Jump! Jump!

Remember that song?  “Jump! Jump! Chris Cross’ll make ya – Jump! Jump!….”  Hehe!

Well, apparently Wesley has been learning to jump rope in PE at school lately.  Thank goodness Santa gave him a brand new jump rope in his stocking this year!!  Talk about coincidence!

Wes was anxious to finish his homework and get outside to enjoy the BEAUTIFUL weather and practice jumping rope.  He’s actually really good at it!

(Day 46:)

I got some other cute pics of him mid-air, but this was the best one of him looking at me and even smiling!

Claire also wanted to try…Bless her heart…I think 19 months makes a big difference in coordination…Look at all this hair…Everywhere…

Wow! 

My parents came over to hang out with the kids while hubby and I went out to dinner again (see yesterday’s post).  So, of course, the kids were anxious to show my Mom their jump roping skills.  She watched them, counted how many they did consecutively, and even jumped roped herself!  I wish I had taken my camera out to get a few shots of that!! 

It’s an amazingly gorgeous day today!  Hope to get a few things done in the house and then enjoy some outside time w/ Boo! Have a great day!

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Valentine’s Day

Hubby & I have never made a huge to-do for Valentine’s Day.   Our thing is going on a dinner date to this certain restaurant. It’s the same restaurant every year, and I can’t remember not going to this place for Valentine’s.

This year, we hadn’t really made arrangements for anyone to keep our kids. And we knew that most of our teen or college-age babysitters probably already had plans. So we agreed to just wait until Tuesday night (tonight) for my parents to be able to watch the kids and we would just go then.

Well, hubby came home a little before 5, while I was cooking dinner & decorating Valentine’s cookies w/ the kiddos, and said to go get ready.  He said his parents would be at our house in a few minutes, and we were going to dinner!  What a great surprise!!  I told him, “But I’ve already arranged for my parents to watch the kids for us to go out tomorrow night!”  He said, “Well, we’ll just go out again!”

So we went and enjoyed an incredible dinner at our favorite little Valentine’s spot.  We feasted on wine, salad, bread, nachos (not ordinary nachos, mind you; these included cheese, sour cream, jalapenos, chicken, etc.), filet mignon topped w/ shrimp, grouper filet topped w/ fried lobster tail nuggets in sweet & sour sauce, a veggie and potato medley, and key lime pie!  HOLY MOLY!!!  We were sooooo full, and rightly so, with all that food.  It was all just divine!  But we were definitely hurting later.

We went out early in the evening, so we got home in time to watch Bachelor w/ his parents!!  Hehe!  AND we get to go out again tonight – woohoo!!

Day 45:  The kids made out like bandits for Valentine’s Day!  It all started with the little treats I gave them in the morning.  Then they got lots of candy and goodies at school.  Then Daddy brought them something when he came home, and Grandmama brought them something when she came!  Whew!  Here’s a picture of their school loot!

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Days 42 – 44

Day 42:  Hubby came home and said some friends had invited us to dinner and a concert.  We were to meet in just a couple of hours and hadn’t made any arrangements!  We quickly found a babysitter and got ready to go.  It was a fun time out with friends!  Hubby was going hunting the next morning and was tired from a long week, so after we got home, he went to bed.  I stayed up just a little while and treated myself to some ice cream – mint chocolate chip!!

Day 43:  My Mother-in-law called this morning, asking me to bring the kids up for the day.  I LOVE that she does this!!!  It’s nice to have a little break, but it’s just as wonderful that she just wants to spend time with them.  Hubby and I got to ride around in the country, just looking around.  We ate some fried seafood at a country restaurant.  We just enjoyed not having an agenda or being limited by kids’ naptimes and having to cut up food or fill sippy cups!    Anyway, here’s a pic of Sadie, all ready to go to Grandmama’s house!

Day 44:  Hubby!  He doesn’t let me take many pictures of him, so I’m glad to when he lets me. 

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This Week

So, I haven’t been posting every day, but I’ll catch up on my P365 today.

Monday – 2/7/11 – Day 38:

My beautiful Claire Bear.  She lost her other bottom front tooth the other day (this is her 2nd lost tooth) – so cute!  Her Gram braided her wet hair the previous night so Claire could sleep in the braids and have wavy hair in the morning.  It looked so cute in pigtails.  This picture was in the afternoon (after school), but I think she still looks adorable.  I don’t know what she was laughing at; she was just being her silly self!

