Friday Night

On Friday, Jared came home from work and said that he wanted to go shopping that evening. Had I known that's what he wanted to do, I would have had supper ready a lot sooner. As it was, we left around 6:30. Our first stop was to pick up a wall-mounted light for our stairwell. That was fairly quick + painless. After that, we went to the mall. I bought a leave-in conditioner/mousse which I read would help with my hair static and it has. Then, I went + fed Blake while Jared took Kiera to McDonald's for a Mcflurry. I've been searching for a plain black zip-up hoodie, but apparently those aren't in style anymore because I looked in almost every women's clothing store in the mall and only found one and they had holes in the sleeves close to the cuffs. I have a lot of t-shirts that I would like to wear in winter, but I didn't have any neutral-colored zip-up sweaters to wear them with. I finally decided that I would settle on a gray sweater if I could find one. The mall was closing in 10 minutes and I was running around it with Blake in the cart frantically trying to find that elusive article of clothing. I also didn't want to spend more than $20. I walked into one last store and on a table they had dark gray zip-up sweaters! I was shocked! I checked the price tag and they were $30. At that point, I figured I wasn't going to find any sweaters like that elsewhere, so I was willing to pay that. Then I noticed a sign on the table that said, "Sweaters $22." SWEET! I had $21 of cash and I asked if I could put the other $2.50 on credit card. The lady looked at me like I was insane, but she ran it through. I went + met back up with Kiera + Jared. Kiera discovered a Mickey Mouse ride in the mall and wanted to go on it. She didn't know it was a ride, so she just sat in the little car beside Mickey and pretended to drive it. After that, Jared wanted to go buy a torchiere lamp that he had seen online. We went to the store and they were all out of them. They phoned their other location and that store had 2 left and they were on clearance for $45 instead of $60. The only problem was that the store was 15 minutes away in the opposite direction from where we live and they closed in 20 minutes. Jared was determined to try to get it, so we took off. Of course, Murphy's law was in effect as every traffic light we got was red on the way there when we were in a huge hurry. We made it about 3 minutes before they were closing. By this time, it was way past Kiera's bedtime and getting very close to Blake's bedtime and I was not impressed. Jared got the lamp and we only got home at 11:00 p.m. Kiera went straight to bed while Blake decided to stay up until midnight. They both slept wonderfully through the night, which is normal for Kiera and not as normal for Blake. I had to wake Kiera up at 11:40 a.m. the next morning. I'm glad everything worked out in the end and surprisingly got everything we were looking for!

Music To My Ears

This is my favorite sound right now! I just can't help but smile and giggle along!

The Week-end

We had an interesting week-end that started off a bit rough but ended well. On Thursday night, Kiera had 3 bad nightmares. I can't remember the last time she was up before that during the night. She was shaking and was so distraught that she had to come to our bed and we had to leave the light on because she would freak out every time we tried to turn off the light. She would eventually calm down and we would take her back to her crib and she would sleep some more. This continued on Friday night and Saturday night as well, except that most of the time it wasn't frantic screaming, it was just crying. The first night I thought it was a spiritual attack, which maybe it was, but then the rest of the week-end she had a fever on and off, so she wasn't feeling well. By Sunday, I was exhausted and felt very strongly that I needed some prayer reinforcement. We had an Italian potluck on Sunday evening with my Mom's side of the family, so we all gathered around Kiera, laid hands on her, and prayed for her. That night, she slept through the night and hasn't had any issues since. Praise the Lord!

