Christmas

Here are pics from our Christmas, We had a lot of fun having christmas with Alissa this year, she is old enough to enjoy opening, and receiving presents. She loved all of her gifts, and has been playing with them nonstop since she got them.

Our Gifts under our snowman christmas tree. We had a christmas tree that we were going to take from Grandma's house, because they couldn't get one, because maury's allergic. But the tree got rained on multiple times and by the time we had the time to pick it up, it was only a couple days before christmas and it was too big of a hassle. I had a christmas tree poster like this snowman, but Alissa likes snowmen, so we decided she'd enjoy this much better than a silly tree.

Alissa's Stocking

Opening her first gift

Posing with her Little People

Opening Presents at Grandma's House

Eric & I

Our Favorite Gifts, I got the salsa from Josh & Heidi. Eric got the pan scraper from me.

Alissa & Nathan opening presents

Crawling Blanket

I had to share this cool blanket that I made, I'm very proud of it:

I made this for Alexis. She can lay in the middle and crawl to the things all over the blanket, They are all different textures and colors, to help stimulate learning in a baby. I got the idea from a Gymboree play and learn book, and just gathered different materials that I could find in my house, and put it together to make this blanket. It was a lot of fun, and pretty simple. I did run out of the blanket edging stuff (whatever it's called). So I will have to fix that later.

My New Couch

I finally got a new couch for Christmas, my first ever!! LaNette bought me a slipcover for my couch. It makes my couch look soooo much better. Here are my before and after pictures

Before: 

After: 

Looks Cool huh! 

The Joys of Motherhood

So, I've been wanting to blog for a long time, about random things that Alissa is doing, but I lost my camera, and I really wanted to be able to post pictures along with the blog. So, I'm going to blog tonight and then get my old camera that doesn't work as well and post pictures tomorrow. 

I've been really enjoying motherhood, and have found that all my emotions have been intensified since I've become pregnant. I got to experience Alissa's first bloody cut and her second all in one day. On November 19, I was pushing Alissa in an umbrella stroller, she had sat down in the stroller probably 1 minute before. Next thing I know, I was stopping and Alissa fell out on her face. I went to help her up thinking, that she was fine, and found blood on her mouth. She had fallen asleep in the stroller and when she fell she cut her lip. My mom was with me and she was able to take charge, we were in line at the grocery store, so she asked the worker to go get some popsicles. Alissa was fine after that, just a little fat lip. Later that day, we flew to Utah for thanksgiving and before we were going to bed, Alissa started jumping on the bed, she fell, and hit her head on the wall, on a chair rail. Again, thinking she was fine, I went to help her and when I saw her face, she had a nice cut above her eyebrow, I proceeded to run her upstairs where Eric was to figure out what to do about it. We then asked LaNette if she thought she would need stitches, and instead, we just put a butterfly bandage on it. Now, Alissa handled all these incidents rather well, but that night I was an emotional mess. It's so hard to watch your precious baby girl get hurt and know that you could have been more careful and prevented both of them. I don't know how parents do it over and over again, but I just pray that my kids don't get hurt more than a couple times. 

Alissa has been learning new words, at an amazing speed. Eric and I, marvel at how quickly she learns. Just the other day, I showed her a snowman on my sock and now she knows the word, "snowan" and points them out all the time. She has also picked up the phrase, "bye, adios" from Handy Manny. It is very cute when she says that. She also walks around the house saying, "oohh, Peete", and "ooh toodles" from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. As you can see she watches slightly too much tv, she's learned to use sign language and talk from it. She is also trying to get me to potty train her. She asks to go potty every so often, and she doesn't usually go, but she sits on the potty for a second, then says she's all done, jumps off and flushes the toilet. But just yesterday, she went in her potty for the first time. At first she was worried that she wasn't supposed to, but I let her know that it was good. 

I'm also getting excited for a new little one around the house, I'm now 23 weeks. And the baby is starting to move a lot more often. For those of you who don't know, we picked out names. If it's a girl, Juliana Joy, after Julee, and if it's a boy, Anthony Eric, after Tony. Eric and I are very happy with the names we chose and while Eric is hoping for little Anthony, I'm hoping for sweet Juliana. 

Victory and Mourning...

