Good Times and Old Friends

We had a bunch of visitors this weekend. And we had a ball. I'm exhausted but it was so nice to see everyone. Well, not everyone. We had hoped more could come but you know college kids! Busy, busy, busy! We had 3 guys from our old Youth group come for the day and then one spent the night last night and then 3 more showed up today which was fun. B had a ball and chattered away to them. She is so full of stories! Here is a picture of our good buddy Sean and her as well as an eBay portrait for future sales. :) Oh yeah, and lest I forget...I head back to work full time tommorrow! Ugggggg in some ways but in others I'm pretty excited. One exciting thing will be paying bills which has been quite a crunch since we still own our other house and are renting here. We will see how our blogging goes now. Enjoy the pics! (Seriously blogger has the WORST word processing EVER.) No idea why that is underlined and link like. I just cut and pasted it.)

Random Rememberings

My girl is at such a funny, funny stage. I need to record some of the fun things she is saying and doing... (Sorry for Blogger's poor, poor, word processing formatting. I'm done messing with it so bear with me!)

• She is getting so good at riding her bikes. Yep, bikes. She has a trike, a dora bike and a scooter. She loves to pedal them down and turn the corner and then walk back up and get the next one...ride it down, turn the corner...you get the idea.


• Lately she has been saying about 30 times a day... Umm, Mom? I love you. Which often comes out sounding like I Wuv eww.


• 
  She can do her carseat all by herself very efficiently now.
  


• She still loves to dance along with the dance shows regularly on TV.
  


• She has been into the movie Annie lately. She has begun singing the songs outloud. On the song that says, "I just stick out my chin and grin and say..." She sings, "I sygamore tree and tin and stay..."
  


• She loves to chew up paper napkins in her mouth. Gross.
  


• She continues to never, never, never sit still.
  


• She is learning to stand on her head and can almost do it propped against the wall.
  


• She is playing more with babies and is starting to love games like Candy Land.


• She is becoming more and more a Daddy's Girl.
  Her favorite Shows are Super Why, Oswald, and Wawa Wubzy (however you spell that).


• She manages to draw out bed time forever (well like 20 min) with all her questions and persistance.


• When we go out "Saleing" (Going to yard sales) and I am having trouble trying to find a sale (BECAUSE SOME PEOPLE DON'T KNOW HOW TO PUT OUT SIGNS!) she is quick to remind me to keep trying and don't give up. She also tells me I'll get it right. (This is all from a yo gabba gabba song that has made a huge impact on her. :)


• She is persistent, confident, empathetic and curious. She never stops asking questions about everything and nothing in general.


• She is active, athletic, smiley and loves to joke around. She gets sarcasm and teasing and loves to tease right back.

She is an amazing gift no matter how you look at it. I just can't believe she is so big! I'm loving having a three year old so far though! It will be exciting to see what the rest of this year holds.

Fond memories of days we will never go back to...

Looking ahead is fun too.But who can resist the here and now?

My Courtney

Well our girl got to go see HER Courtney this past weekend. (There was a time that if we tried to tease our girl and say Court was "MY COURTNEY" then she would dissolve in tears and insist that Court was only hers and if we had let it go, I'm pretty sure tantrums would have happened.) She was spoiled rotten by Courtney and her family and loved every minute of it. We had fun too. I cleaned out the garage and a few other things. In a non air conditioned house. Which was really nice. But oh well. I thought I would share a few pics that Court's brother Kendall took.

Looks like they had fun!

Fun Sayings

I need to record a couple of fun things Spirit has been saying lately. She is expanding her vocab and with it, she mixes up sounds. Its completely adorable. So here's a few...

In reference to her VBS songs she will sing, "Be strong and Aborageous (Courageous)" and "Listen to the Light, Listen to the Light" when its actually Listen to advice.

She has been complaining about her "Squeeto McBites" recently as well. (Mosquito Bites).

Well crud, I just forgot the other one I was going to write. I'll put it down later if I remember. :)

I can't resist publishing a cute photo shoot!

