365Project.2 | Week 4

It's hard to believe that January is nearly behind us, but the calendar says it's so. We were blessed with a blissfully normal week ... plenty of sunshine, the ice storm turned out to be a non-event for our area, and creative energies were exercised in a variety of fashions ...

Day 22. The kids are designing a mud fort, and it's been a lot of fun to see them working together on their project. Even Matthew has been helping out by loading 3-4 bricks at a time in his dump truck and pushing it up the hill. :)

Day 23. Matthew loves to play Hannah's recorder. Based on his demonstrations, he appears to have quite a bit of lung power and a penchant for one particular note. ;)

Day 24.Just a quiet afternoon of engineering fun with the marble run. :)

Day 25. LOL. I did this all. the. time. as a kid. Like mother like daughter ... two generations running. :) (Yes, Grandma did it, too.)  ;)

 We had fun playing with her hair later in the morning ... ♥

Day 26. Our next big helper in training! :) As a side note ... it's SO much easier for a two year old to get on the floor to vacuum up wood shavings than it is for an adult. Just sayin'. Matthew loves helping with just about anything though, whether it's loading the washing machine, feeding Toby, using the dustpan, loading the dishwasher ... he's ready and eager to help!

Day 27. Emily and Eliza have matching skirts! It took a bit of figuring to modify the pattern for Eliza as she is taller and more slender than Emily, but in the end we were successful! :) And now we can make more in the future with much less trouble! :)

Day 28. Yep. We finally took the plunge. For mostly financial reasons, we've avoided the world of "gadgets," including smart phones, for a long time, but some changes in Chris' job responsibilities made a tablet device very appealing. After quite a bit of research, he decided on the Nexus 7. Now for the challenge of finding the right apps. :)

And thus we close another week ... 

I'm thankful for the strength and wisdom
our Father is so good to give us each and every day.
And I am loving our Bible reading plan.

365Project.2 | Week 3

Well, my friends, without doing an official count, I think I took as few pictures this week as I have in any week since the beginning of last year. It's a good thing I only need one per day! :) I seemed to be running tired most days and the camera lay forgotten in lieu of the cappuccino till sometime post-7:00 pm. Ah well. Some weeks are like that. :) Without further adieu ...

Day 15. If you've never noticed, two-year-olds can be very particular (and a bit difficult to reason with) once they've made up their mind. Thus, Matthew and I spent nearly ten minutes hunting for the perfect rocket "that can stand up" in the Microsoft Clipart Gallery. He was so pleased when we finally found it! :) (We won't mention that it was the same rocket I had suggested about eight minutes earlier ...) ;) Once printed, he had so much fun coloring it and carefully clipping all of its edges ... and once complete, he went through great effort to make sure his masterpiece was very. well. secured. to the fridge. :)

Day 16. Oh the joy of a Mommy's heart to see her children loving on each other! Hannah and Peter worked together during most of rest time to design Thomas the Tank Engine and a semaphore from the little Legos just for Matthew. ♥

Day 17. It rained this week. A lot. Oh, did I mention that it rained? Yes, it did. Quite a bit. In fact, most every day this week it rained. A lot. Rain is good. Rain is good. Yes, rain. is. good. Thank you, Father, for rain. And thank you for sunshine, too. :)

Day 18. Wheat weevils. Have you heard of them? Yep, ancient history. By all of about one week. Ugh. Sigh. However, on the bright side, I love organization. Seriously. Having things in nice neat containers is a source of genuine delight. In the past I have considered buying these containers, but deemed them an unnecessary luxury. Having the privilege, by necessity, to finally invest in them almost makes the battle worth it. Thankfully, the war was brief, losses relatively few, and victory decisive.

Day 19. Ah! Sunshine and wonderful fellowship with friends. Can't beat that! :)

Day 20. We love you, Toby! Thanks for letting me snap your picture when I realized after everyone else was in bed that I hadn't taken a single picture all day.

