blessed beyond measure

Bless Trey's heart - he has been such a trooper with the looooong hours we have been putting in at church lately, getting ready for the Easter pageant. And thanks Mom for keeping Trey so much. I know it's a struggle. :) Last night we got home late, so Trey went to bed pretty late, and I had a feeling it would be like pulling teeth getting him up early this morning so I could go to work. Usually when I have to wake him up from a deep sleep, he's not fully conscious until about halfway through his diaper change. Not this morning... Mama: (Rubbing his back as he lays in his crib) Trey, can you wake up for Mama? Trey: (Eyes closed) Hmm? Mama: Can I pick you up? I need a hug. Trey: (Eyes still closed, whispering) No. Mama: Why not? Trey: (Eyes still closed, whispering) Ny-ny. (Night-night) Mama: (Laughing) Come on baby, we need to wake up now. Trey: (Opens his eyes and puts his finger to his lips) Shhh. He is so funny, without even trying. I am the human alarm...

For the last two years or so, I have been part of a team at my church that has been planning our community's first ever Easter pageant, a full-scale drama/musical about the life of Christ. Planning the pageant has been an interesting experience, as very few of us have had any exposure in the area of theatrics, at least on this level. And we have done/are doing everything ourselves, with around 200 people involved in every possible area. It has been a learning experience. Quite challenging at times, extremely time-consuming, but totally worth it. We scheduled our performances for the evenings of April 2-5. Tickets became available at the beginning of this month, and we had 300 tickets for each night. The first week or two, we might have given out 20. And our prayers quickly turned from "Lord, please help us get everything done" to "Lord, please bring people to see your story". We desperately needed God's approval over what we were doing. Ask and it sh...

"Appy Giga" is how Trey responded when asked to say, "Happy Birthday Giga!" We celebrated a milestone birthday for my mom this past weekend by going out to eat a yummy dinner with five generations of family. Trey was as charming as ever, repeatedly going around the table and naming everyone there, and flirting with ladies at the next table. He sure does love his Giga, which he made known by calling loudly for her throughout the meal. Love you so much Mom, and hope you had a great birthday. Here's Trey with a couple of his other favorite people, Nene (Whitney) and Papa.

So, looking back, it's been a little while since I have posted a Trey development update. We are at such a fun stage. He seems to learn new things every day, whether we teach him or not. Here are a few things Trey enjoys: - Letters. Ever since receiving sets of foam ABCs for Christmas, Trey has been fascinated with letters. He knows most upper-case letters, missing only J (still calls it "jump"), N (calls it M), R (calls it A), S (calls it 5), V and W (turns them upside-down and calls them A and M respectively), and Z (calls it 2). He seems to be utterly confused by lower-case letters. I wonder how to introduce those? Here he his in his favorite activity - taking letters out of a bucket one by one, naming them, then throwing them across the room. - Climbing. Trey was blessed/cursed with my short little legs, and though he has wanted to do a lot of climbing for months now, his legs are just now getting long enough for him to get on couches and chairs. Lately we...

My financial savvy, that is. This is not a post to brag on money-saving. OK, it kind of is, but I'm bragging on God for convicting me to be more responsible with money and then equipping me with the tools and time to find good deals. This past week has been amazing money-wise. On Monday Trey and I went to Once Upon a Child to get some much-needed spring clothes for him. We found the cutest things, and ended up getting 3 church outfits (one of them Baby Gap!) and several play shirts for $20. Wednesday found me at CVS. I am relatively new to CVS-ing and have yet to figure out how people spend less than a dollar and get like 100 ECBs back. But I'm on a good, steady pace anyway. I got about $15 worth of stuff for $5 and got 8 ECBs back. Not too bad. Friday was the week's Kroger trip. I have done as well as I could keeping to $75 a week this year. If we hadn't included diapers in that goal I think it would be more feasable. Kroger has a great deal on right now wher...

So here are a couple of pictures. I have to explain the first one - Trey put the hat on himself and ran around the house in it for maybe 10 minutes. Finally looked at himself in the mirror and threw a fit. Dropped to the floor in his dramatic fashion and rolled around crying. Not sure what happened there...

Our snowy Monday is now a distant memory, with today being an absolutely gorgeous day with temps in the 70s. The advent of warm weather tends to remind me of things I'm sure I knew at some point, but seem to have forgotten in the cold: - Your kid grew during the winter. While we're decent on mid-summer weather clothes, Trey is lacking in the season-transition, OK to get dirty department. And he has no play shoes that fit. We went outside today with him wearing shoes he grew out of last fall and a 9-12 month size outfit. So sorry baby! Looks like we're headed to Once Upon a Child soon. - Your windows are filthy. Yeah. I would rather mop the driveway than clean windows. And ours are gross. I did wipe down the insides of them today. And that was when I realized that after our New Year's furnace explosion soot extravaganza, we neglected to clean soot off the windows. Nice. Sometimes I miss my OCD clean freak self, who has gradually disappeared with marriage an...

I would like to offer a formal apology to the weathermen for my disrespect. I will try to not have such a cynical attitude toward you from now on. Although I still wonder if you don't get a bonus for cooking up a snow prediction every now and then. Boy did it ever snow last night. We had an inch or so before dinner, then it stopped. Sometime in the night the sky opened up again, and the dawn gradually revealed God's beautiful countryside under a nine-inch-thick blanket of white. A snow day is almost as good as Christmas at putting me in a domestic mood. We had three homemade meals today - cinnamon buns (soy-based!) for breakfast, vegetable soup for lunch, and beef gravy with pototes and biscuits for dinner. Mmmm, comfort food. We ventured outside this afternoon after a getting-ready scene reminiscent of A Christmas Story . Trey was a little better with the snow this time. He enjoyed stomping through it, but that's about it. Showed no interest whatsoever in helping ...

My prediction that we would never again have a good snow has proven inaccurate. And praise the Lord! This is one time I am perfectly overjoyed to admit when I am wrong. The picture is from our driveway looking at a house across the street. The snow is absolutely beautiful, sticky, falling fast and hard with flakes as big as quarters. It has been snowing like crazy for a couple of hours, and this stuff is supposed to keep up all night long. The weathermen, believe them or not, say we could get eight inches. Brandon's school is already cancelled for tomorrow, and I am so blessed to have a job where I can work from home. So looks like we'll be hemmed in together for a while. Yay! Now, where are those board games??