My girl. I just think she's the cutest thing ever! Enjoy!

Happy Independence Day!--Hey, at least I posted it before the month is over!

We had a fairly uneventful fourth of July. Its my Mom's birthday but we were 2 hours away from her so that wasn't too exciting. We did have a bunch of plans but the rain managed to ruin all that. We went to some new friend's house out in the country and they did a bonfire, some amazing food, and some fireworks. Early in the day B and I tried to find some yard sales for my ebay addiction but between the rain and the holiday, we only found 2. I did take a couple of snapshots of her in her fourth of july outfit. So happy 4th, 9 (almost 10) days late!

We managed to find a shirt two years in a row that states, "Miss Independence". Amen. And thank you to Gymboree for wrapping it all up in two words for us!

The God Complex

My daughter cracks me up. We were at our alumni college all week for a conference for the youth at church. We had lots of fun and learned lots too. My parents kept my daughter for this event until thurs afternoon when I went up and picked her up to bring her back for the very last part of the conference.

She and I were walking around while R and the kids were in with the speaker. Shockingly its not the easiest task to keep little Spirit quiet during something like this and when she's overly tired from a week at the grandparents (thanks you guys, couldn't have done it without you!) then its just not even worth trying. We walked out of the building after singing time and it was dark. Which Spirit pointed out to me. I agreed with her. She then told me she was sorry for crying about the book. Now I'm really not sure what she was referring to on this one but she did seem genuinely sorry about whatever it was so I told her that was fine and she could tell Jesus she was sorry if she needed to. So she told Jesus (out loud) as we walked she was sorry. Cute, right? It gets better.

About 30 seconds later she said, "You are God." I said, "well no Baby, I love God and he loves me but I'm not God." She pondered this for about 5 seconds and then said, "Oh, well I'm God." Oh dear. I decided we had better straighten this out. I know preschoolers tend to be overconfident and all about themselves but this might be a bit too far. So I stopped and got down on her level and pointed out the moon and stars and grass and trees and we talked about how God had made those. She seemed to get that so I said, "so see, I'm not God and you aren't God. We haven't done anything as cool as make the moon or trees!" She thought about it and said, "Oh... Well, we'll have to do that tomorrow."

I burst out laughing at that point. I'm not sure what more I could say. I will keep tabs on her and make sure she's not telling her teachers that she is God or anything. :) Or trying to hang the moon. She is quite the monkey so I will really have to watch that one!

Happy Birthday! A little late... (on my post that is)

My big girl is 3!!! I can't believe it! She is more fun all the time. Such a little talker and loves to tell dramatic stories. She is the cutest thing in our lives that's for sure! Here are some pictures from our family get together. Sorry I didn't do the usual editing!

For Nonny

Do you have a Nonny in your life? I hope you do. Maybe she is blood related or maybe she's not, like our Nonny. Nonny is Swedish for Grandma or something of that sort. I'm really not sure. We didn't have the honor of naming her that but all of her grandchildren and great grandchildren call her that. We got to call her that by default because she was our neighbor across the street for about 5 years along with good old Granddad. They are a wonderful couple who are godly and just overall nice people. My girl loves them and they are an adopted set of grandparents to her. There have been so many things that Nonny has done for B and our family but one of our favorites is the handmade raggedy Ann that she made. Well actually she made two because I wouldn't let B really play with the one because I wanted to keep it for a keepsake so she made her another. B loves these dolls and they rotate as her favorite doll. That brings us to the pictures. One of B's other favorite people, Courtney, bought her a dress over a year ago now that looked like one a Raggedy Ann doll might wear. It was a 3T so we are just now getting to use it. She wore it this morning and I couldn't resist taking a picture. So this blog entry is for Nonny (and Courtney). Thanks for making my girl so happy with something as small as a gift and as big as your love for her. I whole heartedly believe in the saying "It takes a Village to raise a child". You both are very important parts of her Village and I am so thankful for the role you have played in shaping who she will be even when she is a Nonny herself!

Sorry again--for the last time.

