Please Pray

Our son and several co-workers left Dallas for New York City early this morning. Several hours into the trip, a car spun out of control on the highway and struck the car Michael was in. Both cars were totaled, and Michael was injured. After a stay in the hospital and several tests, it was confirmed that Michael has multiple fractures in his nose. His face is too swollen to really assess what needs to be done, so setting his nose or surgery will have to wait for a few days.

I am so thankful that no one else was injured! Michael has precious co-workers who called us, stayed with him at the hospital, checked on insurance, and even started tracking down doctors in New York for Michael to see next week. Michael decided that he could take his pain medications, sleep in the "new" rental car and use a New York doctor, so he is back on the road to New York. He is a trooper!

Please pray for the swelling in his face to go down, for no pain, and for a loving and competent doctor in New York City. I know that God protected Michael and all who were with him this morning, and I am more than thankful.

Moving On

Our oldest son, Michael, received a fabulous job offer last week to move to New York City for several months. He is leaving Wednesday, so we made a fast trip to Dallas this weekend to see our boys before Michael officially becomes a "yankee." My mommy's heart is proud of him, but so sad to see him go .

I woke up in the middle of the night last week and panicked because he didn't have a wool overcoat to wear during the bitter New York winter. We spent part of the weekend looking for the perfect coat to keep him warm and me happy. He is selling his car, packing up his things, and making a great career move. I am praying hard that he will be Texas bound again in the months to come.

I have shed a few tears, and know I will probably shed a few more. One of the hardest parts of parenting is releasing your adult children to pursue whatever destiny God has placed before them. Thankfully, Michael is a wonderful man, and I can trust him to make great choices wherever he goes.

Here are a few pictures of our sweet weekend, and I will post more in a couple days.

Getting Ready for Spring!

We tried gardening for the first time last year and loved our small and fairly unproductive attempt. We moved in October to a smaller house with a much larger yard and love knowing we now have the space to really grow a lot of our own food. We have made grand plans all winter to build square foot garden beds, and this weekend Randy and Mason got 8 of them built!

I ordered our heirloom seeds months ago, and we have had so much fun this week looking at them and drawing our planting plans. Something else we love is our little pot maker from Lehman Brothers. You use strips of newspaper, wrap them around the pot maker and then push them into the molded base. Voila! you have a small pot for your plants that need to be started indoors. You keep the seedlings in this paper pot when you transplant them in your garden. The fun part is that the little ones can make the pots without any help.

Next we will buy the vermiculite, compost and peat moss for the beds and then put the lattice strips across the tops of the boxes to make it an official square foot garden. We are still several weeks away from our last frost, but it is already time to start some of the seeds indoors. Spring is really not that far away!

Madelyn is much better and slept all night last night. I am so thankful that she just had a little cold and not the other yucky stuff going around. She is such a precious sweetie :)

Someone Has a Cold :(

My sweet little Madelyn has a cold and feels so yucky. The only good thing is that she loves to snuggle with her mommy when she doesn't feel well. I'm off to snuggle and make some chicken noodle soup.

An Early Valentine

Today we celebrated Valentine's Day with our homeschool coop at an indoor playground. The little ones and I have spent the last 2 days buying valentines cards, writing names on cards, putting stickers on cards, talking about cards, making a bag to put the cards in...... :) The big party was today, and now I am pooped!

We are renting a movie tonight (unheard of on a Thursday!), and I am going to sit and knit until I fall asleep on the couch. I love fun days like today. Watching Mason and the girls open each little card, listening to Molly read Madelyn's cards for her, and seeing again how much they love each other makes my mommy heart very happy.

Have a sweet Valentine's Day friends.

Hey!!!! I just realized this is my 200th post! I need to eat some chocolate and celebrate!

A Super Hero Kind of Day

I have resigned myself to the fact that this week is going to be "action-packed." Dentist appointments, extra church activities, dinners and more are throwing our fairly simple life into overdrive. As long as there is an end in sight, I can handle a few chaotic days :)

This morning I was rushing around trying to get my early morning walk, quiet time, breakfast, showers, housecleaning, floor mopping, etc. done before we left for Madelyn's latest dentist appointment across town. Just as I finished mopping the last floor, Molly came running through the house screaming that Scruffy (the world's most mischievious dog!) was caught on the garden's chain link gate. He tried (again) to get under the gate so that he could visit the dog next door. This time he got his collar caught on a ragged edge of the gate and was choking. We all rushed out into the muddy yard and finally got him untangled. He is fine, but I can't say the same for my newly mopped floors. Scruffy managed to track mud back into every room before I was able to catch him and wash his little doggie feet. It's a good thing that he is such a cutie!

Tonight the girls dressed up in their finest princess attire and Mason donned his fabulous Spiderman outfit. They played "the 2 princesses and the super hero" until bedtime. How I love watching them play together. I am simply overwhelmed when I think of how blessed our family is to have three precious China sweeties.

So today we had Molly, the dog-saving superhero; Madelyn, the very brave-at-the-dentist superhero; and Mason, the cutest 7 year boy in the world superhero. Not bad for a crazy Monday!

Chickenfoot!

One of our favorite family games is a domino game called Chickenfoot. Mason wins almost every time, much to Molly's chagrin (notice the "poor loser" picture!). I have stopped trying to let that boy win - he does just fine on his own :)

I finally finished my first shawl and it is ready to be delivered to a friend who had a tragic miscarriage 2 weeks ago. I want to start a prayer shawl ministry at our small church, but I think I need a knitting machine. I tried the cheaper one at JoAnns - what a sad disappointment :( It was broken when I bought it, and the plastic pieces were very flimsy. I got it to work for about 20 minutes - long enough to know that a good knitting machine would make our ministry dream a reality. If any of you have a good knitting machine just sitting around somewhere and would like a great tax deduction......:0)

We are driving to a nearby museum tomorrow to see dinosaurs! Our precious Michael has taken Mason, Molly and Madelyn to this museum more times that he probably wants to remember :) Michael, Matt and Missy are wonderful and give their time so unselfishly to the little ones. I wonder if Mason, Molly and Madelyn even know how blessed they are to have such sweet big brothers and big sister.

I am looking forward to having Randy home this weekend! He works 60-80 hour weeks during January every year on year-end accounting "stuff." We are spoiled during the rest of the year and love having him home again. He is such a great husband and dad.

Have a restful weekend sweet friends!