Tuesday – 2/8/11 -  Day 39:

My sweet Wes.  He had a substitute teacher on Monday.  Apparently a lot of his classmates took advantage of the situation and behaved really badly.  But Wes was good and even earned the Star Student award for that day!  He’s earned it once or twice previously in the year.  But he also got it AGAIN TODAY!!  His teacher was back and she gave him the award as well – two days in a row!  Very proud of this boy!

Wednesday – 2/9/11 – Day 40:

Sadie loves playing in her older siblings’ rooms while they’re at school.  She’ll often find their crayons, or worse, markers and get in a little trouble!  She also likes playing with her Bubba’s “layos” (legos).  This day she was wearing one of her sister’s headbands (far back on her head, which is why her hair looks crazy in the pic) and playing at her sister’s princess table, singing “Happy Birthday to Sadie – cha! cha! cha!!”  Hehe!

Thursday – 2/10/11 – Day 41:

My sweet girls.  Wes was having his piano lesson (in Sadie’s room, since that’s where the piano lives), so the girls had to find somewhere else to play together.  My old cheapo keyboard was in Wes’ room.  Claire discovered that it can make drum sounds, and she and Sadie were having a good old time playing on it!

I’ll get my me-photo later today, I guess.

Last night was a long night.  I stayed up late to begin with trying to get my 2010 scrapbooks finished and uploaded to Winkflash.  I needed to complete the order last night because they were having a flat rate book sale — up to 100 pages in a bound book for the price of a 20-pg book.  I do 8×8 books, so mine were $16.95 each plus shipping.  The total was less than $50; without the sale it would have been close to $200.  And my 2010 scrapbooks are done and being printed – woohoo!!!!

I checked this morning, and even though it says on the website that the flat rate book sale is only going through the 10th, which would be yesterday, they’re still showing the ad.  So, if you have a book ready or can get one together really quick (they do have auto-fill if you just want to upload some photos and order a book), you might try the code ILOVEFLATRATE and see if you can still get the sale price.

So, back to my long night.  Sadie was coughing really bad again last night.  Just continually.  She’s had a runny nose again this week.  Wes had a sore throat, etc., this past weekend, and I guess Sadie is pretty much guaranteed to catch anything and everything they get, even if she just had a little head cold the previous week.  Ugh!  It just worries me a lot since she has or may have asthma, and has never really gotten over her original cough which has been going on for around 2 1/2 months now.

I finally got up around 4 a.m. and gave her a breathing treatment w/ albuterol.  She finally got back to sleep and slept very soundly until we woke her up to take the older two to school.

The one thing that I’m glad about it that some of her symptoms just don’t seem like asthma to me.  She doesn’t seem to cough any more after she’s been running and playing.  She doesn’t usually seem to wheeze.  So, I’m hoping and praying that she just has irritated lungs that haven’t been able to heal yet because she keeps getting little head colds one after another.  Her pediatrician says that lungs can take a couple of months to heal.  So I’m praying it’s that and not full-blown asthma.  Really, I’m praying for total healing in her little body.  I hope you’ll pray that with me.

Alright, have a great weekend!  I may be back later today or sometime this weekend to update some P365; but I may not. 

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Days 36 and 37

Day 36:  Hubby and I went to a birthday party for a friend of his.  We didn’t really know many people there, but it was nice to get out a little.  And we always have fun together.

Day 37:  We stayed at the lake this weekend.  Usually when we’re at the lake, hubby cooks most of the time.  He usually makes a yummy breakfast, we scrounge and make sandwiches or whatever for lunch, and he’ll cook something for dinner.  He’s said that he likes to do that to give me a little bit of a break when we’re at the lake (which I TOTALLY appreciate!).  One of the things he’s known for making for breakfast is pancakes (from scratch!).  They are soooooo good!  He uses his Mom’s recipe (I’ll share later, and you’ll thank me!), and they’re just so yummy!

Well, hubby went hunting this morning.  The kids were asking what was for breakfast.  As I was thinking, “uh, cold cereal and milk?” I knew that we probably had the ingredients for the pancakes.  I found all the necessary ingredients and talked myself into giving it a go…..