So, I did it, I got my house clean and not only presentable, but beautiful, in my opinion. I am very proud of my accomplishment and was able to let the girls in, knowing that I went above and beyond. I don't normally do that, normally while people are at my house I'm looking at small messes all around, wishing I had spent more time cleaning it. I know that God is doing a work in me and He has empowered me to do this, because it is totally out of character. I finally feel victory in my life, I've been struggling for a very long time. I've been letting my weaknesses and sins, rule my life, and for the first time, probably since I've been married, I finally feel like I've overcome it. I've finally surrendered to God, telling Him I just can't do it. I'm unable. I've thought for years, I just need to try harder. Push more, but no matter what I did, I'd fail, I could do one thing well, but everything else would slip. So I tried to balance life, by catching the area that was falling the furthest, just hoping I could keep things from hitting the floor. But now I see, that I can't do it and if I just let go, and put God first, then He'll hold everything for me. He'll give me the strength to get things done and keep them up. It feels glorious and it's so neat to see how much my relationship with God effects my family. Eric and Alissa, both enjoy and are changed by the change God is doing in me. 

My night with the girls was very neat, as a group we went through the study and were able to encourage a few of the girls that are struggling with different areas in their marriage or life, while going through the study. After the study, when we normally do prayer requests, one of the girls, shared with us that her and her mom are struggling, because her stepdad has cancer, and he is not responding to any treatment, they are having trouble with the fact that God blessed her mom with a wonderful christian husband, and is now taking him away. They have only been married for a short time, maybe 4-7 years. She loves her mom dearly and is hurting for her the most. Watching her struggle with this was so hard, my heart just broke for her, knowing that she just wanted the best for her mom, and she felt so helpless, and maybe even betrayed. We shared some thoughts with her, encouraging her that God will still take care of her mom, no matter what happens, and then laid our hands on her and all prayed for her and her family. You could tell when she left, that a burden had been lifted from her shoulders and she had a small ray of hope. I tell you all this asking for prayer for her and her family, his name is Jim, he also has 2 children of his own, that are avoiding the situation. Please pray that if God doesn't choose to heal him, that he will end well, and that his family will find peace and comfort, despite the situation.

I was talking to Eric tonight about how hard it is to be in a place where God is blessing us and our life is good, while people all around us are hurting and going through hard and difficult times. Our families are dealing with hard things, and we have a hard time reaching out to them and wish we could just take the pain on ourselves, but we can't. And we still need to enjoy the blessings that God has given us, but sometimes, it makes me feel so shallow. Because I can't fully understand what other people are going through. I don't know how Julee is feeling right now, or what LaNette is going through without Daviance, and I want to help them, but I don't know how, so instead I just ignore it hoping to take the hurt from them by distracting them, the way I've always dealt with my pain. So my prayer for today, is that God would teach me how to mourn with those who mourn, to feel their pain and bless them. Pray that God would be able to use me in these situations rather than letting me run and hide until the storm passes. 

The trouble we go through to get what we want

Yesterday, I was reading my bible study, and I heard Alissa pushing something into the kitchen. I got up to see what she was doing. She was pushing one of our kitchen chairs into the kitchen so she could climb up onto the chair and reach the tortilla chips that were on the counter. It was the first time she's ever done that. It made me think about all the trouble I will go through just to get what I want. I will put forth all sorts of energy to get it, but when it comes to a responsibility, I suddenly have no energy and decide that I just can't do it. If I could put half the energy that I put to do something that I want into doing something I need to do, I would practically be able to conquer the world :) ok, not quite, but I would be able to actually accomplish something. Today, and tomorrow, I will be able to put this into practice, because I committed to hosting our girls bible study at my house. Which means I need a clean, presentable house by wednesday night. And I need to be ready to lead the study. I'm very excited for the challenge of leading the study, I will be the first one leading this study, kind of scary, but exciting. Please pray for me, that I will be prepared and that God will use me. 

The Power of a praying wife

I'm currently in a bible study with 8 girls that are my age and married. We just finished going through the bible study, Search for significance. That was a very good study, and I learned a lot from it. This week we are starting a new study. The power of a praying wife. I'm very excited to do this study, as I'm not very good at praying for my husband, and I'm always trying to fix him. When most of the time I know that I'm the one that needs to be fixed. But it's easier to blame him for my problems. I started reading the first chapter today and already have been touched by the study. I'm trying to do a little of the study everyday. In hopes to finish the first chapter by Wednesday when I meet with my girls again. The beginning of the study talked about us needing to pray for ourselves before we pray for our husbands, and be willing to change instead just wanting our husbands to change. I've examined my heart and know that I'm willing and ready to change. I feel like I have been dormant for a long time, not really changing just surviving. And now, I'm ready to make a change, ready to feel God working in my life, even if it means hard, difficult times. So, my prayer for today is that God will start working in my heart and preparing me for the change that He is going to put me through and that I will be diligent with the study and set aside time for it everyday. I'm committing to spend 15 min a day on the study, and going to complete that 15 min sometime between 11-1.