It was bound to happen!

Just for the record, I'm skipping the month of October from now on! Just like the movie "Click", I'm fast-forwarding through October. I'll go to bed September 30th and wake-up Nov. 1st. Just in time for the holidays.


And here is why I'm skipping October...


October 2. 2002, Christian fell and busted his chin which landed us in the E.R. Thank God they just glued him up and sent us home.


October 29, 2005 we ended up in the E.R. because a 9 year old boy tripped and fell on Christian and broke his radius and ulna (both bones from his elbow to his wrist). With that visit, he was given some I.V. medicine which knocked him out and allowed the doctor to set his arm and cast it.


October 22, 2006 saw us in the E.R. again with Christian, this time we were thinking it was his appendix. You want to know what the diagnosis was...drum roll please...RESTRICTED AIRWAY DISEASE. A fancy word for asthma. Which Steve and I both believe is a bunch of crap! I asked the respitory therapsit if it was possible for him to be wheezing because he had a cold and she said yes. I'm not going to go into the entire ordeal (about 6 hours worth), but after a bunch of test they said his appendix was fine.


Christian runs all the time and he's never had a problem with his breathing. Therefore, we are not going to take him to his doctor unless he starts showing signs that he's having a hard time breathing. And because he's with me 24/7, I'll notice.


And pretty much everyone knows that I do not want my daughter growing up on me. Well, she's gone and done it. She's officially a "bi-ped". She's been walking around our house for quite some time, but she now has the confidence to venture out on her own when we're out of her comfort zone.


And we have Aunt Tracie to blame. My friend Tracie and one of her daughters watched my children so Steve and I could go out on a date. She had all kinds of things planned for them so I knew they would have a great time. I didn't "worry" about them, but after 2 hours, I was ready to go get them.


And although I'm not ready for her to grow-up, she looks so stinkin' cute walking around. And, what makes her different from the boys when they started walking (besides her being my oldest to start walking), she loves carrying things around when she's walking. It doesn't matter what it is, but she always has something.


But, whatever you say, the "T" word is off limits!


And I can finally announce that Tracie is the one who is taking over the children's department. Aside from Rob, who has a remarkable calling for children's ministry, I can't think of a better person to take over. Tracie will do a great job and I look forward to working with her and doing a lot more with the kids than I have this past year.

Little Diva

I know I'm a week late, but here's Eliana's 10 month pictures. For those of you who really know me, this outfit and bow come as no surprise. For those who don't, I love leopard print...so much that my bedroom is done in it!


This is the beginning of her wearing size 12 month clothes and there are more leopard print outfits to come! She wore this outfit to church last night and her jacket that went over this...a leaopard print "fur" coat. A jacket that normally cost $60 for $12...yah, couldn't pass that one up! My mom would wonder if she raised her daughter correctly! LOL


She just blew me a kiss in this picture.

In Honor...

Save Money!

I love coupons!


My mom really loves coupons!


That's probably why I like them. While growing up, we had a huge bag of coupons for groceries and before my mom would go shopping, she would bring out all the coupons and have them spread all over the floor, putting them in piles and picking out the ones that she would need. I'm sure she saved thousands of dollars doing that. And now, when she gets her newspapers, she takes them apart and all the coupons that she wants, goes in one pile, the comics in another and the rest of the paper in a separate pile.


Well, in today's world we have this wonderful thing called the internet. And you know what that means, "e-coupons". No more having to cut coupons and find a place to keep them and hope you don't forget about them.


So, I'll be heading over to Target and JoAnn and using their coupon codes!


So, hurry over and check them out! Take advantage of getting what you need/want and saving some money in the process!

Picture Update

I'm still having problems posting pictures, so I just uploaded the ones into flickr.

This is the first picture and then you can view the rest from there. http://www.flickr.com/photos/rfamily/272255441/

A Survivor's Story

Since it’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I figured this would be the perfect opportunity to talk about a remarkable woman and her story about breast cancer. We’ll call her Dee, for privacy sake.


This woman is “grandma” to my kids. She had 7 boys, but always longed for a girl. She adopted us when we started attending our church, 3 years ago. She has been very dear to us ever since. Last summer, we took a trip out to Pennsylvania to visit family and friends and when we returned, she pulled me aside to tell me that she had found a lump. I felt like I had been kicked in the gut. It was devastating news. But, instead of getting down about it, I joined her in prayer for her healing. We know God is the ultimate physician and could heal her, if that was His will.


