Simple Efficiency

We have pizza every Saturday for lunch. It's cheap: $5 for two Tony's pizzas at Wal-Mart. We love it for once a week (more than once might be blecchh). One day Phillip took care of Saturday lunch while I was indisposed. He changed just a couple things that made lunch so much easier!

First, he cut the kids' pizza into four slices. I was trying to cut theirs into 6 equal slices so they could each have two. But if you cut 4, and then cut the last one into 3.... It saves maybe 30 seconds of time, but it really makes life easier!


I used to put each pizza on a pan to cut them (we put them in the oven without a pan; the bottom crisps better and faster). More dishes to wash!


Phillip opened up the pizza box and laid the cooked pizza right on top. Fold and throw away!


So simple, but brilliant. Thank you, darling!

1-11-11 Birthday for Phillip!

So we didn't have the proper candles. Three single candles plus one number "6" makes Phillip 36 years old today!

How We Take Our Coffee

Every morning this helps us get out of bed.

Phillip takes two sugars and two creams (French Vanilla).
Lanaya takes one sugar and 5 or 6 creams. And sometimes some cinnamon.

Thanksgiving 2010

I wasn't thinking about pictures, but thankfully Elizabeth was. She took these. At least we know half the family was present!

On this day, I was thankful for talking to family, walking outside into warm sunshine while talking to family who were driving on ice and snow, plenty of food, Christmas music on the radio, separating Legos with my son (each color in its own Ziplock bag!), my husband who read a Psalm and a chapter about the 1st Thanksgiving from Limbaugh's book and gave our kids a wonderful Thanksgiving lesson, a relaxing day of staying home, freedom to worship and read the Bible. In history, Elizabeth has been reading about those who were killed for trying to translate the Bible into English. Can you imagine not having the Bible in your own language to read? Having to rely on someone else to tell you what it says, yet wondering if they are telling the truth? I can count probably 10 Bibles we have in our home right now. Not including kids Bible story books. That is richness right there. And I am thankful to God for it.

Outdoorsy Day

The kids were with friends today, so Phillip and I had a most wonderful day together! We relaxed in the morning and then went to The Western Store to buy a cowboy shirt for Phoebe for Christmas. Then we headed to some barbecue! There's an older man who barbecues on the side of the road (well, it's an empty parking lot near a gas station) only on Saturdays. I've seen him there every time I head home after Walmart shopping; but I'm too in a hurry to stop and see what's up. So we ordered up a chicken dinner to share. He gave us half a chicken! With some coleslaw and baked beans. There was no place to sit, so we ate off the back of the car while Harrison sat in his stroller and watched. We really needed a truck with a tailgate to sit on. But as my dear husband reminded me: we've got a fourth kid instead!

Then some friends from church who are wanting to have some "baby experience" (they've been married a year with no children yet), took Harrison for two hours while we went hiking! Hiking! This was Phillip's idea and I loved it. There's a 6 mile trail just down the road from our house. We hiked about 2 miles then drove around with Doritos and Mountain Dew until our two hours were up. Harrison was wonderful for the couple ~ though they were a little upset that he mostly slept. :-) They also offered us some freshly baked quiche, which I accepted. Delicious!

Then home for a little while. Cheap Tony's pizza for supper, coffee shop, then home again just in time to welcome the kids in the door and get them to bed.

I loved the day with my husband! We're very blessed indeed.

South Carolina

We had a nice little weekend away visiting some friends who recently moved to South Carolina. They have a beautiful new home, the weather was just nippy enough to feel like fall, and we all (including the kids) had a great time together.

The kids dressed up to go to a Zoo Trick-or-Treat Thingy. We had two cowboys (well, one of those was a "cowboy girl" as Phoebe puts it), a beautiful Indian princess, a beautiful Snow princess, and some kind of Jedi Venom Spiderman.




The kids also went to a Children's Museum the next day. These are the only non-blurry pictures I got. They spent a good 2 1/2 hours there with no complaining, and we didn't even make it to all the displays! They got along so well; makes parents happy.

