Beauty is....

There are times we call "teachable moments" as parents, times when we try our best to instill bits of wisdom and guidance in the hearts and minds of our precious children praying that they will remember and use what we have taught them to make wise choices, to be healthy, happy, kind and smart.... to hopefully not have to learn all this stuff "the hard way" like we did.

As Carley is now beginning to learn about "image", picking out clothes, occasionally wearing a little bit of kids makeup, choosing how to fix her hair, and dealing with boys at school who say things like "you have hairy man legs" (ugghh, boys!)..... I want her to be confident in who she is and the beauty she possesses and where that beauty really comes from.

This is an excerpt from one of our little mommy-daughter talks on the subject.

(makes a momma proud)

I hope both my girls and every woman I know will always remember this truth, including myself.

Cupcakes & Crowns

Today was a big day at school.

Carley got to wear a special crown all day since it was her birthday.

Her class sang to her.

She got a surprise card in her lunchbox from mom, dad & Zoe.

 ... and grandma sent these cupcakes for her class, yummy!!!

Happy Birthday beautiful, so glad you had an awesome day!

.... and daddy got home early from work and we all got to hang out together, YAY!!!

The big pARTy is coming up this weekend... stay tuned to hear all about it. :-D

Carley Through the Years...

From our teeny tiny early arrival to the incredible young lady she is today; Carley has brought so much joy to our lives. I can't believe she is turning 6 years old. It seems like she has been with us always and yet how can she be growing up so fast! Oh Carley, we love you so very much and we are so proud of the loving, funny, witty, wonderful, intelligent, helpful, insightful, creative, all-around amazing girl you are!

A look back through the years in snapshots:

(*it was sooo tough to force myself to just hurry up and pick pictures out of all the hundreds of special images, great trip down memory lane)

We are proud of you and we love you!

Happy, Happy Birthday Carley!



When you give your husband the camera....

So, I gave my husband my camera and asked him to take a few pictures for me.....

ummm, maybe I should have been more specific. ;)

MOPS

Today I attended my first ever MOPS meeting.

If you're not familiar with MOPS it stands for Mothers Of PreSchoolers.

There is a group that meets at our church one Wednesday morning each month and today was the first meeting of the new school year.

My sister invited me to go with her.

She is helping organize the craft activities this year.

So Zoe and I gathered our things and headed out this morning not long after dropping Carley off at school.

It was a group of about 13 women and it was nice.

The ladies were friendly. And not in that awkward overly friendly fake kind of way; like some ladies groups can be, ya know.

We had activities, discussion, games and snacks and overall the atmosphere was quite comfortable.

I'm glad Jodi invited me and I'm glad I went.

I may even go again. :)

Picnic and a Playground

The weather this week is absolutely gorgeous in the 80's instead of the record breaking 100's we've been having and it is such a delight to be outdoors!

So we celebrated the fabulous weather!
Cause who doesn't like a reason to celebrate, right. ;)

Today Zoe and I packed our picnic backpack (like a picnic basket but it's a really nifty backpack) and when we got to school we surprised Carley and took her to one of her favorite parks for an after school treat.

We had the best time playing, swinging, running around and having our little picnic.

It was so sweet to watch Carley help Zoe on the playground, hold her hand, and wrap her arms around her as they slid down the slide together.

Once we got home from the park the girls just had to play a little bit more in the back yard. :)

Hope this weather lasts a good long while.

Backup Your Files.... horrifying true story

Three words I'd heard and said a hundred times.

Unfortunately good intentions do absolutely no good when a worm virus hits your computer out of nowhere before you actually got around to backing up all your important files.

True story and quite terrifying lesson learned this past weekend.

Friday night a worm virus attacked my computer and completely shut everything down. Nothing but a black screen with a blinking white cursor line.

Panic.

Nothing was backed up on my external hard drive. I meant to, but....oh, the sick feeling in my stomach!

All my thousands of pictures, my artwork, my new accounting for my business, school files, personal files, and the list goes on!

Saturday night my amazing, genius, wonderful brother Tim spent 6 hours working on our computer. We truly thought he would have to wipe it clean and start from scratch. Lots of waiting and praying.

And finally, by God's grace and Tim's unbelievable computer skills, my brother was able to hack in and somehow get rid of the virus and restore everything to my computer.

When he turned my laptop around and I saw my screensaver and all my icons on the desktop I literally shook with emotion and cried.

Very tough lesson learned. Viruses, worms, trojans all that stuff can hit anyone's computer at any time so please remember to do as I say (not as I did) and backup all your files just in case.

So now I do have it all backed up on an external hard drive and will continue to be faithful about it from here on.

What a stressful couple of days.

Praise God for answered prayers!

And thank you, thank you again Tim for all your incredible hard work. You are the smartest computer guy I've ever known! Love you tons!