Four years ago today my hubby and I stood across from each other, proclaimed our love for each other, and vowed to spend the rest of our lives together. In the past four years we have laughed together, rejoiced in each other’s accomplishments and cried together at our disappointments. We have welcomed new life into the world and can’t wait to do it again! But most of all we have grown and matured in our love for one another. We still stumble and sometimes become selfish, but with the Lord’s help we always find our way back to each other.

It’s strange but I feel like I love my husband even more today than I did four years ago. He is the person I want there when I come home and the person I want next to me at night. It’s weird how I spent all those years sleeping by myself and now can hardly sleep a wink when he is gone. He is such a giving person, even when I find I can not be. He will rub my feet and back when they ache, even though he knows I am to tired to do so in return.

Here are a few pictures of us on our honeymoon in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. We had so much fun! We spend the week hiking, eating out, and walking through town. Basically we pampered ourselves as much as possible.  Unfortunately our hotel was a disaster! The bed was so uncomfortable we took all the blankets and made a pallet on the floor! But we didn’t care. We just spent the week with each other. And of course only have 11 pictures to show for it. Which means I didn’t have a lot to choose from to show you.

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I love you my dear husband with all my heart! I can’t wait to see what the next few years hold in store!

In November we moved to a new city. We left my family and a church we loved behind to begin a new journey for our own family. We knew it would be hard, but we also knew that in the long run it would be good.

Since November we have been searching for a church to call home. Each Sunday we have gotten up and dressed and headed out to continue our search and each week we come home a little more dejected. Each week have just felt more and more out of place here wondering why we even moved to a city where we knew no one. But knowing all the while we came here because God told us to.

So we got up this morning, but not at all excited about it. Every Sunday it has gotten harder and harder to get out of bed knowing that this Sunday was going to be just like the last. You can not imagine how excited we were when we walked into the church we were visiting this morning and both felt peace and at home. I don’t have any words to describe the feeling. Maybe you have felt it yourself. The feeling of knowing you are exactly where the Lord wants you to be.

The last couple of weeks the temperature has been in the 80s here and so Sweet Pea and I have been spending a lot of time outside. It’s only going to get hotter so it is time for the hair to go. I am now sporting a much shorter, cooler haircut. What do you think?

The face says it all.

Do any of your kids have a weird favorite toy? You pour endlessly over toy reviews and make the careful decision of which toy will enhance learning over all the others, which toys have been recalled, and which ones have a possibility of lead in them. And after all that, they attach themselves to something totally random that you thought would head straight to the bottom of the toy box.

A few weeks ago my mother-in-law came by with a puppy dog bank that my husband had as a child. It is quite the ugly thing that has been worn from years of play. I know nothing about this toy or where it came from, but Sweet Pea fell in love at first sight.

He has been awakwardly carrying it around ever since. In the morning, it is one of the first things that comes off the shelf and into the living room. One night last week, he threw a terrible fit because we would not let hime take it into the crib with him for bed!

What about you? What toys do you wish your kids weren’t so attached to?

So last week Sweet Pea started getting a little rash on his bottom. No big deal. All babies get diaper rash. So we ran to the drug store and got some butt paste to cure the problem. Each day, instead of getting better, the rash got a little worse. Needless to say we were puzzled. This had never happend. The series of steps is get a rash, put on butt paste, the rash gets better.

Even though we felt silly about it, we took him to the doctor yesterday. We figured if we waited longer we would be out of state for the holidays and have no where to go if it really got bad. Waiting for the doctor I felt really silly. Who goes to the doctor for a little rash?! 

Well I sure am glad we went. It turned out that Sweet Pea has a form of strep. Strep can come in forms other than in the throat. This particular kind comes in the form of a rash. But I am glad we went because it turns out this is very contagious and people can actually get strep throat from it. And if we had waited it would have gotten worse. Yikes! So we are now on daily antibotics, Sweet Pea’s very first one, and a cream. Oh the life revoloving around daily medication.

My hubby told me this joke tonight:

Do you want to hear  a dirty joke?

Mr. Johnson fell in the mud.

Do you want to hear a clean joke?

He took a bath with bubbles.

Want to hear another dirty joke?

