so me and bonita, the extra kid's mama, were talkin about how great it would be if the kids had something to play with outside so they'd stop trying to sneak off into the street. they like the front yard cuz they can ride bikes in the driveway, but they don't like to stay in just the driveway... ring ring- the phone. my pastor's wife on the other end asks if we'd like a big toy for our yard they're getting rid of theirs. amazing grace! i hadn't even had the time to pray for it, God knew the desire of my heart and He chose to bless me. life has been much easier with the 3 with this big toy. they are having a blast!

amazing how if i'm out there they need so much help to play, but when i hide, they have way more fun. maybe i should hide more often...

achan's door

sunday am our sermon was titled "a door of hope in the valley of trouble". i got to have a rockin conversation with my friend about the sermons implication. you see Achan stole some stuff and hid it, but we can't hide our sin from God and so long story short Achan gets called to the carpet. in a last minute effort to stay his execution date he "confesses" to the crime, which ammounts to no more than stating the obvious- he'd already been caught. read joshua chapter 7 for the whole thing.

but the lesson we walked away from this with was mainly about the"door". you see during the long story part, Achan had opportunity after opportunity to come clean, but he didn't. that is the same as Achan standing outside a door that has a sign on it stating, "come on in with your sin and you'll come out sin free, forgiven and changed forever by a gracious God". For any number of reasons Achan chose to not walk through that door. we came up with maybe he liked his stuff more than he liked the idea of being forgiven but not having his stuff anymore, or maybe he thought the sign on the door was a trick or a lie. but whatever his reasons he died in his sin and never walked through the perverbial door.

what does this have to do with our lives?

1. for me i realize I've been through the door, i've been saved. but what i forget sometimes is that as i load down my back with everyday sin i can unload that inside the door too. salvation is a one time deal but sin dumping is an everyday activity. when i don't dump my sin it gets heavier and heavier. this is what we see in the "hypocrites" in the church- you know how everyone says "the church is full of' hypocrites so why'd i wanna join that group?" that leads to point 2...

2. a friend of mine asked me once, "why would i want to be a christian i know a bunch and i know they cry themselves to sleep everynight empty just like the rest of the world only they have to get up on sunday and pretend they don't." what my friend saw was a bunch of christians heavy laden with sin the've not confessed, sin they haven't walked through the door with. they are just like the world. but i told my friend, "don't judge my God for his followers not following His directions. God has told us His burden is light. none of us should walk around hunched over we should all be dancing."

3. we have another group to look at in relation to the door... they are like kids lighting bags of poop on fire, ringing the door bell and running away. these are those of us, who before understanding salvation see the door, see the sign and want to test it but not commit to it, maybe even say a prayer in hopes it'll get us out of going to hell. so we drop our sin near the door, ring the bell and wait to see what happens. when noone answers the bell, we assume noone is home to see our flaming poop, therefore the sign on the door was indeed a lie. but this is not the case, the sign is true the sign is Jesus-" I am the way the truth and the life..." we just aren't reading it right- we need to go in the door.

4. this brings us the last group, my favourite group, a group i pray i am a part of now and as long as i breath... while the kid is sitting dejected watching his poop bag burn out a girl with a small bag (sin of the last minute, day, hour or whatever) walks through the door, the door closes then reopens. she emerges. she is now empty handed and dancing. she shines like a light in the world and the poop by her feet is of no concern to her it is just darkness. the kid who put the poop there is astonished and decides to pick up his bag and go through, having seen the door work he knows it's not a lie and he knows what's on the other side is way better than his bag of poop. he goes through, comes back out and he is dancing and smiling. the girl tells him, now don't forget where this door is, come back to it every time you sin and you can have this joy over and over. he asks her if he can go with her to her house so she can tell him more, she points a foot away to a house and says, "this is where i live. He told me to abide in Him and He'd abide in me, so i built my house as close to the door as i could. when you're ready, me and my friend can help you build here too.

this my friends is true christianity! i am so glad i heard that sermon. i am so glad i was able to talk it through with my friend. i am so glad the door is there and it is real. and i am praying i will keep my bag very small by going to Him in prayer everytime and never letting it get to the point where i am so heavy i can't walk. i have been there and He has forgiven me and i am here to walk with my head held high giving glory to God.

lunch time. we like to eat outside. do you know how much of a mess 3 kids under 3 make on a new carpet? but it'll start raining everday soon, so we'll need to invest in some splat mats for this brood.

