Friday's War

I mean really....really? 8 heroes (mainly women) are going to take down a fighter jet and a neon blue lizard??? For real? And I'm sorry but that Brat's doll ain't going to do jack against anything...it could so ruin her make up and hair. It does look like the lizard is advancing on the scantily clad blond though so that's a plus. Stay tuned for more 'Wars in the Gilliard House.'

Thursday's War

I meant to post this Thursday but the day got away from me. As you can tell, this war wasn't nearly as involved as Wednesday's war. I think the troops are getting tired; and someone needs to put pants for a skirt on the blond with the pink swim suit on if she's going to sit like that..:) I have to wonder what Isaac is thinking when he sets this figures up, Hulk is lying down in the background like he's been taking out...would that really ever happen??? Come on Isaac, we need to understand all of Hulk's abilities before the next attack.

For $100 dollars

This is what I got at the Kids Kloset at the Consignor Sale Wednesday night. All this for $100 bucks. I'll go back on Saturday for the 50% off sale and see if I can't pick up a few more things, especially for Isaac. There just isn't a lot of good things for boys there that are reasonably priced. BUT, Once Upon A Child in VA always has great things for Isaac so that's when we usually stock up on things for Isaac. :) I LOVE the Kids Kloset and since I always consign with them I usually always break even. What I end up spending is how much I usually get back from selling my kids clothes!!! I'll post again on Saturday if I get anymore great finds. If you want info on the Kids Kloset go to www.mykidskloset.com

Evan Grace's clothes. I couldn't get her out of the Disney
dress to put in the pile so here she is wearing it.



Evan Grace's ONE toy that she got. It's a magnet set for the fridge. Very CUTE!! For $4.

Isaac's clothes with his ONE toy the remote control race car.

Chocolate and Lavender

My sisiter sent me this beautiful basket of ready to grow Tulips and purple flowers. It's called Chocolate and Lavender and I cant' wait for it to look like the basket on the left side of the screen. So far all you can see of mine is the two bulb sprouts. :) But I'll keep a watch and post updates of course.

Carpet

It's been 6 years in the making and I'm just overcome with joy at seeing my new carpet. We picked it out Monday, at a crazy low price and the guys came out and installed it today in a little less than 3 hours. Oh my gosh.....it's wonderful. It makes the room look larger and cleaner and I'm just thankful I don't have to vacuum three times a day anymore. We seriously went through 8 vacuum cleaners in the 6 years we lived here. None of them can live up to the horrible green fuzz. Now all that's left of the green fuzz is the bedrooms and they can slowly be replaced over time. The kids are pretty impressed too!!!!!!!! Yeah for carpet!!!!! Now I just have to get some stuff up on the walls and tie it all together.

Nemo and Wonder Woman?

Yesterday was a slow day for us. We got a lot done but overall just hanging out at the house doing wife and mom stuff. Shortly after waking up I walked back into my room to make up the bed and spotted a war going on on my nightstand. Seems Isaac had to be at battle early this morning. I'm not sure where he got the idea of using the things, toys, items that he picked but if you look closely he's chose Cinderella's pink dress (no she's not wearing it, it's just the dress) and there's a My Little Pony on the far left of the screen. Why is it all the Super Hero's he has are fighting characters like Nemo and Winnie the Pooh...really? Guess which side I'm cheering for? ;)

The cute thing about this line up is sometime later today, and tomorrow and the days to come after that I'll find another few rows of men and women and Disney characters preparing for battle. I just hope I don't step on the next row like I did Sunday.

For Matt

Here's the handmade 3D rig cage/heart Valentine I got for Matt as well as the ee cummings poem I found to go along with it. I printed it out on card stock and had it sitting in front of the heart on the computer keyboard for when he got home. I was worried the 3D rib cage might be a little gross but he really liked it and so did I. I pasted the poem below incase it doesn't show up well enough in the picture to read.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)

i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

BY: ee cummings

It's Valentine's Day!!!

