Fun with the Knouse Family

Last week I had the pleasure of going back down to my hometown with my favorite family of seven. My best friend Tara, her husband Kelly, her five precious kiddos and I packed up two cars and headed to Homestead. Kelly was the guest speaker at the annual Good Friday Community Prayer Breakfast that my mom helps to put on and we figured we'd all make a fun trip out of it. We got down their Thursday afternoon after a fun road trip and only two stops-which isn't bad considering we had 8 people with us! My sister Debi and her family of 3 met us at my parent's house so that Alex could spend some time with the other kids. But not before we all stopped at Robert's fruit stand for a delicious milk shake and the miniature petting zoo. She helped me babysit all 6 of them while Kelly and Tara went out to dinner with the prayer breakfast committee. After several hours of playtime, Debi and I had them all fed and in pajamas within an hour. I must say, we were a well oiled machine!
The next morning, we were all up early and headed to the prayer breakfast, which started at the crazy hour of 7:15. The kids were so wonderful and all of them were ready to go without even a hint of complaining. Kelly did a wonderful job of sharing the Good News and the hope of Easter with everyone at the breakfast, and I think everyone was glad they got to hear him speak. Following the breakfast we all headed to the Alligator farm for a little afternoon fun.








I think their favorite part was the airboat ride, although, getting to pet the alligator was a close second!
After heading back to the house for lunch followed by a good long nap, we loaded back up and headed for home. All the kids were so good and I think my parents enjoyed the fun chaos of a house filled with kids again. Which is good, since J and I are planning to send our kids to "grammy and papa summer camp" for at least a few weeks every year when we have them!
Overall, everyone enjoyed themselves and it was a quick, but enjoyable trip. And I'm pretty sure some new friendships were made...

March Madness

Yes, I realize that March has come and gone, but I wanted to at least acknowledge the month since it consisted of a lot of fun and family.
The beginning of the month I had the chance to head home to my parent's house for a week to relax and spend time with everybody. Plus, it was my father's birthday and I wanted to be home to help celebrate that. During my time at home I got to spend a lot of moments spoiling my adorable nephew. We went to the zoo and to run errands and just spend some time together. Of course the whole time he spent asking me where "J" was and telling me to "send gum". Here are a few pictures of our zoo adventures.




One thing I did learn, Alex enjoys his ice cream and sweets just about as much as his Aunt Jessica does!
While at home my brother and sister and I had the chance to give my parents their anniversary present. This April marks their 35th wedding anniversary and so the three of us (along with some sweet family friends) are sending them to Chicago for a long weekend. I think they were surprised, and I can't wait to hear how the trip goes. I'm so thankful to have them as an example of what commitment and joy of marriage is.

Speaking of wedding anniversaries, J and I celebrated our first on March 20th. We went and stayed at a hotel in Orlando overnight, but didn't do much else since I was under the weather. We had already planned to celebrate a little late with a trip to Savannah, which we will be taking this weekend. We did enjoy the top layer of our cake, which was surprisingly tasty after a year....and I'm glad to have the freezer space back!


I've also had the chance to work on some sewing and crafting projects. I am loving my new sewing machine and have been doing some experimenting. My sweet friend Nicole recently added a little boy to her beautiful family and I made a few things for him and his big sister Kate.




Here's another one of my projects, that I got from a fun website I found. They have a lot of great ideas, so if you're into DIY projects, check them out.


I know that was a long update, but I guess that's what happens when you don't blog for a month. There are some exciting things going on right now and so I'm hoping to be a little more consistent in my blogging. Be sure to check back tomorrow for a post about my fun trip with the Knouse family!

Weekend Recap

J and I had the pleasure of hosting his two nephews this weekend while his sister was out of town. It's the first time we've had the responsibility of being in charge of children together so I was eager to see how we'd handle it (and whether or not the children would survive). We started off Saturday morning by going to Target to pick out a few "necessities" and ended up with a cart that looked like this:

This of course was before the giant tent and glow-in-the-dark soccer ball were thrown in. As I said, we had to get the necessities. After that we went to Gamestop where I made the mistake of staying in the car and letting all 3 boys pick out some video games. Let's just say I think the purchase at that store was more for my husband's benefit than anyone else's. We followed this up with a visit to the Sonic drive-thru, which is always a pleasant experience.
After we went home and played for a while, Grandpa came over and we decided to go to the Laser Tag/Arcade/Bowling place near our house. I think everybody had a great time.
I'm not sure who had more fun, him or the boys...

