Day 4 - TOGETHER

We had a good night last night. Mr Johnathan slept until 6 this morning and went back down at 7:30 until I woke him up at 9:45 for church. Mom showed up at 9:30 to help me with whatever. She colored with Julia and played in her toy room while I nursed Johnathan...then we all piled in the car and headed for church - TOGETHER.

Today we had our new worship pastor come in-view-of-a-call and once again our church voted unanimously. That makes the fourth unaminous vote for our church in the last year. We had one for Khris (our new pastor), we had one for Todd (our new executive pastor), we had one to purchase 24 acres of land that we will soon be building on, and now one for Wayne (our new worship pastor). The pressure's on because in just a few weeks we have our new youth pastor coming in-view-of-a-call as well. Seems our church has gone through quite a bit of change in the last year...and you're right! God is really moving in the lives of the people in our church and we live in such a growing community, the changes are needed. We're excited for the days ahead.

After church, mom, Julia, Johnathan and I went to eat some chinese food. As we were walking in (mom holding Julia's hand and me carrying Johnathan)...it was so neat that we were all coming from church and going out to eat TOGETHER. I was walking in behind her thinking, "What a joy to spend such precious time with my mom and have her hold the hand of my daughter". Three generations of us girls spending time TOGETHER. I love having her here. I just thought we'd go shopping every now and then. But it has been so awesome to actually spend time TOGETHER, visiting, laughing, & learning from each other again. And she has been SUCH a help! Just her holding Johnathan was long enough for me to put Julia down for her nap, change clothes and throw the towels in the dryer...so helpful.

Julia napped until about 4...it was so great because Johnathan was still asleep. I took the opportunity to spend some mother/daughter time, so we snuck past the pack and play, went outside and got on my bike. I have one of those trailer thingies hooked to the back of my bike for Julia to sit in while I pull her. We got on and rode back and forth on our street, however every time we headed back towards the house Julia kept yelling, "PARK!" because that is where we usually end up...the park. I explained to her that Johnathan was asleep and that we couldn't go to the park. After about the 100th time, my friend Kari called to ask if we'd like to go to the park with she and her kids...YES!

So I fed Johnathan, loaded him up in the jogging stroller (Kari pushed him) and Julia and I loaded in/on the bike and headed to the park. FUN! Then mom came over, we ate, played in the yard and mom held Johnathan while Julia and I took a bath in mommy's "big baff" TOGETHER. That is what we would do about once a week when I was pregnant with Johnathan and haven't done it but once since he was born. It was a GREAT night. Julia even let me pray the "old" way with her (on her changing table) and then went right to sleep.

Mom stayed for a while after, we ate some shrimp, watched Oprah's Big Give, and just enjoyed spending time TOGETHER. It has been a great weekend. I am definitely looking forward to Jason being back tomorrow. I now realize that I am not a perfect, super mom and need help. Thanks Kristi and Brianna, thanks mom, thanks Valinda and Jen Bishop and tomorrow....thanks to all the Mommy's Group girls for helping fill the time with fun things and people to hang out with. I love doing life TOGETHER with each of you!

Love!

Weekend Update, Day 1, 2, & 3

Soooooooooo my weekend is going pretty good having the babies all by myself.

I met my friend, Jen Bishop and her kids, as well as our pastor's wife, Valinda and her son, up at the bounce house by our house yesterday morning for a little get-your-kid-outta-the-house fun time. Here are some pics from that...

Valinda and Koleman on the BIG slide! And William (Jen's son) and Julia











Then Kristi and Julia's best friend, Brianna came to spend the night last night. The girls ate Chick-a-Fila and then went upstairs for some play time. They ran around singing, "Ring Around the Rosy".....only they call it "PockaRosy". Then it was bath time. So much fun to see them take a bath together since we've been having them take baths together since they were itty bitty. Now they seem so old laughing and pouring water on each other. Brianna washed Julia's hair with a wash cloth and Julia returned the favor with a good belly wash.

THEN IT WAS BED TIME! Oh me, oh my! Usually Jason gives Julia her bath because it's typically at the same time Johnathan needs to be nursed. Well, apparently they developed new rituals over the last 7 weeks that obviously mommy was not aware of. One being that we no longer pray on her changing table together, we are to get on our knees on the floor to pray. I was in no way, shape, or form aware of any of these changes as Julia is screaming, "FLOOR! FLOOR! FLOOR!" I had no idea what FLOOR meant and simply went on with the original plan and that was to pray. Ohhhhhh noooooo....missy would not have anything to do with mommy's old boring ways. It wasn't until I asked Jason what the heck all of that was that he told me he's trying to get her ready for her big girl bed and to start praying on our knees once she moves into it. OHHHHHH - now that my daughter hates my gutts and thinks I'm anti-prayer!!!

