CityFest’09

cousins

My brother Todd and his family and other brother Jeff came in town last night.  We met up with them this morning to get some cousin pictures and then headed out to Hot Springs for some crystal digging.  We stopped on our way for a picnic and some rock skipping and then continued on to Judy’s Crystals.  The kids and adults had a great time digging in the dirt for sparkly rocks and crystals.  The view was amazing!  It was nice to have everyone together.  It was great fun, but I am exhausted.

5 Years

Friday was our 5 year wedding anniversary.  What a wonderful 5 years it has been!  We had made plans to celebrate next weekend because we had family coming in this weekend, so I had no idea there was anything coming.  I come home Thursday afternoon and Nathan asked me to pack the kids an overnight bag for him cause they weren’t staying here.  🙂 Then he and Lucy went to run a couple of errands.  When they got back they brought be a beautiful bouquet of flowers.  So far, so good.  We drop the kids off at my parents and then head to our hotel room to get ready for a dinner out with some of our best friends.  While we were getting ready Nathan said he had another surprise.  He had found the emails that we wrote back and forth to each other when we were dating up to when we got married.  They were written on email accounts that we no longer have, so I thought I would never see them again.  What a wonderful gift!!!! It was fun to reminisce.  It brought back lots of memories.  We then ate at Copper Grill, which was very yummy and hung out downtown.  As if all of this wasn’t enough, he had also arranged for friend, Whit, to keep our kiddos Friday morning (my mom had to work) so we could sleep in and remember what it was like to not have little human alarm clocks.  We picked them up around 11:30 and took them, and our little friend Campbell, to the zoo.  Very cold, but they had a great time.  Eli and Campbell dressed up like Woody and Buzz Lightyear.  I loved all of it!  Getting to spend quality time with my husband away from chores and such, sleeping in till 8 🙂 Cause we all know with my two around that is sleeping in.  Enjoying spending time with good friends, great food, beautiful flowers…..and to top it all off, at the end of every day, I still get to be married to the most wonderful, thoughtful, God fearing, loving husband that God blessed my life with 5 years ago.  God has shown Himself to me in ways that I couldn’t have every dreamed through our relationship before marriage and since marriage.  Marriage is tough, don’t get me wrong, but worth it.  There is no body I would rather be on this journey with.  Thank you, Nathan, I love you so much.

Arkansas State Fair

My parents treated the kids and I to a night at the fair this past week.  We walked through lots of livestock barns.  We did a little walking around and watching and even rode the merry go round (the fair is so not cheap).  As we were walking around we passed the freak show/tent thingy and there was a man out front talking and trying to drawl attention to the attractions that were inside.  Sitting on stage with him was a very little man who is a fire-eater.  He was holding his fire stick thing, waiting for his cue to eat I suppose, and Eli was very disturbed by this.  He has been learning about fire safety at school for the past two weeks and this was so not okay.  He had no intention of watching the fire eating happen and was persistent in asking to move on.  The kids got to play one game and won one of those o so charming, nice stuffed animals that you can only get at the fair or in those machines that have the moving arm and are almost impossible to win.  It’s all a part of the experience, right?  Not the quality of the prize, but the quality of the experience.  We then had pizza and topped that off with ice cream.  As we walked back to the car we walked through the bulls and cows  building and in the last one we happened to walk up as a cow was giving birth.  It was cool.  The owner was a little stressed.  All the interested people were causing the cow to be a little skittish, but in the end a calf was born and everyone survived.  By this point it was late and the 3rd night in a row that I had kept the kids out past their bedtime, so they were just slightly tired.  Lucy was exhausted and even though she did well throughout the trip until this point, she had a little melt down.  “COWS! COWS! I WAN COWS, Mommy!” That what she said for a good part of the walk to the car.  It’s kind of cute and funny to me now………….The only thing I regret is not seeing the Tigers of India.  Oh well, maybe next year.  Thank you, Nana and Big Daddy, we had a blast.

Rain Rain

Eli has had his eye on the kid sized umbrellas for some time now.  Every time we pass them in Wal-Mart, which is often, he points them out.  Last week just he and I were there for a quick trip and decided it was time for him to have his own umbrella.  He picked Spider Man for himself and The Little Mermaid for Lucy.  There aren’t my favs as far as their look, but gotta love the low price.  With all this rain, Eli takes his umbrealla everywhere!!  He loves having his very own.  Lucy could take it or leave it, but still enjoys it.  So, earlier this week it was raining, surprise surprise, and we needed to get outside, so that’s what we did.  I dressed them the best I could for the weather (we have no real rain gear in this house) and sent them to play in the rain with their new toy.  I anticipated them to get a little more in to it and splash around in our flooded driveway or yard, but they were both pretty tame. Oh well, they seemed to enjoy it okay.

After that we came in and made hot chocolate on the stove.  They loved getting to use coffee cups.  In fact, Eli drank out of a coffee cup for a couple days after that just cause it liked it. 🙂

It turned out to be a fun day.

Pumpkins

We tried 2 different days to go to the Pumpkin Patch, but got rained out one and the other day we had to choose between nap time and going, so needless to say we opted for naps.  Since the weather hasn’t been the best, we thought we would go to a more local pumpkin patch.  There is a church here that sells pumpkins every year as a fundraiser.  The kids were very excited cause we have passed by this church many times and they always admire the pumpkins.  They were very excited to actually stop and look this particular day.  Lil Lu was easy to please.  Eli found the one he wanted to moment we got out of the car, but it didn’t have a stem.  It was one of the few white pumpkins they had and that was all he was interested in.  After carefully looking over the whole patch, he quickly came right back to the one he originally picked out.  The nice ladies working the check out gave both of them a sheet of stickers to decorate their pumpkins  and the kids loved it.  I have to say, as much as I enjoyed the real pumpkin patch last year, it was nice to do our pumpkin picking so close to home.

Family Fun Fest

Last weekend there was a Family Fun Fest at the local minor league baseball park.  I had heard about it, but we didn’t really decide to go till the morning of.  It was chilly, but also nice.  It was FREE, so that started us off in the right direction and the kids enjoyed themselves.  What’s not to love, free stuff, ice cream & cookies for lunch followed by popcorn with samples of Juicy Juice to wash it down.  There was also a children’s concert  featuring Brian and Terri Kinder.  I have heard great things about them, but this was our first Kinder experience.  We all enjoyed it.  I will be looking for other opportunities to go see them again.  It was nice to spend the morning with family.

The Wonder Place

About a week ago we meet some friends at the Wonder Place to play.  They moved away a little bit ago and we have missed them.  Lucky for us they were passing through LR and called us up to play.  I don’t have any really great pictures, but it was very fun.  They weren’t going to be passing through till about 1:30, which is usually nap time for us, but we opted to skip and hope for the best.  Let me tell you, my kiddos played without any kind of meltdown or issues from 1:30 – 4:30.  Needless to say they were completely exhausted and not so easy to deal with that evening, but nothing out of control.  It was worth it!  Thanks Rob, Victoria, Cal and Laney, we enjoyed getting to see you guys.

okay, one more….

So while I was looking at the Steve Harvey video I came across another video of a young lady that I really wanted to share with you.  What do you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

How would you introduce Christ?

Here is a clip that I felt was worthy of sharing with my blog friends out there.  And really, how would you introduce Christ if you were given the opportunity?