And so it goes...

I haven't blogged in a bit and I assure you it isn't because I have been kicked back eating bon bon's (whatever those are).  I have mostly been chasing kids, teaching them manners which most days I think I am failing miserably and trying to make a few memories along the way.  Last week Arden pulled her first "nap time stunt" which has got my wheels  turning on getting her a big girl bed.  She still sleeps in her crib and it really hasn't been a problem but last Wednesday she climbed out of it during nap time.  I have no idea how, all I know is she did it without breaking any bones.  I heard "someone" messing with her door knob and when I opened her door I fully expected to see Cash standing there but it was here and she just smiled and said "I fall out".  Sure you did Arden, sure you did! :)  She hasn't done it again so maybe I have some time in my twin bed search. Wednesday must have been the day for my children because as we were leaving church that night, Arden stepped off the sidewalk and into the driveway, as I went chasing her to get her out of the parking lot Cash yells "get back over here you little huzzie".  WHAT?????????  Yep, that's what he said.  He may have heard that word from me but it is what we yell at the heifers on the farm when they won't get back in the fence.  Guess we need to rethink that one!! :)  They are little sponges, I am learning to be cautious with what I allow them to absorb.

All You Need is Love......

This may be bad timing to make this particular statement but here goes....I think Valentine's Day is a dumb holiday.  Aren't we supposed to love everyday?  Do we really need a "day" set aside to do something really special for someone we love?  I am learning everyday how important "little" things are.  A friendly hello, a smile, a hug, a pat, a courteous gesture, a sincere word, how difficult is it to express these things to the people we love and the strangers we come in contact with?  Isn't this in fact how Christ would want us to act every day.  I know it is not practical to think that I can actually walk around with a happy smile on my face all day long every single day of my life but I am challenging myself in ways that I have not ever done before.  I am reminding myself that although I may think that someone does not deserve my kindness, my affection, my forgiveness, my friendship, my love, my respect, the truth is I don't deserve it either but God gives it to me willingly and lovingly every single day in spite of my failures.  HE loves me and he doesn't set aside a "day" to do it, to show it.  He does it every single day with sunshine, smiles and hugs from my children and my health to name a few.  So although Valentines is about romance and ok I get that, don't let it be the only day you extend something special to someone you love, or to a stranger you don't even know, everyone is struggling with some kind of adversity. :)  I have always heard the saying "you don't really know love until you hold your own baby" and now that I have my own babies I know that in fact is VERY true.  I know what love is, I have experienced love on levels that words can't explain and I am grateful for those I share it with!  So to celebrate "Valentine's Day" here are a few quotes on love that I thought worth sharing!


A loving relationship is one in which the loved one is free to be himself - to laugh with me, but never at me; to cry with me, but never because of me; to love life, to love himself, to love being loved. Such a relationship is based upon freedom and can never grow in a jealous heart.
-- Leo F. Buscaglia 



Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength; loving someone deeply gives you courage.
-- Lao Tzu 


Do you love me because I'm beautiful, or am I beautiful because you love me?
-- Oscar Hammerstein


Falling in love with someone isn't always going to be easy... Anger... tears... laughter.. It's when you want to be together despite it all. That's when you truly love another. I'm sure of it.
-- Author Unknown


I am so glad that you are here... It helps me realize how beautiful my world is.
-- Goethe


I love you, not for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you.
-- Ray Croft


If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin Into his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.
-- Emily Dickinson


If you judge people, you have no time to love them.
-- Mother Teresa


I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
-- Maya Angelou

Picture Memories

Art day!!

The funnies thing about this picture is she is not potty trained!!

And he couldn't get Arden do this without him doing it.  He actually was using the potty.

Let me explain, this is a "camping" fold out tarp that you can picnic on.  It weighs about  2 or 3 pounds.  The light in Cash's closet is a pull chain that he can't reach so the other day I tied some garden twine with a small hook on the end so he could turn it on and off himself.  Within minutes he had hung the camping tarp from the hook which obviously pulled it out of the light entirely.  Now there is no light! :) Boys will be boys!

The Johnston Clan at Ella's birthday party

Me and my sweet Aunt Carolyn

Hayride shots, The Earls family!

Malain and Arden

Papa and his babies

Mama, madilyn and Julie D

Alese and Billy

Our Sweet Birthday girl

Me and one of my oldest and bestest friends, Julie 

So the girls painted their nails

Arden did this by herself! Go figure.

Ready for a ride in our pj's

I must say this is some serious exercise!

Here comes Alese

My little boyfriend! 

Cashism

I only have a moment to type as supper is on the stove and Arden will surely notice that my door is closed.  Once she tries to open it she will discover that it is locked and then she will begin to knock, kick and yell "mama" until I can't take the dog barking at her anymore and open the door, so..............

Cash was just playing in the floor with his combine, tractors etc....  he said to me, "mama, my man got dead on this combine so I am gonna stop and get him some milk and pray for him".  If you are wondering why I am blogging this it is because we as mother's love to hear reassurance that our children do listen.  It made my soul smile to hear my son say he wanted to pray even if it was just for his toy farm hand!!  :)  Thank you Lord!

He said WHAT??????? Another Cashism

Tonight after telling Cash twice to get up in his bed he said to me, "I am you ole cow"!!!!!!!!!!!  I could do nothing but laugh, hard with tears rolling down my face!  The look on his face when he said it made it even funnier.  I know that he really didn't know what he was saying and that he LOVES all things dairy farm so i didn't   beat him down for it!  Now if he would have called me a heifer.......... :)

Jesus Girls....

