Moses...

The boys and I have been reading a book that is about a little boy and his family and it revovlves around the ten plaques and the freeing of the Israelites. It is a very good book but it has brought to light some random thoughts.....
The people didn't like Moses! He was causing all these horrible things to happen - ultimately for the good but at the time it wasn't just hap[pening to Pharoh's people it was also happening to the Israelites - that would have sucked! I can only imagine the anger and fear these people were feeling because here comes this guy who was raised with Pharoh and he has been gone for all these years and he comes back and all these horrible things are happening to free the people but they are happening to them as well and it is making life worse for them than it was before! I am sure Pharoh was punishing the Israelites for what Moses was doing - making them work harder, punishing them more severly,etc.. - and yet these people were supposed to be on Moses' side and okay with what he was doing?? I dont know if I would have been on his side - even if I did have faith - that would be hard! I would be downright pissed at Moses and I sure wouldnt want to be glad about what he was doing. I wonder how hard it was for some to trust him and do what he said? I wonder how many lost their lives before they were able to leave because they didnt do what Moses said because of their anger or fear of all these crazy things happening around them??
I have always seen this story and heard it from such a positive angle - I mean what he did was incredible and the people did get their freedom and God is always right in what he does - but I never thought about the fact that everyone had to suffer throguh each of the plaques and Pharoh's anger to gain their freedom.
Crazy I tell you....God is so stinkin Good!! but not always fun in the way he gets us to the good!!!!

Winter Jam Rocked......

the concert was sooooo much fun! we got to the scope at about noon and we were like 20 in line!!
my hubby has never waited in line for concert tickets in his life so he didnt understand why I wanted to get there so early - on a cold rainy day none the less!!! he was ever so thankful for my wise experience when we got such awesome seats!!!


hanging out for hours in line was fun but got oh so boring towards the end!! it was cold and drizzling and windy so we couldnt play cards or anything! alex joined a youth group playing games near us so he was entertained for awhile and dan and i chatted with the family in front of us!



we were like teenie boppers we were so excited to be in the front of the line!!



do you see those miserable faces??? about 90 minutes before the scope was to let us in people started getting feisty and pushy so we abandoned the chairs and stood to protect our spot in line.....then it started to rain! big drops of rain and wind - for the last hour we waited - it was crazy!!!


BUT OH SO WORTH IT!!!! do you see the stage behind us?? we were in the 6th row on the
floor - awesome!!!! i will never go to a concert and NOT sit on the floor again!!


the Line Up was........Stephanie Smith, Francesca (i cant remember her name but she was good),
Pure NRG,NewSong, Hawk Nelson, Brandon Heath and Toby Mac. It was $10 a ticket and an incredible show! There was a speaker named Tony Nolan - incredible youth speaker - who gave a little talk and a lot of prayer - AMAZING!!! Toby Mac was our favorite by far but we knew he would be before we went - he is a favorite around our house! You should have seen my hubby jumping around like a teenager - it was great!
we are sooo going next year! we are already praying for warmer weather and no rain!!!

I finished it....

I just finished the Table Manners canvas I made for my give away so I thought I would share how it turned out!!! I changed the style of writing a little and was able to personalize it for her family.....let me know what you think???

to Grandmother's house we go....

We are off to Hampton for a fun filled weekend at my parent's house. Mommy,Daddy and Alex are going to a concert Sunday night - Winter Jam 2009 - with a bunch of our favorite christian artists in Norfolk. I can already see the embarrasment on Alex's face when we start dancing like the old fools we are and singing and carrying on - should be fun!!!!
On Tuesday we are going to go to Yorktown for Homeschool days and check out the place where the American Revolution ended - the little ones are very excited for that!!!
I will have lots of pics to share when we get back!!!

they needed me...

this morning my phone rang at 845 and since my hubby was home - I slept on!! then it rang again at 915 and i heard the tail end of a conversation which made me holler down at my hubby...who was it??? well - it was my work (both times) calling to see if I could come in for a couple hours and help out this morning. my first reaction was anger at my hubby - why didn't you come wake me up the first time and tell me? I was upset for a brief moment and then I realized - I dont want to go to work today or any other day so why I am getting angry at my hubby??? They Needed Me - little ol ME was needed - not wanted NEEDED and boy did it feel good! They werent whining or fussing at me because they wanted me to do somehting for them - they genuinely wanted me to come to work becasue they Needed ME!!
I think working has taken away some of my Joy at being home with my family and I dont like it! At work I get compliments, I laugh & smile almost the whole time I am there, there is a whole lot of satisfaction in a job well done with lots of OCD elements on the side and I am good at it!
Dont get me wrong - I am a happy person almost all the time but there are no instant rewards in being a mom & teacher and I have gotten used to that instant gratification of things at work and it is making it harder to not expect it and have higher expectations of my kids at home. It took a long time for me to get to this place of joy and contentment and it is scary to me how something so trivial can change my outlook!! Now - I do realize I have to have let this happen so something is not right and what does it boil down to - as always - my relationship/walk with the Lord! At least that is my take on it!!!
It was nice to be Needed for ME today!!!

ants in our pants.....

we are all very excited around here and having trouble containing it - we get our new laptop tomorrow!!! Yahoo!! Yippee!! we cant wait to use a computer that doesnt take at least 5 minutes to open a page(and that is with dsl) and that doesnt slow down even further every time we put new pics or whatnot on it!! hopefully i will be blogging from my bed tomorrow night at this time!!!
I cant wait to play with my digital scrapping stuff! i have it all on the computer but it takes so long to load each element when I am working on a page that I havent been able to use it very much and I am so looking forward to creating some pages! I found a ton of free stuff online and it is all waiting to be used so I can make some pages, get them developed and see if I am even going to like the way digital looks in the scrapbook! I have seen it in other peoples albums and I am not in love with it but I want to see what it will look like for real and get used to the idea! I love that I can also make pictures to put in frames with fun embellishments and paper and stuff - that will be super cute!!! I am sure I will come up with a gazillion uses for the digital scrapping stuff!!
aaaaarrrggghhhh....that is me screaming becasue i just sat here for 5 minutes waiting fo rhte add image window to pop up and then becasue i double clicked on it in my impatience it didnt open at all so I GIVE UP!!! I wanted to add a nice photo for your viewing pleaure but no such luck......until of course we get the new laptop up and running!!!!
till then..........

we got our tax return...we got our tax return

and that means a new laptop computer for us!!! I cannot even tell you how excited we all are to get a new computer - especially one that can travel all over with us(or me)!! Our current computer is almost 8 years old and once we started looking at new ones we were mortified at how ancient this thing is!! We ordered it from Dell and so now we are waiting for it to arrive - they gave us a shipping date of feb.20 - whatever!! I wanted it tomorrow!!! In the meantime - the current computer must know he is being replaced becasue it is being grouchy and messing up way more often than it used to! I am soooo excited!!!
we also will be able to pay off a bunch of hospital/dr/dentist bills which is even more fantastic than the computer!!!
I just cant wait to play with my new computer - this is going to be the longest 10 days of my life!!!

Sickness...

is making it's way around our house and I am the last to catch it - of course! The boys have all had a cough,runny nose,sore throat,fever and my hubby was the biggest baby of them all with his sad eyes and runny nose - it was hard not to feel sorry for him!!! I am now having all the goodness of the sick plus this horrible headache that keeps coming back - I feel so sorry for people who suffer with migraines I dont know how they function! I had to go lay down today becasue my head hurt so bad!

Maybe it is because the Pickle People were here........

i handed the boys some glass chalk and this is what they did to my kitchen windows! They also did it to the patio doors but I forgot to take a picture of those! This was done to keep the Pickle People from seeing us.....NO idea who the Pickle People(prettyc ertain they are from a cartoon on pbs) are or why they would be watching us but the boys had fun and that is all that matters!!!!

I have been neglecting school,family house and all that stuff to paint these last couple of days and it has been fun! I do have to get back on track after I finish all the goodies for my sister but in the meantime I thought I would show off the signs I made for my sister - upon her request

I am also doing a couple of frames for her that I will be glad to show off when I finish those - in the next day or so!!

PreSchool

I was pestering a friend of mine to put together what she has been doing with her preschooler in a book and sell it to me and she in turn directed me to a site that was recently recomended to her http://www.abcjesuslovesme.com/ So I checked it out. It looks so doable and I love that it is simple and Biblical - I am so gonna do this with Thomas starting next week! I figure he follows me around everywhere I go I may as well take advantage and teach him something while he's back there!!! I am still gonna head over to http://homeschoolcreations.blogspot.com/ and check out what she did and I am also going to use this one http://totallytots.blogspot.com/ which is awesome for the little ones!!! I am excited to do somehting special for Thomas - I am hoping it will get him into the swing of things a little better than I have done with the older 2 but I also think it will be fun to have some Thomas time!!

And the Winner Is.......

Michelle from http://lifewiththree.blogspot.com/ Congrats Michelle! I really hope you will enjoy it!! This was fun but it was hard to pick a winner! Here is what I did because I knew I would peek - I wrote down all the names, put them in a bowl and each boy picked a name. We then put those names in the bowl and Thomas picked the winning name! He carried the name around for a couple hours - he was quite proud of himself!!!
For those of you that didn't win - I would be thrilled to make you a canvas for $20 plus S&H! Any excuse to paint works for me!!!
Thanks to all of you for such nice comments about my work! Those meant a lot to me!