SUMMER BUCKET LIST 2015

It feels like summer is flying by already (although it is not even officially summer according to the calendar).  My children have been asking for our summer bucket list and I finally got it printed out today.  It is time to get busy having fun!

SUMMER BUCKET LIST

__Have a water balloon fight

___ Stuart/Johnson weekend of fun!

__Make popsicles 5 times

__Visit Nana, Grand-Bob, the Pitts and Mamaw

__Get donuts

__Wash the cars

__Eat banana splits

__Have family game night

__ Make dirt pudding

__Go to a movie

__ Have root beer floats

__ Go out for milkshakes

__ Roast Marshmallows

__Go swimming 10 times

__ Have a Nacho bar for supper

___ Eat Watermelon

___Go camping

___ Pizza by Eli

___ Cheeseburger Pie by Olivia

____ Make sidewalk paint

___ Calzones by Olivia

__Play in a creek

___ Snack night by Isaac

__ Go Bowling 10 times

___ Supper by Bailey

___ Make stepping stones

___ Make homemade ice cream

___ Game night with friends

___ Surprise a friend

___ Waffles for dinners

____ Make giant bubbles

___ Invite friends for a cookies and lemonade playdate

A Few Pictures from Eli's Kindergarten Graduation Slideshow

Our Last Kindergarten Graduate!

It seems like last week that Isaac graduated from Kindergarten, but somehow it has been eight years.  I had been secretly dreading Eli's graduation.  It seemed like real proof that our little family is getting older.  

Eli's class only had three graduates, and our ceremony was very short and sweet.  Somehow I ended up in charge at the last minute and it was a bit stressful to try to get the slideshow together.  I figured out Power Point in a day and threw it together.  I was kind of thankful for the stress, because it kept me from completely becoming that mom who was an emotional mess over her six year old's graduation.

 Mark asked each graduate about their future career plans and Eli said he wanted to be president.  I am so glad he is aiming high!

I am thankful for the opportunity to homeschool this little graduate.  I am going to try to treasure these next twelve years, because I know they will go by fast!

Rodeo!

We attended our first rodeo last night.  It was quite an experience.  We saw calf roping, bull riding, horse riding and lots of other interesting things.

We even saw Capuchin monkeys riding Border Collies and herding goats to the top of an eighteen wheeler.  That is something you don't see everyday!

It was definitely a new and different experience for us.  We had fun visiting with friends and watching the show.  The kids got a good dose of country music and other cultural lessons they had been lacking.  I have to admit most of the show made me nervous, especially after a bull rider was trampled and had to be loaded into an ambulance (Eek!).  

All in all, the rodeo was a nice change of pace.  We may just have to make it an annual event!

God's picture in the sky was my favorite part of the show!

A Few Easter Pictures

I suddenly have the itch to blog again.  Hopefully it will last longer than a couple of days.  I love to look back at old posts and see things that I had forgotten.  Our children are growing up so quickly.  

My parents came to visit at Easter time.  It was such a blessing to have them here.

We were down to only three egg hunters in our family at the church Easter egg hunt.  It was the first year we ever hunted eggs in the sleet!  Our older two did not mind hunting eggs at our egg hunt at home.  I guess candy is treasured at any age.

Simple Pleasures!

A new box of sidewalk chalk makes us happy!

My Memory Wall-- A few more things

I added a few empty frames to remind us all that God is still working in our lives and that we need to look for his answers to our prayers.

I added a few more things just because I like them...

I hope to add more to our wall throughout the years.  It is very much not perfect, but I love it!

My Memory Wall-- Places

I am a Tennessee Girl.  My blood runs orange and I love Rocky Top.  When I married Mark, I knew that we would probably be moving.  Tennessee, with its many strengths, is weak in chemical industry.  It came time for us to move when Isaac was six months old.  I did not want to move to Louisiana.  I did not want to move away from my mom and dad.  I was still trying to figure out how to be a stay at home mom.  I was trying to figure out my roll in the church as a mom of a baby.  I was crying as I went, but I was also praying. Mark and I both prayed that God would prepare a place for us.  We prayed for friends and a church family.  I cried and we prayed.

 I arrived in Louisiana on a Friday (Mark had been there a few weeks).  We went to church on Sunday and a young couple's picnic on Monday.  God very quickly answered our prayers.  It took a while for the sadness to go away, but it did not take long to find friends and a church family.  God was so faithful to us during this time of transition.

We lived in Louisiana for six years, and we were so blessed by our life there.  We still wanted to get closer to family, so we decided to move to Alabama.  I cried when I left Baton Rouge as hard as I had cried when I came.  Once again, we prayed that God would prepare a place for us in our new home.  We found a church family we liked and we met a lot of friendly people.  We made a few friends, but it still did not feel like home.  I learned that I needed to be content in each season of my life.  It was not an easy lesson, but it was such an important one.  After only fourteen months in our new home, we got the news that Mark's job would be moved, and we could not stay there.  Those fourteen months suddenly made much more sense.  

We came for an interview in Batesville and it immediately felt more like home.  We were blessed with friends very quickly and we jumped right into a new church family.  Looking back at our times of transition has helped me to see how faithful God has been to us.  These pictures are great reminders that I do not need to worry about the future because it a great provider.