Day 21. Team Peter and Mommy won the game of Qwirkle tonight! :) Peter was exceptionally pleased with himself that he managed to get a double-Qwirkle that Mommy hadn't even seen! (Mommy must admit she was pretty proud of him for catching it ... and quite glad for the extra 12 points, too.) :)

And that's about it.
Just a pretty normal, very wet week of life. :)

Thanks for stopping by. :)

365 Project.2 | Week 2

Along with many of you, we settled back into "normal" this last week. I've made some changes to my weekly routine, and overall we're deciding that they're a good thing. :)


Day 8. Yep. It's a board book. That provided us with hours of entertainment. Literally. The artist hid four different shapes in each of the scenes, and while some were quite easy to find, a few confounded two adults for longer than we'd care to admit. ;)

 

Day 9. Just protecting the castle.  

We all thoroughly enjoyed some warmer weather this week, and Hannah and Peter took to the trees with their imaginations peaked by Patch the Pirate's newest release, "Kingdom Chronicles." (A CD which the parents have enjoyed as much as the kids!)

Day 10. I thought they might be digging for buried treasure, but no. Peter informed me that they were digging "for dirt." Which I do suppose is a logical thing to dig for. As a general rule, you have a very high probability of finding it. :)

Day 11. We have {drum roll, please!} completed 100 days of school! Woo-hoo for us! :) Hannah and I had lots of fun sitting together and each coloring our "ball of 100s." It's been a long time since I've done that much coloring. :)

 

And on his 100th day of school, this young man most definitely surprised me. He filled in all of the numbers all of the way up to 100! He can easily count up to 100, but he had never written numbers that high as part of his math assignments to date, so I just assumed he'd need help. But nope. I was wrong. Sometimes, it's good to be wrong. :)

 

Day 12. We celebrated 100 Day with a gift-card funded dinner at Red Robin ... and my camera decided to spend the night. So Mommy and most of her crew went back Saturday morning to retrieve it. (They were quite delighted to receive a second batch of balloons.) :)

Day 13. Legos, K-nex, friendship bracelets, marble runs, train tracks, ... if we're not reading, we're usually creating around here, and the living room has been home to sundry parts and pieces on a very. regular. basis. Don't ask about the underside of my couches.

Day 14. Okay. I'm sharing a secret. You are looking at, hands down, my favorite part of Chris' new schedule. He's dead to the world by the time I crawl into bed, and I'm dead to the world when he crawls out, so I started leaving him little notes on the bathroom mirror or in his lunchbox. He decided to join the fun, but he's a lot more creative (or I'm a lot more predictable), and he generally hides his notes in less obvious places so that I'll find them as I'm going about my morning ... the top of the cappuccino can is a fairly regular hiding place. ;) Anyway. It's been a lot of fun ... and the kids enjoy seeing my growing collection on the inside of my cupboard. ♥ If you haven't left a note for your beloved recently, I highly recommend it. :)

And just for fun ...

2012 Flashback | Week 2

And such was our week ... 

Psalm 13:5-6 resonated with my heart this morning:

But I have trusted in Your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in Your salvation.
I will sing to the LORD,
because He has dealt bountifully with me. 
Psalms 13:5-6

He most certainly has.

I am thankful.

Did you ever miss a day?

I've had a couple people ask me this question, and my guess is that there are others who are wondering. So here it is:

Was there ever a day this year you forgot to take a picture?
I'm dying to start this project, but I'm afraid of failure. :)

 

My answer? ABSOLUTELY. Not many, but a few. Do you know what happened a lot more often than that? I had two great pictures (of different events/subjects) from one day and lousy ones on another day. So do you know what I did? I simply allocated the two great pictures to two different days and skipped the lousy ones.

