Bode the Comedian

 
 
 
 
Bode was hammin' it up yesterday while eating lunch. I took several pics that are all so funny! Here are just a few of him. He may be a comedian when he grows up! 

Something to Think About

As Henry Nouwen writes:

"Many of my daily preoccupations suggest that I belong more to the world than to God. A little criticism make me angry, and a little rejection makes me depressed. A little praise raises my spirits, and a little success excites me. It takes very little to raise me up or thrust me down. Often I am like a small boat on the ocean, completely at the mercy of its waves. All the time and energy i spend in keeping some kind of balance and preventing myself from being tipped over and drowning shows that my life is mostly a struggle for survival: not a holy struggle, but an anxious struggle resulting from the mistaken idea that it is the world that defines me. . .As long as I keep looking for my true self in the world of conditional love, I will remain “hooked” to the world–trying, failing, and trying again. It is a world that fosters addictions because what it offers cannot satisfy the deepest craving of my heart."

I stole this from someone's blog. I loved it! I needed to hear it! Thought some of you out there may like it as well.

Family Time!

 
 
 
Just a few pics of the family from this weekend. It was a great time celebrating Dad's birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD! 

The Kids

 
 
 
 
I just thought these were some really cute pictures of the kids! 

A Cousin's Love

 
Bode LOVED Lani this weekend!!! He could not get enough of her, and she loved him equally as much! I thought this picture of Lani and Bode was soooo sweet! 

Sean with the kids

 
 
 
Sean had just about as much fun playing with the kids as the kids had I think. They had scooter and bike races, played horsey, watched sports, played Bag-O, and many other games. Here are a couple of cute pics of them! 

Tooshy pics!

 
 
This is Bode's cute tooshy! I know that many of you may have thought it was Chris's (because he tends to like to show it off now and again!), though similar, Bode's is a bit smaller in scale...and maybe a little less hairy. He's definitely not shy about his tooshy...he may be following in Chris's footsteps! 

Dirty Toes

 
Scroll down and see the pictures of the beautiful pedicure I gave Lani a few days ago...here were what her toes looked like on Saturday, just a week and a half after the peducure! 

Our Weekend

We have had a wonderful weekend so far. We came to Muscatine on Friday night and will be heading back home tomorrow (Sunday). My dad's birthday was today and we all just hung out and played outside with the kids. To me, the best times are times spent with family. I have taken many pictures which I will post when I get home tomorrow. It's not very often that our whole family is together with Mom, Dad, Cassie, Paul, Brigg, Nalani, Chris, Brenda, Bode, Sean and I, so I cherish the moments that we are able to spend time together without someone being absent. This time though, I almost feel as though someone is absent...I feel as though our baby is absent. Our baby is on my mind almost all of the time and when we get together with my family or Sean's family, I think about it even more. I am so excited to introduce our child to our family. It will be so blessed to have 2 Nanas and 2 Papas that are so loving and excited to welcome it. As if that isn't enough, it will also have 4 Aunts and 4 Uncles that are equally as excited. Tonight I am going to bed feeling extremely blessed and extremely excited to show our baby more love than it could imagine. I cannot imagine the love that I will feel when I see our baby for the first time. I have so much love in my heart for it already, as I know that it is somewhere out there. It's so unbelievable how I can feel this much love for my unborn child without even carrying it myself, but I can't imagine feeling anything less because to me, I AM carrying it, I am carrying it in my heart and I feel it there every moment of everyday!

My Husband :)

 
Here I am, as usual, on the computer while Sean is sound asleep. This is the story of my life! At least Sean is sleeping...he is an insomniac BAD! He will probably be up in a few hours, and I will have just been sleeping for a short while. I am a night person...Sean is not. Sean is a morning person...I am not. We are so different is so many ways, but yet I know we were meant for one another. I am so blessed to have such an AMAZING husband. I can't imagine any other man in this world being more perfect for me. Yes, we have our arguments and disagreements, but in the end, I know that without him, I wouldn't be complete. In our day to day life, I know I can tend to take him for granted, but then there are those times that I look at him and for no reason at all I get butterflies...STILL! Sean is an AMAZING husband and I know he'll be an unbelievable father. I can't wait for what is to come for our future together! I love this man so much! 

Beach Boys

 
 
 
  
Melissa and I took the boys to Raccoon River Beach today. We had a picnic lunch first and then put the boys in their swim diapers and headed to the sprinkler area. It was really fun for the kids. It's a little cemented area that has sprinklers on about 6 foot poles and then holes in the ground that shoot out water randomly. Bode had fun watching all of the excitement and Landon had fun playing in the midst of it all. It was so cute! Afer doing that for a little while, we headed down to the beach. Bode LOVED the sand and we spent a lot of time in the water too. Landon ran around and joined in on all of the excitement with all of the other kids at the beach. It was a BEAUTIFUL day...perfect for an activity like this. Man am I going to miss summer! We had a great afternoon and then headed home. I gave Bode a bath and then let him play for a little while longer before I put him down for his afternoon nap. He was still asleep when Brenda got home and didn't wake up until the evening. He must have gotten really worn out! It was a great day! I can't wait until I have my baby that I can experience things like this with. :)

Unexciting

Well, another weeekend has flown by. Friday night we went to Chris and Brenda's house and hung out and played games. Then Saturday we rested all day and then I went back to Chris and Brenda's again for a "girl's night". It was so much fun, but ended up being an extremely late night. Today, Sean and I had lunch with Sean's parents and then went to Colo and hung out with them for a while before we headed to Knutson's in Nevada to set up the Peakin Salon and do some hair. Afterwords the Knutsons fed us yummy burgers and we all just hung out. We are home now and Sean is laying in bed while I sit on the computer. This is a typical situation at night in our household. I am addicted to the computer! Well, I should probably go to bed now. I wish I had some more exciting news to write about. Can't wait until I do! :)

Girl Stuff...

