More December Fun!

Christmas Tree Hunting! Loved the tree we picked!!








El and I made a gingerbread house this year. Man oh man...getting that icing to work was quite tricky. But once we got the icing tool to work, we made it look quite stellar. :) It was a fun Saturday afternoon activity with my babe.



The school Christmas pageant...didn't have great seats, therefore, not great pics...


That was El's face when she saw her sister. She was SO excited to have Em there. Adorable.

Cookie Time

We had our annual cookie baking day with Nana, and Kiki. (Aunt Sarah couldn't join us this year).
Fun times! Great cookies! And of course some silly dancing to Christmas music...the girls LOVE to dance. Hilarious though, let me tell ya. It was a fun day. Love these times together.















And then of course we got home and when I was in the other room I saw that El had gotten Ems up on the fireplace ledge to go potty. Quite a site...right by the Christmas tree. El loves being the big sister mommy... :)

Some recent El sayings...

1)
El and I were driving down the road the other day, after I picked her up from school. We drive by a cemetery on our way to Nana's house. That particular day there were a lot of people walking around, visiting grave sites, etc. It was a beautiful December day. El asked me what those people were doing. Oh man, I thought...here comes another deep theological question from my 4 year old daughter. I tried to divert the fear of what she might ask me by telling me "they're looking at the ground." (Pathetic, I know!)

Once she asked me why they were looking at the ground I told her it was because they were at a cemetery, which then resulted in her asking me what a cemetery IS. Of course, right?

"El, it's a place where people's bodies are buried in the ground, once they die."
Silence.
"Will my body go in a cemetery someday Mommy?"
"Yep El, it will. And so will mine. All of our earthly bodies get buried into the ground. But that's why we have hope in Jesus!"
"And mommy, our hearts and souls go to Heaven still, right? With Jesus?"
"Yep El, they do. And God gives us a new, perfect body when we are there with Him."
Silence again.
"Mommy...if we have new bodies in Heaven, how will I find Nana up there? How will I find you if you don't look the same?"
(Tears on my end...good question El, similar things I wonder).
"Well peanut, God may just make the bodies we have now perfect and flawless so we can recognize each other. But I'm not sure exactly how it will work. I do know that He will want us to be together though, and that's the most important part."
"Mommy, maybe God will give us name tags when we're up there so we can find everybody we know."
"Good call El, I bet He will!"
:)

2)
Today El heard her Daddy answer the phone. He said "Hello, this is Ryan" and walked out of the room. She apparently misinterpreted what he said. She looked at me and said "Mommy, is Daddy talking to Mrs. Ryan?" (THIS IS---she thought was slurred into MRS.)
Oh the joy...

3)
Her new favorite thing to tell EVERYONE wherever we go is....
"My mommy has a baby in her belly!" Because yes it's true! Baby Snow #3 is on his/her way. 13 weeks pregnant tomorrow and very excited. It will be so fun to see these two girls interact with a new family member. Love it.
God is so good. SO GOOD.

A Sunday night

Pictures from the Pumpkin Patch back in October



A few pics from Em's 2nd birthday...






T'Was a great weekend...another couple of warm November days. RD and I laid low in the evenings, rented a movie last night, and just enjoyed not having a whole lot to do. El, my sister, and my mom went to the Circus today in good ol' Toledo...what a BLAST! Besides the fact that knowing the animals live in cages most of their days, we really enjoyed the entire production. El's favorite part was some of the stupid humor that I found less than funny. Go figure. :) My favorite part was the elephants; it was amazing watching them interact with each other, "dance," lay down, sit up, etc. How in the world does a human train a massive animal like that to do what they did? Wow.

The Snow family got hit with "the flu" two weeks ago, everyone but me that is. What a yucky, rather miserable week that was. I think following the exciting week of Halloween and all its festivities, El's lil' body just couldn't handle anything else. So she started the downward spiral...My house was a mess because all I could do was change our sheets each day, disinfect my house, push fluids down everyone's throats, and then go to bed knowing I had to do the same thing the next day. It was not fun. But everyone was on the upswing...until today. El's cough returned as a dry, nagging one. I'm kinda freaked about that knowing the concern there is for these secondary infections. UGH! I just want everyone healthy for Thanksgiving!! :(

Have to share something El said to her sister tonight as they were getting in the tub:
"Em's, do you know what? Even though our butt's are disgusting, God made my butt and He made your butt. He loves everything about us. So even though they're gross, they're perfect!"

After RD and I stopped laughing, we asked El why she thinks her butt is disgusting. She said, "well because it's where I pee and poop mom!!"
Duh, what was I thinking?!