I've never been for or against Valentine's day. If I was with someone around Feb 14 then we'd do something, if I was single then I'd still do something either by myself or with friends and family. I'm not one of those that goes neurotic if I don't have a boyfriend in Feb and I don't go off the other deep end if I do and expect who I'm with to make a fuss over the day complete with hearts/flowers/cards and what not. It's been a take it or leave it holiday for me.

It doesn't bother me that Hallmark has turned it into a big money making ordeal and it doesn't bother me that flower shops up their prices for this day or that everyone can't think outside the cliched red roses to be more original. You do what you want to do.

But this year, for some reason, I still can't figure out, I've been looking forward to it. I've put together goodie bags for my kids full of Valentine candies and odds and ends. I found some ColorWonder Markers on sale for $2 a package and coloring books for $1 so there's some crafty stuff in there too. As well as rose shaped suckers, pencils with hearts and lips on them, little stamp pads and of course valentine chocolates and stickers and little plastic drinking cups.

Before I woke them up this morning I laid out their goodie bags in the living room floor so that when they rushed in they would see them. They were excited and upturned the bags quickly.

So the kids and I spent much of the morning sitting in the floor while they picked out a treat to eat right then and to figure out how the little stamps work (Evan Grace thought you used them to color with like a crayon!)

That's when it hit me, why I was feeling different about this Valentine's day than the others. My kids are old enough to really enjoy presents, to say thank you after they open them and to be excited for what their siblings get as well. It's more than than.

I like a day devoted to love and to showing those around you that you love them. That you haven't forgotten how much they mean to you or that they are the special one in your life.

America down plays love, oh we all want it, everyone is somewhat expected to get married at some point in their life an if you're not married then who are you dating and how serious are you about the relationship? Marriage gives us hope, a sense of connection, a feeling of belonging to someone other than ourselves.

The Pastor at my church put it beautifully a few Sundays ago. Marriage is a covenant and not a commitment. I started thinking more on this during my devotions and this is just some of my ramblings on the topic. I think everyone gets married under a commitment train of thought. But the marriages that last and really make a good run are those that take that commitment and progress into a covenant with each other. What's the difference? Wikipedia defines Commitment as interaction dominated by obligations. These obligations may be mutual, or self-imposed, or explicitly stated, or may not.

Wikipedia defines covenant in it's most general sense, as a solemn promise to engage in or refrain from a specified action.
More specifically, a covenant, in contrast to a contract, is a one-way agreement whereby the covenanter is the only party bound by the promise. A covenant may have conditions and prerequisites that qualify the undertaking, including the actions of second or third parties, but there is no inherent agreement by such other parties to fulfill those requirements. Consequentially, the only party that can break a covenant is the covenanter.
Did you catch that last line, that's a pregnant statment if ever there was.
To put it plain and simple, a commitment says, this is our agreement, and if you don't live up to them or they change and I don't like them, well I may just back out of the agreement at any time and so can you.

A covenant though, This is MY agreement with you and even if the terms, if any, are not met, even if things change I'm still going to uphold my part of the covenant and agreement.

How many more marriages would survive if they got a hold of this. If each spouse would make a covenant that says, even if you're acting like a selfish jerk and I don't want to be in the same room with you right now, I'm still in agreement that you're the one for me and I'm for you and we're going to get through this? That I'm not leaving, I'm not checking out, I'm not breaking my covenant!

So maybe that's why Valentine's day has taken a different meaning for me. If we can have secretary's day, president's day, earth day and the like then why shouldn't we all enjoy a day devoted to making sure you tell those around you that you love them and are glad they are in your life.


So that's my random soapbox for the day. Happy Valentine's Day to everyone, may it be filled with as much love possible.

Two more Bible Crafts

Here are the two Bible Crafts we've done the past few weeks.
Isaac was actually sick a week ago and he still asked
if he could do a craft and learn more about the bible. How sweet.

