Something I read this morning from Tabletalk (a publication from Ligonier Ministries and R.C. Sproul):

"How often we think we fully understand God's purposes when we take the first steps forward into some new stage in life. We assume that if God is leading us to do X then He means to accomplish Y. We cannot second-guess the Lord; sometimes obedience leads us into difficulties and trials. We need to hold our own plans and expectations for the future with a light touch. Otherwise we will see frustrations as curses rather than bridges into the next stage of His guidance."

So good to remember that obedience doesn't mean we will have a perfect, comfortable life. How would that teach us patience, trust in our Savior or test our faith to see what we truly believe? I needed to hear that this morning.

7 months old

My baby is 7 months old...where does the time go? Ansley has changed so much in the past month. She is a speed crawler now and also does a lot of this....

She's a little more steady now and can stand for quite a long time...as long as she doesn't let go. She eats her 4 meals a day like a champ and sleeps a solid 11-12 hours at night. She has improved on her fine motor skills and can now pick up small pieces of cereal...but that also means she can pick up little pieces of fuzz or dirt and eat them as well...not so great. For some reason she loves to chew on everything that is not a baby toy. She has gone from our feisty baby to a very content and sweet baby, who loves to do her own thing. She stops every once in a while to look for our attention so that we'll smile and talk to her....then she'll flash us her cute gummy smile and she's off again. She enjoys when we read her the "Peek-A-Boo Zoo" book...this has been a favorite for all 3 of my kiddo's as you can tell by all the tape that is holding it together. She really loves the boys attention and tries to follow them around...sometimes they're not such fans of that, especially when she destroys their train tracks or parking lot they set up with their cars. She loves her walks with her daddy and is quite the content car rider now as well. We can't wait to see what the next month will bring. We love our little Ansley girl!

last day of school

Today we finished Kindergarten. Congratulations Ethan! What an accomplishment! I am so proud of you for finishing strong.

I have enjoyed being your teacher and am so thankful that I was able to see you grow in so many ways and learn so many new things this year. What a gift to be able to rejoice with you in your accomplishments and encourage you to persevere through the challenges. I pray that God will give me wisdom in how to teach and challenge you so that you will grow in knowledge and understanding of our great God and His world around you. I am excited to see what the next year will bring.

9th anniversary

What happens when your water is shut off for 24 hours (because your neighbor's yard is flooding due to a crack in a pipe), it's super humid and hot, and you have anniversary plans to have a babysitter and go out to dinner to celebrate? You feel disgusting (due to lack of a shower), cancel your plans (but plan to reschedule) and kiddo's and all go out to dinner because dirty dishes are piled up in the sink (due to lack of water to wash them). So I will leave you with some "blast from the past" photos and when we get out to celebrate our anniversary, I will get a nice (showered and cleaned up) photo.

Newly engaged, giddy and all spiffied upOur first snow as a married couple...15 minutes later it melted...we did live in the south then. Yes, that is Jason without facial hair...my little sugar honey sweetie babyYoung and crazy in love...or is that just crazy

My first and last time I went hunting...the things you do when you're in love...we actually scared off all living creatures because we just sat there and talked and laughed the whole time...but I still say I went hunting.

Jason meeting my parents for the first time and celebrating his birthday...wow, my face hurts from just looking at all the smiling we did.

chores

My definition of "Jude, you need to go put the toys away in your room"...put toys into toy bins, on shelf, etc.

Jude's interpretation of "Jude, you need to go put the toys away in your room" :

Looks like we need to have a little talk on what putting your toys away means.

an official crawler

One for the grandma's and aunties again. She has got the crawling thing down now and she's as content as can be. I guess she wasn't really that fiesty, just bored. Moving suits her.

standing tall

This little girl is trying so hard to grow up fast. But her skills haven't quite caught up with her motivation. Thankfully her balance has gotten better and her grip. Anything that she can grab a hold of has become her support for pulling up and standing up. I find her standing in her crib, the coffee table, the side of her exersaucer, the couch, the baby gate, our legs, the chairs, the oven...but she just holds on for dear life and then screams until we can let her back down because she hasn't figured out how to get down from the standing position. But if she happens to lose her balance or let go by accident, she then falls over...which leads to the saddest cry you have ever heard. Thankfully the bumps on the head (and one gash on the ear) don't happen as often anymore but I think, one day, she will be the child that somehow figures out how to climb up on top of the refrigerator. So don't be fooled by those little chubby baby rolls...there is an amazing muscle system underneath there.

