Disciple Now 2012

We took our youth to Disciple Now this past Saturday. We chose to just go to the event all day Saturday. It was hosted at Hot Springs Baptist and about other churches were involved. About 250 students. Anyways.. it was great!! Lots of fun, great worship, and bible study! We had some time to do a community project too which was going door to door and asking for can foods/ non-perishable items to give for a Food Drive for the Jackson House. We collected tons. We person even gave us some money so we went to DOllar General and I let the youth pick out what cans/ food items they wanted to buy. I thought this was great for them and they enjoyed it too and the day turned out to be perfectly Sunny and not too cold. We also came back to our house and had dinner, a time of rest, and just hanging out before the night time service.

One of our youth, Jeremiah.. professed Jesus this day!!!







All the while we were gone from about 9am to 9pm. Grace stayed with the La Caze Family. She got to play with these two little friends.. :) We are so thankful for their entire family. This picture was from our house last weekend. We had them over for Dinner last Saturday.

Family Fun

Grace got lots of games for Christmas this year and we have played lots of games since then. She also got this large floor puzzle from Mrs. Patsy and LOVES it! For many days she put it together multiple times a day! She is loving puzzles right now!

Here's her and Daddy putting it together. She can now do it all be herself :)



She cracks us up a lot of days too. She talks in all kinds of funny voices. She's been doing this lately..



:) She's a mess!

Back to School

Grace started back to preschool last week after her Christmas break. Unfortunately though she also got sick last week. We all did. Needless to say, she missed some school. I had a little sickness to my stomach, Grace had strep throat and Adam has had the congestion, and runny nose with a low grade fever. We are all better now. Adam still has some respiratory junk but is better. Grace is back at school. We've had lots of time around the house to play with all her new toys, games, etc. from Christmas.

Last night we pulled out her play-dough or model magic set she got for Christmas. It has tools in it to help you make flowers made out of modeling clay with a vase and all. It was cute! Grace loved helping cut out the leaves or pedals for the flowers.. :)



This was her first day back to school. She was thrilled to go back.. )

New Years 2012

We spent our New Year's Eve hanging out the gym at church. Some people from the church and other friends came and we all hung out, the guys and the kids played. We had appetizer foods which was YUMMY!

The guys spent a lot of the night playing basketball and the kids had a blast too!

FrIeNdS

Last Friday evening we had a spur of the moment plan to have Evan and Leah Smith and their family over to hang out. They are the family that we met in Louisville that is originally from AR and has now moved back to AR 30 minutes away from us. Anyways, Grace was SUPER excited when she woke up from her nap and found out that her friend Kendall was coming over :) She has never forgot her even after we changed and went to a different church than them after being there for 2 years. We would meet up every so often for parties, etc. etc.

Anyways, we ordered pizza, the guys watched football.. and Leah and I chatted :) Grace and Kendall took full advantage of all of Grace's dress up clothes and continuously changed outfits! :) They were very cute.

We even talked about letting the girls do a slumber party at each of our houses and just swap up. I told Grace that her and Kendall could sleep in the guest bed since she still has her small bed. Kendall and Grace wanted to go see if they could fit in her bed :)

p.s If you look close you will see Kendall's baby sister Arden in one of the pics :)

Christmas 2011

I'll let the pictures tell the story for the most part.

Christmas was relaxing and a lot of fun this year. We went to AL the week leading up to Christmas but came back on Friday the day before Christmas Eve. Grace really could enjoy it a lot more this year too. We had a Christmas Eve candlelight service that was nice and then we were invited to John and Crystal's family Christmas that night too. It was a lot of fun. We all played dirty Santa and the food was great too. Grace even racked up at their house with presents.

Christmas morning we got up and had cupcakes for Jesus' Birthday and sang Happy Birthday to Jesus! Then our Music Director and his wife did their annual breakfast for church members on Christmas morning. We went and the breakfast was GREAT!! I really enjoyed being able to go to church on Christmas!

We had a great rest of the day relaxing and having some appetizer food that I made that day with just our family. Grace played with all her new toys. Let me just say we are BLESSED BEYOND MEASURE!! The Lord has shown us time and time again HIS provision in our lives but we were amazed this Christmas. It always costs us a good bit to go to AL.. just in gas and boarding our big dog Bud, missing work and not getting paid,and then Christmas expense.. etc etc. Well, 2 days before we left our Maxima had to go into the shop because it was going dead while going down the road. We were hit with 370 bucks that we had to pay to fix it when we returned from our trip. Anyways, between anonymous church members.. that didn't even know anything about this, and my new job that fell in my lap, wonderful family members, etc. etc. the Lord helped us through perfectly!! Praise the Lord from whom all blessings flow!! :)

p.s. Well, I took the time to put a description on each picture and it's not showing up on the slideshow. If you want to see you can click on the link at the bottom of the slideshow.

Christmas at School

I know I've said it before but.. we just LOVE Grace's preschool!! Her teacher and the school just go above and beyond to make the kid's experience great and they all learn so much. I don't know if I have said but in her curriculum she also has Spanish class, and gymnastics!! She comes home singing Spanish songs :)

Anyways, they had a Christmas Program for the kids this past Wednesday and then a Christmas class Party yesterday. Adam went to the Program on Wed. because I had to work. They sang some songs and as you can see they were all little angels.. literally! :)





Yesterday, Adam and I were both blessed to be able to go to the class Christmas Party. They had a cake for Jesus and we all sang Happy Birthday to Jesus. Then they made Christmas ornaments and they played Pin the Nose on Rudolph! Grace did so great with that game. She put the nose at the perfect spot blindfolded! Then they all opened presents from Ms. Ballard, their teacher. Her gifts were in this HUMONGOUS stocking...