I'm done apologizing for my lack of posts. I've been consumed by my vintage eBay world and that's all there is to it. Its like an addiction. But it makes our family some extra cash so that's what counts at the moment! Someday maybe I'll be a regular blogger again. But in the meantime, don't miss us too bad! I guess its Blogger Burnout!

I know, I KNOW!!!

I'm so sad that I have been a loser blogger. I do plan to get back into it very regularly. I have just been consumed with life and well really my eBay life. I've figured out how to make some extra cash by scouring yard sales. And I have a fellow friend who goes along for the journey so its even more fun. Spirit seems to enjoy going along most of the time as well. So I know my thousands of regular readers (aka 2 sets of grandparents) are sad that I haven't updated as regularly. Here are a bunch of pics and some videos that are sure to entertain for at least 10 minutes. I'll get up and running regularly soon. Part of it is sloooooooooooooooooooooooooow computer woes as far as loading pics and even trying to mess with blogger which tends to slow down my computer. Now if I could just find that $1500 pair of levis for a buck at a yard sale then I would be fixing that problem as well! Here goes with the updates...

MOTHER'S DAY 2008

Random Cute Pictures...

Well Shockingly Blogger won't let me upload anymore pics at the moment. That is such a problem these days! Enjoy what I have up and I'll get more up later...

Here are links to what I think are some of my most fun entries if you want to talk a walk down memory lane...

http://lifewithspirit.blogspot.com/2008/02/top-10-ways-to-know-your-life-is-filled.html

http://lifewithspirit.blogspot.com/2008/03/jesus-loves-mewith-flair.html

http://lifewithspirit.blogspot.com/2008/03/miss-personality.html

http://lifewithspirit.blogspot.com/2008/03/day-in-life-of-spirit.html

http://lifewithspirit.blogspot.com/2008/04/what-in-world-was-in-that-picture.html

http://lifewithspirit.blogspot.com/2008/04/spirit-and-her-friend-angel.html

That's all for now!

Nasty BMV (Some States have nasty DMV ) Ladies--Not an Urban Legend

We moved States in January. Not something I hope to ever repeat ever ever again in my life. Hear that God???? I'm begging you here. Trying to transfer your car titles over and get a new license has put me over the edge and I literally hope to never relocate again. In fact, when we finally get to buy a house here (after the sale of our house in that other state) I wouldn't care at all if we never move again. So on with my story...

I had to get a new license, transfer my car titles and get new plates today. Why today? Well comeon now, our plates expire today. I've been thinking about it for a while and knew it needed to be done but unfortunately I haven't done it. Very unfortunate indeed. I got home today from taking some things over to a friend's house for her yard sale tommorrow. I decided to pick up the house a bit, feed my girl and get her down for a nap. Then I would get her up and run over to the BMV.

Well guess who refused to nap for today??? That's right. Spirit with her amazing 6th sense knew that we had some place to go even though I hadn't said a word. So after her jumping around in her bed and SCREAMING momma!!!! for about an hour and a half I got her and figured I would get a head start on the BMV. So we left for the one that is about 15 miles away because after calling I found out I had to go to that one to take a test to make sure I know my State's laws so I could transfer my license over. That part went fairly smoothly if you count going to the BMV and being told to go next door to take your test. Which you know, is lots of fun to uproot your two year old from the puzzles and take her next door where there are NO toys and she is going to have to sit quietly because everyone in the room is taking driving tests. Oh and have I mentioned that when my girl gets tired she gets WIRED. Its like she is trying to keep herself awake. So she was dancing all over the place while I started the test.

Thankfully the ladies behind this desk weren't too bad and offered her a coloring book. She did just fine with that and kept sort of quiet until I got up again and was trying to talk to the ladies. Her dancing and singing antics started back over again. I passed my test and had to head back over to next door.

