The Power of "Praise Baby"

The kids are great travelers, but on our drive to Michigan Trace began crying because he wanted out of his car seat. I remembered that the girls used to love watching "Praise Baby" DVDs so I decided to let Trace watch one to try to console him. The result was amazing. He INSTANTLY stopped crying and began watching the DVD. He is much too little to enjoy other kids DVDs, which the girls had already been watching in the car. However, the instant he saw the "Praise Baby" DVD he began watching it. It was awesome!

FYI: "Praise Baby" is a series of DVDs made for babies. The videos have lots of babies in them and real objects that kids like such as balls, bubbles, animals, etc. The videos are set to contemporary christian praise songs, making it pleasant for parents to listen to as well. I love these DVDs!

Happy Valentine's Day 2010

I woke up this morning without a voice. Trevor seemed to think that was a good Valentine's Day gift. Isn't he sweet????

Murder Mystery Dinner

Tonight Trevor and I went to a murder mystery dinner at a bed and breakfast with Bob and Becki, Sam and Mike, and our friends & neighbors, Josh and Karen. We had a fun night. The B & B was a beautiful victorian home built in the 1890's by a wealthy business man. We got a tour of the house by our host, Greg who used the word "whatnot" at least 2-4x per story. We got some good laughs out of that and whatnot...

We had some appetizers, got our costumes, our characters, and then the fun began with dinner and trying to figure out who the murderer was. Mike ended up being, Benjamin, the man that was killed. Becki was his wife of 1 month, who was with him at the time of his death. Benjamin was a man with many enemies. He died from a gun shot wound to his chest and was also hit by a car at 11 pm on his way to mail invitations with his wife. Sam was his mother-in-law. I was the wife's best friend and maid-of-honor, Becki. I was also a beauty queen, the winner of several pork contents. Karen was a publicist. Josh and Trevor took turns being interrogators. Bob enjoyed watching us all. In the end, Sam was the shooter, along with another man named, Bob Hope who ran him down with his car. It was a fun evening and the food was yummy too, especially the turtle cheesecake!

"Mom, I have a question..."

Notice the red princess wrapping paper sticking up...

Kaylee: "Mom, I have a question".

Me: "Okay, what?"

Kaylee: "I was looking in the closet in the guest room and found some wrapping paper. It was the same paper that Santa used to wrap my Ariel doll for Christmas. Did Santa really give me the Ariel doll or did you?"

Me: Speechless for awhile (deep in thought)...

Me: "You're funny Kaylee. That is a good question for Daddy when he gets home from work."

Daddy later solved the dilemma by telling her that Santa probably either had the same wrapping paper as us or borrowed ours while he was here...

I'm so not good under pressure...

Hello???

I am convinced that Trace has said his first word, "Hello". Trace is a serious walker these days. He especially enjoys getting objects (any object) in his hands and walking with them all over the house. One of his favorite toys seems to be the telephone. He puts it up to his ear and says "hello". Of course, it doesn't sound exactly like we say hello, but he has said it enough times that I am convinced that is what he is trying to say. Too cute!

Upward Cheerleading

Our church hosts a really neat program called Upward Basketball and Cheerleading. The girls are too young to do basketball, so we signed them up for Cheerleading. They cheer for the Kindergarten and 1st grade basketball teams every Saturday. Each cheerleader is announced individually at the beginning of each game and run out onto the center of the court. Then they form a tunnel with their pom poms raised up in the air for the basketball players to run under when the players are announced. The girls perform a cheer between each period and occasionally during the game. A devotional is strategically placed in the center of each practice and the players/cheerleaders are encouraged to memorize a bible verse each week. The girls each memorized John 1:5 which says, "The light shines in darkness, but the darkness does not overpower the light". That is the first verse they have ever memorized. It is a great program and the girls look forward to going each week. Not to mention, they look pretty adorable in their uniforms!!! Today they even got to cheer for their cousin, Aliyah, while she played basketball. She scored four points. Way to go Aliyah!!!

