A friend loves at all times

"A friend loves at all times."  Proverbs 17:17

My daughters have great friends, and it is no surprise....because I have some pretty sweet friends myself.  :)  Just check out these pictures....aren't they the cutest??

Isabel, Ella, Aubrey, Zander, Maddie, & Norah (about 2.5 years ago!)  See how they've grown & continued playing together, below....

Maddie, Isabel, Norah, & Ella - we are with them multiple times a week!

Hanging with our dear friends, Zander & Aubrey

Kara & Norah - only 2 weeks a part....they love to play together!

Isabel & Norah - quite the reading buddies, they are :) 

Elise & Eli

It is a blast, listening to these kiddos play together.  So sweet.  I am thankful for dear friends, and I am so thankful that my girls are growing up with wonderful friends.  I pray they have friends all their lives - that they can count on for anything, look to for encouragement, have fun with, and make tons of memories with!  I know I do....and it is such a blessing.

Joy, Grace, & Faith

My sweeties - Madeline Joy, Elise Faith, & Norah Grace

I changed the name of this blog.  I didn't like what I had had for a long time, so I asked Brandon if he had any ideas.  I changed it to a "Joy-Filled Life," but then Brandon came up with the idea that it should be "A Joy, Grace, & Faith Filled Life."  I loved that idea!  And in case if you are wondering why, it comes from our girl's middle names.  My husband - he is so creative.  :)

Our life truly is full of joy, grace, and faith - thanks to my Heavenly Father.  He has blessed me in so many ways, that it is hard to get down, even when this economy is so frustrating, and we cannot sell our house.  We thought we had...for about 2 weeks, things were looking really good.  We did sign a purchase agreement with a buyer....it was so exciting!  We were going to be breaking even....not getting any money back after closing costs and realtor fees, but we weren't having to pay to sell our house either.  That was pretty much the lowest we were willing to go, and we really didn't want to go that low, but it seems like we can't get much out of this house, in this depressing economy.  Anyways, things were looking up.  We started looking at some homes for sale in Duluth.  Then the inspection happened.  The boiler became an issue.  There is nothing wrong with it - but the buyer used it to try to get us to lower the price we had agreed on.  We haven't felt at peace about leaving this house, paying to sell.  That just seems silly, when we are doing just fine.  We are a little bit cramped, but things could be, oh, so much worse!!  Needless to say, we have been living on a roller coaster around here - highs and lows in the emotions.  I keep holding onto the truth that God has everything under control.

I have been holding onto this verse, whenever I start to get frustrated with this process:

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the Lord. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." Isaiah 55:8-9 

He is good, and He will provide, in HIS time....not mine.  All I have to do is look at my loving husband and 3 beautiful, healthy girls, and know - I have nothing to be angry at God about.  Absolutely NOTHING!  I am filled with absolute JOY.  God has given me much GRACE each day.  And I have FAITH that He is in control of each step our family must take before this house sells or whatever!  Above all, I am thankful for all He has done for me, and I can praise His name because of that.  

AND....we have a showing tomorrow afternoon.  I am praying we don't have to have TOO many more of those.  :)  Continuing to pray and trust God.  It's in His hands now. 

B is for Bumblebee & C is for Caterpillar

I have fallen behind in updating my preschool, "Letter of the Week," theme.  A lot of it is because of the ups and downs of trying to sell a house.  I will post more about that later.  It has been a roller coaster, just let me say that.

The girls and I are are still keeping up with our letter of the week theme.  I am really enjoying these structured activities, and they love it too!  A few weeks ago, we did the letter B.  The girls made these cute bumblebee pictures for their ABC books that we are compiling.

This is Norah's bumblebee.  I found this idea  here

We are also adding a page, to our ABC books, devoted to the memory verse of the week.  Here is the letter B verse:

Maddie's illustration of being kind to others - "handing out popsicles to her friends."

We baked bread during B week and kept our eyes open to find B's wherever we were, around town.  

Last week was C week.  We baked Chocolate Chip Cookies and made our beautiful C projects (a caterpillar idea that I found on pinterest.  Click here for the link.)  And last but definitely NOT least, we learned this pretty important verse: 

Children obey your parents, in the Lord, for this is right.

Ephesians 6:1

Another of Maddie's beautiful creations.

This week, we are studying the letter D.  We are having a short week of it though, because we got to go on a family vacation!  The vacation couldn't have come at a better time, with everything falling through on a possible house sale we had.  Some friends from church generously gave us a week at their Wisconsin Dells time share.  We stayed at Odyssey Dells, which is attached to one gigantic water and amusement park, Mount Olympus.  We stopped first in Hayward and enjoyed the Wilderness Walk.  We especially enjoyed the deer that walked right up to us!  

