Blessed be Your name

Matt Redman wrote the song Blessed Be Your Name... and I was reflecting on the lyrics today... 

Blessed be Your name
When the sun's shining down on me
When the world's 'all as it should be
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be Your name

On the road marked with suffering
Though there's pain in the offering
Blessed be Your name
Every blessing You pour out I'll Turn back to praise

When the darkness closes in, Lord Still I will say
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name

The full song can be found here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7Qp11X6LKYY

As we have journeyed through the last year or so we have seen God give and take away... and it’s been hard at times. We have learned lessons of life that we never thought we would have to learn. We have clung tightly to each other and God because there was no one else to cling to. We have learned so much about God’s goodness through these challenges.

I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

 I’ve felt recently that sometimes there’s so much on my mind and heart that I feel God prompting me to share but I have no outlet to which to share it. I thought about this old blog that I used to keep and am considering starting it up again...

 If you want to read a blog that is full of transparency, hard truths, and vulnerability, then feel to stay tuned!

Potty training, big boy beds and married life

Long time no write! Thanks for reminding me Beth!

But seriously, lots of "big" things happening in our house lately! Josh is 2.5 and we're venturing down the road of potty training! He's our individualist child who will train in his own time, however, we're trying to get him going on the process.

Tommy and Josh got "new" beds this past weekend - Tommy received the "spare" guest bed that has lived in the corner of Josh's room for 2.5 years and Josh got Tommy's race car bed. Both were very excited about the switch and both rooms seem much bigger!

However, Tommy's room is still very mis-matchy! What he doesn't know is that we'll be re-doing it next weekend when he spends the night with MomMom and PopPop! And he'll come home to a new decked out Super Mario room!

Tonight we attended Married Life Live at our church and it's always such a great night out with other married couples. This MLL Joe was IN a skit - it's always fun to see him on stage. Other than his skit, my favorite (and I'm not just saying it because Beth is reading this), was the listening cone skit - it was hilarious - for those of you who were there - you know what I mean!

Alrighty - g'night all! I will try to keep this updated more often. I really should after all . . .

The start of a tradition?

We FINALLY made it to a beach! After five long years of beach withdrawl, we finally made a short trip to the beach. We didn't even know if the boys would like it - the water and sand, our boys are particular, and it could be great or a disaster!

Our last "vacation" was with Tommy in the winter of 2006. Josh had never been on a vacation, never stayed in a hotel, never drove in the car more than about an hour. This was going to quite an adventure!

We packed ourselves up, borrowed a portable dvd player for Josh (because Tommy had his new Nintendo DSlite) and backed out of the driveway. We picked up the boys from daycare and started on our way on Thursday evening. Me and my peanut sized bladder had to pee only 30 minutes into the trip. Then we hit traffic. Then we stopped and ate dinner. Then Tommy had to "go". Then we got lost. Our 3 hour trek to New Jersey, took us 4 hours. But we made it. We got the kids in bed and everyone was asleep by about 11pm.

The next day, Friday, we got up early, enjoyed the "free" continental breakfast offered by the hotel and headed to the beach! The first few steps on the beach were worrisome - Josh seemed unsure. Tommy seemed like it was "old hat" to be walking on that squishy, wobbly, wonderful beach sand. Quickly Josh realized that it was fun. He stopped every few steps to pick up handfuls of the sand.

Tommy took to the ocean like a fish. Josh liked it, but the waves scared him. He settled in with playing with sand. It worked out well. Joe was in the water with Tommy and I got to play in the sand with Josh.

We packed it up around 2pm and headed back to the hotel for some rest time and play time and baths and showers.

That night, we headed back down to the boardwalk for some fun and games and taffy!

Saturday morning we repeated Friday - early breakfast at the hotel and then hit the beach again. Then we walked the boards a bit, and headed back to the hotel to get cleaned up and checked out.

I could've stayed for a week. It was nice, but short. Joe is already contacting rental companies - we WILL go back next year - for a WEEK!

OC NJ, we'll be back!

