Living Hope Ladies Retreat

This past weekend we had our first ever Living Hope Woman's Retreat. We teamed up with Life Point Church which I was super excited about because one of my favorite cousin's is the pastor's wife at that church and I knew that meant we were going to get to spend some time together!


It was a great time of really digging into the word of God and getting to spend time with some wonderful people! Above is one of my bffs Emily. She is the Miss Marysville I talked about in this post. haha. She has the most awesome testimony; maybe I'll get her guest post sometime.




I went early to help get everything together and set up the encouragement table where the every woman had an envelope with her name on it and during the weekend you could write notes of encouragement to your friends or someone you just met. I got the idea off a a post by this lovely lady about her women's retreat.


I had TONS of paper for the ladies to write notes to each other and we completely ran out of paper! I was soo excited that people really participated in this. It really was such an encouragement to me (of course because I am a words of affirmation love language. :) )


Amy Barron and Diane Daniels were our speakers and they went through the story in the book Restore My Heart by Denise Glenn. It was a very special time. Above is Amy, her daughter Becca, and me and below is Diane. Amy discipled me for a little while when I was engaged and Adam used to live with Becca's husband! It was so neat to get to catch up with these women!!


We talked about being the bride of Christ all weekend and this was the wedding dress they had on display. It was gorgeous, very antiquey. (My camera battery died so these are iPhone pictures in case you were wondering about the quality of the pictures!)



I had to catch a photo of Amy with her Razorbacks cup!! These are few and far between in Ohio! haha!


Oh and this is sweet baby Nolan. He was the only baby at the retreat. Every time I missed my sweet babies I went to see him!


Angie Fulks is the cousin I mentioned at the beginning of this post. Love her to death and LOVED getting to spend time with her and the ladies at her church. I led a small group and it was full of ladies from her church and they really did bless my heart!!


The leaders of the retreat, Angie and Jennifer. They did such a great job!

I learned so much at the retreat. I decided I am going to just type out a few things that really stuck out to me so that I will remember so here goes...

~God doesn't always change our circumstances but He does promise to be there for us and He will change us through our circumstances for the better.

~We talked a lot about marriage and how our earthly marriage is a picture of the heavenly marriage between us and God and how the ring God gives us is the Holy Spirit. That's so awesome; I've never thought of it like that before!

~Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, "Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you."Hebrews 13:5

~They gave us a free toothbrush and used the illustration that just as a toothbrush is set apart for the purpose of brushing our teeth and so you would not use your toothbrush to clean the toilet. We are also set apart for God's work and we cannot fully function correctly if we are all entrapped in the world's "stuff."

~Letting the Holy Spirit enable us to live by the fruit of the Spirit makes us a beautiful bride to Him.

~God is not going to bring up our sin to us; He forgives and it is as far as the east is from the west so if you are dwelling on sin, it is either your flesh or the enemy. This can become a major stronghold in your life so be careful.

~And no where in the bible does it talk about u forgiving ourselves. It is God's business or others that you have wronged to forgive you; saying or thinking we need to forgive ourselves puts us in God's shoes and that's no good! Our problem is not God forgiving us, it's us forgiving ourselves!

~Process of a lie. Hear the lie. Think about the lie. Believe the lie. Act on it. Then we think, How did I get here?? We have to combat the lie right when we hear it and we have to know the truth so we can. We can know the truth by knowing God's word.

Awesome stuff huh? I wish I could write awesome about the time Adam had with the girls but I can't. Friday he called me at nap time and said Annabelle wouldn;t go to sleep she was just crying and saying, "Mommy come back." I was soo sad and told him not to tell me anything else like that. That night he called and said he got the girls in the car just to drive around because they were so cranky. Later I found out he took them to Jeremy's house to get help. :( Saturday he said was a little better but on the way home we got a flat tire and it was a crazy situation but God kept us safe and I was so thankful! I've never ever been so excited to see two sweet little babies in all my life!! What an amazing break but I was ready to be with my A's again!! I am so thankful for Adam watching them for me; he sure does appreciate my job even more now!!!