 
 
 

While Brigg played with his soldiers on Monday, Lani and I did some girl stuff. I gave her a pedicure and polished her fingernails and put some lipgloss on her lips. She LOVES girly stuff...then she goes outside with her freshly polished toenails and fingernails and lipgloss on and rolls around and digs in the dirt. Hmmmmm. She's the best of both worlds! :) 

Quality time with Tyler! :)

 
 
 
I got to see our nephew Tyler for a couple of hours on Sunday night. I was heading to Muscatine and thought it would be convenient to stop in Cedar Rapids on the way and see him and Sara and Travis and eat dinner. It was too short of a visit, but I was so happy to see Tyler and see how big he's gotten. He is too cute...all cheeks! Sara and Travis have taught him to be a Hawkeye fan, so I got some pics of him in his Hawkeye PJ's! 

Check off my list...

 
 
My diaper bag and rocker. We got the chair a few weeks ago and the diaper bag in Florida. I love them both! My list is dwindling! 

Going back to Des Moines

I have been in Muscatine the past 24 hours watching the kids with Mom. I love coming here. It's relaxing and fun. I am heading back to Des Moines today. I have to work tomorrow morning and I can't miss Rock Star: Supernova tonight. :) It's always sad to leave the kids...any of the kids. I could barely tear myself away from Tyler on Sunday evening after hanging out with the Barks for a couple of hours. I am so blessed! I have the BEST nieces and nephews!

Enjoying the Flowers

An atheist man was walking through the woods enjoying all of the beauty that just "happened by chance" when he saw out of the corner of his eye, something moving. He turned his head to realize that it was a gigantic grizzley bear and it was running right for him. He took off in a sprint to try and escape the wrath of this deadly creature. He ran up a hillside and as he looked back, he saw that the bear was gaining on him. He was jumping over logs and sticks and trying with all of his might to run faster and faster, but no matter what he did, that bear was gaining on him every inch of the way. Then, he tripped and fell to the ground and when he rolled over, there was that huge grizzley bear right on top of him, ready to strike him with his right claw. Just then, the atheist man called out, "Oh GOD!". At that moment, time froze...I light shone from the sky directly onto him and he heard the voice of God say, "All of these years, you never acknowledged me, never thanked me for the blessings in your life and led others to stray from me, and NOW you call on me? Now, in this moment, you believe that I can help you? Now you want to be a Christian?" The man responded, "It would be very hypocrytical for me to become a Christian now, but could you at least make this bear a Christian?!" Time began again and the man watched as the bear put down his right claw and clasped it to his left claw, knelt down on his knees and said, "Lord, thank you for this meal I am about to partake in..."

:)I thought that was such a great joke. Pastor Quinten told it in church today and I had to share it with all of you!

Today's sermon was fantastic. We are currently finishing up a series about a "Pure and Simple Faith", and today was all about giving thanks to the Lord. It really put things into perspective for me. Pastor Quinten talked about how one person could go into a field all day and pick weeds and put them into a bag and at the end of the day, that person will take from that field, a bag of unwanted weeds. On the other hand, another person can go into that same field and pick all of the beautiful wild flowers that they can find, and although in many fields there may be a much smaller amount of wild flowers to find than weeds, that person will at the end of the day be so thankful to have taken from that field a beautiful handful of wild flowers.

I know that I need to work on dwelling not on all of the weeds in my life, but instead, being thankful for all of the wild flowers that are in it. And although at times it may seem like all of the weeds are covering up all of the flowers, the flowers are always there and if I try to push away those weeds and let the Lord take care of them, all of the wild flowers will come into sight.

Working today on letting the Lord take care of my weeds so that I can enjoy the flowers!

Farewell to Florida!

Well...after a day of flying, we arrived home safely from Florida this evening. We are always so sad to leave, but know we need to get back into the swing of things here. We had a FABULOUS time with the Knutsons and look forward to doing it again! I got almost 300 pictures that are sooooo great, so I am posting several on tonight so that you can all see some of them. I could write for hours about all of the wonderful things we did while on our vacation, but I am tired and need to get to bed. I just will say that it was wonderful. Sean and I are so blessed to have Knutsons as friends. Thank you Knutsons for spending these last 11 days with us. :)

We have so much to be thankful for. We have great friends, the best family (thank you, thank you, thank you Mom and Dad for making these trips possible for us by providing us with an AMAZING home to stay in!), and only greater things to come in the future! We appreciate you all!

The trip kept our minds off of the adoption process for the last week and a half, but now we must come back to reality and begin the waiting process again. We are feeling more patient though, so thank you to all who have prayed for us to have more patience. It's working! We are just so excited for the future that words can't even describe what we're feeling inside! We cannot wait to be able to introduce our new little one to Florida some day!

Enjoy the pictures!

The girls

 
 
 
 

Just a couple of pictures of Delaney and Olivia. Olivia was digging for gold a lot this past couple of weeks. So funny! 

So helpful!

 
Don't be fooled...this happened only once in the entire 11 days. It was so momentous, I had to get a picture!