Havin' some fun on the ole' computer....take two!

Well, we had a bit of trouble because some of the applications on our mac decided to disappear, but after reinstalling the operating system, everything seems to be going smoothly. Here are some fun pics. Warning! Silliness ahead.....

Neat Author, Incredible Books

So, my husband and I were told about this very cool authoress. Her name is Karen Hancock and she has written five books so far with another in the works. I can't tell you how wonderful a writer she is, so you will just have to read her books. Her road to becoming an author is very interesting in and of itself and that story can be found on her website: www.kmhancock.com. She also has a blog here on blogspot: http://www.karenhancock.blogspot.com/. The books she has written so far are as follows: The Arena, Legends of the Guardian-King series - 1) The Light of Eidon, 2) The Shadow Within, 3) Shadow Over Kiriath and 4) Return of the Guardian-King.

She has been compared to J.R.R. Tolkien, but I think a more apt comparison would be to C. S. Lewis only even better. Seriously, I know some would consider that a form of blasphemy and all, but I challenge you to read her books and see what I mean. Sam and I both read the series first and fell in love with those books. I was so disappointed after I finished the last book, but not for the reason you might think. I wanted to still be reading the book, still be a part of the characters lives. I mean its been a couple of months since I finished and I'm telling you that I still feel that way. Amazing. To top it off it is CHRISTIAN Sci-fi/Fantasy! How cool is that? Anyway, very neat books and you should totally check them out!  I'll add a link in the my favorite books section.

Totally about our kiddos...WITH PICTURES!!

So, its getting really close to both of the boys' birthdays. I can't believe I'm going to have a four-year-old and Zekey is going to turn one! Its so amazing!!!

Braden is such a great big brother. He really does try to take care of Ezekiel. He also really does such a good job playing with him. Of course, he's still learing about what is appropriate for the age that Ezekiel is. He also has issues with sharing some times, but overall I am just so impressed with how tender and giving his little heart is toward Zekey. Its so fun watching them learn and grow. I am totally blessed to be their mom. Thank you, God!:)

Zekers is a hoot. He's constantly learning how to do something new. He's definitely my climber. No Fear! Yeah... He is such fun to watch try to figure something out. He will turn the object upside down to see how it is put together and have such a concentrated look on his face and then he'll look up and just bust out laughing, like "Isn't this the greatest thing ever?!" So funny to see. He also wants to do everything Braden does. He's already playing in the sand box, he can play Braden's recorder and I'm convinced that he already is trying to help put on his clothes. Yep, he's getting older quicker than Braden did....I don't really know if I'm okay with that yet or not. I'll have to give myself more time to think on that...hehe.

More on this subject later, OF COURSE....

Braden gets potty trained!

We are so excited!  Braden has been going tee-tee on the potty for about a year now and probably within the last two - three months no accidents of pee at night or in undies during the day.  Well, we've had a very interesting time of trying to get him to go poo on the potty.  At first, he was scared of sitting on the potty, then he got to where he would just hold it until bed time and I would get woken up by him crying because he had pooed his pullup in the middle of the night.  Well, finally we got him to go a couple of times BEFORE bed and were giving him "poo-poo" candy every time he went on the potty.  (We did the same thing with going tee-tee and slowly just phased it out.)  Well, he gave us some pretty tale-tell signs, namely lots of gas, when he had to go poo, so we just started putting him on the potty every night.  Then it was consistently every other nigth.  NOW, it has gotten even better.  He'll be playing outside and just come in and say, "I need to go poo-poo really BAD!  So.....we have our first potty-trained kiddo!  YAY!  Congratulations, Braden!!!!

Church search at an end...we found one!!