Happy 10 Month Birthday Adelyn!

Sweet Little Adelyn turned 10 months on the twentieth. I feel like these 10 months have in a way flown by and in another way have drug out a bit because she was so sick in the beginning. If you would have told me 3 months ago that Adelyn would be on no meds, would sleep pretty well, and would not vomit all over my house by the time she was 10 months, I would not have believed you but I truly and sincerely believe that all the prayers of the people that faithfully prayed for her have made a HUGE difference in not only Adelyn's life but mine as well. I tear up thinking about it because I have had so many people recently ask me how she is doing and told me that she is on their daily prayer list and it has been such a blessing to me.


Adelyn, you are the queen of smiles and funny faces at our house. You are always ready to smile at anyone and are an excellent cuddlier when you choose. You love to straddle us and just lay your head down on our chests. You still adore you daddy to pieces and love his attention.


You make this silly face all the time and we have no idea why. The only thing we can come up with is that you have an itch in your nose because you have had a sinus infection. You are so mobile. You will crawl all over the place and pull up on everything. You will stand for about 15 seconds and when you fall you look at me with a grin like, "I did it mama." It melts my heart. You are definitely getting ready to walk and mama is trying to get ready for it too!!


You LOVE your sister to death and sometimes like it when she "beats you up" but most of the time you cry and Annabelle has to be punished. She is very very rough with you and I am convinced you are going to be a very tough cookie when you get older. I always tell people that I think when you get old enough and want to I'm gonna pretend to leave the room and let you beat Annabelle up at least one good time because, believe me, she deserves it. :)


Annabelle does love you very much though and always asks where you are when you are not there after her nap. I always say, "baby's sleeping" and she says, "Shhhhh baby's sleeping." I still pray all the time you will be the best of friends!


Every morning we hear you banging on your bed post this is how we know you are awake. When we walk in the room you are just standing up playing with your mobile; it is the cutest thing!! You take a nap every day at 1:00 with sister and you try to take one sometime earlier in the morning and sometimes I let you or you just fall asleep and I can't help it. You usually sleep about 2 hours during the day. At night, we put you down at 8 and you sleep until about 7:30 or 8 (on a perfect night :) ) Adelyn, you are still working on 3 top teeth. Two of them are poking through but you always have things in your mouth trying to work on those teeth.


You weigh 20.7 lbs and the doctor you saw yesterday thought it was so funny that you and sissy weights were so close. I told the doctor Annabelle weighed as much as you do when she was your age too. Oh and I have to mention you love affair with food; you are soooo hungry all.the.time. When you are awake you want to eat; I'm pretty sure it is because you have stopped taking bottles. I have been trying to give you formula in a sippy cup and you are not so interested so I think we are just going to move on to milk. This will be funny because we will have 3 different kinds of milk in our fridge for a while.


Adelyn, getting pregnant with you was such a surprise but it was the best surprise I've ever had. I cannot imagine life without your smiley face. You bring such joy to our home. We love you more than you could ever imagine and cannot wait to see what God does with your life! Love you sweetheart, Mommy :)


I took all these pictures yesterday and I was only going to post the one's of Adelyn that I liked but just had to post them all. I thought this last one of Annabelle is hilarious. She is most definitely in the terrible twos stage and I see this whiny face a lot. I think she is starting to learn that she is not going to get away with everything she though she was haha. She is so funny and entertaining these days haha!

This weekend I am going on our church's first women's retreat and I am so pumped. I am excited about getting away and studying God's word and listening to seasoned women share. The only time I have left my children is with their grandparents for weddings and so this will be the first weekend they spend with daddy. I feel so bad for him because both of them are sick and all the other men have grandparents coming to help them but I know he will make it. I am just praying that I can take every thought captive (1 Corin 10:13) and not worry about them while I'm gone. I don't want Satan to distract me with anything!! Will you pray that for me too? I can't wait to post about the retreat and praise Jesus for all He did!!

