Ronald McDonald House

Last night, we had the privilege of serving at the local Ronald McDonald House. Last fall, Chris and I began attending a small group through our church. It is set up for us to meet and study the first and third Sundays of the month and the fourth Sunday is reserved for serving somewhere in our community. We just began serving at the Ronald McDonald House. So far, our duties have included restocking the kitchen, cleaning (sweeping, dusting, etc), minor house repairs and last night we brought and prepared a meal for the residents. It's been quite some time since I've had the chance to serve complete strangers and do it on a consistent basis. It felt good to get the focus off of us and our family for just a couple of hours and use our time and resources for others. I'm looking forward to future opportunities.

Go Colts!

I don't follow too many sport teams, but I do try to know just a bit of what is going on to either hold my own in a conversation or to get myself in trouble. That is true about the upcoming Super Bowl. However, I must admit here that the one team that I follow (yes, please use that word loosely) is the Indianapolis Colts. Here are a few reasons why I like them

• They represent my home state of Indiana and they do a mighty fine job of it as well
• The team seems to have some character about them and are gracious to the other teams they play
• Several of the players are Christian men
• Even though Tony Dungy is no longer the coach, he used to be and I really liked and respected him

So, in the next couple of weeks, you can bet that I'll be cheering on the Colts in hopes that they will finish on top when it is all said and done. Go Colts!

Mustache March

Well, if you haven't seen my husband recently, this is what he looks like. Yep, he has a mustache. This picture was taken last year, but it is now becoming an annual event. I must admit that I don't like it and he knows it. He wears it around me just long enough to provoke a comment or two out of me and then decides to shave :) I think he missed the memo that it is not March yet. In the military, growing a mustache is something they (pilots and their crew along with others) do in March. I guess it doesn't really matter if he is off flying. Oh well, as long as he eventually shaves it, I will live and I would live if he didn't shave it. I still love this man!

If the Pants Don't Fit . . .

Luke and Hannah are more than capable of changing their own clothes by now. However, Luke could really care less about the whole matter unless it's his beloved John Deere shirt (pictured above) that is worn at least twice a week and sometimes three times a week. If it's clean, it's on his body, not in the closet. Anyway, last week, he needed another pair of pants for some reason. I told him to go get some and put them on. The next thing I know, he comes out saying his pants are too tight and begins to run around (mostly, because I had the camera). Guess who's they are. Yep, they were Andrew's pants. I have to admit that I was rather amazed that he got them on as far as he did, but they were definitely tight. Maybe he'll pay more attention the next time . . .

What I've Been Doing . . .

Well, to copy from my sister's blog, here is what I've been doing instead of blogging.

• Driving - Last week, I drove to the other side of town five times in two days. It was fine, though, since it was all fun stuff we were doing over there.
• Not staying home long enough to blog - Last week, we were busy with MOPS, friends, hosting a dinner, AWANA and one planned (thankfully, it was planned) trip to the doctor. My little trio stayed with a babysitter three times last week - yikes! That has never happened and I don't like it to happen too often. I guess I used them all in one small amount of time rather than over a period of time.
  
• Scrapbooking - It's that time of year to catch up with some scrapbooking. I need to catch up with the annual updates on Luke and Hannah's book, but I'm waiting for paper to go on sale at Hobby Lobby. It just has to be next week! Plus, I'm catching up our Robey Family adventure album.
• Reading - I have a couple of books in progress. I would love to finish reading through the Bible again this year. Since last fall, I finished the New Testament. Now, I'm at the end of Exodus and headed into Leviticus and Numbers. I have to admit that I've slowed down a bit. I continue to remind myself that there are very good reasons why those books full of details are given to us and in the Bible. I also love to read fiction. I could spend my days with my nose in a story book. So, I try not to read too much because I don't want to do much else when I've found a good book. Currently, I'm finishing up another Karen Kingsbury novel, but I am trying to pace myself and not let it consume all of my time.

Finally, I have to admit writing is not always something I enjoy. So, simply, I haven't been in the writing mode lately. Hopefully, that is all about to change . . .

Happy 3rd Birthday, Hannah Elizabeth!

Well, our sweet baby girl celebrated her third birthday exactly a week ago. She actually got to celebrate her birthday twice with even two different cakes. She celebrated her special day with you guessed it, the color pink! She wore pink shirts, ate pink cupcakes with pink ice cream, had pink balloons and even many of her gifts were pink. For the first celebration, our friends, Roger and Cathy were able to join us for an early celebration. She didn't care what day it way. She was just happy that they got to come to help with her celebration (she'd been talking about them visiting since Luke's birthday in September). She adores them. The second celebration was just with our little family on her actual birthday. That morning, we went to MOPS. Even though, I told a few people that it was her birthday, I don't think Hannah had much to say about it. I'm pretty sure her favorite part was eating cake and ice cream and opening gifts with Grandpa and Grandma Robey over the computer.

