Hello blogging world, i am back! We had a pretty low-key weekend, which was nice. Church yesterday was so great, Allyson led worship which i always love because she is so awesome. Then Justin preached, and it was just an amazing message about truth. He talked about how we all distort the truth so much in life, and try to sell ourselves as so much better and in the church people try and make themselves appear to be this super spiritual giant who has it all together. I really struggle with this I know. I think for a period in my life when I wasn't living for God I felt s though people within the church looked at me and pitied me, and were like "Oh, that poor girl, she is just making such bad choices, she really just needs to get her life back together" And so now I know that Satan uses that to make me feel as though I need to constanly keep up this super spiritual persona, and I just have so much pride sometimes with this attitude of "Look at my life now, it is so good right now" When in reality I am just one slip away from the pit, just like everyone else, not to mention that those kind of prideful thoughts are just as dispicable to God as those outward sins like partying and such. The truth is that my life is still a mess, and the enemy so wants to catch us in a trap of secrecy and lies, even if it is just lies to ourselves about how good our lives are. He just wants us to be honest before him, and lay all our mess at his feet. I know this is a daily thing, and I am going to really work on it.

SO, to switch subjects, so many of my friends are either pregnant or have little babies right now. It is so hard sometimes for me because I really do miss the sweet newborn stage, i don't know if it is just a phase that I am going through because all my friends are still in that stage. i am happy with our family the way it is, so I guess I just need to get the fix from all my friend's babies!

I am hoping to take some good pictures of the kids this week and post them, so be on the lookout!

So obviously i have been absent from the blogging world, but this week it was not merely from slacking off. On Saturday I started feeling really tired and icky, and by the time that I got home from work that night I knew that I was pretty much full blown sick. So for the next two days I spent in my bed with a really awful case of the flu (not the stomach kind, just the fever, aches, feel like you got hit by a truck kind) and then strep throat on top of that. UUUGGGHH! It was bad. But thankfully my lovely husband was his handsome and charming self and helped by keeping the kids entertained so I could sleep, and he even took off work on Monday and stayed home, which he hardly ever does, and that helped so much. So it seems like everyone and their brother and sister and all their kids are sick right now! Oh, I just don't remember winter being this bad for this long last year. Today there was snow and ice pelting down for like two hours, and the streets are totally slushy and icy.

We had MOPS yesterday, but it was such a small group, im sure because of a combination of the sickness and weather. We have hardly had any meetings lately, our last one got cancelled because of the snow and it's hard because i feel like we have lost some momentum because of it. I just hope that March feels a lot more like spring, and not like a continuation of this freezing cold snow filled winter.

I am so ready for spring! It was so nice to just have a really sunny day and even though it was only 42 degrees, it felt so warm because of how cold it has been lately. Supposedly it is supposed to be pretty cold all through February and March though, and Gary Lezack said last night that he thinks we will very likely have more snow soon.......oh, will winter ever end!!??
Well, today Grace is home from school because of parent/teacher conferences and so the kids have played hard all day together. I really love the relaxed pace that we get to have when she is home because I am not a morning person, and the kids would sleep until 7:30 or 7:45 if I let them, but on school days I have to wake them all up at 7 in order to get them fed, dressed, and out the door. And i have to say that I am ashamed of the number of days that we have been late to her school, even if it is just by a few minutes, it just seems like i am constantly pushing and pushing to get them out the door. Oh well, i guess that is just part of it, but it does make days like today extra nice.
So now I have some unashamed bragging to do on the part of my daughter, so if you want to skip over this part that is fine. But i just have to report on how awesome Grace's conference was today. Her teacher said that basically she doesn't even know what to conference on for Grace because she is just the whole package. She said not only is she extremely smart, which we have known (she gets that from her dad), but her teacher said that she is so respectful, she listens to directions so well, and she has the best attitude, and is inclusive and considerate to all the other kids in class!! Wow, we we knew that she was a great kid, but it is so good to hear that from someone else that is with your kid when you aren't there. So Rich and I are going to take her out on a special date to celebrate soon. OK, unashamed bragging is done.
I am really excited for youth group tonight. We didn't have it last week because of the snow and i really am missing my girls. I could never have anticipated how much i love these girls. It was such a suprise to me that I really love spending time with them. They teach me so much and i miss them so much when i don't see them. I am really excited because next weekend we have a conference called Aquire the Fire that we are going to on Friday night and all day Saturday and it is going to be so much fun! Rich and I drove a van of kids last year and it is such an awesome conference. The worship is so amazing, and the speaking is really good too. I think it is so awesome for the kids to see all the other kids worshipping, packing the arena because it makes them feel like they are not alone. I think Satan works so hard to make these teens feel like they are alone in their walk with God, that a relationship with Jesus is only something that weirdos and adults have. So it is so important for them to see that they can be such a powerful voice, and that their are a lot of other teens out there that love Jesus, and also that they aren't the only ones struggling. It always makes me think about the decisions that I made, and how different my life would have been if I wouldn't have decided to try to make it on my own for awhile. My life is just so much better with God in control!
Well, hope you all are having a good day, peace out!

