The Shedd

April 28th was a teachers' inservice so Sofia had the day off.  It was a gray, rainy day and pretty chilly so I decided we needed to do something indoors.  Thankfully our season pass for The Shedd Aquarium was still valid and the new exhibit of Jellies had just opened.  Mind you, they are NOT jelly fish.

 Aren't they cool?  And aren't these two girls cool?  For a special treat we went to the 20 minute 3D showing of Dora in the Rainforest.  The girls loved how the butterflies came flying at them.  This was a nice sit down break.

 We also went to the area where you can touch the starfish.  Selah loved doing this.  Sofia, well, she passed.

 The best part of being there with the kids is their amazement at God's creation.  It really is quite amazing to think about how creative our God is when you see so many different types of water creatures that are so different in shape, size and colour.

Diminished prayer life.

Many years ago I was blessed with the opportunity to attend a conference in Ephesus.  The guest speaker,  Elizabeth Elliott.  Yeah, it was pretty great.  I have two memories from that conference.  The first one is when we were at the amphitheatre in Ephesus and Elizabeth Elliott stood in the middle of the stage, no mic, no nothing, and began reading Scripture.  It was amazing.

The other memory I have is when Elizabeth Elliott shared how moms need to be intentional about their quiet time even if it means getting up at 3 a.m. to do it so you won't be disturbed.  Well, being that I was single at the time, I thought that was crazy.  And guess what?  Now that I'm married and have three kids, I still think that is crazy!

But it is something that has stuck with me.  And there have been times in my days of motherhood that I have had opportunity to have quiet times of prayer at 11 p.m., 2 a.m., and 5 a.m.  There have been prayer times at 1 a.m. and 4 a.m.  Special times of praying for my children.  Quiet time to focus and reflect on my Lord.

Those middle of the night quiet times of prayer, however, have ceased.  You see, as of last week, Isaiah is weaned. I actually haven't been up in the middle of night for a couple of months now but I cant' help but think of those special times and most definitely amazing times of prayer as this particular season of mommyhood has come to an end.

Yes, my prayer life has diminished in quantity of set aside times of prayer BUT no way have I stopped praying.  My reliance is on the Lord.  It is He who sustains me through each day as I raise my three children.  I pray that they will grow to love the Lord with all of their hearts, minds, and souls.  And I pray that they, too, will understand the importance of prayer.

She gets it from her dad.

The previous blog stated Selah is silly.  Hmmmmm......I think this pic shows where she gets it.  HA!

Silly Selah

 This beautiful blue-eyed girl can really crack me up.  Here are a couple of conversations we've recently had that made me laugh.

# 1
Mommy:  "Isaiah sounds like a boy with all of his grunting and low voice."
Selah:  "Mommy, he is a boy."

#2
Selah woke up yesterday morning with a fever.
Mommy:  "We need to make sure you drink lots of water today.  We need to get rid of this bug that you have."
Selah:  "Maybe it's a beetle."

Happy Easter 2011!

Love this boy!

We are amazed that Isaiah will be eleven months old tomorrow.  Can it really be that next month he will be turning ONE!?!

He grunts, growls, points, "normal" crawls, pulls up on everything, races for the stairs as soon as momma isn't looking(I do let him crawl up when I'm following), and loves to chase after his sisters.  If he wants something, there is no stopping him.  He stays focused on it and will run over anything and anyone in his way.  His vocabulary is limited to mama, dada, night-night, and ball.  His favourite game is for you to ask him where your nose is, then when he points to it you say, "beep".  This gets a deep laugh from him every time.

Poor guy has been experiencing the yucky side effects of teething.  He is working on teeth #s 9-12, two on bottom and two on top.  He gnaws, drools, gnaws some more.  And last week after a couple of sleepless nights I took him to the dr. to find out that he had double ear infection.  Thankfully he is back to his amazing sleep patterns.

It seems as if we are in the last stages of nursing.  Isaiah was only nursing in the am and pm and as of a couple days ago we are down to just bedtime.

So our little baby is growing up.  He will soon be entering the toddler stage.  But no matter what stage he is in, we love this boy!!!

Not happening, momma.

I thought I would try and take a picture of Isaiah in his Easter outfit BEFORE Easter Sunday.  There is enough going on that day.  And wouldn't you know, I got the best pictures ever.  Yeah, right!

Round one, no go.  I'll let you know how the next round goes...if I try before Easter Sunday.

This weather is strange...

....well, not that strange being that we live in the Midwest.  It's part of life.

A week ago Sunday (April 11) we had a freaky warm day of 85 degrees.  The next day it dropped to a high of 55 degrees.  But being that we've had a long, cold winter, that still seems warm to us.

