Mother’s Day

I totally dropped the ball!!! I was just looking over my blog and realized I never made any mention of Mother’s Day!!!  At least I caught it before Father’s Day, right?!  So, in a nutshell, my sweet hubby and kiddos cooked breakfast, we attended church, ate with my mom, mema and Aunt Pammie.  THEN, I got to go shopping with those three lovely ladies AND THEN I got to meet up with my sweet and dear friend Whitney for dinner and a movie. It was a nice day and I felt very loved.  Thank you to my family and friends.

picture update

I have gotten so bad about keeping up my blog!!! Sorry for the delay.  In effort to play catch up I thought I would just post some pictures from the past couple of weeks for your viewing pleasure, cause looking at pictures is one of the best parts of blogs, right!?  So, here they are for any interested in the recent Happenings Of The James’.

TTFN my blog friends!

sweet ending to an oooo sooo long day!

So my day began around 6:15ish this morning after having made it to bed around…….oh, 11:30 or 12, so way too early no matter which way you look at it.  Let me give you a little background about the week we have had.  As some of you know and others may not I took a part time position at my church as WeeROCK director.  That is the birth-preK4 program.  This past week was VBS for 1st – 8th graders and I was responsible for providing childcare for all the volunteers children during that time.  I just took this position the first of June, so this came quite quickly, but luckily the girl before me had most of it all lined out for me (THANK YOU)  Let me just start this off by saying what a wonderful first VBS this was for me.  I was so encouraged by the volunteers and their selflessness to come and give 3hours of their evenings 5 days straight AND with good attitudes.  So even though it was fun and a great time getting to know the kids and other leaders, it was still tiring, physically and mentally.  ( this is longer than I meant already, I guess I needed to vent:) )  Okay, so back to this morning, I woke up, got dressed nice cause I was helping host a baby shower at 11 and then headed to take lil bit to her visit.  Went by the grocery store, farmer’s market and got to the shower location.  Cooked and prepared, welcomed guests, visited and then clean up (which really Bek and Steph did most of, thanks ladies)  I then came home and by this point it is 2 and was home only long enough to check an email and leave again to pick lil bit up from her visit.  From 3:30-6 we were IN THE CAR! 😦  Then we had a nice stop with our good friends for dinner and the exhaustion really started to kick in.  We parted ways with Nathan at this point and I decided it was best to head home for what I thought might be a long process to make it to bed.  There were multiple meltdowns, throwing of cups, multiple time outs to calm down and privileges to stories lost, o and my sanity was slipping real quick like, too.  So, I started saying in my head “Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path” and prayed for God to light my way and walk me through this moment that seemed like it would never end without much debate and fussing.  So now we come to the last 10 minutes of my time with the kids.  I was sitting on the spare twin bed in Lulu’s room and E sweetly asked if he could sleep in there on the spare.  He has been asking to do that lately and tonight I thought, Why not!?.  So I laid out some rules and crossed my fingers as I left AND………….well, they are both still in there and I just heard a little giggle of excitement over the monitor, but otherwise they haven’t made a peep!!!! This may be blah blah blah to some people, but it was just the little treat that my tired mind and soul needed tonight.  Thank you Lord for the little things I take for granted, for whispering to me in ways only You know how to do to reach me.  Now, I must head to bed so tomorrow won’t follow in today’s footsteps!  And I will end by saying I couldn’t have asked for a better week from both the kids/volunteers at VBS and my kiddos that have been troupers going to bed 2 hours past their bedtime!  I wouldn’t trade it for anything.  God is good all the time.  “…For the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” Joshua 1:9

storytime

Last night for some reason Eli was feeling very big brotherly.  He helped Lucy get her pjs on and then read her some books.  It was real sweet.  She didn’t sit still to hear a whole story, but she would sit in his “wap” and he would attempt to hold a book in front of both of them to read to her.  Then she would stand up and start over again.  And at some point she decided it was her turn and tried to get him to sit in her lap.  These little moments are so sweet to me.

Busy weekend

2 weeks we had lots of vistors! Gramma and aunt Tarah came in Wed and we got to do some fun things with them.  We took Gramma to see the bird show at the zoo.  It was our second time seeing the show.  I really enjoyed it and so did the kids.  One of the highlights was at the end there is a bird that takes donations from you and puts them in a box.  Eli thought it was pretty cool.  We also had a first that day, Eli and I both rode a camel for the first time ever.  We ended our trip to the zoo with a ride on the carousel.  This is the first time it has been open since we started our membership earlier this year.  The kids really enjoyed it and Eli was ready to go another round.  He had his next spot picked out and everything.  Too bad it isn’t free to ride 😦  The next day we loaded up and went to wild river country and had a great time.  I didn’t get many pictures with it being wet and all, but I did manage another good one of the way Lucy’s hair looks after I spray sunscreen on it.  Then the next day we went to our friends b-day party at a park near by.  They used a halfed watermelon for a cake, candles and all, and the kids LOVED it.  I’m thinking that would be a good idea for Lulu’s b-day coming up.  In the midst of all this we added more visitors to our home.  At one point all of Nathan’s immediate family was in the same room!  That doesn’t happen much.  We wrapped the weekend up with a family dinner and brownie birthday wishes for N’s uncle Brian.  It was so great to see everyone and get to visit a bit.  Busy, but good.  Thank you everyone more making the trip to NLR.