If You Give a Mom a Muffin

If You Give a Mom a Muffin

If you give a mom a muffin,
She'll want a cup of coffee to go with it.
So she'll pour herself some.
The coffee will get spilled by her three year old.
She'll wipe it up.

Wiping the floor, she will find some dirty socks.
She'll remember she has to do some laundry.
When she puts the laundry in the washer,
She'll trip over some snow boots and bump into the freezer.
Bumping into the freezer will remind her she has to plan supper for tonight.

She will get out a pound of hamburger.
She'll look for her cookbook. (101 Things To Make With a Pound ofHamburger.)
The cookbook is sitting under a pile of mail.
She will see the phone bill which is due tomorrow.
She will look for the checkbook.

The checkbook is in her purse that is being dumped out by her two year old.
She'll smell something funny.
She'll change the two year old.
While she is changing the two year old the phone will ring. (Of course!)
Her five year old will answer it and hang up.

She remembers that she wants to phone a friend to come over for coffee onFriday.
Thinking of coffee will remind her that she was going to have a cup.
She will pour herself some.
And chances are,
If she has a cup of coffee,
Her kids will have eaten the muffin that went with it.

Written by Kathy Fictorie

Based on If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff

What a blessed Easter!

This Easter was the first Easter that I truly understood what the timeline was for Jesus' last days were. I really was moved by understanding this timeline.

Good Friday was Tommy's special day with Mommy and Daddy. We did whatever he wanted. Which included donuts for breakfast, bowling and Strasburg! He had a great time!


We attended Good Friday service at church, and while admittedly, I was a bit distracted by an event before service, I still found the service to be moving and amazing. The worship team did an awesome job and the service was perfect.

We then went to Saturday evening Easter Service since we were travelling to Maryland on Sunday morning. The Easter service was interupted for us when I got paged to the nursery for Joshua who wouldn't calm down. I think it was just too much being out late two nights in a row. So I pretty much missed the service, although I was in for the worship team's opening and it was so full of energy and so awesome!!!!

Then Sunday morning, the boys got their baskets of goodies. They boys also blessed us by sleeping in until 8am!!! YAY!

We had some breakfast, and a slow morning, and then got packed up to drive the 75 minutes south to my sister's house. Joshie entertained us on the drive down:

There we ate WELL (Josh had his first Peep ever):

I got to see my beautiful neice and nephews (here's Ellie in picture perfect outfit):

did an Easter egg hunt

and had an awesome time.

Josh even took a nap in his cousin's big boy bed!!

It was awesome three day weekend and we are so blessed!

A work in progress!

We've been updating the house (windows, curtains, some painting, etc.) lately and I've already posted the pictures of the new windows!

This past weekend, Joe and my Dad worked together on hanging new shutters and I have to say, I finally LOVE the exterior of our house - it still needs a lot of paint - all the beige color trim needs repainting, the door and sidelights needs to be painted to match the new shutters, etc. But overall - what a difference! I'm so happy to be done with the drab beige on off white on white exterior with no real color!

Here are some pictures of the new shutters!

And for comparison - before and after next to each other:

Asthma? Small Airway?

Joshie has a chronic cough - for which he has repeatedly been given antibiotics for over the last year or so - which obviously aren't the answer. So we finally got him in to see the doctor that diagnosed Tommy with asthma -

She said that chronic cough is usually one of three things - GERD (we don't think this it but he did have reflux as a baby), small airway (for which there is no treatment other than time - he just has to get bigger and therefore his airway will broaden out), or asthma.

She said she didn't think it was GERD either, and there's no treatment for small airway (which can cause colds to be a problem - duh - seen that!) so the best thing to do is treat it as asthma, and hopefully we'll see improvement.

So Josh started on albuterol (for 7 days to help the inflamation calm down) and Flovent as a maintenance drug (which will take 2-3 weeks for us to see maximum effectiveness).

The first two nights it seemed to be working miraculously fast - unfortunately, that was a flook, because he's still coughing till he gags sometimes. We're hoping that the Flovent will kick in soon and that we've found an answer to his chronic cough.

Here's little Joshie doing his "puff puffs"