700th Post!

Actually, this is my 701 post! Thanks for sticking with me the past couple years!
In accident news, I went to the doctor yesterday for my neck and back. He said I have some pulled muscles and some strained muscles and gave me three different pills to help resolve the pain. It was interesting to see the x-ray of my spine. When I was a child the school nurse told me I had scoliosis and later on my adult doctor said he thought I probably did too, but it was never officially diagnosed. Now I am officially diagnosed with x-rays as having "mild scoliosis". Not a huge deal, just something interesting to know.
After my appointment I went to Fred Meyer to get my prescription filled. As I was walking to the pharmacy, I slipped on the floor and completely fell down! I was so embarrassed! My whole entire body was on the floor of Fred Meyer! Nothing was hurt, but my pride. I was a little surprised that even though tons of people were walking by, no one asked if I was ok or if they could help me. I'm relieved in a way because then I would have been even more embarrassed, but it was also a bit surprising. I think it says a little something about my neck of the woods.
I was very thankful to my poor, sick Mom who came to watch the girls and let me use her car so I could go to the doctor!
Anna and I skipped the Missions Conference at church last night so we could both crash out. After I put her to bed I took my new medicine hoping it would knock me out. No such luck! Three hours later I was still in pain and not asleep. I decided to take another pain pill and Ryan sent me to bed.
Then I started to feel it! I felt like a limp noodle and I kept muttering unintelligible things. My brain wanted to play the alphabet game. I kept thinking of a letter and all the words that started with that letter. I couldn't shut it off! My brain also kept saying, "Alakazam!" over and over again! It was very odd! Ryan was tempted to sleep on the couch. I was relieved though to have a nights sleep without pain. I'm hurting again now, but there is no way I can take this medication while I'm supposed to be taking care of my children. I'll go into my drug induced state tonight!
Hopefully I'll see most of you at the Missions Conference!

vacation 2008

View Project at Shutterfly

Totaled!

The insurance adjuster came out today and said that our car is totaled. They should be by sometime this afternoon to take it away. We are still waiting to find out the final amount that will be given to us. I also talked to the medical claims adjuster and she said that the girls hospital bills will be totally covered. They also said that they will cover the cost of new car seats! Thankfully we don't have to pay any money out of pocket for the deductible either.
The girls are doing great today. Rylie said her neck doesn't hurt at all, praise the Lord! I'm still having pain, but it's tolerable.
To cheer me up, I'll leave you with a cute picture!

My (not so) fun day

I was planning on having a fun day today. The girls and I were on our way to meet our good friend Sarah and her son, Henry for a play date, when the unexpected happened.
I stopped at the stop sign a block away from my house to get ready to turn left. I couldn't see if any oncoming cars were coming because the people that live on the intersecting street had their cars parked in such a way that it blocked my view. I decided to creep forward to get a better view. That's when I discovered in a not so fun way, that there was indeed another car coming. I think you can figure out the rest of the story!
My poor Rylie girl was scared and kept crying and complaining that her neck was really hurting, so the EMT's (that came when we called the police) put a collar on her and advised us to take her to the ER for X-rays to make sure something more serious wasn't wrong. They advised us to have Anna checked out as well, even though she was her happy self and seemed fine.
After spending almost three hours in the "hopstible" (as Rylie calls it), and x-rays (which Rylie thought were cool), we were discharged with a clean bill of health.
Anna thought the whole event was a party and quite enjoyed every minute of it (that is until nap time). My parents came to the hospital to check on the girls and as soon as Anna saw them, she yelled out, "Hi!"
Rylie did not enjoy wearing the collar for three hours, she was pretty uncomfortable, but was such a trooper. Uncle Matt and one of his employees came by and made her a glove balloon, that helped cheer her up.
I'm very thankful that we have insurance, and car seats and that the police didn't cite me, and that the girls are safe. Please pray that we can figure out how to afford all of this. The insurance adjuster is coming in the morning to see if the car is totaled or not.
My neck, back, and shoulders keep hurting worse as the evening wears on, but my good friend (and almost neighbor), Michelle brought me over some dinner, so that helped!
Rylie got to keep her collar, which she was excited about because she loves to play doctor. As you can see, she fixed up her dog!

Time (I'm really working on this!)