So that part we are still trying to work on. It seems I'm a little out of the loop lately. I think having another baby has really thrown me a bit. Sometimes I feel removed from Julia in these areas, but am working on handing Johnathan over and truly getting down in her world more.

So we woke up this morning, ate breakfast and all 5 made our way to the bounce house place (for Julia, the THIRD day in a row!). Here are some pics and a video (YES! That's Mr Johnathan sliding too!) to prove our adventures.

Brianna and Julia

The Love of a Child

I just got home from attending the funeral for Jason's little 9 year old cousin, William Sloan. The service truly honored William and showcased his sweet short life very well. There was not a dry eye in the church and rightly so. We are blessed to have such faith in our family. The love of the Lord is what the family is clinging to right now. Thank you for your prayers.

As I nursed Johnathan immediately following the service, I thought to myself, "sweet little boy, what if I only have you for 9, almost 10 short years?" At that, I just started to weep, holding him tight. Then when I talked with my mom later, she talked about Julia and how much fun they had together while I was gone. I thought....what if I only have HER for a short time as well? I don't understand the Lord and His ways at times, and I pray that if something were to ever happen to my children, I would rely on Christ as William's parents are during this time.

As I drove home, I prayed the Lord would help me when I get impatient with Julia or don't know what to do when Johnathan is crying and I'm not sure how to handle it....or when I don't want to get on the floor AGAIN to read a book with Julia or out of bed to tend to Johnathan one more time. I pray that I would cherish the days I have with them as if it were the last. I pray that for you today, dear sweet and tired new mom......hug your children and pray a prayer of thanksgiving.

So as promised, here are some of the pictures that were taken by our friend, Beverly Toney. There are more to come, so I will send some here and there once I receive them all. Here are some she sent already:

If Brad can do it, YOU can!

These were my husband's sympathetic words this week when he was preparing to leave on a mission trip to Campeche Mexico for 5 days (Thursday through Monday). "Sweetie, if Brad can stay home with his two babies alone, YOU can do it too!"

This will be my first time to be alone with both kiddos, so I have to do as good as Brad did when Shannon was on her women's retreat. If you think of it, please pray for them....I mean, please pray for us!

We have a lot of things planned so we're not just hanging out at the house all day. I'll keep you posted on how it all goes down!

"Happy Seester"

This is how Julia was greeting people at church today when we showed up for our Easter service...."Happy Seester". Then by the 10th time, I think she finally got that it was Eeeester and started saying it correctly. Okay, so here are some pics from the Easter holiday...

Kisses from Big Sister...

This is what usually happens, though...

Mom was with us again this Sunday at church. She keeps US on track with the goings on at our church. We asked her what time the Good Friday service started and what time the Easter egg hunt started this morning and she was even invited to the 50 (pronounced FIVE OH) club on Tuesdays for lunch. She's a social person, that woman. She's going to know more people than we know!

We started a new tradition for Easter. Mom bought a ham for us to make (seems she's been buying the food lately and we fix it at our house!), we had corn and mashed potatoes. We thought we'd start doing that every year as our traditional Easter lunch. So much fun! Then we "hid" (they were just here and there in the grass) eggs in our front yard for Julia to go "find" after her nap. She had a ball and wanted to eat ALL of her candy at once. We're spacing her out.

And here's a little video of Julia finding eggs at the church....they were falling from "heaven"...actually we got there late and they were ALL GONE! Sooooooooo the sweet older children shared their eggs by sneaking around her, climbing on cars and throwing them down. She got so many she could hardly carry her basket.



When I was growing up, we always colored eggs. I asked my mom if she could help me with Julia's easter egg coloring so here are a few pics from that a couple of days ago...

SAYved by Grace

That's right, my mom.....SAYLA (some call her Say) made a public profession of her walk with Christ.

Last Sunday, March 9th she was sitting in church and felt the Lord telling her it was time to surrender her life to Him. She and Jason went down to the front of the church to pray with Pastor Khris (I wasn't even in there because I had to feed Mr Johnathan!). She wanted to pray the prayer of salvation and ask Jesus to become the Lord of her life. Sooooooooooo exciting!

We are very excited for her since this is one decision she will NEVER regret! God is so good to each of us and loves us deeply. If you have never made a decision to make Jesus your Lord, you are missing out on a huge blessing - don't pass up the opportunity!

