Thursday, October 31, 2013

Halloween (and Mexican Chicken Soup Recipe) 2013

I'm sitting here eating leftover avocado from dinner, and a Butterfinger candybar.  I know, it sounds weird.  Don't judge me. I'm pregnant and that's what ya get! Ha!

Tonight, I made a yummy Mexican Chicken Soup for dinner.  I got the recipe here, from pinterest, and added my own flare to it.  We have lifegroup on Thursday nights and serve dinner, so I always love to do "one pot" meals. They make it so easy!  I made Mexican rice and we topped off the soup with avocado, cheese, and sour cream. It was quite tasty!  I now have a bunch left that I will freeze for another night that I'm too tired to cook.

We had a great night hanging out with friends.  After dinner, the men stayed here and handed out candy and invites (to lifechurch.tv) to trick-or-treater's who happened to stop by.  The ladies took the kiddos down the street and around the block to knock on some doors.  It always makes me smile to watch the people come to the door and look at my cute kids.  I heard a lot of  "what a cute lady bug" and "Wow- Iron Man!"   

We all trotted back to our house and handed out more candy and invites to church.  Caroline sure did love giving the kids candy and invites.  She was mad when I put candy in the candy sacks.  She wanted to do it all herself.  We have a bit of drama in our little Miss. Independent.  She keeps it interesting around here.  While we handed out candy, Tobin took the time to sneak/eat more candy.  Oh dear, I'm surprised he even went to bed at all!

As I sit here, My amazing hubby is fixing our van.  We needed new brake pads, and some rod or something came loose on the front tire and something had to be replaced. I don't speak car language; the point is, he is fixing it all up.  I don't know what I'd do without that man!  I'm so thankful for him!

I'll leave you with some pics of my cute kids tonight.  Tobin wanted to be Iron Man again this year, which was great for me so I went with it.  Caroline wanted to be Snow White and then changed her mind to a lady bug at the last minute, so we scrounged up a Lady Bug Costume from the dress-up box.  If you're wondering why we are Christians who Trick-or-treat, here is a post I wrote last year. 

The kiddos are out of school tomorrow so we will be having a much needed family day! Yay! Enjoy your weekend!

She wore her tap shoes, with red pom-poms glued on them (temporarily).  Yes, we are transitioning to real shoes, without a walking boot! Yeehaw! (I need to do an update on her Kohler's Disease).

 We used last years bumblebee wings and hung them upside down for her ladybug wings.  She said ladybugs had to have wings... that's the best I could do on the fly.  Pun intended (-;

 There are actually two antenna's on this baby ladybug costume, but one was folded back in ALL the pictures. Oops!


Somewhere in the shuffle of last Halloween and moving this year, the attachable mask got misplaced. He didn't mind one bit!
 There was no staging in these photos.  I let the kids pose however they wanted! Can't you tell?





Enjoy eating your kids candy!  I know I will!

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

He Makes All Things New


I have been absent from the blogging world for over a month! Sorry about that.  I've been doing some intense face-time with my Bible.  I've cried a lot too.  I'm not sure what is pregnancy hormones, or what is real feelings some days.  I guess that's how pregnancy goes! Ha!

About a month or so ago, my regular jeans were not working anymore, and the realization that I no longer had maternity clothes hit me.  It took me a week to get my grasp on it.  Just when I thought, "It's been a year since the fire.  We have been through 4 seasons. We have everything we need"  I was hit with a brick.  That wasn't the worst of it.  

The thought that I'd never see the precious baby things that my babies wore and used hit me harder than I had imagined.  Actually, I never really imagined it hitting me because you see, I did not have a reason to think about it before.  Again, my motto of  "We have everything we need, until we need something we don't have" came back in my mind.  Oh, how I would love to get boxes out of the attic -- boxes of tiny baby clothes and receiving blankets and precious mementos.  I'd love to look through them and reminisce and wash them and fold them for this new baby...  But I can't.  These are one more category of items that the fire stole from me.  

I've been processing a lot of this lately.  Some has been healthy through prayer and time with the Lord.  Some has not been healthy-- crying, taking out my pain on Tony  others, or maybe eating too much ice-cream.  I was reading my bible one morning and I felt the Lord tell me "be quiet and wait".  What?  wait on what?  Then he gave me more words,  "my timing, provision, healing".  So I waited.  

I wanted to blog so badly, and get my thoughts out, but He told me to wait, so that's what I was going to do.  I wrote in my journal and prayed and read and prayed and read.  I made a conscious effort to not be discouraged.  

During these weeks, he gave me this verse in Revelation 21:5

He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new!" Then he said, "Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true."

God told me he was making everything new.  I wasn't going to look at this next season and get discouraged because I was starting over, yet again with something else -- Another category of loss. NO!  He told me that He is making all things new!  I'm going to get excited about this NEW baby, this NEW life inside of me, this NEW chapter for our family, and NEW baby stuff!

Then it came.  His answer, in the form of a baby crib.  This is what He wanted me to wait on.  Sunday night we got word that a baby crib was waiting for us to pick up.  I immediately started crying.  Not because we were getting a free crib ( because that was really exciting!) but because God was answering my call to silence.  He was telling me it was all going to be okay.  In HIS timing, in his utterly amazing perfect timing, he would provide for all things needed-- not just for this baby, but in my healing. 

I felt like today was the day to start writing again.  I love documenting our lives.  Family and friends keep up with us this way too.  I don't ever want to come off as sounding whiny or anything like that.  I want you to know that grieving is still a process.  If you've grieved anything, you know this.  This whole process has been so different that I would have expected.  Now that we have a new city, home, school, etc.  I didn't expect to hit another terribly hard moment.  This whole (rip the scab off, painful) grieving baby things caught me off guard. 

I guess it is safe to say that it may happen again.  For now, I'm resting and waiting on Him.  My healer.  My provider.  My Abba Father.  My sustainer.  My friend and confidant.  My forever love.  My Lord.

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