 

I didn't do it all the time, but probably at least one picture every couple weeks or so was taken on a day other than the one for which I posted it. (And no, I did not apologize for or draw attention to it. It's my project, folks.) Most of the time I did it so that I could get at least one picture of each of the kids each week. Really, when your kids play outside every. single. day., does it really matter too much if the picture taken on Day 346 gets posted to Day 347, especially considering that the only pictures taken on Day 347 were boring and/or blurry? Nope. Not one iota. :)

 

And sometimes I did it when something like the creek flooding happened on a particular day, but I also got a super one of the kids that I wanted to use. Occasionally I'd post two pictures a day (if there were two big events), but I really tried to keep it to just one. So in that case, I'd move the picture of the kids to a different day if I liked it better than the pictures I took on that day. My bigger goal was seven pictures a week ... and if that meant dropping the pictures from one day so that I could use two pictures from another day, so be it. :) It was my project. Nuff said. :)

 

It's okay. Try it. You'll be glad you did! :)

 

And since I now have a random post, I'll add a picture I really liked from last week but didn't get to use. :) Colors are popping out along our driveway!

  

365 Project.2 | Week 1

Well, my friends, ... are you game for a repeat performance? If not, change the station, 'cause we're doing it again. :)

Why?

It was fun. :)

I LOVE the simplicity that my 365 Project gave to my blog posts ... one picture a day (maybe 2), a brief comment, and wa-la, 7 pictures later, I had a week's post. Seriously. You can't get much simpler than that, folks. :) (And for some reason, grandparents really seem to enjoy the regular stream of pictures and have no desire for that to dry up, which it would, if I went back to my former method of trying to dream up something creative to post about on a semi-regular basis.) ;)

I love how it helps me capture the kids as they're growing up!

And mostly? I love how it helped me to appreciate and share the beauty of the ordinary which makes up the fabric of our lives. My prayer is that it will help you to see beauty and blessings in your own life.

 Let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us:
and establish thou the work of our hands.

Psalm 90:17


Big events are fun, but most of life is made up of ordinary days ... and my 365 Project helped me appreciate and focus on the blessings in the midst of the challenges of life.

Mommyhood is not for the faint of heart. And in the midst of the everydayness of life, it's sometimes easy to get focused on the (never-ending) piles of laundry or sink full of dishes or dirt on the floor or messes to be cleaned or clutter to be tamed ... and forget the incredible, overwhelming blessing of the husband and munchkins who are behind the piles and the sink and the dirt and the clutter.

Picking up my camera every. single. day. helps me remember to be thankful for the blessings of our Father in the midst of the everydayness of life. ♥ So this Mommy plans to continue the habit. (Although I'm hoping to begin posting on Tuesdays rather than Sundays.)

Many thanks to those of you who read my posts regularly and have shared that you enjoyed last year's project. I blog primarily for family, but it's very encouraging to know that others are reading and enjoy my posts, too. Hopefully you won't mind the theme continuing. :) I would love to have you join me! :) (It's totally okay if you missed the first week!)

So without further ado ...

Day 1. Last day with G&G ... the ladies brought out the gingerbread houses! We definitely learned some things from last year's attempts, and it was SO much easier this year. It's amazing how much more fun such activities are when you remove the frustration element. ;) (The extra houses from our kit traveled north so that cousins could join the fun, too!) :)

 

And the men supervised the engineering of an incredible marble run. Yep, my hubby engineers everything. Including marble runs. :) Makes for some pretty cool marble runs, if you ask me. :)  

 

Day 2. Bookmarks ... for a new year's Bible reading plan.

 

I discovered this plan about three months ago, and it's been niggling at me ever since, so here we go. I am very excited to be doing it with my hubby. ♥ 

 "Professor Grant Horner's unusual, challenging, and life-changing
Bible-Reading System is unlike any other you have ever seen.
Try it for ONE MONTH and find out for yourself!
You will never be the same."

If you're interested, you can read about Professor Horner's method and reasoning here. (I designed bookmarks which seem a bit more user-friendly for our purposes, and I'm glad to share if you'd like your own.)

 

Day 3. Potty training, round 3. :) May I say that outside of the fact that Matthew was most definitely ready and has been doing phenomenally well, it is absolutely a HUGE blessing not to have to mesh my potty training methods with daycare rules?!? Cause they don't mesh well, and that presented some real challenges with our older munchkins. Reason #3,078,263 why I'm glad to be home!!!!

