Decorating Our Tree

As many of you know this has been a very difficult week for our family. My older sister, Billie Marnay, passed away on November 19th leaving behind two children. While this time has been extremely challenging for our family we have also seen and felt the Lord's compassion, love and mercy. So even in the midst of this tragedy God provided moments of relief. Amazingly enough the girls decided it was time to decorate the tree! So I wiped away the tears, put on a smile and hung some ornaments.

"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles" ~ 2 Corinthians 1:3,4

Congratulations to Riley ~ Again

This morning Riley called me to let me know that he made the "A" team for basketball. It's a pretty big deal considering only 10 seventh graders make the team. We're really proud of him and after our disaster of a football season we can't wait for b-ball to start. I decided we'd have a small celebration for him, so we made homemade pizza and cookies. We made Snickerdoodle's (his favorite) for Riley and M&M cookies for Bailey. The kids helped me roll the dough and dip it in the cinammon while Jeremy finished the pizza's. I love that my kids help out in the kitchen. Hopefully before they leave home they'll both know how to cook.

Romans 12:15 "Rejoice with those who rejoice"

Riley's Party

Today we celebrated Riley's birthday. It's a couple of weeks early, but he wanted to play flag football and the past couple of weeks have still been in the 70's so we didn't want to wait and chance playing in the freezing cold weather. He had a lot of fun and got a lot of cash so of course he gad a great day. I can't believe that is less than a month I will be the mother of a teenager! Kinda' crazy but so far I'm really enjoying this age.

Happy Halloween

As you can see Bailey was the American girl doll Molly. Riley on the other hand...a ladybug! As soon as I picked him up from school yesterday he wanted me to take him to meet his friend, Nick, at Walgreens so they could buy costumes. Waiting until Halloween day to find something to wear has sort of become our norm so I was expecting it. Shopping at Walgreens with these two was pretty interesting. These boys were literally in the middle of Walgreens with no shoes on arguing about the best way to put on a dress!! It was hysterical, but I guess I shouldn't complain that my son doesn't know how to correctly put on a princess costume. Ultimately they decided on these two a ladybug and bumblebee costume that by the way are made for toddlers. I can't believe they could actually fit into them. Later we met my friend, Lori, to trick or treat in her neighborhood. We walked around with the little ones and set all the big boys off on their own. It was a lot of fun and of course the kids got way too much candy. When they were little I used to take most of their candy and throw it away!! Luckily they were so small they never noticed. Something tells me I won't be able to pull that off anymore...darn.