room for 3 on my lap

these days i am trying to make room for 3 as i have an extra girl, Bianca, for a while. Bianca's mama works an hour away so i watch her for like 10-12 hours a day 4 or 5 days a week. bianca has taken to callin me mommmy. at first we were like "no, "antie", not mommy". but then a memory flashed through my mind. comming to julie's to get or bring eli or just to hang out and eli's little voice saying hi or bye or asking for something from "julie ma". it seems i was mama and julie was ma. when i was struggling julie ma stepped in and helped me raise that rebellious little sinner who threatened to unravel me with his little words and shaking fist and abnoxious never ending fits. i was so thankful for all julie helped us with. as time grew on, i was more ready for this mom thing than when i first met julie. with the help of our pastor, some books and accountability between each other, julie, david, myself and everyoneelse watching was able to witness the change in eli- it was amazing. instead of just becoming frustrated with him i was able to see him as a soul separated from his God by his sin, a soul who needed course correction and love. this was very different view from what i originally had for my son- i thought he just hated me and was bent on hurting me because he could (yes these were desperate times. it seems silly to write those words but i was very sure of their accuracy at the time). so what does all this have to do with moss bianca? well bianca came to me very mild mannered, loving to pray and generally easy to work with. as we get to know her better though i see she is just as rebellious as my kids, she is just quiet about it. at first it was easy to think "this will be an easy job, she may even be a good influence on my kids" but i forgot that she too has a sn nature and at 2 years old she has jet to be trained to master it as God told cain before he murdered able. God has blessed me with the privilage of training another child for his glory- kinda odd, if i had carried the last pregnancy to term, he or she woud have come at the same time as i began watching bianca. God is allowing me to disciple a new child, even though she was not birthed by me, i get to work with her mom as julie worked with me to make this young girl aware of her God and to help her learn to love Him with all her heart soul mind and strength, to teach her that her end goal in everythng she does is to bring glory to god and enjoy Him forever! sometimes that means lining all 3 of them up for discipline and prayer after a figt breaks out amongst them, sometimes that means being patient as bianca gives me the silent treatment when i ask what happened , sometimes that means not playing favourites and relizing that many times the fight was my kids fault and bianca has been a victim of their sin nature and sometmes it means loving her in the same way i love my kids when they disobey. yesterday. i ran out to pick soemthing up- i posthat story in another blog- when i came back all 3 of them were so happy to see me. i picked up lee and gave her tickle-kisses and then put her back down. stnading at my feet was bianca saying something uninteeligable(as is most of her seach at only 2 years old), but i was able to decifer it as do that to me know. so i picked her up and showered her with tickle kisses too. why had i not done that sooner. as per her mother and my agreement i was discipling her so as not to send home a spoiled brat at the end of a 12 hour day or a 4 day work week, but i had missed an importnat part of that discipleship, affection in this form. we sing and dance and rock to sleep together, but before this i hadn't really played with her. i am so glad i am able to. God is blessing!

All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. hebrews 12:11

"You shall therefore impress these words of mine on your heart and on your soul; and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall teach them to your sons, talking of them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road and when you lie down and when you rise up." deut. 11:18-19

it is so nice to be able to say, "what does /god's word say about______" rather than just saying (or yelling) stop fighting, no yelling, cut that out.

Thank You God for giving me the instuction to teach them about You. everything is about you oh, Lord! may these 3 children grow up to love You, may they be lights in this dark world, behaving differently beacuse they hold themselves to Your standards and chose to live in your safe boudaries.

old 2 me kids in my new 2 me truck

yeah, so it's on ramps, but that's o.k. david is teaching me how to fix it. today we work on a freeze plug and washing the seat cover- which is as old as the truck- which is older than me- that makes me smile, yesterday i installed the battery. i got to drive it... with a hose dumping water through the radiator while parking it in the driveway, but none the less it was my first drive in my new truck. eli asked if it could be his truck- i told him if we take good care of it, it may just be his truck someday. "someday like while i'm this size, or someday like when i'm grown up?"- eli. like when your grown up, you have to at least be able to reach the pedals"-mama. maybe i shouldn't put that restriction though since i can't even reach the pedals all that well.

New 2 me truck!

