I'm Good!

S4 went outside to feed his bunny - Whiskers Gray - and was gone a long time.  Long enough that I began searching for him.  I looked out the front window, nearest his bunny cage, and didn't see him.  I did catch a flash and I watched him fly on his bike down a hill and land in a pile of leaves.

I did what any mother with a blog would do.

I grabbed my flipcam.




All the laughing behind me are his brothers who could not believe that S4 would attempt this trick on his own.

After this fall, he jumped up...and tried it all over again.

When he would land, he would lay there a second, shake himself off and give a thumbs up - "I'm Good!" he declared.

His brothers couldn't let him have all this fun on his own so they all ran outside, got on their bikes, and joined in S4's game.  He made a video of that - it's shaky but a hilarious 30 seconds and you can watch it here.

S4's Explanation of the Bike Jump. 

After a few turns for all the boys, I called them in.

"Ah, mama, we're having fun," they moaned.

"I do not feel like driving to the med center with one of you needing stitches or because you have a broken bone," I answered bluntly.

And so they decided Mama was right, even if she wasn't any fun, and we had dinner instead.

Praise and Coffee Fall Magazine is HERE!

Praise and Coffee Fall Magazine has arrived!

We are sooooo excited for this magazine issue.

Perhaps you have been at that place where you are not sure just what God is telling you.  Perhaps you have just had to let it all go.

Because that's where we were.

I sat on Sue's back deck and said, "I'll miss it terribly, but if we need to leave the magazine behind for a little while, I'll do that."

From that conversation came a rebirth of the magazine.  And not really the magazine, but the movement of Praise and Coffee.

Perfectly timed was a visit from our dear friend, Ronel.

Ronel writes a blog called Chosen For More and she is the National Director for Praise and Coffee.  She can spout out all sorts of information about Praise and Coffee at any given moment.  That is cool, but what rocks is her heart.  Her heart is with her family, her country and helping women.

And...get this...she likes to write curriculum.  I did not know this.  Sitting at the same table you see in this picture, she wrote out an entire study.  Amazing.

While we were all together out for lunch meeting some really great women (Check out their site Circle of Friends), Ronel gave a "mini resume".  I was blown away.  I looked over at her and thought, "And here I loved you because I loved your heart....But holy wow!"

Sue, Ronel and I sat around the table and from our heart flowed words — and Ronel then looked up the words to make sure the words we used were exactly what our hearts were saying.  It was an intense two day pow wow, and it was a God moment in so many ways.

What we were willing to give up was reborn and the excitement we have — spectacular.  Our vision is clear, and we know that had to have come totally from God.  His fingerprints are all over this.

Thrilled?  That would be an understatement.  We poured our heats out here, and thrilled we are with the end result. 

So look over our magazine, tell us what you think.  

I mean, really tell us!

We want to know what you think.  Check out our Facebook links, they are a way to stay even more connected and join the conversation.

Connect. Encourage, Inspire.

It's not a ministry, it's a movement.

Won't you join us?

Praise and Coffee Magazine

My article on the football phase of my life and the friends I have — a post from the heart. HERE.

Korene's amazing fall craft is EASY and found HERE.

Leaf Jumping and Growing Up

It's Sunday morning here and we are not at church.

I have to admit, I'm thankful for the quiet day.

But the reason we are home is not a fun one.  S4 woke up with the flu.  He had tons of fun a friends house yesterday, he played hard all day and fell asleep exhausted in the middle of the living room last night.  This morning he woke up and said his tummy hurt.  

Since then he has gotten sick four times.

He is the most pitifully sweet sick kid.  He apologizes for throwing up, he smiles sadly at my worried gaze, he says please and thank you like he is some sort of inconvenience.  

As if.

I was laying all curled up in the chair watching over him as he dozed back off to sleep for a bit on the floor and happened to look out the window.

Outside S1 and S2 had gotten the pickup untarped from the leaf job Jake and did yesterday.  While the boys were gone we went and cleaned the leaves out of a sweet old lady's yard.  She believes only my husband can do the job right and just has the biggest crush on him.  When she met me for the first time yesterday she said surprised, "Oh, I know you! I've seen you on tv!"  

That was a first.

Anyway, it was dark and spitting rain when we got home.  We had pizza to bake and were starving hungry so we had just left the leaves for today.

S1 and S2 untarped them and then wandered off.  S3 took one look at that huge pile of leaves and knew just what to do.

 I watched him as he scaled the side of the big dodge and poised himself just right to dive into the leaves.

Over and over again he climbed the truck to jump in the leaves.  He would scale different sides of the truck to get an all over leaf experience.

 It was the funniest thing to watch as I lay curled in a chair waiting to see if my youngest was about to be sick again or just going to sleep.

And then I wondered, at what point did my two oldest get so old that they would not see a truck bed full of leaves for the fun it is?

