What is Valentine's Day to you? To some it is just another day. To others it is a time to focus on the one you love. But to me, Valentine's Day is so much more because it is also my anniversary. When my husband and I were in the process of planning our wedding, several people said that they felt sorry for us getting married on such a commercialized holiday. But you know what I say... what better day to get married than the day that embodies love?

So tomorrow, during the Valentine's parties at preschool and everything else that will go on, I will be celebrating my 5th anniversary of being married to the man I love.

May you all have a wonderful and blessed Valentine's Day!

Sometimes I feel that I am on a merry-go-round and spinning really fast. So fast in fact that it feels as if I can't get off. And then something happens to bring the merry-go-round of life to a screeching halt. This past week was one such time for us. Tom Spangler, one of the deacons at our church passed away suddenly on Monday of a massive heart attack. This came as such a shock to everyone because he seemed fine on Sunday. In fact, Mr. Tom was just telling Ben about a new rifle that he got to go duck hunting with. Ben had the opportunity to go be with the family on Monday afternoon and that is what ministry is all about.

Mr. Tom was always willing to lend a hand and he always did it with a smile on his face. In fact, I can't remember a time when I saw Mr. Tom without a smile. The love he had for God and for his family was evident in everything he did. He was a great man and will be truly missed.

So as you get back on the merry-go-round, remember to take the time to smile and enjoy the small things in life. For it is in the small things that you will find joy. Don't let life get so routine that you forget to enjoy what life has to offer.

Well, I know that it has been a while since the last post but I am still here, just busy.

Our week with Ben's parents went so well. We had so much fun and got to do several of the things that we wanted to do. We went to the Georgia Aquarium and had such a great time. The whole time we were there, Thomas kept asking, "Where's Nemo?" I kept thinking to myself, "Do you even know what Nemo looks like?" Well apparently he did, because the very last fish we saw was an orange clown fish and Thomas said in his not so quite toddler voice, "There's Nemo! Look Mommy, Nemo!" We just had to smile. So of course, Finding Nemo is now our new favorite movie. But we just had the best time with Ben's parents and we are looking forward to seeing them in a few weeks for Christmas.

My mom and I have been taking a cake decorating class. I never knew how much fun it could be to decorate cakes. We have learned how to make shells, stars, drop flowers, and clowns. But the roses are so hard to do. Those people at the bakeries make it look sooo easy. I guess its kind of like driving a stick shift. At first you think that you will never be able to get the car to go and then all of a sudden you get it. Maybe the roses will come like that for me. I hope so anyway. I am looking forward to taking Course 2 in January, maybe by then I will be a pro at those roses. :)

This past Saturday, we had our annual Fall Festival at the church. We had perfect weather, mid 60's with a light breeze and not a cloud in site. I love to see all of the kids dress up in their cute costumes. Thomas was the cutest of all though (of course I'm biased) dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow. "Arrrrgh Me Maties!"

 

This Wednesday, he gets to dress up for school as well as the costume party that we are having for the youth group. Ben and I are going as a pair of "Black eyed peas". I'll have to post a picture next week of us.


So in the meantime, "Batten down the hatches, Maties!" and have a great week.

Question ~ Whatever happened to "the good old days"? We we were younger, the days just seemed to be full of fun. Now that I am married and a parent I always feel like we are saying, "Hurry, go faster, we are running late, we've gotta go, etc." You know those phrases, I know that I am not the only one who says them. It seems like, especially during the school year, that we are constantly going. We spend so much time in the car going back and forth from here to there. I can't imagine what it will be like when toddler boy is older and we get to add sports or music lessons or fill-in-the-blank activity to our already big list of church, errands, church, preschool, play-dates, and so forth.

I say all of that to say that I am so glad Ben's parents are coming down the first of October. We will get to take some much needed time away from the hustle of life to enjoy this fun and relaxing time with family and friends. We are looking forward to going to Stone Mountain, the Georgia Aquarium, Underground, and the Coke factory. I am really looking forward to spending this week with my in-laws, they are such great people. I am so glad that I married into a family where we all really like being with each other.