Time Well Spent (excerpt)By R.C. Sproul

Time is the great leveler. It is one resource that is allocated in absolute egalitarian terms. Every living person has the same number of hours to use in every day. Busy people are not given a special bonus added on to the hours of the day. The clock plays no favorites.We all have an equal measure of time in every day. Where we differ from one another is in how we redeem the time allotted. When something is redeemed it is rescued or purchased from some negative condition. The basic negative condition we are concerned with is the condition of waste. To waste time is to spend it on that which has little or no value.I am a time waster. When I think of the time I have wasted over the course of my life, I am hounded by remorse. This guilt is not a false one fostered by an overactive work ethic. The guilt is real because the time I have wasted is real time.The late Vince Lombardi introduced the adage, “I never lost a game, I just ran out of time.” This explanation points to one of the most dramatic elements of sports—the race against the clock. The team that is most productive in the allotted time is the team that wins the game. Of course, in sports, unlike life, there are provisions for calling time-out. The clock in a sports contest can be temporarily halted. But in real life there are no timeouts…Given my propensity to waste time, I have learned a few tricks to help me beat the clock. They may be helpful to some of you.First, I realize that all of my time is God’s time and all of my time is my time by His delegation. God owns me and my time. Yet, He has given me a measure of time over which I am a steward. I can commit that time to work for other people, visit other people, etc. But it is time for which I must give an account.Second, time can be redeemed by concentration and focus. One of the greatest wastes of time occurs in the human mind. Our hands may be busy but our minds idle. Likewise, our hands may be idle while our minds are busy. Woolgathering, day-dreaming, and indulging in frivolous fantasy are ways in which thoughts may be wasted in real time. To focus our minds on the task at hand—with fierce concentration—makes for productive use of time.Third, the mind can redeem valuable time taken up by ordinary or mechanical functions. For example, the mechanics of taking a shower are not difficult. In this setting the mind is free for problem solving, creative thinking, or the composition of themes. Many of my messages and lectures are germinated in the shower. When I used to play a lot of golf, I found that the time I had between shots was a great time for composing messages in my mind.Fourth, use your leisure time for pursuits that are life enriching. Leisure time is often spent on avocations. Reading is a valuable use of time. It enriches life to read outside of your major field or area of expertise. Augustine once advised believers to learn as much as possible about as many things as possible, since all truth is God’s truth. Other avocations that are enriching include the arts. I like to study the piano and I dabble in painting. No one will ever mistake me for a serious musician or an accomplished artist. But these avocations open up the world of beauty to me that enhances my view of God and His manifold perfections. I also enjoy working cross-word puzzles to warm up the little gray cells and to expand my vista of verbal expression.Fifth, find ways to cheat the “Sand Man.” Several years ago I had an epiphany about time management. Though my life-long pattern had been to stay up late at night I realized that for me, the hours between 9–12 p.m. were not very productive. I reasoned that if I used those hours to sleep I might secure more time for more productive things. Since then my habit has been to retire between 8–9 p.m. when possible and rise at 4 a.m. This has effected a wonderful revolution for my schedule. The early hours of the day are a time free from distractions and interruptions, a marvelous time for study, writing, and prayer….Sixth, use drive-time for learning. Driving a car is another mechanical function that allows the mind to be alert to more than what is happening on the roadway. The benefits of audio tape can be put to great use during these times. I can listen to lectures and instructional tapes while driving, thereby redeeming the time.Finally, in most cases a schedule is more liberating than restricting. Working with a schedule helps enormously to organize our use of time. The schedule should be a friend, not an enemy. I find it freeing in that the schedule can include time for leisure, recreation, and avocation. It helps us find the rhythm for a God-glorifying productive life.

-----------[The article “Time Well Spent: Right Now Counts Forever” was written by Dr. R.C. Sproul and published in Tabletalk magazine (September 1997, pp. 4–7). This excerpt is reprinted by the kind permission of Ligonier Ministries.] (Via CJ Mahaney)

Sweet Words

I have not been doing a very good job posting these days! It seems like I just don't have enough time during the day! I really don't have time to post now, but I wanted to write this down before I forgot it.
Sunday night, Rylie rode home with Ryan in his car. She told him that she likes to sing and dance and put her hands up in the air because she is so happy. He asked her why she was happy and she said, "Because Jesus is giving me a new heart!" She then asked if she could pray, to which Ryan replied in the affirmative. She prayed that Jesus would save her from her sins and clean her heart and give her a new heart!
She has recently learned the word "regeneration" (ask her to say it to you sometime, it's really cute), so we have been discussing that topic a lot lately. She really takes interest in her catechism questions and is always wanting us to read her Bible to her and is constantly singing songs she learns in Sunday School (thank you Natalie and Sarah!). We are so excited by her eagerness to love the Lord!

