The Bungalow: January 2012

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Some CO Memories...

Having coffee with Melissa

Going to villa sport

Sitting in the hot tub drinking coffee

Hearing Alice say Abby and Tookie

Abby's surprise birthday party with her favorite friends

Chick fil a with Katie and James and our conversation at the dining room table

Melting pot...Oh the Melting Pot...So fun!

A walk to cottonwood

Ping pong

Waking up to Alice every morning - I mean look at how cute this kid is!

Visiting AIES

Seeing Valerie

A gift from Valerie - a new little pink dress that Abby wears all the time!

Abby and Alice taking a bath together

Watching the Wonder Years and Switched at Birth with Melissa

Impromptu lunches: bowl of cheese and guacamole

A gift from Dan and Dodie - complete with activities to do on the plane!

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Heaven Vs. Hell

A quote from our pastor, Sung Kim (paraphrased because I couldn't write fast enough, but if you listen to the sermon (from my last blog post) you will hear him say it at the end....

If you know Jesus, earth is as close to hell as you are ever going to get.

If you don't know Jesus, earth is as close to heaven as you will ever get, so live it up while you are here.

Wow...

God is at work even when you are in the desert....

This weekend we got to talk to the figits about what our walk with Christ is like.

It was interesting to me because all four of us (Russ, Jen, Steve and I) talked about how college/post college was when we really found out who the Lord was and learned to trust him.

When I shared I thought of this analogy: When you are searching for what your purpose is in life, you are in a big field looking for a path. But, the problem is that field is all gravel and you are running around trying to figure out who you are, what you should do, who God is but you can't seem to find the "path" because it all looks the same. Questioning and running around in that field is necessary to finding out who you are and what you believe. What you do in that field helps create who you are. But, running in that field is hard work, it is frustrating, and at times your questions aren't always answered. You feel alone and you question everything, at least I did.

But, God is at work in that time.

Today at church our pastor talked about Ex 1:15-2:15, it was titled, "Though I walk through the valley." Something for you to chew on....The Desert Principle: God is at work - often times behind the scene - even when you are in the desert.

What? Wait a minute, that is what I just talked about with my cousins! Could God be wanting to impress something on me? Yes.

Short version: Moses made a mistake by killing an Egyptian. He ran away and left to live in the desert. During that time he learned a variety of skills such as patience, humility, how to live in the wilderness, how to raise sheep, what to eat, etc. This was hard. Moses didn't see God working. Moses felt alone. But, lucky us, we get the big picture. Who knew that Moses would be stuck leading people around the desert for 40 years, trying to free them from slavery? GOD DID! Who knew that Moses wasn't ready for that? GOD DID! Who took Moses initial mistake and made good out of it? GOD DID! What I am trying to say here is even if you are in the desert right now, God knows, God is working behind the scenes and he has got something planned for you. Know that this difficult season will come to an end. And, in several years, you are going to look back and say, "Ahhh, now I see what you were doing God."

Also know, that if you are in that difficult season and searching after who God is and how he is working in your life, know that YOU WOULD NOT BE SEEKING GOD UNLESS HE IS ALREADY SEEKING YOU. Even though He may seem distant...Know, there would be no way you would be seeking Him, unless he sought you out first. A quote from today, "Trust God's heart, even when you can't trace his hand..."

I think back to the very worst thing that could happen....Jesus Christ was sentenced to death for our sins. He was beaten, abused, ripped apart, and mocked for me. It is the very worst thing that could happen, but guess what? It brought about the best thing that could EVER happen in this world. A promise to live forever with the savoir of the universe. Who is feeling loved, taken care of, and blessed today?....This girl.

This was an awesome sermon and I encourage you to go listen...It spoke to me and I hope it speaks to you too. (Click on Launch Media Player, and then the sermon on the top "How God Shapes us Through the Events in our Lives)

Life is Good

These past few days have been absolutely fantastic. I LOVED this weekend and although I don't have pictures to document the weekend, I do have my memories and those are all pretty awesome.

The weekend started with a visit to see my cousin who is currently in the hospital because he had back surgery. He had two CRUSHED disks...not just problematic disks, crushed ones. He had four pinched nerves which caused him to have tons of pain in both of his legs. The surgeon was surprised he could even walk. Some things I am thankful for:
1. That this surgery happened, Chad has been living in pain for far too long
2. That we got to visit him. I love family and I love being able to see them when big things happen. We missed that when we lived in CO
3. Some pretty cool cousins....

On to the second part of the weekend. We went to Russ and Jen's for a figit sleepover. For those of you who don't understand how odd my family is, let me give you a picture. I have five cousins between the ages of 14-almost now 20, holy cow! And from the time they were VERY little, we called them figits from the old Little Rascal movies (not the cartoon...Like the old black and white movie). Anyway, it stuck, and even though they are in college, we still call them that....
I would never think I could have that much fun with "teenagers" but my cousins are incredible and we had a blast....Some memories:
1. Mike and Tay dancing to Promiscuous Girl on the X box Kinect
2. Dan figuring out how to play Settlers of Catan by watching for about 5 minutes
3. Playing Settlers of Catan - I can't believe I am saying this, I really do not like that game...
4. Making rice krispy treats for the "first time in their life" with Sarah and Amber
5. And my all time favorite part of the weekend was sharing with the figits. Russ, Jen, Steve, and I all shared with the kids why we live the way we do. We all opened up in ways we don't usually open up others and it was so fun for the kids to see who we are and what our relationship with Christ looks like. I hope it was as meaningful to them as it was for us. It is hard to share your heart and be so vulnerable but it was something we all wanted to do because we love those figits so much.