In Wisconsin Dells, we had a beautiful, spacious room - 2 bedrooms, a living area, and kitchen.  It was perfect with kids!  We could walk to the water and amusement parks and had wristbands that lasted the entire time we were there.  The outdoor stuff pretty much shut down when we got there, as Labor day is the end of their outdoor season, but we got to use the indoor water park.  Maddie especially enjoyed the water slides in the kids area.  She was going down them all by herself, no problem.  Norah was a little more nervous.  She hates getting water in her face....a water park really isn't the place for her, I guess.  :)  Her and I enjoyed a few more of the amusement park rides.  She was my ride buddy.  

 Our family is so thankful for the chance to get away like this.  It was wonderful for us to get away, relax, enjoy each other's company, and not think about our house for a few days.  God knew we needed it.  He is so good to me.  

Apple Pie begins with A!

To continue on with our letter A theme of the week, yesterday, the girls and I tackled making an apple pie.  Making pie is not one of my favorite things.  It's time consuming, chopping up the fruit, making the crust, rolling out the crust, (which never goes well for me), etc.  Anyways, so making a pie with a 4 and 3 year old was especially time consuming and taxed my patience...but that's okay.  That's what I'm learning more of in this season of my life....PATIENCE!!

Yesterday morning, the girls and I went to the grocery store to buy what we needed to make our apple pie; all the while, Maddie was yelling out every "A" she saw along the way.  :) We got home and started the pie making business.  First we had to chop up the apples.  The girls LOVED using my cool pampered chef tool - the apple-peeler-corer-slicer.

You can see Norah is taking this job very seriously.

Step #2: adding sugar and cinnamon to the apples and stirring them up.

Here is what Elise was up to while we were baking....

Step #3: Make the crust & roll it out...

Step #4: Fill the pie plate with bottom crust layer and apples.  As you can see, Norah looks awfully proud.

And there you have it - a finished apple pie, with a capital letter A!  :)  The girls were very proud and excited to tell their daddy, as apple pie is one of his favorite desserts.  We got to enjoy a slice of pie with vanilla ice cream later that night.  We received daddy's stamp of approval!  It was very yummy. 

Ready to go into the oven...only after about an hour and a half of labor.

Daddy gives us an A+!

The whole pie making process was a long one.  In the past, I have avoided letting the girls "help" me with cooking and baking, but lately, I have been convicted of missing out on important teaching times with them.  It may take an extra dose of patience and take longer to clean up the mess, but in the end, we are creating good memories together and they are learning new things!  We had fun baking together...I hope to do more of that with them.  

Another thing I spent some time doing yesterday was making a prayer photo album.  I was going through all of our Christmas pictures from last year and was about to throw them away.  I would usually have our fridge covered in photos, but with all of our house showings, I have had to take them down.  So, I was about to throw them away, when I decided that it would be a great idea to make a photo album with all of our Christmas card pictures, and use it as a reminder to be praying for our friends and family.  So yesterday, the girls each closed their eyes, opened the book, and pointed to a picture....and we prayed for that family!  The girls LOVED it.  It's a good reminder to me, to always be in prayer for our many friends and family and the different missionaries we support.  

Don't throw away your Christmas card photos - make a prayer book!

We love praying for our friends and family!

Also, we went to a member appreciation night at the Duluth Children's Museum last night.  Here is my little knight and princess enjoying the castle.  They just love that place.  

Letter A Theme for the week!

I guess the teacher in me is coming out this week.  I am so excited about starting a letter of the week theme with my girls.  They love structured activities, craft projects, and special time I spend with them....which isn't often enough these days, so I am working on being more intentional with them!  Part of it stems from a book I've been reading called, Going Public by David & Kelli Pritchard, as well as a sermon series that Pastor Jeff has been sharing about in church lately - "Positive Parenting."  God is really urging me to make my passion for Him more visible to my children, as I am called to disciple them!  I am with them many hours of the day....why am I not taking more time to be teaching them about my relationship with God and relating all that we do to having a heart for Him?!?!?  I feel like I have been getting this left and right lately - at church, in blogs that I follow, the book I am reading...I think God is trying to get my attention.

So, today is the day I start to be even MORE intentional with my children.  I am hoping to become more diligent with our daily devotions...not just family devos, but my own personal quiet time!  I am also planning on working more on Bible memorization with them.  I spent some good time this morning planning our week of activities - relating to our relationships with God and also some other educational activities.

Here is what we've been up to today!  This week's theme is the letter A.

We are starting to memorize Bible verses, according to the letter of the week.  This week's "letter A" Bible verse is:

The girls have been looking for letter A's all around the house and while we were driving to the YMCA this morning.  Maddie wrote down a letter A every time she found one on a road sign or billboard, as we drove in the van.  It was quite fun.  :)  This afternoon they decorated acorn pictures, which we will compile in ABC letter books, that we will hopefully fill with every letter of the alphabet.  I am the queen of not finishing something I start....but maybe this blog will hold me accountable.  :) 

Decorating our acorn pictures

Norah with the finished project!

