~Our Anniversary~

~Thank you for all your nice anniversary wishes! We had a nice anniversary! It was comical though. Phillip and I were laughing because, he was still feeling yucky from having the flu, and had several fever blisters, I had pink eye and am 6 months pregnant. (Which means more tired than usual, etc.) Phillip said, "Help us, if we are this "falling apart" when we are celebrating 15 years, what will we be like when we celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary?" HA! =D
But we had a wonderful Lord's day/anniversary!
~Phillip got me these beautiful flowers and asked me if there was anything else I wanted for our anniversary. I told him that I wanted to get our 2009 pictures developed so I could get them scrapbooked...to just please make that my anniversary gift. (So, this past Monday I picked up all 536 pictures (Jan-Aug. 3rd, 2009) and have already completed scrap-booking the month of Jan. 2009! YEA! =)
~For our breakfast I made this DELICIOUS Quiche! I have been WANTING Quiche for awhile, so was HAPPY to have it. I'll try to post the recipe soon. Kimberly was my helper and cut up a yummy FRESH fruit salad to go with our Quiche. The salad contained Fresh mango, strawberries, pears, kiwi, and an apple. It was a wonderful breakfast!~
~Before we went to church, I asked Jesus to PLEASE come and meet with us in a special way. I told the Lord that His presence makes all the difference in our services. Our preachers can preach until they are blue in the face, but it's God who convicts hearts, and meets needs. I didn't know that Phillip had been praying that very prayer too! We went to church and God helped in the singing and helped Phillip as he preached. But, it wasn't until the closing illustration of Phillip's message that God's SWEET presence settled down on our service and a lot of us wept and prayed for about 40 minutes or so. It was a very special service!
After we came home and ate our yummy dinner, this is what Elijah and I did...we were exhausted. =) Phillip stayed up with our 3 older children.~
~I made a fresh Strawberry pie for Phillip for our anniversary! Here Elijah is pointing to it...with LONGING in his eyes. =)~


~We melted some chocolate and added some chopped walnuts for a quick yummy choc. heart. =)~
~Kimberly and I melted choc. and made choc. hearts to put down into the cool whip of each piece of strawberry pie that we served. =)~
Lord willing, we plan to have Noah's kindergarten graduation this coming Saturday, June 12th. We plan to do a little program with us singing some specials, Noah reciting Scripture, presenting him his diploma, etc. and then afterwards I'm serving a full course meal to all of our guests. PLEASE PRAY THAT I CAN GET IT ALL DONE!! When one is 6 months pregnant, their energy level isn't quite what it usually is. =) Thank you for your prayers!!!!
I'll post pics of his graduation as soon as I can.

~Our 15th Wedding Anniversary~

A few weeks ago when I was on bed rest, I read the book "I kissed dating goodbye." Now, I don't plan to kiss dating goodbye, I plan on dating my sweetheart for as long as I have breath =)...but I was proof reading it before our kids started reading it. It was a very good book. One of the things that caught my attention was when a young man told Joshua Harris that he was scared to ask a girl to marry him. That he felt that asking a girl to marry him could be like jumping off a cliff. I really had never thought about the guys side of it. I had thought of a guy marrying a girl and RUINING her life...but not how much of a responsibility it is for a guy to decide to ask his lady for her hand. Though he may know her really well, he is still taking a chance. A wife can make or break a man's career, life, reputation. This is the lady that will make him shine, or tear him down. She is who will basically raise his children while he's gone to work each day. His children will be trained by her and will end up accepting her values. She will help him make Heaven or Hell. WOW! When you think of it that way, it's no wonder that Phillip fasted and prayed about marrying me. He wanted to marry me with his whole heart, but just wanted to make sure it was God's will. He knew God knew the future and if I was the right one for him. Thankfully, Phillip felt that God wanted him to marry me...and today we are celebrating 15 wonderful years!
I love you, sweetheart Phillip and I am so glad that God brought us together. It doesn't seem possible that 15 years have gone by since our beautiful wedding, but I Love you more now than I did then. I'm so glad that I said, "Yes!!!!"...and I would do it all over again. =D
Let's aim to celebrate many more years happy together! =)

~Noah's last day of kindergarten!!~

Yesterday I went to my doctor's appointment. I was very excited for I'm measuring 23 weeks (right on schedule), and I haven't even gained an ounce since last month. YAY! That means that so far it appears that I don't have trouble with sugar. (Because when I was expecting Elijah, I measured 9 months when I was 7 months, which means that I had lots of extra fluid from trouble with sugar.) I'm going to try to keep eating carefully and walking and hopefully baby and I will not have gestational diabetes this time. I also notice that my baby bump isn't as big this time around. PRAISE THE LORD! Thank the Lord, Phillip is feeling much better!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Look who finished kindergarten? YAY! I started teaching him on Feb. 3rd, and then on Feb. 4th is when we found out the exciting news about our 5th baby. So, between the health scares for baby and I, bed rest, doctor's appointments, etc. God has really helped us and Noah finished last Thursday, May 27th! We plan to have a graduation and luncheon for him soon.
~Noah's last day.~
~We made a little clown ice cream man to celebrate Noah's last day.~There is a park here in Bogota called "The National Park". However, this is where we took Sarah's pictures with her kindergarten graduation cap and gown on, so ever since then our kids have called it "The Graduation Park." Now that it was Noah's turn to get his pictures taken, I knew it would never do for us to take them anywhere else but the graduation park. =D So, We ran to that park and God gave us a clear day and we got lots of fun pics. After wards we let the kids play and Kimberly and Phillip took a hike. The girls have a few more weeks, but God is helping them plug along on their schoolwork. It was hard to keep up with their studies as much as we wanted to while traveling last fall to 40 different churches while on our deputation. (Including 2 in Canada.) =)
~Our little Noah in his cap and gown.~




