Weekend Highlights

Lately, Elise's eyes have been focusing much better.  On her little play mat, there is a mirror.  I caught her checking out her reflection at one point which was pretty interesting.  She stared at it for probably a minute straight and never moved.

Here she is flailing around and hitting toys.

She was kicking really hard and hitting her heals against the floor so I had to put a blanket under her feet after this pic.

I had to go over to do bulletins on Saturday afternoon and Kim took this pic and sent it to me.  

Here I was trying to go through my choir stuff for tonight.  This is Sammie's version of "helping."  She likes to help like this when I'm working on a lesson or sermon as well.  She lays her snout either on my mouse pad or wrist.  The poor little baby gets so tired but I have no idea how laying her face on my computer is comfortable.

Eating God's Word

I've been reading a new book the past few days from Joshua Harris called Dug Down Deep. So far, it's pretty good.  I found one part pretty interesting when he was talking about the Bible:

"Eating God's Word.  It's an odd picture.  Yet that's what the prophet Jeremiah describes when he says to God, 'Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by your name, O Lord, God of hosts' (Jeremiah 15:16).

When I read these words, I imagine someone tearing out the crinkly, tissue-thin pages of a Bible and stuffing them in his mouth.  Of course I know Jeremiah is speaking metaphorically.  Hes describing his wholehearted embrace of God's Word.  We should have the same appetite.

That's how I want to be.  But I still have a long way to go.  I do love God's Word.  I've tasted that it's good.  But sometimes I only nibble on it.  Sometimes I don't feel like eating at all.  I want to delight in it the way Jeremiah describes.  I want to be hungrier than I am."

I definitely feel like I can relate to the author.  In fact, I was even taking the metaphor in a different direction in my own mind while reading.  I was thinking back to when I was a child.  I remember back in those days, oh so long ago (in the early 90s)--back when kids didn't even have cell phones--anyways, we used to sit at the table as a family and eat dinner.  The t.v. was off, we didn't have portable game systems to get in the way (not that they didn't exist, we just didn't have them-thanks mom and dad! Just kidding), and we talked about how our days went.  There were many of these times where my mom would make corn as a vegetable and I literally wasn't allowed up from the table until I ate it all.  And let me say this before I get judged for being a picky eater..okay, no excuses, I was and still am a picky eater.  But, I HATED corn back then.  I would rather have eaten moth balls.

Looking back, I wonder how I could think corn to be so terrible.  It's still by far not my favorite thing in the world to eat as I am kind of a junk food addict, but now it probably tops as one of my favorite vegetables.  Somehow, over time, my taste buds changed and became more than tolerant, but actually started to enjoy the taste.  The same thing goes for cinnamon rolls and fruit smoothies.  There are certain foods that have grown into more enjoyable tastes over time.

This analogy is a little broken in the sense that I have never hated God's Word.  I've always had a love and reverence for it.  But, especially as a child and even teenager, God's Word wasn't as enjoyable to me.  It didn't quite ring the same.  It didn't fulfill me like I get fulfillment now.  Again, I relate to the author as well in that there are times now where I only nibble or don't feel as hungry for it as I truly would like to be.  But, my desire for His Word grows more over time.  It seems as though the more I mature, the more God's Word fulfills me in more satisfying ways.  I think part of it is probably the fact that I read slower, study more, and dig deeper into meaning.  But, more than that, connecting with truths God is trying to reveal to me makes it better.  I only hope that this desire grows more and gives me motivation to read and seek much more than I do now.

 

 

Cool Baby, Martin House, and Bird House

Some pics from our big day outside..

We put her sunglasses on to protect her eyes and we thought for a minute that maybe she didn't like them.  So, we pulled them off and she started squinting some kind of terrible so we threw them back on and she never fussed.

Cool baby with her mom 

We got the Martin house up!  Yesterday, I put the bottom of the three tier pole in the ground and put in concrete and leveled it.  Then, today I went out and put up the house.  It looks pretty awesome out in the yard.

Here is "Mama Bird" feeding her babies.  Kim named her Mama Bird.  I put this bird house up at the beginning of Spring, and within a week we had a bird with a nest already made.  Mama Bird's babies hatched recently and we've been watching her take food to them.  Every time she shows up with a bite, you can here the babies chirping like crazy.  I was able to snap the next two pictures today while she was feeding them a worm.

Puzzles

Kim and I both enjoy doing puzzles.  It would be nice to have more time to do them, but of course it's difficult.  Even so, we finished the top puzzle about a week ago.  We had a couple of others glued as well and just sitting upstairs but they weren't glued very well anyways.  Before, I had used those small bottles of puzzle glue that had tiny brushes to complete an entire puzzle which was horribly time consuming.  They also went on clear which made it hard to see what you had already covered.  On this last puzzle, we used Mod Podge and it worked wonders.  The lid is huge and I was able to fit a whole sponge brush in and get the puzzle done quickly.  It also went on white so I could see what I had covered, but it dried clear and glossy.  So, using the Mod Podge was a huge success.  I even went back over the older two puzzles as well to fix them up.

The next issue was wanting to put them around the room, but fearing the expense of frames.  So, I grabbed a 2x4 from the garage and ripped it to maybe half an inch or so, mitered the corners, and stuck a few frames together.  They actually turned out better than I expected.  Then, I just stapled the puzzles to the backs of the frames.  I'm not, however, a great photographer.  The pictures make the frames look a little unlevel, but they actually sit flush with one another across the walls.

Mother's Day

Kim had her first Mother's Day this past Sunday and it went real well.  She even got to take Elise to church. She doesn't have her 2 month vaccinations yet so we just kept her in the back and left a little early.  Here are some pics 

Here is a little certificate that Elise got for her mom.  You can see her half hand print there from where she didn't want to cooperate very much when we were trying to put it on there.

This is what I got Kim.  I whittled it myself out of wood from the baby's crib.  No, I kid.  I bought it at Fruth's, but how awesome would I be if I had actually whittled it?

Here is the card that Elise, Gracie, and Sammie got for their mom.  

 Well, it's official: Kim was the "winner" of newest mother at church Sunday!  Since she had to leave with the baby, I got to pick out her trophy which was these flowers.  They got some rain over the past couple of days so hopefully they will keep looking good.

Here is the end of a long, but good day.  Elise was all tuckered out and laying with her mom.  And mom was never more proud to be mom than on Mother's Day.