the one we skipped

somehow time got away from me and i missed sharing our verse for the letter F. it was, "Fear not, for i am with you." Isaiah 43:5

we read the story of the Israelites crossing the red sea and talked about how scared they must have been. the kids named several things that scare them (mostly lightening... HA!)

and they wanted to act it out! this is allie pretending to be moses with his staff. it was obviously dress up hour :) caleb is right behind her pretending to be a faithful follower! the pillows were the dry land.

once they crossed they said the verse. they reenacted this a dozen times! it was hilarious!

have i ever shown you

MY BOOTS????
lance got them for me as a Christmas present and I love them!!!

and even better, i figured out how to break them in...

HA! this girl is something else! we love our allie cat!

our little guy

one year ago today!
today!!

happy birthday sweet riley!!

back to my kinder days...

UPDATE:
although my heart was in the right place, my mind was NOT and i misspelled sweet Reese's name in this post and in the shaving cream... i will make another one soon! sorry to Katie and her family! i know the Lord heard my prayers despite my inability to spell!! :)
there are some days when i just miss being a kindergarten teacher!

we spent a dollar today... and did this! it was sooo much fun!

we printed letters... spelled our names... drew pictures...

and i managed to squeeze in our verse for the week (i realize that i forgot to post letter F last week... i will get it up soon.)
after allie wrote her name and i wrote the verse, i instantly thought of my faithful sister in Christ, Katie, and knew it was not a coincidence... i said a prayer for her and wrote reece's name in the shaving cream for the name gallery that Katie has. you can read her story here. we love you katie!
when it looked like caleb was going to call it quits, i threw some blocks on the table and that was AWESOME! they played at the kitchen table for over an hour today AND my house smells good!
what does a one year old do while all this fun is being had? play with blocks in the floor!

party time!

our little boy will be turning one on wednesday... i can not believe it! i'm sure these won't be the last of the bday pics, but i wanted to share some of this weekend's party!

we have a tradition of waking our kids up with balloons on their party day!

this is one of my favorite pics of the day... two of my three guys!

the cake was crazy tall!

this is riley while we sang to him! he is so chill... even on his bday!

the big kids thought they needed to help! :)

a slice... makes me smile! i stole this idea from my friend meaghan who stole it from blog friend meg. you can click their names to see their cakes! thanks for being so creative girls!

i love the surprise of this cake! :)

he enjoyed every bite!

on sunday morning we all headed to the egg and i to enjoy a BIG FAMILY breakfast!

what a weekend!
thanks to our families for making it so special!

simple reminders

Matthew 6:30

But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you?

i don't know if you need to be reminded of that verse today, but i sure did. The Lord so tenderly reminded me that i am being clothed by him daily! i bought these flowers ($2.50... gotta love after v-day sales) and have been praying to be clothed in only what he deems important!

enough said...

today went kinda like this...

crossing our fingers for no fever tomorrow
(fyi: allie is healthy, but keeping her bro company - HA)

it came and it went...

Valentine's Day seemed to fly by... i guess i am use to the longer, bigger events like christmas and thanksgiving. in my opinion, valentine's day is a strange tradition, but super fun if you have kiddos!

we made these REALLY delicious "cutie pies" from the farm chick. the best part is that you only need pie crust and a jar of jelly... and powered sugar if you want to add a little somethin' extra!

we also made valentine cards. my "0oh, so bright idea" was to use their fingerprints to make cute little hearts... this was the "example."

caleb just played with the plates and got paint on EVERYTHING! :) ahh, boys!

and this was the finished product... if you squint you might see a heart in there! HAA!

mommy had to let loose and not sweat that they turned out MUCH different than she had hoped!

Saturday morning we ate strawberry and heart pancakes!

i think they liked them! caleb was eating them two at a time... and, i'm sorry, why is our daughter starting to look soo old! (stop-stop-stop growing up!!!)

there is truly nothing better than hand picking your chocolates... that is what we did as a family on Saturday afternoon. the Sweet Gourmet in Tyler has become a must stop on Valentine's Day.

on sunday morning we let the kids rip into their bags and cards... they could NOT believe that so many people sent them valentines!

gg sent $5 for each kid and they shouted, "can we go to McDonalds?" so that is where we had lunch! we ended our pink day by watching the veggie tales love dvd... they laughed so hard! hope it was happy for all our friends and family as well! we love you!!!

down, set, hut

snow?

in tyler? that is CRAZY!!!

this was riley's first time to venture into snow and he LOVED it!!

he even got to break in his new boots! aren't they cute?

i would love to say that caleb helped build the snowman, but NO... he ran around throwing himself into the snow and pelting allie and daddy with snowballs! :) typical boy!

for caleb, a regular snowman just wouldn't do... we had to have a fireman snowman... good thing that sister didn't mind at all! she had fun spraying the red on the snow (thanks for the tip grammie!)

snow princess!

all done!

lance got the morning off, so we all got to play!

daddy helped caleb make a football player snowman. when it was done, caleb said, "down, set, hut, hut" and tackled him that snowman to the ground! it was cute and he hasn't stopped talking about it!

wouldn't believe it without

seeing pictures!!

tyler was covered in snow this morning

it was enough snow to cause us to lose power

these are some shots that i took around 7:30am

it has already begun to melt, but we got to play in it for a LONG time this morning. those pics will be posted soon!

watch out world!

mandy is trying her hand at crafty!

i'm suddenly in LOVE with my sewing machine!

and i made this valentine garland from felt and thread! so easy and it makes us smile! i got the idea from here.

i also saw a rag quilt letter post recently that i loved. check it out here.

one of my friends is having a baby boy in just weeks. the name is to be determined so i spelled baby in boy fabric and tucked it into a rag quilt pocket. the back of every letter is done in brown corduroy.

hopefully it will make a cute addition to the nursery or be a fun texture toy for the baby!