Friend Day

Today I let the girls each invite a friend over for the afternoon to play. Kaylee invited her friend, Ashley, over and Kianna invited her "best friend", Lexie, over to play. Kianna is just getting more into the "friend" stage, so it was really cute seeing her and Lexie go off and play by themselves. The girls all had a blast. I had a special project for them to do. I had bought some multi-colored sugar cookie dough awhile ago from one the neighbors fundraising efforts. I thought today would be the perfect time to put that dough to use. So each girl got a portion of each color and were able to make it into whatever they wanted like play-doh. Afterwards, we baked the cookies and ate them for our snack. During this special time the girls said "this is the best party ever, except that there isn't any cake or presents". I thought that was cute. I found out later that now Lexie wants to bake her play-doh and eat it. Oops!!!! It was a really fun afternoon. The girls sure will miss their friends, but we're trying to focus on the positives...

We're Moving to Michigan...

Yes, you read the title correctly! I better start at the beginning. The past few years Trevor has been unhappy with his job and trying to figure out what to do about it. He has struggled with balancing work, family time, and ministry opportunities within our church. A couple of months ago he told me he felt God was calling him to do something more ministry related with his career. He began searching the internet for opportunities that would integrate his business skills with a ministry. He came across a job at Lenawee Christian Ministries in Adrian, MI. Just reading the job description, we were amazed at how the job seemed to have been made just for Trevor. It seemed he met almost all of the specifications they were looking for in a candidate. LCM oversees a Christian school pre-K through 12th grade and The Center. The Center includes an impressive work out facility complete with racketball courts, basketball courts, an olympic sized pool with 2 waterslides and a climbing wall. It is an AMAZING facility. In addition, The Center has a small restaurant with a Starbucks, a 700 person auditorium, and 70 acres of land. The ministry focuses on trying to get back to how it used to be when the church was the center of the community. They use their auditorium to bring in speakers and singers throughout the year. During the summer they host numerous camps. From the two times we have been there we have fallen in love with the place and the people. On January 23rd, we found out that Trevor got the job as the new Executive Vice President of LCM and ever since life has been a blur.

We are both really excited about this opportunity and feel confident that this is where God is leading us. Trevor and I spent last weekend back in Adrian looking for a house. Adrian is a smaller town of about 23,000 people located in the southeast corner of Michigan. It is just 20 miles north of the Ohio border and is 36 miles northwest of Toledo, Ohio and south of Ann Arbor, MI. After a thorough search of the available houses in the area we made an offer Sunday morning and then drove back to Iowa. Monday morning (yesterday) we got the good news that our offer had been accepted. Yea!!! We are the proud owners of a nice 2-story, 4 bedroom home. It is in a really peaceful neighborhood and appears to have been well cared for. It has a newly updated kitchen and a large four-seasons room, which we will use as a recreation room. As a bonus, it has an in-ground swimming pool and hot tub, something we completely were not looking for. It will be a great house for entertaining, which is something that we both enjoy.

Trevor's last day at Rockwell is 2/12/2010 and his first day at LCM is on 2/22/2010. We plan on moving sometime between those two dates. There are still a lot of variables as to whether or not we can move directly into our new home or will need temporary housing. It all depends upon how quickly all of the paperwork can be completed and much of that is based on how quickly our current home sells. As of this morning, we have a sign in our front yard, so we are making progress. When we first told the girls that we were moving to Michigan, Kaylee realized that meant we needed to sell our house and that we would have a sign in our yard. I asked her what the sign would say and she took a moment to think about it and said "FREE". We laughed and told her it definitely would NOT say free... The girls are really excited about moving to Michigan. In their little minds they know that we will have access to the swimming pool at The Center whenever we want and that they no longer have to share a room. Kaylee is especially excited about that, as she says Kianna snores! One of the perks of the new job is that our kids can go to Lenawee Christian School for FREE, which is huge! I met Kaylee's new preschool teacher over the weekend and she was super nice. I think Kaylee will fit in really well there. Kianna will start preschool there in the fall, as they only have a 4 and 5 year old preschool class. It will be fun having some more 1-on-1 time with Kianna while Kaylee is in school and while Trace naps. Please pray with us that our house sells quickly and that we make this transition smoothly.