I watched S3 throwing leaves up in the air and letting them fall down on him, not caring who seen him or if he was the only one in the bed of the truck, he was just taking the fun moment for what it was.

And my two oldest were "too old" to have this fun.

When did we all get too old to have this simple fun?

How did this happen?

Icky Day Sunshine

Today is an icky cold dreary rainy gray dark blustery day.

It ain't pretty.

The boys woke up at five.  I know this may sound odd to the lot of you, but I ENJOY sleeping in until my alarm goes off.

And it doesn't go off at five.

I gave up and just began the day.  It's pretty much impossible to go back to sleep with two extra boys in your bed.

My boys wake up like they have had a pot of coffee by iv before their eyes fluttered open.  It's hard to handle the extremeness of them...they are running and squealing and playing and climbing up Daddy to get his phone to play Angry Birds and eating cereal and fighting over their favorite bowls and chasing the dog with a nerf bow and it's insane.

I haven't even had a cup of strong coffee yet.  Heck, it isn't even brewed yet.

But as I watch the boys get those extra minutes with Daddy before he leaves for work, as I watch them tease and giggle, my heart can't help but melt.

I stand in the kitchen inhaling my french press coffee and think about what a dreary long day this is going to be.

And catch my boys attempting to escape outside.

Here I am all sad about the mud and the cold and the darkness and the thought of winter too quickly approaching....

...and my boys are trying to get outside to run and play in the puddles and attempt to slide all over our slippery slimy wet deck.

Perspective.

It changes an icky day to a bright one - even if the sunshine doesn't shine.

Yup, we've got Icky Day Sunshine here today.

And I need another strong cup of coffee.

We Nearly Died in a Corn Maze

On Tuesday, I took the two youngest to the best Apple Orchard I know (okay, it's the only Apple Orchard I know, but the donuts make it the BEST). Gull Meadow Farms puts together a great destination spot and it is very well known in the area. Ever since I was little my parents have taken us there for donuts and apples. Never pumpkins because, I know this will shock you all, we have always had our own.

If making the drive over to Gull Meadow Farms, here are some tips you might want to know....

*For $7.50 you get to do everything...wagon ride, kids play area, corn maze. (if you haven't clicked on the link yet, you want to just to see this maze,)

*For $1.00, you get to play for unlimited amount of time in the kids play area (this is what we did). However, the slide, the zip line, the hay bale climb, the pillow jump, the garden tractor train, etc...all this is closed until four pm. You do not have an option, either, to take a wagon ride through the farm. I did not know this when we arrived and honestly, it really disappointed me.

We could go through the corn maze but I'm not sure if this will surprise you at all, but I am "directionally challenged".

I get lost everywhere.

Except when we are camping, oddly enough. I always can figure out our way there.

But anywhere else, well, that's a whole other story. It could be a whole other BLOG in and of itself. "The Many Ways to Get Lost" or something like that.

So I was very thankful when the woman told me there was a kids corn maze in the kids play area. I figured this would be perfect because I am pretty sure had I taken my boys into the gigantic corn maze, they would have to send the energizer bunny of search parties in after us.

The boys had a ton of fun with the hand water pump duck race, we played this the most. They found the outhouses and foot pump sinks way cool. Seeing all the apple tress was impressive. But the corn maze that was really fence stakes, was the ultimate in fun.

It was a lot of walking but it was impossible to get lost and pretty cut and dry. You walk in here, you follow in one direction, you walk out over here.

Unless you are us, apparently.

The boys thought it would be fun to race each other and beat Moma and have her eat their dust and all that. They squealed with laughter as they took off. But S3 just got new shoes out of a bag of freebies someone (thankfully) gave us and they seemed to have super running powers because he would run way far ahead of S4. S4 would then hang his head and cry. Sob really. This would put S4 even further behind, which would then confuse him, so then he would try to run back where he started from, which made him even further behind.....

It turned into a mess.

Because, while S4 was only a row or so away from me, I couldn't actually get him. And whenever S3 tried to run to get him, S4 would run to meet him and they would end up further apart and S4 would cry harder.

However, when we would finally all meet, there would be great rejoicing. Huge hugs. As if this was the first meeting among brothers and their mother in years.

When we were leaving, I asked the boys if they had had a good time, a good day. I was concerned they may have not. S3 emphatically told me it was the best trip EVER and he had the best time.

S4 began to whimper a bit in the back. "Except for the part where we were lost in the corn maze and we could have DIED."

"Yah, yah, other than that part," agreed S3. "But the corn maze was the best part."

"Except when you lost me," S4 quipped from the back seat.

"But we found you," S3 pointed out.

"But we could have starved and been lost forever and died," S4 reminded him.

"Yah," S3 nodded in agreement, "but we didn't so it was fun."

I leave you with this video, taken after about the 5th lost experience. Prepare your ears.....