Messy girl!

This little girl isn't a fan of pureed baby food, but boy can she put away some solid food! She loves bananas, apple chunks, pasta, cubed chicken and steak, oranges, peas, green beans, and her new favorite, avocado!

Now if only I could prevent her from getting it alllll over the place.

Game night

One of my favorite things is doing game nights with friends... I LOVE getting together to laugh, eat, and just bond with them. And thankfully, the Greenlee's and the Caracciolo's love to do them too. I see many more in our future :)

Soccer!

The Bubble Guppies had their first game this past weekend and boy were they excited!!

Plus, they got to be on the same team as Liam and Aidan, so that was cool for them.

 Jake was 'ready to kick the ball' (no surpise there),

but what did surprise me was how forward aggressive Lauren was! Girl was on a mission!

Kiddos had so much fun and they both can't wait until next Friday!

Thankfully, I got the minivan. Now all I need is a 'soccer mom' sticker and I'll be stylin'!

Focusing on the positives

I knew when we put in an application on this house that things would be dramatically different. Specifically, we were moving into someone else's house... a much older house.

Initially, on moving day all I could think about is, 'what have we done? Why have we moved out of our upgraded, beautiful home to live here?!?" I'll be honest, I was bummed and bratty and not happy about the change at all. And above all else, I was humbled.

That night, I prayed for peace. I prayed that God would make me content in the current circumstances, although I highly doubted I would ever arrive at that point. And then, the next morning, I woke up happy. I can't explain it, I just felt at peace. I felt like we were walking by faith and that God has blessed us in this journey. This was the house we were supposed to be in, at least for the meantime.

Ever since then, we've been happy here. Not just okay, happy. And so, I've decided to record this because it'd be neat to one day look back upon this time. Anyway, here's a small list of the reasons we like living in this house:

1). It has a beautiful back yard with tons of different fruit trees, and trees that put off lots of shade. Plus, we have neighboring ducks (??), and the kids think it's pretty cool to hear them outside while they play. In addition, Lauren has grand plans for the fruit trees in the backyard... specifically, apple pies :)

2) Some would see this gold swirled bathroom countertop (as well as the fancy gold plated medallions) as hideous. I'm not gonna lie, I would never in a million years choose this, but as Lauren pointed out, its "sparkly and full of beautiful glitter". That's now how I choose to see it :)

3) It's got amazing storage space. The kids have ridiculously sized closets to fill the ridiculous amount of clothing they own :) Plus, it's got a ton of storage in the kitchen. You all know I'm not a huge fan of cooking, but it is sort of inspiring...

4) The brown carpet.... it's wonderful for hiding all the little crumbs and lint that settle on it. With three young kids, it's nice to not worry about keeping it spotless 24/7.

5) This gawdy chandelier. This one took me a while to come up with something positive to say about it but I found one; people can look through the living room windows and see that thing in clear view. They'll look at it and think, 'these people don't haven't upgraded their fixtures. They probably have no money". Therefore, we're not in any danger of getting broken into to. Okay, so that was a far stretch, but it's the best I could come up with!

6) Speaking of getting broken into, I highly doubt it. We're in a nice neighborhood, and a few of our new neighbors have stopped to say hi. That's pretty cool. Oh, and lets not forget our AV friends we're close to now. All we have to do is get Mandy, Tara, the Greenlee's and the MacDonald's out here and we'd be golden ;)

7) We have an awesome fireplace. Look at the picture below... 'nuff said.

8) The living room has a wall of new windows which let in a tremendous amount of natural sunlight. What's better? We have a pretty sweet view of the mountains. I can get used to this :)

9) This house is LOADED with mirrors. Thankfully we put the large toy shelf on the mirrored wall and covered it up but clearly the owners were pretty vain and liked seeing themselves constantly, haha. The positive to us is that Lauren gets to practice her dance moves and Jake gets to practice his 'scary monster' look. See? Another positive!

10) The lovely 70's style wood cutouts. If nothing else, they remind me that this is not our home. It's a house and it's temporary. God has a plan for us and it's good. I rest in that :)

So there you have it. I'm looking at the positives and writing them down. That way, when I'm sick of the stripper mirror and the gawdy chandelier, I can re-read this and remind myself this is short-lived ;)

We're here and settled

Thanks to my awesome friends and family, we're completely moved in. As in, kitchen, bedrooms, bathrooms, garage, everything. We seriously couldn't have done without help. It was waaaay too overwhelming. Thankfully, I stayed back at the old house while my friends and family practically unpacked my entire house in AV. I came 'home' to a fully stocked kitchen, kids bedrooms that were completely set up, and even a nicely organized closet.

(On a side note, I had no idea we had so much stuff!!! There will definitely be another yard sale before the big move to Texas. In fact, we already have 'sell items' waiting in the shed).

Our first night went really well. The kids were thrilled with their rooms, and passed out shortly after coming home from a weekend with Nan.

A huge thank you to the Sarah, Mandy, Becka, Mark, Jaime, Tara, Noah, Gino, Teresa, Dad, Flo, Jason, and my mom, who kept the little one's out of our hair while we got stuff done. We love you guys!

Why we love Tereneh

Reason #598: The girl can make something fun for the kids out of nothing!

It was the day before the big move and I had Tereneh over for an hour so I could do a few last minute things. Unfortunately, all of the toys were packed and the only things I had out were blankets and such for packing and covering furniture.

 I walk out into the living room and find a 'castle', made of blankets.