Circus

We tried out the circus a few weeks ago. The albino tigers were cool. The family that did flips and things was cool. The clowns weren't funny. And every other act was done by women dressed in just about nothing. Elizabeth wouldn't even look and we kept trying to distract the other two, so we finally left. So anyway, I got pictures of us!




And then we headed to McDonalds and the Town Center for some ice cream and a little fish-pond time.

Old House/New House

The kids play and lay at the old house.






The kids play and lay at the new house.





(Funny kids. They made bubbles out of dish soap and water and are using scissor handles as the bubble wands.)

Moving and Moving and More

Since last time I blogged, various and sundry happenings have taken place. Among them are:

Elizabeth making the most important decision of her life...
Moving to a new home....
Fighting fleas and cat hair left by previous tenant...
Enjoying chicken pox and horrible coughs....
Trying to tuck some schooling into nooks and crannies of life....
Discovering a new tooth for Harrison....
Baking for 60 high school football players....
Moving back to the old blog site....
Overwhelmed, yet learning to praise God through it all instead of waiting for life to calm down before I seek Him again.....

Pictures to come....


...at some point.

We're Moving!

To a new website, that is! Phillip has created a family website which includes a blog, photo gallery, and links page, so this will no longer be our blog (though we'll keep the old posts here as always). You can find the new site at www.phillipandlanaya.com. See you there!

Happy Mother's Day, Mom!

I love you!

And Happy Mother's Day to you also, Mom!

Thank you for giving me the wonderful man that is my husband!

And to me! I get to be a mom too!

I'm so thankful for my kids and that God is teaching me to enjoy them now instead of rushing them to grow up. They are innocent and inquisitive and joyful and bursting with potential and so hilariously funny. I love being a mom.

Resurrection Day!

I love Easter! Everyone dresses up and special programs and music are done at church and there are lots of new people to meet. We're celebrating something only we Christians can celebrate fully! Jesus rose from the grave and is in heaven waiting for us! It's the cornerstone of our faith. It's very encouraging and I really enjoyed it yesterday. We had a thank-you breakfast at church, so I didn't have to make breakfast (or clean up afterwards). Then Phillip and I got to sit together in church service (which rarely happens on a Sunday morning). We think we may have had 5,000 people total for the weekend, so that's exciting. Then I taught my 3 year old class with 4 visitors (yea!). We went home for the kids to "open" their Easter baskets (books, a cute chocolate candy in the form of snail, frog, and turtle, markers for Liz, toys for Jon and Phoebes, and music DVDs from CedarMont kids) and grab the coleslaw I made. Then we went to some friends' for a late lunch and egg hunt for the kids. It was a great day!


Saturday night curling of the hair for the special coming Day. This is the first time I've curled Phoebe's hair and she sat really still for me. Please excuse my dirty bathroom mirror. I did clean it last night. :-)


Beautiful clothes all around!

Small Group

This is most of the women from the small group I led at Fleming Island. They were a great group and had great patience with their green teacher. At the end of our last study the church had a women's retreat at a camp ground in Georgia, so that's where the picture was taken.

3 year old class

I teach these precious 3 year olds on Sunday mornings. The other lady in the room is a "buddy" to an autistic boy who is in class with us. We have a wonderful program at church called Access Junction which finds a "buddy" for any special needs children we have, and they stay with them throughout whatever class they are in at church. Every other week another lady teaches and I help and sometimes we have a teenager to help. (nice!) And if one of the kids gets wild or is having a fit, I just have to throw out a red bandana into the hall and a ministry leader will come take the child out of the class and help them calm down. I like it!

Living Proof Live (Beth Moore) Conference

Five of us ministers' wives from church were blessed to go to a conference this weekend. It was the first time I'd seen Beth Moore in person (though I could barely see her since we sat in the back). The worship team was phenomenal. They all have powerful voices. And they would often let the women sing without their instruments, so it was really neat to hear all of us singing together.

Here we are waiting for it to start!



Our plane flew in early, so we had some time to go to Opryland. It's an enclosed place with a glass roof, so there are all kinds of beautiful plants and waterfalls and little shops and restaurants. It's was really neat to see.


We saw Steven Curtis Chapman in the airport in Nashville. I didn't recognize him because I don't think I've ever seen a picture of him, but I hear his music on the radio and enjoy it.