blessings six and seven.

We've been completely moved into our new apartment for almost a week now, but we've been living here for almost two weeks. Two Sundays ago, a lady that works in our rental office came down to the old apartment while my husband and a friend were moving the big furniture. She was all teary-eyed, and my husband wondered what was going on, since she was there to see him. She informed him that the Lord told her to bless us, and she was really afraid to do it because she didn't know how we would react to something like that. She doesn't know us very well.

Anyway, it turns out that she and her husband have a ministry and she's learning to be sensitive to the voice of the Holy Spirit and obeyed his voice. She and her husband accompanied my husband and our friend to our new apartment and delivered several bags of groceries, from frozen meats to milk to paper towels to sodas to laundry detergent, and everything in between. Even fresh flowers. Then they prayed for us. I was floored. It was so unexpected, it was overwhelming. We haven't needed anything from the grocery store since we got here.

Then this week, my husband was given a $100 AMEX gift card. That was also completely unexpected (as most blessings are, I guess), and awesome. He wasn't sure what we should do with it, so he decided to just hand it over to me and let me decide. Yum. Stuff for our new spot. Discount design, here I come.

This week has been cool.

spic and span.

We never actually used Spic and Span in my house growing up. We used Comet. Comet was pretty good for cleaning, but you had to make sure you used enough water, otherwise you just got a chalky green mess all over the bathtub or sink.

Years later, we began to use Soft Scrub. I don't know why we switched. Soft Scrub wasn't quite as good. It left a chalky mess regardless of how much water we used. I hated it. There's nothing like the feeling of taking a bath in sandpaper-y water. But hey, at least the tub's clean! And I was probably a little extra clean too!

We also used SOS pads to scrub the cast iron skillet.

I use Brillo pads now. And for cleaning the bathtub and sinks, I use the Method Home cleaners. I love those. They smell so good. They have good hand soaps too.

I don't know why I brought all of this up. I was thinking about cleaners for some reason earlier and realized that I don't remember the last time I saw Comet or Spic and Span (which I never used) at the store.

They're probably still sold; I've just never looked for them. Never needed to.

nostalgia tuesday.

This is me and Bobby, when he was about five months old. We lived in New Hampshire then, which is where he was born. In the previous Nostalgia Tuesday picture (when he was two), we were back in Georgia.

It's hard to believe this was taken almost ten years ago. It doesn't seem that long in my mind, but it was 1997! I can't imagine sitting somewhere ten years from now and looking at pictures of my little one who's been walking for a week and who is sleeping in my lap at the moment.

day of the dead.

My pastor gave quite a good butt-kicking sermon this morning. It was all about how we so often get our focus off of the Lord and onto ourselves, onto what's wrong with us, onto changing things about ourselves. That's pointless; why try to change a person who's supposed to be DEAD?

Being dead to Christ means there is nothing left to focus on but HIM, not us. We focus on how we can do all things through HIM who strengthens us. We focus on how nothing is impossible with HIM. If we yield completely to HIM and DIE to ourselves, He can and will use us in incredible ways. We begin to look more and more like HIM as we keep our focus on HIM. That's how we are changed from glory to glory. That's why there is liberty where His Spirit is, which is in us.

I cannot put it quite like my pastor did, and something is definitely lost in my delivery where the humor is concerned. I'll see if I can learn how to link to audiofiles of his messages. They are definitely worth hearing and applying.

We finally finished moving out of our old apartment and into our new apartment yesterday. It feels so good to finally be finished. It's so hard when you've got a baby! I kept asking the Holy Spirit to help me put one foot in front of the other when we were having to load the last bit of stuff (mostly the kitchen). He did, and gave me the energy I needed to finish the task. Now I'll just need help unpacking everything. Ugh. One box and one bag at a time. Once that's done, I can get on with decorating and making it "home." I've got a lot of ideas; let's see if they look as good off-paper as they do on.

baby steps, revisited.

Two days have gone by where I have been too busy/too tired to sit down and post. I haven't even hooked up my printer yet! I have several photos to upload to my Flickr page, but haven't scanned them yet. So we missed Nostalgia Tuesday. Not to worry; it'll be back next week!

Two days ago (Tuesday), my nine month-old did two things for the first time:

--he nodded his head
--he walked

No longer the Three Step, or even Four Step, King. We're talking slow, deliberate steps, at least eight or more. He did it again last night! And this morning! HE WALKS!

He WALKS??!!!...

Yikes.

There'll be no keeping up with him now. The quick bulldog-like crawling has been bad enough. He gets into EVERYTHING, despite all of my best efforts to keep him away from ANYTHING.

Sigh.

He's still really cute though.

bobbyisms.

New Bobbyisms for the week:

"Four hands are better than three. Or three hands are better than two...?"
He was referring to the three of us (him, Daddy, and me) moving some of the furniture upstairs to the new apartment, as opposed to just Daddy and me or Daddy and him.

"This is an area where really expensive people live."
He meant rich people. He corrected himself immediately, but it was still hilarious.

No wonder my heart is in such good shape, with all of the good medicine it's getting.

i dig my new digs.

Moving.

It's never easy. Or fun.

This time has been especially hard for me. We are moving into a new apartment, in the same apartment complex. We are downsizing from a three-bedroom to a two-bedroom. It makes sense for us, since we never actually got around to using the third bedroom, except a few weeks ago when some friends crashed with us for a couple of weekends. It was supposed to be a nursery for our now nine month-old.

He never slept anywhere but with us. And still does.

So, we opted to save a couple of hundred dollars a month and downsize. Our new apartment is just as huge as the other one was (and with a bigger sunroom!), it's just missing the other bedroom.

I had a hard time because I was attached to our place and the memories there. That's where we brought our newborn son. It was his first home. Our nine year-old is used to moving; his first home was in New Hampshire, where he was born. Leaving there was hard too.