Last weekend I had the awesome pleasure of attending our church's womens conference.  The only thing that made that better was that my sweet mama came for the weekend and went with me.  A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!!  It was just what my soul needed.  Lysa  Terkeurst was our guest speaker and if you aren't familiar with her she is worth your time.  You can find daily devotions and  encouragement from her at her blog  lysaturkeurst.com or at Proverbs 31 Ministry, where she is the president. You can find them at proverbs31.org.  She had an amazing testimony, one that I never would have assumed but one that was very powerful.  She made a great point that God doesn't always make us "comfortable" but he makes us "comfort able", reach out to others, share your experiences, the good, the bad and the ugly, you never know when it could touch someone's heart!  Our past doesn't make us who we are, it doesn't define us!  It is not a secret that I was married before I married Patrick, it seems like another life ago.  It was a long time ago and it is rarely spoke of anymore, which honestly is okay with me.  However for whatever reason the Lord has been resurfacing some of my past lately.  What I went through was tough, I was young and it very likely would have qualified us for an episode of Jerry Springer, no joke.  I guess I don't "tell the stories" anymore for a lot of reasons, I got sick of talking about them, they were almost unbelievable, etc... etc.... Let me clarify what I meant when I said the Lord has been resurfacing them.  In the last month or so I have been thinking about how I have always said that if what I went through could help one person, if the Lord could use me to help just one person than it was all worth it, otherwise it was all in vain to me.  I use to use my story to reach people, specifically young women in very troubled relationships, I was proof that God delivers and protects because on more than one occasion my Lord WAS MY protector!  So why have I stopped sharing?  Shame? Embarrassment?  I know that people tend to forget about the fact that I was once before married so why bring it up and remind them?  A lot of people in my life now probably don't know and probably don't care but to me it has become something that I want to keep a secret but the reality is that is exactly what  I don't want to do.  I do not want to keep it a secret.  I don't want to confess to every person I come in contact with "hey I am divorced and remarried" but I am no longer going to sweep it under the rug, pretend it never happened.  I felt God dealing with me for whatever reason and yesterday I got an email from a girl that I only know from church, super sweet girl but I don't know her that well.  Anyway she shared with me that we were in a Bible Study together years ago, probably early 2005 and she was thanking me for my transparency, for being open about my experiences and what I had been through.  Her email meant so much to me, it made me cry and say "Thank you Lord for speaking to me through Candace"!  There may be some girl right now who is terrified as I was and has no idea which direction to run and I may could share with her what God did for me!  Why wouldn't I want to do that!


Lysa said "Rise and GO tell your story!!! What satan meant to harm you, God has MADE GOOD"


And all my Jesus girls said "AMEN"! :)


"For I know the plans I have for you" declares the Lord. "Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."  Jer 29:11

Me, Lysa and Mama at the conference

Super Mom or Slacker Mom....That is the Question?

And one I refuse to answer because what I have taught myself as "stay at home mama" is that I am my own worst critic!  I feel the constant need to be super mom and accuse myself often of being slacker mom, although I know that is not the truth.  I look around my house and I see "stuff" in places that "stuff" shouldn't be, mail stacked on the counter, books and toys all over the floor, folded laundry begging for me to put it up (hey at least I folded it, right?).  I then turn and see that I have probably 200-300 pictures that I recently printed just patiently waiting to be put in an album.  I will get to them eventually when there are no more clothes to wash, meals to cook, kitchen to clean etc...you get the idea.  The problem is there will ALWAYS be something that needs to be done and I have to learn to relax in some areas a little.  I find myself often looking at the amazing blogs of other creative and crafty busy mothers and wonder "how do they do it".  I can barely make time to blog although I love it passionately, let alone find time to "create" and take pictures AND put them along with  detailed instructions on how someone else can recreate the exact thing.  I get ideas from other professional bloggers and I find myself in envy of their, well time I guess.  I must admit that my first thoughts when I am looking at their beautiful "things" is "what are their kids doing while they are doing this"?  Seriously, I LOVE to sew so much but don't have a "sew room" so when I do start a project I have to pull out the machine, the serger and everything else that my new project entails and I can't even think of starting something when my kids are awake because I have only been sewing for a year and well, I just have to concentrate and I just can't do that when I have to stop every ten minutes and take care of something for them.  This is my season right now.  I juggle what I can and what I can't I am learning that it is not my "battle" and these are NOT the things that matter.  What matters really is am I following Christ, am I seeking His truth every morning so that I may somehow in my "slacker" mom way resemble His love to my children because that is my MOST important job.


I am in the middle of a Bible Study with some of my "Jesus Girls" at church, it is called "Creative Corrections" by Lisa Whelchel and I highly recommend it to mother's.  One of my favorite quotes from this study is "Jesus is more concerned with what is going on in our children's hearts than He is about how well-behaved they are".  Wow!!  So my most important job and passion right now is my children's hearts.  I pressure myself into believing that if my children aren't well behaved then others are judging me and assuming that I am not a "super mom".  This is a tough for me because I am so critical of myself but I am learning to stop judging myself and start fully asking God to reveal Himself to me every morning and all day long so that I may invest in my children's hearts.  So next time you see us out to eat and Arden throws her food on the floor, along with 14 forks and Cash is up and down climbing on Arden's chair being loud and totally interrupting your meal, you can relax...their behavior may be completely obnoxious but their sweet little hearts are filled with love!  Oh and if you do see us out, you may just want to ask to sit across the restaurant, or better yet, you may just want to find another one entirely!  :)


Loving this "season" of our crazy lives,
Julie