The best years!

I used to think that my 20's were supposed to be the best years, but my 30's are by far the best ever!
In fact, 33-35 were incredible, holy, and life-giving in countless ways. I am hoping for even more fun, more peace, more trust in God's will for my life and my family in the next year ahead!
Today as I am preparing dinner, talking with my husband, and carrying around a precious boy on my ankle I knew that I needed nothing else in my life, God and my family are more than enough! So very grateful to be at a stage where another birthday does not sting my heart but I can look both ahead and behind and be thankful for all the time our good and gracious God is giving me!

By the way, Joseph brought me my early birthday card tonight and it was the best feeling in the world to hold him tight and know that this is the life I always prayed for and these are the moments that my makes my heart overflow with gratefulness!




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Going private.

I have been having it in my heart for a few months now that my blog needs to be private. I really like being publicly around for certain reasons, but currently don't feel free to truly share the struggles I am facing right now.
I need a place to express my feelings without the worry that it will be viewed and misunderstood by really great people.
My blog initially became a place of healing for me as I recovered from my first surgery with Dr. Hilgers as I sought others who shared the journey of infertility alongside me. My life has been changed by the very grace of community these blogs created for me!
Speaking of grace, it has only been by grace that this very humbled if blog became a mommy blog. I find that I now blog primary with the goal of making a book out of my blog so that I can share these memories with our family for many years.
So I will be transitioning my blog to private in the next week but really would like my friends to follow along. Please email me or message me on fb if you want to be added as a reader!
Thanks for stopping by ;)
I have enjoyed having you all be a part of our lives!


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Funny josephisms!!

Last Sunday when we were trying to come up with ideas for the afternoon to help Joseph burn up energy I jokingly said "let's go to chuckle cheeses!l". Jessy and I loathe that place so I was just being sarcastic to Jessy. Well Joseph apparently shares our opinion because he said "no cheese Chuck". Jessy and I are still cracking up over that one!

Joseph loves to go to church but he tells the whole congregation when he has had enough by clearly and distinctly saying "no more Jesus". He also uses that line when he doesn't want his night time prayers said with him because he would rather be reading Curious George.

He has been really loving his puppy these days. First thing the last two mornings he pops out of bed after saying "good morning mommy" and runs to get his puppy and starts to feed him the car food from the cats food bowl. The puppy is a pretend puppy and the cat food is real. So this morning I though I was a genius and gave hime two bowls to pretend with as the puppy's food bowl and water bowl. I was thinking of making a pretend type of food for the puppy but in moments he has transferred to cats food to the puppy's pretend bowl. Boy was he proud to feed the puppy!

Joseph's favorite color right now is yellow! I love that he loves to say the word yellow because it is the cutest thing ever. At one point this week it looked as though he was finally getting the idea about colors an would correctly answer us when he was asked what color something was but then he started saying everything was yellow! It is yellow, yellow, yellow folks!!



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Oh my . . .how you have grown!

The weather has been so nice the last few days, enough for Joseph and I to hang out on the porch and play with the tractors, wheelbarrows, and pretend birds.  It has been fun! 

We ended up doing a few things to make more room on the porch today and one of those things was making one side for all his toys and giving him a play area and we moved the simple chairs and bench to the other side for a sitting area.  One thing that was sentimental we removing his swing from the porch.  He hasn’t used it in a long time and he is really getting too big for it now, but it was still sad to take it down.  He was also getting too tall and would hit his head pretty often when running around out there.

But for old times sake, I put him in the swing today because once we acted like we were taking it down, of course he wanted to play in it.  When I put him in it, I got all those warm feelings in my tummy, reminding me just how joyful I was the first time I put him in the new swing his Granny and PawPaw got for him in June of 2011.  Time is moving to fast for me.  I found the pictures and it is amazing to see how much he has grown in the last 19 months!

My music man!

 

Joseph and I try to get creative everyday to find new things to help us avoid the television.  He actually asks for the tv (“we we please”)  and I do my best to limit tv time.  Yet with the cold days we have been having along with the rain that has caused some flooding, we have been stuck indoors for too long.  A really great thing though is that  he received this awesome music set from his Ancy Barbara for his birthday and gets really excited when we pull it out.

He has learned to whistle, beat the drums, and shake the maraca.

He would ask me to sing and he would play the instruments

 

I love how he has his hat on just right so that he can have some spike musician hair! 

Beat those drums, handsome boy!  All to the beat of his Momma singing “Old McDonald”.

Love my cool dude! 

Favorite books

 

Joseph has been very fond of the new book he got for Christmas from his Aunt Crystal & Uncle DJ.  Joseph adores George and at any given time will ask for “More George”.  It is a heavy book, and has close to 200 pages and it is nothing for us to read the whole book every night.  We know the stories by heart. 

Last night before bed, we just laid on my bed and looked at the pictures.  He would randomly pick a page and I would read it.  He was satisfied with that, phew. 

