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Sunday, December 30, 2012

Happiness, Love, Heartbreak & Forgiveness

What would this world be without love? Not a very happy place. To me, happiness walks hand in hand with love. Love of and from the Lord, my husband, my kids, my family, my friends and my church. To me this world would be a very unhappy place without love. Of course, when you have love and happiness, there is also going to be heartbreak and sadness. Whether it's from losing a loved one to death, someone moving away, a betrayal, losing a job, etc, there are so many reasons for this heartbreak. Which brings me to forgiveness. How does forgiveness fit in with some of the heartbreaks mentioned above? Sometimes the forgiveness is for someone else and sometimes it's for ourselves. The guilt of not doing something we should have done, not calling that special friend/family before they took their last breath, could we have done something different in a situation. We may have not done anything wrong but in ourselves we ask these questions thus needing to forgive ourselves and move forward.  Maybe, it means forgiving someone who has done wrong to us, even when they didn't say "I'm Sorry". This is something that's really hard to do but it's an important step in moving on. Tho we may not forget and we may not trust those as much, we still need to forgive.

In my life I have had so much happiness and love. The love of Jesus when I got saved, the love of my husband when we were dating and how it grows more everyday. And those who are parents know about the love for our babies. The love that started when they were in my belly and grew more when they were born and continues to grow each and everyday. The love for my parents, family, friends and so on. All of these things, these people, that I love and that love me make me so very happy. I can not imagine life with out these people. But like I mentioned before, along with the love and happiness, I've had my share of heartbreak and sadness.

Throughout my life I've had my heart broken many times. Before I go on, I must say, the good times and blessings have definitly out weighed the bad. But back to the heartbreak and forgiveness. When my grandmother passed away my heart was broken. I was so close to her. I had so much guilt because I didn't go and see her in the hospital before she died. I said I would wait until the next day. The next day she had passed. I felt so guilty. It took a while but I eventually forgave myself. Tho it does come to mind from time to time. The feeling of your heartbreaking when your child hurts and you can't do anything to help. I've also had my share of people hurting me during my lifetime.  The most recent situation being this year. Some of these people during these times have apologized and some have not. Have I forgiven these people? Yes. Do I love these people still? Yes. I am very friendly to all of them. Some I see, some I don't. Some I trust again and some I don't. But I still love them all and have forgiven them all. However, I will say it's easier to forgive those that have apologized but it's been necessary to forgive them all. Sometimes the memories or problems come back to mind, and I'm talking about things from many years ago to more recent situations. When they do I pray really hard because I do not want things, hurt from the past to get in the way of my happiness in the present and future. God has forgiven me and I can forgive others. We are all human and it does take time and prayer. None of us are perfect and we all mess up, tho I always say, how you fix the problem/situation is very important.
We learn lessons, who we can trust, who we can depend on, who we can talk to, etc. and we can always find a way to forgive, a way to be happy, a way to love and a way to move past the heartbreak. Love and happiness are more important than grudges and hurt. Don't let it steal your joy. It's only hurting yourself.

25 Days of Christmas (Update)

Wow! What a month. It seems like the month of December came and went with the blink of an eye. I had every intention of blogging about our 25 days of Christmas. Unfortunately, this didn't work out as planned. Between sickness and other things of personal nature, I had to take a break. But I do want to share with you some of the things that we did. I wanted to make everyday as special as I possibly could and keep the kids excited about Christmas. Keeping them excited was very easy to do. Some of the activities that we did includes, make a craft, Christmas parade, Christmas parties, seeing Santa, make a Christmas card, paint, make ornaments, sing Christmas carols, advent calendar, read Christmas stories, ride the train at the mall, read the Christmas story, bake, cook, see Christmas plays and so much more. My kids had so much fun. I would not trade a moment of it. I love Christmas and I am so glad that I get to share it with my sweet, sweet family.

