Camping

Last week our little family went camping.  It was a huge blast.  We went to Jellystone Campground near our house.  It was so much fun and we even slept in the tent all of us, together, all night.  I have never camped with my kids before and so it was different.  Not really relaxing.  But we had a great time.  I think my favorite was being away from everything else in the world.  No one cared how I looked and we lived off of hot dogs, s'mores and pop tarts.  And then every night we told the boys scrpiture stories and watched the stars as the fire died out.  I think we created a lot of great memories and I'm excited to go back again.

 I had to show you my awesome jeans.  I LOVE these things way too much.

 playing in the James River, it was great until Matthew went under and was unwilling to forgive us.  He was practically blue anyways, so we decided to call it good.

 they even had a playground

 strong poses.  haha

 early morning faces.  So precious.

Pop tarts, this is for you.  :)

One Year Old

 My sweet Matthew is now ONE year old!  How fast this year has gone by.  He is so precious to me.  He has the cutest dimples and even a dimpled chin.  His eyes are so blue and perfect.  His temper is insane and he is so demanding.  He just wants to race into everything.  He loves water, loves running, loves laughing, loves doing whatever his brothers are doing.  He came running into the world, not wanting to miss anything, and I have a feeling this is a long lasting character trait of his.  How I love my little boy.  Thank you for coming to our family!!

 (this is how I find him pretty much everytime he wakes up, with his little feet through the bars)

 blueberries for his birthday breakfast.  LOVE his crazy hair.

 Birthday cake.

 Caleb made the crazy eyed chick.  Haha

 Cassie and the boys made pretty much all the cupcakes.  So fun.  And the boys did a really good job, I was impressed.

 Oma gave Matthew these awesome balls that of course his brothers hog.  :)

Was a little shy opening presents.  I think he was afraid he would get in trouble.  Just LOVE this kid!

Scriptures to Help

"^aTrust in the Lord with all thine ^bheart; and lean not unto thine ^cown ^dunderstanding.

 In all thy ways ^aacknowledge him, and he shall ^bdirect thy ^cpaths."

-Proverbs 3:5-6

 

"Every man according as he ^apurposeth in his heart, so let him give; not ^bgrudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a ^ccheerful ^dgiver."

-2 Corinthians 9:7

Testing My Optimism

I am naturally a positive person.  I have to be.  I am pretty sure I drive people crazy sometimes because they might complain about their life or mention something sad and I just try to flip it to be a good thing.  I don't mean to be rude or annoying, I just can't handle negativity.  It is too easy to slip into a rut of endless sadness and despair because of a negative thought.  Sometimes I disgust myself because I feel like I sound like a cheerful chipmunk.  Or if I can't think of a good thing to say, I just keep quiet.  (That is the Bambi philosophy, "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all")  Well, that is unless I am talking to Kenni, my mom or Tyson.  That is when I vent and complain about everything.  :)  I'm working on that.

But still, I try to see the good in things.  Our tree fell down, no big deal, our car is okay and it is just great the tree fell the way it did.  Our dryer broke, no worries, it just gives me a chance to learn how to fix it.  Our car breaks, we replace the whole engine, don't have the car for weeks, no worries, it teaches us to be grateful and hey, I lost 10 pounds from all the walking I had to do.

Lots of little/somewhat big things keep going wrong.  It is really wearing down all the optimism and patience I have.  This morning, Tyson's sister came up from the basement to use our bathroom because the downstairs one wasn't working.  "WHAT!" I thought.  And Tyson said "I give up."  This is the news of the week and why this last announcement did us in: Well, now we have termites, (yes, termites), we need to buy a new stove for the basement, our car is dying yet again (it just randomly dies, always when I am in the car and not home and with all three kids), we still have to fix the roof on our shed and clean up all the rest of the tree stuff that litters the road (thankfully the main tree trunk is gone now though) AND the toilet in the basement was broken.

How long can we keep going like this?  Are we supposed to just keep paying and paying to fix things when we really need to save money and buy food storage and pay off the mortgage?  I don't know.  It is one of those moments in life where we need to decide/figure out what the Lord wants us to do.  Are we supposed to be here?  Are we doing something wrong?  Or is this just an opportunity to do things differently?  Does it motivate us to live a different life than we have been?  Because right now, my instincts tell me to curl up in a ball and cry until all the bad stuff stops happening.  But the bad stuff doesn't go away on its own and really, what would they make me?  Just a huddle of a person. 

So, what I need to do is take a deep breath and take care of one problem at a time.  Thankfully, the toilet kind of did fix itself, whew.  And all the other things, I guess I just need to pick one and deal with it.  And really, if these are the problems we have, I would much rather have these than sickness or death or marriage problems.  I know my life is great.  I just want to know what I should do to make even better and not so spendy.  Or at least, if it spendy then at least it is spending money on chocolate.  Right?  :)  So I suppose my next step is to pray, the Lord is the one that knows what I need to do.  So why am I waiting to ask Him?

Wow, there are a lot of pictures here...

I figured out a long time ago my kids are weird.  Since I am weird and Tyson has his odd moments I knew there really was no hope for my children to really be normal.  However, the way they pose in pictures shows just a smidgen of how crazy they are.  Love it.

 By the way, this picture Josh drew is of him, Caleb and baby turtle Matthew.

 Caleb fell asleep reading.

 Our friend, Ginny, reading to the boys.  Crazy eyes, don't know why.

 We had a fun breakfast with the young women, they are so sweet and fun.

 Our trip to San Diego.  These three boys were squished in the back of the car the whole time and they did pretty good all considering.

 Train ride at the San Diego Zoo.  Thanks Zach!

 Matthew and Grandpa.

 Family zoo canoe ride.

 Matthew bartending at the playground in the zoo.  That was really what it looked like.

 Sad that all the pics in San Diego, we didn't take any of the wedding or with Abby and her family.  But here are some once we got back.  Matthew LOVES the broom.  Seriously, it is crazy.

 The weekend after we went to Cali, we went to a lakehouse by Lake Anna with Tyson's office and all the families.  It was a lot of fun.  Yet again, I am super bad at taking pics and this is the only one: while we were getting ready for church and all three boys were crying, so Tyson took this shot.  So one of those moments were you really have to repeat over and over to yourself that going to church is worth it.  Because it is.

 Hanging out with Breleigh.

 Caleb's first day of preschool and his all about me poster.  Love his smiles.

 Josh took the broom from Matthew.  Like I said, Matthew has a little bit of an obsession with the broom.

 Dressing up Matthew.

 We went to Jack's birthday party and it was all about super heros.  Well, these are my boys in their super hero masks fighting bad guys or something.  So much fun.

 Celebrating Carmel's 15th Birthday.  I can't believe how old she is.

 Hanging out afterwards.

 For some reason the other day the boys decided to make a barricade so no one could get into the living room (?)  I still don't know why.  Yes, those are all the cans we own and all the shoes too.  I love their imaginations.  But I am pretty sure my house is a little worse for the wear because of those imaginations.