Jared had yesterday and today off of work, so yesterday we dropped the kids off at my parents' house and went out for lunch. We got to the restaurant at 2:00 and they had a sign on their door saying they didn't open until 3:00. So we went to the mall and used our Starbucks gift card to share a large strawberries + cream frappuccino. Mmmmmm! Then we went to Wal-Mart and Jared used 2 gift cards to buy a video game there. We went back to the restaurant at 3:00 and there were only 4 other people eating at that time, so it was nice and quiet. We got a gift card for this nice restaurant for Christmas, so first we shared a caesar salad and then Jared had steak with garlic mashed potatoes and I had honey bbq ribs with garlic mashed potatoes. Very good! Almost our whole date was paid for with gift cards that we got for Christmas, so that was sweet! Today, we spent the day at home and I also got to go out by myself for a while this afternoon to do some shopping. It was so nice to get some breaks the past couple of days! Tonight, Jared and Kiera both have a friend over, so I just have Blake to take care of and he's sleeping right now! Time to go continue relaxing. :)

Necessities: Food, Drink, Sleep, + Going To the Bathroom

Since my post a couple of weeks ago when I said I thought Kiera wasn't going to nap anymore, she has napped every day since then! Yay! I'm so thankful both my kids are such wonderful sleepers! God gets all the credit!

Last week, Kiera went to her grandparents' house for 2 1/2 days. My Mom-in-law wanted to try to potty train Kiera and I don't have the time right now to do that, so I said, "Sure!" She did pee on her little potty a whole bunch of times at their house, but since returning home, she hasn't done it at all. I'm not sure that's she's quite ready yet. She doesn't mind sitting on it sometimes, so she does that while reading books. While she was away, we made a really yummy supper! We made pancakes, hash browns, and breakfast sausages (I don't like those but Jared does). I decided to experiment with the pancakes and I added a cup of wildberry yogurt and a teaspoon of vanilla. SO good! Next time I might try strawberry or vanilla yogurt. It gave them such a great flavor! Another thing I made along with the meal was an orange julius for both of us. This is the recipe I used and put it all in the blender:

1 cup fresh orange juice
2 ice cubes
1/2 cup milk
2 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. vanilla

That makes one drink. Most recipes use half a tin of frozen orange juice instead of fresh orange juice and then you need to add 1 cup of water as well. I'm all about my homemade frozen drinks made with my Magic Bullet these days! They're cheap, yummy, and taste like summer! On that note, time for a snack!

Thanks-living

“The more I count these blessings, the more I realize that they really are not the product of my own efforts. They are truly gifts of grace from God above. It’s incredible to open my eyes to them week after week. And humbling. That I should be graced with such wonders? Me… whose heart is weak and black, yet covered with much mercy. How great is Your unfailing love, Lord God of all!”

-Sharaya Crossan

I’m thankful for:

111. Blow dryers

112. Washer + dryer which makes doing laundry SO much easier than washing it by hand

113. Sunglasses

114. Food in our cupboards

115. Preppy clothes

116. Sweaters that help keep us warm in winter

117. How God paints the branches with snow and it is beautiful

118. Silence when the kids are napping

119. A daughter who likes to “help” clean the toilet

120. Grapes which I have enjoyed snacking on lately

121. Cuddle times with Kiera

122. The movie “Fame”…I love dancing + singing movies!

123. That Blake started reaching for toys + grabbing onto them a week and a half ago

124. Blake celebrated turning 3 months old on Saturday by sleeping through the night again! He hadn’t slept through the night before that in quite a long time and I prayed that he would sleep until at least 7 a.m. He went to bed at 11:30 p.m. and he slept ‘til 8 a.m. and then fell back asleep until 12:15 p.m.! 

125. After 4 1/2 years, I finally got a new cell phone!  I just wanted something basic with bluetooth so that I can talk hands-free in the car and I wanted a qwerty keyboard to make texting easier.  I got the Samsung T456 Gravity. The phone was $20 and I like it!

