Just Some Pictures

I know some of these are several months old--But I just found some cute pictures and had to share.

Fell asleep in the bay window

This bike is 17 years old!  and been through 5+ kiddos.  

Waiting for the tow man aka Dad

Dirty Chocolate ice cream face

Hmmm..I wonder what D will look like when he is 30? 

Stress Free?

I've been slightly stressed lately.  

For many, many reasons.  

Change.  Little Ones.  School.  Work.  Finances. 

Orphans.  Our World.

I've felt like with our change in schedule and uncertainty about 

work and school we're having a hard time with routine.  

It's driving me nuts.  I like my days in order. 

I like being mostly in control of what's happening for the day.  

There are many things at our home that I am very specific about and when it doesn't happen how I imagine, it stresses me out! 

Bedtimes.  I don't care what time our boys wake up, but I NEED my boys in bed at a decent hour for my sanity.  

The second thing would be dinner as a family at a set time.  It's part of the greatest time of our day together.  We get in a lot of conversation, our boys love us being all together (at their young age, I can already tell how significant this is to them) 

SO...at times when I start getting stressed here's my options...

Lock myself in the bedroom with ice cream. Psh..That's not nearly good enough!

Lock myself in my closet and call a girlfriend.  Usually pretty great idea.

Take a hot bath and pray.  Excellent...

Go for a run and pray.  More like..walk really, really fast.

Grab one of my boys and snuggle them close.  Soothing.

Curl up in my bed and get into the Word.  Best one yet.

I'm always left in awe when I read my Bible.  Truly, being one who had no relationship with Christ until my late 20's, I am always astonished when I open my Bible and the words speak straight to my heart.  There are times I get so drawn in, I could sit for hours if my day allowed.  I sometimes think "If I knew THIS, THEN...my choices would have been different"  But guess what, my salvation was no mistake, my salvation (just like yours) was predestined before I was born.  It's so hard to wrap my mind around that.
I was chosen to come to know the Lord at the specific time I did.
What a beautiful thing!

It's amazing how a little stress and a little anxiety can be turned around for GOOD.  It keeps me scrambling for my Bible.  Needing more.  Dependent on my Savior.  Because while I sit and stress and get worked up over something, I don't have the answer,  He does.
It's difficult sometimes to continue trusting and keep wondering, especially when I don't get the answers I want.  It's incredibly difficult being patient.  But while I'm waiting, I will trust in Him.

It's not up to my nosy, inpatient, worrying self to figure out, it's just up to me to walk according to His way.

Click Here. And Here. And Dwell on this.

This is just prompted, from my heart to share this blog.  I know this is already on my sidebar, but this lovely woman writes the most moving posts of all time.  More often then not, they bring me to tears of sadness of how this is happening around our world.

She wrote this post two years ago...Seriously, please get onto her blog and read if not the two links above, any of her posts.  

These children need our help, our voice, our prayers as much as we need our next breath.  This is not RIGHT.  I don't know how anyone could have their eyes opened to this and have it not affect them.

We need to rise up and dwell on this... 

What's keeping YOU from James 1:27?
"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."  


Reece's Rainbow   

My heart jumped.

Russia.  

Russia has been on my heart.  I pray for the children in Russia (and all orphan's world wide) But, Russia holds incredible significance to me right now.  

Guess what happened today when I logged onto Google... 

I recognized this picture.  My 3 and 4 year old boys also know this picture and it's symbol in our family.  

Saint Basil's Cathedral in Moscow, Russia. 

450th Anniversary today.  That's why it is on google.

But, the reason it makes my heart jump...I will share someday.soon.

::Living in Despair::

I feel like I am going to start sounding like a broken record here.

"Lord, help these babies"

"Lord, bring them mommies and daddies"
"Lord, comfort and protect these children"
"Lord, come quickly" 

I am having a hard time displaying my passion for these innocent, precious children and babies.  It's no secret I have a hard time expressing myself, but as I am trying to find the words to describe what these stories, pictures and testimonies do to my heart all I can say is...

Soul Wrenching.

Heart Aching.

"Once our eyes are opened, we can not pretend we don't know what to do.  God who weighs our hearts and keeps our souls, knows what we know, and holds us responsible to act." Proverbs 24:12 

Today, all I can do is pray.  Knees to the ground, face turned up, intentional prayer.  The other thing I can do today is speak up for these babies and share some truth with you all about their reality.  Their reality. See, it is so easy to be consumed in our daily lives and wrapped up in a comfy house, nice vehicles, new clothes, spoiling our children with toys, a week long vacation, the ultra cable package with hundreds of channels, eating out every week, or one I am particularly guilty of-because I'm obsessed with this, new sheets and duvet covers every couple months. (Nothing against you, if you have all these things and you are able to enjoy all of this, I am simply speaking about me and how I feel right now)  With that being said none of those things matter to me right now.  I've felt this way for a while now-  That I would happily give up nearly all of of my luxuries for these hurting, helpless children.  Live on less.  It is my desire to live on less and sacrifice some comforts, in order to give to these children in need.  It is important to me (and husb.) that we teach our children that their are other's in deep need and that they can go without a new toy.

It wasn't until recently that I've learned the desperate needs of these orphans.  Early this year I found Reece's Rainbow through some friends in our community who were adopting three children from Ukraine.  I was so touched by their adoption and their obedience to the Lord by caring for these orphans.  I started following other families adopting from Reece's Rainbow, I started praying for these children.  I will never forget the day when one specific child I had been praying for was moved to the "My family found me" page on Reece's Rainbow.  I was overjoyed! to see prayers answered.  After much reading and Youtubing institutions in Russia.  The stories are all shockingly similar.

