Happy Anniversary

Happy Anniversary, my love. I am so grateful and honored to call you mine for the past 6 years! You are amazing. You are honest, hardworking, strong, passionate, committed, fun, loving, playful, honorable...I could go on and on! You are such a wonderful husband and as your wife, I feel treasured. As the mother of your children, I am mesmerized by your acts as a father. There is nothing you will not do for me or for our boys. They are so blessed to have such a hands on father who cares about what they do daily. Who wants to be there for them daily. Who would rather be at home with us than anywhere else in the world.

I am not always respectful or the best helper, but I want to be. It is what God has designed me to be. I am not your equal and I do not want to be. I want to be right where God designed me to be...serving you, helping you become the man He created you to be. As I continue to learn more about my design and as God makes me into a Godly wife, I pray that you will be blessed. Thank you for your patience in this area!

We have had an amazing 6 years of marriage...6 moves to 6 different states, two beautiful boys and a life filled to running over with blessings from our God! I praise Him for you and for the strength of our marriage. I pray for protection of our marriage and for many more years to enjoy one another. I am excited to see where He will have us in 10 years....geographically as well as spiritually.

Thank you for loving me in spite of myself! You are a patient man!

I love you with all of my heart and I respect you more than you could EVER EVEN IMAGINE.

Cam

blog comment issues

It seems there have been some issues with leaving comments on my blog. I think I've gotten it figured out. I'm still pretty new at this blogging thing...there are a few things I want to get figured out! Like, how do you post a link to something and make the click-able link say something other than the link?..for instance...click 'here' to see .... You, my seasoned blogger friends are so good at this! Jessica, Amber....how do you do it??!!! So, just thought I'd let you know that I've changed some settings so that you may find it easier to comment now.

While I was at it, I thought I'd post some pics from Easter Sunday at our house. You'll notice Harry's white knee socks. Funny story...I searched high and low for those things. You see, down south, this is what little boys wear...John Johns and white knee socks with black and white saddle oxfords! I mean its just traditional there, and while not all of my friends with little boys do it, I do! I love if for a little while...until they turn 2 or so..

One of the places I looked was a very nice Macy's in a nice shopping area in Minneapolis. I thought for sure they would have these socks! Well, I asked for help from a lady in the children's department. She said "how old?" I said "He's one and I'm looking for white knee socks." Her reply with kind of a 'you're crazy' look on her face was, "Well, no one really dresses like that HERE!" What?!!!! OK, we'll now that you've insulted my taste in dressing my kids, do you have them?? Is what I wanted to say. But I restrained myself, because clearly she was the one who was crazy! Ha ha ha! Macy's did not have them, but as you see, I did finally find something to make do at Marshall's.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christ filled Easter. What He did on that cross wasn't just for everyone else, it was specifically for YOU my dear friends.

Eat more veggies!

My sister gave me an really great cookbook for Christmas...I asked for it...ha ha ha! Its called DECEPTIVELY DELICIOUS, by Jessica Seinfield. Yes, she is Jerry Seinfield's wife! Its chock full of recipes that help you to get more nutritious food into the bellies of your kids..and husbands. My kids are pretty healthy eaters and I don't have a problem with them eating their fruits and veggies, however, it is hard to get them to eat the recommended amount of those each day. We take vitamins and I am going to start a whole food supplement, but this is another great way to get MORE of the good stuff into their bodies!

Basically, you steam veggies and make purees and then add them to whatever you're cooking.

For example, there is a recipe for mac and cheese that you can add either cauliflower puree or butternut squash puree to, and it is GREAT! There is a chocolate chip cookie recipe in which you put chick peas (I forgot to take a picture of those)...

So far, our favorite has been the chicken nuggets. To these, you can add broccoli or spinach, sweet potato or beet. The best part about these is that you roll them in whole-wheat breadcrumbs plus flaxseed meal! Flaxseed is full of omega -3s which are SO GOOD FOR YOU! You may get a lot of them if you and your family eat a lot of fish, but we don't tend to do that unless Brent is catching them our of the ocean!

Anyway, its been really fun to try these few recipes out on our family. The cookies were just OK- I love chick peas, but for some reason the cookies were very soggy- maybe I forgot an ingredient...not sure. There are SO MANY more recipes to try for breakfast, lunch and dinner and even dessert!

