I Can Only Imagine

I heard this song on the radio tonight.

I LOVE my life.




BUT


there are times (like tonight) when this song takes my breath away when I truly sit still and try to imagine meeting my Creator.


unimaginable, I know



it's worth trying though



sometimes like tonight



I can only imagine, but imagine I will!

Birthday Celebration - Take #44

David,

You are now forty-four.  I love you more each year.  As we count off the years we've been together I feel like I know you more and more each passing year.  I thought I had you figured out when we said our vows.  HA!  Then at year five I knew I had it all figured out....then at ten years.....and fifteen.....and now at almost twenty I have finally fully figured you out. 

So here for your reading pleasure is what I've learned about you in the past many years..........

You are exactly like that pecan pie you love so much.

Profound I know, but let me explain.......

At first, you seem pretty tough.... hard and almost brittle on the surface

you might even be described as a bit flaky by some who know you

 Your determined ways can make you crusty about the edges.

and yet if someone is to push past the tough exterior

they find a softer sweeter person on the inside

a nice balance exists between the two parts

And no one who knows you can deny

.....the very essence of who you are....

...the thing you are known for...

..... the main ingredient.

You, my friend,

are a nut!

See?  I said you were just like a pecan pie!

You NUT JOB!

OK, I'm done.

I'll leave the poetic metaphors to Carl Sandburg and Emily Dickenson. 

There's a reason they're published poets and I'm a stay at home mom.  I better stick to my own vocation.

I love you.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Conversations with little people

Mom: What do you want to be when you grow up, Grace?

Grace:  I'm going to be a lifeguard!

Mom: You know that lifeguards have to put their faces in the water and get their hair wet, don't you?

Grace: (after a long silence absorbing this piece of information)  Then I want to be a ballerina teacher.   They are beautiful and so am I.

 ********************************

 Mom:  Grant, that is so nice how you're petting Jet.  He likes it when you pat him nicely.

Grant:  He's purring.  Yeah, he likes me a lot.

Mom:  Remember not to pick him up anymore, OK?

Grant:  OK, Mom.  What would it be like if we ate cat poop?

Mom: (a little surprised by this turn in the conversation) I don't think that would taste very good, honey.

Grant:  Yeah, but what if we dipped it in ketchup before we ate it?

Mom: No, I still don't think it would taste very good.

Grant:  Would we die if we ate cat poop?

Mom: No, I don't think you would die.  I think your tummy would hurt.

Grant:  What if we dipped it in ketchup?

Mom: Your tummy?

Grant: What if we dipped the cat poop in ketchup?  Would we die then?

Mom:  No.  Now no more talk about poop.

Grant:  Mom, I love you. (seriously he said this)

What is left to say at that point???

Moving Day

Most of the boxes are finally empty and furniture is finally arranged and in place.  The pictures are hung on the walls and dinner is setting on the table.  The entire family is excited about the new house.  I've included a few pictures of the new place for your enjoyment.

The exterior

The dining area

One of the bedrooms for the kids

The living room

The upstairs bathroom

If you haven't guessed yet, the Shupe family has not moved.

The pretend Shupe family relocated during Christmas vacation.

The movers showed up on Christmas morning of all mornings.

Here is one of the movers helping the family unpack their belongings.....

Actually, David  Santa made Grace a new dollhouse for Christmas.  That's what she told him she wanted.

This isn't the dollhouse David  Santa made.

It is one of the pretend kids pretend toys INSIDE the dollhouse.  How cool is that?

Here's the finished product after Grace got all of the furniture unpacked.

Emily has a matching dollhouse that 'Santa' made for her when she was five years old too.

Somehow I would bet David Santa is glad that we only have two girls at this address.

Speaking of David, I think someone has a birthday tomorrow, but I'm not going to tell you how old he'll be.  That wouldn't be very nice of me.

Oops.

We made a Texas Sheetcake, which he loves, for an early birthday celebration tonight.  Tomorrow night I am taking him out to dinner so we decided to celebrate with the kids a night early.

He and Grant got into the spirit of the event by wearing the appropriate party attire.

After eating, he opened his one and only birthday present....

a book that he bought himself at the bookstore the other evening that I confiscated from him.

He is rotten about buying himself the things he mentions wanting!!!

That's OK. I love him anyway.

*********************

OK, it's late and I'm tired tonight.  I'll get to the details of the past few days another evening.  My hubby and I are going to go sit and watch a movie together.  It's my last evening to have a date with a forty-three year old man.

and we wish you.........

MERRY CHRISTMAS

AND SHE SHALL BRING FORTH A SON, AND YOU SHALL CALL HIS NAME JESUS (SAVIOR): FOR HE SHALL SAVE HIS PEOPLE FROM THEIR SINS   (MATTHEW 1:21)

'Twas the Night Before Christmas.......

We were ready for Santa......

even the mouse hamster.

 

We did the traditional Shupe family Christmas Eve.......plus a few new twists......

We added a movie this year.  We watched one of the Santa Claus movies this evening.  The kids got hot chocolate and cookies for one last hurrah.

We played with the Christmas train underneath the tree.... just like we did earlier today.

We then settled in to listen to David read the Christmas story and 'Twas the Night Before Christmas.