Bible Time & Cookie Decorating

Adam has recently started reading bible stories to the girls. Of course Adelyn is crawling all around and could really care less but Annabelle LOVES it! She eats every second of it up and I think it is so cute! I am thankful Adam wants to do this with the girls; it's so sweet!


Today, we went to a pumpkin cookie decorating party at the Westbrooks house for our church's play date. It was fun and of course Annabelle loved decorating and eating her cookie!


She was very hard at work!


She kept trying to eat the sprinkles out of the can...haha!!


What a pretty cookie!

I gave Adelyn a cookie to eat because she was going crazy for one...I know I know I probably shouldn't have but I really wanted to enjoy my time with Annabelle so I gave in. Adelyn loved it. Adam and I joke that on her first birthday she is going to want to eat her whole cake because she has such an appetite and she begs and begs for sweets when we eat them! haha!

Other news with us, Adelyn has stopped taking a bottle. :( This is the forth day of it! I am going to try to put her formula in a sippy cup when she wakes up from her nap but I have a feeling that she is finished with bottles. :( Oh that reminds me I need to post Adelyn's 10 month birthday! I'll get on that!!

Happy Halloween!!

Last Week Recap

Our week started last Monday with an AWESOME surprise from my aunt Janice. She sent me and Annabelle some new winter shoes!! She sent Adelyn some last year that just now fit her and so she didn't need any new ones.
Aunt Janice lives in Alaska and she knows what being cold, really cold, is like and so she wants to keep our feet warm! Isn't that sweet! We LOVE them and we are so thankful for her!


Aren't they the cutest!!


We had a playdate on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and so we got up and got dressed every day! (We just don't always do this...don't judge :) )


Oh in the picture above you can sort of see Adelyn's boots; they are super cute too!


On Tuesday night we had a meeting with all the staff and staff wives at our church to discuss some things and Annabelle helped me make some "healthy" cookies after her nap. It was fun for both of us!


I love these little shirts from Target but they are both already a little small on the girls. :(


This is Annabelle's "Am I in trouble face?" haha


And this is me before our dinner trying to get a picture of all of us....ha is all I can say. Just thought the picture was funny so I had to post it!



But those are so cute of Daddy and his girlies!!


On Wednesday we spent some time outside. It was a beautiful day!!


We also got to visit the girls favorite place twice, once for a play date and once to eat with daddy (and play on the play ground of course) before youth group.


Adelyn wants to eat the leaf.....everything goes in her mouth...you know how it is at this age!


Annabelle's so silly. Sometimes she gives me these cheesy smiles!


We also had a tea party that day. Of course Adelyn only gets the pieces Annabelle says she can have and I am just thankful that Adelyn doesn't really know what is going on! haha!


They love to sit at the table outside together! It's so cute!


Thursday we went to "Wee Praise" which is this new little thing a friend at my church puts on at her house where we sing and do a craft and learn something from the bible. It was about Zachius and Annabelle loved it.


Annabelle likes to crawl around with the baby sometimes; it's pretty funny!


That afternoon I kept my friend Maly's kids so that she could move! Everybody had lots of fun!


Annabelle and Ryley obviously love each other which is nice!


And there may be some crushing going on from these too as well! hahaha!


I LOVE these pictures. I feel like 10 years from now we are going to look back and think they are funny!! It actually wasn't bad at all keeping all the kiddos. I posted on facebook that I just might have me 4 kiddos now! haha. For now, two is good though!!

Friday, Adam spent all day helping Maly and James move and then Friday night we went on a date and I actually did not take any pictures believe it or not!! I guess we were having too much fun :) We went to Panara (which I ALWAYS love!!) and then we went to get our favorite ice cream at Graters because we figured we won't be getting ice cream anymore since it is getting so chilly and then we went to Starbucks and just hung out. It was really nice quality time. I love my husband so much and I am so thankful for how special he makes me feel.