So, until this mini vacation, I am making a conscience effort to slow down and relax, you know take time to "smell the roses" and watch the clouds. Life doesn't need to be so hurried, even though we think that it does. We need to remember to see the world as we did when we were children -- relaxed and full of fun.

Our family has four pets, two cats and two dogs. One of each lives inside and one of each lives outside. Lady the dog and Fearless the cat live outside, while Holly the dog and Sammy the cat live inside.
The other day, Ben, Thomas and I were sitting in the living room and Thomas ran over to the kitchen and said, "Mommy Holly  pooped."
Which I responded with, "No honey, Holly didn't poop. Sammy  threw up." The response that we got from Thomas just proves how toddlers think, they are such concrete thinkers; everything is black or white. Thomas replied with "Sammy threw the poop?" All we could do is laugh. Obviously, Thomas has no memory of what throw up means, even though he has done that in the past. After we finished laughing we explained that Sammy ate his food too fast and then he spit it back up, which by the way, Thomas completely understood.

When you are young, before you have kids, you hear people say things and you think, "I am never going to say anything like that." The only thing is, when you have a toddler, you say things that you never thought you would say.... I wonder what will come out of my mouth next?

So the first week of preschool is over. I have ten adorable children in my class. Over all, we only had two children that cried the whole week, the rest of them just cried for a couple of minutes when mom and/or dad dropped them off, then they started playing and they were happy campers. So, as you can see we are off to a wonderful start.
Next week we are going to have Ice Cream Day (we serve vanilla ice cream for snack). You should see some of those one year olds, they somehow manage to get ice cream all over them, from head to toe. I'll write more about that next week. Anyway, I am looking forward to a long relaxing weekend. These first few weeks of preschool really wear me out. More on preschool later. :)

What an exhausting but wonderful weekend I just had. I went with a group of 15 ladies from the church to the Women of Faith Conference in Atlanta. The theme was Amazing Freedom. The speakers were wonderful, I believe there were 10 speakers in all. My favorite was Lucy Swindol. She told this hilarious story about a juggler on a ship. The ship was tossing to and fro and he was trying to juggle knives and kept cutting his hands because the boat was rocking so. Oh, and he was also on a unicycle. After several minutes of trying to juggle, he left the stage only to come back on with about 3 or 4 band-aids on each of his hands. You almost start to feel sorry for this man, but the way she told it, all 16,000 woman were rolling with laughter. Lucy even got so tickled over the story that she could almost not finish telling it. Her whole point that she made though was to "Sit down, Shut-up, and Let Go." We have to sit down and let God be in control; shut-up and quite telling God what to do; and let go of our control with total surrender to Him. Once we do that, the inner peace and freedom that we will find is truly amazing and we can only reach that place if God is in control instead of us.

The worship time was wonderful. To hear all of those women lifting their voices in praise was so cool. At one point Nicole C. Mullun was singing "My Redeemer Lives." On the last chorus of that song, she cut the music and we all just sang acapella (sp?). It gave me chills. That is one of those things that everyone should experience just once in their lifetime, to hear thousands lifting their voices in worship.

This weekend was great. We laughed, we cried, we prayed, and we worshiped God. What a sweet time of fellowship with the ladies from my church.

Today we went to The High. It was amazing to see some of those paintings from the early 1400 and 1500. The best part was the Louvre section. I couldn't imagine living in such opulence as Louis the XIV did. We saw this silver serving platter cover that was solid silver. This thing was so massive that it would have taken two very strong men to bring it out to the table. It just amazes me. Being at the High today made me want to come home and be creative. Now that I am home, the feeling has passed. Oh well....

While we were there, we also went to Toddler Thursday. We had so much fun watching Toddler Boy paint. His first painting was just a series of blobs in red, blue, and green. Then he decided that he wanted to get creative too. So he made  a self portrait.  who knows maybe his paintings will be hanging in a museum like The High someday, wouldn't that be cool?

Hello there! I am hoping to use this to keep you up to date on things that are going on in my life. I know that I will not be able to post something everyday, but I will post as often as I can. Being the mother of a toddler leaves little time for anything beside playtime.