Yaayyyyyyyy!  I did such a great job, if I do say so myself (and, actually, the kids and hubby said so as well!)!!  They turned out really well.  So well, in fact, that hubby declared he was no longer the only one to cook pancakes in our family, which means I have breakfast duty more now than I previously did.

So, here’s the recipe.  Just remember 2-2-2 and 1/4.  That’s 2 cups of flour (self-rising), 2 cups of milk (buttermilk is best; whole works fine as well), 2 eggs.  Then add 1/4 cups of oil.  Stir it all up and get ready to fry them up in a pan.  They are so much better when you fry them in bacon grease, so that’s just a great excuse to first cook some bacon to go with the pancakes!  Enjoy!!!

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Cheater Cheater Pumpkin Eater

So, okay, I’m cheating on yesterday’s P365.  I’ll update the P365 photos first, and then I’ll explain.

Day 33:  Wes at the breakfast table, bed-head and all.  Love this kid!

Day 34 (sorta):  Sadie having an absolute blast playing outside!  She had fun peeking through the board slats on the bottom of the treehouse, saying “Peek-oo!” (peekaboo).  She also kept climbing up into the treehouse (yes, I held my breath every time she started up the ladder and held my hands up behind her ready to catch her if she fell; and if you don’t understand why I was so nervous, you can read this old blog post to see the size of this treehouse).  She slid down the slide at least 1 million times, each time saying “wuh mo tigh, mama, wuh mo tigh” (one more time) with her “1″ finger held up.  Soooo cute!  I love this age!

Day 35:  And last, one of Sadie and me, taken with my old point-and-shoot as we were waiting for Wes & Claire to get out of school.  (Side note #1 – I think my p&s is biting the dust.  It will still take pics, obviously, but it wouldn’t display the picture on the screen after taking it.  Stange.) (Side note #2 – while the shadow in this picture makes it look so, my teeth on my left side [right side looking at picture] are not actually gray and rotten!)

Okay, so now the explanation of why Day 34′s photo was actually from Day 33.  First, I reserve the right to complete this P365 project however I see fit!  Haha!  Second, I took plenty of pictures on Day 33, so I could borrow one.  Third, and the main reason, yesterday was a really bad day.

I’ve never been one to just go around blaming the devil for everything; just not my style.  But I really feel like I was kind of under attack yesterday.  I woke up not feeling terribly bad, but not good.  Sinus issues, like normal lately.  But I just had a very serious case of the “blah’s”.  And by that I mean, I was just depressed.  It was a rainy, gloomy day anyway; and I’m not joking when I say that I think the weather (or maybe, more like lack of sunshine) can effect my mood after a certain amount of time.

But I think that the devil was kinda out to get me.  John 10:10 says

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy;

He definitely stole, killed and destroyed my day, along with anything I might have accomplished.  I mean, just the day before I had this whole post about how I had such peace about where I am in life, leading worship or not, “just” being Wife & Mommy, knowing that God knows what my future holds.  Then I have a day where all I want to do is lay in the bed. all. day. long.  It was awful.

Plus, I got physically very sick.  I hadn’t really eaten much that morning (not so unusual), and was about to start to eat lunch, but I started feeling awful.  My little sinus pressure turned into an extremely horrible sinus migraine.  I think my blood sugar just completely bottomed out — I got really shaky and couldn’t eat and felt like I was going to pass out.  I even called hubby and asked him to pick the kids up from school.  It was that bad.  After some rest, I got over the headache and sick feeling, but didn’t regain much of an appetite and was weak because of it the rest of the night.

So, because I barely made it through the day standing up (and parts of it were definitely not standing up), I certainly didn’t take out my camera.  There’s the story.  I hate days like that and am thankful I don’t have them often.

One great thing about this is that I’m telling it.  I spent a lot of my life trying to look and act just right.  Usually only my family (and more specifically, my husband, so very lucky for him) got to see the not-so-nice side of Kresta.  I still fight that, and for some reason, still find myself trying to have the appearance that all is perfect in Kresta-land.  But I’m learning and trying.  So, this is the real stuff.  And I think people appreciate the real and genuine so much more than anything put-on and fake.  I know that I definitely want to know people for who they really are.

