Wednesday, January 30, 2008

six and nine

Malachi's been putting sentences together since he was a year and a half. Short ones of course, three word sentences like "I see you." His doctor was very impressed with that and said he was already at a two or three year old level. Malachi's verbal skills have been a source of amazement to John and I. Ever time something new comes out of his mouth we look at each other, smile and praise Malachi for what ever he said.

Recently he put together a couple of sentences that just blew us away. One sentence had six words in it "go to church and see friends." He was speaking of himself because after dinner that night we were going to go to church and he was going to see his friends. Not only did this amaze me because it was the longest sentence we'd heard from him but he was putting two mini-sentences together to form one normal-size sentence. He was also putting two thoughts into one sentence, it was the first time for that.

Since then he's been doing that same thing, two thoughts into one sentence, and I love it! It's so great to see how he's developing. Then the other day he put two thoughts into one nine word sentence! I couldn't believe it. I can't remember it either :( Wish I could share the sentence with you guys.

John and I are doing well right now. John's last semester is in full force and he's got a difficult class, linguistics. He read to me out of his textbook and it's crazy the stuff he needs to learn. I'll be praying for you babe.

John's birthday is on Saturday and his party is on Friday. I'm excited to have our friends here to celebrate this occasion. Our friend, Holly, is going to make John's cake. She loves to bake and likes to make cake for people. I love that she's doing it because it takes that stress off of me. Thank you Holly!

Hmm...what else...

That may actually be it. I better go check on the roaming toddler and see what he's into.

Love to all!

Monday, January 28, 2008

Urgent Prayer Request

From my church email:

Lavonne Priest – Pray for my friend Michelle, she is 28 years old and is 32 weeks pregnant. The Dr’s have just told her that according to a sonogram and other tests that the baby appears to have no brain, only a brain stem. This child needs healing!!! Secondly, please pray for Michelle and pray the Holy Spirit will give her peace and comfort as she is faced with very difficult decisions. The dr’s are saying that she cannot abort, she’s too far along, but she can decide not to feed the baby once it’s born…. Pray that Lavonne will be able to give Godly counsel and minister to Michelle during this difficult time.



Also keep Malachi in your prayers, for those who don't know, he was sick some time in the night, but I didn't know until I got him this morning. It seems that he's fine now, if not a little needy of his mommy.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Hand off #3 and trip home

I decided to go to my mom's house. It turns out my sister wasn't sick and my mom had a sinus infection and some stiffness in her neck which made it feel like the flu. So, we went to my moms on Thursday afternoon. She came up to my in-laws to get us. It's about a two hour drive from her place. She was really happy that I changed my mind and it made me happy to see how happy she was.

That night we just hung out and had pizza for dinner. We popped in a movie and my mom fell asleep during it, my sister went to bed in the middle, so I was the only one who finished it. After it ended mom and I went to bed.

My mom was up really early and I heard her, so I was up at 4:45 with her. My sister got up in the morning for a half day at work. Malachi decided that he wanted to be up at that time too. So we were all up pretty early. My wonderful mother let me take a couple hour nap and after that mom, Malachi and I hung out for a while.

After lunch mom, Steph and I got ready for our photo shoot while Malachi napped. We had a pretty good time at the shoot, except that Malachi wasn't very smiley. Despite that we did get a couple of cute pictures of him.

On Saturday I went and had brunch at Jon and Brenda Gill's home. I've known Jon Gill for over 10 years and Brenda and I keep in contact through our blogs and facebook. I had never met their daughter Abi, so that was great fun. Malachi liked hanging out with her. Brenda's hospitality was great, the place was clean, and warm which made me feel welcome. The food was great, she unknowingly made my favorite (french toast)!

The rest of the day was just spent hanging out and getting ready for me to go home.

