Who would have guessed...

another post from me!  I am going to try to update the blog a little more often than I have the past year or so.  Here are a few more things about the boys...  Mason has started playing more with his animals.  When we tuck him in at night we have to makes sure they are all get tucked in with him.  He said they need "cubers" so they don't get cold.  :)   A few other cute things he says "Oh, thank you", wapples (waffles), I'm just crying right now, let's see, your not supposed to do that, excuse me, and I made my undies sad.  Thankfully he is mostly potty trained!  Cloth diapers for 2 was a lot of laundry.  He still has occasional accidents, but overall he is doing pretty good.  He wears regular undies for nap and cloth pull-ups at night - the last couple mornings they have been dry so we are about to go regular undies all the way.  He loves all his grandmas and grandpas, Dora, walking the dog, throwing rocks at the park, read books, paint, playing on the computer, and wrestling.  I leave the wrestling for daddy.  I sure this love this little man! 





 

We are still struggling a bit with Mason at bedtime.  It didn't help that he had snuck into the hallway while we were watching one of the Lord of the Rings.  Who knows how long he was there, but it was when they were fighting the Orcs...he was up a little more that night due to being "scared". 

 So we thought we would gate him in for a bit to break the habit.   We found that he had taken everything off his bed to make this little spot for himself.  Of course he couldn't forget the animals.  :)

Paxton is growing like a weed!  The past few weeks he has learned to clap, blows "thbbppsstt" with his lips, and he has waved once.  The poor guy had his second tooth break threw a couple nights ago about 12:30am, and he was screaming/crying for an hour straight.  It's been bothering him at night, but he is still as happy as can be during the day.  He loves Peekaboo, baths, being outside, taking walks, having mommy carry him, the Peek-A-Who book, playing with Mason's toys, grabbing the iphones and remote controls, and eating with his fingers (cheese, rice crispy cereal), and wrestling with daddy.  Mason is dying to wrestle with Paxton, but he is still pretty rough with him. 

 

 

Eyes Opened

I hate sad movies and books!  I do not like to waste time and money watching/reading something depressing.  I feel like life is hard enough as it is so why fill my free time down in the dumps.  So for awhile that's the approach I took on the starving orphans in Africa and around the world.  Deep down I knew they existed, but I just didn't think about them.  Part of it was out if sight out of mind, part of it was how can I even begin to make a difference, and part of it was just me not wanting to think about them and their daily struggles.  But I praise God that our eyes have been opened because this isn't just a movie or book.  This is real lives - precious, innocent lives - and real souls that need to be filled with a parent's love and the Father's love. 
Not only that but as Christians we are called to take care of the orphans.  I always considered myself a good, caring person, but to be completely honest, my way of "taking care" of an orphan was buying him/her a Christmas gift every year.  I don't think that's what God has in mind at all.  I looked up orphans (fatherless) in the Bible concordance a few months back, and I was amazed at how often they are talked about particularly in the old testament.  (Is. 1:17, Ps. 82:3,4) The Israelites were commanded to leave a portion of their crops for the orphans in addition to what they were to "give" to God (Deut. 24:19-21).  God was concerned about their well being then, and I know he is still today. (James 1:27)  Personally I think what I do to help the poor, orphans, or widows should be part of my everyday life and  separate from what I also give to God. (Matt 25: 35)

Congo alone has about 5 million orphans.  While that may seem too big to tackle, I know that I can make a difference for at least one.  Then hopefully I can encourage someone else to do the same, and they can do the same, and then before we know it hundreds-thousands of children's lives have been changed.  Katie (Kisses with Katie) and her life has changed (directly or indirectly) the lives of hundreds if not thousands of lives.  There are no limits to God's power to change lives through us. 

There are three main ways each person can help the orphans.
1.  Bring them into your home - foster or adopt
2.  Resources - sponsor a child, give to families trying to adopt, donate items to a child or orphanage
3. Time - be a mentor, reading buddy, etc to an orphan

I read that 30% of Christians have thought about adopting, but only 1% do.  It is also said that if only 7% of all Christians adopted an orphan there wouldn't be anymore. 
Satan - the source of pain and suffering - doesn't want that to happen.  He will distract us or fill us with all sorts of reasons that keep us from helping, but it is our prayer that more people's eyes will also be opened.  It is time for action!

"Don't try to avoid responsibility by saying you didn't know about it.  For God knows all hearts, and he sees you.  He keeps watch over your soul, and he knows you knew!  And he will judge all people according to what they have done." Proverbs 24:12 NLT

BTW family we posted pics of our boys a couple days ago (see below) in case you missed it.  :)

Love these boys!

It has been so much fun in our house now that Paxton has been crawling!  Once he started crawling (around Thanksgiving) Mason began playing with him a lot more.  They love to do everything together.  When one wakes up, the other one glows with excitement.  Don't get me wrong Mason sometimes gets annoyed with Paxton for playing "chewing" with his toys, but he really is pretty patient with him.  Both boys love it when Zac comes home to wrestle with them on the floor.  Paxton started pulling up on things early/middle December so I have a feeling he will be walking a lot sooner than Mason did. 
I love these boys to pieces, but I must say that they have worn us out the past couple weeks!  Last week Paxton's tooth finally broke through so we went over a week of him getting up a lot at night from that.  Unfortunately Mason started getting scared at night around the same time, but his has been a longer process.  We have tried a night light, letting him sleep with the door open, letting him sleep on the floor (which is what he prefers) nothing seemed to help.  Saturday night was the worst.  He kept coming into our room throughout the night.  As soon as we put him back in bed he started crying which then woke up Paxton.  So we finally tried bribing him, and it worked!  The past 2 nights have been a lot better.  He's just gotten up once.  Now if we can just get Paxton to start sleeping through the night... 
Funny story - one night Zac asked him what was scary.  He said there is a mouse in the hole (it's a dark corner of his room).  Z said there is no mouse, but M didnt believe him.  So then Z said well the mouse is nice.  He just likes to make cookies (referring to one of our books M likes).  So now M is scared that a mouse is making cookies in his room!  Silly little guy!  Here are some pictures of these guys.  They are out of order (which drives me crazy, but I don't have time to mess with it)  :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have almost finished our kitchen!  We started giving it a face lift this fall, and Zac just installed the lights (thanks to Christmas money and gift cards from family) over the holidays.  We just have to patch up the holes where the previous lights were.  The upgrade didn't cost us that much.  All the appliances were used from craigslist except the microwave - which was in the cheap clearance section because it didnt have a turn table.  We also painted the walls, cabinets,  and did the back splash ourselves which we got a great deal on the back splash tiles at a non-chain place.  We now just have to hang some stuff on the walls to give it more color.  It was a mess, but well worth it!