Grandpa and Shawn playing


After playing laser tag and a slew of arcade games, we cashed in our 667 tickets for 2 small bouncy balls, 2 plastic flash lights, 2 rope bracelets and 2 dolphin key chains, and decided to head home.
We ended the night by lighting up the fire pit and making smores which I think everybody enjoyed. Then J and the boys put up their brand new tent while I blew up the air mattresses in true roughing it fashion.




I had to get up early and head back in to work Sunday morning, but not before enjoying a pancake breakfast with these 2 boys

I think we all had a great time and are hoping we get the chance to do it again soon. They are such sweet boys (and they go to bed early!).
Hope you all had a great weekend!

Home sweet home (away from home...)

The past 40 hours of my life have been spent here:

My call room at the hospital. It's not too bad, and I'm just glad I have somewhere to rest and decompress! In addition to my lovely room are some great nurses, who never cease to keep me entertained.

Exhibit A: Audrey (AKA Swami) who I met last fall and seem to have a lot in common with. We both got married on the same weekend last March, and we both failed the great cracker challenge of 2010. But that's a whole different post.
The days leading up to this 2 day work-induced hibernation were actually quite productive. I went to the local sewing store in hopes that they could fix my machine, and instead ended up walking out of there with a brand new (FABULOUS) one. I think my mom is going to have sewing machine envy. It's a BabyLock Sofia and embroiders, monograms, and has all kinds of great functions. I went home right away and finished the kitchen curtains AND a baby blanket that was made for one of my friends. The blanket was a bit of a challenge, but overall I think it came out pretty well and I'm excited for her to see it.



I have a few new projects lined up that I'm eager to get started on , and I'm going back to the sewing store next week so they can give me a one on one tutorial on how to work my machine.
Overall it's been a productive week. Although, being stuck in the hospital hasn't been good for my wallet. I bought these cute shoes and purse online today:



At least they were on sale.
Have a great weekend!

Precious Time

So, as you can see it has been awhile again since my last post. I'd like to say it's because I've been doing really important work, or changing the world, or anything else worthwhile, but the truth is, I've been basking in the glory of working once a week. I've been staying up late reading books, going to bed without setting an alarm, going to the gym, spending time with some of my favorite children in the world, and overall enjoying life. Of course, I've also been fine-tuning my domestic skills like picking up the dry cleaning, grocery shopping, cleaning the house, and cooking. I mean, just last night I made fish sticks and sweet potato fries for dinner. Don't judge, I think it's J's favorite meal. His face lit up like a 4 year-old at Chuck E Cheese when he saw what I had made. Tonight we went out for dinner, because I wouldn't want to use up my newfound cooking skills all at once.

I've also been trying to finish some sewing and craft projects, but have been unsuccessful thus far. My sewing machine has decided to rebel against me before I could finish the curtains for the kitchen, an experience that has taken me to a new level of frustration. So tomorrow will consist of a trip to Joann's to see if they can help exercise whatever demon has taken residence in the bobbin holder thingy (yes, that is the official term) thus causing it to malfunction. Hopefully, I'll soon be able to post some pictures of my kitchen curtains hanging in all of their homemade glory.

Anyways, I've been trying to think of some fun things to post on the blog and one of the things I decided to do was post some weight-watchers friendly recipes that aren't entirely tasteless and boring (although it will be hard to top my fishsticks and fries feast). I've been in the gym every day and trying to eat healthy, and looking for some fun things to make (which unfortunately means staying away from my Pioneer Woman cookbook...). So if any of you have any recipes you'd like to contribute, email me and let me know!

Hope you all are having a great week. J and I are hosting his nephews this weekend while his sister is out of town and I'm really excited about it. I'll try and take some pictures and let you know how our first experience in parenting goes!

It's Been a While..

I tried not to look at the date of my last post, since my goal was to keep this blog updated fairly recently. I go back and forth between the understanding that most people really don't care about what I had for lunch or what I did at work or any other mundane details of my life. On the other hand, I wanted to keep this blog as a way to journal all of the events (exciting or otherwise) of my life, just to have something to look back on. So with that warning, here are all the fun details of my week!