~Noah and his sisters and silly brother. Don't ask me what made Elijah cross his arms. He was cracking us up.~
~We got Elijah a new hat and wanted to get some pictures of him in it with this outfit. He reminded us of Cat in the Hat. =)~



~Tired little Elijah wanted his Daddy to "Hold you" so Phillip let him wear his hat on the way home. =)~


We are trying to plan Noah's graduation for a time that works well for all of our guests to come, so Lord willing, I'll post pics of Noah's graduation as soon as we have it.

~Our Mother's Day Service~

Thank you for your nice comments on my scrap-booking pages. Thank the Lord, Phillip got home safely last Monday. Unfortunately he is very sick today. Please pray he gets better, for we have lots to do this week. Phillip is to teach and preach Saturday and Sunday also.
Last Thursday night after church while we were visiting with each other, the lights of the church went out and there were lots of sparks coming from the light post outside. Bro. Jimmy called the electric company and they said that there was a power outage in lots of homes. They said that they were so far behind that they wouldn't get to our church UNTIL Sunday MORNING!! How sad! Here we had this special Mother's day service planned and needed electricity for that. So, I told Bro. Jimmy that I was going to pray that God would help our church to get moved up on the list and that they would come and fix it Saturday night. Sure enough, our Awesome God worked, and they fixed the electricity at the church on Saturday evening.
We had a special day at church. Here are some pictures.
~To celebrate the day, Jimmy and Farly got 2 cakes made with our Christian Nation Church symbol on them. They used these as the arrangement to decorate the front of the church, but the cakes were moved elsewhere to serve after church. ~
~The top cake says, "Happy Mother's day" and the bottom cake says, "Happy Birthday, 3 years, Christian Nation Church." The church here in Bogota was celebrating it's 3rd anniversary. I thought that the cakes turned out really pretty.~
~Thank you to those of you who remembered to pray for me as I spoke to our Mothers this past Sunday. The Lord really helped me and my Spanish. =)~

~A couple weeks ago when Farly was at our house, I had Elijah strum his guitar and sing "Jesus Loves Me" in English for her. She Loved it. A few days later she asked that He sing it for our special Mother's day service. Bro. Jimmy announced that we were going to be favored with a special from one of our oldest, and wisest members, the one who had the most gray hair...and then called for Elijah to come up. =) Kimberly held him and sang in his ear so he didn't get side tracked with all of the people watching him, and walking around with their cellphones and cameras taking his picture. In all the excitement he forgot to strum his guitar, but the Lord helped him and he sang the song all the way through. =) ~
~Here's a picture of us Mothers with the pretty handmade flowers that our kids made for us in Sunday school. We also received a yummy choc. sucker.~

~Scrapbooking pages~

While Phillip is gone the Lord has been helping the kids and I with their school work. I was able to write a bunch of Thank you notes to send to our supporters, and now I plan to scrapbook lots to get caught up before Phillip comes home. =)
PLEASE PRAY FOR ME THIS SUNDAY MORNING. HERE IN COLOMBIA THE WHOLE MONTH OF MAY IS A TIME TO CELEBRATE MOTHERS. SO, THIS SUNDAY WE ARE HAVING A SPECIAL MOTHER'S DAY SERVICE AT OUR CHURCH. FARLY HAS ASKED ME TO TALK TO OUR MOTHERS DURING OUR SUNDAY SERVICE. PLEASE PRAY THAT GOD WILL HELP ME TO CHALLENGE US MOTHERS, AND THAT GOD WILL HELP MY SPANISH. =) THANK YOU!
~The Lord has helped me to get several scrapbooking pages done here recently. I only have a few more pages and I will finish scrapbooking the year 2008! YEA! I'm hoping to get at least 6 months of 2009 scrapbooked before our baby is born. For I know that if I don't...I will be very overwhelmed with lots of pictures of the new baby, plus all of the year 2009 to scrapbook. The Lord is helping me. Here are some of the pages that I have done.~
~Kimberly. Please excuse the glare on some of these pages. I didn't have the energy to remove their plastic protectors to get the pictures. =)~
~November 2008 we decided to show a few of our Colombian friends what Thanksgiving day was all about! Here Kimberly is helping me get the apples ready to make pies. We made 2 apple pies, 2 pumpkin pies, and 64 rolls, plus LOTS of other food.~
~Our table. I had fun finding these little gold-ish colored leaves to use as place card holders.~
~After we ate we gathered in the living room and each gave thanks to God for something He had done that year, and sang hymns and prayed together. It was a precious time.~
~My birthday in 2008~


~The kids all dressed up for Christmas.~
~Our family pictures at the park.~
~Sarah's Strawberry Shortcake birthday party.~
~At her party I let all the kids make sugar cookies, cut them out, use all my sugars, icings and sprinkles to decorate them. They had fun. The next 2 pages go together.
FLOUR, SUGAR, FLOUR everywhere!~ =)

~Christmas 2008~
~Then I went ahead and scrapbook our JCPenny's Christmas pictures from this past December (2009).~