Praying for a Sleeping Baby

Last night while I was praying with Steven, he prayed for our future foster babies. For their protection, whether in the womb or laying in their beds. In those little words, it all became real. It hit me like a ton of bricks.

I don't know what I have thought up until this point. I know what foster care is. I know why kids get placed "in the system". I have even prepared myself, as much as one can, for the possibility of a drug addicted infant. But really, up until this point, I have been a bit naive.

In that moment, while Steven prayed for a child sleeping in a bed. I realized, my foster child, my child, may be in an abusive home right now. My child may be neglected and abused. It may be happening at this very second.

My heart is aching. My heart is hurting so badly for the children I haven't met. For all of those poor babies, hurting, waiting to be rescued.Waiting for someone to come in and save them from the physical and emotional pain.

I get it now. I get why God has called us to this amazing thing called foster care. We need to be there on the other end when they are taken from their unsafe homes. We need to be there with open arms, to hurt with them and help them heal.

You can help too!

I am not saying that you need to drop everything in your life and go become a foster parent. But if God calls you to, please answer His call.

What you CAN do, is pray with us.
Pray for each and every child in and out of the system.
Pray for their safety.
Pray for their hearts to heal.
Pray for their biological parents.
Just pray.

I've said it before and I know I will say it over and over again...God has a plan. He has a purpose. We need to be praying, interceding daily. Without ceasing. We can all make a difference in these children's lives. It's as simply as a prayer. Jesus saves and He heals. He works miracles if we believe for them. So pray for miracles for these hurting children. Pray for miracles for the parents. A softening of their hearts.

Just Pray. Pray. Pray!

Sand and Water to the rescue

These past few days, weeks, months have been chaotic around the house. As we prep for foster care we are making lots of changes in our home. Since there is so much to do and construction happening, we have really had to cut out a lot of our fun out of the home activities.

The kids have been quite stir crazy because of it. Don't get me wrong, when my dad is here working on building the girl room, all the kids want to do is help him work. But when he's not here, they are bored. They are sick of coloring, they have played with all their toys...all 2143273249709 of them.

We have been taking lots of breaks to go outside and play in the sand box. I am so thankful for little things like sand and water. They really have broke up the monotony of our days. We are having fun despite being cooped up.

They love playing in the sand!

Is there anything sweeter than siblings playing nicely together?

I am so in love with his always messy baby face!

I'm equally in love with her beautiful little face.

Is there something you do when you are stuck at home? How do you keep your little ones occupied and happy? I would love some tips.

Going Deeper

How often do you spend time with the Lord? How often are you emerged in His word? How much time do you spend in prayer?

If you are anything like me, your answer is probably "not enough". I try to read my bible daily but I am not always consistent and I am often distracted. I do not sit and listen. Really take in what God is saying to me through the bible.

I pray numerous times a day. I have a decent prayer life. BUT it is not nearly enough. Most of the time I pray quick prayers. Five minutes at best. I cannot remember the last time that I got down on my knees and prayed for more than 10 minutes.

Things are changing though. Last night, my husband and I started a course at our church called Deeper. Going Deeper with God. For 4 weeks we are making a commitment to be at church NO MATTER WHAT, on Sunday morning and then in the evening for our class. We will be at our Growth Group every Wednesday. We will be praying daily for 15 minutes at a time. We will be in the word for even longer. We will be seeking God and all that He has in store for us. I hope that when these 4 weeks are over, we will not break these habits.

It sounds like a lot. Doesn't it? When the Pastor went through the list of what he would like us to do during the time we are in the 4 week course, I was scared. How on earth would I fit this all into my schedule? Doesn't he know I have 2 kids?!? (He has 5). Doesn't he know how much I already have on my plate? How could I possibly survive going through all of this with everything else I do? HAHA I have to laugh at myself. What do I mean? The real question is, how have I been surviving all of this without first spending all of this time with my Lord and Savior? How have I not dedicated this much time to Him before?

Silly me. Going through life like I can accomplish anything on my own. I always make it a point to seek God first but have I really been stopping to listen? How "in charge" am I allowing Him to be when I pray for a few minutes and then rush off to my busy schedule?

How much more can I accomplish when I am depending on Him fully? We will find out!

God is so good. Look at how much He has done for us when we have given Him so little to work with. I can only imagine what we will see now. I can't even fathom what is coming next.