I've actually had the past ten days off, because February 1st marked the beginning of my FABULOUS new schedule where I work 6 days of (24 hour) call at the hospital a month. That's right, I work full time and I only do 6 days a month. I told you it was fabulous. Anyways, I tried to cram a lot in this past week and a half and I think I managed to succeed. I had the pleasure of taking two of my favorite little girls to pain pottery on Tuesday at a fun place called "You Do the Dishes". You go in and pick a piece of pottery and sit down and paint it in whatever fun way you decide. Since I'm lacking the creative gene, this has never resulted in something I would consider displaying around my house, but I figured the girls would enjoy it and they did. Here are a few pics of them painting their masterpieces (I'm sure their mom can't wait to proudly display the multi-colored miniature horse and whimsical fairy that were painted....I suggested the fireplace mantle!).





Inspired by my recent creativity in painting pottery (notice I didn't post any pictures of my "artwork", although the girls promised me it was beautiful. Is it bad that I need to get affirmation from a 4 and 6 year old?), I had Tara and Jenn over to bake and decorate Valentines Day cookies. Jenn and I were not new to this process, but Tara was, and we decided to pass on our wisdom to her (read: we needed to have another person to tell us how fabulous our cookies were and to help keep my husband from eating all the dough). Pictures were taken, however, it was 10:30 at night, we were covered in flour and hyped up on icing, and needless to say, the outcome was not flattering. So instead I'll show you the end result.



I did learn that you can't stack the cookies before they are completely dried, or they'll stick to each other and end up not so pretty (see picture above).
We are by no means experts at this, but we've come along way from our first attempt which included the mistake of tripling the recipe, 9 cups of flour and a handheld mixer....not a good combination. Needless to say, we are getting better and it was a lot of fun just getting to spend time with my sweet friends.
Anyways, this is Valentines Day weekend and we've got plans to go to dinner and see Wicked! I am so excited (even though I've already seen it) and have desert with some friends after. I can't wait! Anybody else doing anything special?

Enough

Today was one of those beautiful blue sky, 68 degree days that made you glad you live in Florida. For those of you who happen to live up north, don't be jealous. We'll be paying for it come July when a tank top and shorts are too much clothes to have on given the degree of heat and humidity.

Anyways I brought my bible outside for a change and decided to sit and read there instead of being cooped up inside the house. I feel like there is a lot to be learned from the things that J and I have been dealing with these past few weeks, but part of me has been feeling like I'm missing it. It's like the world has moved on and life keeps going, but part of me (that type A, obsessive, perfectionist part) is still holding on to the what ifs and what could have been. We've been talking a lot about when would be a good time to consider starting a family again and whether or not I'd be ready emotionally. Up til now, I havn't been sure of the answer. I get so caught up in everything that could possibly even remotely become a problem that I forget that ultimately, it's not up to me. I get so worried about what if I had another miscarriage, I don't think I could handle it or what if this goes wrong and things don't turn out the way I planned. The sad thing is, my plans and worries aren't only relegated to the concept of having a baby, but every other aspect of life I think I can control. And it always boils down to "enough". Do we have enough money, can I lose enough weight, do I have enough time or whatever my concern for that day may be. And today I really felt like God was speaking to me. Do I want to wait until I feel like I have enough control and can handle things my way, or do I want to trust in God's sufficiency. Truth is, I've been trusting in my own abilities and planning to get me through, rather than resting in the knowledge that He is enough. And it hasn't been working. I can put a smile on my face and pretend that everything is wonderful, but all the acting in the world won't make that true. I've been trying to heal myself instead of letting the Healer do His perfect work.

I've always been the type to try to do things myself, rather than ask for help. Not because I don't like asking for help, but because I think I can do it better my way. My sweet husband hired someone to come clean the house but I cancelled because "why pay someone to do something I can do better myself?" (yes, I know I'm crazy!!). I was saddened to realize that this mentality has carried over into my walk with God. I was led to 2 Corinthians 12 today and here is what I read: "But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
So my prayer today is that I will let the truth of those verses penetrate my heart and be real to me. That I will allow God to be enough.

Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you;
he rises to show you compassion.
For the LORD is a God of justice.
Blessed are all who wait for him!
Isaiah 30:18