Baptized!

My little girl, my Stinky, is now baptized.  She took her public declaration in front of our church family this evening. 

I am so proud of her. 

After she had dried and changed clothes, we returned to the sanctuary where my little girl was voted into the church as a member.  My Stinky is now a member of _____ Community Baptist Church.

I am so proud of her.

I walked her up to the tub to get baptized and video taped the whole thing.  I bought her her very own King James Version Bible as a gift.  She loved it!

After she had become a member, a friend at church invited her and her family over for dinner.  What a joy that is to us!  This is just so exciting for me, but I'm trying to keep myself contained.  Inside my soul is rejoicing!  It is wonderful!

Now we just need to get my baby boy baptized when he's old enough to understand and decide on his own.  

I pray that my children never stray from His side.  I would love it if you prayed with me for my children.  Thanks!

Getting Ready for Baptisms & Birthdays

My daughter, my Stinky, is getting baptized this Sunday night.  I am so proud of her decision!  This is the biggest decision of her life and she made the right choice.  She had already accepted Jesus as her Savior when she was 5 years old.  So we are preparing for that special evening.

I bought her a new Bible.  A grown-up Bible.  She has her own, but it's NIV and we don't read that at church or in Sunday school.  So I bought her a pink and green King James Version bible.  I can hardly wait to give it to her!  It is all so exciting to me!

She has her bag packed already for the clothes that she will change into after she is baptized.  She is definitely a plan-ahead-person.....like me.


Glitter Graphics, Happy Birthday Glitter Graphics

On Tuesday of next week, it's my baby's 6th birthday.  My little Bubba.  Bubby.  He's going to be 6!  Did you get that?  6!!  I can't believe it!  No wonder I'm ready for another baby.  He was going to have a friend spend the night tomorrow night, but with me not feeling the greatest, don't know if that will happen now.  Maybe we'll have to reschedule for next weekend.  Tuesday we will have a little family celebration for him and cook or have what he wants for dinner, within reason.  I can't take him out to eat.  Unless he uses his Pizza Hut coupon for his Book-It time.  Maybe that would be a fun thing to do for lunch sometime this week too!

My children are growing up too fast.  Has anyone found a way to slow this down yet?  Let me know if they do.

My Prayer Journal & More

So last night I put together my prayer journal in my household mommy notebook.  I am still trying to come up with my own name for mine.  Ever since I made mine the first time, I have had pages printed out for each day of the week.  But, I never went back in and put what I do for each day of the week. 

Last night I decided that I was going to use those pages for my prayer journal.  I wanted to separate my prayer topics into different days of the week.  Instead of making a separate page for each day, I just used the ones that I had.  I divided my topics up and assigned them a day.  This will make it so much easier for me to keep up on my prayers and focus my mind on certain issues or people that I forget.

I also cleaned my desk up yesterday so this morning when I wanted to see my prayers, I had enough room to open up my binder and read my prayer requests.  I also wrote my requests in this morning.  That is something I still need to do is fill it in.  So far, the only parts I've filled in besides the requests I got this morning, is my daily reminder to pray for my Secret Prayer Sister at church.

Stinky and I got up this morning and went on a shopping adventure searching for a diary with a lock and keys.  First stop was borders and they had 2.  Just 2.  Next store was the Dollar Store and they didn't have any either.  Into the van and across the intersection to the mall and we hit Office Max and they don't have any.  From there we walked to Claire's Boutique and finally!  Eureka!  First diary we see, Justin Beiber, who Stinky is not head-over-heels-in-love-with (thankfully!) and both are missing lock and key.  We kept searching and searching.  We finally found a couple, but almost all of them were missing the locks and keys!  How crazy!  Why just steal that part?  Must be that many girls out there who lose their lock and key......

Lucky for me, it didn't take Stinky long to choose the one that she wanted, and both lock and keys were there.  She chose a bright pink on that says "Private Property".  It also has a puppy on it and markings that look like they were made with a permanent marker saying "i'm cute...but i BITE!"  It's cute.  Now on this whole search, I was also looking for one for Bubba.  He had to stay home, lying on the couch with a fever and a head cold.  So I was on the lookout for him with his money in my pocket.  I had 3 things to go by:

1. Race cars
2. Orange
3. Locks

So far, I hadn't seen any locking diaries that were suitable for a boy.  The only boy diaries, were actually just journal notepads.  After we left the mall, I still needed to get dinner so we decided to stop at Walmart and check there while we pick up groceries.  There we found a diary for Kyle that we though he'd be happy with and it met 1 out of 3 of his requests.  We found a Diary of a Wimpy Kid Do-It_Yourself Book by Jeff Kinney.  That's the author of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books...duh....This certain book is.....orange!!!
This book is neat!