When we came home we got to go to a BBQ (like real southern BBQ with pulled pork, sweet tea, and everything) with our small group. I was amazed at how easy it was! To elaborate on that...in CO we had a small group where everything was easy. Hosting a party for K group was no big deal at all. I was never nervous that the house wasn't clean enough, or if I had enough chairs, was everyone having fun, etc. (You know, all those things that go through your mind when you have a party). With K group, I never worried about ANY of that. If they came over and I wasn't ready it wasn't ever a big deal. Last night, for the first time, I felt like our small group here in MI was easy. We showed up a bit late, which wasn't a big deal, unloaded all of our junk, put our stuff away in rooms in their house, and started eating and hanging out. Conversation wasn't difficult and it seemed to all flow so nicely. We have been pretty blessed by small groups....Incredibly blessed by small groups.....

Thursday, January 5, 2012

The 11 month pictures!

Watching Baby Einstein and eating some snacks....

Playing with my lion!

Mommy and Me.

Playing with my new kitchen.

My favorite window.

My hair is getting long enough to be messy!

More pictures of eating snacks and watching my video!

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

11 months old

These are some older pictures from the month...Hoping to do a photo shoot tomorrow, at 11 months and 3 days!

Eating her "teething bagel"

11 months old…Oh time flies

· One of Abby’s favorite things to do is to crawl into the kitchen and pull the towel off the oven handle.

· She has mastered the stairs up and down. The gates are up, because if we turn our backs, she is gone.

· She loves picking up bite sized pieces of food to eat. She feeds herself with a spoon.

· She eats almost anything! Ribs, Mexican, chicken, spaghetti, fruits, veggies! If momma can grind it up, Abby eats it.

· She drinks out of a sippy cup and loves spitting the water out onto her bib.

· She loves the wind in her face and laughs whenever we walk outside and it is super windy

· Sleeping is going OK…We took a few steps back at Christmas time, but are getting back to sleeping through the night.

· Her favorite toys are her play kitchen, the drum set, duplos and her train block from Daddy. She loves to pull toys out of bins (we haven’t mastered putting them back IN yet, still working on that).

· She loves to play hide and seek.

· She claps “on command”

· She is working on saying “up”

· We had her standing by herself for a second or two! We are so impressed (however, then mama let her fall…and she bumped her head…bad mama, pushing your child to walk too early!)

· Today she sat in her red elmo chair, ate snacks from her cup and watched an entire episode of baby Einstein. I know that isn’t something to be proud of (“my kid can watch TV for a long time, what can yours do?”) but we thought it was hilarious, she lasted 20 minutes!

She is the sweetest girl. She cuddles mom and dad all the time and loves to give kisses
She also had her first temper tantrum...Daddy put the gate up between the kitchen and living room and Ms. Abby did NOT like it.
She isn't super smiley all the time. It takes her a while to warm up. She is always accessing the situation. However, Sammi can ALWAYS get her to smile.

We love Abby way too much.

Crafting...I love it.

A couple of my crafts from this Christmas season....

Popsicle stick puzzles for Sam and Elli

This year I made t hem a box full of "independent play time activities" It had lots of ziplock bags full of activities they could play with independently while mom takes care of other things. The girls loved the activities!

Felt board:

Magnetic pom poms....This came with other patterning activities too (the picture is sideways..Sorry!)

Matching games (one side was done, they had to complete the other side)

I made this for Katie...My dear friend....A journal cover to congratulate her on GRADUATING! I miss Katie :)

My kindle cover....But, now I am on to making a new kindle cover because I got a kindle FIRE for Christmas! Booya!

This was for Brittany...A bag full of cheap date ideas! I had so much fun thinking through the date ideas (some are goofy) and putting them together in this bag.

And...Christmas Cards....I am so bummed because I had a picture uploaded, but then realized people's address would have been on my blog...Decided against putting that up there..

It was a great Christmas season, more crafting pictures to come!

Christmas

Christmas Eve...Boy those girls are spoiled!

Christmas PJ's!

Sam and Elli are so sweet and helpful passing out the presents!

Abby LOVES her kitchen!

Sweet Girls

Auntie Laurel and Sar-sare

Family Picture at the Bucks!

Abby has her own Bronner's Christmas Ornament

Our 2011 family ornament from dad-o

Auntie Brittany and Uncle Andy..Abby had lots of fun playing with Auntie Brittany's hair during these pictures!

Our little wolverine

Christmas tires me out too...Sleeping on Grandpa Klenke

Annual Rib cook-off! Steve and Andy tied for first!

Steve's ribs = A+ for presentation (see manger below....)

Andy's Ribs = A+ for tenderness

This girl loved the presents!

Wooden train from Daddy....It is a Melissa and Doug train. When it was sent to the house it had a piece of paper taped to it which was folded in half. All I saw was "Melissa" I thought for sure Steve and Melissa were in cahoots...They weren't.....I just saw half of "Melissa & Doug"

Sammi LOVES Abby

Elli Bean playing with a puzzle I made for Christmas

Dad's new bumper sticker, Captain Big Fish!

We gotcha mom! I don't think we will ever be able to top that!

Abby is excited about learning all the names of the presidents....Or maybe she is just excited about the sound the place mat makes when she bangs on it.