"5 years old, weighing 11 pounds"      

"We were told he would amount to nothing" 

"3 years old, weighing 11 pounds" 

"Left in his crib all day with no touch, affection, love, praise" 

"Being transferred to the institution" (at 4 years old. without any hope of ever having a family)

"MRI shows her brain shrunk due to malnutrition" 

and over. and over. and over. again. 

These children need our prayers.  Not only yours and mine.  Entire churches.  Entire communities.  

And just how my eyes have been opened, my heart is being compelled, my voice is starting to speak up.  I pray this happens in you too.  

This is the story of Carrington.  Her family brought her home not long ago at 3 years old and took her straight to the ER.  She weighed  11 pounds. (That is like, what my son's weighed at their 1 month appointments)   On their blog you will find another story of sweet Victoria who just got home to the states and is battling for her life also.  I want to share this harsh reality with you because it is truly hard to imagine and hard to believe there are children in these conditions thousands of times more then I ever knew.   

One more note before I sign off of here-  I stumbled across this video that has been weighing my heart and mind.  

Here.

"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."  James 1:27

Why?  Why does this video weigh me down?  Because...I have been convicted.  I have been made aware of a desperate need in this world and I don't do all I can to care for these children.  This video speaks to me, (and husby too) because our hearts are being compelled by the Lord to act.  speak up.  give.  and pray.  

I know I just threw a whole lot out there.  My thoughts are sometimes not the most organized and I will mention again on this blog, I am not much of a writer.   Hopefully this blogging stuff will get easier with time.  

I beg you all to at the least, join me in prayer.  

::One Tough Toddler::

This is Hudsenn.  

Please disregard the mess in the back.  It's our toy room.  It's overrun by three crazy boys.  It's almost always a mess.  

Here is Hudsenn's boo boo from 3 weeks ago. (on his hand)

He fell.  On our porch.  Hit a metal brace.  Equaled hours in the ER with a traumatic ending resulting in stitches.  

This was our first visit to the ER between our three little guys.  

Well, let me explain something about Hudsy before I show the next pictures.  

He is w.i.l.d  

He likes to jump off beds.

He likes to climb to the top of the table.  the couch.  the entertainment center.  

He likes to balance on things like laundry baskets, an entire pile of pillows, weird things that look "risky" (like a large toy or a tricycle seat) 

Oh, he likes to stand at the foot of the bed on the foot board and free fall backward.  

He likes to hang on the rope @ the top of the rock wall on the play ground (which is about a 10ft drop) 

Did I mention, He is not two, yet.

So, my point about prefacing what this little, busy, fearless, nearly two year boy of mine is like is...

He has a lot of opportunities to get injured.  

Instead, these two trips to ER were both results of unfortunate balance and both while I was standing less then a foot away from him.  So before you go calling CPS on me, take that into account :) 

I did tell my husband before leaving for the second ER visit in 3 weeks.."They are going to turn me into CPS, I was just there with this boy"  Haha.

So.  He fell into the coffee table.  Here's the second boo boo...

Here we are @ ER waiting to be seen...

(Good thing I bought that wrap stuff for his hand recently-Otherwise he would have been a mess traveling to hosp.) 

I begged the ER doctor to glue it closed this time.  The stitches experience was horrific and the ER doc looked at me all crazy and exclaimed-- "It needs staples" 

UH! STAPLES! Ohh...that made my stomach turn. 

No numbing medicine.  Just staples...

Thankfully, we made it in and out of ER so quick.  Staples were so easy.  And we were able to get out P.A. (a bad part of town where the hospital is) before dark AND we made it 7pm praise and worship @ church!  

(All of which I prayed about on my way to the hospital.  Praise God for prayers answered) 

Here's crazy little man (standing on a chair, of course) and acting like staples ain't no-thang.

Oh, did I mention...we had the same nurse.  She was probably fearful to send my son back home with me.  

::Cheated of Childhood::

*This post contains some raw emotion and painful to watch video.  This is not an easy post for me to write about.*

I am sitting here tonight, with husb.  We've had a pretty good day.  We have spent the day as a family, cleaned in our garage, got out more paint supplies to paint the toy room, played a lot with our boys.  Pretty nice day.  Our life is good.  We are pretty darn blessed.

We had a few blogs in mind that we wanted to catch up on and read together, so we hop on here.  One of the blogs I pull up has a photo of this darling, precious, mother and fatherless, fearfully and wonderfully made Princess, Michelle.

She is 4 years old.  She is partially blind, has cerebral palsy and living in a Russian institution.  For the rest of her life.  {my heart.  is.  breaking}  This means Michelle and millions of other children living in institutions, are bedridden.  malnourished.  neglected. confined.  no affection.  no one to touch, hold, love on them.  No one who kisses them or hugs them.  And no one who teaches them about Jesus.  

Ever since I had found Reece's Rainbow website, Michelle caught my eye.  I love her.   Tonight when I read she has been transferred, I burst into tears, my heart just aching and told husb. "I can not let her live in an institution" 

For those of you who know me, children are my heart's desire.  I played babies until I was 12 (or older), I "just wanted to be a mom" from as young as I could remember.  Seeing these helpless babies, children and teens literally makes my stomach sick, my heart ache, and my eyes cry.  Here is a video of an orphanage life in Russia.  This is not an institution.  I will spare you the traumatic images of an institution life, tonight.  Some 170 Million children cheated of their childhood.  It gives me goosebumps.  

Pleas join me in deliberate and persistent Prayer for these angel children who deserve every ounce of life in a family.  

"I will not leave you as orphans I will come to you" John 14:18