"You Make Me Happy Everyday"

It never fails...whenever I am in need of a smile she is ready to deliver. (she was caught outside with her sissy's lipstick)

 Every single night, before she goes to bed I sing three songs to her.  One of the songs is "you are my sunshine"  but I changed the words up a bit to make it our song.

"You are my sunshine, my Madi sunshine, you make me happy everyday. you'll never know dear how much I love you, please don't take my Madi away."

It's so cute because she sings the song with me and she say mommy when I say Madi. 

Decisions Decisions

This message couldn't be more timely for us.  We all have decisions to make in life and I have to say I am guilty in thinking it was God's trail of "bread crubs" that lead me to making the right decisions. 

I have to admit what he is talking about in the sermon is huge in the Church and I am guilty of it big time!!  Eye opening and life changing on how to make godly decisions.

Olivia Ann (Anastasia)

Olivia: Kind one

Anastasia (ah-nah-stah-SEE-yah)
spiritual meaning: Resurrection - The state of one who has returned to life.

To be honest with you, I did not know the meaning of her name when I gave her the name Olivia. Her name in Russia was Anastasia so we decided to keep that as her middle name. As far as her first name...I was praying over names before my girls came home...before I even knew I was going to be a mother to two girls. I had heard the name Olivia and my heart was drawn to that name.


I LOVE that her name means kind one. When she came home from Russia she was anything but kind (not that a 14 month old could be kind but believe me, she was anything but kind due to orphanage living).

For the past few years I have made it a tradition to crawl into bed with the birthday girl the night before her birthday and tell her of her special story...about how God brought her home. As I laid in bed with Olivia reminiscing over her beautiful story we were laughing about the funny things she did as a baby. One of those funny, but not so funny things she did was hoard things. Her sister could not crawl yet so she would take all of the toys and put them just far enough to where her sister could not reach. Then as her sister grew she would take her sisters toys and her toys and hide them. As she got older we use to find things under her bed, under her pillow and things hidden in her closet. Through the years I have seen her heart majorly soften towards people. She is the one who will quickly serve her sisters first when helping mommy with lunch or dinner. She has recently told me that her friends and family are worth more than her things. She told her sister the other day..."you can have my toy, because I love you more than I love my toy."
 Tonight after doing our Advent tears ran down her face over her sin. It was such a sweet brokenness. She told me she hated her sin so much and she wanted the Lord to come now. She said she wanted to see Jesus and thank Him for dying for her sin. It was such a sweet sincere cry which of course made this mom bawl like a baby. It gave me a glimpse of how the Lord may feel when we come to him in our times of brokenness. It made me want to hold her and make her feel loved and forgiven and cherished. It was a good hug tonight.

I also love that I get to encourage my daughter with the fact that her name means kind one.

I love too that fact that her middle name means Resurrection. There is no life for a child in an Orphanage. The fact that she is adopted...chosen, out of all of those babies, by God, for our family! God returned her back to life.

                                          HAPPY BIRTHDAY SWEET O

Another Amazing Opportunity for the Duggars

My heart hurts for the Duggar family and I pray for healing, the only kind of healing God can bring. If I know the Duggar family, they WILL use this pain to encourage others. Glory will go to God, they will turn their hearts to the Lord, their children are going to learn first hand how Christians deal with pain through the example of their parents, their marriage will strengthen, and they will go on trusting the Lord with the size of their family. The most amazing thing...America will see a true and steadfast faith and how much peace we can truly experience in our most difficult times.  He is a faithful God and I have no doubt He is going to bring so much good out of all of this.  This opportunity IS His goodness.

What's My Reason?

He legitimately had every reason in the world to keep the change for himself. 



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DXL9vIUbWg   (just incase the video dosen't show up)

Happy (late) Thanksgiving

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!  So much to be thankful for!!!  It feels good to finally have a chance to sit down at the computer.  I actually don't have a chance... I have one child to the right of me doing her spelling and the other to the left of me reading...and if you know me, it is soooo hard to do things with distractions. So if this post is choppy you'll know why. 

Update on Gabby...We did go to jail to visit her but there was no record of her???  Not sure if she is lying to her boyfriend or what?  My prayer is that she went back home and got off of the streets. 

We have gone back out and met some more precious people.  The girlfriend I have been going out with, her and I are thinking it might be best if we worked with an organization.  Our husbands agree that it would be safer too.  The streets are not exactly the best place for women to go out and witness.  We will continue to keep food bags in our cars and there is a spacific married couple we will continue to visit but for now I think our street days are over.

SO....onto a totally different subject... You know I love my projects!  And of course I am never without a one.  Many of you have asked me..."what the heck are the kids doing while you are busy doing your projects???"  That is the nice thing about homeschool!  They are usually right by me asking me a bazillion questions about what I am doing, how I am doing it and why I am doing it?  They also read to me while I am working, or they ride bikes, roller blade, play on the playground, build things, paint...really the list is endless.  Here is a picture of one of them as I worked in the garage....

Is this not the cutes thing ever!!!  I was sanding one of my latest projects and she went inside, grabbed her sleeping bag and enjoyed a nice nap in the cool air.  She slept there for atleast and hour and a half.

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Thanksgiving was really nice.  We had my parents and hubbys whole family here.  It was also Neals dads 60th birthday that day.  Once again I got lucky and didn't have to cook the meal.

 That was a tasty bird!!


The girls loved playing with their cousins..

And of course we can't go a day without the computer?!?! 

Here is a picture of Neals family...His parents, brothers, sister and their families.

I really love Thanksgiving.  I love the food but most of all...I love that it's just a day to really enjoy the best blessing of all...FAMILY!!! 


Well I saved the best for last.  If you have actually made it to the bottom of this post then you get to see what Grace got as an early Christmas present....

Thats right...another dog!  You know, it's just not crazy enough around here!  Question: What do you give a lazy child?  Answer: A responsibility. 
His name is Boo and we of course rescued him.  He is a 2 years old cockapoo.  He is really cute.  After we brought him home we soon realized he is a horney little thing.  Our other dog is a female and my parents dog is a female.  He thinks my parents dog is reeeeally pretty.  We are having that issue fixed this week.  Speaking of which, I'll end on a funny story.


So I brought boo home and quickly gave him a bath.  He was matted with knots and very dirty.  After washing him I got busy cutting off all of the knots.  He had a lot of knots on his tummy.  There was a pretty big one I kept pulling on and moving back and forth so that I could get under it and cut it off.  Welllll, after all the tugging and moving I finally realized it was not a knot!!  Poor little guy.  I am not use to having a boy dog!!

Michelle, You Truly Are One Of My Heros!!!!!

As most of you already know they are going to have their 20th baby....and I know most people will roll their eyes and say they are crazy.  With all the rolling of eyes and criticism she always returns the with understanding and truth.  Made me think of this...Do all things without grumbling or disputing; so that you will prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I will have reason to glory because I did not run in vain nor toil in vain.  Philippians 2:14-16


I think God is soooooo good and I am so encouraged by this family.  I think all of Michelle answers were awesome in this video.  Obviously, 20 kids is not Gods plan for everyone but it amazes me to see how many kids they are raising up in the Lord and sending out into this world for Christ. 

This may sound offensive and really it's just a thought that passed through my head for a second......What if...it was the non-believers who closed their wombs and the believers who adopted more and left their wombs open to whatever God saw fit?  Honestly, it was a split second thought.  I wonder what the world would look like?  Don't get me wrong, I believe God is completely sovereign through it all...all of our fears and doubts.