 

Day 4. Peter has been loving his new Legos he received for Christmas ... and this kit that his Daddy played with when he was little has been the favorite. Thanks, Grandpa!

 

Day 5. Houston, we have a closet. And great is the rejoicing! :)

 

Day 6. We had the blessing on Saturday of sharing our wood pile with some friends from church who will use it to lower their heating bill this winter. We were doubly-blessed when they returned with a box of doughnuts. Sunday afternoon, Chris and I had a mini-debate over whether he would or would not share the last half-doughnut with me ... Hannah's perspective made me chuckle: "I think it's silly to have an argument over eating a doughnut." Somehow, I think you're right, Doodle-bug! ♥

 

Day 7. Ah yes. Vacation is officially over. School is once again in session. I personally am glad that there's only one "first day back" from each vacation. :)

 

And thus 2013 has begun.

Let the adventure continue. :)

365 Project | Weeks 51b-52

Nope. Don't look at the calendar. I am well aware that we are no longer in 2012. However, the pictures were taken in 2012, so that must simply be good enough. :) We were blessed to enjoy a wonderful Christmas vacation, and updating my blog was not high on the priority list. (Things like enjoying time with our munchkins, their grandparents, and a new sewing machine took much higher precedence.) ;)

 

Day 356. Pshew. This one came totally out of the blue! Our sweet monkey got the stomach bug ... praise the Lord, he was only "sick" for about 12-hours, and even more blessed, none of the rest of us got sick. Thank You, Father!

Day 357. Our friend Jay braved the tummy germs and blessed us with a day of help in our basement ... thanks, Jay! The day ended with a secure subfloor and "the boys' bedroom" being a nice shade of teal blue. Progress! :)

Day 358. Our kiddos in their new Christmas outfits from the Blessing Family. :)

 

Day 359. Christmas Eve was a rather exciting day in our home ... of course, there were the usual things, like icing sugar cookies ...

And then Grandma and Grandpa made a surprise arrival ... TWO DAYS EARLY!!! Talk about exciting! :)

And for the first time in ten years of marriage, we did not have to set up a tripod for our annual Christmas Eve photo. ♥

Day 360. And we were able to get a family picture in front of the tree! :)

Merry Christmas!

For a number of years now, my parents have been able to join us after their busy season to celebrate Christmas with us, but work obligations usually prevent them from arriving till the 26th at the earliest. It was so much fun to be able to share all of Christmas with them this year! :)

Day 361. Totally unposed. And too cute not to capture on camera. Peter and Grandpa have more in common than their name. :) (Christmas afternoon and the day after were filled with a multitude of random projects ...)

Day 362. And then following Christmas, we had a wonderful vacation in Gatlinburg!

Funny story ... our first evening at the cabin, Matthew decided he wanted Grandma (AKA, "Gampa") to play hide-and-seek with him. So he hid her in the closet (yes, you read that correctly), and then he started looking for her. Upstairs, downstairs, in the bathroom, behind the couch ... finally, he decided to check the closet. You can imagine how we all laughed when he jumped in surprise at Grandma's "Boo!" :)

Day 363. The irony ... it was somewhat colder at the southern amusement park than the northern one we visited last summer! But Dollywood was still lots of fun!

Hannah was very excited! Not only was she tall enough to drive her own bumper car, but she was tall enough to ride every. single. ride. in the park!

Day 364. Matthew discovered that he loves carousels!

Day 365. And a wonderful climax for our trip ... life doesn't get much more exciting for two southern children than to wake up to a half-inch of snow. ;)

Day 366. Ah yes. 366 days in a 365 Project. February 29 kind of threw that off, but we still enjoyed our tradition of appetizers for our New Year's Eve "supper," followed by many rounds of various and sundry games. :)

 

And that, my friends, is it.
Thanks for joining me on our journey through the exciting

and the mundane of everyday life, 366 days a year.

 

Shall we do it again?