BBC Book List

I got this meme from Kris and I thought it was fun so I'm passing it along. The BBC made a list of classics that they thought everyone should read. They said they reckon that most people have read six of these. Put an "x" behind the ones that you have read. I tag whomever wants to play!

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X
6 The Bible X
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte X
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials trilogy - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens X
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare X
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger X
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell X
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens x
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy X
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck X
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll X
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy x
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens X
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X
34 Emma - Jane Austen x
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery X
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen x
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens X
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas x
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville X
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens X
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zol
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White x
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle X
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl x
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

7 0f 7

I was tagged by my friend, Stephanie S. to post the 7th picture that was in my 7th picture folder. This is the 7th picture in my 7th folder. A bathtub. How boring! I was hoping for some really great picture to show all of you, and I will admit I was temped to cheat because the number 8 picture was prettier.
However, this picture comes with good memories for me. It was taken at the Italian Bed and Breakfast that I surprised Ryan with for our 10 year anniversary last May. Although I didn't use the tub, I took pictures of it, along with everything else in the room because it was all so pretty. I loved that they sprinkled rose petals all over the room for us too. We had such a nice time just being away. The B & B was in our own town, but it felt like we had gotten away for a mini vacation. We also had dinner at the Melting Pot and I got diamonds, which was the icing on the cake!
Thanks Stephanie for a fun meme! I tag: everyone on my blogroll!

Beach Pictures Part 3

Beach Pictures Part 2

Are you a Theologian?

“[As] a matter of plain fact every Christian is a theologian!… By virtue of being born again we have all begun to know God and therefore have a certain understanding of his nature and actions. That is, we all have a theology of sorts, whether or not we have ever sat down and pieced it together. So properly understood, theology is not for a few religious eggheads with a flair for abstract debate—it is everybody’s business. Once we have grasped this, our duty is to become the best theologians we can to the glory of God, as our understanding of God and his ways is clarified and deepened through studying the book he has given for that very purpose, the Bible (2 Tim. 3:16)…[G]etting doctrine right is the key to getting everything else right…[A]t every point right living begins with right thinking.” -Bruce Milne (from GirlTalk)

Beach Pictures Part 1

Valentine's Day Pictures

We had a great Valentine's Day! We had a special lunch with Nana and the girls. Patty brought this delicious heart shaped, strawberry cake! In the evening we went to the Valentine's Banquet at Church. The food was amazing (thank you Aaron!) and a fun time was had by all!

Happy Valentine's Day

to my true love, my best friend, my soul mate, my encourager, my discipler, my Ryan!

Hair, Hair, Everywhere There's Hair!

I found these pictures that I forgot to post along time ago! This was from Anna's first Mother's Day, when she was two months old. She was playing with Aunt TeTe, otherwise known as Ryan's sister, Sarah. If anyone wondered if all that hair ran in the family. . .
In other Anna news, she is officially cruising! Today she took a step from the coffee table to the couch and back again. She is also walking around the coffee table while holding on to it. She has a Leapfrog toy (thanks Ricci!) that she stands at and plays with, but now she is walking around that as well! She is also trying to stand up from a sitting position without holding on to anything. She ends up with her buns in the air and her head on the floor. It's pretty cute! She is liking to stand in her crib now too. Rylie didn't do any of that. Rylie never crawled and she didn't walk until she was around 14 months. I have a feeling Anna might be walking by her birthday!
She had her weight check appointment last week and the Doctor was encouraged that she had gained 10 ounces. She is still in the 15% for weight, but is going up on the scale now, so that is good. She impressed the Doctor with her verbal skills. My Dad just told me that she said "bird" the other night to him! She does a very cute monkey impression too (ah, ah, ah)!

Photo Fun!

Go here for some fun with photos!

My Baby Brother

I thought I would share a few pictures of my little brother, Matt. Here he is doing a little logging. He has started his own tree service, if you need any work done! Love you Moo!

My Favorite Cookies

My Aunt Jill has made these cookies every Christmas since I can remember. If I'm not able to go to the family Christmas gathering, she always makes sure she saves some for me. They are my absolutely favorite cookies! This year, I finally got the recipe, so I thought I would share it with you! There's only one catch, if you do make them, you have to save one for me!

Cake Mix Cookies

1 Box Cake Mix
1 Egg
1/4 cup oil
1/3 cup milk
Chocolate chips ( I like it with mint also)

Bake at 350 on an ungreased cookie sheet (she didn't say for how long, so just keep checking them)

Top with melted white almond bark with mint extract to taste.

Enjoy!

More Sister Pictures