Thankful 5/25

Okay, so I've missed a few days posting, but I have been writing them down!!

5 things I'm thankful for today:

1) Getting an aisle seat at the graduation/awards ceremony... It was great to be able to take pictures from my seat!

2) That my parents come to Delaney's things... Daddy can rarely get here, so someone sure needs to make the poor kid feel important!

3) I get to SLEEP IN tomorrow morning for the first time since soccer season started!

4) String cheese--so easy.

5) Fresh strawberries. YUM!

5 things I'm thankful for today:

1) Freedom to worship & praise my the Lord my God with all of my heart!

2) Chocolate cake...yummy!

3) Cool showers...feels good on sunburned skin...

4) The ability to have fun... just to jump up and down, run around & act silly with my kiddos.

5) My girls don't sunburn like me... they got darker skin from their daddy. :)

That's My Girl!

I am 110% positive that Delaney is my child. She sleeps with books under her pillow.

Yep. She's mine.

I'm so proud. :-)

What a day!

I spent much of my day on the phone trying to fix some things... we've had some things go wrong in our lives lately. (If you're reading this, please say a prayer--these issues are extremely important and mainly financial in nature.) I didn't end up getting anywhere with anybody. I stay on hold with one company for 35 minutes, only to have the person on the other end tell me she couldn't help me. That only made me mad. I informed her that I had been on hold for 35 minutes, and I expected an answer to my question. I already didn't have any patience after waiting so long on hold! She said I had "a tone". And apparently I should have said I'd been holding for 35 minutes instead of "35 freakin' minutes!". Ugh. I just hung up before I said something I would regret.

Jenna had quite a busy day, too... She's getting into everything these days. And I do mean everything! I was on the phone when I heard a noise... I didn't think much of it, as there are trucks and tractors in front of my house because they're putting in an underground electric line (yippy skippy). About a minute later, here comes Jenna... with an opened packet of instant oatmeal. I couldn't help but laugh when she said, "Momma! Help me!" Ha ha ha... When I went to check it out, she had managed to empty most of a shelf from the pantry onto the utility room floor.

A little while later, I was looking up something for Mike whe she started to holler at me. I knew she had gone in her room to play, and I wrongly assumed she was playing in her toy box. I went in to find that she had climbed into her crib. Apparently she didn't think she could climb back out though... This time it was, "Wanna g'out." (Translation for those who don't speak toddler-ese: "I want out of here!")

Today, I found adventure without ever leaving the house... It must be a lot of fun to be two. Maybe tomorrow we can ride the tricycle (aka "sickle") in the back yard!

Something good for a change...

Well... after last week, we're now the proud owners of a blue 1997 Kenworth W900L... and the so-called "newer and better" Peterbilt now sits on a lot for sale in Oklahoma City. It was absolutely sucking us dry!! I'm positive that I breathed a sigh of relief when I met Mike in Oklahoma City to drop it off. I was happy to drive away and leave it sitting there, knowing we would not have to pay for any more repairs on that very expensive hunk of metal!!

We bought the KW in Kansas from a guy that Mike knows... he's an older man named Mel. He's about the nicest guy I think I've ever met! He must be a long, lost relative or something... we made sure he knew he was invited to our house for dinner next time he blows though our town. :)

I'm very happy to say that we now have a lower truck payment, and we owe about half as much on our truck as we did with the Pete.

Thank the Lord! I really feel like it's just about time that something goes right for us in the financial department... Lord knows hard times have had us by the neck way too long. We've been in fear of losing everything more than once. And that's a truly horrible feeling!

Now we just have to get all the other things caught back up so that a nice blue Kenworth can be seen sitting in our driveway on occasion... gotta make sure we can keep the driveway so it will have a place to come home to... :)

Sometimes I forget how much I appreciate what my husband does. Some people just don't "get" it... He really sacrifices a lot for our family, and I truly feel loved and blessed because of what he does for me and our girls.

Satan vs. God's Love

Did you know that ONE THIRD of the angels fell with Satan? And that they were all cast out of Heaven with him? I didn't know that before last night. I knew there were others cast out with him, but I didn't know there were so many.

Satan will truly do ANYTHING to get to us. He will talk us into doing things, and then turn around and say, "oh, you shouldn't have done that!" He wants us to feel bad about ourselves all the time!!

I hear people saying all the time, "I don't know why God would do such a thing. Why does He cause me this pain?" Well, if it's hurtful in any way, I can assure you that it was the work of Satan--NOT God!

The Bible says in James 1:17 that "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the father of the heavenly light." It says that he never changes, that He will ever turn on us. There is not one cell in me that believes that My God would ever cause us any harm. He loves us more than we could possibly fathom. Just think about all the love you hold in your heart for all of your loved ones combined (and some of us love pretty passionately!)--He loves us so muh more than that. It's so much more and much stronger than anything we could imagine. His heart must be overflowing--exploding with feelings of love! Would you send one of your own children out to die for me? He did. He truly cares for us more than words can express.

Do you know that even the demons of hell believe in God--they tremble in God's presence! It's just not enough to believe. We must dig into His Word and really get to know Him, form a relationship with Him. Tell Him all our troubles--give them to Him (He tells us to do so!). Worship Him and praise Him. It is the reason we were made.

Delaney told me tonight that when she's a teenager (she equates being a teenager with being grown up) she is going to be a teacher... and sometimes a waitress--the kind of waitress that tells people about Jesus.

Thinking that she has somewhere confused two things, I asked her, "Don't you mean you want to be a missionary?"

"Yeah. That's what it's called. I think I'll be a missionary and sometimes a teacher. I really want to tell people about Jesus."

She has quite an imagination, that girl. But I'm glad to hear that she's aiming for the stars--or at least she is aiming "high". :)

Sometimes I think I just might be doing an okay at this mom thing... :)