About a month after she found the lump, she was finally able to get in to see the doctor. She went through a battery of test and the results said cancer. That was easy to take because the rest of the news was that it had spread into her lymph nodes and once it does that, it’s in the rest of the body.


They scheduled her for surgery on Friday morning (2 months after first finding the lump) and we went to visit her on Saturday morning. She was sitting on a chair, waiting for her discharge papers! She looked great and was feeling great. I could not believe that this older woman, just had a mastectomy 24 hours ago and was getting ready to leave the hospital!


A couple days later, we went to her house to check on her and take her dinner and she looked remarkable! She took me into one of the bedrooms and showed me the after affects of the surgery. It’s one site that is forever burned into my memory.


She still had to go through testing to see if the cancer had spread. The power of prayer beat this terrible, life threatening disease. Not only did the cancer not spread, but she has been marked as cancer free! No chemo, no radiation therapy. She has to take some medicine for 5 years, but that beats what one would “typically” have to go through with cancer.


She will tell you how very important it is to do your self checks every month and at the first sign of something being different, go to the doctor! If you find something yourself, the chances of you beating the disease are much greater than if you were to wait until you went to the doctor for a check up.


God has a very special plan for our Dee and I’m so thankful that I’m around to be a part of her life!


For a story of a woman who is actually going through breast cancer treatment right now, go check out her journal and she lets you know what's happening, when it's happening. Let Sylvie know you're thinking about her.

It's about time!

**Lots of problems uploading pictures. I've published this and have come back to try to upload more pictures, but the ones I'm trying to upload are not letting me. So, I'll keep trying and when I finally get them in, I'll delete this part of the post.**


It's about time I posted an update. A lot has happened, a lot has been going on and when I've had a free minute here or there, I haven't really had an interest in sitting here and typing.


So for a recap...

• I turned 30 at the end of September. It was a very nice weekend! My boys treated me to dinner and my husband surprised me with a mint chocolate chip ice-cream cake with a koala and pink bow in her hair. My favorite cake, with my favorite icing, with my favorite animal with my new passion...making bows for my little princess. He wanted to get a camera on there too, but there wasn't enough room. We did some other stuff and I had some special phone calls and now begins a new decade in my life.


• I chopped my hair off and I LOVE it!!!


• School is going great! We are having such a wonderful time and I absolutely love the time I get to spend with them. We've had quite a few "WOW" moments in the past couple weeks and it just reassures me that we're doing the best thing for our family by home schooling our children. We've also increased our family size by 1 (female) cricket, 2 bugs, we think might be tomoto bugs and a catepillar that is now in a cocoon.

• Christian is reading very well now. I was worried because he wasn't very intersted in reading, but now he wants to read all the time and he's actually picking out books that are very challenging to him, but he works through it and gets it!!

• Zachary has become very interested in writing and keeps asking me to start him in kindergarten. Without me teaching me, he's writing a bunch of letters. So, now that the interest is there, we're going to act on it since he'll learn so much because he WANTS to!


• Eliana is a walking, talking machine! She is letting go of things on her own and taking steps, but we're not quite ready to make the transition from crawling to walking completely yet. If it was up to me, she wouldn't be walking at all for quite a while. I'm not ready to say toddler! And just like her brothers, we're seeing a surge in her language abilities and I firmly believe it's because of her signing.







• We got to spend some extra time off with Steve last week. The boys were sick last Wednesday and then I started getting sick, so Steve took 1/2 the day off. On Thursday, he stayed home to help me out because I was feeling miserable, although the boys were doing better. Friday he had already taken the day off to go hunting with our pastor, but plans changed, so we had him to ourself. Monday was a holiday, so he was home. We sure did get spoiled!


• Our associate pastor and his wife who is our children's director are moving, so we have 2 new positions to fill. They're both filled, but he's only announced who the new associate pastor is. The person who will be taking over for the children has one more step to go, but I know without a doubt that this person won't have any problems! Also, we unveiled the plans for our church last night. It's absoultely beautiful! I can't wait to see it finished. There was info that was not mentioned last night, so I don't know if I can talk about it or not, but I will say this. It won't be long before we get started and it won't be long before it's completed! I'm supposed to be getting a copy of the video and when I do, I'll upload it to the church webpage and then I'll link it so you can see it.


• And I took 257 pictures of my family last week and almost all of them turned out great! I put a few on here and the rest I'll upload to flickr, when I get a chance. I had a lot of problems with the pictures on here, so hopefully you'll be able to see them no problem.