The front half is filled with different sections that are asking him questions, allowing him to draw his own comic strips, and things like that.  Lots of things.  The middle has a few pages of colored comic strips written by Greg, the character in the books.  The last half is blank pages for him to write whatever he wants.  Since he didn't get a lock with it, I gave him an orange rubber band to put around it.  He's happy.

While I was at Borders, I was perusing through the calendar sections.  The big sign says "Calendars $4.99!" so they could hurry up and sell them.  I saw a planner called family_time.mine and I picked it up and checked it out.  The months have big boxes to write in and when it breaks it down into weeks the boxes are big there too.  That is something I always like in a calendar.  The ends of each page are labeled "lists • more lists • crises notes • groceries" and it has perforated edges so you can rip off your list and take it with you if you have to.  There are also big cards included for each season to write your schedule on.  And it goes by every half hour.  Then, of course, they always win me when they include stickers!

The best part was that this planner was included in the clearance sale and it was regularly priced at $17.99!!

This evening, my FIL came over with gifts for Greg and I.  He had ordered us iRenew bracelets.  I have seen the commercials for this and they look like a rip off to me.  But he got it for a gift.  So I will wear it. 

When he is here.

I did a google search on it to see what it does.  Well I find it really strange that the website for these bracelets don't say anything about it at all.  And you know they didn't come with any type of instructions.  Although my FIL did pay an extra $10 for some recharge stickers.  It came with a sheet of holographic stickers, one for each bracelet, but no idea what to do with them.  lol  Then the other things that came up about iRenew were all bad reviews.  They all said it was a scam.  I haven't told my FIL. 

So I've probably blabbed enough.  I want to blog about one more thing this evening but it deserves it's very own post because it's so cute and sweet.

Not quite ready yet....

I know that I said I was going to blog about something soon.  Well, I'm just not ready yet.  I really want to.  I know just what I want to say.  But I'm not sure that I'm ready to let everyone in on that yet. 
So on we go.....Things here are going smoothly along.  Besides the temperament of a person I put up with daily.  But that is something I have been dealt to deal with and I just do.  I try not to let it bother me, along with other things.  I am trying to grow in the Lord everyday.
Homeschool, as I've mentioned before, is going great this year!  How much fun we have!  Yesterday we did a Science experiment to make rain.  It was awesome and I will blog about it later on my homeschool blog called Teaching at Home in a Christian Way.  As my friend Tawny said on Facebook, "I'm so thankful that we answered the call from God to Homeschool".  That is not word for word, but I can't find it to quote it exactly.  But it was something along those lines. 

I found a new Christian bookstore up here on the hill, about 15 min away in good traffic.  In great traffic it would only be about 10!  But that never happens on Meridian.  So I plan on 15-20 min drive.  But the store is great!  It's a Christian bookstore (I know I already said that) and thrift.  I did see some clothes and such in there but honestly, I just wanted books.  lol  The name of the store is Love's Treasury.  Isn't that a great name?  So inviting!  The books were so fairly priced that I am going back probably this weekend!  I can't wait!  They had a large selection of books for homeschool.  I mean large. 
Speaking of Christian and bookstore.  I found a new used book store called A Novel Idea in Puyallup.  I went there to meet author Christina Weigand.  She found me last year on Facebook because I was signed up to do NaNoWriMo and she lives in Puyallup.  At that time, I didn't realize she was in the process of getting a book published!  Well she did get that book published and it's called Aaron's Revenge. 
I found the bookstore and actually got to meet her.  The best part?  She gave me a book for free for just making it there (it was quite a feat for me) and signed it.  It is the next book that I am going to read.  I have to finish White Fang first.

I have a busy day planned today.  Trying to get my house all cleaned and ready for the holidays.  Decorating is going to be kept at a minimal this year for Fall and Thanksgiving.  I don't know where any of my decorations are at the moment and really am not going to try and get them from my garage.  I'll save that for Christmas.
And since I have so much to do, I am going to start my work now.  And that has to start by stopping my blogging.  Oh I hate it when I have to do that.  I could just keep on blabbing. 