Tereneh saved the day :)

Lasts in our VV home

We did lots of lasts on Friday and Saturday. Last showers in our VV home,

last bedtime routines in our VV home,

and last morning 'get ready for the day' outfits in our VV home:

And that night, when all three littles were tucked in bed, the Hubster and I sat down in the bare living room floor sharing memories. It was bittersweet; there was some sadness,

but more peace, comfort and excitement than I ever imagined. More than anything though, I'm exited for what God has planned in our lives. Our prayer is that through obedience, we bring glory and honor to Him :)

Laurenisms and Jacobisms

Lauren, after just waking up one morning, says 'I need to rub the nuts out of my eyes'.

And so nobody's mind is in the gutter, nuts = sleep :)
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Lauren: "Does Jesus love mean people?
Me: "Yes, he does. But mean people probably make Him sad"
Lauren: "Well, that's not true. There's no sad in Heaven!"

Can't argue with that!
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Jake, while eating his chocolate chip muffin, says 'look mom! This muffin has chocolate seeds in it!'
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While reading the story of Jesus' birth, the following conversation occurred:

Lauren, looking at the manger: 'Mom, is that baby Jesus?'
Me: 'Yep, it is'.
Lauren: 'Well, how can there be people around him (the Wise men) if He was just born?'

(Meaning, if He created the world and the people in it a long time ago, how then is he just a baby?)

Um, yeah. Girl is smart!

Busy busy busy

Within a matter of seconds, Little Lady was sitting, then lying, then crawling, then getting back up into the sitting position. Girl can MOVE!

Being immobile is offically a thing of the past.

Le sigh...    ;)

Nakey tush

Megan has a bazillion nicknames around here; Meg, Megs, Meggie, May May, Cakes (for sweet cakes), snaggle tooth (when she only had one) and my personal favorite, "tush", given to her by her daddy.

The thing is, she's got the cutest little tushy. The cutest. I have a ton of nakey baby pics, but for obvious reasons, I can't share them on this very public blog. So here are a few internet-safe pics I took of our sweet 'tushy girl' after bath time last night:

Love this sweet girl!

Sacrifice

It seems silly for me to write a post about sacrifice, when I really have no idea what sacrifice is all about. Jesus paid the ultimate sacrifice, dying on the cross for my sins, so really, I have no room to talk.

And yet, here I am writing a post about sacrificing. 

You see, Justin and I recently felt a strong an sudden calling to give up our house about a month ago in preparation for relocating to Dallas. Justin will be attending Dallas Theological Seminary out there in 1.5 years. As you can imagine, this has tuned our world upside down (definitely exciting, but scary too!). Giving up the business (shortly), renting out our home, leaving friends, family, church, moving across the country,etc.. And because of the economy slump, we're not able to sell our house. Instead, we're renting it out. That way, we'll have renters already established in our home, so that when the time comes, we can up and move with few strings attached.

In the meantime, we'll be downsizing and living in a rental home in Apple Valley. Had you told me 2 months ago that I'd give up my home, my home where we've put a lot of money, sweat, and love into, I would have laughed. We started dating here. We came home married here. We brought home three beautiful babies here. This is not just a house, it's our home. And there would have been NO way that I would have given up my home to live in someone else's. And yet, here we are, days away from moving into another house.

I didn't think this would be easy, but I didn't think it would affect me as much as it has. I didn't think I was attached to the things in my home. But boy was I wrong.

Because there simply isn't enough room in this new house (nor would we be able to move this stuff to TX), we've had to sell many of our belongings. First we sold the piano to a couple of friends of ours. We had alot of memories on that piano. I can still hear the kids happily banging on the keys, shouting their made-up songs as the noise level skyrocketed.

The movers came,

and then it was gone.

All I have left are memories.

Same with the spa.

It's too big to carry, too expensive to move. So it'll stay here for the tenants to enjoy. A lot of memories are associated with that spa; Lauren LOVED splashing around in it, Jacob took adorable pictures in it, and Miss Meg had yet to enjoy it. Plus, we had 'therapy sessions' in the spa many times with some close friends.

All I have left are the memories. I sure will miss it.

And lastly, the playset.

I had prepared myself for this one, because I knew I was going to have a hard time selling it. That was an understatement. First off, I know how much that set cost my mom and it wasn't cheap. Second, I knew how long it took my dad and stepmom to come up here and help install it. It was a sacrifice for both my mom and dad to help make that swingset happen. And yet, we sold it and now we have an empty area where it once was. Talk about extreme guilt over that one.

Also, I wasn't prepared for the day when the new family came to purchase the playset. Their little girl's eyes got huge as she heard the news that her parents were buying it for her. And selfishly, my heart sank. I want my kids to have that playset. I want them to know that their grandparents loved them so much, that they sacrificed their money and time to build it for them. And me?

Well, I was just incredibly sad that our family won't have any new memories on that swingset. I have cried many times over this. Following God's will is hard.

The new house, while nice, is small and older and someone else's. I want my own home. I want to paint the walls, and fix it up, and make it my own. And I know I can't because this is temporary. And it's hard. Super, duper hard.

Yes, we will make new memories in our rental house, and in our house in Dallas. It's just letting go of the memories associated with that stuff.

This is what I've learned though; this stuff isn't mine. I can hold on to it as long as I want, but it's not going to Heaven with me. God blessed us with those items, and now it's time to let go. And based on my little knowledge of how God works, it's not just the physical stuff I'm letting go of.... it's more than that. It's these stronghold's in my life that anchor me to this world, and not to Him.

That's what I'm doing. I'm sacrificing the comfort and image and future memories with my 'stuff'' for God's calling. It's not easy, that's for sure, but it's what God has called us to do.

And when He leads, we follow.

Always.

*sorry for such a long post. After calling two of my best girlfriends and crying more than one should over this stuff, one suggested I write a blog about it. And that's what I've done and it has helped put things into perspective.