project 365 - catching up

january - week 2

*layout using Life 365 by Gina Marie Huff - www.weedsandwildflowersdesign.com

*click on the images to read journaling

project 365 - catching up

january 2009 - week 1



*layout using Life 365 by Gina Marie Huff - www.weedsandwildflowersdesign.com
*click on the image to read journaling

project 365, feb week 1

at the beginning of 2009 i started project 365 - an attempt to take at least one photo each day to capture the "everyday moments" instead of just the big holidays and events. One of the designers at weeds and wildflowers designed a "Life 365" kit to help scrap the everyday photos. it's the first digital scrapbooking kit i've purchased and i love it! (i usually use free stuff that i find here). it has templates and all the pieces fit together like a puzzle so you don't have to spend a lot of time scrapbooking and it's easy to keep up to date. they even started a contest to encourage people to keep up to date on their pages - if you are using the project 365 kit and you post your layout from the previous week - you get a free add on that goes with the kit - fun!

since i didn't have a computer for most of january i'm a little behind on my january layouts, but here is my layout from the first week of february:

*if you click on the image it will open it in a bigger window so you can read the journaling

new beginnings

For those of you who don't know already, Michael and I are part of the pastoral staff of the new Destiny Church campus in O'Fallon, MO - and we are so excited! We have already grown to more than double our size since launching last month - we had just under 100 adults and children worshiping at the O'Fallon campus on Sunday!

Here are some photos from this past weekend - it was our first time holding the service in the gym and we moved the nursery & preschool into the cafeteria. We are meeting at an elementary school, so everything has to be set up before service, then taken down after and stored until the next week - so it requires some creativity in what equipment to use - and some amazing volunteers who show up early and stay late to get everything set up and torn down.

The lovely Laura in our nursery/preschool before the kids arrived


Fast Track - K-5th grade

Worship

The worship team

Pastor Mark sharing the message

We are so excited to be part of what God is doing through Destiny Church in O'Fallon! If you live in the O'Fallon/ St Charles County area and are looking for a church, or know someone who is - come visit us! You can find out more and get directions at the Destiny Church website.

girls night out

friday night i got the chance to spend the evening with some of my favorite ladies in the whole world. sara, nicki, and alicia were my bridesmaids (other than my sisters) and my best friends from college. we all have very busy lives now and even though we all live in the st louis area, we rarely are able to get together all at the same time...in fact, it had been 3 years since we all sat around the same table together! you would never have known it by the way we carried on all evening long. we eventually ended up adding more tip to our checks because we occupied our table at the restaurant for 4 hours - poor server probably wondered if we would ever leave -and i'm sure we could have gone on for hours longer had time allowed.

thanks for a wonderful evening ladies! i love you all very much and lets not wait 3 years before we do it again!

boden's surgery

thank you everyone who was praying for us on wednesday. i have never felt the peace of God so much in any one situation like i did wednesday. i thought for sure i would get all worked up and be crying and worrying - but not so at all. when wednesday rolled around, i had complete peace that he was in God's hands and that it He had it all taken care of.

boden wasn't allowed to eat or drink anything on wednesday before surgery, which we thought would be tough because he always wants milk and a banana as soon as he wakes up. but thank God he slept right up until we needed to leave for the hospital. the surgery was supposed to be at 9:30am, but due to delays they didn't take him back until 11am. that's a long time for a little guy to go with no food or drink, but he was such a trooper. he asked for food or water a couple times, but we just distracted him with toys and he was fine. the surgery lasted about an hour and then they let us come back to see him in recovery. he was so out of it and didn't want to wake up at all. they said some kids kick and scream when waking up for anesthesia, but thankfully he did not, he whined a little when we would try to wake him up, but just went back to sleep. we stayed for about 2 hours and he still did not want to wake up!

finally we got him up for a little bit, he drank some juice and they sent us home. at home he played for a little bit, ate some yogurt, then went back to sleep for a couple hours. once he woke up, he was pretty much back to normal boden - pulling out all his toys and running around. we only gave him tylonol once - he didn't seem to be in pain at all, so that was a blessing.

thank you again to everyone who was praying for us - we definitely felt your prayers and God's peace. Here's a couple pictures from the day:

coloring in the waiting room with mama

getting measured before surgery

falling asleep trying to drink some juice

so sleepy after surgery

playing with his "get well" balloon from our friends, the kopeckys:

wonderful husband.....and a new laptop!

as i mentioned previously, my laptop has been giving me all kinds of trouble lately (although the new charger did arrive) the battery is pretty shot and it just locks up all the time when i'm trying to work. we had talked about getting a new laptop, but i wasn't expecting it anytime soon. last saturday michael took off to go to the library to study and boden & i went to the gym. when i walked in from the gym i was talking to my sister on the phone and michael was sitting at the table and to my surprise - this was sitting next to him:

(sorry again for screaming in your ear caela) apparently he had no intentions of going to the library at all - he had been looking at laptops online and decided best buy was having a good sale so he went and got it!

