New Beginnings

Ya know how when you get married, you realize weird habits and thought patterns you'd always had that you didn't realize were that weird until you were suddenly living with another person that noticed them?  After Travis and I had been married a little while, I realized that I change my clothes and put make up on a lot through out one single day.  So instead of changing my habits, I just called it "New Beginnings" and "Make Up City".  That made it so that that Travis wouldn't ask me about it as much - because "hey - I'm having new beginnings here" or "well, it's just time for make up city!".  It worked. 

Savannah has recently gotten into New Beginnings herself.... it's only 2pm and here's what's she's worn today: 

Starts with jammers.  I mean, that's normal. (Notice, making a smoothie in our Ninja dealy - it's amazing!)

 Then we went to the blue dress with earrings, crown and necklace. 

 Moving on to the official Cinderella dress, complete with high heeled glass slippers...

 Then we went out and some errands.  I made her put normal clothes on for that, but she took them off the second we got home and put on this official Sleeping Beauty outfit.  She's holding the flower we got today with this "value card" we bought from one of our high school students.  We paid $20 for the card and take it in to get "free" flowers every month.  Pretty awesome!

 By the time we worked on baking cookies this is what she was down to.  Training pants and a necklace. 

Needless to say she went naked for about an hour after this picture before I made her put clothes on for her nap.  We'll see what happens when she wakes up.  My money is on something pink though.

evidence of timing

Today I waxed our dining room table.  We got this table 4 years ago from some good friends of ours.  We had just put our old house on the market and were anticipating moving into a bigger house right away.  One with an actual dining room, that could house an actual table!  So as we waited for our house to sell we stored the table in the garage, along with most of our belongings (I guess mostly empty houses sell better than mostly cluttered ones ).  Well, waiting turned into more waiting and more waiting until over a year later our house finally sold.  So there waited the table, in the garage, for over a year.  It wasn't cared for at all.  Small animals and birds crawled on it, boxes of who knows what scratched against it, and I never once waxed it.  

As I waxed it today and went over the scratches, the places where the wood has buckled, and the places where the wood has pulled apart, I was reminded that this table that is warn before it's time is evidence to us of God's good timing.  It was didn't seem so at the time, but it was perfect timing.  Just in time for a baby to be born, for grandparents to opening their home and help, for a new roof on the new house before we bought it, and just in time for the table to be warn enough that it will never be the same and always remind me of that time. 

For I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord.  Plans to prosper you, and not to harm you.  Plans to give you hope and a future. - Jeremiah 29:11

Favortite Game

Have I mentioned that Savannah's FAVORITE game to play is "nite nite".  Where everyone takes turns pretending to go to sleep, then wake each other up.  Sometimes you get to fake snore, or Travis' favorite, you can pretend that you wont wake up unless you are awakened with a kiss.  She just loves it.  Does it all the time.  

In other news, Savannah could not poop for over 3 days and obviously had some in there wanting to come out.  She was in tears most of the day yesterday saying "oweeyyy, my booty!".  So I tried having her drink a lot of juice, and eating fruit in the morning, and we tried caffine (a Coke) and black licorice, and even some organic laxitives, and let's not forget the 3 baths in hot water and baking soda.  Finally last night I brought her over to my parent's hot tub to swim, hoping to relax her a little.  It worked!  I think the combo of warm water and actually swimming around finally got it out.  That's the story. 

evidence of life

Savannah has just gone down for her afternoon nap and I am doing my usual quick pick up of the house.  {it's the only time of day that I get to enjoy living in a somewhat clean environment!} I usually just walk through the house picking up toys, papers, crayons, whatevers, and putting them where they go.  But today as I started at it, I stopped and looked again.  This is what I was about to pick up, 

I know it just seems like a mess at first, right?  But something in me stopped(likely the holy spirit who is constantly teaching me to enjoy life) and thought "I love that my little girl was playing here".  Seeing her little earring on the floor next to her little purse with my memory verse cards all in front of the dogs dish made me stop and imagine, what was she doing here?  Could have been anything, knowing her - really anything!  But what God wanted me to see right now was the Evidence of the life, joy, and imagination of my sweet Savannah.  Not a mess.

When am I going to stop seeing the "messes" around me and start seeing the evidence of all the gifts and wonders God has blessed me with?


Here's us just messing around with Photo Booth on my computer earlier.  She loves taking pictures of us on it!  I love taking pictures of us on it!

Reading our Bibles

The reason I haven't posted all week is because we were reading our Bibles.  We are SOOO Holy.  *Insert Sarcasm here please * 

Actually, I did want to mention though that I've been reading my new HSCB (Cornerstone is switching translations this spring).  It's great to have a totally fresh translation to study!  I like that the HSCB is a little more word for word than the NIV even because it really challenges me to study and reflect more on what I'm reading. 

Here is an example of excellent parenting.  The other day Savannah told me she wanted to play in the snow.  It was only like 20 degrees outside and I hate cold so I bundled her up and sent her out - while I watched from the living room :) 

 Here's Savannah showing off the robe that Travis and I got her for Christmas. We got it like 2 sizes too big.  This was one of those things that she can easily grow in to.  She loves it.

_ _ _ _ on the potty!

Someone went _ _ _ _ on the potty at home for the first time today!  

And it was AWESOME!

And no, it wasn't the one on the left.... well, not that I know of :)

Potty training has been going okay - except that Sav hasn't yet gone poo poo on the potty - until today.  It was a grand victory, worthy of her promised ice cream!

Christmas round 2

We celebrated Christmas with my parents yesterday.  It was a pretty fun time. It was kinda awesome because we waited until new years day to go shopping and everything was like at least %50 off!  For breakfast my mom made "man-cake pancakes" - it was a recipe I found online that uses beer instead of water.  Travis LOVED them.  Me, not so much, but I don't typically like beer anyway.  

Then we did some gifts.  Savannah got her own lip gloss from my mom.  Looks pretty hot! 

We gave my dad black olives and batteries.  When he was a kid I guess they didn't get good stuff like that very often so he tried to shop lift a package of batteries and a can of black olives.  On his way out of the store he got busted and they chased him down across the parking lot.

Savannah also got a trunk full of princess dress up clothes.  She has been doing almost nothing but taking clothes off and putting new ones on for the last 2 days.  She especially likes the clip on plastic earrings and the heels.

Here's her big gift.  

My dad made Savannah her first big girl bed!  

He's really amazing at what he can do.  I'm pretty sure I blogged about a year ago about all the hand crafted items around our house from him. This entire bed is made and decorated with his own hands!

 The headboard of the bed is a little house with wood shingles.   There are several little cut outs / shelves in the house, each installed with LED lights.  The on/off button is right inside the bottom and easy to push so that Savannah can wake up and turn the lights on at night if  she gets scared.

My dad, knowing of Savannah's obsession with owls, also got her this little owl family to live in the house and "keep watch over her at night".  She's been waking up lately after having bad dreams or just feeling afraid of the dark, so any help is good help!  The bed totally matches her room too!  I put her blankets on on it today.  She's SOOOO excited!

And here's how Travis usually spends holidays at my parent's house.  Can't blame him.