Malachi is such a good traveler! We got him up at 5:10am and stuffed him into all the winter clothing (I think it was about 30 or 40 below windchill). After we loaded him and my stuff into the car we headed to the airport (thank you so much Steph for the ride). We got there to a HUGE line at the counter but we were pushed to the expedite line because my flight was in an hour (thank you wonderful Sun Country employee). Security was also a breeze, there were about five people in front of me. We said our good byes at security and Malachi and I were on our own for a few hours.

We did have a bit of extra time to sit at the gate so I let Malachi out of the stroller and let him run around. The crew for our flight was waiting for the plane to arrive, so I mentioned to them that it was Rick Roy's grandson (Rick too is a pilot for Sun Country), after that my flight was cake because the flight attendants loved Malachi. The pilot made it a nice flight for us, avoiding the turbulance we encountered over Oklahoma, and making it a nice smooth landing (landing is the scariest part for me, I hate it).

Rick and John were waiting for us at the gate! What a nice surprise for us. Rick can of course use his ID to get through securtiy and he got John a gate pass. It was so great to see John that soon when I thought I'd have to wait until baggage claim. We got my bags pretty fast and we were off to church!

I've had a wonderful time with John the last few days. I really missed him a lot and can't believe I scheduled a trip of 10 days without him. I don't think I'll be doing that any time soon.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

BTW (by the way)

Check out the Flicr Photos on the right to see pictures of our trip so far.

change of plans

So my mother and sister are very sick with a flu bug that I don't feel like catching. Unfortunately that means that I wont be going to stay with them like I thought I would. It makes me very, very sad and I was pretty depressed when I found out. If they're 100% better on Saturday I'm still going to the photo shoot that we have scheduled. I've been praying that they would be completely better. It would really suck if I was up here for ten days and didn't get to see them at all.

So, I'm going back to Ben and Sarah's house on Friday night and staying at the lake (Rick and Mickey's (my husband's parents)) until then.

Malachi, I've learned, isn't a very big fan of winter. When he visited the lake in September he was able to go INto the lake and now in the winter he's only able to go ONto the lake. He wasn't expecting that and he was very disappointed that he couldn't go in the lake. He also has quite a dislike for the cold, cold wind in his face. However, he does like to eat the snow! I wouldn't let him crawl on the ground and eat the snow this time, which didn't make him happy.

But after we came inside the garage, he was very happy to go sit in grandpa's boat and "drive" it. The garage is heated so we'll probably play in there a little bit today in his car. He really liked that in September and I'm sure he'd like it again.

Oh, and it was brought to my attention that I should mention that Malachi chooses to go into Zoe's house and is not in any form coerced or forced to do so. He has also been in Zoe's house at the lake :)

Monday, January 14, 2008

hand off # 2

Well I'm now sitting warmly in the basement of my mother and father-in-law. I'm very happy it's nice and warm in their basement because currently outside it's about -11 degrees fahrenheit - brr!

My time at my dad's house was very fun. On Saturday we went to the Mall of America and met my sister at California Cafe for lunch. It was a very nice restaurant and we had some very good food. After lunch we made it over to Underwater Adventures which is a huge indoor aquarium. In one part of the aquarium you're going through it with the fish on your side and above you. Malachi really liked that a lot. Saturday night we went to church. It was a great service!

Sunday we made it out to a sno-tubing park and had a blast for a couple of hours! Malachi didn't like it so much so the adults took turns tubing and staying with Malachi at the bottom of the hill. When I first when to the top of the bunny hill (which was a lot higher than any of us expected) a fear of it came over me. But I decided and voiced that the longer I stared at the hill the more my fear would grow. So I took the plunge and headed down. It was awesome! We made it to the medium hill and that was also a great time. There were a few bumps on that so I got about a foot off the ground one time. I'd definitely do that again.

Today we went to see my grandma (dad's mom) before we headed out of town. We hung out with her for a couple of hours then made the trek to St. Cloud (1 1/2 hours from grandma's) to meet my in laws. We had a delicious early dinner at Granite City Brewery and then another hour drive to my in laws.

