Crazy Love Day 3

God is holy.

God is eternal.

God is all-knowing.

God is all-powerful.

God is fair and just.

Crazy Love Day 2

"What if I said stop praying"? What if I told you to stop talking at God for a while, but instead to take a long, hard look at Him before you speak another word. Solomon warned us not to rush into God's presence."
-Crazy Love

Go watch the "Awe Factor" video and worship Him!

www.crazylovebook.com

Crazy Love, Day 1

"I think most American church goers are the soil that chokes the seed because of all the thorns. Thorns are anything that distracts us from God. When we want God and a bunch of other stuff, then that means we have thorns in our soil. A relationship with God simply cannot grow when money, sins, activities, favorite sports teams, addictions, or commitments are piled on top of it." -Francis Chan, Crazy Love

What is the real reason of my blog? Hmmmm, I'm trying to decide.

http://www.mosaicmaryland.com/audio.htm

Listen to our audio of Mosaic's service---Jake and another guy from our church preached last Sunday for about 10-15 each! Jake is first :-) SOOOO good!!! :-)

The Opportunity

Jeremiah 29:11-13"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, they are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. In those days when you pray, I will listen. If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me."

Phillippians 4:6-7"Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank Him for all He has done. Then you will experience God's peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus."

I'm so excited!!! Jake and I have the priveledge of being involved in an incredible church here in Maryland. Mosaic Church. www.mosaicmaryland.com
www.twitter.com/mosaicmaryland
So, Jake and I have always felt like our age group has been ignored in a lot of churches...so we started a group that we call "The Flow" - multiplying Jesus' influence in our church, our community and our world! We have a great group and we've been meeting for about 7 weeks now. God has placed on our hearts to disciple church members and also to affect our community. The Flow is working on an incredible opportunity for outreach in the greater Frederick ( and we're praying DC, Baltimore, VA area!) A HIP HOP CONCERT!!! We're so excited! It's goign to be great to hear Jesus' name be praised through these artists and for our unbelieving community to have the opportunity to hear it!

So...here it begins! I'll keep you updated!

7 years ago yesterday...

Someone very special came into my life 7 years ago yesterday. I cannot believe how quickly life has moved since that day. I held, on that day, the most beautiful baby I had ever seen. That day was very special for me and for some other special people that are an incredible part of my life. I'm very thankful for her and her parents.

Happy Birthday Katelynn.

Kiddos

Halee just turned 4 about 2 weeks ago and now Jett will be 1 in less than 2 weeks...

Time just flies. Everyone said it goes quicker with kids, but you just have to experience it to believe it. Just like a lot of things with kids, experience is the know all haha! They are getting so big. Halee is getting so smart, having conversations with adults, like this one with our good friends/neighbors "Ms. Wendy--Mr. Billy gave you that ring." Speaking of Wendy's wedding band, and I asked Halee why he gave it to her "Because Mr. Billy is in love with her" awwwww. Karis is just goofy, psycho...wierd, she stays up til all hours of the night, and then comes and trys to be all sweet and get in bed with us with this sad pathetic cute face, and in a high pitch voice says "but momma/dadda, I just wanna stnuggle with you..." (she inserts the 't' in snuggle). Jett is our man child, our friends call him Bam-Bam or Manboy or Monster or Linebacker...etc. He's rough, tough, huge, has a manly voice/grunt and is now walking. Funny kids, we are so blessed!!!

Efusjon

www.myefusjon.com/dubbsr

Feeling like a newly wed again...

