Just for fun!

Who's who? These next four pictures are of Chloe and Emma, both at around 6-7 months. You can certainly tell they are sisters can't you! Can you guess who is who?

Emma and Mommy, January 2005

Chloe and Mommy, February 2007

Emma, February 2005Chloe, March 2007
Are my girls beautiful or what!?
Start saving up those cattle to stake your claim for your little sons:)

A month gone by

Wow! It's hard to believe a whole month has passed since I last posted pictures and an update. In mommy time, it has only seemed like a day, can anyone relate? This first picture is one of my new favorites. Emma has become so nurturing to Chloe these days, sometimes I wonder who the mom is! She's always asking to hold Chloe and making little coos at her, giving her toys, helping her sit back up when she falls down, tickling her, kissing her goodnight before naps, feeding her and talking to her the same way I do, nick names and all. She's even invented some of her own nick names for Chloe that have stuck, like Chloclock, Coa, and Baby Moses.

We had a nice little get away to visit my parents and sister and family last weekend.

Chloe's first experience in a swing was a hit! Especially with Nana's face zooming in and out as she went. We are loving these gorgeous spring days, gotta love CO.

One of the best things about staying at Nana's house is getting to make breakfast with her. Emma thoroughly enjoyed pouring all the ingredients in the bowl for pancakes and then wisking them up, she was so proud.

I call this my angel baby shot of Chloe. The sun was coming in one of our bedroom windows one morning and gave Chloe this glow that just made us want to eat her up. She doesn't need a glow to give us that desire, but it certainly increased it.

Miss Moses is sitting by herself now quite well. In fact, she much prefers sitting to laying down any day and is sure to make that clear. She can roll over both ways, but hasn't really had much interest in the skill. I think crawling is just around the corner, but I hope she holds off a little longer. Once they are mobile, watch out!

Chloe's adoring Papa. She's quite smitten with him as long as mommy is around. In fact, mommy has to be around for her to be happy with anyone these days. I must be honest, it's flattering that she is such a momma's girl, but at times it would be nice to get away without knowing that there is waling going on at home.

My poor girls, and I, were stuck with a nasty cold a couple weeks ago. I really thought it was against some ancient law for mothers to be sick at the same time as their children, but aparently not. This face Emma is making sums up how all three of us felt. Nothing like a good cuddle in Grammy's arms though to heal all wounds.

We sadly said goodbye to my grandpa Gale last month. What a wonderful life he lived, he will be so missed. But it was a great time to reunite with family. This picture was taken at Granny's house after the memorial service. Nana and Grandpa just can't stop smiling when their precious grandkids are around.

This next shot is my silly little peanut needing to "be little" like her sister. Every now and then she asks to nurse or sucks her thumb or wants to sit in the front pack like Chloe does. She'll always be my baby, and I must admidt, I'm happy to ablige! But I was a little worried that sucking her thumb might stick, so a quick little scare tactic did the trick. I told her that when big girls suck their thumbs, sometimes they fall off! I highly doubt that tactic will work on Chloe when she needs to stop the habit, but who knows.

Chloe looks quick grown up in this next shot, she just loves being with her sister, she's just facinated with her.

So we're thinking Chloe may have Daddy's face/head shape, nose, chin and mouth. She's definitely got my eyes we think, but some people think she looks so much like her daddy. I think each of my daughters is a Travis clone in her own way, maybe if we have a son next he'll look like me?

Well, not much new to report, other than we are absolutely gleeful that spring is here! We have big plans for walks to the near-by school playground and picnics and gardening and BBQ's! We'll be pouring our back patio soon and seeding grass. A fence and other landscaping will have to wait until next spring. Stay in touch, and God bless you! Happy spring!

Love, Sarah

Personality or Practice?

