Future Artist???

Well, most likely not but Josiah has made such an improvement with his coloring that I just had to share with the bloggy world.

This was his color page that he did back in November. (Yep, we took December off from Pre-School.)

 And this is one of his color papers that he did this week. Completely by himself!

Michael and I are both so pleased to see such a vast improvement.

Maybe next month will be the magic month that he will remember what the number six looks like or skip over it when he is counting. lol

~A Happy Momma

Anniversary Sunday 2012

Yesterday we celebrated Pastor and Mrs. Carter's 41st anniversary here at Landmark! I am so grateful to have a Pastor and Pastors Wife that have given so much of their life in service to our Lord. They are a wonderful example to all of us.

I am not sure of the exact count but I believe we were only about 200 away from having 4,000 people in attendance yesterday and 411 of those precious souls came to know Christ as their Lord! Our 3rd-5th grade junior church was packed! We had over 330 kids, and 83 of them accepted Christ!

One of the things as a worker that concerns you on the big days is how the kids who have never been to church before are going to behave. The current group that we have now is not the most mature class we've had over the last few years, so we were wondering how it would go.

All the praise goes to our Lord! They behaved so well!!! We didn't have to send any kids out and that was such a huge blessing! They obeyed the rules and listened attentively to Michael as he gave the Gospel.

 Girls side- section one

Girls side- section two

Boys side- section one

 Boys side- section two

We ran out of chairs and some of our guy workers had to do a bit of scrambling to get more chairs downstairs. We even used some preschool chairs. :)

Here are some of Michael's balloons that he made for prizes. Our Eagle Eyes had cards and when they found someone really doing a great job at singing, following rules, and listening to the preaching they handed a card to the child and at the end of the service they got to choose which balloon they wanted.

"Wearable" Airplane

 Michael's personal favorite- the biplane

 One of the winners

 Winner with the motorcycle

 Winner with the "wearable" race car

Praise the Lord for such a wonderful day in Church!

The Color That Made Me Cry - A Home 'Improvement' Post

 Monday and Tuesday were set aside for getting some painting done in some of the rooms. Josiah was excited about his room getting 'colored' even if it was blue and not green as he originally wanted.

 Can you see Josiah sticking his tongue out? He gets this from my mom. Whenever he is trying to concentrate really hard he sticks his tongue out. It totally cracks me up.

 Here is Josiah's room completely finished. I think it turned out really well.

 We used Josiah's birthday money to go buy the little toy storage bin in the picture below. We love it!!!!

Here is Tadpole's room. Its pink... very, very pink. I am crossing my fingers hoping that once we get curtains, pictures and possibly some border up that it will tone it down a little bit. The camera is being nice because it is much brighter in person.

 Michael gave our bathroom a coat of paint. It still needs another coat and the trim needs to be painted but it is already an improvement.

Keeping it real... the house was a disaster those two days.

 My dearest was getting things ready to paint the kitchen what I thought was going to be a beautiful pale 'earthy tone' yellow. I envisioned a lovely and relaxing color. What I got was something completely opposite.

 Disaster number one is while Michael was trying to move our frig out from its extremely tight fitting place the handle broke off. Michael rigged it to work for a couple days until our new handle (which arrived today) could be installed.

Okay, so back to the color that made me cry...

Michael says to me "This color looks exactly the same shade as what was once the color of the kitchen." He takes me to this spot on the wall where he removed some hardware and there was this hideously bright yellow color. He holds the paint color card up and I gagged. He opens the paint can and I just stare at a very hideously bright yellow.

Michael paints a two foot section and I start crying. (Okay, okay- I was blubbering like a little baby. In my defense it was almost 9pm, I was exhausted, and my frig was missing a handle.) It was horrible! I can only describe the color as a Canary-Pop-Your-Eyes-Out-Yellow. I knew you would all want to see a picture of it so I took one but once again the camera was being EXTREMELY nice and you can't tell JUST HOW YELLOW that paint is. I think its because the color is so glaringly bright it hurts the camera too much to get a true picture. 

So anyway, there is still a two foot section of Wear-a-pair-of-sunglasses-and-bang-your-head-against-the-wall-yellow in my kitchen. Michael so sweetly decided not to paint anymore and I adore him for it! He was great about the whole thing suggesting that maybe we could use the paint for his man cave or my favorite suggestion- sell it really cheap in our yard sale next weekend. I never want to see this color again. I don't think Michael does either, he actually said he didn't like it either and for someone who could really care less about stuff like this that is saying a lot!

