Desperate

That's the name of the Bible study I just finished, just in case you were wondering!  I did want to take a moment and share some highlights from it.  The book is written by Cindi Wood and focuses on looking to the Cross while living in such a fast paced world.  It's a 7 week study and could be easily done independently, but I highly recommend doing it with a group as I would for most any study.

Highlight #1:  The Blood

"There is power, power, wonder-working power in the blood, of the Lamb"... Amen to that!

   During one of the weeks, we focused on the blood of Jesus which is something we often don't take the time to really think about... especially those of us who have grown up in church and have heard it all along.  Jesus' blood took away my sins once and for all and when you think about that, the blood has significant meaning.  In the Old Testament, animals were sacrifaced for sins, but their blood only covered the sins and they had to be done over and over.  Jesus died once and His blood took away our sins forever... how awesome is that?!
    I now love thinking about how I am covered in the Blood.  It's like when I take AR out of the tub and put her hooded towel on her and hold her in my arms... she is totally trusting me at this point and not fighting to get down and she's covered from head to tow.  I think of Jesus' blood covering me in this way and how secure it is to be there.

Highlight #2:  Sundays
    This book also revealed to me that I need to take more time to rest on Sundays.  The Lord intended for Sundays to be for rest and worship and I often find myself running an errand or two while I have a babysitter (daddy) on hand.  I plan to cut back on this and spending more time with William and AR on these days as a family.  She is often asleep much of the afternoon, but that would be a great time for me and William to spend together just the two of us... and that doesn't happen often anymore!  We all need a day to physically rest, especially in today's world.


Highlight #3:  Honoring His Name
   One other topic we touched briefly was using God's name in vain.  Something I am guilty of, though in recent months/years I have cut back tremendously.  When you grow up in the South it is very common to hear "Good Lord" and all over tv you hear GD and "oh my god" (both of which I despise).  These are just a few examples, but you get the drift.  The point is, God's name is holy and in Philippians it say "at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow... and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord".  We should be bowing at His name, not using it in everyday conversation as if it's just another word.  This book really made me think hard about this and from now on when I use His name it will be when I am talking about Him or to Him and with honor.

Those are just a few of the things I took away from this study.  I hope you will get to do this study one day!

On another note:
I could also write a blog about the whole Chick-fil-A thing going on right now but I'm not... b/c a friend's fiance of mine already did it so well.  I hope you will read my friends' blog here.  And I hope you will support Chick-fil-A during this time.

Thanks if you read this far... I promise that pictures of AR will be in the near future!  :)  Oh, and I have a new masterpiece by my handy husband to show off on the next post as well!

15 Months (and Cousin's Day)

Today we went for AR's 15 month check-up.  No, not 15 days, not 15 weeks, but 15 months!  Oh how time flies!

Stats were as to be expected from this chick - head and height were both 101% and weight was around 94% (27lbs!).  She continues to be on the high end for everything but around other toddlers her age, she really doesn't look that much bigger.  At least she's proportionate!

What she's up to these days:
-walks like a pro now and she's picking the speed up more and more... running, here we come!
-was giving kisses on command but now they are random and only when it's her idea
-drinks her two sippy cups of milk - one first thing in the morning and one in the evening before bed... otherwise it's water for the rest of the day
-eats very well unless she's teething
-has at least 13 teeth, but I think it's really 14... she just doesn't like you looking in her mouth anymore so it's hard for me to tell
-her favorite "tricks" are:  "the face", crossing her arms, making funny noises with her tongue, pointing at the fan and moving her finger in a circling motion, making a "snoring" sound, and patting people on the back
-words are still very few but she will repeat (sometimes) mama, dada, baby, and ba(ball)... but she talks all the time in her own little language
-still sleeping around 11 hours at night and taking two naps during the day
-loves shoes, pocketbooks, her baby doll, crackers, her baseball cap, and lately her little shape sorter - the blue and red classic ball one... the one that she can only do the circle and oval in and brings it to me every 2 minutes to open it up and do it again... and again... and again... but it's cute!
-understands most everything I say to her and it always amazes me when I say something that I don't think she'll understand and then she does it

Here are a couple pics from today, though she turned 15M last Friday.

She NEVER plays with this walker anymore except when I try to take a picture of her at 15 months!  ha

She wasn't very happy w/ me for some reason that I can't recall.

 
This past weekend was the annual Cousin's Day on my dad's side of the family.  This year it was held at my parents house and although the crowd was smaller this year, we still had a good time.  AR was the star of the show since no other kids were able to show up.  Following are some pictures from the whole time we were there:

Checking out the latest current events.