Once in awhile, a topic or issue comes up so much in my life that I feel I must talk or write about it, just to process it. Have you ever heard someone say, in the defense of a certain behavior, "that's just how I am!"? Or have you ever been the one to say it? Here are some examples of phrases I've heard, "I'm just a blunt person, if people get their feelings hurt, it's their problem, they just don't want to face the truth." Or, "I just don't like conflict, so I'll just ignore the person until the problem disappears, that's just how I handle things." There are countless other phrases I can think of, "I'm not a trouble maker, I just have a bad temper" or "I'm not lazy, I'm just not domestic or my bosses are difficult" but you get the idea. And believe me, I'm preaching to the choir! Isn't it amazing how quick we are to blame someone else or some unchangeable quality in us for the behaviors we don't want to change? If we convince ourselves that it isn't broken, then we don't need to fix it, right! So I've been thinking about this concept of the difference between who we are and what we choose to do, and this is what I'm coming to. I think far too often, we blame a practice, a behavior, a life style, on a supposed personality characteristic, our genetic make-up as it were as a cop out to continue in, and feel okay about, that behavior without a need for growth. Because after all, how can someone expect us to change the essence of who we are? But I would propose that we are far more changeable than we want to admit. After all, for those of us who have received the Lord, we are a new creation, "the old has gone, the new has come!" And is there ANYTHING God can't do in us?! Amen! So where am I going with this? Just right to the heart hopefully, mine included. Sure we all have certain bents or struggles that are different than those of others. Someone who's naturally verbal may have a harder time biting their tongue, for instance, but are they any less responsible for the words that come out of their mouth simply because they have a harder time with it? Of course not! But this in no way means that we should be any harder on ourselves, especially as woman, than we already are. The Lord knows we already live under far too many umbrellas of inadequacy than we should. But what I'm suggesting is that we own up to what our struggles REALLY are. Don't call apples bananas! I would propose that it is nothing short of a clever plot of the evil one to convince us that our sharp tongue, or laziness, or insecurity, or whatever the case may be is simply an eternal part of "who we are". We are people in process, always needing growth, being sanctified. We will never "arrive", and we're not supposed to here on earth, so we also need to give ourselves and others the Grace we've been given, amen!. But we ARE supposed to grow, so let's not be stagnant, believing the lie that we can't, nor should we try to change. Vulnerability is the greatest gift we can give ourselves and others! It's not going to be easy to admit where we need to change, nor is going to be easy to do the changing, but as I've always believed, anything worth anything often treads the most difficult path. But thank goodness we don't have to do it alone! And God even promises to carry us when it gets too hard, to be our strength, our everything. So the victory belongs to Him! Bottom line, let's start calling apples, apples so we can be refined into all that God has called us to be. That's my opinion, take it for what it's worth.
Sarah

Chloe's six month birthday!

That's right, our little "pickle" as we call her, due to the fact that she can make some of the cutest sour faces, turns six months old today! We can hardly believe a half a year has passed since she miraculously entered the world! So much has happened in those six months and our baby girl is growing up. She appropriately had her six month doctors appointment this morning, complete with vaccines (ouch!) and some big show off smiles for the doctor.

Stats:
Weight: 18 pounds (90th percentile)
Height: 27.5 inches (95th percentile)
Head circumfrance: 17 inches (75th percentile)
She's growing beautifully, as the pediatrician put it, and my aching back is in agreement. It was only natural that after her appointment, Travis and I headed straight to the chiropracter!

Here we are, me and my girls, in their matching valentine dresses. That was one of the things I was very excited about when we learned we were having another girl, matching dresses! If only I could find them in my size, we'd be set!

Giggles galor! Miss Chloe Paige loves to laugh, especially at her big sister, which Emma loves. I just want to eat those chubby cheeks and sweet druely mouth! Only a parent can understand that desire.

It's a good thing miss "Biddle" has chunky thighs to cover her parts in this shot, otherwise I wouldn't have posted it. Chloe loves to be naked before and after her bath at night, she gets very frisky. Travis loves to tickle her armpits with his wiskers.

Did I say she enjoys being naked?