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

25 days of Christmas (give or take)

I am so excited about Christmas and so are my kids. I have so many things that I want to do with my family for the season and hopefully I will get to all of it. Pinterest has given me so many more ideas (which is where I got the idea for 25 days of Christmas). We'll see what we get done. My plan is to do something special for Christmas with my kids everyday. I was going to start on December 1st but we've gotten a little bit of a head start.
On Saturday, we put our Christmas tree up. Caitlyn & Clay loved this. On Sunday, they decorated some more. I think they've added decorations to our tree everyday. Monday we sang Christmas songs, Tuesday we made breakfast, complete with Christmas tree shaped biscuits, sang Christmas songs and watched Cailou's Holiday Movie. Today we made a cake and have played. Lots of memories being made. I think they have added ornaments to our tree everyday, but I love it. The excitement and happiness they have is so wonderful to see and it's quite contagious.
I wish I had taken pictures of the biscuits and cake but didn't. I am so looking forward to Christmas. With Caitlyn 3 years old and Clay 20 months old, they are at a great age to keep it fun. I am ready to do lots of crafts, bake lots of goodies, do tons of activities and most importantly, make many, many memories.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Turkey Fruit Tray

Yesterday was the Thanksgiving Feast at Caitlyns preschool. The kids were precious. I was asked to bring a fruit tray for the feast. I wanted to do something fun that Caitlyn could help with. She loves to help in the kitchen. I have seen several fruit & veggie trays  on pinterest that were made like a turkey but I put my own spin and this is what I came up with. We made the eyes from a cut up raisins and for the beak we used the tip of a cut up clementine.  Here are some sites that I used as my inspiration.
 
 
 

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

My Hope is Built

I love the Hymn, "My Hope is Built". I am So glad that my help is from above. With the storms that we face in our personal lives, at our jobs,  our country and everywhere in between, it's good to stand on a solid foundation and know that he is the rock, the anchor and he will protect you in all things.

So many times we put our hope and our trust in people on this earth. While it's good to trust and have friendships, those people will let you down. They are human.  Humans make mistakes, they mess up, they do things out of spite. People may betray you, talk about you, hurt you physically or emotionally or leave you, but the Lord, he will never leave or forsake you. He is the one and only one that can be completely trusted.  He is perfect and good. On Christ is where my hope lies, where I will stand and in whom I trust with all my heart.

My Hope is Built

My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly trust in Jesus’ Name.

Refrain

On Christ the solid Rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand;
All other ground is sinking sand.

When darkness seems to hide His face,
I rest on His unchanging grace.
In every high and stormy gale,
My anchor holds within the veil.

Refrain

His oath, His covenant, His blood,
Support me in the whelming flood.
When all around my soul gives way,
He then is all my Hope and Stay.

Refrain

When He shall come with trumpet sound,
Oh may I then in Him be found.
Dressed in His righteousness alone,
Faultless to stand before the throne.

Saturday, November 3, 2012

Thankfully Blessed

I can't believe it's November already. It doesn't seem possible. Yet here it is. I love this time of year. November & December when we start to prepare for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Planning for what is to come. And my kids, the joy and happiness to hear them talk about Christmas and what's coming up. Today my daughter, who is 3, started singing Jingle Bells. I couldn't help but smile. Even tho it doesn't seem like it should be time to sing Christmas carols yet, I thought how blessed I am.

How blessed am I? Well, if you look at material things you may not think that I have many blessings. But you can't go by looks. I have the Lord and the wonderful salvation that he gave me, my wonderful husband and beautiful kids, Gods love, mercy, grace & forgiveness, a great family, a roof over my head, food and the list goes on. I wouldn't trade anything for my blessings.

I am not bragging. Just thinking about how truly thankful I really am for all that God has done for me. We have gone thru, are going thru and probably will go thru many happy times, trials and struggles. Through it all the Lord has always been there. It's not always easy and there is so much I don't understand, but I always have someone to walk with me and help me thru. For that I am so very thankful and feel so very blessed.

All the blessings that I have been given come from above. He has trusted me & my husband with so much. After all, isn't that what blessings really are? They are things that God has entrusted us with. Things he has given to us. Even the trials, God turns into blessings. I can't begin to list all that I am thankful for, there isn't enough space. The Lord knows my heart tho and he sees what I can't always express. I owe everything to him. For all these things, these gifts, I am truly thankful.


Thursday, November 1, 2012

A while back I wanted to curl my daughters hair, but, didn't have any curlers. I experimented by twisting sections of her hair and putting it up on her head and letting her sleep overnight. It worked! She had curls the next day. At that time I had not heard of this, tho I figured that it had been done before. Since then, I have seen it on Pinterest. I had not tried it in sometime so I thought I would try again. So here is what I did.

I took portions of her hair and twisted onto her head and put hair bands to hold them in place. She slept overnight like this.
 
When she woke up it was really curly and a little frizzy. So I calmed the frizz down some and pulled part of her hair back to keep it from being so big. I probably would've worked with it more and gotten it to not be so much but she had to get to school and we were running behind. In the end, I think it turned out very pretty.