happy 2nd birthday, sweet caroline!

caroline is 2 years old today! she is 2, going on 22. our little girl has packed so much laughter and silly times into the last two years... i can only imagine what the years to come will hold! this morning, we woke up caroline to the singing of "happy birthday" and a birthday cinnamon roll. she loved blowing out her candle in bed, and after we moved the festivities to the kitchen, she had so much fun blowing the candle out over and over. "more hot gint?" (gint= again) she would say. two years old is such a fun year to celebrate birthdays because i feel like it is the first year that they really "get" that it's their special day, and boy, does caroline know it! here's a little walk down memory lane... but if you're gonna keep up with caroline, you'd better run...

november 2007

december 2007

january 2008

february 2008

march 2008

april 2008

may 2008

june 2008

july 2008

august 2008

september 2008

october 2008

november 14, 2008
and it was just like yesterday that i was holding this sweet (and perfectly still!) little bundle... oh to be able to swaddle her now! :)

november 14, 2006

we are praising the Lord for caroline today, and we are so blessed to have had a wonderful two years with her. have there been challenges? ohhhhhhhh yes. is she a handful? ooooooooooohhhhhhh yes. that is what my mom and dad call "payback"!!! i am reminded on a daily--and hourly--basis that she (like me!) cannot be good on her own and that she (like me!) needs a Savior. what a humbling thing it is to strive to lead your children to the Cross. it is a joy and it is a battle. but thankfully, it is not with our own strength that we guide caroline and ethan! we pray for many more days to train up these children in the Lord. what a blessing it is to see caroline fold her chubby little hands to pray (and to want to do it again and again) and to hear her request "LORD!" (the song "praise the Lord") as soon as we get in the car. (ok, so it's a toss up between that song and veggie tales these days!) i look back on the last year with so many precious memories of my first daughter, my sweet caroline. and i thank the Lord for every one of them.

we have a fun birthday party planned for her this evening, so stay tuned for pictures from the festivities! she has been saying, "party? cake! blow!" for the last few days.. she knows just what to do!

happy birthday, baby girl. we love you!

fishin with pappy!

ethan has been asking to "go fishing with pappy on a hot summer day" for awhile now. well, summer has come and gone, but last saturday, ethan finally got his wish. he took his first fishing trip with pappy! i expected ethan to come back full of excitement and stories, but i did NOT expect him to come back with a bucket full of fish! ethan (and pappy) caught TEN catfish! what a productive hour of fishing, huh!? thanks to nana, we have the whole fishing trip documented with countless little videos, as well as a picture of ethan & pappy after every catch! :) (that's one proud nana for ya!) the fishermen had so much fun showing off their catch to us. pappy even tried to get ethan to "kiss the fish", but thankfully, ethan refused. :)







kissin' the fish!

this one is my favorite...
ethan sure does love his pappy!

thumbs up for a great fishin' trip!

tonite, pappy fried up the fish (and some hushpuppies!!), and we enjoyed a delicious catfish feast! ethan was so proud to have helped catch our dinner! :)


i'm sure this is just the first of many fishing trips to come since both of ethan's grandfathers love to fish. my dad has stocked the creek behind his house with fish, and he can't wait for those little fishies to get big enough to be worth catching! my dad and joy came over later that evening after ethan's fishing trip, and my dad asked ethan how big his fish were... and ethan answered just like a true fisherman:

"ten feet!"

if you can't say somethin' nice...

fellow mommas, please tell me if you can top this one...(kristi, i'm counting on you!)

i ran to the grocery on saturday to just pick up a few things. i saw an old friend as i was walking in the store, so we stopped and chatted for a few minutes. i noticed this lady waiting to talk to me, and as i said good-bye to my friend, the lady approached me. and this is what the complete stranger waited to say to me...

you couldn't hide behind a tree if you wanted to, could ya!?

um, well, if it was a big tree!

a week later...

