Little Parts :)

Ooooo Sweeters, I love your cute baby parts. You are so sweet and I must kiss that sweet spot on the side of your temple two hundred times a day at least. You are the best!

***You can do fun mosaic's like this at Flickr's Big Huge Labs

Catch me Poppy!

Fun times with Poppy at the park... sunday we had an unusually warm 75 degree day!

Profoundly Seth!

My bloggy friend El is celebrating 10,000 hits! She is a rockin' mom of 3 plus one with Jesus. Her blog is one of my daily fav reads... her littlest son Seth was born deaf and Lord willing in the future will be getting a cochlear implant surgery to help him hear!

Check out her blog and enter to win a fun giveaway!

Out-Takes

I never got a picture of sister in her Christmas dress, nor put together a christmas card photo... so I dressed the kids up this morning and made an attempt to get a cute shot. And of course it was harder than I thought it would be!...

But I had no AA batteries- no where- in the house. Darn... ok, I will use my iPhone. Which takes great pictures in light, but you can't be moving or they are blurry. I thought Luke could hold sister in his lap since she is a little bigger now...

It went kind of like this: Luke, ok, sit in the chair. No! Sit still. Ok now put your hands around sister's tummy (he is laughing and won't sit still). Careful now! We don't want sister falling off the chair! ... Now he starts LICKING sister (see below)


And sister thinks that is totally funny :)
No Luke! Stop licking sister! Let's get a good shot, and then mommy will give you candy! "Oooooohhhh, where's my candy?" Not until you get your picture. Say cheese! "cheeeeeese"...





Taking pictures and looking cute is such a hard job!

Honeycrisp Apple I love you

We fell in love last year... when the produce guy at Fresh Market saw I had a bag of Honeycrisp Apples in my cart. He cut me a piece right there in the store and "oh my!" that was a beautiful thing. You see they only come to our store right around Thanksgiving to Christmas... so they are an awaited item. And when I googled them I see there are more fans out there.

"Honeycrisp fruit is characterized by an exceptionally crisp and juicy texture. Its flesh is cream colored and coarse. The flavor is sub-acid and ranges from mild and well-balanced to strongly aromatic, depending on the degree of maturity. "... no wonder they taste so good! Maybe you like honeycrisps' parents: Apple experts at the University of Minnesota discovered Honeycrisp by cross-pollinating two exceptional apple varieties, Macoun and Honeygold.

So now you have some apple education! And make a trip for some... not much time left!

Halleluiah, Praise the Lord, She is taking a Bottle

I don't think I've posted about this, but if you know me in real life I have been trying everything to get Sophia to take a bottle. I tried the fat Dr. Brown's, the Breast Flow bottle, the Adiri natural nurser bottle (I wished she would have taken that one b/c is was so cool!), avent magic sippy cup, Playtex vented. No go. She would chew on the bottle nipple like it was a teether. Then gag, spit it out, choke, throw a fit. Was it the milk she didn't like? So I bought a breast pump on craigslist and pumped, tried soy milk, non-soy Carnation milk, then Earth's Best Organic soy milk... same result on all milks.

Then I saw a mom in Nordstom (by the way they have the best nursing mothers room) feeding her twin 10 month girls with the skinny bottle by Dr. Brown's... made a mental note to try those. And I did have a couple from Luke's "boo" days. Low and behold she got it! Ate 2 ounces, then 4! We've got it! What a relief.

Park with Caleb!

We had the pleasure of cousin Caleb spending two days with us last week while Sharay took Grandma Hunt up to DC to catch a plane to Alaska (brave Grandma!). Caleb is 6, and as Luke gets older they are really getting to be best buds. They both are all boy! The loudness went up a notch with all the sword fighting, wrestling, and karate chopping :) It was fun.

Luke impressed me with his strength--- he would have me put him on the monkey bars and then held himself on the bars. Jeans were a little big today- haha isn't that belly cute!

I rolled sister around in the bugaboo and she had a good time too.

Woo-Hoo! He went down the pole by himself too!

Rock on

You moms will appreciate this... had to go on an interview yesterday, and I totally fit into my pre-pregnancy size 4 navy blue J crew suit--- ROCK ON! Thank you breast feeding and the YMCA, thank you very much :) Now the tankini ... that is another story....

Sweeters' "New" Room

So after posting about my nights of getting up and down so many times, my sister Christina was very disturbed. She said Sweeters needs to come out! in order for anyone to get any good sleep. "But where could she go?" I asked since we only have 2 bedrooms?? Well the wise choice was the living room Mckmama style! (she has set up quite a few creative rooms for her many small children :) We never sit in the living room anyway... and it is further from our bedroom so if Sophia cries a little or I have to feed her, I don't have to worry about her waking up the boys. We did have to add a little radiator heater, which involved running a new circuit for an outlet b/c it was shorting when we turned on the heater in our room. (Aside... which ended up being a blessing b/c when my handyman went under the house he found a broken pipe).

So sister is so cute and enjoying her "new room":




And she is so getting ready to crawl! See how she walks out to all fours...
She moves herself to get her favorite toys.. fish bowl with the little animals, oh and brothers chainsaw :)

Word

Sometimes at our church someone will go to the front during worship and share a 'word', or picture that the Lord has used to minister to them, and that may encourage others. This was given by my friend Linda and I thought I'd share. It has to do with trials and discomfort, idols, and GRACE! This can minister to many right now I bet...

Jonah 2:8 "Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs."