Ems favorite thing to say right now (to El especially) is "Bad girl." It's quite possibly the most annoying thing ever. She is constantly telling her big sister that she is bad and we are constantly trying to redirect. Fortunately, El is pretty even tempered with her sis and just tells her, "no I'm not Em." But the talking she does with her eyes right now is by far the BEST thing ever. She just looks at us like she's 21 sometimes. She can make an entire room erupt in laughter as she shoots someone a sideways glance out of the corner of her eyes. See picture below for an example. She is just so smooch-able! My friend and I say that the reason 2 year olds are just so stinkin cute is because we need a reason not to get frustrated with how often they are just flat out STINKERS!
Oh the joys of these 2 girls...so precious!

A quick giggle

More to come very soon (Em's 2nd birthday, family time @ Pumpkin Patch), but in the meantime check out this video. It was actually taken on my phone this past summer but everytime I see it I cannot help but laugh. I think it'll make you laugh too! Enjoy!

A weekend with the Kenyans

I could write forever right now...
I'll try to be brief.
RD met (through a series of different events) a great guy named Julius, a 32 yr old from Kenya--speaks really good English. He is an incredibly fast runner and RD manages a running shop. Needless to say, RD hired him two days after meeting him, which was only about a week ago. How fun!

Well, yesterday RD was planning to run the Akron marathon. He decided that he should bring Julius along, and one of his Kenyan friends, Richard (27 years old with a wife and baby back in Kenya). The three of them stayed with the Mitchells, who introduced Richard to his first exposure of M & M's.HeHe. :) (That's ok though cause El and I got to give him his first chip today!) RD ran a great race on a challenging course yesterday. Richard...well...he got to break the ribbon as he came in FIRST PLACE. Yeah...decided to register 15 hours before the race and stinkin ran it and won it in 2 hours 27 min...which is actually quite slow for him. Julius just went along for the ride - he has several other races in the next few weeks.

Julius ran his race this morning around Toledo, but Richard came to church with us. He said that back in Kenya at church they do worship, they give testimony, worship some more, give more testimony, worship some more. So coming to our church was exciting for him and he asked if he could share some testimony. Of course we let him! His English is a bit more challenging to understand as he's only been in the states for 12 days. But he shared, in the most simple, humbling, honest, God-loving way, how God provided for him to get his VISA. How God gives him strength to run. How God is the Alpha and the Omega. It was great.

We invited Richard, Julius, and two of their Kenyan friends (21 and 23 yrs old who have been here for 2 years and attend the University of Toledo) to come over for dinner. Well that's a bit tricky when the UT students want good American food but Julius and Richard prefer much more bland/ "safer" food. So I made pasta and offered a variety of different kinds of sauces, had a few kinds of bread, lots of butter, a veggie salad, and ice cream for dessert. They were so grateful, and they absolutely LOVED our girls. They wanted to play with them...Julius played with El and her sticker book for a good 30 min.

Topic of conversations over our 2 1/2 hour meal together:

• How Kenyan women spend the first 3 months with their newborn babies...they don't cook, serve, clean, do ANYTHING other than be with that baby. NO men, not even the Daddy, can see that newborn child for 3 months. It's "tradition."
• How Kenyans are taught that white people will hate them..."they will shoot you if you step foot in a white man's yard." They found this to be totally untrue and actually said the white man is the only man who has welcomed them into their home.
  
• They were also told and figured that America would be much more violent than it is. They thought they would see people get shot and/or killed all the time.
• One guy, Barnabas (whose name means Son of Encouragement), has lived here two years. He said he may never date an American girl. He feels that American women should care most about taking care of their families and doesn't understand why women have kids and then don't want to take care of them.
• Kenyans value the family. They respect how other men and women raise their children. They look at other families and care how they are raised up to know the Lord. They don't care at all about material things or respect one another for what they have or own. That doesn't matter to them. (In fact, no one said a word about our house, dishes, rugs, couches, ANY of that crap...they cared about our HOME).
  
• I was taught how to make something called "Okale" (sp?) that they eat 1-2 times a week and they say this helps them run fast. El loved it and ate it as a bedtime snack tonight.
• We talked a LOT about running...it just seems like second nature to them. So neat how different and yet so similar their culture is!
  

When they left and said thank you, Richard almost cried. He seemed so grateful and it was such a special moment. What a great heart this man has!

Incredible night for me. Incredible weekend for RD-he is so refreshed as he sits here next to me, after having spent this weekend with such great new friends!

The Great Nightmare

El woke up last night crying and screaming my name. She had a nightmare. When I was in there rubbing her head and smooching her sweet little cheeks, she said "Mommy I had a bad bad dream." I asked her what it was about. She said, "You took Jack (her cousin) to the store to buy batteries and made me stay home with Daddy and Nana. I wanted to go and pick them out but you took HIM!" I thought to myself, "Are you kidding me? This is what my 4 year old dreams about when she has a nightmare? Oh the stresses of her life..." But I still told her that it was ok, that it was just a bad dream and to go back to sleep. And she did!

It made me think about the 4 year old little girls in this world who dream about much much more severe situations than a trip to the store. Possibly they have nightmares about their own lives, or something that happened, or is happening, to them. That broke my heart. Makes me wish I could be the mommy of lots and lots of kids who have no one to kiss their cheeks when they are struggling through the night. Ugh.

