Erika

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

She's 4!

Journey's four! (sob, sob) How can she be four already? Four is getting close to five, and five is when they leave and go to school!!! (more sobbing)

Ok, ok, I'll pull myself together. It's just that I love my sweet girl. We all do.

A week before her 4th birthday, she got to go to Nana and Papa's house with Ava and Zoe for 4 days. Wow, for being the quietest of the three kids, the house sure seemed extra quiet. Aspen missed her SO much. Every day he asked when she was going to come home, and talked about how much he missed her. She's his playmate, and although he did have fun playing with Willow while she was gone, it just wasn't the same.

At four, Journey is now really into stickers, coloring and crafty things like that. She naturally likes to play independently in her room, so we have recently set up a table for her to keep her crayons, markers, stamps, coloring books, beading supplies, Lego Duplos, etc. on out of Willow's reach.

Her current favorite book is the Bible. I've never written about this before, but I've seen a really beautiful transformation in her over the past 6 months. A real answer to prayer.

About 6 months ago, Journey began to really struggle with fear. I remember Aspen struggling with fear (monsters and stuff at night) around this age, and I talked to her the same as I talked to him about fear.

"What does God say about fear?" (then we would say our verses we memorized about fear). I would generally talk to her a little more (God is always with you, you can always talk to God and ask Him to give you peace, etc) and then leave. I didn't want to make a big deal about it and reinforce the fear as being real, but I also didn't want to dismiss her fears and make her feel insecure. It's a tough line to walk.

Anyways, each year I try to ask God for insight for things to pray about for each member of our family, and then write them down so that I can remember to pray regularly over them. This last year, a few of the things on the list were that "God would capture her heart", "draw her to Him", and "give her a heart that follows hard after God". I also prayed that He would take away the fear that she is struggling with, and turn to Him for her peace, security and comfort.

A month or two later, I started finding Journey's Bible under her pillow. I thought it was kind of odd, but didn't say anything about it right away. Finally I asked her about it, and she said that she "reads" the Bible to herself at night, and keeps it under her pillow at night because that gives her peace and she isn't afraid any more.

I have no idea what gave her the idea to sleep on her Bible, but it is incredible how much peace it has brought her. It went from every night saying she was scared (many times crying in bed) to saying she's scared maybe once every 3 weeks. God, you are so good.

Journey - You are a beautiful, sweet girl with a tender heart. You are an absolute gift to me, and I love that God gave me you as my daughter. I love you!

Pics to come of her birthday weekend :)

He's got games

Aspen, can be SO manipulative! He is incredibly witty and smart, maybe too smart. Here's an example...

Lately, Aspen's new thing has been to try to make us feel guilty when we get frustrated with him. Mark came home after a long day of work, we were all sitting down to eat (translate - it was a bit chaotic around here), and I asked Aspen to bring some forks to the table. He came and sat down without the forks. Slightly irritated, Mark asked Aspen to go get the forks.

Aspen responded with, "Dad! Why are you so mean to me? You've been gone ALL day, and then you come home and are SO mean to me!"

Argh! See? So manipulative! That boy keeps us on our toes, I tell ya.

Mark doesn't remember much from his childhood, but he does remember being manipulative. Aspen isn't able to get anything past his Dad. He wrote the book on manipulation, after all! I'm so thankful, because I'll admit, I have a harder time recognizing when he is being manipulative and when he is being genuine.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Halfway through 1st grade

Aspen is half way through 1st grade and doing great. I feel a little bad that I don't have too many current pictures of him right now, but when he gets home from school, things get busy!

I generally give him 30-45 minutes to wind down from school, get a snack and watch a show or play the Wii. After that, we do 30-45 minutes of homework. Each week he has a homework packet to work on, plus 20-30 minutes of reading to do each night.

It was torture for me at first, trying to find that amount of time to read with him, but now that he is reading on his own it's getting easier. He's really progressed a lot in the last month, and I'm really proud of him! The downside is that Mark and I can no longer spell things out to each other when we don't want the kids to know what we are talking about. We always get caught :)

Sneaky Girl

OH. MY. GOODNESS.

This girl is driving me crazy right now! If it's not the toilet or toilet brush, it's markers.

I can't leave her alone for a minute.

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Choosing to Grow

Growth.

Sometimes in life, the most growth comes out of pain. I'll be honest. I hate this fact. But as much as I try to fight it, I know it's true. I guess it give pain a purpose. A way to bring good out of something bad, but it makes me feel like the bad was somehow justified. And so I fight it.

The last six months have been challenging. I've been dealing with some issues that I thought were dead and dealt with, and I've been surprised at how much pain emotion, and insecurity it brought up for me.

Recently in worship at church, some lyrics to a song really stood out to me. It was about loving others the way God loves me and living out that love.

I really felt like God was whispering to me that I can choose to react out of my insecurity and continue the emotional spiral I've been in, or I can choose to respond in love. Insecurity is my comfort zone. Respond in insecurity and the walls go up. I may not be hurt, but I sure do come off as a, you know, .....itch.

Live out love? Love takes growth. Intentionality. Vulnerability. Dealing with my insecurity head on and choosing trust instead of fear and doubt. Bottom line, it's hard.

This year, I'm going to choose growth, and with God's help deal with my insecurity as best I can.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Christmas Eve

Since we celebrated Christmas with the Wilde's on the 23rd (we are normally with them on the 24th), we were able to celebrate it together as a family. As in, our own immediate family :)

We really tried to think through what we wanted to do to make it fun and memorable. We spent the entire day at home playing with the new toys and cleaning up from the night before, except to leave for coffee and drop off the chairs we had borrowed from my parents. That in of itself is unusual!

We went out to eat as a family to Hopworks. A local restaurant specializing in local and organic ingredients and beer. It is VERY rare for us to go out to dinner as a family, and now that Aspen has found a food he loves (pepperoni pizza), it is a fun treat instead of a chore.

It also helped that Hopworks had a play area for the kids!

After dinner we came home, opened stockings and ate the gingerbread house we had made with the kids a couple weeks earlier. We watched a Christmas movie and just enjoyed the evening without rushing. It really was a fun day, and it is great to see how we have grown into a family of our own, able to enjoy each other and establish our own traditions.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Christmas with the Wilde's

This year, we celebrated the Wilde Christmas on December 23rd at our house since Ryan had to work Christmas and Christmas Eve. It was a blast!

We had fondue for dinner, and this was the adults table.

One of the kids tables - we had all the boys around this one for dinner. The girls had their own table in the Living Room. With such a large group (11 kids and 11 adults) it was nice to have all the different rooms. It helped to cut down on some of the noise :) Having the basement and the Wii was also a huge plus. Much of the time half or more of the kids were down there.