This is where the mean ladies come in. I let B play with the toys again so that helped. For now. I got to go back up to the desk because I was a "Return". I went up and they asked me for my Social Security Card. Well I had two pieces of paper with my my number on it but they weren't the right two pieces of paper. I need to order a new card but remember, today was the day our plates expire so I was trying to get this all done today. I showed them a whole bunch of identification and my two papers. The lady who was helping me and her person beside her were literally mocking me to each other. But not in a quiet manner. In a way that I knew for sure I had been soooooo dumb as to try and prove my social security number without one of the papers on their list. The mean BMV lady said, "Did they give you one of these papers?" Not being real clear on who "they" are I said no. She said, "well these are the only papers we will take with your social security number." I said, "Oh, well I wasn't sure. I just tried to dig some things up and get over here." They told me to go to the other BMV which was a little closer to me (I couldn't go there in the first place because they don't do the out of state testing) and take my Social Security Card. I decided since I had messed up in the first place I had better ask what I needed for my license plates. So, like a moron, I asked. Meany Pants said, "Well, do you have your title?" To which I replied, "I have my registrations right here..." Now lets pause. I'm an educated person. Granted, I didn't look that great today with my pulled back hair and work out pants, t-shirt and zip up hoodie but really. Meany Pants said back to me, in a tone that I can only describe as burnt out-but tenured-55 year old-about to retire teacher tone, "That is not what I asked." At which point I was ALL DONE. All Done. I was bothered at myself for procrastinating, worried about my plates expiring and a mother to a non napping almost 3 year old Spirited child. I was ready, absolutely ready, to bite her head off. But I just looked at her and said thank you and picked up all my paperwork. She tried to stop me with a ma'am before turning to her vicious little friend and began mocking me again saying she was trying to help me but I just walked away. I told my girl it was time to go. Thank goodness she fully cooperated and walked obediently out the door with me. Oh, I'm sorry, that was my denial speaking. She refused and wanted to pick up her toys she had been playing with and close the lid. And take the one with her. So what I meant to type is I literally had to carry my kicking and screaming almost 3 year old out the door when all I wanted to do was get out of there.

So I came home and dug up all the paperwork I needed (and yes, should have had with me in the first place). The BMV by our house was open until 6:30 so I threw my girl back in the car and called my husband to meet me over there. He was thrilled. I mean, he wanted to take me out to dinner for calling him to do this after working until 6PM and having to go deal with all this at the very last minute right before they close. Sorry Babe. Procrastination got the best of me. Again. So we had to have vehicle inspections, go next door to another set of mean ladies for the title work. But oh wait. My state doesn't take debit or credit cards. Nope. They sure don't. They expected me to have close to $200 worth of cash with me for all of this stuff. And I had looked on the website and didn't see this stated anywhere (not that I was looking for it but comeon!) So we dug up enough money to have my husband sign power of attorney over to me to deal with the title work. The For Real nice ladies on the BMV side at this branch even tried to pay so we could get the titles done with three minutes left but the mean title ladies had locked their door three minutes early.

So where does that leave me??? Going over to the BMV first thing in the morning. Can you feel my enthusiasm jumping through my blog??? I'll let you know how it goes. Oh and the 2 BMV ladies at this branch really were nice but umm, yeah...The one who took my picture turned the screen toward me when I was done and said, do you remember this picture? Oh dear. There it was. Me 5 months after we got married and 70 lbs ago, all tan with super cute hair. So while she was quite the friendly sort, part of me has to wonder if she was pretending to be friendly and that was her way of being mean.

I'll update again soon. I'm putting a no-nap Toddler/Preschooler to bed early.

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Too Good Not to Share

My husband uses a lot of Louie Giglios stuff for his lessons. My friend sent me this link. Louie is truly a man of God who can speak his word in ways that touch your heart. This video can make you just fall apart at the amazing love of Christ and his creation of people. Its about nine minutes long. The first six minutes or so are really good, the last 3 will stick with you forever, literally. How Great is our God!

Go Fly a Kite

Well we tried to do it! But apparently we got the wrong kind. According to my friend we need the 2.88 ones from Wal-Mart. They fly the best. This one never got much higher than the house but she had fun. She also dressed herself--notice the upside down jacket. :)