Can I ask you to hold me accountable? If you want to join me, I would love to hear about your commitments to Him and be there to hold you accountable too. He really does deserve all we can give Him.

If you need prayer, please let me know. I would love to be praying for you.

If you are local, I would love to refer you to the next session of Deeper at our church. Let me know and I will give you all of the info.

Yarn Challenged

The process of getting the girl room together has begun. The construction starts this week, so I thought it was a good time to start some of the decoration projects. The fabrics for Rhi's quilt have been purchased, washed and ironed (I felt the need to list all of that since it's ALL that I've done on it), pillows have been made and then a few odds and ends have been started.

One of the items that Rhi requested was a letter R. I have a cute little wall art planned and it fit right into the idea. I decided to go with a yarn wrapped letter. I have seen them everywhere and they seem easy enough...hahahaha. That is me laughing at myself. Apparently, yarn is not my medium. It went poorly. So poorly I thought I'd do a tutorial. A tutorial of how NOT to do this.

So, I started off with my letter and yarn.

A spot of glue to hold the beginning yarn in place. But then I couldn't fully cover the bottom. Hmmm...so I added a little more glue and then some more. Ah. It is ready. So I moved up the letter. It was going well. Until. Wait. How do I get all this yarn through here? I know I am smarted than this. No, really, I have to be smarter than this....At this point I was regretting not naming Rhiannon Olivia or Odette. Those are great names. But really, how do I fix this?

So I cut it. And kept cutting little yarn balls of the red yarn so that I could get around all of the turns and outsmart the stinkin' thing. It worked like a charm. Do this. At the beginning not when you get stuck and angry.

 At this point, things were going great. I got it all wrapped. All the way up to the next turn...until I turned it around. Wait....hold the phone. How did I manage to cover all of the front and miss this big old gap here in the back? This is lame. RECOVER..

So I worked my way around and got the the point of going around the last turn when I thought, why don't I wrap from the bottom of the R and through the center in order to avoid any glue on the bottom? Hindsight is 50/50 folks. Do that. Not that gluey mess that I started with.

Really, it didn't turn out horrible. It is not one of those beautiful letters that I see all over Pinterest but it is usable. I'm thinking of adding some rosettes staggering up the left side. Hide some flaws and add some pretty. We will see.

 So, basically, don't do what I did. Here are my tips for you.

1. Name your children names that start with an O or maybe an L. That would be ideal.
2. Paint the letter first, so anything showing through is not so In-Your-Face obvious.
3. Start off by cutting a bunch of yarn balls to easily wrap around all of crazy lame turns.
4. If you do have a letter like an R start wrapping vertical and then hide that by wrapping horizontally to hide it. Does that make sense?
5. And if you are yarn challenged, like I am, go to www.etsy.com and order a stinkin' letter. There are some really pretty ones on there.

Toddler Talk: Setting the Standard

Have you ever taken your kiddos on a date? It is a fun thing that we try and make a point of doing often. Steven started taking Rhi on Daddy dates when she was about 18 months. As Talon is quickly approaching that age, this month in fact, Valentine's Day seemed to be the perfect time to take him on his first Mommy and Me date.

So this Saturday (because I am not willing to give up my man on Valentines day) we parted ways and took our kids on Valentines dates.

We started off by giving them their little Valentines. After gifts were given, Rhi and Steven headed to the Santa Ana Zoo. They had a blast and Rhi talked about it all evening. After the zoo, they went for ice cream cones. In order to devote all of his attention to Rhi, Steven ditched his dSLR and used his iPhone to catch a couple images for memory sake.

What a sweet date they had.

Talon and I grabbed my pass for a fun trip to Disneyland. We hit up Small World after battling a massive crowd.

 From there it was Talon's all time favorite Winnie the Pooh or as he says "Wi-e-apoooooo".

  

We cut the trip short in order to go have dessert at Rainforest Cafe. He enjoyed lots of sweets while I devoured the time I had alone with my sweet boy.

In that moment, as we shared in memories and fun with our precious babies, we were also teaching them valuable lessons. Lessons of how they should be treated when the dating days come. How they should treat the people they chose to date. From the time we found out we were having a little girl, these dates were something we knew we had to do. We live in a time where courting and treating a girl right are not common. We knew that Steven would be taking her out, showing her what she deserved and setting a standard for her. That any boy who didn't treat her this way was not worth her time. We decided to start at a young age because...well, it's when kids learn the most. How my husband treats me and how he treats her during date time, is what she will likely base her dating and eventually marriage off of. We wanted to make sure that was shown to her properly.

