Molly at 8 months

Molly turned 8-months old yesterday. If you read my previous post, you will know that she celebrated eating dog food. She is such a joy in our lives. Yesterday morning I was washing dishes and, as she came crawling around the corner, I said "Hi" to her. She sat up right where she was and waved at me. Soooo cute. I love how she wrinkles her nose when she is happy about something. I love how she tries to make kissing noises with her tongue instead of her lips. I love how she lights up when her brothers just walk in the room. She has such a twinkle in her eye that I pray never gets stolen from her. Happy 8 months Molly!

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Dog Food - Yum!

Well, Molly has decided in the last week or so that she won't eat vegetables any more. She will gladly take cereal and fruit, but not vegetables with the one exception of sweet potatoes. I even tried seasoning the vegetables to make them more enticing, but she still spits them out. She'll even spit them out if I mix them with fruit. She's too smart for those tricks. She'll eat those gerber puffs and Cheerios. As a matter of fact, she loves having finger foods. So I thought maybe it had to do with the liquified state of the vegetables. Thinking I had MAYBE figured it out, I cut up some green beans into really small pieces that she could pick up and feed herself, and it worked - for 4 pieces. After 4 pieces she was spitting those out too. I have to say though that she WILL eat dog food - every chance she gets. If she sees the dog bowl out, she makes a bee-line for it. And my dog is the messiest eater ever. He can't just eat at his bowl. He has to carry his food around, drop it in random places and go back for it sometime during his meal, so I often find Molly with kibble in her mouth - despite my efforts to keep the dog food up when Molly is awake. Someone needs to invent dog food like kibble made out of vegetables, maybe then I could get Molly to eat green beans.

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Weekend fun

Last weekend I finally got to meet my new neice. She was born on Jan 5 and is very precious. It was so good to be able to see my sister too. Also, while we were there, Molly learned to cluck her tongue (which she particularly loves to practice - in between practicing blowing raspberries - while eating breakfast) and how to wave. (She was practicing waving during breakfast this morning too.) It is very cute to watch, because you can tell that she is soooo proud of herself. So here are some pictures that I took of my beautiful neices. Am I prejudiced? I don't think so. Oh, and you won't see Mason or Molly in these pictures because they were sick and we didn't want to spread the germs.






And here are some black & whites that I like...

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Practice, Practice, Practice pictures

One of my goals this year is to learn how to use our SLR camera, without using the full auto setting. I have a Photography For Dummies book to help me understand some of the more technical stuff (like f-stop settings, shutter speed, iso, etc), and a friend who showed me the basics of how to use our camera in manual mode. Now I just have to start taking lots of pictures and testing out the different settings. Here are a couple of the pictures I took last week as part of my learning. (These were taken in our living room without a flash.)

Merritt...



Mason...

Molly...

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Winter Wonderland!

In a completely spontaneous act the Sunday before last, we drove to the snow. I'm still not quite sure how it all happened, but by the time Epic was packed up in the trailer we, along with 4 friends, were heading to play in the snow. It was a pretty crazy idea (it was still snowing in the mountains), but I had soooo much fun. I haven't been to the mountains while it was snowing in a long time and Saturday had dumped about 16 inches. Needless to say, it was quite beautiful. We got there at about 5pm so it was already starting to get dark, but that didn't deter anyone from having some fun. It did make it hard to take pictures though. I didn't initially turn the flash off, and when I took the first pictures, and all I got was the falling snow because of the flash. Here is one of those...

When I realized that I needed to change the setting to no flash, then I had to have a steady arm, but here are some of what I was able to get with my little point-and-shoot (we didn't bring Bruce's camera with us)...

Merritt... Mason ...
Molly stayed warm in the car with Emily and Maggie (Emily's dog), while I got out to play a little. Then I played in the car while Emily played in the snow.

Our friend Chris Preszler was up to visit for the weekend and got drug along on our adventure. Molly had fun with Chris, but only stayed outside for a few minutes. It was tooooo cold and she didn't like it one bit.
Chris, Emily and Maggie.
Thanks Chris, Emily, Brian and Christopher for a really fun time!

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Here is what Bruce said in his teaching on Noah this morning that challenged me and that I want to share with you - Life is made up of moments. My impact for Christ depends on what I choose to do with those moments. I think I have wasted too many of those moments on me and what I feel like, what I want to do, what I think is best, what I, I, I. When I was reading the passage in Hebrews 11 where Noah was counted as faithful that Bruce mentioned, I read on. Verses 13-16 say that the people who were listed were obviously looking toward Heaven and it ends saying that God was not ashamed to be called their God. I love that! I pray that I choose to live my moments in such a way that God is not ashamed to be called MY God.

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I am trying to be consistent about reading the Bible daily by following the daily readings in my Daily Walk Bible. This particular Bible starts in Genesis and reads straight through, ending the year in Revelations. Last week I was reading about Sarai and Abram (before God changed their names to Sarah and Abraham) in Genesis 16, where Abram sleeps with Hagar to conceive a child since Sarah is barren. I love how when I read Scripture multiple times I notice more than just the story being told. Now I have read this passage several times, but it has always been about Abram conceiving a child through Hagar and the result of that. This time as I read this story my focus was on Sarai. She is soooo human in this passage. You see, it was her idea to give Hagar to Abram. In the passages just before this, God told Abram that he would have descendants, and Sarah, who has no children and can't seem to have children, gets busy troubleshooting the problem she perceives. I love this because this is so how I respond to God sometimes. God says, "This is what I am going to do" and I get busy trying to figure out how to accomplish that. DUH!!! God says HE is going to do it through me - not that He wants me to figure out how to accomplish his plan. But read on in the passage. When things don't exactly go the way Sarai thought they would and Hagar starts mistreating her, she blames Abram. In the NLT she says, "The Lord will make you pay for doing this to me." WHAT??? It was her idea, but when things went wrong it was his fault? See what I mean? SOOOOO human. Maybe she was PMSing (even though she was probably post-menopausal)? Here is what I love about God in all of this... He doesn't hold Sarai's stupid mistakes against her. In Isaiah 51 she is listed as one to look at as an example if you are pursuing righteousness and seeking God; in 1 Peter 3 she is listed as an example of a good wife; AND she is included in the list of faithful in Hebrews 11 - for being able to have a child because she trusted God would keep his promise - exactly what she was initially struggling with in Genesis 16.

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