Bubbles is the girl next door.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Oh yes, that is right. My family participated in the Black Friday deals. In the above picture is (from left to right) mu hubby, my little brother, and Deng Hoa (the Chinese teacher that my parent’s are hosting for the school year). During Thanksgiving dinner Deng Hoa was mentioning that electronics in China are more expensive than in the states and he was hoping to participate in the deals at Best Buy so he could bring some things home for his family. My hubby is always willing to do stuff like this, not to buy things, but for the experience. So he and my brother volunteered to wait in line with him all night at Best Buy. My hubby wrote about his experience here.

My hubby and I have also started keeping a list of things that we need around the house. On Thanksgiving day we pulled out the list and went through the ads to see if there was anything we needed in there. My husband has needed a razor for quite some time and we found one that is originally $100 for $30. Score!

Also I read this great post about Black Friday over at Muthering Heights so check it out!

So a while back Maria over at I Love you more than Cookies tagged me for some awesome blog fun! It has taken me a while to actually put this up on my blog to answer (sorry about that), but here goes!

1. I HATE chicken. I have tried it baked, boiled, fried, and pretty much every other way you can fix it and it still does nothing for me. I always get a lot of weird looks about this and one time someone actually told me I was unamerican because I don’t eat it. That was a little much…but whatever.

2. This may shock some people but my political views fall mostly in line with the Libertarian Party. The government is in our lives way to much and for the most part they need to just butt out. It’s to bad that there will never be a major libertarian candidate and I will have to choose between two dumbos.

3. I can’t spread my toes apart. Yup. That’s right.

4. I put ketchup on steak and shrimp and pretty much every other meat there is. Don’t know why but it makes the meat taste soooo good!

5. I nursed my son for 14 months and the experience has caused my to become a HUGE breastfeeding advocate. I am most likely going to try to become a lactation consultant. This could take a while since I want to stay home with my kids but it will happen someday….

6. I don’t wear makeup. I never have. At this point I am so glad that as a girl I never had an interest in it. Turns out in can actually do your skin more harm than good…

7. I love to take bubble baths!!! They are so comforting and relaxing. When we finally get to buy a house the master bathroom will be the most important room. The tub will be huge!

Ok…there are 7 random facts about me! Now it’s your turn:

Jessie

Charles

Ryan

Sarah

Nell

Heather

Erin

Ok. So we are past the tooth debacle and definitely feeling much better about it. I think Elmo and I took it a little harder than Sweet Pea did. Thanks so much to everyone who shared their own stories with me. It was good to hear stories of people going through the same thing. Stuff like that always makes your own situation much easier.

So now I am going to move on to something a little more cute. Sweet Pea has never really been one to eat things or put things in his mouth. That is probably because he has either had nursing or his pacifier to satisfy his needs. To this day he is incredibly addicted to his pacifier, so I have never really had to worry about him eating random things. Until a few days ago….

I don’t know what changed or flip flopped in his head, but now he must eat everything! Here are some examples:

1. I had just bought groceries and loaded everything into the car. I am half way home and decide to take a peek at little Sweet Pea in the backseat. And what is he doing? Munching on a hamburger bun!! He had taken the package out of the grocery bag, opened it up, and was eating the bun. I can’t even tell you how he managed to do that.

2. Sweet Pea sits and plays on the bathroom floor while I am taking a shower. I peer around the shower curtain every now and then to see how he is doing. The other morning, I noticed he was be particularly quiet so I took a peek and he was eating the toothpaste! How he managed to get hold of it I have no idea, but he was certainly enjoying it!

3. Our bedroom is off limits to Sweet Pea. So when he does get to enter on rare occasions he is very excited. It’s almost like entering new territory for him. Because he is not allowed in there we don’t worry as much if we leave food or drinks in there. One night Elmo popped some popcorn and left it on the floor. I accidentally left the door to our room open the next morning and when I went looking for Sweet Pea he was sitting on the bedroom floor chomping away on some popcorn. Now we are very strict about what he eats and popcorn has never made the list before so he was extremely happy with himself since he was in the forbidden bedroom and eating something totally new.

It is a big change for us to have to just now start watching out for this. You would think that he would have gone through this stage a little younger or not at all. Oh well…it just makes life a little more interesting.