Our little thumb sucker. Part of the reason she's been such a great sleeper is that she's always got her trusty thumb attached to her for self soothing. We had such a hard time getting Emma to sleep through the night because she was so dependant her her pacifier. Every time she'd lose it, we had to come in and put it back in for her. I'm sure we won't think it two years from now, but there's just nothing cuter than a baby sucking their thumb. I'm sure I'll be asking for ideas for weaning her from it in a couple years though, so fire away!

Chloe is such a messy eater! But oh how she loves it! As soon as the food hits her mouth, the babbling begins and the hands go straight in her mouth. Then of course the hands proceed to goober up everyone/everything within reach for the entire feeding. But we're so glad she loves to eat! She's tried sweet potatos now for three days and just tried apples this morning. She's a bit slower to down them, it's almost as if she's savoring the new flavor. We're thinking she takes after her daddy in that respect. His favorite thing to do is savor good food, it's almost a hobby for him. It makes cooking for him fun (when I've got the energy and time to be creative in the kitchen)!

Our happy eater!

Chloe's newest discovery over the past month has been putting her feet in her mouth. She can now pull her socks off to get to those tasty little piggies!
We are counting our blessings every time we behold our happy, healthy little girls! God is good! Stay in touch, please send us pictures and updates of you and yours as well!
Love, Sarah

House pictures at last!

Okay miss anal retentive perfectionist, just get some bloomin pictures of the new house up already! That was me lecturing myself. I have finally decided, pushed by many of your requests, not to wait until my house looks like a page of Better Homes and Gardens to put pictures on my blog, so here you go.It's a 3 bedroom, two full bath ranch style home on an awesome lot! There will never be anyone to the right of the house, the way you are looking at it, and beyond an irrigation ditch is a huge farmers feild that is technically a flood plane, so no development there most likely. There will likewise never be anyone on back of us either, horray! There are tons of very old, very large trees surrounding the development, so even though it's a new neighborhood, we're in an older part of town. The development is plotted for only 40 new homes, so we're not talking mega suberbia, which we like.This picture above is the view out the back of the house (i.e. two of our bedroom windows and our master bath). I took this picture during one of our recent snow storms, notice the deer.This is the view out our side picture window and our courtyard style covered porch. This is looking south, remember the farmer's feild and irrigation ditch I mentioned? This is it. Very country feeling eh!The living/family room. Plans for paint and furniture and more wall decor are all on the hope list, but time and money will be our guide.Looking down the hall at the front door and down the stairs to the unfinished basement. We have nine foot ceilings, both on the main floor and in the basement.The kitchen and dining room. I plan to do a faux finish in the dining room. The dining room ceilings are 16 foot, that's the tower you see from the front view of the house.

Our master bedroom and bath. Excuse the clutter in the bathroom, somehow it and Chloe's room have landed at the bottom of the to do list. I'll be sure to send pictures of completed projects too. Rooms that did not appear in these pictures are the girls bathroom (it has two sinks as well), the girl's bedrooms (they are napping as I write this), and the mudroom/laundry room. I hope you've enjoyed this peek into our home, sorry it's taken me so long to share it with you. Stay in touch!
Love, Sarah

"I can do it!"

This post could also be titled, "Emma's brag box"! That's right, there have been some new accomplishments in the world of our sweet little two and a half year old, she's officially potty trained! Now when I say officially, I mean about 80%. She still has an accident here or there, but she is waking up each morning dry and using the toilet more often than not. If she doesn't make it, it's usually due to the fact that she's engrossed in one of her favorite movies, like "Little Bear's Rainy Day Tales".More exciting news, which I only forgot to mention in my previous post, is that Emma has been sleeping in her big girl bed ever since we moved in to the new house and has been doing wonderfully with it. We have a nice little routine of reading about 10 books, then lights out and a back rub, then it's off to dream land. She doesn't come out until morning, we are just so pleased!I'll be honest, as exciting as it is to see my baby girl reach these milestones, it also makes me sad to think of what's soon so come as she enters school in a couple years. I'm no fool, I know there will come a day when I will look back and long for these days when my children were at home with me all day, full of life and emagination and learning, never missing a moment, being a part of every new discovery. But that's why I don't have much guilt when the laundry piles up or the house needs cleaning and I just haven't gotten to it yet, because this time is precious and I've heard the advice of too many seasoned mom's to know that it will be over in a blink, never to be relived. I highly doubt I will look back with remorse over postponed chores, amen!