Now that we have Talon, I want more and more to teach him how he should be treating a woman. AND how she should be treating him back. I think, so often, we forget to protect our boys. Not that we forget but it is not as important to us as protecting our girls. Why is that? They are just as precious. Yes, they are the "stronger" gender. They are the ones who are expected to protect but they too need protecting. They need to be treated with respect.

I encourage all of you to take your kids out on dates. Teach them to show love and respect. Show them how they should be treated and just importantly how they should be treating others. It is never to early...and it's never too late. They are sponges and you need the training too. If you start now, you are more likely to do it later.

Stop and Listen

I just want to start this off by saying, When God speaks, listen.

We recently felt the call on our lives to do Foster Care to Adopt. You can read all about it here, here and here.

When God spoke to me, He said do it now.

So we started prepping our house. We started planning construction, what needed to be done to add a room and what needed to be done before we could do that.

We knew we had to eliminate some bulky furniture, move my studio to the laundry room, move the toys and create a playroom. We knew we had work to do.

We started busting our booties to get it all done. We started stressing out. Okay, I started stressing out. I started freaking out. Things in our home got crazy. They got overwhelming. I got overwhelmed. We decided to slow things down, take it one step at a time. We said that when we finished one step we would start the next. The construction could start after X,Y and Z and once that started we could put in our application.

Three days after those words were spoken, our kids got sick. Not sick enough that they or it was a problem. Just sick enough that we had to stay home. In the weekend that they were sick, we created the studio and moved in, we moved the toys and almost fully completed the playroom. There are just a few decorative elements to be completed, nothing that would hold us back. As we were in the middle of all of this, we got a phone call. A friend wanting to purchase the furniture...that day. He came and picked it up.

There is no denying that this was all God. There was an obstacle and He pushed us through it. We begin construction this week. Which means, we put in our application THIS week.

People, God has a plan for us. He spoke and we committed to follow Him. When we felt overwhelmed, He lifted us up and carried us through it. He is meeting us where we are and asking that we simply come with Him on this journey. I am overjoyed with what He is doing.

Is our home still chaos? Yes. Is it still crazy and stressful? Yes. Is it still overwhelming? Yes. Do I still feel like my life is falling apart? Yes. Are we still trusting God? Yes.

Sometimes in life, our world needs to fall apart so that God can rebuild it. He is not making our lives bad or bringing it to the point to where we cannot handle it. We are still trucking along and having fun. We are just being pulled to our limits to fulfill His plans in our life.

That may sound like I am saying that God is destroying or harming our little world and that is so far from what I am trying to say. What I mean is that He is taking what we have and changing it all. He is taking our strengths and molding them. He is taking our weaknesses and working them out. He is taking our lifestyle and our home and guiding us in making it what it needs to be in order to do what we are called to do.

We are not only becoming ready for possible foster children, we are correcting bad habits (mostly in my time managment) and establishing tradition, opportunity for fun and memories. We are making our home not only prepared but a place better for our family.

God is so faithful. God is so good. God is soooo right. When He speaks, do yourself a favor and listen. He will mold you and stretch you beyond what you can imagine. In the midst of the stress we are going through, our marriage has been strengthened, really, our whole world has. Keeping your eye on God is something that all marriages should focus on but that is a whole other post.

What I am saying here is simple. LISTEN UP, He speaks loud and clear when you let Him. I am amazed at what God is doing in our home and family.

You're Invited

Hey all-
It's me. Did you fall out of your seat when you saw me blogging. It was kind of like a ghost popping out to haunt you, wasn't it?

I know, I have been missing forever. I have been so busy with prep for Foster Care. Remember, a long time ago when I blogged consistently, I told you all about it?

I let you all know on Twitter and Facebook that I would be back with you next week but I wanted to take a break from my break to invite all of you local people to join me and my kiddos at Pretend City. We had you join us a few months ago and it was so much fun. I was thrilled to meet a few of you there... in real life. I would love to meet more of you.

Pretend City is offering a free entry ticket with the purchase of a regular adult or child ticket. Just bring this with you and join us there.

We will be there around 1pm if you would like to meet up with us. Feel free to use this voucher anytime during the day though.

If you can't make it, I will be sharing all about our trip there. There are always so many fun stories, pictures and memories to share after a trip to Pretend City.