So Jake and I will be married 5 years this month! WOW. Plus we have 3 kids, we definitely aren't newlyweds anymore, hehe. And I love it that way. I love that we can screw up big time, and be forgiven without even a second thought, I love the way he still looks at me-with love and caring, I love the way he holds my hand-and yes, it still gives my heart a little flutter, I love the way he hugs me-like nothing else matters, I love the way he loves me, and I love him. He is such a good man, a good husband, a good father. I am so thankful for him. Now I'm not much of a romantic, even after the words you have just read, but his love for me and our children makes me so happy! He sacrifices every day for us...amazing.

i.e. So...thursday night (after the kids were in bed), to be specific, we are watching "Shall We Dance?"-an older romantic movie with Richard Gere and J-Lo. Not by choice really, we rarely watch romance movies together, but he is taking a Marital and PreMarital Counseling course for his Masters and he has to do 2 marriage movie reviews. Which the first he picked was FireProof (if you haven't seen it....SEE IT!!) and he picked"Shall We Dance?" for the second. Well at the end of the movie Richard Gere walks into his wife's (not J-Lo) place of work with a single rose and dressed in a tux (they were going through a "boring" phases in their marriage) and hands the rose to her and starts dancing with her. So during the credits I took Jake's hand and we started dancing. Now slow dance is just not Jake's thing, but he did it anyway and then we were just laughing, giggling and doing crazy, silly things for about 10 minutes. Ahhh, it was so wonderful. I felt like we were still dating or even like we were newlyweds again. This kinda thing happens more often than not-but that's just a recent example that I thought was so fun and cute :-)

I love you Jake <3

I realize that this is NOT the blog that I had intended but I felt as a couple things came to mind this week and last that this was more on my heart.

This is my own version of a friend's blog and how it applies to my life and my kids; hers was about her kids being sick and mine is about the current state of life.

God reminds me that my children are not mine to keep. They are mine to surrender. And the more I hear about certain things going on, the more I have to give them to Him but the more I want to hold them close. It’s heart-wrenching to yield them so fully to the Lord while longing more every day to grab them in my arms and run to safety.
It is easy to feel guilty that God uses our kids to purify our faith, that my walk with God has the potential to bring trials into my kids’ lives is a sobering reality. Yet my walk with Him also means they benefit from my transformation and share in the joys as I declare His faithfulness to the next generation.

Interesting to think about!

Finally Relief.

From sickness, from snow, from sleep depravity, from crankiness, from bickering, from it all!

Life seems to be goin' alright. I mean, that of course means something is gonna hit the fan soon ;-) It's alright though, it makes us stronger because of it.

I'm studying Ephesians right now with my girls :

Definitely hitting some heavy theology in there, with big difference in beliefs and interpretation, but I strongly believe that this will make us stronger believers - even if we walk away with the same beliefs as we started with. Hopefully our Biblical proof will be stronger than before and our hearts will be at ease with our choice.

Our God is a good God!

Psalm 34:8 "Taste and see that the Lord is good..."

Psalm 86:5 "You are forgiving and good, O Lord..."

Mark 10:18 "...No one is good, except God..."

Next time..."No good" - a look at why I'm no good, and why nothing I do (or don't do) makes me a better person than the other.

Halee has rota virus - she was finally diagnosed after 4 days of vomiting and diarrhea. She was put on an IV in the hospital with meds and lots of fluids. She has stopped vomiting but still isn't feeling well. Please pray for her! Thank you!!

Starbucks!

So, I'm sure many of you know that I'm currently working at Starbucks. Yes, I'm a Barista! YAY! It's only a PT gig to get health insurance because Jake's company is small and the insurance costs so much for me and the kids to be added onto it. So we're making a little extra cash and getting much cheaper health insurance for the kids and me next month! I love it. I love working on bar and making the drinks but I also love being on register and talking to all the customers. I normally work tues, thurs 430am-930am, sat 530am-2pm and sun evenings. So I'm a very busy girl.

It's tough juggling work on top of my most important duties and my real FT job-being a wife and mom. But I think I'm finally getting the hang of it...slowly. I'm absolutely exhausted right now bc I need to work an average of 27 hrs a week for the next 5 wks in order to meet my goal to even get health insurance. And my house just never seems to get clean, toys are always on the floor, the kitchen floor always needs to be swept and mopped, the laundry always piles up so quickly, and oh the dishes...there are always dishes in my sink.