Hannah is such a sweet girl full of care and compassion for all of us - ok, most of the time for her brothers. Andrew seems to get the brunt of her "care". She enjoys singing and writing as many "H"s as she can. We're excited to see how she grows in the year to come.

My Scare for the Day

And hopefully, for the month and year! Before I go any further, I must let you know that Andrew and the others are all fine.

This morning, I needed to clean the bathrooms. I had finished one bath and was moving to the next. I had just set down the cleaning supplies in the next one when I was distracted by a discipline issue. As I was taking care of that issue, Andrew, my ever curious little guy, needed to check out my cleaning supplies. When I finished disciplining the unnamed child, I found Andrew had dumped toilet bowl cleaner (yeah, it's my fault, I don't usually close it from one bath to the next) all over a good portion of the carpet in Hannah's room, on his good pants, part of his sweater, somehow, it was on Hannah's pants and then I thought, did he eat it?! I was horrified and scared - really scared especially after I asked Hannah if he'd put it in his mouth and she said he had. I don't know if I was supposed to do this, but I gave him some milk to drink because somewhere along the line I thought that was what you were supposed to do. After a few minutes, I thought I would check and see if there was any info on the poison control website. It did very little to calm my fears when it listed some of the worse poisons and toilet bowl cleaner was on the list. So, I swallowed my pride and called their hotline once I read that you should call before symptoms appear. I'm really glad I did because she asked me questions that really put me at ease because the vast majority of my answers were "no". Plus, she gave me symptoms to watch for. She then, called back a couple of hours later to see if he was still acting normal. Of course, my mind was racing like crazy that whole time and what was Andrew doing? He was playing and doing just fine. Maybe the poison control center is just as much for panicked parents as it is for an actual poisoning. So, I will chalk this up as lesson learned and be even more cautious the next time around. I can't tell you how thankful I am that Andrew is just fine.

Oh, thankfully, Hannah's carpet faired much better than all the clothing it touched. Also, when the poison control lady called me back she let me know that Lysol with bleach is one of the less caustic toilet bowl cleaners out there. Just in case you ever need to know. . .

Kansas City or Bust

Trying out this huge 4-wheeler at Bass Pro Shop

Hannah modeling her hat at the train restaurant, Fritz's

Luke enjoying some bounce/slide time

Andrew more than enjoyed the water tables at the children's museum

To say good-bye to 2009 and the welcome 2010, we decided to head to Kansas City for a couple of days. We didn't really have an agenda while we were there, but I had found a couple of things that did sound a bit interesting. We started our time there with a trip to the Hallmark Visitor's Center. It was kind of a quick trip through there. I was the most interested, but the I think the others enjoyed it as well, especially when they were demonstrating with actual machines how the cards were made. Our next stop was a fun little restaurant nearby the served the food with little trains. It was very fun. We all enjoyed it, but I think Andrew did the most. Each time he saw a train, he alerted us and most people nearby with a healthy "choo-choo"! The afternoon was spent at a nearby children's museum followed up by a yummy dinner at Chick-Fil-A (believe it or not, there is not one here where we live - how very disappointing!)

The next day we just did whatever sounded fun at the time. We started at Bass Pro Shop. Of course, that was like a little museum to our little trio. Hannah seemed fearful of the stuffed animals, but we then gave her a close up look and she found out they weren't real. She was ok after that. In the afternoon, we hit a bouncy place with big inflatables and jungle gym type equipment. We all enjoyed what they had to offer and got a good workout at the same time.

The next morning we headed home to visit with some dear friends. It was rather bittersweet to come home. I enjoyed my time there, but was ready to come home. On the other hand, I didn't want to leave because I cherished our uninterrupted family time together.

Isaiah 55:8-9

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,
declares the Lord.
As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Yesterday marked getting back into the daily routine of life. So, as I return to many of the activities that took a break for the Christmas season, I'm often asked how my Christmas was. Honestly, it just wasn't what I expected. There were two things that I had my heart set on doing and I didn't get to do either one. In retrospect, though, I don't think they were part of God's plan for us this season. These verses have been a balm to my soul during times like this (planned events change quite often around our home). I may never know the reason why this Christmas didn't happen as planned and held some disappointments, but I am confident that God had His reasons. When it was all said and done, though, I'm so very thankful for the time we had together as a family, just the five of us, this season. It holds a special place in my heart knowing it won't be that way for a little while as Chris heads out again soon.

I hope each of you had a wonderful Christmas or maybe just one that held some lessons to apply in the coming year.