The Face of Guilt

Look what I caught Mr Blake doing this morning.

As soon as I found him, he started crying and backed himself into the corner.

By the way that was a small tote full of decorating sprinkles.

Gardens, Gardens, Gardens

Luke and I both grew up with gardens, so it shouldn't surprise us that we like having one so much. One funny story about my garden growing up is that one day when I was going to help my dad plant corn I unknowingly grabbed a mason jar full of our lost baby teeth instead of the seed corn, which was also in a mason jar in the same cabinet and thus learned that the tooth fairy wasn't real : ). Anyways, here's a little peek into our back yard. 

And all this rain lately has made lots of mud, so one day I let Bailey get naked and have fun. She and Owen had done this earlier in the week at Nana's house and I couldn't hold her back. Here are the appropriate mud pictures.

Luke has found inspiration lately at the Natural Gardner store in South Austin. He was dying to take the family and this is why...

everything was so huge and colorful!

I think I could have stayed there for hours, but Luke was helping his mom get her garden started, so we headed back to her place.

Here are some of the kids helping. Blake wanted to do just like daddy and Bailey enjoyed getting almost naked (do you see a theme here? I have a hard time keeping this girl's clothes on), getting dirty, and fnding worms.

Daddy Date Night

Luke took all his girls out for dinner last night, but this wasn't just any old date night because we headed to College Station for the Kappa Delta spaghetti dinner. It was alot of fun to get to see Tori in her element and help out a good cause. Bailey even made friends with one of the yell leaders. We didn't get to spend a ton of time with Tori until she was off duty so we only got one picture of her. And a huge thank you to Franny who kept Blake!!!

One funny story is that we usually refer to College Station & Texas A&M as Aggieland to keep it simple. While there Bailey got confused and kept calling it Toriland, which we thought was cute. For example, "when are we getting to Toriland?"

Family Day- SOCO & Downtown

This weekend we took a morning & headed to the SOCO (South Congress) area of Austin to see the sights & take some photos (it was supposed to be to just get some 2 year old pictures of Blake, but he didn't always cooperate, so we just had fun with it). We visited the "i love you so much" and "greeting card" murals and within the 10 minutes we were at the "i love you so much" mural atleast 10 other people took there picture there. We had no idea it was that popular and Luke had never even heard of it before. Next we headed to Whole Foods for a book reading of The Lorax and got to meet him. Bailey loved it and Blake was really scared and kept saying "no like, no like". By the way, the rooftop of the downtown Whole Food was amazing for the kids- playscape, birds to chase, we got to see the Mopac train and it was all contained! We were then going to head to the frog "hi, how are you?" mural, but it was getting too close to nap time. Hopefully, we can get down there sometime soon, but here are the pictures we did get from our family day.

Valentine's Day

I know this is a day late, but Blake has had a double ear infection that has prevented me from doing much for the last two days, so Happy Belated Valentine's Day! 

We celebrated very simply with a small surprise for each kid & by having red velvet pancakes with whip cream & chocolate for breakfast!!! Breakfast of Champions for sure!

Followed by a sugar high from their preschool valentine exchange! I know these aren't great, but how dare I interrupt the candy eating?

Thank yous go out to my mom for Bailey's outfit, Tara for Blair's homemade onesie, and Aunt Kathy for Blair's bib.

We hope you had a good Valentine's Day and I will close with Blair's life verse, written by Paul to the Ephesians as a good reminder of the everyday love & hope Jesus wants to give his children.

I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.

Ephesians 3:16-18

Sew Much Fun

I had "sew" much fun making these Valentine's Day pillows for the kids. I wanted to make something where they could find love notes from us & other family every morning from Feb 1st- 14th. The white part with their name on it is actually a pocket. I learned so much with this project about where and how to seal up pillows.  And the kids love it, especially when the pillows play hide-and-seek!

And here was my sewing buddy.

Using all those sitting up muscles must be hard work...

Next I'm working on Valentine's Day morning inspired by Chelsie. : )

My Mission

I love this definition of evangelism:

"My "mission field" is my daily life, the grocery store, the post office, the play groups. It is every situation and place I find myself in every day. It means loving my family as a missionary, sharing Christ with them in word and deed. It means intentionally becoming friends with people who do not know Jesus so that I will have the opportunity to love them and live a real faith before them. It means making decisions about money, time, and resources that will glorify Jesus every day. We view relationships, every situation, every event in our lives as a chance to "live" the gospel of Christ."

-Stacy Paolella

pg. 89 The Missional Mom by Helen Lee

Our Morning Reveille