Anyhoo, Jason is going baptize her around the beginning of April! Don't worry, I will be there taking pictures, so check back to view them. And thank you for praying for her. There are many of you who have been praying for her for years...so thank you!

"Teese Brush"

We had our regular dentist appointment this past week and the dentist wanted Julia to come with us to ride in the chair and get used to the place. That way when she turns 3, hopefully she'll enjoy it as much as I do.

Here's a pic of her in the chair...











Here's a couple of pictures of my little pride and joy. One in his first "real" outfit with shoes and the other is his definition of a hard day of work! We are enjoying him and love him so much! He's just so sweet!

PUMP it up!

I usually pump 4 ounces throughout the day so that we can feed Mr Johnathan a bottle at night. This is not only faster, but it allows Jason to participate in the feedings (which he really doesn't mind).

For my Type A personality, my plan is to: while Jason is feeding Johnathan, I pump some more for the NEXT night's feeding. This way I stay on top of it and don't have to feel pressured to find time to pump in between feedings all day long. Sounds like a good plan, right?

So when I pumped 5 ounces for last night's feeding, I was pretty proud of myself. Especially since I had a heck of a busy day: my mom decided she wanted to start walking with the Lord yesterday and made that long walk to the front of the church to pray with Pastor Khris (wow! what an incredible blessing that was!), then we went out to lunch with my mom and our new friends Kari and Brian, then I was home long enough to go over the drafted Bi-Laws for our church since I'm on that committee, I pumped after editing those, I left Jason home with Julia and Johnathan to go to my Bi-Laws meeting, left early to go to a dinner-get-together at Jen and Ross Bishop's house, and got home in time to give Julia her bath and well, feed Johnathan AGAIN.

So while Jason was giving the middle-of-the-night feeding, I pumped 3 1/2 ounces for tomorrow night's feeding. I was so excited because that meant I would only have to pump 2 ounces today. While I was finishing up, Johnathan was almost done with his 5 ounces. Jason gave me the bottle to put Monday night's feeding in, but by that time, he started fussing like he wanted more....more? How can you want more than 5 ounces? I was thinking in my head, "you better not drink more than an ounce of this milk I'm giving you, I need it for tomorrow night" What did he do? He drank ALL but 1/2 an ounce!!!! Nooooooooooo don't drink my milk! I mean, afterall....it IS HIS milk.

I don't know when I'll be back to normal, but the thought of pumping again today seems awful!

Ziploc Chicken

Okay so there were some of you asking for the scoop on my new found FABULOUS dinners! Go buy the Ziploc Steamer bags (buy the medium bags AND the large bags).

You can cook chicken, shrimp, salmon, any kind of veggie and I think I'm forgetting another kind of meat. Anyhoo, the bags come with recipes inside. And then they print right on the bag exactly the time limit for each kind of food.

Recipe for what I'm calling, "Ziploc Chicken": We thawed out some chicken, cut it up into bite size pieces. I sprinkled a packet of Ranch Dips in there along with about 5 shakes of worcestershire sauce. Put it in the micro for 5 minutes. When it was done, we threw it on a bed of rice (which I cooked for 5 minutes before the chicken because it takes 10 minutes for the rice to cook). Right after, we threw our asparagus in a bag and vio-lah....dinner in about 15 minutes. The chicken turns out VERY tender and cooks it all the way through (no pink!) and the veggies are nice and soft and cooked. When you're done.....ya just throw the bags away!

Oh and then the next night, Jason did the same thing only instead of the Ranch Dips packet ('cause we didn't have any more of them left), he sprinkled lemon pepper in the bag. Very good!

Sooooooooo easy for new moms, moms on the go or someone who hates to do dishes after dinner. And it's healthy steamed foods you're cooking for your family! Happy Cooking!

The OBSTACLES we face!

First, I'll tell you that the picture taking went pretty well this morning. We took some pictures of Julia holding Johnathan (WITHOUT mom and dad - whoah!) and some with her kissing him. We took some of just her, some of just him, some with Jason, Julia and Johnathan together and some with all four of us. We should get them soon, so I'll BLOG once we get them back.

Next, we stopped off at The Zone, which is a bouncehouse pizza place, for lunch. BMom was passing through our neck of the woods on her way back home and decided to join us for some lunch and some bouncing (which was really actually some sliding and some sweating - see videos to prove it). Here is Julia going down a 20 foot slide (that she climbed up ALL by herself!).....following is her dadda...

Momma and Julia together!

Then it was on to the obstacle course! I nearly pee'd my pants....speaking of pants....Jason got me pulling them up which shows a bit of MY REAR at the beginning of the video! Sorry, we're all family here, right???