I kept going over in my mind the things that I would miss about our old apartment, simple things like the dimmer light in the dining room, the desk drawers in the sunroom, the extra cabinets in the kitchen. I know that sounds silly, but those things are associated with some of the memories I have of our family living there. It was hard to get used to the idea of leaving, even though we chose to leave. And coming into the new space was upsetting at first.

Not anymore.

I'm constantly finding things that I like about this place. Like the bigger sunroom (and I thought our other sunroom was nice!). The larger bedroom (and our other one wasn't small). Living on the second floor (which has its disadvantages, but for me, the advantages far outweigh them). And watching my baby enjoy himself crawling all over the place! He's now up to four steps, by the way.

I can already feel the peace in our new home, and I know we will be blessed here. The angels have followed us from the old place to the new one, just like I asked.

And I'm serious about the angels. My son sees them all the time.

no sweat.

Have you noticed that no one uses that phrase much anymore?

nostalgia tuesday.

My son at age 2.

What's hard to believe is that I now can't really remember him being this small. His clothes and shoes are so tiny. And his hair was so long and so much that I had to pull it back into a ponytail. Those days are long gone, but praise God for pictures that I can step back into anytime...

grace.

That's exactly what the Lord has shown us this week. This month. This year.

He's always good to us, but sometimes I'm just floored anew by his grace.

Such was the case this week.

In the past couple of months, random people have given us money. My husband has been given money a couple of times on his job. (He's been so busy the last couple of weeks that he has not had much time or energy to sit down and write about it on his blog, but he will!) One week, he was given $100. Two weeks later, he was given another $100.

Two weeks ago, we were given $300.

Last week, someone gave us $30, and wished that they could give us more. Can you believe it?

These are people who felt the Lord leading them to bless us. It's pretty humbling.

We love to be a blessing to others too. We just get surprised when we reap what we sow. Why we get surprised, I don't really know, but we do.

Well, THIS week, we got a small windfall from people WE DON'T EVEN KNOW. It came at a time when we really needed it, and it was just what we needed: two thousand dollars.

TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS!

I am still dumbfounded. The Lord provided in a completely bizarre way. It really was above all we could ask or think.

We're told to count our blessings, and I think I will meticulously count all of mine and RECOUNT them, on this blog.

Let's call these Blessings #1-5. I've got quite a backlog to share. But I've got to start somewhere!

yummy bits.

Here are a few more nuggets from the Bob Jones meeting at church a couple of weeks ago (I did score the CD last week):

We are winners. We may be beginners, but we are winners.

Those of you that have had a hard year, full of rough times and stressful circumstances, be encouraged: it has been a worse time for the enemy.

If you have been struggling, know that you are headed in the right direction. You are making a bee-line straight for God. If you have not had any struggles, you need to evaluate which direction you are headed.

The Church has a greater impact than we realize on what happens in the natural. Our intercession can make things happen or keep things from happening. We must intercede for these coming elections, so that the Lord's will can be established in the earth. We must pray for His will to be done here on earth just as it is in Heaven.

I need to listen to the CD again, so I can post some more bits. I want to get it all right. There was just so much!

Good stuff.

the baby's toys.

First, let me say that as of last week, my son is the Three-Step King.

Nothing over three steps in the walking department yet.

Last week I bought him some noise making balls from Target, to replace the little green ones that came out of big brother's Nerf gun. We can't seem to find those. Apparently, they all vaporized.

Anyway, each of the six balls has something in it--tambourine discs, balls, gears, a ringing bell, tiny balls that make a rainstick-type sound. He likes them all. Not as easy to mouth as the green Nerf balls, and not quite as easy to crawl around with, but he likes them.

He's got some pretty nice little toys, one of which is this Sunshine Symphony thing. He likes that too.

And he's cool with his Baby Einstein blocks.

So how is it, then, that his FAVORITE toys, the ones he goes for most often, are these?

• my cellphone
• daddy's cellphone
• my keys
• the remote
• empty water bottles
• the tube of Aquaphor
• big brother's Pirates of the Caribbean sword
• big brother's light saber
• big brother's (empty) Nerf gun

I'm spending money on the wrong stuff.

nostalgia tuesday.

I have no idea how old I was when this photo was taken. I don't remember posing for it. Oddly enough, however, I do remember those ball-clamps in my hair (my hair was just about always in ball clamps unless it was freshly pressed-n-curled or freshly braided-with-beads) and I remember that shirt. So I'm gonna say, age six or seven.

My teeth are really white! That's always a good thing.

My father took this picture. He died of lung cancer when I was eleven. He was an amateur photographer. He took a few classes for it at Emory and learned how to develop his own pictures. Our den was turned into a darkroom, and I vividly remember him waking me up late at night just to show me the process. All of the chemicals were in milk gallon jugs in the hall closet ("Don't touch them!" he would warn). How absolutely fascinating it was to watch all of those photos come to life in a matter of seconds! Most of the photos that he did were black and white. I grew up wondering if that was all there was. That one could do at home, that is.

This photo was developed at the local Fotomat.

I'll add this photo to my Flickr page at some point, and maybe Nostalgia Tuesday can be a regular feature here, as sort of a "Flickr Preview." I've got TONS of old photos. My dad would flip if he could see all of the fun stuff one can do with them now. Gone are the days when they served as mere fodder for magnetic photo albums and slide projectors, rarely to be seen again.

Yeah, Daddy would totally flip.

And DIGITAL CAMERAS? Oh my gosh. Don't get me started on what THAT invention would have done to him. He'd probably have about ten Digital Rebels laying around, all of which would see more traffic than the Google search engine.

a good word.

Check out this post from the assistant pastor at my church...


KINGDOM POWER on the street: The Real Deal