Milestones all around!

Here they are , as promised, recent pictures!Can you believe our little Chloe Paige is already 5.5 months old! She's all smiles, and giggles too. Her favorite person to laugh at is her big sister, it just warms my heart to see how much they have grown to love each other.

Chloe in her "happy baby" position, as they call it in Nana's yoga class.

After taking most of her nap in the car, Emma decided to finish her nap on Nana. She must have remembered sleeping on Nana's chest all those times in her infancy.

Two year old bums are cosher, aren't they? Cousin Tayden and Emma are like peas and carrots these days. They can cause quite a tiddle wave in the bath tub.

Cousins, and the best of friends. Tayden and Emma's new favorite thing to do together is throw themselves on the floor in uncontrollable giggles while in their jammies, nearly missing each other each time.

Miss Biddle, as we call her, loving her swing time. She's almost to the weight limit, but Chloe still loves her swing.

After a nice visit with Great Grandma Betty on a blizzardy day, we took this priceless photo. Four generations of women, what a beautiful legacy Grandma Betty has started! We love you "G.G."!

"Sisters...Sisters...there were never such devoted sisters"
It's amazing to me how, already, Emma and Chloe know there's something special about each other. It's almost as if they know that some day, they will be best friends, and rely on each other like honey to the bee as they go through all of life's trials and blessings together. At least, that's what I pray for them.

Putting her best smile forward in Grammy's arms!

Biddle Peep's idea of a perfect bed, Nana's arms! With a little sleep training, Chloe is sleeping so well these days, at least 8 hours for the first stretch, and has even pulled an eleven hour night of solid sleep. We feel like we are among the living again, praise the Lord!

That's right, our baby girl is eating rice cereal already! She'll be 6 months old in just two weeks, after which we'll be adding fruits and veggies to her diet as well. Where did these first 6 months go? Dare I say I'm already catching the baby bug again! But don't worry, we're hoping for about a three year space between Chloe and the next one.

My cup runeth over, what more can I say?!

Emma holding her sister, something she frequently asks to do. Only as she would say it, "I wanna holg my sister". As you can see, "Oh bla di, oh bla da, life goes on..." As we settle into our new home, we look forward to digging our roots in, not just as we settle in to this house, but as we seek the Lord to see how He might shape and mold our family to know and love Him more deeply and to see how He might use us in the lives of others. So as we hunker down for this last stretch of winter, we are everso thankful! God is good, whether our lives are abounding in blessing or laden with hardship. He is worthy of our praise because it is by Him and in Him and for Him that we were created.
Love, Sarah

