Easter

We went to Benton for Easter this year.  We dyed some Easter eggs Saturday night.

Daddy helped Reid because he is working on the "gentleness" skill.  (: 

They enjoyed putting the eggs in all the different colors.

Reid dropping one in on his own.

Lilly decorating with the "magic" crayon. 

Adding some stickers.

 

This is what finished eggs looked like.  Unfortunately it was raining Sunday and we didn't want to hide real eggs in the house...and then we forgot to bring them home with us...so I am not sure what ended up happening with these eggs. 

Reid found out why he needed to be gentle with eggs.  Sometimes you just have to see it for yourself. 



We were invaded by some cute bunnies!

Ready for church.  He insisted on taking the bunny glasses to church.

All ready for church.  Lilly and Reid impressed their Sunday School teachers by telling them the Easter story.  They also sang the chorus of God's Not Dead (Our God's not dead.  He's surely alive.  He's living on the inside, roaring like a lion.) to them.  They are both still obsessed with the Easter story, or as Lilly calls it, "The spooky crown story."  They also love to watch this video called Sunday's Coming.  I have really been amazed at how many questions they have asked and how much they understand and remember. 

A funny story about Lilly--she hid all the plastic eggs for the kids at DeDe's and then also participated in the egg hunt.  Needless to say she found LOTS of eggs.  And was pretty proud of herself, too.  Ha! 

We all loved seeing and playing with Baby Breanna!  The kids have asked to see her about 20 times already this week. 

And we went by to see MamMa on our way out of town.  Lilly was so sweet to her this visit (sometimes she gets shy) and it warmed my Mommy heart. 

Love this group of peeps! 

Reid looks so thrilled for more pictures, doesn't he?  Ha! 

And here is a video of Lilly explaining her preschool resurrection eggs to her Daddy.  There is a part that is hard to hear where she is talking about the bandaid and how Jesus came to heal a broken world.  It is precious!  I am so thankful for the desire and curiosity God has given them to know more about Him and His Word. 

Her Name is Lola...

As I mentioned before, our beloved Tank passed away, and pretty much immediately Lilly (and Matt) started asking for another dog.  In February we decided to start looking and so we started praying for the right dog for our family.  That might sound silly but given that a dog is a pretty big, 10-15 year commitment, in addition to the fact that we have small children--we prayed for guidance.  Plus God tells us to bring him ALL of our requests, right?  It was pretty sweet to hear Lilly pray for the perfect dog for us and then tell God how she was really tired of waiting.  (: 

 

Matt and I had thought of our "perfect" dog:  a girl, one year-old, needed to be rescued, potty-trained, sleeps through the night, plays great with our kids, sweet disposition...we were really shooting for the stars. 

 

Then, a girl at Matt's work raises Australian Shepherds and we researched and found that everybody says what GREAT dogs they are...and she just happened to have a pregnant Australian Shepherd.  So we decided we would just wait for one of those.  There we were--we had made a list of what was perfect for our family--and then were completely willing to settle for something completely different.  (Not that the Australian Shepherd wouldn't have been GREAT--I am not saying that at all--I am saying we made a list of what we thought would be all the qualities for the "perfect" dog for our family and were praying for the "perfect" dog for our family...and then disregarded all of that at the first seemingly great opportunity.)

 

Then one day my friend Sarah put this cute face on facebook.

 This sweet little 1-year-old girl dog that was potty-trained and slept through the night had just been rescued by her neighbor.  Unfortunately her neighbor was highly allergic (as in lips swelling, breaking out in a rash, doctor said she couldn't keep the dog-kind of allergic) and couldn't keep her.  She needed a new home.  Now both Matt and I saw her post and thought the very same thing...that is EVERYTHING on our list...except whether or not she was good with kids. 