Here is to being more intentional with my children in their love for the Lord and in preschool learning!

Deuteronomy 6:5-9

New International Version (NIV)

⁵ Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. ⁶ These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. ⁷ Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. ⁸ Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. ⁹ Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

• 
  

Remembering April

We had quite the busy weekend.  Friday and Saturday were filled with 10-year class reunion activities with our old high school classmates.  To be honest, I wasn't really looking forward to it.  I guess I was unsure about how it would be.  But it really turned out to be fun!  It was just like old times in a way...talking with some of my friends was like being back in 11th grade again.  (Only this time, many of us are married, working full-time jobs, and raising kids!)  We laughed a lot, reminiscing about our teachers and the fun times we had together.  It was a great weekend....and we stayed up way too late.  Oh, another thing that has changed from those days...I have 3 little girls that wake me up at 6:30 a.m.  Oh yeah, that is why I don't stay up late anymore.  haha!  It was worth it though, and it makes me wish we had these reunions more often!

On a more somber note, we have lost one of our classmates, since graduation.  April Oles-Magdzas was tragically killed, along with her young daughter, and she was about to give birth to her second daughter the next day.  It is a tragic situation, and she is deeply missed by many.  April and I weren't close friends, but we did chat occasionally, and she was always very sweet and kind to me.  I appreciated that my classmates planned a memorial for her, on Saturday afternoon.  We planted a shrub at the Carlton Elementary school, a poem was read, and we wrote messages on cards, attached them to balloons, and sent them into the sky.  It was a somber and touching moment.  I pray for her family and think about how difficult it has been, dealing with her loss.  She was missed this weekend at our high school reunion!  I pray I see her again one day, in heaven, playing with both of her sweet, little girls.

April and her daughter Lila

Letting go of the balloons, in memory of April

A Stay-at-Home Summer

We have been having a beautiful summer - once June came to a close with all of the chilly, rainy, and flooding weather.  Thankfully, our house was okay.  We did not have any flood damage.  Praise God!  We are very blessed...just a little bit of water in our basement, but that is normal.

The summer is flying by, as usual.  It has been a perfect July, spending lots of time outdoors, enjoying our beautiful Lake Superior and riding bikes/running around in the parking lot next to our home.  We also have been getting lots of sun at the Park Point beach and at one of the many playgrounds we have in Duluth.  It is so much fun to meet up with friends at the park, in the summer.  Gotta take advantage of this weather while we have it, before we are locked indoors for 7-8 months.

God is teaching me so much about enjoying all of the moments I get with these sweet, little girls.  It probably has been the most challenging time with Maddie and Norah, the last 2 months.  There have been many more tantrums, fights with stubbornness and strong wills, difficult bedtimes (with it staying light so long in the evening), and most recently, no more naps.  :(  That has been a hard one for me to give up.  While I dearly love my children and do not want to always be looking forward to nap time, I am finding that I miss that quiet hour or two I would get each day, to be refreshed and recharged, as a mom.  But while it has been a more trying time, as a parent, God is continually reminding me of how quickly this time will pass and how I need to be using these moments to shape my character, to become more like Him.  I am definitely trying to learn how to be patient (not only with my children, but also with this house selling business...almost a year now!)  I am working on staying calm when they are starting to push my buttons.  I am learning to be more consistent in my discipline.  And most importantly, God is teaching me to be discipling these little ones, while they are so anxious to learn and talk to me about what is going on in their minds.  This time does fly by!  I can hardly believe Maddie will be heading off to kindergarten in a year.  My little girls are growing up so quickly, and I long to be the kind of mom they need, in order that they will grow up to be strong, godly, young ladies, who long to serve God in all that they do.

Speaking of growing up, our little Elise just turned 9 months old last week!  She has been such a joy to us; such a smiley little girl.  She is a great sleeper and eater.  We always know just what she wants.  Her older sisters adore her.  Elise is getting ready to crawl, any day now.  I haven't been encouraging it too much, but I know it's inevitable and she will be even more happy when she can get places by herself.

Also, Norah celebrated her 3rd birthday at the end of June.  She had a fun birthday party at Lester Park, with a few friends and family.  Norah is a fun-loving, sweet girl, who can be very stubborn at times.  She is our strong-willed one, but hopefully in the future, it will serve her well!  

I sure am thankful to my rock-star husband, who encouraged me to go and hang out at a coffee shop tonight.  It was much needed, after a few long, busy weeks.  It has also gotten me excited about getting this blog going again!  (And to my little girls, who I hope will read this one day:  You need to find a husband like your daddy.  He is the absolute best - such a gift to me.  I have never been more happy in marriage and life, thanks to God and the blessing He has given me in your amazing daddy.)