I'm sitting here at my desk looking out our bedroom window. The leaves are changing to yellow, brown and orange. It smells amazing outside. The way Thanksgiving smells, and makes you feel special and alive and comforted. I feel unfamiliar with this keyboard and this screen - seems like I never get the time to blog my thoughts and ideas lately. Life is full and rich. My week days are filled with children and household duties and ministry appointments - I'm thankful for each of those. My evenings are filled with family dinner around the table, tv shows with my husband or grocery shopping - also thankful for those things. I do scratch at my head and wonder how each week seems to fly by a little bit faster. {sigh} Anyway, Fall is clearly here and we've been enjoying some little family things each weekend. My girls are growing and we are such a fun stage with them. Ava loves going and doing, she's my busy body. She loves activity and outings and go-go-go. She is so disappointed when I tell her, "it's time to go home" and asks, "can we go to one more place?" every time. August will be 5 months old in a few days. She is SO AMAZINGLY go with the flow. She never cries. She is smiley and chubby and perfectly adorable. This morning I walked out of the room she was in and came back to find her rolled over onto her belly. {sniff, sniff} So begins some mobility already. She is an amazing creation made by an amazing creator, God.
This weekend our church is hosting our Big Picture Missions Conference. We have missionaries from all over the world and our own country here with us - sharing their calling and experiences. It's intense. Lastnight my heart was so challenged by hearing lady after lady talk about how God uses them, seemingly insignificant, in HUGE ways. I was reminded of my order : Child of God FIRST, Wife SECOND, Mommy THIRD. Needed that reminder. My tears welled up {and over} as I heard them share their hearts pains about leaving family behind to serve, health issues endured, and roles taken on all the the Glory of God. How easy my life seems after hearing such things. Do I even have anything to dare complain about? We had a ladies day of pampering and fellowship yesterday - lunch at a fancy pizza place, starbucks pumpkin spice lattes for dessert and then pedicures at the Aveda salon. :) Wow, did I feel special! I was blown away by just listening to the conversations around me. Women challenging each other to step up and parent for Christ. Pastors wives encouraging other pastors wives... experienced missionary ladies giving advice to young, upcoming missionary ladies. It was EXACTLY what the bible exhorts us to do as women... "TEACH THEM". Ah, my heart was full. I loved sitting in the back of a van talking to two dear pastors wives about how we raise our children. The struggles we face, the victories we have, the desire to follow God harder and more diligently and the obstacles we face. Part of me {although we were all exhausted} didn't want the day to end. I want to have those conversations everyday. And I came to a realization - something I think I already knew but forget about : we all have the same struggles. They sometimes have different faces behind them, different price tags or circumstances. But they are so similar. We need each other. Cracked pots trying to serve a holy God.
Just thoughts.
It's saturday. The fam and I are planning to make an appearance at the International Food Festival downtown today. I'm hoping to try some Ethiopian food or maybe something else. It's an amazing fall day - and I couldn't think of any other people I'd rather be with.
While this isn't the best picture of it... we were given this awesome coffee table a few weeks ago. I'm SO thankful for this piece! I had been wanting one for so long but we just didn't have the funds to make it happen. Thankfully a friend was willing to hand it over for FREE! I had this bucket that was bright white and some random plastic pears and a bunch of viney twigs... voila! This is what I came up with for the coffee table. FREE :) It works.
Last Sunday my husband had the awesome opportunity of baptizing 2 of our teens! That will NEVER get old to watch, for sure. So excited to see how the fruit of this summers growth is carrying on through the fall. Praising the Lord for changed lives! 
August is 4 months old and just doing so so well. She is learning so many things at once that I can hardly keep up. She now sucks her thumb and it's absolutely adorable. I love it. She has found her toes, is trying to roll over, and has found her sometimes very loud voice. The other day she was sitting up all by herself, too, causing momma to tear up {of course} at the fact that my baby is already SO big! We started rice cereal this week and she did ok - not really sure about this spoon thing, but, she'll get it eventually.
And there you have it! An easy, quick and FREE crafty wall art for the big girls room. :) I used a decorative upholstry tack to hang them up - it's a smaller hole then a nail and a pretty external design. I already had all of the materials at home, but, if you need to buy some of the things you could probably still do this for under $5 is my guess! If this is TOO simple for you - I think you could put frames around each piece or maybe some ribbon ties. I might still do the ribbon eventually...but for now, simple is the name of the game.
My big girl already loves her room - and this was a special, homemade craft by mommy that she thinks is pretty cool, too! And mommy loves that it was FREE! :) 
-green afghan on a chilly morn