The little girl beside her with glasses is Emilee. She is one of Grace's best friends!! She just LOVES her!






Just for good measure..

Imagination is a wonderful thing!

I've just loved watching Grace's imagination run wild. I have been busy today getting everything ready for us to go to AL after church tomorrow till Friday. Grace's has played by herself must of the day because Daddy is working too.

She has this Bear that she just loves that Adam got for her not too long ago at Lifeway. She has been carrying it around and being a little Mommy/ teacher to him all morning. I overheard her telling him all kinds of things. He had to go to time out at one point, and she even went and sat him on the potty to use the bathroom and helped him wipe! :) (I took this picture fast before she could catch me getting a pic so that's why it's dark)



Next she is teaching him to flush the toilet..


and wash your hands!!...


She's also been coloring, and drawing her letters a lot this morning. We are AMAZED at how much she has learned now with her letters! She can recognize just about every single letter on a paper and can now WRITE HER NAME!!! She did it today for the first time really well. She drew the letters all together. If she can see the letters drawn for her she can draw just about all of them. Her counting is much improved.

I'm one proud Momma!!..



So then she had to teach Bear how to draw.. and she left him with the marker and eraser to draw away.. :)



She really is growing up!!

Pics from Thanksgiving and More Income, More Events.. :)

I guess I haven't wrote about my new job on the blog. I am now working a 2nd PRN (as needed job). I still work at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital but I am now doing some home health as needed also. It was pretty awesome how it happened. I wasn't even looking for another job. I had been in the past since I wasn't getting very many hours at the hospital but had been able to pick up enough by alternating days and night shifts. It was rough but we were fine. St. Joseph Home Health got my name from Jackie (a lady we go to church with), and she told them that I have worked in home health and I may be interested in helping them out as needed. They needed help bad so they called ME! I started the next week which was the week before Thanksgiving. I am still orienting because I am having to orient at Home Health on a part-time basis since I work at the hospital other days. Anyways, it is going great and the staff have all been very friendly there. Between both jobs, I am working about full time. We are already seeing what a tremendous blessing this is. Because of this we were able to move Grace up to 3 days a week in her preschool and Adam has been able to get more hours at Lifeway.

Needless to say, we are busy. Adam stays busy with school. We went to a playoff football game at one of the high schools that our youth go to. I went to a band concert for another youth and then we have been planning lots of events. We just had a Christmas Party for the kids AND youth of our church. We had pizza, games, and presents for all of them. We are also working on a camping trip the first weekend in January for our Youth. Then Disciple Now event the end of January and then Winter Jam in Feb. in Little Rock. We have been blessed for a while to see the numbers grow tremendously in the children's department. Recently though, we are finally seeing our youth group grow!! This is thankful to the youths efforts to invite their friends also!!

Through everything, we are trying to remain focused on why we are here and especially focus on Christmas and teaching Grace to always remember what Christmas is REALLY all about.. our Savior Jesus Christ! Lord help me to reflect...

Thanksgiving.. Part 1

Well I took my Mom to Little Rock airport to fly home today. She has been with us the past 8 days. She came to celebrate Thanksgiving with us and for an added bonus was here with me to go black Friday shopping. I love going with her black Friday shopping. I remember enjoying doing this even as a teenager with Mom.

We cooked here at the house and had PLENTY! It was just us and Mom. Grace helped make our Chocolate Turtle Cake:) Mom and I left that evening to be at Walmart right after 10pm for the buys and was out till 1am and back the next morning for more. We got some REALLY great deals and thankfully I am almost done Christmas shopping!

Lots of quality time. We put up our Christmas tree on Saturday after Thanksgiving and of course, watched the Iron Bowl.. ROLL TIDE!! :) Grace helped decorate and that's a funny story in itself. As some of you know, we have a 9 foot tree that we have been putting up for probably 8 yrs now because we lived in houses with high ceilings. Well, this year the rental house we have just has the standard ceiling. So we knew we would put a smaller one up. We had a 5 foot tree (suppose to be 6ft) that was free to us years back and we just kept it. We had never taken it out of the box to see if all the parts were even there. When we put it up, it was so funny because it is a lot different from what we are used to, but also the thing was lopsided!!! So we had to rig it to make it stand up straight! I also had to go out and get white lights for it since it wasn't pre-lit and crazy me got white lights with white strands instead of green strands. At this point, I didn't want to go to the trouble to take them back so I made do. You will see in the picture esp. where I used the flash that you can see the white strands! :/ I will show other pics that shows more what we see in the house with the camera flash off. When it is lit up.. you hardly notice. At least, that's what I tell myself!!:) I figure I would be better off to buy Christmas lights after Christmas this year when they are on sale anyways!

So Grace loved having her Nana here and we even encouraged Grace to go get in the bed with Nana if she woke up in the middle of the night or early in the AM. So Nana got some snuggle time the last few days or so in the early AM! :) She also, watched Grace for us while Adam and I went on a date Monday afternoon to a matinee to see Courageous! It was great!!

The week before, Grace's school had a Thanksgiving meal and little program. I was working so I was unable to go but Adam went. Grace had been learning this song to sing there and we recorded her at home too. She is getting to be so big!!












More pics from Nana's camera to come!!