But most importantly to me, Jake is home with the kiddos when I'm at work. It's really tough on him because he is working 45 hrs a week plus in seminary taking 6 credits, then working out on top of that. It's just craziness. Hopefully when April rolls around we'll be able to relax a little more and I'll have my normal schedule back at work.

Agh!!! I'm a crazy person to be doing this!!!!!! :-)

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2196255&l=3da2f&id=55710807

here are some pictures of Jan 09 - check them out! if you're not on facebook or not my friend, add me and you can check out some really cute videos of the kids!

Sweet

Thank you for all for your prayers. I went to a Endocrinologist and she immediately suggested that I have radiation done to my thyroid. - therefore KILLING my thyroid. It's not my thyroid that's the problem. My body is attacking my thyroid so therefore somethign in my body needs to be changed. I refuse, absolutely refuse to kill my thyroid - I mean, I'm only 25. Jake is seeing a naturopath and an acupuncturist - she's doing amazing things for him so I'm going to see her soon. It's crazy expensive, but I'm willing to do it to be healthy - I'm tired of taking medication (although I'm not going to stop and make myself sicker until I find out what she says). You guys are just so sweet to respond! Thanks for reading!

The kiddos are great. They are wonderful. Halee, 3.5, is momma's girl - and is my big helper. She loves her schoolwork and really wants to go to preschool! She's so funny and this morning after we woke up she was giving Jake hugs and kisses, she told him "pee-ew Daddy", I asked her what was wrong and she said "daddy has STINKY breath" hahaha! Made us both start laughing. Karis, 2, is a little goofball still. She has this crazy laugh and this psycho looks - if looks could kill you, her's would! She still into everything, and if I was healthy she would be fully potty trained (she takes her own diaper off and go to the potty on her own at least 4x a day). Jett - oh boy! He's just 6 months old now! He started getting up on his hands and knees just a couple days before he turned 4 months, he started rocking a couple days later, then after 2 weeks of that he started the army crawl and about a week later he was crawling all over the place. At 5 months and 3 weeks he started pulling up on things - now he's standing up all over the place. He eating baby food like crazy and getting so big!!!

My disease...

Graves' disease is the most common form of hyperthyroidism. It occurs when your immune system mistakenly attacks your thyroid gland and causes it to overproduce the hormone thyroxine.
The abnormal immune response can affect the tissue behind your eyes as well as parts of your skin. The higher thyroxine level in Graves' disease can greatly increase your body's metabolic rate, leading to host of health problems.What is Graves’ disease? This is an uncommon disease that affects 2 percent of all women at some time in their lives.

What are the symptoms of Graves' Disease?
These are the most common symptoms of Graves’ Disease and hyperthyroidism:
trouble sleeping
fatigue
frequent bowel movements
irritability
weight loss without dieting
heat sensitivity
increased sweating
muscular weakness
changes in vision or how your eyes look
rapid heart beat
hand tremors

Thanksgiving 2008

So, I'm supposed to write a story about Thanksgiving 2008, as a family of 5. I'm not really in the mood to write bc I'm really not feeling well, but we'll see how it goes!! I'm writing this as the girls would've remembered it!

Thanksgiving 2008 was focused on us giving thanks to Jesus for our family, friends and food. We spent the day watching movies and then making dinner. We didn't have turkey because mommy had a hard time sticking her hand inside and pulling out all the stuff in there. Mommy almost threw up! YUCK! Finally daddy tried to help but the turkey was still a little frozen - oops! Oh well, we ended up having ham, sweet potato casserole, green beans, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce and stuffing! It was so yummy! Jett even got to eat some rice cereal for the first time! The next day we had it all over again, except we got to eat the yummy turkey because mommy finally got all that yucky stuff out of it and baked it!