Family Pics and Picnics

It is not often that my family can do something and ALL of us enjoy ourselves.  For some reason, it just works that way.  But Saturday afternoon we had a great family day and all of us enjoyed ourselves!  I am so thankful that the Lord gave us such a great day.


The weather was beautiful and I wanted to get out and take some pictures.  I thought first that I would go down to the Farmer's Market in Orting and take some shots there.  I mentioned to Greg that it would be a good day to get out and take my camera somewhere.  He apparently thought so too!  But he didn't want to go to the Farmer's Market, that I knew.  But he had other great photo ops in mind!

A while ago he had shown me something that he discovered on one of his drives.  He likes to get out and just take drives.  Anyway, it's an old stone chimney.  It's the only thing standing around the whole area besides tress.  And the trees are old.  He also wanted to take me to see the trees that the beavers are chewing down by the river.  

We started out our day trip heading towards Kapowsin.  Our first stop was to get a few refreshments for our trip.  Across the street for the gas station that we stopped was a whole gang(?) (crew?, group?, flock?) of bikers neatly lined up at the Kapowsin Tavern.  Now for many of you who do not live near me, Kapowsin is basically a 4-corner town.  One corner is a gas station and another corner the tavern.  That's about it.  

I liked the looks of these bikers and decided to snap a few shots.  A few of them watched me and sat for me to take their picture.  

Our next destination was to see a huge tree that beavers have chewed almost all of the way through.  When we arrived at the spot, there were fishermen there so we decided to leave them alone and come back another time.  But I did see trees where the sap suckers are making holes to suck out sap (hence the name, sap suckers ;-P ) and I found it interesting that they make almost straight lines. 

 I was really excited about our next stop.  It was the old chimney.  I do not have a good enough camera to really get the details in my shots of this.  But one day I will and I'm going to go back.  The trees that are grown up around it are old trees, you can tell by the thickness.  So that chimney has been there a long time!  There isn't evidence of a foundation anywhere around it, so my guess is that it was a cooking chimney.  

Long time ago, kitchens were not built onto houses because kitchen fires were all too common.  So the kitchen was built away from the house.  Greg's uncle mentioned that a railroad used to go through there and maybe it was used at a camp for railroad crew or something of that sort.  There is a number on the front of it, you can't really tell what the number is by my pictures.  I don't know if it is a year or a type of address, or maybe if it was a work crew it was a number to identify them?  I don't know, but it is 2917.  That is carved in the shield.  Below the shield is a ribbon.  The left side of the ribbon has writing carved into it also, but I couldn't make it all out.  The center and right side as well had writing and says "of", but the right side was all worn smooth.  There is also an image on each side of the shield.  I don't know what they mean.

My pictures do not do it justice....This first picture shows the stone chimney hidden in the trees.

 Here is the front of the fireplace

 The shield that says 2917

 This picture below shows the size of the tree growing not too far from it.

 Greg always likes to drive on this road called Camp 1.  It is a road that trucks use for the rock quarry and I think it used to be for logging trucks too.  He sees lots of wildlife up on this road.  He's seen countless deer, elk, quail, bobcats and probably others.  With him I have also seen a baby coyote wandering around.  The kids and I don't necessarily enjoy this drive too much, but he does, so we endured for him.  :-)  I did take a few pictures on this leg of our trip and ended up with a beautiful one of a foxglove that I am going to save for another blog.  But I will show the picture that I took of a little water fall and the pictures of the foxgloves that I am not saving for another blog.

 Now it's off to more beaver trees.  I made sure to get the logs and the wood chips in my pictures because the kids loved it.  This first one I love though!  It shows the funny side of my husband.  I told them to ignore me and told Greg to pretend he was showing them something.  He did!  lol 

 This log below looked like brass in the sun.  My camera didn't capture that. :-(

Hanging out and having a picnic at the river was our last stop of the day.  We didn't get to relax and hang out quite as long as we wanted to because of some disobedience but still had fun all the same.  We let the kids get in the river where there was a calm little pool.  They certainly loved that!  Here is the path that we take down to the river.

 Bubba's strawberry with pepperoni.  YUCK!

My sexy hubby standing there with his Non-Alcoholic Beer.  

Can you see the kids playing?  It was so weird to be at a place where they could get that far away from me and I didn't have to worry.  There was no one else there.  It was just incredible.  I felt the presence of God out here in His wonderful handy works.  Very comforting.

 This rock appeared to have baby rocks stuck to it.

 I love love love putting my feet in mud!!

  Doesn't that look like a good family day?  Praise the Lord for that!!