 We arranged to get together and she was great with the kids.  I am a bit of a commitment-phobe so I wanted to go home and pray to make sure this girl was supposed to be ours.  I don't know why the fact that she was everything on our list wasn't enough for me...but it just wasn't.  So I went home and prayed and honestly wasn't feeling any confirmation either way.  So with about an hour left before I was supposed to let her know I grabbed my bible and just opened it and I was just thinking should we wait for the Australian Shepherd or should we get this dog??  I felt led to read the highlighted passages which were praises like Proverbs 3:5-6 "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and He will direct your path."  And I was like, yes, exactly!  That is what I am here for--path direction!  (:  And the next highlighted passage was this:

Now let me tell you how God used this for my clarification.  "Do not withhold good...when it is in your power to help."  This sweet woman needed somebody to take this dog that she had already grown to love.  We were looking for a dog to love.  "If you can help your neighbor"  This passage stuck out to me because she was literally the neighbor of my friend Sarah and through this process we referred to her several times as Sarah's neighbor.  "now, don't say, 'Come back tomorrow, and I'll help you."  This was God's confirmation to my heart to get THIS dog now and not wait for the other dog.

Matt walked in the door literally 2 minutes after I read this and I asked what he was thinking (without showing him this) and he said, "Oh, I am ready to go pick her up now!"  So we did.  (:  Elizabeth, the girl we got her from, had intended to keep her so she had bought her a kennel, a dog bed, toys, food, etc and she gave it all to us with our sweet dog for free.  Now isn't that just like God to not only provide what you pray for but also everything you need for it, too??  We are so thankful.

 Now Elizabeth had called her "Dutch" but said, "She really doesn't like that name.  You probably want to call her something else."  Ha!  Lilly voted for "Raisin, Slinky, and Ruby (because we were watching Max & Ruby) but we ended up naming her Lola.  Mainly because when we said that name she came running. 

 And she was instantly part of the family.

 She even posed in the grandkid photos with DeDe.  Ha!

 The kids ADORE her and she adores them.  I hear "Lola" no less than 100 times a day.  Seriously. Most days it is cute but some days I have to just put her outside for a little while.  I say, "I'm sorry, Lola.  It's not you, it's them."  ( ; 

 Reid introduces her to people as "our Lola girl." 

 Lilly warns people that "she can be a little jumpy" because she likes to greet you by jumping on you.  We are working on that. 

 We are not sure exactly what kind of dog she is but we are pretty sure she has some lab in her because of her bark and face and tail. 

 She LOVES to chew.  I think she must be the equivalent of dog teething because we go through chew toys constantly!

 She is so sweet and really thinks that she is a lap dog.  One funny thing she has done since we got her is that she ate my contacts...and it was my last pair.  I had to wear my glasses for a week before I could get to the eye doctor and I actually had to say the words, "Ummmm my dog ate my contacts."  Ha! 

And some times she sleeps like this, too, and it cracks us up!  We love Lola so much and are so thankful that God has given us the perfect dog for our family...and I know one little girl is thankful that he answered it so quickly.  ( : 

Spring Break

I have wanted to blog for a while but there is just so much I want to blog about that I have been overwhelmed and just couldn't decide where to start!  The kids have done so much, we have done so much, and the Lord has been working in our hearts so much--and I want to share it all...but couldn't decide where to start so I have just kept putting it off and putting it off.  If I am being totally transparent...this has been pretty true of several areas (laundry, anyone?) of my life over the past couple of months.  We haven't really been any more busy than normal...I have just been less motivated than normal.  Anyone else with me?  I feel like I am finally starting to move out of this lazy-feeling haze and back into the motivated world.  And now that our house is almost-not-embarrassing-type-of-clean (thanks in a large part to my awesome man), I would like to start catching up on what has been happening in our lives.  I am starting with Spring Break because those are the pictures that are next on my camera and I have to start somewhere.  Ha! 

 

Monday

 We started Spring Break off by making some yummy banana pancakes! 

 The kids love to help mash and stir. 

 Monday afternoon we met up for lunch with our sweet friends Rebekah, Duke, and Cilla at Chick-fil-a. 

 We got to be there when Duke tried his very first Chick-fil-a french fry.  We feel very important now.  Ha!  (: 

 And Reid enjoyed an ice cream cone.  My children are growing up too fast...they have started asking for the chicken sandwich instead of nuggets and eating ice cream in a cone instead of a cup.  When did they start acting so big? 

