These are the Moments

These are the moments that add up to our days.  Sometimes in the hectic mayhem that seems inevitable in a household of 9 it is good to stop and breath and remember that while it's true it all matters, what we do with our days and how we invest our time, God is also truly sovereign over it all.  This is so important for me to remember because it is ONLY with this in mind that I can stop trying so hard to do it all perfectly.  

I'm often convicted that I spent to much time focused on keeping an orderly house and raising well mannered kids who are well liked and successful in school and on and on and on.  This often feels like swimming upstream in my house, crushingly overwhelming, and while I won't go so far as to say these things don't matter, I will say I'm learning, we're learning, SLOWLY, that they are not the most important things.  We'll never understand how God has ordered our days.  We'll never understand how He's using the big and small teaching moments or even the things the people around us are simply observing about the way we live our lives to work out His plan.  All we can do is stay close to Him, always connected to Him, remembering, trusting that He's using our ordinary moments, ordering our days and working out His perfect plan in and through our lives.   

Looking so grown up.  Every one of them!

This is Sadie's little cat Potato.  He's OLD!!!  My sister Kendra who is now an adult with 2 children of her own received him from a friend in high school I believe.  Sadie claimed him when we moved to Oregon 10 years ago.  So he's OLD!!!  Potato has been "forever" lost twice but then miraculously reappeared.  I think one time he was gone for 6 months before we found him again.  He's been dropped in the toilet once.  Daddy froze him once as a joke once which was NOT FUNNY!!!! and when this picture was taken he had just been found after his latest adventure.  Sadie lost him while out in the pasture with the goats and we had looked and looked but thought once again he was surely gone.  The grass out there is tall and there's a lot of ground to cover and we thought this was finally it.  Sadie was dramatically and seriously heart broken as she takes this silly little thing everywhere.  She's in 6th grade and most of her class knows him by name... sooooo I don't even know what to make of that.  Anyway, we thought all hope was lost but went out one more time to look in the morning and found him next to Daddy's old work truck.  So he lives on and I took a picture so she'll at least have that should she ever really loose this well loved little kitty.

Sweet Sisters

The girls' cribs have become a real problem.  I feel like I clean them out fairly regularly, although I will admit that they usually climb into bed with an armful of toys and I usually allow it because I'm just so ready for them to be in bed.  The bigger problem however is that throughout the day they carry additional toys up to their beds until they reach a point after a few days that there isn't even room for them to sleep anymore.  We had this problem with all the kids to a point but this is next level, as is EVERYTHING with twins.

ALL of this came out of their cribs!!!!

If you've ever wanted to wash the same load of laundry 6 times in a row I've got an idea for you.  Wash it the first time with 2 wet diapers.  

Sooooo fun!!!!

Maddie loves Hadley!!!

Hot chocolate in our new Christmas mugs.

Remembering the sweet sane moments moment when they were holding hands and sitting in the cart.

Laundry, Laundry, Laundry

I do soooo much laundry these days!

They're the silliest things you ever did see.

Aubrey

Maddie

Aubrey

I guess you'd call this repurposing Wyatt's mask.

This poor chicken!!!

Happy Valentines Day!

Anybody else squeeze in a haircut on Valentines Day.

Snuggly Babies

  

Nice Babies

Naughty Babies

Grumpy Babies

Flower's make me so happy and Brandon does a great job of keeping my pot filled for me most of the time, but I thought these were pretty for the in between times.