Lilypie Fourth Birthday tickers

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Lilypie Second Birthday tickers

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Puppy Love

We knew this day was coming. Eventually, Kate and Hannah would realize that Bella was just more than this annoying black, hairy blob that incessantly annoys them (or maybe it's just me) by licking their faces. She is also a cuddly "toy" that they can play with. Check out the pictures of Kate and Bella below.

Kate hugging Bella or putting her in headlock-not really sure?
Bella licking Kate




The three girls on Thanksgiving night
All ready for bed in their warm, fuzzy PJ's-It's been cold down here.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

So Many Reasons to Be Thankful, But...

These two might just be in my top 3. Happy Thanksgiving! Last night we borrowed a zebra sit n' spin toy from a friend. It's getting passed around between her, us, and my sister as our children out grow and grow into it. It's Hannah and Kate's turn now. They love it, as if it's hard to surmise that from the smiles on their faces. Just incase you still have trouble telling them apart, Hannah is the one on the zebra in all of these pictures and her shirt is buttoned over her jeans. No, we are not going for a new fashion statement. We just had some spit up mishaps while we were visiting some friends and it was just easiest to not have to take off their jeans.

























Here's Hannah riding her zebra



Finally, I got Kate walking on camera. This girl gets around well now.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

New Favorite Food

Can you say spaghetti? While it may still be quite a mouthful for Hannah and Kate to say, they sure do love mouthfuls of it. Hannah opens so wide for it as if I have somehow forgotten where her mouth is. "Right here, Mom, put it right here. I'm ready!" It does create quite the mess, but they love it. Enjoy the pictures!

Hannah
Hannah-could she be any happier?

Hannah & Kate

Kate

Kate-fresh after her bath after her spaghetti and teething biscuit

Kate

Kate-"Look at me, Mom. No hands!"
I love these girls with all my heart. I think that George and I do make the most gorgeous babies on the earth. George, being the wonderful man that he is, has agreed to do anything that I want to do on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Get this ladies...he turned down golf to go (gasp, choke, sputter) shopping with me on Black Friday!
P.S. I know that some of you were praying for Anna Kate about a month ago and I just wanted to write a quick update and say that she has reached 4 lbs! She's still working on regulating her body temperature and they are increasing her feeds slowly. Please pray that she'll come home before Christmas! Thanks!

Thursday, November 19, 2009

The Modern Unclean

I told you that I've been reading in Leviticus for my quiet time lately. The other day I was reading chapters 13-15 and it talks all about infectious skin diseases and such. God put all of the laws about being unclean for 7 days for a good reason. The reason was to keep disease from spreading around the Israelites camp. Well, I think that is the same reason that God set church nursery rules...except they don't seem to be working so well. My two little bugs and myself are currently on the downhill from a bug. No, not an infectious skin disease, but a cold. We stayed home from church this past Sunday to make sure that we didn't spread our germs. I feel like we've been quarantined like the Israelites were back in the day. We should be yelling out, "UNCLEAN, UNCLEAN!" anytime anyone comes over. I know that sometimes people bring their kids to church when they are sick, but the symptoms just haven't shown yet. It's happened to us once or twice. But when you know your kids are sick, be courteous and stay home with them. God makes those rules for a reason. All in all, it could have been much worse. So we thank God for the health that we have.
On a completely different note. Hannah and Kate are celebrating a milestone tomorrow. Their minds are 1! Their bodies turned one back in September, but their little brains are 1 tomorrow. November 20th was their due date. Speaking of birthdays...George is also turning 27 tomorrow! Wow, it felt like just yesterday when we were in our early 20's, so young and carefree. I love him!
Kate is walking around so much more. She still crawls, but she is becoming very confident on her feet now and will even repeat "Uh oh" after me. Hannah still loves to crawl, but can be coaxed to walk. They both have a new trick....sticking their finger up their nose. "Look, mom. My finger is the same size as this hole in my nose. That must be where it belongs." Lovely, huh? They have also both learned what it means to be gentle with Bella and Mommy. Haven't quite learned about being gentle with each other, but we are working on that.

Kate


Kate

Kate

Hannah

Hannah

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Hangin' With the Big Girls

Nothing new and exciting to report on. Just some cute pictures to share. Enjoy!

Rachel begged her mom to be able to come back and spend some time with her Aunt Lauren and cousins. Here is all three hanging out at our house. Look at her hanging with the big girls. She does a good job of holding her own. Hannah better watch out because Rachel is bigger than she is.




Kate loves to play with Bella and her stuffed animals. She likes to lay on the stuffed animal so Bella has to cuddle in to her. It's a game. I think that we are also successfully learning what it means to be gentle with Bella. Yeah! No more pounding on the dog (unless you are mommy and Bella is on the table eating your lunch for the 3rd time this week).


Kate

Hannah
Hannah

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Is It enough?

"Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law." ~Psalm 119:18

God brought this verse to my attention while going through a recent Bible study. Then, further in the study He challenged me to question whether or not God's Word was really sufficient for me. Is It (the Bible) enough to teach me or do I rely God speaking to other people to teach me about Him? I am not in any way suggesting that doing Bible studies or listening to sermons or reading Christian books is sinful or harmful. However, I think that lately I've been using it as a crutch, especially as a "new" tired mother. So many days I find myself sitting down and doing my quiet time out of obedience and not necessarily desire. I get lazy because I'm tired. I feel like the life is literally being sucked out of me from so many different angles. So rather than ask God to open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in His law, I open a Christian book or Bible study and rely on them to do the hard work of studying the Bible for me. There are many times when I think that this is perfectly okay. This is just my opinion, but there are times in life when you need those resources to guide you or you need the encouragement from someone who has been there. God gives spiritual gifts such as teaching and preaching to equip Christians. If He didn't want us to take full advantage of those people's insights from the Holy Spirit than He wouldn't have given them in the first place.

However, I shouldn't just be growing in His Word when I am in a Bible study. Yes, there are times when I may be spiritually dry and I am just not finding the meat in the Bible. I don't want to use that as an excuse though to pick up another Bible study.

"For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart." ~Hebrews 4:12

"All (emphasis mine) Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." ~2 Tim. 3:16

God is challenging me to dig a little deeper and allow His Holy Spirit to teach my directly through His Word. That is difficult to do because I just finished Exodus and the end of Exodus is full of God's instructions to Moses about all of the measurements and specifications of how the Tabernacle is to be built. It's kinda hard for me to read through that stuff. I can't say that it's exactly my favorite part of the Bible. However, this morning I started Leviticus. Another book not often cited, but I want to read through the Old Testament. The first 3 chapters are about how the Israelites were to make offerings. I won't say that my revelation this morning was anything life-changing, but definitely a reminder of what a true sacrificial offering is. This may be weird, but the following was honestly my conversation with God this morning as I was reading the first 3 chapters of Leviticus:

"God, I don't understand why these poor innocent animals had to be slaughtered because of the sin of humans. It just seems kind of unfair." (side note here: Yes, I could never survive on a farm, even though my husband is trying to convincing me that we should have farm animals.)

"Lauren, isn't that the same that happened with you? Didn't you really deserve to be slaughtered on that altar because of your sin? Wasn't it the Lamb of God who took your place on the cross?"

"I guess so, Lord. I deserve the punishment of sin, not your Son. Your Son was blameless, without defect, and Jesus was the only acceptable sacrifice to you."

That is what you call a Holy Spirit blow to my spiritual gut. Once again proving that God's Word is sufficient to teach me. The original point of the text in Leviticus was to provide instruction to the Israelites about bringing an acceptable sacrifice, not necessarily to teach them about Christ. It was written hundreds of years before Christ walked the earth. Yet, God's Word is living and active and He can use His Holy Spirit through His Word to teach me whatever He wants me to get that day.

Lord, open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in Your law.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Garage Sweet Garage

For most things in life, I have a go-getter personality. God did not create me to just sit by and let other people do things for me. This can be a blessing or as most Christian women have experienced can be a curse. What I mean is that when God is telling you that He will change a situation or calls you into submission under your husband's authority in His timing, that is hard to swallow for a woman who thinks she knows what is best. However, I decided that after a year of not having my car in the garage where it has spent some time off and on until George decides to acquire more stuff and then it gets shoved back out to the driveway, I was putting it back into its rightful "home." George came home about 3/4 of the way through my little project and called me a "crazy woman" because I had actually moved or scooted some pretty heavy stuff. I have been asking for weeks, probably months, now if he would clean out the garage. I'll let you guess where that request went. If it looked like trash, it went in the trash. He's actually lucky that most of his stuff is too heavy for me to lift, otherwise, I would have had much more trash. I even went through some of my old boxes and threw away some trophies and awards that I received throughout my education. For a pack rat like myself that was a little difficult. However, I know that my treasure is not here on earth and I figured I'm just saving my children the time of throwing things away when I die one day. After about 5 hours of hard work, I accomplished my goal. I parked my car in the garage with room to get passengers in and out.



The other two little crazy women in the house are just normal babies. Getting into everything and having fun doing it.






I bought them shoes the other day because I wanted to have something to cover their feet with in the cooler weather. I just went to Target and got the "cheap" shoes. They do have flexible soles so it helps them to learn to walk better. Those little shoes cost me $13 a pair. Multiply that by two and the little black dress shoes that they need and we're talking a lot of money just for shoes that they will outgrow in a couple of months. It's the times two that gets us. However, WE WOULDN'T HAVE IT ANY OTHER WAY. Check out the adorable little shoes.

Hannah

Kate


I don't know if you can see what Kate is doing in this video, but she has a little toy chair that she is bouncing up and down in. She can actually stand up out of it without any help. She's becoming much more skilled at bending down and picking things up without falling over while trying to stand back up.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

For Aunt Amy

Since I was sweetly told yesterday that I need to update my blog more frequently because Amy (George's sister) is obsessive about checking for new pictures, I decided to dedicate this post to her. It's full of pictures. Eat your heart out, Aunt Amy.

Hannah
Hannah-don't you love the footie pajamas she's wearing? Guess what size they are? 9 months. I've surrendered to the fact that Hannah will always be my little pipsqueak.

Hannah

Kate

Kate

Kate

Kate
Kate
Kate

Kate

Hannah














The weather was finally nice enough to go to the park yesterday and do some swinging. The girls loved it.