At this point in the evening we set out cookies and milk for Santa to have when he comes to visit.

Usually this is the moment in the evening when we go tuck our sleepy little ones into bed so they can drift off into sleep and dream of sugarplums (whatever those are) and reindeer and sleighs full of toys and jolly old men.

Not tonight

Our kids were rockin' out!!!!!

ARE YOU READY TO ROCK??????

LET'S MAKE SOME NOISE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

AND NOW FOR GRANT ON AIR GUITAR!!

THANK YOU!! Thank you very much!!

New family tradition????

Umm, I hope not.

Then Grace had to do her famous "La De Dah" song.....

Doin' her best Gene Simmons

She had the whole house rockin' it with her!

And to all a GOOD NIGHT!!!

Yeah right!!  Like you think they're going to sleep after THAT??

The Longest Stick in the World

I have to post this just because I'll forget it (again) if I don't do this right now......

Grant just came up to me and asked "Mom, where is my 'Longest Stick In The World' "?

I had to laugh.  He hasn't mentioned 'The Longest Stick In The World' for a few weeks now. What he is talking about is a stick that blew down in a wind storm back in October.  Grant was playing in the yard after that and brought the stick to me so I could see it.  He was so proud of it because he had found the longest stick in the world.  It lay in the yard for several weeks as fall drew to a close and cold weather set in.  Everytime he would think of it he would run and drag the thing into the garage to protect it.  He was so afraid someone would steal his valuable treasure.  I would step over it for a few days until I grew tired of the game then toss it back into the yard.  I am guessing the guys that mow our lawn finally got tired of it and tossed it into the field behind our house. 


The stick disappeared.

Grant forgot about it....or so I thought.....until today.  Now out of the blue we are talking again about the biggest stick in the world.  I told him it was hidden  in the back yard under the swingset until spring.  I explained that I put it there to keep people from stealing his 'Longest Stick in the World'.  He bought my story.

Yes, I lied.  Who really cares?  My four year old is happy.

Let's just hope he forgets about "The Longest Stick in the World" by springtime or I am in BIG trouble!

Count down to Christmas continues

The snow is melting quickly.  There is still a little left here and there.

The weatherman oops, I mean meteorologist (we must be politically correct you know) is forecasting more snow for tonight.

White Christmas anyone?

These are my flower pots on the back deck.  Each of the kids gets to pick an annual flower to plant in their own pot each summer.  It's interesting each year what they pick.

I just liked how the colors looked with the snow.

Excitement is building in the zoo as we count down the hours until Santa arrives!

Anyone want to babysit this afternoon???

The pay might be pretty good if you're brave enough!

Man, can he hold a grudge!!

Grant: (said to me after he and Grace got into a verbal altercation over a toy)  Grace made me mad forever!!  (just so you know, he had fully forgiven her in under five minutes)





Grace: (while pouring pretend tea into five teacups) There's some for Mom....some for Grant........some for me.......and some for........ (here she paused because she'd run out of people to invite).......some for Emily

Mom:  ....but Emily isn't here.

Grace: Oh no.  Not for our Emily.  This tea is for INVISIBLE Emily. She's nicer than Emily.


I just want to say here for any Harry Potter fans that are reading this, it was a stay at home mom who invented the 'invisibility cloak' used in the Harry Potter books.  Mothers would give a king's ransom to have such a little wardrobe accessory and be able to disappear at will.





Grace: (while dishing out her variously colored alphabet puzzle pieces and pretending she was serving cookies) Would you like an orange one, or a yellow one?  The yellow ones are lemonade flavored.

Mom:  What flavor are the blue ones?

Grace:  They're blueberry.  The red ones are strawberry.  The green ones are.......(a little bit confused at this point).......GREENBERRY flavor.

SANTA

I forgot to post this last week.

One day after picking Grace up from kindergarten we took a trip to the mall to see Santa.

I love Santa.

It is the same man every year since we moved here ten years ago.  I feel like I know him well even though I don't even know his name....well, other than 'Santa'.

Grant was still a bit nervous about the whole thing and would not sit on his lap alone.  Grace was more than happy to oblige by climbing up onto his other knee so the three of them could visit.

Santa asked them all of the right questions regarding if they were good this year and if they listened to their parents and were helpful and kind.  He then asked them what they wanted him to bring them for Christmas.

Grant's request was for a roundhouse for his Thomas train set and a yellow Molly train.

Grace asked for a dollhouse.  (The elves are making the requested dollhouse at ECO as I post this)

After a couple pictures and a checking to ensure Santa knew where we lived and which tree to put the toys under, we were on our way.

Man, I'll miss this some day!!

You can see Grant wasn't really sure about the whole thing.

Merry Christmas!

You know life is slow when.....

you actually have time to go back and organize old photos that have been transferred to digital files.

This is the set I am working on tonight.  I thought I'd share with you.

Summer 2001

after we moved into the house in October 2000

they seemed so grown up at the time

it doesn't seem that long ago

yet feels like an eternity since they were this small

What fun!!

I don't miss it.

I'm just glad I was here for every minute of it.

I didn't realize just how fast it would fly past.

Have I mentioned a time or ten that I love my kids??