God I pray for those kids out there who are waking up this morning and feeling unrested because they battled with their dreams last night. I pray for those kids who possibly faced their sad and dark realities again when they tried to sleep. I pray for protection over their little minds and I pray that you would send people into their lives to change the situations they're in. I pray for your merciful hand to continue to pluck kids from horrible homes and put them into places where they are loved and taught about Jesus. Use me God in whatever way you could to come alongside this. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Summer Happenings Take 4

So here is why I haven't blogged much this summer...it's just been too fun to be with the girls and doing ANYTHING else other than sitting in the basement on this computer. I will get much better now that Fall is here. :)

I feel like I have good updates on here already for June and July. So all I'm missing is August I guess. The busiest month of all!!!

Well the month (KIND OF) started with a women's only triathlon on July 26th at the Centennial Quarry in Sylvania.


It was an event that 5 women from my church all did together. We did a few training runs/bikes/swims together throughout the summer, but a lot of the training was done on our own. I enjoyed the bike trail of good ol' Toledo, OH quite a bit on those cool summer mornings. PERFECT! (A good friend of mine let me borrow her road bike- makes SUCH a difference). I swam in the open water of Devil's Lake when we were up there at the cottage. I felt that really helped prepare me for this race. And running--well I just did that whenever I could. RD was such an incredible help when it came to the training, what I should do, for how long, how intense, etc. And on the day before the Tri, he was AWESOME. He went out and bought me everything else I needed. He got me all setup and walked me through exactly how to do each transition area. The morning of the race I was a nervous wreck, but ultimately the event was one of the neatest things I've ever done. I had NEVER participated in a race of any kind. It was a great experience.
I had a huge cheering club and seeing the girls when I ran out of the water and up some stairs to my bike about made me cry. RD was so great...he was such a good coach throughout the whole race. I did pretty good as far as timing. Better than I thought at least. 1 hour and 21 min. Yippee!! It got me hooked.



AND SO....I did another one two weeks later (August 9th). Ha! Not quite as enjoyable as Tri #1 because of the extreme heat, but I managed. The swim leg was also different. Rather than starting alone, every 5 seconds, like my 1st Tri, we started in massive groups. I started with my age group, which was about 10 minutes after the official starting horn went off. That allowed for 10 min. of extreme fear of being drowned by the women standing next to me when we all ran into the water. It wasn't horrible when we began swimming, but it definitely wasn't easy. I certainly had to kick a few people in order to stay on top of the water. Crazy! Overall, I was a few minutes slower in my time probably due to the 90 degrees, (1 hour 24 min) but I was still so proud of this accomplishment. :) Yaaaay! Fun times!!

Besides swimming, biking, and running this month I/we did do some other things. We spent a lot of time at the pool, and El has improved tremendously on her swimming. She is much more confident and can doggie paddle/free style all over the place. It is the strangest feeling watching my peanut do that. She used to be my baby and she is now fluttering around in a pool. Wow. She also was the flower girl in two weddings. One good friend of ours from church, and then my sister's wedding of course. :) Here area few shots from her first flower girl adventure...

(taken by my sister in law- sarabethphoto.wordpress.com)

El and I also had a girl's day this month. We went to the Ohio State Fair with my dear friend Beth and her daughter Clara. It was so fun. The girls had an absolute blast...and it was one day I actually didn't care at all about spoiling El with treats and junk food. We both loved it!! We then spent a night and a day in Columbus visiting with RD's mom and siblings. (Rd and Ems drove down to Columbus with El and I. ) It was great to be together...we hit up yet another pool! But the Dublin pool was far better than where we typically go, so the girls were certainly entertained.

The lake is always a part of our summer weeks, so I can't forget to mention that. We were there quite a bit this month as well. Both of the girls truly enjoy their time up there. When we get 'em out of the car they start running toward the water. El has gone tubing this summer but we didn't try the skis...just ran out of time I guess. Ugh. She also loved the wave runners this year. Ems...not so much.

And last but certainly not least...my sister's wedding. Kiki (Katie) Moan became Katie Moore on Friday Aug. 21. It was a SUPER fun wedding week and a super special wedding DAY on the 21st. Katie was truly a princess. Jack, El, and Ems all agreed. El was the flower girl along with Dave's niece, Grace. They did great...loved the attention. Dave was a basket case during the ceremony as they became man and wife. Ahhhh...perfect.
Enjoy the shots!

Night of Rehearsal Dinner...

Morning of the wedding @ the salon...

At Nazareth Hall getting ready...

taken by sarah: sarabethphoto.wordpress.com

taken by sarah: sarabethphoto.wordpress.com

El wanted to dance with Daddy SO BAD. She missed the reception (bedtime) so they just had a Daddy/daughter dance time beforehand...

And then there's us... :)