NOT ME! Monday.... the super short and sweet version!

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.

This will be short and sweet. Why you may ask? Because I have so much to do today! Erik and I certainly have NOT known that we'll be moving since October. There is no way that even though we have known that we have to be out by May 1st, we still haven't started packing. Under no circumstances would we leave finding a storage facility, packing and having a garage sale until just a few short week until we have to move.OH NO NOT US! We're responsible adults.... really we are.

And know just how busy that I should be (packing, storing, moving, and garage sale tagging), there is no way that I started something like QUILTING this week. NO NOT ME! I wouldn't be foolish enough to pick up a time and energy consuming activity like quilting when I know just how busy I should be. Ok.... maybe I did!

Hi Brother!

I am so excited!

Crafting is my favorite thing to do. I love to make bows for Sissy, sew little skirts, crochet dollies and animals, paint, draw, just about anything crafty that I can get my hands on. Lately I have been doing a lot of sewing. When E and I got married my Grandma gave me a wonderful sewing machine that my parents had given her. She was getting older and had a hard time with the digital features of the machine. It's a great little machine. But as I've learned more about sewing and advanced, I've out grown this little machine. So yesterday, after much thought, I bought one of these bad boys! A Brother SE-350:

"Hi Brother!"

Did I mention that I'm excited? Well I am!

Revelation

I can't seem to stop crying.

At what point in your walk, your relationship with Christ do you realize that you are dry. That you are barren.

Empty.

Is it the enemy that blinded my eyes to this painful realization? Or is it my own prideful nature?

The blinders fell from my eyes recently and the pain in my heart, my soul from drifting away from my heavenly father became too much for me to bear. I recently joined a women's Bible study and have been working my way through "Becoming a Woman of Excellence" by Cynthia Heald. God is truly revealing to me who he wants me to become. He has laid the path for me to follow to a beautiful, fulfilling and excellent relationship with him.

But I did not truly realize just how hungry I was, just how desperate I was to be filled once again with Him. I know now. I cannot stop crying.

For Lent I wanted to give up something that meant something to me. Something that really changed my behavior. I struggled with what to give up for days. It couldn't be soda or the internet; failure would follow those for sure. It had to be something different. One day it hit me, hard. I sat in my minivan with my three rambunctious kids listening to my daily dose of talk radio. Depending on the time of day it could be Rush, Hannity, Beck or if you are lucky enough to live in the Pacific Northwest, the great Lars Larson. A great debate filled the airwaves and I was enthralled. So deep in the thick of it that I snapped at my child to be quiet so that I could hear. HE revealed to me then what I was to give up. I reset my radio to KLOVE. It was really hard at first. I didn't know the music and honestly didn't like a lot of it. It took a good week before I stopped reaching for the tune button after every song. But soon my beautiful children started singing along and so did I.

There was a specific song that I had heard in church a few times. It was intense and rubbed me the wrong way when I heard it. So much so that I didn't sing along. I caught it a few times on the radio and didn't think much of it. But yesterday I had the rare occasion to run to the grocery store by myself. In the car this song came on. I knew every word. For the first time in a very long time, I really truly worshiped my God, my Savior. I wept like a baby. He brought me to a very low, low point and showed me just how full he could fill me. This passage broke me:

 

Filled with wonder,

Awestruck wonder

At the mention of Your Name

Jesus, Your Name is Power

Breath and Living Water

Such a marvelous mystery

Allowing Him to fill me.

The song was a mystery to me. I had no idea who sang it or what the title was. Tonight I had some time to myself so I went searching for it. When I finally found it I had to laugh. He is SO AMAZING! The name of the song was Revelation Song. That is truly what it was for me, revelation in a song. I can't seem to stop crying.

Thank you Philips, Craig and Dean and thank you Savior.

Pirates

Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good,

God would permit us to be pirates.

- Life on the Mississippi

Mark Twain

Moving on, quilting and sewing for Nancy

I have been putting off blogging this week. There is a personal post that I started last Monday but can't seem to finish. I couldn't get past it, didn't feel right posting something else so I avoided my blog all together. But this week I spent too much time looking at that post, trying to figure out how I feel about it, how I want to end it. So I put it away and am moving on. I'm rather pleased with that decision.

Since I had so much non-blogging time on my hands this week I got to work! I found this wonderful blog V and Co. with a great pinwheel quilt tutorial. While I've never made a quilt before and I'm a novice seamstress (to say the least!) but I decided to give this quilt a shot. All I have to say is that I am so proud of myself! I had some beautiful fabric left over from a skirt that I made for Sissy. There wasn't enough left for much else but boy was there enough for this quilt. I've been cutting and sewing and cutting and sewing and so on and so on. This is the result so far:

Yesterday Sissy found a cute little doll dress pattern in my craft stuff. She brought it to me and said (and I quote) "Make it!". So I did! I happened to have a ton of this red fabric from a project that never came to fruition, so Sissy got a skirt...

And Fancy Nancy (or as Sissy calls her "Nancy Nancy") got a dress.

Nothing is perfect (can you see the seams on poor Nancy sleeve!?! Goodness!) but I am really enjoying learning to sew. It feels so good to create something!

Want to know what I have not been doing?

Packing! I should get on that....

Our new best friend

Mr. Liam has a new best friend.

Liam was diagnosed with asthma last summer after four straight months of breathing issues. We had him tested for seasonal allergies but everything came back negative. We never found his triggers. He managed to stay pretty healthy through the fall and into the winter. His pediatrician even talked about taking the asthma diagnosis off Liam’s chart. But alas, the good news was short lived. Liam’s asthma came back this spring and came back fast. In the past month he has had two major flare ups. Flare ups equal lots and lots of breathing treatments. And since we seem to be repeating last year to a T (both springs started with Bronchiolitis and an infection in the right ear), Liam has been put on the long term inhaled corticosteroids. This means a typical day for Liam includes four or five breathing treatments. A boy gets bored, let me tell you! He was getting antsy and frustrated at each treatment. I went looking for help where I usually do, EBAY! There I found Liam’s new best friend. We got our little dragon in mail this week and Mr. Liam took him for a test run. A successful one!

Now I must warn you that you will see my sweet baby with leftover Spaghetti-O’s on his face and dirty finger nails… life happens! Liam loved his new friend… until big brother brought him a police car to play with…

“Back on your mouth Liam!”

“Back off, lady” That’s the steroids talking…

“Liam!”

"Like this mom?"

"Yes, Liam. That’s perfect!"

I think that I may be just as happy with Liam’s new best friend as he is.

Not my potty chair!

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.

What a long weekend it has been! After three days of non stop runny noses, breathing treatments, crying, cuddling, and constant trips to the potty chair with my overacheiving toddler, I most certainly had NOT had enough. There is not way that I took this adorable little fellow:

out of the bathroom and placed him smack dab in the center of my living room. I did NOT follow this heinous act by taking my child's unders off and then just let the little comando roam. Nope NOT ME! I have ALL the patience in the world! Potty training my two year-old twins never gets old... I swear!

I should add that this was succesful! Liam had a place to go (constantly!) and I didn't have to spend my day on the floor of the bathroom!