it's been a week since obama was declared our president-elect. between now and then, my thoughts have run the gamete from utter disgust for the man to praying for the grace to pray for our future president. i've come across several articles that have encouraged and challenged me, as well as those that have put much more eloquently the basic thoughts i've had lately. my pregnant brain is really too tired to write more about this, so i'm gonna let these articles do the talking for me. i've included my favorite snippets from these posts for a little preview... obviously, they're not my thoughts because these people capitalize!

ligon duncan
For those Christians who are more dismayed than overjoyed about the prospects of an Obama presidency, there should be a remembrance that as our President, Barack Obama will have God-given authority to govern us, and that we should view him as a servant of God (Rom. 13:1, 4) to whom we should be subject (Rom. 13:1, 5; 1 Pet. 2:13-14).
chuck colson
I can’t find any better explanation for why we Americans find ourselves in the state we are in. We have forgotten God.
my dear friend kristi
I pray that my heart will be humbled and not look to a man but the Man for my peace. I pray that for all of us who follow Jesus Christ. We are not slaves but to Christ. This is not our home. May we believe it and live like it!
this link that i found thanks to boomama
"Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor." (1Pe 2:17) When Peter wrote those words, Nero was the emperor of Rome. (To those inclined to cynicism, I AM NOT equating President Elect Obama with Nero.) My point is that if Peter could encourage the early Christians to honor the man that was feeding them to lions and impaling them upon poles and burning them alive to light his gardens, then surely we can pray for and honor our new President notwithstanding our political views.
ross middleton
I’ve been praying for mercy and the fact that my ideal candidate isn’t in office will not change the fact that I pray for mercy. We don’t need mercy because of one person, we need mercy because we are sinful people.
thirsty theologian
I’ve got news for you. Unless you wrote in “Jesus Christ,” you voted for a lesser evil.
clayton bell
Dear Christian who spent time politicking on your Facebook, Twitter and blog, it’s Wednesday, November 5th. The election is over. But the world still needs changing.
so a week later, i am convicted and i am encouraged. i am thankful to call Jesus Christ my Savior, and i can sleep knowing that He does all things well.

campaigning debut!

today, the kids and i joined tammy and her kids for a couple of hours of sign waving at one of our local precincts. we were hootin and a hollerin "yes on 2!" in support of the 2nd amendment to protect the definition of marriage in florida between one man and one woman. this is an extremely important issue, and we were so happy to show our support! and the kids were so happy to get to yell and wave at people. :) tammy's husband, jonathan, is very involved in politics in our town (um, yes, tammy, i realize that is a huge understatement!), so he found out where our influence would be most needed today. we set up camp around lunchtime, hoping to persuade hoards of voters flocking to the polls on their lunchbreaks. wellllll, thanks to early voting, flocking was not exactly the reality of it all. it was more like a voter here, a voter there... in two hours, we maybe saw 30 people actually walking into the precinct to vote. we did, however, wave and holler at lots of cars passing by. natalie, jonathan & tammy's oldest, has been her daddy's little campaigning sidekick this election year, and she loved cheering, "one man one woman!" it really made me smile everytime i heard her! natalie was also very into how much response we got. we had fun analyzing things... like what is better? a smile with no wave? or a wave from a very unhappy looking person? we decided thumbs up was the best, only second to a big loud HONK! the kids drew a lot of attention just sitting there in a row with their individual signs.


after awhile, it hit me that tammy and i were two women waving with "one man, one woman" signs!! we got a big laugh out of that, but we are happy to say that we are both happily married to MEN!


here is tammy with baby claire, who even got into the waving!


we were also pleasantly surprised to see our friend kj and her kids there when we arrived! the more the merrier! the kids took breaks from waving to explore the intriguing grate behind our post. they went from hard at work...


to hardly working!


they even got creative and made trains and towers out of the many signs we had...



i hope we were able to get the message out to even just a few people that had not yet made up their minds about amendment 2. if nothing else, we encouraged those that also believe in the importance of traditional marriage between one man and one woman. may all the glory go to our God, the One who created the blessing of marriage!