126. Distilled water…I drank a whole pitcher yesterday!

Expired Milk + Grocery Shopping

Last week, Jared went to the store for me and picked up a few groceries. One of the items was a 4-litre jug of milk. The next morning, I was pouring my cereal and happened to glance at the expiry date. It expired that very day! My dear husband had forgotten to check the expiry date when buying the milk. I searched all over for the receipt in hopes of returning or exchanging it, but I couldn't find the receipt. I thought, "What am I going to do with all of this milk? Pouring it all out would be such a waste! What uses quite a bit of milk? Pudding!" So, I went to the store and bought 4 boxes of pudding: chocolate, vanilla, butterscotch, and cookies + cream. I figured that was a lot of pudding for just our family. Then I was thinking, "I wonder how many of my neighbors are on their way to hell and I'm just sitting here cozy in my house not doing anything about it?" Not exactly warm fuzzy thoughts, but God was speaking to me again. I decided that I would bring desserts to 3 of my neighbors. I checked our cupboards and we had exactly 3 plastic disposable containers. Then I checked the graham crackers and I had exactly enough to make 3 desserts. Coincidence? I think not. I made chocolate + vanilla pudding and layered them between graham crackers. Then I taped a note onto each one of them and left them at my neighbors' doors. The next morning, one of my neighbors came and taped a thank you card onto our door. He was trying to be sneaky, but I saw him do it! It felt kind of like a game and it made me smile. :)

This past Monday, I went to the grocery store and I only had $20 for this whole week's worth of groceries. I arrived at the store and prayed, "Lord, could you somehow multiply this money?" I started my shopping and arrived at the yogurt. There was yogurt on sale and there was one container left of a flavor that I liked! I said, "Thank you, Lord." Then I went to the jam and there was jam on sale! I said, "Thank you, Lord." Then I went to the juice and they had 1-litre juices on sale for $1. The shelf was completely empty and I was disappointed. I knew that Jared had really been looking forward to having orange juice and there were none left. I looked at all the other juices and nothing else was on sale. Suddenly, I saw one carton of orange juice on completely the wrong shelf sitting all by itself. I couldn't believe that nobody else had seen it and snatched it up! It was totally a gift from the Lord! I got to the check-out and I even had some money left over! God may not have physically multiplied my money, but I got almost my whole list on sale and had some money left over, so that was an answer to prayer! "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows." James 1:17

God Is Speaking

A couple of weeks ago during the 3 weeks of praying + fasting, God spoke to me in a dream and told me to memorize Psalm 63. I did that over the next several days and was totally blessed by that! God gave me another dream on Saturday night, except I didn't know at first that it was from Him. In the dream, I had gone back to my former place of work after my maternity leave where I had been a receptionist and there were people everywhere. I got taken into the back room which was the staff room and there were people everywhere in there, too. They were lying on hospital beds; some were sick and some were dying. One of the patients was an 8-year-old girl who just had a baby. I said, "This isn't the job I came back here for. I don't want to take care of these people." I was so overwhelmed and just wanted to get out of there. After a while, my supervisor pulled me aside and said that I was getting really bad reviews, 0/10 - 4/10, because I wasn't doing my job. I said, "You're right. I don't want this job." They were going to fire me, but then they decided to try to find a different position for me. I got taken into another room, and it was a dental office. It was dark in there and there were also a lot of people in there as well. There were screens on the wall and a few receptionists behind a tall counter. I sat up on the counter and a man came in and started yelling at everyone. It was just noisy, chaotic and I hated it there, too. I walked out onto a busy street and started walking home. I passed a friend and said hi. I kept walking and then behind me a cop pulled a car over. At first, I just stood there and watched and then decided to keep going. The cop said, "No, you need to stay. You're a suspect now because you were in the area." That's when I woke up. I thought it was really weird, but then didn't think much of it. After church, I shared the dream with my cousin, who took over my former job. She started crying and I was really confused and didn't know what I was missing until she said, "In your dream, you were me. I don't want to work there anymore. The people in the hospital beds are the people who work there. They are sick and dying because they don't know Jesus." I started crying, too, as I realized the dream was prophetic and how badly my former co-workers need Jesus. I don't know if the 2nd part of my dream has a deeper meaning as well, so I prayed that if it does, that God would show that to me or nudge me to share the dream with a specific person. Lately, I've had many "lost" people on my heart to pray for them, so this dream totally ties in with that. I am blown away and humbled that God would speak to me and through me. Lord, help me to hear your voice and to obey.