Encounter the Cross

My dad, brother, and brother-in-law (sister's hubby) went to a men's retreat called Encounter back in May, (Paul was supposed to go, but the timing was bad with his work, and having just taken vacation for Zadie's birth).  In September, they returned, taking Paul, two men from church, and a neighbor.  Then Paul went back to yet another last weekend, taking his dad and his uncle.
I can't tell you a lot about it, other than the second-hand info I have heard from him, but it is obviously incredible.  It's a 48-hour retreat, that covers all aspects of a man's life.  I have absolutely no doubt the Holy Spirit is powerfully present at this event, from start to finish.  I have heard no negative feedback from anyone attending (except for the food :) ).  For those of you that know Paul, you know that he isn't a bad guy at all - he's a committed Christian, a great husband and father - yet the change in him has been amazing.  He's reading the Bible daily consistently for the first time since we've been married - he wants to, not me reminding him to.  He's stepping up and speaking out.  I am so proud of him.
I don't know the exact history, but it sounds like a church puts it on, then rather than the event for that church getting larger and larger, they train other churches how to do the event themselves.  True discipleship.  They are training men to be men, to stand together and stand for Christ.
If you men want to change your life, go to this.  If you women want your man and marriage changed, encourage him to go (although nagging him into it is not the best approach).  If you have any questions, my husband would be happy to answer them via email.

www.encounterthecross.com

And can I just say that a husband who is on fire for God is incredibly sexy as well? I think the boys are tired of seeing us kissing in the kitchen.  ;)

Perspective

One my sidebar, I have links to friends' blogs.  On one of my friends' blogs, she has links to other blogs.  One of those blogs is Life and Grace.
Talk about a lesson in perspective.
This woman is about to have a baby.  A baby that won't live very long after birth.  She's known that for most of the pregnancy, and yet chose to carry the baby (not abort her) and celebrate the life.  She's simultaneously planning a birth and a funeral.  And yet the strength and grace and absolute trust in the Lord she has blows me away.  Every time I read it, I am so humbled.
If you have the time, read it.  You will be blessed.  And if you have any heart, you will bawl your head off.

Halloween

We didn't celebrate Halloween this year.  The last two years, we've done something, but I decided this year that we were going to stay away from the mainstream celebration of Halloween.  Instead, I organized a game night for anyone else who didn't want to do the trick-or-treating thing, or wanted to be out of the house so they didn't have to deal with greedy kids banging on their door all night.  (I will admit, it's partly laziness.  I don't want to come up with costumes.  Or deal with wrangling 3 children while Paul's at work.)

Two years ago, we did the whole trick-or-treating thing.  I just did home-made costumes (Nathan a construction worker, Jacob a sailor).  One of the boys' friends was having a birthday party on Halloween night, and they were going to go trick-or-treating on their street afterwards.  The boys were freaked out.  It was dark, there were kids (and adults) in weird and scary costumes all over the sidewalks, being loud and boisterous.  And half of the porches we went up on had freaky decorations.  

So last year we did something a lot less scary.  We went with friends to a local nursing home.  The kids had decorated miniature pumpkins, and handed them out to residents - instead of it being gimme gimme gimme,  they were also giving something.  And I did like that.

But this year, the more I thought about Halloween, and how our culture celebrates it, the more I wanted to distance my family from it.  If you celebrate Halloween with the costumes and candy, I'm not judging you.  I do think it is possible to participate in Halloween events with innocence and good motives.  But you can't get away from what the holiday glorifies..... death, ghosts, witches, and evil - it's everywhere!  I wish it wasn't that way.  You may send your kid to school dressed like a ballerina or baseball player, but their friends (and teachers) are dressed up as witches and zombies.  A trip to nearly any store has costumes and decorations portraying gore and death.  Do we really want our kids thinking those things are okay?  That witches are no big deal?  That ghosts are friendly?  That death is not serious?

I wanted to find out the "roots" of Halloween.  I looked up the Wikipedia entry on Halloween (rather than use a biased Christian site).  Halloween the way our country celebrates it is based on the Celtic holiday of Samhain - which was the day before All Saints Day, or All Hallows Day - thus the name All Hallow's Even[ing], later shortened to Hallowe'en.  The holiday morphed from pagan and "Christian" traditions. 

The custom of wearing costumes has been linked to All Saints/All Souls by Prince Sorie Conteh, who wrote: "It was traditionally believed that the souls of the departed wandered the earth until All Saints' Day, and All Hallows' Eve provided one last chance for the dead to gain vengeance on their enemies before moving to the next world. In order to avoid being recognised by any soul that might be seeking such vengeance, people would don masks or costumes to disguise their identities".

That's not any kind of Christianity that I practice.