As the Dust Settles

Before I write anything else, let me first appologize for my long haetis from the world of blogging. While we were living with Travis's parents it was very difficult to find time to blog as their computer was in the room where Emma slept. When the girls are asleep, that's my time to do emails, blog, and anything else I may need/want to do, so it was really hard to find a moment to do either. But now, we are finally back online in our new home and the computer is at the kitchen built-in desk, ahh..., I'm back. So first, let me give you a recap of the past three months or so. After much thought and consideration, we felt that we needed to stop paying rent on top of the mortgage we were paying on the house in Utah. After two different contracts on the townhome fell through, we knew we couldn't just assume it was going to sell quickly. So, we packed up our things once again and moved out of our rental and into Travis's parent's basement. They so graciously agreed to let us live there until our future unfolded. It wasn't easy sharing the space, especially with two bull dogs under foot that Emma gets some devious pleasure from harrassing, but what great lessons in patience, humility, kindness, and trusting the Lord. So then as a huge answer to the prayers of many, our townhome finally sold! To our good friend and realtor nonetheless, so on the 8th of January, "it was finished!" We recieved the wire of money from the sale of the townhome and then officially closed on our new house here that very night. I tell you, the look and jingle of those six shining silver keys was oh so sweet! My mom was able to come up for a few days to help us with the girls while we moved, unpacked, and hung blinds. And now, exactly three weeks later, we are finally feeling more settled and moved in than not. God is so good, I just don't know any other way to sum it up! We are so excited to have many of your over for dinner very soon to celebrate all the blessings this new home brings. And believe it or not, amidst all the caos, we have found/made time to plug in to our new church family, Mountain View Community Church. I've joined the Saturday night worship team and Travis and the girls and I all have an awesome small group (called flocks) that meets every other Sunday night. As we build relationships and study God's Word together, we just know this is right where the Lord wants us. We're just about ready to get plugged in to some accountability groups, Travis with some guys and me with some ladies, so please be praying that this is a time of great growth for us as we sink our roots down deeper with our brothers and sisters here. And I know many of you are anxious to see recent pictures of the house and the girls and hear updates on their growth and development, and I promise, I will be making such posts this week after I retrieve the necessary cable to download pictures from Travis's parents house. It just feels so good to be able to connect to you all again through cyberspace! I also am able to check email at least once a day now, so I hope to catch up with you personally very soon. I'm a big fan of personal emails, I'm not really fond of forwards because I don't have time to read them, but keep those personal letters coming please! I hope to hear from each of you soon with updates from your own lives and ways that we can be praying for and encouraging each of you.
Love always, Sarah

Mysterious Ways!

(Chloe in the POD while Travis loaded it.)
We finally have some good news to share on the house homefront! God works in mysterious ways. Monday morning we got a call from our realtor, Pat. First he told Travis the usual, that he hadn't heard from anyone about the "buyers" qualifying for this third loan. Then he proceeded to blow Travis's socks off by telling him that he and his wife are going to buy the townhome! Travis needed a repeat of this information to be sure he heard it correctly. Apparently, Pat and his wife were planning on buying an investment property beginning of the year, but decided to make their purchase a little early. We definitely didn't see this coming and are completely blown away with how God is working in this situation. Just the night before recieving this news, Trav and I were praying together and really just asking the Lord to give us peace and contentment whichever way things worked out. We acknowleged together that getting this new house was not going to make or break us. God is good, ALL the time, and working His best in our lives, even when things don't seem to be going our way. Some might call this good news the following morning a fluke, but we choose to give our awesome God more credit, amen! Now, if all things go as they should, we should be in our new house the first of the year. We are so humbled and grateful for this undeserved blessing! Thank you all SOO much for your faithful and powerful prayer for this situation. We have learned and continue to learn so much about God's purposes and character through this time of faith and transition. As a Rick Warren devotional put it, "God cares much more about our character than our comfort". Thank you Father, for asking us to step out in faith and then asking us to wait. We praise you for always bringing us to a place where we can't possibly be prideful and think we are the captains of our ship. It is when we are weak that you are strong, when we are powerless that You show us Your power, when we find contentment in the present that You give us blessings for the future, when we surrender that You conquer! Thank you for asking us to take the focus off ourselves, so that we can be used in the lives of others. Amen.
To close this post, I'd like to share an idea I learned this morning from a dear friend and mentor who spoke at our MOPS meeting. The point of her talk was reclaiming Christmas for Christ by diminishing the materialism and busyness and increasing the ways we celebrate the birth of our precious Savior. One of her ideas was advent ornaments. The idea is, each day of December leading up to Christmas, as a family you hang an ornament on the tree that has an attribute of Jesus painted on it. With each attribute, there is a correlating scripture that you read as a family. I thought this was a great idea because it's a daily thing that brings your focus back to Christ during this season of distractions. I'd love to hear any of your ideas too! Talk to you soon!
Love, Sarah