While Sofia was at school, I took Selah and Isaiah to a local park.  It was so nice to be in the sunshine.  Note Selah's flipflops.:)

But here we are one week later and this is what we woke up to this morning.  Two and half inches of snow.  It was a real wet snow so it stuck to the trees making for a beautiful scene.

Selah was ready to go out and play at 7:00 a.m.  I made her wait until 9:00 a.m.  She really does love the snow.  Maybe she's the one praying for summer to be delayed?

Sofia Makes Breakfast

You've got to love a servant's heart. And I love how this little girl desires to have a servant's heart.

Last week she woke up before anyone else in the family which is something considering we are talking about Sofia. She is usually the last one to sleep and the last one to wake. I thought I heard someone about in the kitchen so when I got up it was so sweet to find that she had made breakfast for the family.

The above picture shows the breakfast she made for mommy and daddy. The green bowl had daddy's multigrain cheerios with a banana, and the white bowl had mommy's raisin bran with an apple.

The below picture shows the breakfast she made for Selah. Knowing that you eat pancakes hot, Sofia put some on a plate for Selah then left them in the freezer ready to go for her.

She helped me make the coffee then I sat down with my daughter and had a lovely breakfast.

The Butterfly Exhibit

As I shared in my previous post, last Friday I took the girls and their cousin to visit the Butterly Exhibit at the Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids.

 

 

 

 

After learning how God designed the lifecycle of eggs to caterpillars to chrysalides to butterflies, it was time to enjoy the butterflies.  And butterflies there were.  The exhibit volunteers told me that this year is one of the best.  It was amazing walking through the tropical conservatory with the butterflies freely flying around.

The girls were determined to have a butterly land on them.

Finally one landed on Stella.

They loved Stella.  She had about four land on her at different times.
Selah had one land on her finger...she was in awe!

Sadly Sofia never had one land on her (it may be due to her jumpiness every time one flew by) but Stella was sweet enough to share this one until security came and shook it off of them.

It was quite warm inside the conservatory so we took a break outside.  The girls loved going through the butterfly maze, running around the treehouse, and climbing the statues.

It really was a great time with only one incident.  And what an incident it was.  Selah (surprise!) was getting quite tired and the heat didn't help.  When she was ready to go, she was ready to go.  We were sticking around trying to wait for a butterfly to land on Sofia.  So when Selah saw a door and mommy wasn't looking, she went for it.  Then everyone knew Selah was ready to go because it was an emergency door that she opened.  The sirens went off, security came running, and the butterfly staff came to make sure no butterflies had escaped.  All the commotion overwhelmed Selah, she began to cry, and meltdown mode was in fullswing.  Definitely time to go.  



 
Thankfully we still had some smiles left for Stella to capture of mommy and her girls.

Spring Break

Last week was Spring Break for Sofia.   Because of rain, cold temperatures, and daddy working it probably wasn't the most exciting one but it was a good one.  One of the most exciting things we did was visit the Butterfly Exhibit at Meijer Gardens in GR.  I'll write a post on just that visit next.

Monday and Tuesday were spent doing mundane things like cleaning and organizing.  Believe it or not, but Sofia loves to organize so she enjoyed being able to get her winter clothes put away and preparing her Spring and Summer clothes.  On Tuesday we tried to go to the library in the afternoon but it was so crowded that there wasn't even a parking space available.  Instead we called up some friends and they met us at the mall where the kids played on the indoor playarea.  That evening we went back to the library when it was much less crowded.

Wednesday our dear friend Krista came over and watched the kids while I did some errands.  The weather warmed up a bit that day so Krista took them on a walk which was a HUGE treat (and they wore their new flip flops with their coats)!!!  Later in the afternoon, Sofia's friend from her class, Bree, came over to play.  Bree's mommy and sisters also came. 

Thursday late afternoon we as a family headed over to Michigan to visit Grandpa Sheck and the rest of the Sheckler gang.

On Friday, 12 of the Shecklers met up at The Cottage Bar (Kevin's brother, Glen, is the manager) for lunch.  They were voted by USA Today as having the best burger in Michigan.  After lunch, I took the girls and their cousin, Stella, to the Gardens. 

Stella, Sofia and Selah

The girls being silly.

Isaiah hung out with Grandpa and daddy and watched the Cubs opener on t.v.

 

Isaiah loved hanging out with Grandpa Sheck

 That night more family got together and headed to the local fish fry for dinner.  Afterwards we all just hung out at Grandpa's house. 

Sofia and Selah with cousins Hayley and Jordyn

 Saturday afternoon we headed back home. 

Sunday evening Aunt Kelli arrived with cousins Caleb and Hannah along with their friends Kim and Eric.  Their Spring Break was just beginning.  We played charades and a mean couple of games of Sequence.

Caleb and Aunt Kelli are on the right of the pic

Cousin Hannah

Now it is back to school.  The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and flowers are beginning to bloom.  Maybe Spring is finally here to stay.