But where it came from aside, I am more concerned with de-sensitizing my kids to the seriousness of the occult and witchcraft.  I don't want them to start thinking that because we laugh at people that are dressed as witches or zombies or whatever, and that we celebrate fear and death on this one day, that they're no big deal.  If my kids met a witch in real life, I want them to be scared out of their wits and praying for God's protection like they never have before.  If they saw a dead person walking, I want them realizing it would only be from demonic possession.

Nathan kept asking me when it would be Halloween.  How long 'til Halloween?  Who's going to be at Halloween?  So I asked him, "What do you think we are going to do on Halloween?"

"We're going to go to the church and play games and laugh and have fun."

Last November, we had a game night at the church, and there were pumpkin decorations on the table.  Apparently that's what he remembers as our Halloween.  And I'm okay with that.

So that's what we did.  

(Minus the pumpkins, or decorations of any kind.  Because I'm lazy like that.)

Birthdays!

Changing seasons around here brings birthday season!  Both boys have birthdays in the autumn.  They are separated by five weeks, so we really don't have the temptation to lump them both into one party.  However, they are definitely close enough that Jacob remembers exactly what happened for Nathan's birthday.... Which could prove tricky when they are a bit older.

Nathan turned 5 on September 14.  We had a little party for him; I was just planning on a small family-only party (which is still 15 people), but about a week before Nathan gives me this line (not trying to manipulative, truly sincere): "Mom, I like Charlie.  He's my best friend.  He really is my best friend."  Then later repeated a similar declaration, followed by, "Can Charlie come to my birthday?"  How can you say no to that?  So we invited Charlie's family.

We don't do much in the way of parties (themes, decorations, etc).  All birthdays have the same theme:  food.  But I do try to make them whatever type of cake they ask for.  (I figure even if it's lame, the made-by-Mommy touch is worth something.)  

He had been saying for months that he wanted a Tonka Truck cake.  I figured I'd find an easy idea online, but.... No such luck.  When I Google'd "Tonka Truck Cake," mostly all I could find was cakes with a toy stuck on top.  I wanted to do something a bit more original than that.  (Not that I didn't do just that for his first birthday.  And his second.  We just don't need any more toys!)

My sister Lurenda told me about something called a "sugar sheet," which you can print designs on and then just lay on top of the cake.  AWESOME!  After I bought it, I read the instructions.  You are supposed to use edible ink.  Uh oh.  But then I thought, if my kid ate a piece of paper that had ink on it, I wouldn't take him to the emergency room - what's the difference?  They printed off great, but didn't dissolve into the top as well as I thought it would.  We called the printed out things "stickers" and told everyone they could peel them off if they wanted to.  (FYI, the sugar sheets taste like paper that dissolves in your mouth.)  He requested a chocolate cake, and I forgot to buy a mix, so I made a from-scratch chocolate cake.  Triple layer.  It was massive, and had to weigh at least 10 pounds.  I don't think we even finished half of it.  (It's in the freezer for another day.)

I decorated it the night before, so it had bled.  

I had leftover batter, so I made cupcakes.

The Munchkin convention.
Nathan and Jacob, my nieces Lena and Mackenzie, and Charlie is on the right, along with his older brothers, Clayton and Willie (who are also pals to our boys and nieces).

I had to have Paul re-light them like 3 times to get this picture

Jacob turned 3 on October 21.  His birthday came at kind of a bad time.  The boys had been sick all week.  Like can't-get-off-the-couch sick and fevers all week, and by Sunday, Zadie and I were also getting sick.  We also were having a worship night at church the night of his birthday, which I was leading.  It was a busy weekend, and Sunday after church was the best time to squeeze in a party.  We again did a family-only thing.  And he was still sick enough that that was about all he could handle.

We made four of these for his party, and cooked them on the grill.  We made them Saturday, and rewarmed them at the church on Sunday.  Absolutely a-freakin'-mazing.  Best yet.

Jake had been saying he wanted a elephant cake.  He really likes elephants, and had 3 in his stuffed animal rotation.  I was planning on doing it... somehow....  And then he asked for a mouse cake.  And a worm cake.  I made him stick to his original request.
I was not sure how to do it, and finally went for free-handing it.  I wasn't positive how we'd do the fill inside the outline.  We were going to "star fill" it (I have no idea what the official cake-decorating terms are), but then decided to paint it in using food coloring and water.  Much easier.  Plus, I was super-tired, getting sick, and stressed out about the upcoming worship night.  So I was happy with anything, just as long as it was done.

It was not supposed to be this purple.  It was supposed to be more of a gray-blue-purple.  But I was still pretty happy with how it looked.

First shot!  (Him and me!)

......And as I tried to remember what we'd done for Jacob's cake previous years, I went back and looked at old blogs.  No pictures.  Of first OR second birthdays.  Not even any mention of his birthday, both years.  HORRIBLE. MOTHER.  Oh my gosh!

His first birthday we were in Colorado.  We got him an ice cream cake.  I'm sure we have pictures, but they're not on my laptop.

