Answered Prayers...

I know we all have answered prayers and I love to hear about them, so I thought I'd share a couple of our recent answers to prayer. Of course there are many, many more and maybe I'll share more some other day, but for today, I'll just share these two.

The other night during our family devotions, Kristyn said that she wanted to pray that Jesus would give her some new shoes. I didn't think that much about it, because she still had her Easter shoes and I hadn't started looking for bigger shoes for her, yet. So she prayed and I heard her asking Jesus for some new shoes. The very next morning, we were going through a box of clothes for Owen, that our dear and gracious friend, Mary Ellen, sent to us from her boys and guess what was in the box? That's right!!! A pair of beautiful, black shoes. It was the only "girly" thing in the box. Kristyn just grabbed them up and said, "Praise the Lord." She was SO excited and they fit her perfectly! So now when she wears them, she says they are the shoes that Jesus gave her.

A few weeks ago, I had to have some medical stuff done and when I got the doctor and hospital bill it was almost $4,000.00. When I went for my follow up, Keith was with me and he talked to the doctor and showed him the bill (the Dr. bill alone was almost $2,500.00). Keith said he didn't want to take advantage of him in any way, but if he felt like he could reduce it any, we would greatly appreciate it. My doctor was shocked that it was that much, he said he never looks at the bills. He promised that he would look into it and if he could reduce it, he would. Last week, the nurse manager called me and said that my doctor had talked to her and at first he said, "Just see what an insurance company would have paid us and charge them that amount." Then he stopped and said, "No, wait, just charge them $250.00 and I'll pay for the rest." I don't need to tell you, I was speechless!! That was an almost 90% reduction!!! I told her I didn't know what to say. She said, "you just have an extra special doctor."

I gathered the kids up and we prayed right then and thanked the Lord for answering our prayer and prayed that God would bless my doctor.

He really is a great man and doctor. By far the best doctor I have ever had, who loves families and has a nice family of his own. He always asks about Kristyn and Owen if they're not with me. We have truely been blessed by him.

I don't see how people make it in life without God. Why wouldn't you want to serve God? He is for sure our everything and I can't thank Him enough for all of His blessings in our life!!!

I'd love to hear your answers to prayer, if you care to share. :)

(I think I'm on the border of having a wordy blog. :/ )

Thanks for stopping by!!!

Happy Birthday, Dad!!

I know every girl thinks they have the best dad in the world, but I am most certain that I really do, have the absolute, best dad in the entire universe!!! :)

He loves his family and more than anything else, wants them all to go to Heaven. He takes time for ALL of us and is never too busy to lend a listen ear, a word of advise when asked for it, always ready with a word of encouragement and a hand for playing catch with the little ones...or big one's, too for that matter. :)

All the grandkids like him to read to them. It will forever be etched in my memory hearing my dad read from the Bible every night before we went to bed, when we were all growing up....what a beautiful sound!!

He's always happy to welcome new little ones into his "ever growing" family. He has 3 kids and 9 grandkids (all 5 yrs and under) and one beautiful wife.

He LOVES to have any of us sing, or participate in church service when we are there visiting. Doesn't he look like one proud Grandpa??

He has a great sense of humor and doesn't mind slipping it in, every chance he gets. :)

Most importantly, he is a Godly man! He has set an example that we are proud to follow. I often remember his words that I would hear every day when he was praying for us kids growing up. I never want to forget those words and now I pray the same prayer for my children.

I feel very blessed today to have such a great dad, who has loved me, supported me, encouraged me and loved Keith just the same as me.

We love you, Dad! Happy Birthday!!!

Pumpkins...

First of all, does anyone know how to get this little blue box off of my posts and still have the background......ugh....it's driving me batty. :/

Okay, on with the post....

Kristyn has been asking if we could get a pumpkin to eat for a while now. So the other day, I let her and Owen pick out a pumpkin off of the "dollar" stand at the produce store and let them paint them. As you can see, they were quite proud of their pumpkins.
Kristyn said she was painting hair on her pumpkin. When I asked Owen what he was painting, he said, "A pumpkin!" (Oh, really??? I never would have guessed.)
This used to be several seperate colors. :) We'll cut up and eat the pumpkins today...yummy!!
As I've mentioned before, we have Kids Club at our church. Last week we finished our construction theme, "Build Each Other Up. We had a great time and the kids enjoyed it so much. Last week we had 41 community kids. Each child had a construction hat (from the party store)and that was their name tag each night. I won't bore you with all the details of each week, but I thought it was a great 6 weeks and the kids learned a lot. Next week we start "Treasures of the Nile." The white picket fence on the left is a puppet stand that 2 "school kids" would walk by each week.
Isn't this just the cutest puppet "truck"...aka recliner box from the furniture store? That's Mr. Ibeam sticking his head out. :)

Here's some pictures for Megan's Grandma's. :)



" Okay, Mom, you can leave me alone to play now."