• french toast with banana or pineapple or pumpkin or carrot
• peanut butter and banana muffins with carrot or cauliflower
• blueberry lemon muffins with yellow squash
• spaghetti and meatballs with butternut squash and carrot
• quesadillas with butternut squash
• sloppy Joe's with sweet potato or red pepper
• doughnuts with pumpkin
• blueberry oatmeal bars with spinach

You get the idea. I will say that there is still the use of white flour and sugar, so you could substitute whole wheat flour and sweeten with honey or stevia. So, click here for the website:

http://www.deceptivelydelicious.com/site/

or here for recipes:

http://www.recipezaar.com/cookbook.php?bookid=163632
Happy Pureeing!

NEXT...

To say we've had a busy few weeks is to speak the truth! We've had a really fun beginning to our spring! First we had some dear friends come to visit for a long weekend. The Tobins, (our friends from Appleton, WI), came and were our first guests in MN. Sean and Yvette have 2 kids, Bella (3) and John Michael (almost 3 mos.). Henry and Bella are GREAT friends. They love each other so much and have missed one another terribly since we moved. Henry asks for her or about her about every other day, so their visit was a fun reunion for the two of them.

We were busy while they were here. We took them to the Minnesota Children's Museum, which was AWESOME! There was so much for them to experience! I highly recommend it. They were exhausted when we left.

We also went to the Mall of America and took the kids to Nickelodeon Universe. They had a blast and it was hysterical to see these two little people enjoy the rides. They ran from place to place wanting more and more. Bella is a little more adventurous than Henry and is up for anything! Their dads also rode some of the rides with them, which was also pretty hysterical. The kids decided they wanted to rid ethe log flume, which was a pretty big ride. So, they did, with their dads. Needless to say, it did NOT go over very well. Sean and Bella were in the front and got soaked! Henry and Bella were both terrified on the way down and we have a pretty funny picture to prove it. (I'll try and get that on here sometime- I'm not skilled with a scanner)

We were so happy that they drove to see us. I think that there are a few hard things about our nomadic lifestyle, but one of the hardest is to make such wonderful friends and then to leave them. We are so blessed to have made good friends everywhere we've lived, I just wish they would all move with us!









Next we had our Alison! Or, Oopie as the boys call her. My sister came for her first visit as well. The boys can't get enough of Aunt Oopie. I understand, I can't get enough of her either. She's a wonderful sister and aunt. This time, I think Henry may have been using her somewhat to get at her Nintendo DS! Ha! That's the 2nd thing he said to her. "Hey Oopie! Where's your game?" Oopie came when she did because it was Harry's first birthday! So, she helped me get ready for a little birthday party for Harry. We baked cakes and made cookies for a little get together with some friends here (friends that also live here that we know from NC). However, the boys and I got sick and we didn't get to have the party! Boo hoo. Luckily, we had already done a family dinner and cake so we did get pictures!

The day after my sister left, my mom came for 10 days! We had an awesome visit with Grammy. As I was downloading pics, I realized that I didn't have a single pic of Grammy with my camera! I guess we picked up her camera each time to take pictures of her with the boys, so she'll have to send me some to post. I was so bummed! Anyway, we did some shopping and lots of park hopping since it got warm while she was here. We went to the movies and played lots and lots of trains and read lots and lots of books. Its so nice to have her visit with us. She helps me so much and she's always a pleasure to be with. Its just nice to have MY mommy with me! I miss her terribly and the initial few days after she leaves are ALWAYS VERY HARD for me. I try to be thankful for the time we had and not stay sad for too long. After all, she'll be back in June!

Thanks for all the memories to all of our visitors! We LOVE when friends come to see us!

The little things...

Just wanted to share this picture that is so precious to me. It so captures the blessings that I've been given. 3 wonderful guys to share my life with. I love this picture. As much as these our two little boys love me, they just live for time with their daddy. I think he feels the same way. Mommy is good for many things, but there are some things that only a daddy can do...especially when it comes to boys. It'll be funny one day as Henry and Harry become older to keep snapping shots like this one...as their shoes get bigger and bigger, possibly getting bigger than daddy's! Maybe then his shoes will be on top. For now, I want to treasure every moment of tiny little shoes in my house.