It happened one morning at breakfast

It was a typical Saturday morning. I was half asleep and the kids were wide awake. We're eating some cereal. Atticus says: Mom, how do I get Jesus in my heart?

My jaw dropped. I wasn't awake enough to really know how to respond. I found a few words finally: You pray and ask God to take over your life and then he'll be in your heart.

Atticus: Can I do that?

Me: Sure

Alexandra: I want to do it too.

I figured Paul would want to be apart of this so I told them that we could do it later. Last night at prayer time, Alexandra reminded me that we need to pray that special prayer. So Paul and I led them in a prayer to ask God to forgive them of their sins and be in charge of their life. It was quite a moment.

Today at church, Atticus had his hand up for a while during our intergenerational teaching. Paul and I wondered what he wanted. When he finally got the teachers attention, he told him that he gave Jesus his heart. Tears welled up in my eyes. It was so cool.

Repairman, we don't need no repairman

So our HE washer has been not working on and off for about 3 months. It's only about 3 years old and it's been very, very frustrating for it to not work. It throws off my routine. Can't have that. So we took the panel off and ran a diagnostic test and found something wrong with the drain pump. There is a valve hooked up to the drain that we thought about taking off and seeing if something was clogging it. I had an inkling that maybe a kid sock was stuck in there but we weren't sure that was possible.

Well as you can see from the pics it's possible and it was clogging up the whole drain. I had to drain the water, which is the other pic and then pull out the plug and there was the sock and a lot of other things. I'm now running a rinse cycle and it seems to be running fine. Yahooo! I wouldn't recommend it but it worked for us. Oh and just for the record I didn't work on the washer until I unplugged it. :)

How we blow off steam in the winter

We don't get the winter blues, we get down.

Just a rough week

This last week was one of those weeks that hits you out of nowhere. We all ended up with the stomach flu and after we thought everyone was on the mend, I ended up with an infected lymph node which has felt like an ear infection. I'm on meds now but man it's been pretty tough. I felt like we were treading water. On Thursday Paul and I tag teamed the kids. They would watch PBS kids upstairs while I rested in bed. Then we'd get them lunch, they'd watch a movie with Paul in the living room, while he rested and I slept upstairs. Then they got a snack, came back upstairs with me to watch PBS kids. Whew...We were just surviving. I have to admit that we worked pretty well together to make it through. I guess we didn't have much choice. I did a ton of laundry on Friday and then started to feel bad again with some sinus stuff Friday night. I was pretty down and out Saturday and Sunday. Paul even took the kids to church on his own Sunday while I slept. I got an appointment to see the dr. today and we waited 50 min after the appointment time and yest I had all three kids with me. I had to get creative. I thought ahead and brought juice pouches and crackers. That only gos so far though. It was my dr. so it had about 5 books and that was it. No other toys for the kids to play with. I mean after a while you can't blame them for playing with the water fountain. I did get to see the dr. and the kids got a treasure out of the treasure box. The kids needed to let out some steam later tonight so we did a dance party right before bed. Whew, we made it through. I'm writing this so that later when the kids are older we can look back on this and maybe not laugh but look back and be thankful we aren't in this last week anymore.