New Territory

Mara: Mom, can you buy me some perfume?

Me: Why do you want perfume?

Her: Because perfume makes boys come around you.

Me: (After choking on my coffee.) Do you want boys to come around you?

Her: Yes.

Me: Why?

Her: So I can get a boyfriend.

Me: (After being revived from cardiac arrest.) Why do you want a boyfriend?

Her: So we can fall in love, get married, and have kids. I want to manage my own family when I grow up. (She really used those words.)

Oh. Sweet. Mercy.

I do believe I have a tween on my hands. That makes my blood pressure go up, my palms sweaty, and my prayer life more active than ever before.

I want so desperately to teach her that beauty comes from inside, and that nothing is more beautiful than a girl running after God with everything she is. And the world will contradict both of those definitions of beauty.

Lord, help me protect, teach, love, discipline, and raise up these young women. I'm feeling overwhelmed right now and honestly down right scared. Lord, thank you for loving my girls more than I do. Please protect and raise up Godly husbands for each of them.

Mercy, I need some more coffee!

What we've been up to...in pictures. Part 2

The first part of 2011 is mostly a blur of sleepless nights and falling more in love with this little booger during every one of those sleepless nights.
Emily Elizabeth turned 6.
Celebrating Em's birthday at the pottery place.
Easter egg hunt at Nana and Papa's.
One of Mara Lin's writings was published in a county wide publication.
And she got to read her story for the whole school at arts night.
We dedicated Ruthie Carolyn.
The cicadas invaded.
We celebrated our family's 10th birthday (our anniversary).
Becca Sue graduated preschool and is Kindergarten bound. *sniff sniff*
I completed my first 5K!
Becca and Mara performed their ballet recital.

My three big girls (the original Three Girl Circus!) with Mrs. Sharon, their ballet teacher.
Vacationed on the beaches of Saint George Island.
The boy turned 2.
Oh what a mess he is!
Whew, and now I'm caught up. So much is happening in the next month, it makes my head spin. On the to do list is to blog while the memories are fresh though.

What we've been up to...in pictures.

Looking back now, I can see why the last year has flown by....we were a little busy!

Rewind nine months with me, will you?

Here are my four (number 5 was still cooking) at the pumpkin patch the first weekend it was open.
Trick or treating with friends.
We joined a new church and are enjoying getting to know some new friends, some old friends better, and learning lots about how to be the body of Christ. Here's Emily at the Sending Kids Jr. event where families did mission projects together around Smyrna.
We dedicated Samuel John.
I had lots of help cooking for Thanksgiving.
Ruthie Carolyn made my blog name obsolete on December 13th.
But we are all so in love with her that all is forgiven!
I just had to include this random next picture. This is Ruthie and I heading home from the hospital. The nurse carrying her is one of my clarinet students from 1998...small world!
Ruthie and I got home on Mara Lin's 7th birthday.

Celebrating my big girl's birthday at Build-a-Bear.
And five gorgeous boogers on Christmas Eve.
So that catches me up to 2011. Up next is what we've been up to this year so far!

Eight Months

Has it really been that long since I've blogged? Wow whee, where does time go?

This is my attempt at getting back in it....not that I have any readers left anyway! I just spent the last two hours reading old blog posts and I'm sad that I don't have memories from the last eight months written down while they were still fresh. I'm going to do my best to fix that.

I'm planning two or three big "what have we been doing" posts to catch up on the last eight months, and then my goal is to post once a week. And I guess I need to start with a new header and probably a new blog name since Miss Ruthie has made this house a four girl circus...and the little monkey is not so little but still very much a monkey!

I've missed my little space here in the blogosphere and can't wait to get back!