Disneyland!

**Warning - - this post is going to have a LOT of pictures!!**

So, we made it through tax season - praise the Lord!  :)  We celebrated by taking a mini family vacation to the Happiest Place on Earth.  And it was!

Wednesday morning we woke up bright and early, and drove to Disneyland.  We stayed there alll day (visited California Adventure a little bit that evening).  The next day we spent more time at California Adventure, but also visited Disneyland in the morning and late afternoon to go on Samuel's favorite ride again, and do a couple other new rides.  Friday morning we enjoyed a very nice breakfast with Mickey, Minnie, Daisy, Pluto & Stitch.  :)  Sooo fun!

Okay - here we go!  (You've been warned...)

Samuel ready for his 1st ride of the trip - Peter Pan!  

What a surprise it was to meet Mickey with no line - in Toontown at Mickey's house!

Sammy loved riding what he calls the "crazy car ride."  

Me and my handsome baby boy - love his mickey shirt!  

Even though Cars land wasn't open yet, we still got to see Lightning & Mater.  Micah was mesmorized.  :)  

Love my 2 boys 

Micah & my sweet husband... love this photo!  Both boys really enjoyed the train ride around Disneyland.

And believe it or not, THIS was Samuel's favorite ride!  He rode it 4 times!  

 Thursday night we met up with our friends and enjoyed dinner at Rainforest Cafe.  The kids were having so much fun!  

 Breakfast with Mickey - Surfs up!  

 Sammy was enamored with Minnie...

 ...and a little unsure about Stitch at first.  But eventually warmed up and played the bongo drums with him.  

 This was by far Sam's favorite part about the breakfast...  Brumming (sp?) cars with Mickey.  They raced cars along the floor....  Sam says his car won.  :)  

Okay - that's it for now - until next time!  

My purse

At naptime today, I was hunting through my purse for my cell phone.  My purse isn't that big, mind you.  But, it still took me a while to find it (which seems to happen all the time!).  That's when it crossed my mind that I probably ought to clean out my purse.

As I was pulling out the many items that I had just tossed in there and forgot about over the past days & weeks, I thought of how any random person looking at all this stuff could totally tell that I was a Mom.  :)

Here's what I found in there, in order of pulling it out:

a nail file

cell phone (found it!)

wallet

keys

pair of Micah's shoes

one napkin

a church bulletin

desitin

a paci

2 hair clips

necklace

a sunglasses case (without the sunglasses)

checkbook

three clipped coupons

3 pouches of antibiotic ointment

a baby toy

an expired Michaels coupon

2 receipts

a small handful of stale and/or crushed up puffs & cheerios

three cute zippered pouches (a gift from my sister-in-law) each containing a whole other long list of items, which I won't get into)

Isn't that fun?  Now go and clean your purses, ladies!  :)  

To tide you over...

Here are a 2 photos and 1 video to tide you over until the next post... enjoy!  :)  

got milk?

mid-laugh!

2 minutes of Micah standing, talking, crawling, playing with trucks, and being so adorable! :) 

Joyful

 I love this verse I came across the other day in Psalms... actually, its just a snippet of a verse:

"...like a joyful mother of children."
Psalm 113:9b

I love that God uses the word JOYFUL as a description of a mother of children.

So for the past few days, I've been looking at these precious moments with my kids through joyful eyes; the way the Bible declares a mother of children ought to, and it has truly been so precious.

What is this cause for joy, you ask?

 Well, this is what I saw when I walked into Micah's room yesterday morning.... (at 9am when he woke up... yes, 9am everyone!  Micah is our little sleeper.)

For the first real time, Micah pulled up all on his own from a lying down position.  (He has been pulling up tons recently, but this was the first time I came in to get him the morning and was greeted this way... all previous times he was still lying down and waiting for me.)

