Like father like son...

Their oral hygene is up to standards even if their hair is a little out of control.

Gettin' big fast

Tiny little newborn Riley
4 months old and still a little guy.
Not so little anymore...

Through all our struggles with Riley's weight he was always healthy and by 6 months he was starting to fill in. Now, at 10 months old, he is almost 25 lbs and really starting to fit into those ears.

P.S. Brandon wasn't with me at Riley's 9 month doctor visit and they were shocked at his climb in height, weight and most of all the size for his head! But I assured the nurse that they would not question the large size of Riley's head if his father was with us! :)

Beautiful scenery

Before I post Riley's updates I wanted to show you a picture I took last fall in the U.P of Michigan.
My parent's are going through their mid-life crisis; and in the U.P that means you build garages bigger than your house and buy 4-wheelers. So Brandon and I took a ride on the 4-wheeler through my old moutain biking trails.

When I look at this picture I remember the great times I had the God, walking through these beautiful woods asking Him tons of crazy questions about life. Thank God no one heard those conversations but the squirrels, bunnies, turkey and deer - and they didn't seem to mind, often they would just look up from eating and stare as I walked by and then return to eating.

Alert the news - we're blogging!

So before I start updating, I want to go back and review:


1. We have several other friends with nursing babies now - anyone want to share a story of the random things you contemplate by yourself or with your spouse while nursing?


2. All the new things we went through last year are still great blessings and we still have fun challenges in all areas of our lives as well.

3. Riley has obviously grown a ton so I will be posting a few things to show the stages.

LOST

Jonas has preached several times this year about characters in the bible whose identities are truly found in God. And I must admit that I didn't really understand what that meant so when we were challenged to look at our own lives and check where our identities lie, I didn't really know how I apply the challenge to my life. How do you check where your identity truly lies? I am sure Jonas explained it to us and gave us some homework that would help us figure this out but I obviously didn't do my homework and here's how I know...

Let me step back for just a second and let you know (if you haven't been around me to hear me whine about this already) that I have felt lost for the last few months. This lost feeling was awful, overwhelming at times, affecting my family and I couldn't define anything about how or why or even what exactly it was that I was feeling.

Then this week I sat down for personal devotional time for the first time since we have been in our new place and probably even longer than that! (Yes, I know that a really long time and yes, I know I am a very bad girl and all that terrible stuff but that's not the point of the story, thank God!)

Very soon into this devotional time God smacked me over the head with his Captain Obvious hat and said, "You are lost because you have lost me!" Pretty dramatic right, well I had been quite the drama queen and I will humbly admit I had not given God any room in my life.

So, not that I recommend this, but if you want to find out if your identity is in Christ you could try taking Him out of your life and see if you still know who you are.

IRONICALLY, I HOPE YOU FIND YOURSELF LOST IN YOUR OWN SKIN!

CELEBRATE

"I am overwhelmed!"

This statement has come out of my mouth too much lately! Why? Because I am married!
What is overwhelming me? Everything about my husband that is so unlike me. Everything about him that I don't understand. Everything going on within him that comes out at an inconvenient time (for me). Everything about him that I don't know how to deal with it!

I know this is NOT a struggle foreign to other couples; whether married, dating, or just a couple of close friends.
But somehow knowing that others struggle with it doesn't make me feel any better, it just makes me think that there is no solution!

Well, I would like to share what Brandon and I have been trying to help us deal with each other and see what you think.
Hopefully you can share any tips you have, even if they didn't work; it would be funny to hear what other people do to deal with each others oddities.

In a time of deep thinking, searching for the right attitude when the worst attitude kept creeping up, I thought to myself,
"I hate the way I react to his strange habits even more than I hate the habits; I don't feel like I have the right attitude about this struggle." (In case you missed it; those thoughts came from God trying to show me my errors, of course!)
So then I thought,
"Maybe I should try celebrating those things instead." (Again, I can't take the credit for the idea.)

Honestly, I didn't like the idea so much at first. But after I calmed down I decided to give it a try. So the next time I was with Brandon we were driving in a car and of course I started to get annoyed and then I shared the Celebrate Tactic with Brandon and right away decided to declare my celebration of all the things that had annoyed me in just the last several minutes.
But I didn't tell him how much they bugged me. Instead I said, "I celebrate how free you are to .... and all the things that your personality teaches me about loosening up!"
Of course, the statement sounded really funny and we both cracked up at how ridiculous it was that I couldn't just let those little things slide by. But we were laughing! NOT ARGUING!!!

So let us know what tips you might have. We haven't even been married 2 years yet so we are going to need all the tips we can get!
Thanks!

New Car

We are looking for a new to us car, and want to know if anyone knows of anyone with a good deal. Sorry to use our blog for this, but thought it might be fun to find if someone from our blog circle knew of something good.