A little food for thought

I came across this poem and really liked it, so just thought I would share:

My life is but a weaving

between my Lord and me;

I cannot choose the colors,

He worketh steadily.

Oft times He weaveth sorrow,

And I, in foolish pride,

Forget he sees the upper,

and I the under side.

Not 'til the loom is silent

and the shuttles cease to fly,

Shall God unroll the canvas

and explain the reason why.

The dark threads are as needful

in the Weaver's skillful hand,

As the threads of gold and silver

in the pattern He has planned.

He knows, He loves, He cares,

nothing this truth can dim.

He gives His very best to those

who leave the choice with Him.

~Author Unknown

Hope you enjoy!

Fun Times

I love this picture Lily.

Some cute kids.

One morning Drew set his alarm clock way to early. So he was all ready for school and crashed on the living room floor!

Can you tell Drew takes after his dad? Drew loves to fix, work, and build things. I was quite impressed. Especially how he got some of the Jenga blocks to tilt and stay in place.

Just another picture of a Hannah snitch. During our family movie party, Hannah got into some of the leftover pizza.

Hannah is loving the jumper. She gets a lot of help with it from her older sister.....
(oops I meant Lily is loving the jumper....)

I love this picture of Lily!!

Our family went ice fishing in Roberts and Drew caught this perch. It froze after he caught it, so here we were trying to revive it so we could have another fish for our tank...it was kind of gross. It really did look like it was going to come back, the gills moved and it would move its fins but we finally came to grips with the fact that it had passed on.

This fishing trip was in Swan Valley on the Snake River. Drew pulled in two fish: a rainbow, and a cutthroat. He had to throw back the cutthroat, but we kept the rainbow. It was a really beautifully colored fish. It was almost black on top with a bright purple stripe on its middle. We had never seen one like that before. And I just accidentally erased the picture of Drew actually holding up the fish...sorry.

Hannah and Lily and I stayed in the car during the fishing, and this is what kept Hannah content.

After fishing, we went up to Jed's uncles cabin and watched the deer. They were everywhere! (He actually sets out hay bales and those deer go crazy for it!)

These pictures are through our very dirty windshield.

It was so fun to have so many deer so close up. While we were in Swan Valley we also saw probably 25+ swans flying around. I had never really made the correlation "Swan" Valley, perhaps because in the many many times we have gone up there I have never seen one swan!! Maybe I've been blind to them...

This is Drew's good sized rainbow, you can't really tell by the picture how beautiful the coloring was.

We have finished our basement in the last month or so, so there has been a lot of adjustments to make. One of them has been to move Lily out of her bassinett in our room and into the kids room with Hannah. It is hard for me to see change like this. This means my baby is growing up!! So Hannah is introducing the crib to Lily. Hannah is getting used to her big girl bed. Drew and Madelyn both have their own rooms in the basement and they have done pretty well down there. I've been impressed.

Lily is growing like crazy. Bittersweet. Life is flying way too fast for me. Our family has been quite busy the last few months, and it just makes me feel like I need to push pause on everyone. I love them just the way they are and want them to stay little. But of course I have always felt this way. I remember wanting Drew to stay little and Madelyn to stay a baby a little longer, but then I wouldn't have my two other snugglebugs to be with me!! So it is all good and great....I just wish I could slow it down a smidge. :) I love these guys so much. I love being a mom, it is not always easy that is for sure, but I am so happy and blessed to be with these little ones.

Christmas Time in a Nutshell

I'm behind in blogging...so I'm going to just hit you with a brick wall of pictures! All out of order of course because my goal is to just get them up and be done!
Like our tree? Ha Ha...we received this tree for free from a stranger in Home Depot. We didn't really know how bad of shape it was in, until we tried setting it up. The branch holders were extremely cheap and more and more of them kept breaking!! But we had a Merry Christmas with our dilapidated tree!!! (We did get it to look a little better, and that is our bare walled newly finished basement)

Unfortunately our family all got attacked by a ferocious flu bug at Christmastime. Oddly enough, Lily was the first to catch it, then it went from there. It was horrible and it really makes you feel bad because you really don't know what your little ones are feeling until it hits you! I did enjoy getting to cuddle with Lily a little more though.

Hannah loves to test out Lily's baby gear.

Oh how I love my Lily girl!

Ok, here we are jumping right to the annual traditional New Year's party! Let's just skip the whole Christmas thing for a minute. This was Cindy's first year vying for the Domino Championship, and beginner's luck...ok ok, just pure innate skill, won it for her!! Way to go Cindy!

A family that lives near us kindly gave us this fish tank, so one of our kids' Christmas presents were fishies!! Hannah just pulled up a chair to watch.

Now we're getting to the thick of Christmas! You can see bags of wrapping paper trash to the side... Hannah loves coloring, and coloring on walls, so Santa thought this might help that a bit.

Gift unwrapping....

more unwrapping....

A little bit of shnoozing, after all we did get up at 4:45 AM!!

Gaming.......

A bit more resting.....

Lily enjoying the new stash of toys.....

Here is what the kids and I got that dilapidated tree to look like in the end. It might do for another Christmas.

Santa's loot....

Here is our Christmas Eve party. Lots of delicious appetizers. Mmmmm....

While I was working in the kitchen on Christmas Eve, Jed pulled the kids and the neighbors kids behind the four wheeler.
Ok, so I am grateful for automatic saving!! Here I am at the very end of this and the whole thing disappears before my eyes!! So glad my computer is working with me!
We had a wonderful Christmas season. It went by so very fast, but each year Christmas means more and more to me. I love that. We had such a wonderful time with all of our family, friends, and neighbors. What a wonderful time of year!