I love to watch his facial expressions as he looks at the pages, he is learning so much these days and growing up faster than I seem to store the memories in my heart for a lifetime.

 

He was not pleased with my little photo session, he wanted to resume reading.  Priorities

It is rare that his blue eyes show up so clearly so I am a big fan of this one that captures his little smirk and tousled hair.  I always used to think that I wanted a daughter and if one came along I would not complain, but my life is filled with boys and love every minute of it.  I find great joy in being this boy’s Momma!

 

This is his other favorite book these days.  This one was from Mitchell & Matthew and they found it for a quarter at a garage sale.  Joseph is always also asking for his “Choo Choo book”.  A few days ago he began to say “All aboard the Choo Choo”  in his own special one-of-a-kind two year old voice.  Yesterday when he got to see Thomas he kept telling me “Gordon!!  Gordon!!  Gordon!!  Gordon!!”  When I figured out what he was saying and I asked “Gordon?”  He was just so thrilled.  This whole communication this is so special to the both of us!  We are so thankful his vocabulary is growing!  Except last night when he did not get his way he said ‘Oh, man.”  A certain 16 year old taught him that one, not a big fan of it.

It's the little things

Sometimes gratefulness just overwhelms me.

Sometimes my heart remembers just how much I longed for the ordinariness of picking up after little ones, washing more cups, or even just preparing a meal for the ones I love.

Yet my heart will never forget just how watching Joseph play on the kitchen floor racing his monster trucks or Thomas trains fills my soul with more thankfulness than I ever thought possible! It just seems incredible that my life includes his life giving presence!
I just love this stage of discovery, excitement, and joy! I love having this little boy to love and I am so grateful that he returns that love to me and his Daddy!

We made it church today (all five of us at the same mass) for 7 am! Incredible, right? Well, lets see - weather was a mess last night so we lost electricity which woke Joseph us off and on from 2-3 am and then he was up for good at 4 am! Oh well, we snuggled for a long while and in an effort to preserve sanity, he got to watch his favorite p.bs show and then we got dressed and headed out! Holy mass was beautiful, Joseph was LOUD for the first 20 minutes telling us all exactly where Jesus and Mary are and that he hears the music and he danced his way through mass. Learned so much in the moments I could hear the priest, lector, and cantor!

The song "earthen vessels" ministered to my heart in such a powerful way this morning I fouled myself crying, thanking God for the gift I hold everyday - because in Joseph, Christ dwells and in everything I do for him and for the two older boys I do for Christ! My vocation was crystalized in the moment!

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Welcome Sunshine

 

We have been bombarded with lots of rain this week and today is the first day the sun has shone what seems like forever! 

So when I discovered that the temperatures were in the low 70’s I did my cooking for tonight’s supper really early while Joseph watched Brother Francis and then we high-tailed it to the park before nap time.  Oh, sunshine, how we have missed you!

Just for fun, here are some fun pictures I captured while on our adventure out of the house

Christmas Memories: My little elf

 

Living in a small house has its advantages, but preparing for Christmas is not one of them.  With three busy boys and one busy husband, I had to get creative in setting aside time to wrap presents.  I would sneak away, but this little rascal kept finding me   I tried to distract him by giving him his own wrapping (old baby shower paper) paper to wrap with it but he soon wised up to the fact that Momma was not sharing the tape!

Later on, as I was labeling the gifts with their sticky gift tags Joseph thrilled because he thought I was going to be sharing the stickers.  After failing to distract him further, I ended up writing on one and giving it to him to put on his shirt.  He did this but at some point he must have taken off his shirt (I don’t even remember this) and decided it was better on his flesh.  Silly boy!

The message on his gift tag read “To Momma & Daddy – Love God!’

Side note:  I am trying to blog these days when he settles down for naps and I am playing catch up on my posting from December and early January.

Box Time!

I have to confess, my blog has turned into my virtual scrapbook to capture the moments I want to always remember with my Joseph.  I know I lost a lot of readers and that is ok, but this is my journey right now and it is what keeps me sane (to what level of sanity, completely unsure).  I find that when I am having a really tough time, like today and last night, I find myself focusing on the positive . . .on the moments that bring me great joy. 

Like the days that followed his birthday party.  On the day of his party we received a package in this box for some new diapers I am trying with him and we made the box a boat, a train, a garden, and since his big infatuation these days is pizza (which he likes only a little) we drew lots of little pizzas on there.  Now that I am thinking about it, I was trying to teach him shapes and when I drew the circle he immediately called it a pizza!  We rarely eat pizza, but it is a treat for us and he must have loved those times.  Now when he sees anything round, he thinks about cookies   Silly boy!  He does call lots of things cookies, especially his favorite peanut butter crackers.

 

He loves to borrow my cooking utensils and so we pretended we were cooking a big bowl of soup!  I love these moments!

 

Here he is drawing his pizzas!!!

His favorite color, most days is blue!  He even has the blue crayon in his had in this picture.

“Cheeeeese Mamma”

I love his eyelashes.My sweet boy!

 

The box that saved the day