What worthless idol are we clinging to that is causing us to forfeit the Grace that could be ours? The Grace that is freely given to us!
In chapter 4 of Jonah v6"...the Lord provided a vine and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade...to ease his discomfort and Jonah was very happy...vs 7...the next day God provided a worm that chewed the vine...vs8...God provided a scorching east wind the sun blazed on Jonahs head so he grew faint and wanted to die vs9...But God said to Jonah 'Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?'"
Are we only happy when God provides things to ease our discomfort in life? Sometimes God takes things away or allows trials-- He provides a "WORM" to help remind us not to cling to worthless idols and forfeit the Grace that could be ours.
He wants us during those difficult times, to cling to grace rather than the comfort of the idol in our heart. It's when our focus is off Gods provision, instead its on the comfort we want, we lose sight of God's Grace.

I believe God is asking us:
Do we have the right to be angry at our lot in life?
Does not God provide all we have?
Does not God provide grace during the difficulties of life?
GOD is calling us to let go of the idols we're clinging to in order to experience HIS AMAZING GRACE!

My Boon Spoon

Look what I found! I was at Babies R Us and was going to get a pack of the Gerber spoons, which were like $8 (for spoons??) , and saw this nifty gadget by Boon . You put the baby food in the spoon, squirt out as much as you like and feed the babe!! Great for on the go; just throw it in the diaper bag b/c there is a little lid for the spoon. I just checked out the Boon website and oh my! They have so many cool things. Thought I'd share....

Love The Blog Frog

So blog friends, if you haven't already- sign up on BlogFrog. It walks you through an easy process, scans your blog for links and you are set up! You can see what people share similar friends and links as you; and find blogs of people you may know from high school, college, etc. And you can put their little visitor gadget on which is fun too to see who stops by!

And FOLLOWERS on blogger is great too. You can add it by going to your layout page, click 'Add a Gadget' then install the Followers! Then me and others can follow you! Blogger will keep track of when new posts are coming up and it is handy.

have a great Weekend

Here are a couple of cute pictures of me and Sweeters, we hope you have a great weekend ! Isn't her romper cute with the little green stars? $4 on ebay loves. Her eyes look kind of green in that first picture don't they? Oh, she had her 6 month checkup on monday and weighed in at 17lbs. 4 ounces! And 27 inches long. Her head was still in the 95th percentile, but height and weight kind of dropped a little from her 4 month stats of also 95th. It amazes me how big my babies are/were... I was always a bit of a runt. Skinny and small all of my growing up years- not the case for my offspring so far! She is starting to walk out to a crawl type stance from sitting. She really wants to go! She tries to get to Luke and kind of attacks him, it is really funny. Can't wait to see them play as she gets bigger. Some days she is the best baby, content to hang out with me whatever we are doing. Others she is high maintenance and fusses everytime I put her down- only happy on my hip. We love you Sophia!

Pray with me sisters...

Recently the Lord has been leading me to pray a lot. Last friday I went to our church's ladies prayer, a time from 12-1 to just pray outloud for lots of requests. It was a great time of prayer and I plan on putting it into my friday agenda.

If you can be praying with me... for healing of Wayne's headaches. He will still have weeks where he will have them 3 days in a row and not be able to do much of anything. This week has been better so maybe my prayers are working! He has 2 deals that have a potential to close in jan/feb. But with the market and financing lots of details have to fall into place for these developments to sell. So I am in prayer that one will close. This would really help us by replenishing the dip into savings of the last 5 months. And would free Wayne up to explore where God would have him next employment-wise.

God also opened the door for me to be accepted into nursing school! I have always felt my strengths lie in the medical field, and once I have my RN licensure that will open up jobs for me where I can work 3 days a week, and be with the kiddos a lot still. It is a 20 month program. They have me in the august class; but something tells me that a spot may open up for me to start in January. I would really like to get started. So I am praying for a spot to open if that is the Lord!

Thanks for "listening" and joining in prayer. Off to get cookie ingedients and make cookies for our ladies' group Cookie Exchange party tonight. Which entails taking two kids to the grocery store as Luke has been sick for 2 days with fevers and coughing. Wish me luck!

Best teether

Don't you think those big ring teethers are nice but too big for baby to hold onto by themselves and bite? I stumbled upon this great teether that is just a little bigger than a pacifier... the biter part looks like a raspberry and is soft with bumps that soothe those teething gums. Sophia loves this thing... she knaws at even the handle and leaves and can hold it and pick it up all by herself.
Check it out at Amazon ! Jess watch the mail- got one for Dayton :)

Organic Baby Food

So with some encouragement from my sister Christina... I have dove into making Sophia organic baby foods. And it really is doable! Here is my process:


1. Peel your fruit or vegetable... I am starting with pears, bananas, and sweet potatoes. You only need 2 or 3 depending on size to make quite a bit.

2. Cut up the fruit or veggie into smaller pieces and put in your steamer:

3. Steam for 11 minutes or so
4. Put the steamed stuff in my Magic Bullet (or food processor- I just don't have one). Now before blending you can add a half ounce of breastmilk, formula milk, or a little flax oil Mckmama style.
5. Pour into ice cube trays.

6. Pop out the cubes and put into freezer bags for storage. Just thaw what you need to feed your baby!

It is fresh and organic and so good for baby. I had been buying the organic gerber, but the shelf life on that stuff can be ten months old! And quite expensive. Do you all do this too??

I can't believe it, but I also ordered an all in one diaper from Three Monkeys on ebay. They are similar to Bum Genious which everyone seems to say is the best one; but 1/2 the price. And lots of cute fabrics too. We will see how it works.