Motherhood With Eyes on God

   ..."Shelly also tries to see everything as an act of worship. Worship to
her can be praising God for the opportunity to be home with her kids to
teach them who Jesus is, while she picks up toys for the twentieth time
that day!"

Here are some encouraging blog posts from moms on motherhood:

Motherhood, Part 1:  Learning To Worship While Picking Up Toys...Again!

Motherhood, Part 2:  A New Definition of Success

Motherhood, Part 3:  Shocked By Selfishness, Sustained By God

Motherhood, Part 4:  A Heart of Selfishness

In Honor of Earth Day...

 " The conservation of natural resources is a good thing. Saving trees is a
good thing, but how sad it is if we only care about protecting the
lives of trees and owls and baby seals. Many of those who have the
utmost concern for the preservation of life on this planet have almost
no concern for preserving the lives of the most innocent and helpless
members of the human community. A responsible environmental policy does
not include the killing of helpless human beings!"  From abort73.com

Hiking In Joshua Tree

We went up for the day to Joshua Tree Park.  The boys had a blast climbing on the rocks and boulders.  The place is filled with them!  The boys are amazing climbers.   We had lots of fun!

They really are best friends.  It is so sweet :-)

 

 

There were lots of caves and crevices for the boys to climb in.

These two make me smile :-)

Crevice crawlers.  They LOVED this stuff!

High and mighty Mason.

 

 

There was lots of water in the dam.  We managed to keep the boys out of it :-)

 

 

If you look closely at the picture above you can see the valley floor is covered with Joshua Trees. 

And of course we had to have a picture next to a Joshua Tree  :-)

Fun day and we want to go back soon!

Picture Frames

The kids made picture frames to put their camping trip picture in.  My mom cut out the wood frame and I had the kids paint the frame.  Then they glued acorns that they found camping and other random stuff that grandma and I had.  A fun way to remember a great trip. 

 

Ellie had some help ;-)

Miles is the sweetest!!  I did not tell him to put that!  Ha Ha!!!  I didn't even help him with the spelling :-)

Easter 2010

Sweet day today :-)  My parents, my brother's family, Erick's parents and grandparents, and some friends from our midweek home group came.  After lunch Erick read the resurrection story to the kids and then we had an egg hunt.  My mom had 120 eggs!!!!  Lots of fun.

The cousins

Girlfriends

Lucy

Ellie knew exactly what to do.  So cute!

Don't they look like sisters?!!

 

 

 

 

 

Wesley, Mason, and Miles.  Cool guys.

Lovely ladies :-)

Jeri and Mom.  Love you!

Smitten By This Guy 20 Years Ago!

20 years ago I was smitten by this handsome and funny guy and we started dating!  You can read a little more of our story from a post I wrote 2 years ago by clicking here.  I love Erick more and more each year.  Erick is a godly leader to our family, protects me, and loves me.  I am so very thankful to God for Erick!

Camping With The Arings

We went camping with my parents and my brother's family at Dos Picos Park in San Diego County.  I grew up camping a lot with my family but have not done much camping the past 12 years.  I have gotten spoiled with nice hotels that will bring you cool drinks by the pool  :-)  The boys keep asking about camping and in a moment of weakness I said sure.  Camping with a 1 year old is taking it to a whole new level!!!  Actually it went way better than I thought.  Beside the fact that we did not sleep at all we still had a ton of fun!!! Camping with kids is a lot of work but is also a lot more fun!!!  Kids are excited about everything and they had nonstop fun!!  It was the perfect campground for the kids.  There was so much for them to do.  There was a tree right in our camp site that they could climb, they rode their bikes a lot, there was fishing, a giant playground, and hiking trails.  It is great that my brother's kids are so close in age to our kids.  Thanks for the great time mom, dad, Craig and Jeri!!