"Here I am!"

 

She knows how to chill!

 

The "O" Face

 

Demonstrating how to ride the horsey... it was a workout!

 

Wrong side!

This is THE FACE

Not wanting to kiss Aunt Katie

 

That's just plain pitiful!

We've Been Busy!

 I've got lots of pictures to share so it's a rather long post!  We've been pretty busy this past week trying to knock off some of our "to do" list and AR had a fun trip to Mimi and Papa's house so that I could work in her room some.

As many of you know, we William just completed redoing our bathroom and it looks great AND there will be a post about it as soon as I get matching linens in there!  We knew we wanted to eventually redo the other bathroom as well just not to the extent of this past redo.  Well, as you can see below the shower curtain is on the wrong side of the tub in order to cover the massive hole we now have in the wall.  When we returned from Chicago we found wood shavings and carpenter ants in the tub... which led to the bug guy coming out and William tearing a huge hole in the wall.  We have it so AR can bathe while William finishes his "honey do list" and then we will be on to bathroom project #2!

AR still enjoys her bath time!

Rocking the mohawk!

This is "the face" or it was I should say.  She has now changed "the face" into a fish lip face.  Both are super cute though!

Here is "the face" again!

One of AR's newest accessory is a baseball cap.  I think she likes it b/c she can take it on and off herself.  It's rather funny to see her walking around with it on - all thug-like!

This is one of my favorite pics of her!

You may remember that AR got a sandbox for her bday back in April... well, we finally got the sand for it!

Hmm... let's go check this out.

What is all this in my box?!

Daddy, are you sure you know what you are doing?

This is pretty fun!

 

I don't really like the wet part though!  (Nor did she like the big mouthful she took of it about 10 minutes later)

 The other day while at Aldi, I saw that they had kids picnic table marked down to $25.  Since I didn't have room in my car and I didn't really know what kind of deal this was, I decided to hold off.  When I got home I checked on Amazon and this same table was marked $90 and today it was $77 at Walmart!  I sent William back for it and look forward to using it for painting, play dough, and other projects better fitted for outdoors!

Checking it out!

She LOVES it.  She can climb in and out by herself and was really enjoying it!

Checking out daddy as he works on the house.

 

Love these two!

Just so you know, it's a BIG deal when you lose a shoe!

You can often find AR doing this with both my keys and her fake keys.

AR really loves "baby", which is what I refer to her babydoll as.  She's a good little mama!

Kissing Baby

Buckling Baby into the bouncy seat

Bouncing Baby... it's a good think I didn't treat her the way she handles Baby sometimes though!

The other night WIlliam went outside to get something and was gone quite a while.  I looked out the window and saw him crouched down in our hosta plants and he then "signed" to me that he had seen a baby rabbit and was hunting for it.  These are the pics I was able to get:

Where did that dern thing go?!

Like I've said we've been knocking off the ol' to-do list.  Here are some pics of what we've checked off so far!

I asked William to build me a shoe shelf for our coat closet and he so kindly did.

The finish product in a horribly photographed picture.

One thing that I have been wanting to do for a long time is clean our grout in our kitchen.  I don't think it's been done since William bought the house 6 years ago - nasty, I know!  Honestly, I didn't grow up with grout and didn't know you had to clean it... I thought mopping was enough.  But it was looking ROUGH so I found a grout cleaning method on pinterest and jumped on it!

Before... looked almost black and it was originally white.  White grout should be outlawed if you ask me!

Afterwards... much better but not as white as I was hoping.  I wish I had a picture of what was coming up when I was scrubing it.  I will saw my floor, baseboards, and lower cabinets are super clean now!

The "to-do" list:

You will see below that I was able to mark one more item off!

When the sun started coming up earlier and earlier, so did my child.  This mama was trying wake up before her, therefore getting up extremely early.  I had to put a stop to it!  I started researching blackout curtains and found out you could buy the liner at Hobby Lobby.  I bought some and it ended up draped over the windows for about a month... making it very deary in there during the day with no natural light.  So while AR was w/ her mimi, I buckled down and got them done. 

What the windows looked like before.

And afterwards - MUCH BETTER!

I have also been working on lots of sewing projects as we know many babies coming late summer and fall.  I have some things I want to do for AR to and this outfit below was the first and only I've done so far for her.  I've gotten many burp cloths and onsies done too!

I also worked on the 3-4 year old coffee stain in AR's room (again) while she was gone and the whole floor looks sooo much better and newer.  I took a before but haven't gotten around to the afterwards pic... so that will come later.