I go to my mom's house on Wednesday evening. yay!

Friday, January 11, 2008

One Down Three To Go

I leave my brother in laws house today to go to my dad's house. I've had a good time at Ben and Sarah's house. Unfortunately it was a little short, only got to see Ben at night and Sarah for half the day yesterday. They were gracious enough to let me have my best friend from High School, Sara, over. That's right...in the house last night was Ben, Malachi, Sarah, Sara, and Sara. That was fun for Malachi :)

My dad's picking me up today after he gets off of work, but he gets off of work at like 1:00 or 1:30 so it's not like I have to wait until 6:00 for him to get here, yay! I'm really excited to see him because I haven't seen him in 13 months. That's a bit long for a daddy's girl to go with out seeing her daddy. We have some really fun stuff planned to do on Saturday and Sunday.

So I guess I'll post about that at the end of that stay...maybe.


I hope everyone had a great week and has a great weekend planned!

Love you!

Monday, January 7, 2008

New Stuff!

There is a bunch of new stuff on my side bar: a video bar, a Blog Roll, my Flickr photos, and a poll that might be controversial but hopefully will get people thinking.

I hope you enjoy all the new fun stuff.

Love to all!

Saturday, January 5, 2008

Pics

I had to wait until John was awake to do this part. Enjoy!

Future Pastor's wife: Bethany!



Joshua waving "hi"



Josh and Bethany during the game of Pit



Joshua washing dishes, thank you!



Bethany getting ready to go home :(



All five of us together!



Bethany and Me



Joshua, Bethany, and Malachi (he was very sad they were leaving)



Here's a little video of us playing Pit on New Year's Eve. This is a great look into the crazy fun:

Visit from D.C.

Our friends that live in D.C. came for a visit last weekend. Joshua and Bethany were our best friends while we were students here. They moved off campus after the first semester, but there was much driving to their apartments or to ours.

We had a great, great time while they were here. They came in at 11:30 on Friday afternoon. It was an hour later than they were supposed to arrive, but they had inclement weather in Atlanta during their layover. It was great to see them again after being separated for two and a half years. Bethany and I would cook a lot together when they lived in the DFW area and we were excited to cook together again. So after we got home and Malachi started napping we made our way to the grocery store to stock up for the five days they'd be here. I showed her my new favorite grocery store, Central Market. We had a great time just hanging out and talking that day. It was so fun to see how much we've grown over the last 2 1/2 years. They've really matured and it's so obvious when talking to them. Joshua plans on being a Pastor and it really shows that he and Bethany are spending their lives preparing for that future ministry.

We spent the first four days playing games, talking, laughing, going to church, going to the Dallas Zoo, and overall just hanging out.

Monday night we had a New Year's Eve party at our place so that our friends could come meet Josh and Bethany. We ended up with 13 people in our apartment playing Pit, Mafia, and Scene It. The last few people left our place at 3:00am on 1/1/08. We had such a great time that it was worth the lack of sleep.

Tuesday was their last day with us. Malachi got me up at 7:50 and by 8:15 I was back in bed because Joshua came in and said that I could sleep if I wanted. What a blessing that was. John, Bethany, and I didn't get up until after 9:30. We mostly spent that day just hanging out and getting ready for their departure. We left for the airport at 3:15 and said our goodbye's at terminal E. I think it was hardest on Malachi. He started crying when Josh leaned in to say goodbye. I really think Malachi's starting to hate the airport.

John and I hope that we'll get to go see Josh and Bethany later this year. Neither of us has been to D.C. in a long time and we all think that 2 1/2 years is way too long to be apart.

I'm so happy they came to visit. They are such good friends and were such a blessing to us while they were here. They worst thing about their visit was the rooting for the New England Patriots (boo Pats).

Josh and Bethany we love you!

p.s. pics to follow