To Bear,

With your sudden and unexpected early entrance in to this world three years ago, you have melted our hearts and filled us with uncontrollable laughter and hugs. You entered our lives as our first born, though we never knew that we could love someone so much, we have.

Planes, trains and automobiles abound with enough dirty hands and faces to always make life interesting. The music of thomas the train, caillou, wonder pets, sesame street, and bob the builder stuck in our heads. The tremndous crashes and scrapped knees. You are the quintessential boy.


You are becoming a strong and polite big boy and no longer a baby bear. You will always be our baby bear. May you have a wonderful birthday and many more to come.


Happy Third Birthday!
Love Mommy and Daddy

Just because its Monday..

We all need a little laugh...

Volunteering

I commit to activities with the notion that they are jobs and obligations. I “stress” over these activities and plot them out in my day planner to the minute. Yes, my planner drives my life. I am a mother of 2 small kids, wife, full-time employee, friend, caretaker and volunteer. Really, can anyone do these without needing a planner without going nuts???

Volunteer is a hard word for me to say I am. Instead of thinking of being a Sunday school teacher, a member of the staff council and staff council executive committee as volunteering, but as responsibilities. About a week ago during one of my drives home (which I do a lot of my thinking then), I realized that I was stressed out about everything I was doing because I was thinking of them as needs to do no longer as fun things. I had not notice that my mindset had changed towards these activities to where I was resenting them. Truthfully, I just wanted ME time and need a vacation by myself. Well that is just not going to happen… Well maybe I can plan a day trip somewhere.

So when you think about your life, is your mind, heart, and soul in the right place? I can truthfully say now, yes mine is.

So anyone up for a day away?

Oh Boys! Cont.

After spending close to 45 minutes playing on the John Deere, we headed off to the next farm. This time Bear was asked which one he wanted to go to, with an overwhelming response of COWS, we headed to the cattle farm.

The cattle farm was fun in different ways than the dairy farm. We walked through the barn to view the cows, which Bear was not really interested seeing. This was not what I expected from the reaction in the car. The barn cat however, was a highlight and not only for our clan. There was plenty of farm equipment to look at including a “mac” truck. But the tractor tires filled with corn, wheat and soybeans were by far the best. The boys (yes all of them) took their shoes off and hopped right in. They moved from one tire to the next and back again. I knew that Bear enjoyed playing in corn at Aunt Marla’s and Uncle Ron’s, but I did not realize it was not a one-time thing. Which I am sure Marla is still finding corn all over her house a year later. We finally got everyone’s shoes back on and headed off to look at other farm delicacies. When Bear would not leave his nose alone and began crying…of course I just assumed he was having a little allergy to corn dust (because he gets really stuffy when they begin to plow corn). Finally, I stopped him and looked up his nose….He had a soybean stuck up there!! Seriously how do you get a soybean stuck up your nose???? So with that we ended our farm tour and headed home to find a snot sucker. After a “I think we got it”, a nap and dinner on the table; did I realize “We did not get it”. I was able to cut the end of the snot sucker larger and got the soybean out, with several tears.

Oh boys!

This is late...of course. A couple weeks ago, we took the boys to the Hancock County Farm Festival. It was a tour of 4 different working family farms and they open up their farms to allow us “city” folk to see how the farms work. The tour included a dairy farm, cattle farm, horse stable, and grain mill.

We decided to take the boys to the dairy farm first, just because we thought it would be cool. (Yes, we are big dorks!) It was a very interesting experience and the boys loved it. They had us put on plastic boot covers over our shoes before entering the grounds. This was such a great idea to protect both the cows and us. We walked through the barn and got to see a baby that had been born that morning, as well as several that had been at the state fair. In one area they had several “ladies” waiting to be milked and at the end of their line was a door with a rope across it, with a very either lonely or nosy cow sticking her head in. One of the owners, said that she had already been milked and probably had a friend in line. Who would have thought cows would break out into “cliques”.

After laughing a little and watching someone make ice cream by generator power churns…we headed over to play on the John Deere. All the boys enjoyed getting to play “farmer”.

A word to the wise...

Why is it when you are down, frustrated, tired, and seemingly alone, that’s when God shakes you to say “Hey, did you forget something?” or “Now, you know I will take care of that.” This past year has been a struggle. I grew up being very self-reliant and accomplishing the goals I had set for myself. I have engrained in myself high work expectations and standards, and I hold others to those standards even if they do not know it. Over the past year God has been “shaking” me to get my attention and I have been fighting it. I know He is right and it is his plan, not mine. But those expectations are really hard to let go of.

I know that trials and tribulation are to make us stronger Christians, but my human-ness wants to throw a two year old tantrum about how it is not fair and ask why when things get really hard. Then I look at family and friends, to find them struggling with a lot of the same issues including those I believe to be strong Christians. I, then, begin to see what God is teaching me. It always amazes me at what God shows me and how my expectations/desires are usually so out of line with his plan.

With everything that has happened over the past year, He has provided and watched over us. His grace has never left our life.

I have come to rely heavily on the following two versus to help me not throw my two year old tantrum.

Trust in the LORD with all your heart
And do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge Him,
And He will make your paths straight.
Proverbs 3:5-6

Good News

For those who know us and how hectic our life is; will be happy to know that my father in law was re-enlisted on the heart transplant list. This is fantastic news and has been a long process. We are so proud of the progress he has made in the last 6 months.

Yeah...Its has been a quick summer

Oh my, how the summer has sped past us. If you asked me, I would tell you it was still June. So let’s play catch-up…

The boys are doing great and growing like weeds. Bubba has started to take over Bear’s clothes, the chucky little guy is now in 24 month/2T clothes and Bear is in 3T. It is so hard to believe that neither of them are babies any more. *Sigh*

Bubba has begun walking in the past two/three weeks and you would never guess that he had problems figuring it out. It was like he got over the fear of balancing himself on Monday and had practiced in his sleep to be a pro on Tuesday.

With as busy as our summer has been, we did not take any trips away. But then with two little ones who are always on the move, can you really travel far? We did get to take Jonah to a Brickyard 400 and several trips to the zoo. We moved Ma-moo closer to us, so now both grandparents are within 10 miles of us.

In June, we got a new puppy (June Bug). She is a labordoodle and is going to be huge. I don’t think we realized how big she was going to be. She is roughly about 6 months old and is already the size of our standard poodle. I have definitely discovered one thing about her…she is as stubborn as a mule.

This fall we will be even more busy than the summer. We do have a trip to the Quad cities planned for the end of October for FIL’s 60th birthday. There will be several more trips to the apple orchard (we have been twice already), we will travel the state for the covered bridge festival in a couple weekends for big shu’s birthday and our 6th wedding anniversary. YES, I did say 6 years! Then we are trying to decide what to do for Bear’s 3rd birthday.

Big shu has been dreaming and strategizing his Christmas light display for months now (yes months, since July actually). I am sure our time with him is going to be very limited over the next couple of weeks. But he has some good ideas and hopefully there will not be an electrocution possibly like last year (like 5000 extension cords running across the ground under snow).

Sorry this is a little quick and irrational, but it was a hurried post.