Cows

So if you go to Chik-fil-a on cow appreciation day dressed like a cow, you get a free meal. Yeah! So here we are...dressed like cows...for the second year in a row.

New Phases...

Ava had to sit in time out today for the first and second time ever. She bit our friends son and then tried to bite me. Where did she learn to do that? It's such evidence of our sin nature to me. She is a sweet little kid but when she wants something, she will do anything to get it. I feel like we work hard every day to teach good Jesus-like character to our kids. Some days are harder than others:)!
On another note...we have been enjoying the heat in Atlanta...or maybe not. We have been going down to the Centennial Park Fountains. Here are a few pictures...

Forgot the quotes...

Ashlee: "Anniiyah you get a cookie for finding Ava's pacifier for me, Makayla you get a cookie for brining in the trash from the van, Ava you get a cookie for eating all your lunch..."

Anniiyah: "Mama Ashlee, are going to eat a cookie?"

Ashlee: "No, probably not"

Anniiyah: "why not, you do lots of good things every day!"


Anniyah: "Umm...Ashlee, I think baby Ava wants you to buy her this toy mail box"

Ashlee: "are you sure that you don't secretly want me to buy that mailbox for you?

Anniiyah: "No, Baby Ava looked at it like she really wanted it."


Anniiyah: "Ashlee, I just want us to be best friends"

Makayla (sitting at the breafast table, singing at the top of her lungs): "TOMORROW TOMORROW, I WUV YA TOMORROW....YOU'RE ONLY A DAY AWAY"

Blogging...

I was on a blogging kick for a while. After a minor break, I will try and resume. Things with the kids has been so busy lately. We have been on many trips lately which has been great and tiring at the same time. We are about to leave for another trip to East Liverpool next week. The girls are all doing well. Anniiyah and Makayla are in a summer program and Ava and I are getting to spend a good amount of time just the two of us during the week. Many things have been happening wtih the girls case (which I will not detail in a blog) but continue to pray for wisdom in next steps. You can also pray that we will trust God for control with their lives instead of trying to keep control ourselves. I will end with some pictures and my favorite thing...kid quotes!

We spent a great week with great grandma

Ava likes to walk around in high heels

Hair Washing night.

Ava learned to do flips and she loves to do them!

Makayla held the flag at her preschool graduation

Ava's first corn on the cob

They Love each other.

Family day at Makayla's preschool

Peace Like A River...

It's quiet in my house right now. I only hear the dryer which is on it's 25th load of the weekend. My days kind-of run together lately...beautifully, tiring, wonderful, hard, days a lot of times. As I type in the silence, I think about the normal noises in my house. At any time you will hear kids talking, singing, playing, or sometimes even arguing:). From Makayla I will hear "mommy" about 100 times a day...From Anniiyah I will hear her singing one of her made up songs that everyone needs to listen to, but no one else is aloud to sing along with. From sweet baby Ava I will hear the words "help, cheese, and doggie" repeated over and over again. The girls have been with us for a little over 2 months. In some ways it seems so much longer than that. I feel like we are starting to get into the flow....there are a lot of things that could be really hard about all this and I realized after a visit from the girls mom this week that I feel peaceful. A LOT is up in the air right now, but I know that God is present with us. In a devotional once the author talked about the idea of "peace like a river." I had sung a song a when I was a kid that talked about that, but never thought about the fact that rivers aren't super "peaceful." Most of the time they are rushing and changing and forcefu. A river can bend and twist in ways you aren't expecting. I feel that kind of peace right now. I pray that I the Lord will continue to give me a peace that is so clearly from Him becuase I often don't know which way things are going to "turn" next.

Tongiht Caleb and I got to go to a movie with friends for the first time in a LONG time. It was really nice to be out without anyone who needed something from me but at the same time, I love taking our kids with us places. I love how they think everything is so new and exciting. I love how everytime we get in the car, they all start dancing to "their song." Another big occurence of the night was that Ava pooped in the toilet. It was kind of a fluke but it's more and mroe exciting. I am not the mom that gets excited about poop becuase it's VERY exciting to me.

a few more pics...

Nana with the girls on Easter Sunday morning.
We love to snack.

Painting at the children's museum.

Starting to eat like a big girl with a spoon!

trying to protect our hair by putting underwear on our heads. It didn't work so well.

4.5 years later...

Last night I watched the DVD of Caleb and I's wedding. There were a lot of pictures of us sitting on the same steps as this picture below. What a different picture 4.5 years later! I am pretty sure in the picture below Makayla is mad at us, Ava is losing her mind, and Anniiyah is cooperating for the sake of the upcoming Easter Egg Hunt. Somehow, this is the best Easter picture of all of us that we ended up with:).

This week has been challenging. A few things happened that were completely beyond our control but they are things that could have drastically changed the current picture of our life. I have a hard time giving up control of life. Even when I have so clearly seen God's faithfulness to me over and over again, I want to fix things myself. I pray that I will go to my knees more and seek my Savior for the answers to hard questions. I pray for patience when the answer is not as I think it should be. I am so grateful for the picture of our current life. I don't know why God calls each of us to different things and different places but I want to cling to Him through every step. As I watched our wedding video, I was reminded that Caleb and I stood on the steps of my dad's church and said that we wanted to love the Lord and love each other and that we would see where that would take us. Only a few years later, it has taken us to Atlanta, kept us in Atlanta, and given us three wonderful girls to spend our time loving. In the midst of laundry, cooking, cleaning, mending, kissing hurts, sitting people in time out, rescuing little people from potential danger, I am trying to remind myself that these things can be done for the Glory of the God that I serve. The journey continues...