The conclusion I came to was that I can stop my membership at the gym and just go to the bouncehouse obstable course with Julia every day and have my abs back to normal in no time!

Click here to view video through snapfish (it was too long to download through blogspot): http://www2.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=214562933/a=32221019_32221019/fromupload=true/imagecount=0/videocount=1/t_=32221019

What was Johnathan doing during the sliding, sweating and mooning? Sleeping, of course!

"Snow Snow Snow Your Boat..."

I mentioned that I am part part time at work now. I only go into work on Tuesdays and Thursdays when Julia is at Mother's Day Out.

I bring Mr Johnathan with me (he's way too young to stay at home by himself right now) so my time is limited to work the ENTIRE time because afterall he still has to eat and be held from time to time...

Anyway - this week it has snowed on both Tuesday AND Thursday. On Tuesday, Julia's school was delayed two hours because of the snow. Today they called me to come get her almost two hours early because of the snow. Now, I like the snow and all - it's pretty and exciting and we get to teach Julia that it is actually called "SsssssssNow" and not "Oh Noooooooo!", but I like to work. It gives me a reason to take a shower on those days!

Okay so I wanted to show you a picture of the four inches of snow we received...

Well, I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow because we're supposed to have pictures taken of Julia and Johnathan. Pray for us! :+)

Couldn't Take the Pressure!

Okay, so I guess I got sick of hearing, "Did you read Shannon's latest blog?" or "Oh my goodness, did you see the pictures of Mallory and Morgan on Shannon's blog?"

The answer was always a resounding....Noooooooooooooo! What's a BLOG anyway? It sounds gross. Couldn't they have come up with a better name than BLOG? I needed some kind of reminder to read my sister-in-law's BLOG because I never remembered to read it. I always felt like the outcast in the family because they would constantly be talking about Shannon's BLOG. Okay, okay.....I'll read it.....that way next time you ask me if I've seen the pictures of my nieces, I can proudly say, "YES!!!"

On top of not being a BLOG reader, I felt pressured to give the grandparents a chance to see pictures of their other grandchildren and to be able to read about their day as well. So needless to say, I couldn't take the pressure anymore and decided that since Julia is now 2 years old and Johnathan is one month old (yesterday) - it was only fitting to start BLOGGING myself. I'm an official BLOGGER...not 100% sure if I'll succeed or fail at keeping up with it, but here is my feeble attempt to start:

Other than just having a baby and going from part time work to part part time work, my day pretty much consists of feeding Johnathan, running around with Julia, changing a few diapers, feeding Julia (NOT breast feeding!), then feeding Johnathan again, running around with Julia....and if I'm lucky - getting in a nap here and there (usually does NOT happen, though)

I went to my second Mommy's Group today. I have to tell you that I wasn't always in favor of "Mommy's Group". A year ago, I was a part of this same Mommy's Group that got together every Monday around lunch time. Julia was just starting to walk while the other kids were just itsy bitsy babies sitting so pretty and sweet in their carriers or on their cute monagrammed blankies. Julia inevitably would stomp all over the babies or think that one of them was trying to steal her toy or get just plain bored because none of the Halo Babies (this is my term for babies who are angels all of the time at this age because they aren't toddlers yet!) weren't playing with her.

When the anxiety level of my daughter taking dancing lessons on the Halo Babies' heads got so intense, I dropped out - holding the official title, "Mommy's Group Drop-out"!

Although I held my title proudly for the last year, I started going to Mommy's Group again 2 weeks ago when Johnathan was, well...two weeks old. There are new members of the Mommy's Group who have older kids than Julia (which makes it oh so much better) and now all of the original Halo Babies are walking on the heads of our precious new babies....who are now the second generation Halo Babies!

All of that to say that I enjoy it now and it's been great to spend time with my girlfriends and have (some) adult conversation in between the, "why did you push him?", "say your sorry", "you have a dirty diaper AGAIN?" and "you need to go sit in timeout for 2 minutes."

Speaking of 2 minutes (which is the length of time Julia sits in timeout....a minute per her age)...lately when you ask Julia what her name is, she answers, "Two Minutes!"..."No, not the time you spend in timeout, what is your NAME?" After asking her several times, she'll enthusiatically answer, "Julia BAKEhead!"

Well, I must run, my Halo Baby is waking up ready to.....you guessed it.....eat again. And my Toddler Two Year old is starting to wake up and I hear her counting to her puppy (this is her way of playing Hide and Seek). She's counting, "One, two, one, two, five.....her-i-come!"

Until next time I BLOG you......have a great day!