 Reid planted a plant at school and I forgot about it in the car for a couple of days and then brought it in and sat it on the counter for a couple of days...and somehow, some way, without water or anything--it grew!!!  Reid was SO EXCITED.  Lilly, on the other hand, was a little bitter.  You see a couple of weeks ago she, too, planted a seed at school and Reid dumped it down the sink while trying to "clean it."  I let her water it and all was right the world again.  It has since been spilled and didn't "make it"...but it had a good couple of week run in our house...which is better than most plants do here. 

Lilly wrote her own story.  On the inside cover of one of her books.  She said it was a good one and I believe her. 

Tuesday

 Because I got all caught up in how excited the kids were about plants and because I got all visionary about how awesome I wanted our landscaping to be this year, we went to Wal-Mart to buy some flowers to plant!  Luckily the guy working there said, "You do know it is supposed to snow in a couple of days and if you plant them and don't cover them they won't grow??"  No.  I did not.  So I let them each pick out one pack of flowers. 

 Don't let it surprise you that Reid picked out blue...

 and Lilly picked out pink.  We went home and planted them.  I remembered how much work planting flowers is and have shelved the whole landscaping idea for a little while.  At least until we quit getting snow for a while.  I don't remember much else about Tuesday except for that Reid was a toot and I had to call Matt at 4 to encourage me to stay sane until he came home.  We had the two previous weekends with grandparents in town so we saw this coming.  Ha! 

Wednesday

 Given the forecast for the rest of the week and knowing this would be the last nice weather day of Spring Break, I decided we had to get out and took a spontaneous trip to the Gentry Safari.  Our friends Dallas and Levi joined us and I think we were all thankful to have some friends along for the ride! 

 We saw the alligator up close and were all really excited! 

 A quick funny story.  The safari has a drive-thru part and the animals (except the bears, lions, tigers, and alligators) roam freely.  They come up to your car--it is really awesome.  That being said, there is no place to stop or pull over once you are in the safari part.  We also picked an extremely BUSY day--so in the safari--we were bumper to bumper.  What normally takes about 30 minutes to get through took us over an hour.  Stay with me--all these details are important.  (: 

My son, less than 3 minutes into our time in the safari informs me that he has to pee.  Now.  I tried to tell him he would HAVE to wait--there are no bathrooms and there are wild animals outside of our car.  5 minutes later he is holding himself saying, "I have to go!  I can't hold it!  It's about to spill!!!!"  I can tell by his panicked expression that he is serious.  He has to go.  Now!

 We are in the middle of going up this giant hill at a snail's pace.  An Emu even gets in front of our car and causes us to go even slooooower.  Reid is doing the potty dance the whole time and I am begging him to wait 5 more seconds.  We finally pull over and I had to dump out my water (that I had packed to drink that day...with no back-up) out of the window.  I just barely rolled my window down to dump it out and thought I rolled the window back up...but in all the craziness accidentally rolled it down all the way.  I am getting him situated when we look up and are face to face with the Emu.  Insert panic.  We are all yelling and panicking as the window slowly rolls up.  Annnnd that is the story of how Reid peed in a cup in our car for the first, and hopefully last, time.

 The kids enjoyed feeding all of the animals in the petting zoo.

And we had a picnic while we were there and this rooster just walked around cock-a-doodle-dooing the whole time.  All in all, I called the trip a success. 

 

Thursday

 We all wore our mis-matched socks for World Down Syndrome Day. 

 Lola, our new dog, who will be the star of my next blog post, was very cute...but not very helpful in my mission of cleaning up the house. 

 It snowed.  Forget that it had been warm, beautiful, and 70 degrees 2 days earlier. 

 I had some much-needed quiet time with the Lord.  And I had coffee.  I have decided that I am a much better person on coffee. 

 And, I don't want to brag on myself or anything, but I did make our bed at 5:00 that afternoon.  So there's that.  Lilly brought Mickey and put him on my bed because she said, "it needed him." 

And we were very excited that is was baby Breanna's first birthday!

 

Friday

 

Well, I didn't take any pictures Friday so I don't really remember what we did that day.  (: