Family Summer Vacation, Part 1

 Our summer vacation finally came!  It's amazing what you have to bring for 10 days with 2 little kids.  First stop was a lake house near Twain Harte.  We met up with my side of the family there.  We spent every morning at the lake which was beautiful.  SJ couldn't contain her excitement as she got to go swimming every day.  She's our little fish and Drew can't stand the water. 

 This is how all good road trips in the Callaway family begin!

 SJ travels best with all 3 blankies near by.  Hey, whatever it takes to keep them calm:)  We love vacation because we get to spend time with family but we also love it because of the food!  We always try to plan it so we can stop at Chickfila for lunch.

 My sister planned a lot of fun things for the kids to do in the morning and afternoon.  Here they are on a nature scavenger hunt.  SJ was just glad to run around outside.

 We played speed scrabble one night and Andrew dominated like usual.  Here's his best one yet!  He felt the need to take a picture of his brilliance.

Unfortunately our last night there Drew got the stomach flu.  We packed up the next morning and prayed we could make it smoothly to our next stop.  We didn't get to do much our last evening there but we were grateful for the time we had.  SJ loves her cousins and Drew likes watching all the excitement too.  Our next stop was near the coast in Jenner...

This Week

The kids are having more and more fun with each other every day.  I love to see them make each other laugh.  I also love to see them like this-just a little loving not throwing-yourself-on-top-of-your-brother kind of loving:)

SJ is finally enjoying trying on clothes.  I just bought her these pj's for the fall and might need them on vacation.  I had her try them on when it was triple digits outside.  She didn't seem to mind!

Our little man is almost 10 months!!!  He is now feeding himself in our new little set up here.  He gets pretty relaxed (see his almost 4 teeth).

We are heading out on Monday for a few weeks of vacation.  Our prayer is to come back relaxed and ready to jump into the Fall.

How Pinterest Continues to Humble Me

I really should not be allowed to look at Pinterest anymore.  I just can't be trusted with projects.  Even though I have made some recipes and taken some ideas that have worked when it comes to projects around the house things get a little more tricky.  The thing is, no matter how many projects have bombed or just became harder than they had to be, I always go back to trying another one!  In the past few weeks, I tried to make a smore pie simply because I thought my husband would like it.  The recipe was not that easy and it turned out tasting okay but was not worth the effort.  Then we move on to making one those easy chalkboard that we've all seen all over Pinterest.  You get a frame, get a piece of wood to paint witch chalkboard paint, and viola you get a new board to write things on.  Sounds simple, right?  Well for me it means paint the frame twice before you like it, try the chalkboard paint on a flimsy board and it fails so then buy a piece of wood and paint that.  Now we are just trying to figure out how to secure it to the frame.  I also didn't realize how dirty a chalkboard will be.  I know, I know, what am I thinking???  Another project we have going is our guest bathroom.  It all started with a new towel bar that I found in the clearance section at Target.  Like any frugal wife I got it and thought it would be an easy fix to help our bathroom look a little nicer.  Then it went like this-took old towel bar off, needed to do some touch ups with the paint, realized we didn't have any paint to do touch ups, pick out new paint, buy 2 samples to put on the wall and test out, don't like either sample, buy 1 more sample, didn't like it, taped a paint chip up on the wall to see what we thought, tired of buying samples so we just went for it, bought new lights since we are fixing things up anyways, take down lights and realize it is a sloppy job with holes in the wall new lights will not work, finish painting and leave the tape up too long, tape continues to pull off paint as we pull the tape off, spray paint old lights to make them look better, use 1 whole bottle of spray paint and can still see gold shining through, send hubby to Lowes to get one more can:)  So if anyone made it through that congratulations!!!  I just think Pinterest is there to humble me as I try these new things and fail a lot of times. I am continuing to learn to laugh and to remember life is not perfect, I am not perfect and that's okay.  Enjoy the pics to see these little projects that will one day be complete!

Serving in His Strength

Being a mom is hard.  I know that is not anything new to most of you but it just has to be said.  I am not sure if there are season that are harder than others but I would imagine every stage has its own difficulties and delights.  Right now I feel like we are in a crazy season.  We have a 2 year old that needs constant training and discipline and a 9 month old that just started to crawl!  Yesterday was another hard day, which lately I would say I probably have about 2 to 3 hard days each week with them.  They are not bad children, they are just a handful and I get tired.  It was good to have another hard day because I was listening to a radio program and they were talking about something completely different but they talked about relying on God.  It is a simple truth, nothing profound but it was profound to me.  God has given me these 2 little kids to show me, once again, that I must depend on Him.  This truth took my "I need a break" mindset to a "I need to depend on God" mindset in a matter of minutes.  

I looked at this verse this morning to reflect on today as I know my 2 year old will whine and probably ask my the same question 20 times.  I also know my 9 month old will go to the 2 things that he can't touch and repeatedly touch them again and again.  "Serve by the strength that God supplies-in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ."  I Peter 3:11.  I need to not only have a mindset to depend on God but it must go further than that.  I need to depend on God not to get me through the day, to help me not blow up, but I need His strength to glorify Him in being a mom.  It is about Him, not about me.  I am here to worship and bring glory to God in whatever season I am in.  Today I will turn to God for strength before the lovely chaos starts so that I might glorify Him.

This Week

 This week we went to the lake with some of the youth group families.  SJ joined the Swanson family and chowed down on some of their food.  Drew is not a fan of the lake yet but I am hopeful he will like it more next summer.

 Here's the beginning of our new fence.  We have one side done and 2 more to go.  It's already looking so much better.

 We are getting even closer to our neighbors with no fence for a few weeks.  Its kind of odd to be able to look right into their yard. 

 Here's my boy who is getting bigger and cuter daily.  He already needs a hair cut and can't stop playing with his spit up like its finger paint.  I am thankful for wood floors more than I ever knew I would be!

Our Cuties

 SJ and Drew love to be in a crib together.  They both get a good laugh out of it.  Unfortunately we don't have a great picture of it but these ones make me laugh.  Drew doesn't look so thrilled but I promise he does love it!

Our Drew Drew is officially a crawler.  I am glad because I could tell he was getting frustrated not being able to get around but it also is going to be very interesting to see how much more curios he is than SJ was.  Already I am finding in in things that she never went near.  This little guy is going to keep me busy!

When We Think God has Forgotten...

"The Lord has remembered us, He will bless us."  Psalm 115:12

When you are going through a long trial it is easy to feel like God is not there.  Sure you might start off strong at first and feel like God is working and that you are confident in Him but after some time when you think this trial should have passed already and it hasn't, it is easy to think God is not there.  I remember feeling this way a few times in my life and it is a dark and lonely place to be.  The problem with this way of thinking is it is all based on how we are feeling.  We are drained from a trial (mentally, physically, spiritually), nothing is changing even if we are responding in a God glorifying way, so then we feel like God has forgotten us and we feel far from Him.  Well good news, God has not asked us to base our beliefs, what we know to be true about Him, on our feelings.  Whether we feel it or not we can see in this verse alone that the Lord has remembered us!  Even more-He will bless those who fear the Lord, both the small and the great.  We might not feel it at times but the Lord has not forgotten us.  He is not consumed by other people's problems and left us on the back burner.  That way of thinking makes Him seem so small and very much like us.  He is our omniscient God and He knows exactly what we are going through and why (our God is in the heavens, He does all that He pleases. v.3).  Sometimes we just need to remind ourselves and our feelings that the Lord has remembered us so just keep pressing on. 

Trust in the Lord or Trusting in Me?

"You who fear the Lord, trust in the Lord!  He is their help and their shield."  Psalm 115:11

Our pastor is doing a short series in some of the Psalms.  I have been trying to study the chapter he has preached on throughout the week and this verse ministered to my soul today so I thought I would share it.  Here's some thoughts for my 3 faithful blog readers:)

You must fear the Lord before you can trust Him.  You must know who He is and look at Him with awe and respect.  Can we flip this?  If we are not trusting the Lord we are not fearing the Lord.  We are looking to ourselves or to our own abilities to trust in or we could be relying on someone else (when I type "we" I am saying me, me, me I am so lame, just so you know:).  When I think about God and who I know Him to be there is no reason I cannot immediately without hesitation put my trust in Him.  The problem is I tend to not think about what I know to be true about God in the midst of an opportunity to trust Him.  I tend to think of me-how it effects me,  What can I do, what do I think about it (are you seeing a pattern here or what?).  I need to confess my selfishness and change my natural way of thinking.  I want my first thoughts in these situations to be-what does God say about this, how can I see Him in all of this, what do I know to be true about God.  

He is my help and shield whether I am choosing to trust Him or not in a situation.  But think of the amount of help and joy I could have if I was working on my heart to trust Him faster, to trust Him more, to trust Him and Him alone.