Especially in light of Christianity – nobody wants to see a fake Christian, at least I for sure do not.  Yes, I’m a Christian.  But I’m also a real person with real-life “stuff”, just like everyone else.  I just happen to have a Savior to help me through it; One who has gone before me to the cross, on my behalf, and taken all of my “stuff” with Him.

Today has been a good day.  Still gloomy outside, but my spirit is somehow refreshed.  Thank You, Lord.  And, I’m looking forward to a wonderfully relaxing weekend with my family.

Hope you have a good weekend as well!

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“I Know”

When I was a little girl, if you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have told you that I wanted to be a classical pianist and play Carnegie Hall.

Fast-forward a few years and I would have told you I wanted to be a Contemporary Christian recording artist.

Fast-forward a little more and I would have told you I wanted to be a Music Therapist (that is, after all, what my degree is in).

Fast-forward a very tiny bit more and I would tell you I wanted to be a wife and mommy most of all.

And that is where I am today.  I am a wife and a mom, and I absolutely love that this is my life.

For a very long time I have also been a worship leader.  I have talked about this before on my blog, but in case you’re new here and don’t want to look back, I have led “contemporary” worship for most of my life, starting in my youth group and up through now.

You may remember my post about leaving the church we had been at for almost a decade.  We had prayed about it for a long time and knew God was directing us to do something different.  Almost immediately, we felt led to go to and lead worship at another church, a church plant.  Well, this past Sunday was our last Sunday there.

The long-story-short is that there is no story.  Nothing went wrong, nothing happened, there’s no drama, no behind-the-scenes animosity or problems.  We felt God’s leading to be there, and though we were only there for a short time, we knew that was what we were supposed to do.  But we have felt that it was not the place we were to stay.  We genuinely love the pastor and the others that we got to know there.  They are precious people who are doing some wonderful things for God’s kingdom.  I can’t wait to see how God uses them in our area!

So where does that leave us?  Well, we don’t know.  We aren’t sure where we’ll go next.  We just want to do God’s will and be where He wants us.  Our hearts’ desires are just to glorify Him and worship Him with our lives.

And I’m strangely at peace about the whole thing.  Our pastor prayed last Sunday for God to give us peace about all of this, and He has.  No, I don’t know where we’re going next or what we’re going to do, but God knows.

Earlier today I was listening to a podcast from a church I’d never listened to before.  The pastor offered a few thoughts of his own, but then spent the majority of the rest of his time reading passages of scripture.  The scriptures he read told of God’s faithfulness, how God is on our side, how He loves us and wants the best for His children, how we can have hope in Him.

This scripture is so familiar, but it’s one I heard that pastor read on the podcast today, and I heard it in a new way:

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”          Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV)

I’ve so often heard this verse and even referenced it myself, focusing on the “plans to give you hope and a future” part.  Yes, that is wonderfully comforting to me.  But today, the part of the verse that struck me was the “I know”.  I, Kresta, don’t have to know, because He does.  And I can rest and have peace in that.

So, if you asked me today what I want to be when I grow up…well, I don’t really know.  I’m content in the role God has for me now, wife & mommy.  And I look forward to what He already knows about my future.

And just because blog posts are always better with pictures, here are some pics of one of my most important callings:

(btw, these are all from today, plus a ton of other cute ones of Sadie playing outside; I have no idea how I’ll choose just one for today’s P365!  =D)

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Days 31 and 32

Just a little update of P365…

Day 31: Sadie at her follow-up Doctor appointment.

We’re still treating this as asthma, although we’re still not 100% sure that’s what it is.  Her pediatrician said it can take up to a couple of months for lungs to heal once they’ve been ill, so we’ll kind of have to see how she does after that time period and after weaning her off some meds.

As of now, she’s still taking part of the breathing treatment that she was taking.  This is good that she’s only taking part of it because she’s becoming fairly tired of it and trying to be uncooperative.  Her Daddy’s pretty good at getting her to do it.  He plays games and tells her to sing in her microphone, etc.    Good Daddy!  She also still taking some oral meds.  Praying that her cough will just go away completely!

Day 32: Wes & Claire playing outside after school.  Getting some energy-burning time in before the rain comes!  It’s really windy and cloudy out, so it probably won’t be long!

Since it’s the first photo for February, I decided to change up my date marking a little bit.  Just going to try this (or variations of this) for this month and see how I like it.  If I like it I’ll keep it, if not, I’ll find something else. 

Have a great evening!

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