My Memory Wall-- Answered Prayers

I believe strongly that God answers our prayers.  Unfortunately, I do not always have eyes to see the many prayers he has answered in my life.  As I was thinking about what to put on my wall, I thought of several times that God answered prayers major requests in our life. 

I prayed for almost ten years that God would bless me with a husband that loved Him.  I was beginning to feel "old" but I kept praying.  When I was twenty-seven, I met Mark at a football party and a friend snapped this picture that night.  It is a treasured reminder that God answered my prayers.

Artwork by Olivia

Being a mom was my real career goal.  I am so thankful God answered that prayer as well!

One of the saddest times of our marriage was the death of Mark's dad.  Elmer was a very kind man who loved his family (especially his grandchildren) very much.  We prayed a lot during his battle with cancer.  God, in his infinite wisdom, did not grant his earthly healing, but he answered our prayers for peace and comfort so beautifully.  We look forward to a reunion with him someday.  I am so thankful for the hope of Heaven.

Memory Wall-- Godly Parents

As I have gotten older, I realize more and more what a blessing it is to have had parents who love the Lord.  I have met many people with wonderful testimonies of how they came to know the Lord despite the fact their parents were not Christians.  God is truly amazing.  As I have heard their stories, I have become more thankful that my parents and my in-laws love the Lord. 

Sorry about the crookedness-- a perfectionist, I am not...

My Memory Gallery Wall Part 2-- The Year of JOY

Back in December, I started to realize that I had lost much of the joy that comes from walking with the Lord.  I was still doing all of the same things and I still loved the Lord, but I was tired.  I decided that I needed to spend some time really thinking about and praying about the joy that comes from God.  I declared 2015 to be The Year of JOY.  It was ironic that 2015 started out with sadness.  I guess that was part of my first lesson in The Year of JOY.  Sometimes joy and sadness walk hand in hand.  I definitely wanted to make joy a part of my wall.  

Deciding to focus on joy in December was perfect timing.  I had hit some after Christmas sales (Christmas in a joyful time of year), and picked up quite a few joy reminders.  In fact, I probably went a tad bit over board in my joy decor...

A very talented friend of mine made me a sign to go over our piano...

Another talented friend made a chalkboard frame for me (I am blessed with talented friends...).  My plan was to write a different verse for our family to focus on each month, but Romans 15:13 has been up since January.  I think it may be my verse of the year!

Proverbs 3:5 has been one of my life verses, so it made its way onto my wall as well.

My Memory Gallery Wall Part 1

I heard a great sermon a couple of years ago.  A guest speaker at our church spoke about remembering the things that God has done in your life and teaching them to your children.  His family had created a memory wall with a shadowbox full of reminders of the times that God has been faithful to their family.  He encouraged us to find a way to tell the story of God's faithfulness in our lives.  I decided that I wanted to do that for our family, but I had trouble deciding what it would look like, so I kept putting it off.

On an unrelated note, I had been seeing a lot of gallery walls on Pinterest, and I really liked the way they looked.  I started a Pinterest board with ideas to do someday...

January was a hard month for me.  There were no major tragedies or sickness in our family, but a combination of sad news, ministry fatigue, uncertainty and deaths in families I knew and other things I could not even actually put my finger on all hit all at one time.  I do not typically struggle with sadness, so it caught me by surprise.  It almost seemed to take my breath away.  Somehow in the middle of it all, my desire to make a memory wall and a gallery wall came together and I started obsessively working to make it happen.

I spent way too much time thinking about my wall and nailed way too many actual nails in the wall.  It was all I could think about for a week or two.  It is still very much a work in progress, and it is nothing that will ever appear on Pinterest, but it was just what I needed to remind me that God is faithful and has worked in my life in so many ways.  I wanted to write a few posts to document the stories of God's work in my life, so that the next time a January rolls around I can remember.

A Sad Day...

We moved to Arkansas almost exactly six years ago.  It was a transition we had not expected.   Mark was loving his job at BP and we were all loving being only a few hours from our family.  We did not really feel quite at home in Huntsville, but we were content.  Then the news came that BP was restructuring and that we may not have a job, and if we did it would be in Chicago.  Times were changing!

God provided for us in so many ways during that unsettling time.   One of the many blessings from that time period was my friend Melissa.  Mark came to interview at Future Fuel, and the human resources director set up a lunch play date with Melissa and her children.  We met at McDonald's and our children played while we visited.  Our families had a lot in common, and I really enjoyed lunch.  

Mark got the job and we moved to Arkansas.  Our kids were excited because they already had friends (Isn't it great that kids can play on a playground and already be friends?).  Melissa introduced me to life in Arkansas and soon became a close friend.  We had three children that were the same gender and age.  We had quirky things in common like a love for calendars and meal planning.  She and her husband Tim taught us how to camp and inspired us to buy a pop-up.  We home schooled together, played cards together, traveled together and walked through hard times together.  Her family became a huge part of our family's lives.

I found out a couple of months ago that Melissa's husband Tim had accepted a job in Kingsport, Tennessee.   It was hard news.  I was excited for them because it was a great opportunity, but I immediately began to mourn the changes that were coming.  Our lives were so intertwined that it was hard to imagine what it was going to look like without them.

Today was the day to say good-bye.  Not an "I will never see you again good-bye", but a "from now on things won't be the same good-bye."  Today was a hard day.

Praise the Lord for good friends.