And that's how it is every time Micah goes in his crib... Micah LOVES his new trick.  He thinks it is a game... A game that goes like this: He's super tired, so I lay him down for nap or bedtime.  He kinda smiles and does a tiny laugh, and rolls to his side... then to his tummy... then pushes up on all fours, crawls to the edge of the crib and pulls up.  If I'm still in there, I'll lay him down again... but if I'm not, he'll start bouncing, looking around, playing, and toss his pacis all over the floor.  And then finally start crying for me because he's so tired...  but is that the end of the game?  Of course not!  No, he will play this game with me for about 30 minutes or so, until he is SO tired, that he'll give in to just lying in his crib and fall asleep.  

But it's cute...  :)  And deep down it brings me joy.  

And so does this...  

and this...

 and this.  :)  

Happy Easter!

This year we had lots of fun celebrating Easter and the fact that our Lord is risen!  

On Friday night, we made "Resurrection Cookies" for the first time.  There are just a handful of ingredients, and each one represents an aspect of the story of Christ's death and resurrection.  Here, Samuel is beating the pecans, just like Jesus was beaten by the Roman soldiers after he was arrested.  

We also added salt (representing the salty tears shed by Jesus' followers), vinegar (what Jesus was given to drink on the cross), egg whites (representing life; that Jesus gave his life to give us life), and sugar (the sweet love Jesus has for us) to the mixing bowl, then after putting them in the oven Samuel used tape to "seal" the tomb, and we waited until morning.  

In the morning, he was happy to find his cookies were as hard as stone, just like the stone tomb Jesus was buried in.  When we opened the tomb (took a bite) we saw that the tomb (cookie) was empty!!!  Jesus has risen!  :)  

Saturday morning we met up with the Whites for an Easter Egg hunt.  Here are me & two of my beautiful sisters waiting in the long line before the hunt began.  :)  

All 6 cousins made it to the hunt this year!  :)  

Micah was up first... he found quite a lot of eggs (thanks big brother!) and seemed to really enjoy how they tasted...  

Samuel was so patient waiting in front of the sea of eggs, waiting for his turn to hunt!  

Samuel & Leia were thrilled with their basketfulls of eggs!  

Then we made it up to the Davidson's for Easter Sunday.  The night before Sammy had fun setting out carrots for the Easter Bunny...

And couldn't wait to find his Easter Basket(s!) the next morning!  

I love this photo of both boys discovering some fun goodies in their baskets.  

Our family of four on Easter morning.  Happy Easter!  

And one little shot of our crawling babe.  Such a cutie!  

Good Friday

This week Samuel & I had some fun decorating Easter eggs...  we had this egg coloring kit with stickers, outfits and  hats to decorate eggs (as seen below), but I got this wonderful idea from a friends blog to go a bit further with egg decorating, and incorporate a (very simple) gospel message with the different colored eggs.  

As Samuel had fun painting, coloring, adding glitter and sequins to the eggs, I explained to him what each color represented...  and then afterwards, I got the camera out and filmed him as he in turn explained it back to me (with my help of course).  Being a three year old, he really only remembered one or two words about each egg, but I was super proud of him because he did remember!  I love all the opportunities God allows me to teach our son about Jesus, His wonderful love, and about how this Easter we remember His death and celebrate His resurrection.  Praise be to God!  :)   

My precious boy... (I find him looking more & more grown up each day)  

 The final project...  

And the video... 

(we kinda had to rush through this version... the baby woke up was crying in the background!)

Butterflies!

Last week we were so happy to join Aunt Mindy & cousin Laylie for a day at the Wild Animal Park.  The highlight of the day for me was seeing all the beautiful butterflies on exhibit!  Sammy & Laylie were really excited too, and were hoping that the butterflies would land on them.  :)  We saw some of the most gorgeous butterflies we've ever seen, and there were so many of them - too many to count!  I don't think our little ones were able to hold still long enough to have a butterfly land on them, but they came pretty close!  

 On the way back to the car, we spotted a camel on display...  what a fun treat!  

Thanks Mindy & Laylie for inviting us to come along!  :)