Okay, so in the past we have had trouble finding a church to get involved with when we move to a new place.   The usual protocol is to look in the yellow pages and see what's available.  A lot of times it would take us months to find a place and by then we would be getting ready to leave.  VERY frustrating!!  Well, when we moved to Oklahoma, all of that changed.  We started to really pray for a place to be prepared for us ahead of time and that it would be obvious.  Since, then, we have really been blessed! We actually ended up driving past the church that we stayed with until our departure and made some really great friends super fast that same day!  So God has made places for us so far and they haven't been hard to find.:)  In Austin, we had the same experience.  We drove past Victory Christian Center and while it wasn't exactly what we expected, God made a place for us there.  Now the same exact thing has happened again! (Don't you just love God's faithful consistency?!)  We had looked in the phone book and visited two other churches the Sundays that we were here before and were actually on our way to an Assembly of God church this particular Sunday that we ended up not being able to find.  On our way back into town, wondering where we would go, we went past a Calvary Chapel!  Yep, we are pretty familiar with Calvary Chapels.  LOVE them.  Talk about consistent!  We haven't been to one we haven't liked yet.  They weren't in the phone book because the pastor's cell phone is the church phone.  Anyway, Sam was like, "Oh yeah, we can definitely go there!" (He was very excited.  I love to see him get like that.:)) We were ten minutes late, but it was so great.  The funny thing is that a few weekends before we decided to take the motor home on a mini vacation to Florida and Alabama and wound up visiting the Calvary Chapel in Pensacola.  Such a funny "coincidence" because we came back thinking it would be so great to be able to go to Calvary Chapel.  God provides again!

I LOVE podcasts!

I'm totally diggin' being able to download all of these podcast sermons!  I've been listening to Pastor Chuck at our home church New Covenent in Longview, TX today as well as Pastor Jeff Little at Milestone in Keller, TX.  I also subscribed to Joyce Meyer's podcasts, so this is so very cool!!!!!  Here are the webpages if anyone is interested.  Just click on the media tabs.

New Covenant - http://www.nclongview.com

Milestone Church - http://www.milestonchurch.com

Joyce Meyer Ministries - http://www.joycemeyer.org

As I come across others, I will post links for those as well.  I've got a few to explore, just haven't gotten to them yet....

Another debt bites the dust!

Go, God! Go, God!  Yep, its thankful praise time again.  This is an addendum to the previous post about paying off one of our credit cards.  We were also able to pay off the medical bill we had from when Zekey was born.  It wasn't as much as most births cost, I'm guessing, but we didn't have the money in a lump sum to pay it off at the time.  We were on a payment plan for a few months (Have I mentioned that I love Scott and White? I'll have to write a post about that sometime soon.) and then God just blessed us with increase and we were able to pay that bill off and put that monthly payment amount on another bill.  Yay, God!

Havin' some fun on the ole' computer....

So, we finally got our new computer.  We've had it for a few days now and I've got to say.....I LOVE IT!!!  I know, I'm a total gadget chickie...  One of the reasons that I'm so excited is that this thing has some awesome picture editing capabilities!  Woo-hooo!!!  This is gonna be so great.  Sam and I are both learning about it because it is a mac and I haven't used one for about 10 years and he's only messed around with them on occasion.  Anyway, very exciting.  Just thought I'd let everyone know that we are hooked on mac.  I mean this thing talks to me.  I have it tell me the time in a very funny voice.  Also, it will tell you a joke.  I'm not kidding!  Now of course the speech command program seems to like Sam's voice better than mine, but I'm gonna work with it and maybe we can be friends. :)  We'll see.  More later on the wonders of the imac....

Link to a very special family

You should totally go and check them out.  www.ebersoleonline.com     Especially anyone who is interested in becoming a missionary!

Yep, Its been a while....

Well, I know its been quite a while. Yeah, I have no good excuse, just life has happened. I'm gonna try to catch up as quickly as I can, but it may take a few posts. The good news is that we are getting a new computer, so pictures will definitely be in this blog's future. Yay!! For now the basics: we are now in Meridian, Mississippi. We've been here for almost two months. Its so funny, it feels longer than that. We are living in a nice rv park. There are lots of people here right now which I'm told by the owners is unusual. Lots of pipeline work being done, so lots of pipe liners here. Anyway, we don't know yet how much longer we are going to be here and we have no idea where we will go after this. Please pray for us to be content with where God has us. At times this can be a very frustrating way of life, but for the most part its pretty fun. We get to go different places several times a year and get to meet lots of very interesting people. Also, we need prayer for pouring into the hearts of whoever we happen to meet. Right now I have realized I have a very cool ministry with the kids in this rv park. It took me a while to realize this, but with the help of my close friend Jennifer (She's also my sister-in-love...how awesome is that?), I've gotten to be pretty involved with introducing these kiddos to God and also introducing His ways to them. Very fun to watch unfold. Anyway, there are some other neat things going on, but I'll have to post about them later. Gotta go do Mommy stuff now.:)