So next week it will be back to Lowe's to find something that won't give us a headache when we walk in the room and see it. I hate that we wasted money on that paint but y'all I have limits and that Glow-in-the-dark-its-so-bright-yellow totally exceeded my limits.

So there was some home improvement done this past week but as far as the kitchen goes, well, its still a work in progress.

~Joy

Josiah's 3rd Birthday Party

 Josiah's party turned out so well! Michael grilled hot dogs for our supper while the cousins played in the yard and the adults sat around talking. We enjoyed cake and ice cream before J ripped open his gifts. Thank you to all who could make it to share Josiah's special day.

 Michael P. had fun trying to distract Thomas from opening Josiah's gifts before he could get to them. That was comical to watch! He kept using an empty gift bag filled with tissue paper and letting Tman 'open' it. lol

 I told my sister that Michael and I were getting J a fish tank for his birthday, and she said 'No! I have one in my garage you can have!' This is funny if you know how much stuff my brother in law and sister have given us recently. Anyway, We got J two little goldfish to start the tank out with which Josiah has named 'Joseph and Mary'. :) We are going to take him to pick out another fish this week!

 All three of us have been seen doing this exact same thing since Saturday night. :) As I type this post J is sitting in a chair in front of the fish tank wearing a Darth Vader mask and saying 'I'm your father' to Joseph and Mary. We are so pleased that we all love his gift! (Michael and I are also going to pick out a fish too! lol)

Hopefully by the end of the week I can show you the new paint job some of our rooms are getting! We are so excited!!! Have a wonderful day!
Joy

Birthdays and Blessings

Josiah's birthday was this past Saturday the 14th. My Dad was out of town hunting and there was just so much going on that we decided that we'd have a party for him the 21st. At the same time Sami and Ailey were spending their last weekend in sunny Florida and they along with Sami's mom and my mom were fortunately able to come over and help us sing "Happy Birthday" to our little guy. Although Ailey started screaming due to my hubby's melodious way of singing that song we had a nice evening.

 He couldn't wait for everyone to eat their cake so he could open the presents that Sami and Ms. Sharmel brought for him.

 They spoiled him big time with a camera and a ball tent. Josiah carries his camera around everyday taking pictures. I think I finally have him trained to not push the red button which deletes the pictures. :)

 Another blessing we've had this past week is my sister was getting rid of her china cabinet to make room for a larger dining room table. My darling hubby moved a light switch over so we could get it to fit in our house! I enjoyed pulling some stuff out to put into the cabinet but I don't want to fill it up too much because we are hoping to paint the kitchen soon. YAY!

 I told my husband that I am either really redneck or have watched way too many episodes of Macgyver growing up. In unpacking my goblets I came across my curtains for the kitchen and I was determined to hang them up even though I didn't have the correct size rod. They are crooked but they are up! I used a piece of leftover electrical wiring to connect the two pieces of my curtain rod together. I felt pretty good to get them to actually hang up there without falling down.

I got a new rod yesterday but we won't bother trying to put it up until after we paint since I am going to have Michael hang them up higher. Call me crazy but I have this thing about stuff being not necessarily the same height but it should be proportionately pleasing to my eyes and the fact that my windows are two inches shorter than the top of the cabinets irks me... and I can't see out the window above the sink while doing dishes because the curtain hangs too low. 

 My sister came up for a visit yesterday and I asked her if her and Larry have any furniture left in their house. :) It seems everything that we have had need of has been sitting in their garage and just waiting for us. This cute little dresser is now in Josiah's room. The large dresser is needed in Tadpole's room since it is also the changing table. Becky and Larry, Thank you!

We are looking forward to Josiah's birthday party tomorrow afternoon, we are also celebrating my Dad's birthday as well. It's just going to be family and its going to be simple, but I am excited nonetheless. :) I'll be sure to post pictures early next week! :)

Legoland!

 Saturday, we got to go to Legoland to celebrate Josiah's birthday. We were given annual passes as Christmas gifts from my parents and I can tell you we will definitely be using them like crazy! Josiah LOVED legoland. There were so many things that were geared to his age, and they had firetruck and train rides. It was love at first sight. Hope you enjoy the pictures! -Joy