bowling fieldtrip

Today we got to hang out with our friends to try out bowling for the first time (for the kiddo's that is). They seemed to have a really great time. There is a local moms group that does fieldtrips over the summer to different places around the island and we decided to join them today. Amazingly Ansley slept in the Mobi wrap...with all of the pins crashing and bowling balls dropping.

faces

Ethan thinks it's hilarious to make the craziest face he can for pictures. Rarely do I get a serious expression from him. I love that he has fun with life. You definitely can't describe this kid as dull.

paper eater

It looks like we have another paper eater. What is it about the magazines under the coffee table?

beach walks in the evening

Ansley's first sand experience...which was short lived after stuffing two hand-fulls of sand into her mouth and reaching for more.
My two part human/part fish boys who love the water and waves.

Ethan was snapping pictures and this was the one of me...proof that I do exist in this family.

Where Ansley ended up after her 32 second "fun in the sand" incident where she continued to chew on the sand in her mouth that I couldn't sweep out with my finger...gross!

These are times that remind me that Hawaii is a great place to live...which I know most of you probably think that is a given. And yet most of the time I find all of the reasons why I would rather be living on the mainland. It's a great lesson to be stripped of a lot of comforts of life. Because of the expense of living here (and working in a ministry) we learn to make it without a lot of "stuff" and comforts. The distance from family and everyone we knew makes us rely on God more, our little family or on our church community. Living in a culture that is different than what I'm used to teaches me to appreciate other ways of living. But all of this also teaches me contentment no matter where we are because it will always seem greener somewhere else and we will always be longing for more because we are made for something bigger than this. So I'm glad for these times when I am reminded to love God and his plan for our lives because it is far greater than what I could have planned for us...or I can gripe and complain about the circumstances and waste time wishing it were different. So this night, God once again showed me that you can find joy in where you're at and trust him, trust him, trust him with the rest.

happy 4th

The boys enjoyed sitting in the child carrier while they watched the floats go by...even though it is a bit small for both of them.

This is one of my favorite holidays. And we have some fun traditions. The first includes the local town parade. The boys and I went this year so Jason could stay home while Ansley napped...actually he didn't want to sit out in the heat and sweat. And after 2 minutes of sitting in the sun I then understood what he meant. But we still had fun. We rode our bikes (Ethan loved the fact that he got to ride his bike there) since it's so close.

After watching the parade for about 5 minutes Jude came up to me and said "mommy I want to go home." But once they started handing out popsicles and candy he decided it was okay to stay.

The parade had the usual Hawaiian band, fire trucks, motorcyclists, political leaders in convertibles waving to the crowds and my favorite, the bag-pipes that bring up the end.
We then headed to our friends house for supper and I brought our red, white and blue cupcakes for dessert. As I put Ansley to bed the boys and Jason shot off a couple of fountain fireworks and some sparklers before they headed to the beach to watch the local fireworks show. I snapped a couple of pictures from our lanai but they had the best seat - down by the beach.

in season

One of my favorite parts of summer is the fruit that is in season. The local fruits like mangoes are better than anything I've ever bought in the grocery store. Our neighbor dropped these off yesterday and we have been snacking on them ever since (there used to be 6 of them). But the other tasty fruit (that isn't local) are cherries...they don't beat the fresh ones I picked off the trees in Budapest, Hungary when I was in college but they are still pretty good. My boys and I sit at the table eating away at our Costco size container and using our fancy-schmancy cherry-pitter kitchen gadget that my friend Troye gave us...I love kitchen gadgets. It looks like a torture device but honestly it is worth the drawer space to get...especially since we love the fruit so much. The one fruit I really miss are the sweet Georgia peaches. So far there has been nothing that can even compare here...but you can't have everything here in beautiful, sunny Hawaii.