Goodbye to Passie

All three of my kids were addicted to pacifier's at an early age. With Mackenzie, I started cutting away the silicone part of the passie for a week or so, until it was gone and she had to desperately hold the plastic ring against her mouth, in hopes that the 'suckey' part would come back. It never did and she gave up her passie. Isaac, was addicted for 3 years and when we took it away from him, he transferred it to his blanket. He didn't suck on his blanket, but he would hold the corner of his blanket to his mouth and suck his bottom lip, which I still catch him doing from time to time. So when Evan Grace was a little over 2 I decided to nip the passie addiction early, rather than waiting for her to turn 3. So I hear what a friend at church did with her daughter that was attached to a passie and I thought, that sounds like a great idea.

I went out and got a few flower balloons, came home, tied Evan Grace's orange passie to the balloon ribbons and told her we were going to go outside and send her passie up to heaven for all the other babies that might need it. Evan Grace loves babies, she's all about the babies so I really thought this is why this senerio would work so well. She seemed excited and Isaac was pretty happy about it too. Here's a picture of her getting ready to launch away a small piece of her security.





So I tell her to give passie a kiss if she wants to (which she does, followed by one last suck) and say 'Bye passie' and then let it go. Her little fingers uncurled and up went the balloons and orange passie. It was a breeze day that day, perfect for watching balloons race across the sky. Their journey started over the roof of our house........

And directly into the large pecan tree in our back yard, where they promptly wrapped themselves around a branch and have been there ever since. That was until today. We're in the middle of a down pour complete with gushing winds and the branch that held these now deflated balloons captive snapped and down it came. The passie is still attached and in good shape, the orange color a little bleached out, and if the batteries in my camera weren't dead I'd take an after picture of it.

Pick one please.

Ok, I need your help. I have a necklace of my gramma's that I had a friend draw up for me. (Joe you did an amazing job, it's so much more than I ever expected. Thank you my friend. )I can't decide on which I like better. The vein running down the middle of the leaf has my gramma's initials on it as well, for more meaning.

So which do you like better? I'm leaning towards Leaf A but I don't know, I see a lot of good stuff in Leaf B.

Care to help a sister out? Leave a comment and tell me which one and why.

Poor little man.

Isaac has been running a fever all day long today. And tonight it spiked at 102. Please pray for the little man, when he gets sick he usually goes all in, full force. How precious and how sad is this picture? :(

Dear Sweet Jesus,

Will Evan Grace ever sleep another nap again? I have no idea. This is how she got up from her nap today. I promise I check in on her and I'm really starting to think she does this in the last 10 minutes of nap time. Good grief! I couldn't pick which wacky picture I like better for this post so I decided to put them side by side so you the viewer could pick. Man oh man, I remember, fondly, the days I use to put her in her crib where she couldn't get out and actually go to sleep for an hour or so; but I did get a good laugh out of this one.

Somebody's watching me.

And that somebody would be my 15 lb cat Skip Buttafucco . He's a bruiser. If you look hard enough you can see the scar running into his left eye, that's his newest one. He has numerous scars all over his furry body and some of them I've had to nurse and pray out of infection and into healing. Skip adopted us about 4 years ago. He was a stray that I coaxed into the house by an offering of lunch meat. It didn't take a lot of encouragement either.

We once gave Skip away shortly after Evan Grace was born. She developed severe allergy's. We gave Skip away to a lady I knew through church, she lived 4-5 miles away from us. Skip was gone for an entire month before he found his way back home one night. My husband was taking out the trash when he heard a familiar meow and sure enough, Skip had walked his way back home and came in as if nothing had ever happened. My husband's words were and I quote, "We can never give that cat away again."

But the reason for my post; seems every time I'm on the computer here of late Skip jumps up on the desk beside me to watch my progress. Of course, since I'm blogging about him now, he's sound asleep in the chair. But hey, give him a power nap and he'll be back at his post soon enough.

He's an all around good cat.