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you have a great day!!

Who's Who...Answered! :)

I enjoyed reading all of your guesses. :) Thanks for taking time to do that. Most of you are right, the top one is Kristyn and the bottom is Megan. Papa, I guess you're the only one that didn't guess right. :( Need to come see us more often. :)

Thanks again for taking time to post your comment. I enjoyed them.



I saw these two pictures and thought I'd share with you. Can you guess which one is Kristyn and which one is Megan? :)

Family...

Since I had so many things I wanted to blog about, instead of making one GIANT blog, I made 3 seperate blogs, so scroll down and enjoy the other two blogs. :)


Isn't family great? Here's a little bit of what our family has been doing lately...actually, I'm only showing the "fun" stuff. I won't bore you with picture of washing dirty dishes, dirty diaper changings, dusting, mopping, "mommy talks" about having bad attitudes and the list goes on. Keith had off today, so we did some fun things and we all enjoyed being together.

Kristyn and Owen, aka Laura and Albert (from Little House on the Prarie) cooking their "broccoli" Kristyn told me.
We have Kids Club here at church and Heather was telling the story of the Good Samaritan, so she needed Keith to act like the man that was robbed and beaten. He did a great job!!
Our smallest angel!
We found a great park today and the kids had a grand time there.

Our oldest angel....I would say biggest, but I think Owen is as big, if not bigger than her. :)

One evening last week we went fishing. What a great time we had!!


God likes to talk to little boys, while they're fishin'......sorry, now you're going to be singing that all day. :)
Thanks for stopping by. Leave us a comment, we always like hearing from you. :)

Fall...

I'm posting these pictures for my sister and Elise, who live "way down south" and do not have the colorful world like we do this time of year! :)
The flowers have just about all given up, but there's a few hanging on and still blooming.
We found this today...a long ways from our house (thank the Lord). I think it's a hornet's nest. We had never seen one in the wild before and I certainly didn't realize they were SO BIG!!! We didn't stick around too long. :)

We had a fire the other night and couldn't resist this picture. No, she wasn't IN the fire, just beside it.

Here's your flowers, Elise! There are LOTS of them and they are very pretty!
I'm afraid this will be the last rose until Spring. :(

Can't you just smell Fall in the air?


Maybe that will make you feel better, Elise! Hope the rest of you are enjoying Fall in your own little corners of the country. :)

Thanks for stopping by!

Happy Birthday, Bethany!

Happy Birthday, Bethany!! We hope you have a great day!

(I don't know why the picture is so small....probably because I stole it from your blog, Bethany. :) )

Keith's sister, Bethany, is having a birthday tomorrow, so hop on over to her blog

and wish her a Happy Birthday!!

We love you lots and lots!!!

Happy Birthday, Mandy!

Happy Birthday, Mandy!!! We hope you have a wonderful day!!!!

We love you LOTS and LOTS!!

Since she doesn't have a blog (A-hem, hint, hint) you can leave your comment here, because I know she reads them and that would make her day. :)

An Update...

Not a lot has been happening here. Just normal "Mommy stuff", but I thought I'd give a little update for my family that likes to "see" how everyone's doing. :)

Kristyn loves to have tea parties, so we had a tea party while Owen and Megan were napping. Mom, the blue is the new set of dishes you sent me for my birthday. :) We like to mix them up to make them more colorful. :)




Another great tea party, tucked into our memory box. :)

We've had an abundance of apples this year.

After canning apple pie filling the other day, I had a tiny bit left in the pan, so Kristyn asked if she could make a pie for Daddy. I made up some dough and she dumped in the pie filling and plopped it in the oven. She was quite proud of her accomplishment and Daddy thought it was yummy, too.
Here's my apple pie filling and more jars waiting to be filled. Today it's going to be apple sauce and apple rings. Hopefully, by the time I get all those done, we'll be out of apples. :)
Our newest little kitchen helper!

Hope everyone's having a great day. Thanks for checking in on us. :)