I think I was planning on a grand post featuring his cake last year, because it's probably one of my best.  But I was pregnant.  (That's my excuse, anyways.)  Last year, Google really paid off in the idea department. He'd asked for an owl cake, and it turned out awesome!  (Cupcake cake.)  (Now that I think about it, I think we did do a first-birthday party for Jacob after we got back from vacation, and we had cupcakes for it, too.)

So, a year late, there's Jacob's 2nd birthday pictures.  And his 3rd.  And Nathan's 5th.  That's just how I roll.  Better late than never, I guess. :)

Refinancing.... Again.

We're in the process of refinancing our house again.  Rates are currently 3.5%, which is over 1.5% lower than our current rate, and we can save something like $30,000 if we can get the lower rate, not to mention saving over $100 per month with a lower payment. Worth the hassle, totally.  I wasn't thrilled about starting over on 30 years again, but they gave us the option of continuing our current payment schedule, just at a lower rate - awesome!
I'm not sure if I've given them a shout out on here, but I have so loved our experience at Citizen's State Bank of Paola.  Our original loan when we bought the house was with Bank of America.  (Boo!  Hiss!)  That was NOT a good experience.  We'd get our monthly statement, and the amount had changed, due to a change in escrow amounts.  Or we'd get a "additional escrow needed immediately" statement.  Or both.  They called all the time to try to get us to refinance, apply for a home equity loan, or open a credit card (not to mention the junk mail).  Whenever I called to talk to them, IF I could get through the phone system, the person couldn't really help, "That's just the way we do things."  We had to pay $70 a month of mortgage insurance (which would pay our mortgage if we didn't - you know, because they can't take the house or anything like that), and kept saying we could take it off after such and such point, but wouldn't do it, even when we had a appraisal that showed we owned over 20% equity.
NOW, when I need something, I call the bank at Paola, a real person answers the phone, and transfers directly to whoever I need to talk to.  In the two plus years we've been there, I've needed something maybe twice, and it was resolved instantly.  No junk mail.  No phone calls.  We do our own escrow (setting money aside to pay yearly taxes and insurance), so there's no surprises.  They carry the loans, and don't sell them to national companies (which is how we ended up with Bank of America, even though we went to a local bank).
So there's my internet shout out.  I love this bank, and I highly recommend them to anyone looking to refinance.

Six Months, One Tooth (Finally!)

It feels like I haven't updated in so long.  And it has been a couple weeks, but really not much has been happening.  We had a 10-day stretch of sickness, so that was a chunk of time where there was lots of movies and days spent in PJs.

Teething bites.

Zadie passed the 6-month mark last week!  She is such a big girl.  Her first tooth FINALLY made its appearance.  She has been working on that thing for, I'm not even kidding, three months.  Unfortunately, it's twin is still struggling to make it's debut as well, and now when she bites while nursing..... YOWCH.
Zadie has been sleeping through the night since she was about two weeks old.  I got used to that real fast.  Now she's waking up at about 4 to nurse, and sometimes then again at 6.  Killer.  If I put her in bed with me, she will nurse for a solid hour, until my alarm goes off at 7:15.  I'm sure it's because she's growing and needs more calories.  I can't get her to go crazy on the solids.  And frankly, I don't blame her.  She still needs the smooth texture, or else she gags, but the simple foods are so bland.  How long til she can eat Mexican food, seriously?  Jacob didn't eat solids til he was 8 months old and could pick up finger foods to feed himself.  I'm hoping we're not headed for that again.

First food!

We really need to get a high chair.  Meal times usually consist of planting her in the middle of the living room, wrapping her in a tea towel, and feeding her.

She's sitting really well on her own, and really, really wants to figure out how to crawl.  She leans forward from sitting and gets her legs mostly under her but then can't figure out what to do from there, and then gets frustrated and starts hollering.  She's starting to try to pull up to stand.  I am so not ready for her to be mobile.  More so, the boys are not ready for her to be mobile.  The Legos will have to go when she starts crawling, plus who knows what else.  In general, she's been kind of high maintenance.  I think she's discovered that there is worlds beyond her little field of vision, and she wants to see it all.  Right now.  She likes spending time outside.  It's been so warm out here, that hasn't been a problem.  Unfortunately, it just turned cold, so I'm not sure what we'll do this winter.

Trying to pull up.

Oh my gosh.  I've got the TV on while I type (Office reruns).  I hate it when they have restaurant ads that show steak.  Now I want steak.  I think Paul's going to be cooking on Monday when he's off.

Mommy and sister.  (In all my morning glory.)

So that's the update on the little miss.  I've got other stuff, but I'll let this post be just for Zadie.  Except for the steak comment, of course. :)

Overheard:

We don't speak Whinese.

Paul, after I told Jacob he needed to stop whining and speak clear English.  Jacob is really bad about instantly switching on the "Whinese" when he's upset about something (which usually doesn't merit the drama he applies toward it) where we can't understand a single word he says.