it is exactly what i wanted - it has a full keyboard with number pad so i don't have to attach the separate keyboard when i do accounting and it has plenty of harddrive and memory (or whatever :) ) so that it won't lock up when i scrapbook and edit photos.

we did spend the last week hunting for my photoshop disc so we could install it - i was starting to think it was actually gone...but yesterday michael found it in a box in the closet that i didn't even know existed! whew! it's great - everything runs so much faster on the new laptop - i love it - thank you michael!

i've been waiting on a new charger cord for my laptop for about a week and a half now...i'm getting a little impatient. my charger bit the dust (again) and my genius plan to order a replacement from a very random website in hong kong because it was only $7 instead of $50 has backfired. i'm still hopeful that it is actually coming, but frustrated that it's not here yet. :(

so, i haven't been able to upload any new photos, or work on my project 365 scrapbook (a picture each day for the whole year to capture the everyday moments) for which i have purchased an awesome kit that i can't wait to use, or do any accounting or anything else that is on my laptop. i never realized how dependent i was on that thing - looking up miscellaneous things on google throughout the day about recipes, fun ideas to do with boden, or directions to wherever i'm going, or most importantly -catching up on all my blog reading or checking facebook to see what everyone is up to - these things are very important. :) i pretty much grab michael's laptop out of his hands when he walks through the door in the evening so i can check my email or whatever - totally pathetic, i know. strange, however, my house has been a bit cleaner and my laundry not stacking up as much. but that's probably just a coincidence.

i do have a prayer request - we saw an ENT (ear, nose & throat) doctor yesterday for boden. he's had an ear infection nearly every month since he turned one and sinus infections and constant nasal drainage since about october. poor kid has been on way too many antibiotics. so, the dr suggests that we put tubes in his ears and have his adenoids removed. this is supposed to help his ears & sinuses drain better, and help him to start breathing through his nose. so, we have scheduled this surgery for next wednesday (Jan 28). everyone i've talked to says this is a very quick, very routine surgery, but it's still a little scary to have your baby put under and have surgery. so please pray for us to be at peace and for quick healing for boden and that this surgery would be what God uses to heal boden completely. thank you for your prayers.

hopefully i'll get my laptop charger soon and have some new pictures to share!

what happened to my "baby"?

boden has been in serious need for a haircut for awhile now. i've been putting it off mostly because of how much he loved his last haircut - see here, and because i secretly keep hoping it will start curling in the back (which doesn't appear to be happening in the slightest bit - in fact someone told me last week that it looked like his hair was flat ironed - lol). what is happening is it just looking a little mullet-like and the stocking hat i put on him when we go out is not helping his look at all. i think a lady at the store called him a 'she' the other day too.

so, for some crazy reason this morning i decided to attempt to cut it myself - i am no professional, but i've cut michael's hair with clippers a couple times and honestly i didn't want to pay $20 to have boden scream and yell again. i put him up on the bathroom counter and turned on the clippers. i used the longest guard we had, but it still cut about 3-4 inches off! once i saw how much was coming off i wanted to quit immediately, but he probably would have looked pretty silly, so i had to finish it. surprisingly he actually thought it was fun. i made funny noises each time i ran the clippers through his hair and he laughed and overall did really great. he started getting upset at the end though because he kept getting hair in his mouth and every time he tried to wipe it out he would get more in there because his hands and arms were covered with hair. (i've made a mental note to cover him with a towel next time)

look how long it was! this was with the back already cut, but the side still long. looking back, i don't think i realized how long it was until it was cut. wow!

and this is after i finished. it's so short now! doesn't he just look so old now? michael loves the new haircut, and i suppose i agree it's adorable, i'm just having a hard time getting used to his "big boy haircut".

We're still here

i've had so many things i've wanted to blog about and pictures i wanted to share over the past month or so, but i just haven't been able to carve out the time to sit down and do it. we've been fighting sickness in our house since thanksgiving and just can't seem to get rid of one thing before we catch the next. we all had a nasty stomach virus for a little over week - right through christmas - and now boden has an ear infection and possibly a sinus infection, and i've got some sort of sinus thing going on too! i'm not sure how we're catching it all - boden hasn't even been around another child for at least 2 weeks. it's frustrating, but i'm thankful we are not fighting anything more serious than colds.

we did get to go to nebraska for a few days at christmas and see some of my family. despite boden getting sick in the car on the way there, the flat tire on the interstate, and giving the stomach virus to my sisters, their boyfriends, and my dad we had a really good time :) lol. boden got some really fun gifts for christmas and he's been having so much fun playing with them since we got home. probably one thing he enjoyed the most, that wasn't even a gift, was my mom's "scooter". she had foot surgery about a week before christmas and instead of using crutches to get around she has this little scooter that she rests her knee on and pushes with the other foot. (it's hard to visualize, but you'll see it in the photos) boden LOVED the scooter - he wanted to ride on it constantly. he would just walk around saying "ride?", "ride?" whenever he saw it.

there's too many pictures to post on here, so here's the link to them on facebook . i will try to add some more in the next couple days.