an "ah ha!" moment

so, sunday david was so sick we didn't go to am service and for any of you who know david, that's really sick! he spent most of the day in bed and as such that night was not tired, but still sick and couldn't sleep. having an insomniac for a wife he thought no biggie, i'll just talk to her till i fall asleep. it's not like i'm keeping her up. well sometime around 3:45 am (passed this insomniac's bedtime) he realized he was keeping me up now. and i started thinking "now i know how he feels when i won't shut up and it's passed his bedtime." which of course i turned around on him, not wanting to face my own sin, and said "so now you know how it feels to not be able to sleep and have a million things you wanna talk about but never do cuz there are screaming kids and obligations and work and laundry", yeah i was laying it on thick.... at which he responded with poking while laughing and saying "do i hear bitterness, is that resentment pouring from my sweet wife?" indignantly i replied, cuz really how else can you reply to such an accusation..."it's not bitterness, i just want you to understand how i feel and i am genuinly happy that you can now better understand me cuz you're walking in my shoes" (as nice as that all sounds, don't be fooled i said it with a whine and a pout and a pile of emotional expectations). i continued with,"being understood is one of my favourite feelings" he decided then that there was my "love language"- being understood. and you know what i think he's right even if it's not an option in that stupid book. i tried to think through what some of my other favourite feelings were and you know what i could only come up with 1 that topped that. i then continued with, "it's right up there with a really good prayer. not the kind you say at lunch or in the midst of crying kids and laundry monsters when your thanking Him or crying out to Him for help, but that kind when you know it's just you and God and you're in His prescence and He's listening to you and it doesn't matter what all is going on around you, your eyes are closed and it's totally dark and a beautiful darkness not an ominous kind. and you're talking to Him and he's understanding you and you know He is and you know He's understood you before you even spoke, before you said dear God. " now i don't know if you've ever had the blessing of one of those moments with God or if everytime you pray it's like that. i just know for me it happens every so often and it is always a treat and a surprise and so unexplainable, and though i've just tried to explain it really i've done the experience no justice with my lame words. in any case, all this time you've been reading to learn what my ah ha moment was. so here's the meat .... drum roll.

i want david to understand me because i want God to understand me. and God does understand me and david doesn't and so i get mad at david for not being God- how dumb. i mean they write this kind of stuff in most every woman's bible study-"don't expect your man to be God, he's not" and "God is our Husband and He is the One we are to be fulfilled by" and don't look to your husband for things only God can do". "your husband and you are a picture of Christ and the church and so it's what God wants your marriage to look like" when i love and submit to my husand i am acting like Jesus wants the church to be and when david leads and is willing to sacrifice and even lay down his life for me he looks like Jesus. this is from Ephesians 5:22-33

 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body.  Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself.  For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church.  For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”  This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.  Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

but i just got it for myself, at least in this area. stop expecting your husband to be omniscient, katrina, and to understand you like God understands you, instead worship God for how awesome He is that He can do what no man can do. instead of complaing to david that he doesn't understand you, pray to God and thank Him that He can. replace the bad thinking with the good thinking (put off/put on). God is my husband, and He is a perect husband. David is my husband, but he is not God, so he's not perfect but i do have to say that by God's grace and power in David's life i do have a pretty-good-imperfect-husband who i can go to the throne of grace with in prayer and know that we are both understood by our God who "knows what we have need of before we ask" and who "knows the heart of man". God is good!

he'll be an engineer yet!

so here's my little engineer. he did this almost entirely on his own while i supervised lee's antics. i wondered "what is that quiet boy doing, it can't be good" but it was! aside from the knot i made on the "busket", he engineered this on his own. including "tying" the hemp rope to the garage door and between the first and second video he is doing course correction because in case you can't hear him, he says, " if i hit andy's car that would be a sin". way to look out for other's stuff while embarking on a scientific breakthrough o.c.e.a (or however that acronym is spelled) would be proud, i know Jesus is pleased, but i'm not sure if davinci would care. the last video is me trying to get him to repeat what he said while not being video taped-figures, all the good stuff is when the camera is off. but the jist is- i told him maybe he should push the busket back to the starting line ya know since it has wheels and all... his response- "but then i will step on the rope and that is not safe, it will cause me to fall down and hurt myself"- seriously those were his words. who talks like this? not "it'll trip me", but a diatribe instead, oh and of course he acted it out as well in slow motion as he described why my pushing idea was ludicrous and his carrying method was far superior.

he got the land for cheep since it's right next door to the trolls' castle. you can look at this 2 ways- 1. always an adventure and a foe and 2. theres' a TROLL in your yard!!! ahhhhhh

This is the first castle location and armour. As you can see it could use some improvement. Sir Eli decided to move his castle to a more cosie local far from the living quarters lord daddy the great. During his move he met a new armourer , costco, and found a patron, a lady Debbie Alford to pay the armourer. Lady Alford's son Sir Devan and Sir Eli are now able to roam the country side together in full battle array in search of dragons and damsels in distress.

the school of knights is in full swing

We've spent the last month studying the medievel ages aka dark ages aka knight time. I thought the boy wold be sick of it by now. but over a hundred books, a full costume, at least 5 store bought swords and countless homemade ones, a lego set (never again!) and a dozen dvds later he's still asking for more. So off we adventure to the local library to pillage yet again....

occasionaly i will ask the boy a rediculous question and he will respond with are you serious, to which i promptly say of course i'm serious. at which point he astoutly says alive serious? or dead serious? i always reply alive serious who wants to be dead?

here are some pics and videos of our fearless knight.