Valentine Cookies, Scrapbooking, MTV

So the last couple of days have been so great! Friday I had another really great session at bible study. basically this study just keeps getting better, i just can't get enough! Then the kids and I went over to my mother-in-law, Judy's house and the kids got to make and decorate Valentine cookies with their cousins. It was so fun and they had such a blast! Oh yeah and here is a great tip- next time you make sugar cookies, try substituting whole wheat flour for the flour, it is SO good! They tasted just the same! So these are some fun pictures of the cookie-making fun.




So then Friday evening and most of the day today I got to go to a scrapbooking crop with a bunch of wonderful ladies and it was, of course, so great! And, of course, i really didn't get that much done, but any progress is good, and i had a lot of fun!! but we did totally miss you em, scrapbooking just isn't the same without you!

So I am totally obsessed with this new show on MTV called America's Best Dance Crew. It is a show where crews that range anywhere from 8-12 members dance for judges. And the dancing is straight-up hip hop from the streets. It is SOOO amazing!! If you love dancing you have got to check it out, it is on thursdays at 9. Let me know what you think, Kabba Modern is my favorite crew so if you watch let me know your fav!

A blog-worthy story.....

One of my blogger friends Carly entitled one of her posts Sometimes it's either laugh or cry.... The story that I am about to share with y'all is totally a story where I just have to laugh my head off or I'll end up bursting out in tears. So I was planning on going on a missions trip with my church to Jamaica in March, and I was really excited about it. The last missions trip that I got to take was to Mexico about 5 years ago. I am so ready to go again. So back to the story......I knew that to go on this trip that I needed to have a passport, obviously. And I actually have a passport that I got when I went to Europe in high school. But alas, it is in my maiden name, Hansen, so I found out that in order to get a new passport with my married name I had to send in my old passport with a certified copy of my marriage certificate. Ok, I say to myself, I have a document in my files that I am pretty sure is some kind of marriage certificate or file of some sort. Well, not so. (Sidenote-I am sort of an unorganized individual, especially when it comes to paperwork.) I got online and went to the site of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, or whatever came up when I googled kansas marriage certificates and promptly ordered one of these certified copies, and also bent over and paid the extra money to have it shipped pronto to mi casa because once I get it in the mail I have to send it to the passport agency to get the new passport, and apparently that takes 4-6 weeks! Whew! What the h?! what is the deal with our family and passport problems (we had a HUGELY crappy thing happen a couple years ago when my husband tried to get his passport, i don't even want to share because it will get me all kinds of worked up)!! Again, back to the story......SO on Saturday we receive a letter in the mail from the Kansas Board of whatever and they proceed to let us know that they have NO RECORD OF OUR MARRIAGE on file. So as I am flipping out I go and look at that document that I have in the file and......are you ready for this......it is actually our original marriage license that was NEVER FILED!!! SO BASICALLY WE WERE NEVER LEGALLY MARRIED! Can you freakin believe it?? And I am not done yet. First thing this morning I call the Kansas Board of whatever and ask them what I need to do to clear up this little problem, praying that they aren't going to make us go to the courthouse and get remarried. I just can't believe we haven't figured this out before now, HOW could this have happened? So the lady was very nice and said that all I had to do was take the license that we had to the courthouse of the county where we were married, and they would file it there, and they would send it to Topeka to the Kansas board of whatever. So I take all three kids to the county courthouse (yeah, picture that, it was funny) and they are very nice there too, and I think everything is going to be ok, until the lady looks at my license and says that the officiating pastor of our wedding (who happens to be my brother-in-law) signed the license in the wrong box on the license and didn't include the date of our wedding, which is the one piece of information that they absolutely needed in order to file the license. IS GOD MAD AT ME?? WHY??? So I call my brother in law and am on the way to his house to get him to resign and date this friggin license so that I can then take it back to the Johnson County courthouse and file it there, and then drive to Topeka to file it there......yes, this all really happened!.....and on the way I get a call from our youth pastor, James, and he tells me that the trip to Jamaica is canceled, so I really don't need the passport after all!! SO to end this totally crazy story, the license is now filed, and thankfully they are going to backdate it to the date of our real wedding so we won't have to get remarried. Done. I am so done. So now Rich and I just can't stop laughing about this whole thing and i'm sure our friends will never let us iive it down. So that is my story-feel free to comment and give me a hard time, i probably deserve it!