Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Finding Hope in the Sky

Have you ever had a REALLY bad day? I'm not talking about accidentally burning your husband's dinner and the kids driving you crazy...I mean something life-altering crappy...getting possbily life-altering crappy news. Well a couple weeks ago I had one of those days. I was completely stressed out over it but tried not to show that to my husband. Our whole family went over to his parents house to visit and such. Tyler had a meeting after that so he left from there in one of our cars, and I drove home with the kids in the other. On the way home, I felt out-of-it, just exhausted with worry...when I looked up into the sky and saw the sun streaming through the soft, blue clouds, leaving gorgeous streaks of sunlight. I've seen this many times, and it always makes me imagine what it will be like when Christ returns to the Earth for the final time. This time though, the streaks of sunlight through the clouds covered an entire half of the sky. It was amazing. It made me smile the rest of the drive home, and to me, it was a way of the Lord showing me how much he really does care, and how present he actually is in my life. I'd never doubted him, but this little sign gave me the extra comfort I needed at that moment.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Sick Season AGAIN?


Well my little family has been sick on and off over the last 3 weeks!! Mainly colds, coughs, and body aches. BUT, I think everyone is doing better...even Addy has been doing better. Over the weekend I couldn't even put her down, and although normally I can lay her in her crib and she goes right to sleep, I had to rock her all day long. Truthfully it's nice at this stage when she stops squirming long enough for me to really cuddle with her, though. Here are some pictures of her when she fell asleep in her jumper the other day! She's NEVER done this, she normally whines when she's done jumping! I was doing the dishes a few feet away and I realized she wasn't banging her rattle anymore. This is what I found! She's a major thumbsucker when she's tired so of course it's in her mouth. It was too sweet though. She slept for 20 minutes like that (I didn't have the heart to move her...she looked so peaceful) and then she looked at me, grinned, and started jumping again!! What a character!! Unfortunately today I took her to the doc and we figured out why she was so cranky over the weekend...she had an icky throat. So...now she's on antibiotics. It always makes you feel like a SUPER mom when you don't catch those things...but I was giving her infant Tylenol occasionally because I knew she wasn't feeling well so atleast I unknowingly helped ease the throat pain!!

Monday, September 8, 2008

The Circus!


On Saturday I was able to leave Addy with Grandma Caudle, so that Shaylee, Cayden, and I could go to the Circus!!! Tyler was sad to miss it since he's never been to one before...and I only remember going once when I was little...so this was a fun treat! Although once I saw the adult price I probably would have choked on my gum if I'd had any!! Luckily I had free kids passes...but $16.50 for one adult is a little hard to swallow...that could have bought me enough yarn to crochet a blanket!! Haha! Then of course they try to steal the rest of your money with all the things they are selling!! Luckily I fed the kids before we went...so after I bought them Cotton Candy, I told them if we didn't buy anything else, we could get Happy Meals afterwards from McDonalds.


It was a fun circus! Well the first half anyway...after the first hour the kids were ready to go. Shaylee was upset about not getting to ride the ponies or elephant (which I would have loved to let them do but I didn't bring enough cash since my ticket was so spendy...she also had a head-cold though so she just wasn't handling all the excitement very well) and Cayden was running around wild and wanted to go home. BUT...we got to see black bears push strollers around, poodles do the "train" and do balancing tricks, THREE motorcycles rolling around in a really-not-so-big metal cage (shown in one of the photos), girls climbing up ropes and swinging gracely from them (shown in one of the photos), girls climbing up long ribbons and doing all kinds of tricks, a young female contortionist, and then in one of the pics you can barely see a man hanging by his mouth way up high...and the girl carely hooked her feet to his (no ropes, contraptions...NOTHING, just wrapped her feet around his a little) and hung there. CRAZY!!!





Even though I have a pretty decent camera, there was just no way of getting a good photo with all the movement...and we weren't allowed to video tape...but oh well. It would have been fun to stay for the next half of the show, but atleast we had fun while we were there, and hopefully next time we go Tyler can come and the kids will last a little longer!!