and they call THIS snow???

Blair had fun licking the "snow" or may i just call it cold water off of the leaves!








these are "snowflakes" falling (oh and melting when they touch the ground... thats how we do it here in South Carolina... we have this HUGE BLIZZARD and schools were closed as of 6pm last night... CRAZY!!! im sure all yall northerners are just rolling in laughter over our "SNOW DAY"

Not Me! Monday

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.

Here are a few fun moments that DID NOT HAPPEN @ OUR HOUSE...

I did NOT say this in response to being asked when Bono could get out of his dog crate... "when i feel like being nice"... mind you it was after i MOST CERTAINLY DID NOT FIND an empty dirty diaper... with the poop missing and a little dog with the most guilty look and tail between his legs!

I did NOT allow Eli to use a butter knife to cut up his own food... of course not, he is only 1!

I did NOT find my sweet baby doing the following IN ORDER early Saturday morning:
step 1: clean off the fire place with paper towels and spray bottle
step 2: collect fire wood
step 3: get some news paper and crumple it up
step 4: get Daddy's long lighter and make the chh chh noise (pretending that it lights)

i did not give Eli a bowl of barley just because i needed five minutes use of both hands... then give the boy a paper towel and ask him to clean up his mess!

Baby Bump: 20 weeks!

Family Time

New Look for the New Year

So I decided that we needed a new look, new music (you are welcome, to the one who asked me to change my music, I hope Jill Phillips soft voice is better blaring out of your computer speakers), but the same type of stories and writings. Including Not Me! Monday's, I think I am going to start Wordless Wednesday's, I will continue to throw in quite a few articles or videos that have to do with other parts of the world, and as always share from my heart what God is doing in our lives or in others.

Since this is my "new" blog for the new year... I figured I would share a few of our New Years Resolutions with you:

1) Read the Bible together, from cover to cover. We chose to read out of The Message, but we keep a couple different resources next to us to look up some key events. We are close to being right on track.

2) More family time = less t.v. watching

3) We have been going to be earlier = much happier people with more sleep, but sometimes Eli likes to remind us what little sleep is all about. Like last night we were up from 4:30-5:20, but after I got him back to sleep I was wide awake until 6:45. Despite us being sound asleep on the couch the guys were super quiet as they got ready for work, so we could get a few extra zzzz!

4) My goal is to be more organized = using coupons like crazy (hey make fun of me all you want, but I have already saved $70 and only spent about $100), cleaning out closets, junk drawers, bedrooms, etc.



So Enjoy... as the year has already begun!

Not Me! Monday

Here is to the brutally honest mama moments! For more details as how you can join in on all of the fun, or at least read other mama's Not Me! Monday stories, click on MckMama's blog!

Since it has been a few weeks since I have last posted a Not Me! Monday I will try to remember the best stories over the last couple weeks (but that may be difficult, since I cannot remember a dog-on thing during these pregnancy days)!

While at the beach with Chris, Kristen, Mike, & Koren (our friends from Jacksonville that met us in Hilton Head for a few days) Eli most certainly did not get sand in his eyes, which led to a little bath (for both of us) in the bathroom sink (mind you it was a itty bitty trickle of water and he was screaming bloody murder) just off the beach, which lead to me realizing he had poop running down his leg, so i walked all the way back to the car to realize that Chris had the keys, so i walked all the way back to the beach and got them, walked all the way back to the car and realized the wipes fell out sometime during this chaos, so i walked all the way back to the beach and most certainly asked Chris (who didn't have them) where the wipes were in the most loving tone of voice. Oh and I proceed to walk all the way back to the car and finally cleaned up the stinky mess I toted with me on every leg of the trip! This process took a good 20 min... and I was in no way frustrated by the end of it, nope NOT ME!
(pre poop/ sand/ frustration picture!)


I have NOT allowed Eli to help unload the dishwasher... because what if a dish broke! Nope, NOT ME!

I have NOT found my sweet little man climbing on EVERYTHING these days... and definitely not storage boxes higher than my big ol' belly, nope that was NOT in this house!

Eli did not run a million errands the other day with me in only a long sleeved t-shirt while it was a bit chilly, because I am the mom and I make the rules, and I would NOT have given into my son's desperate desire to NOT wear pants! Nope, that was NOT ME at Target, Home Depot, Kroger, Palmetto Citizens, or Barnes & Nobel!


I did NOT take one side off of Eli's crib so that I can very soon take it down and put him in a big boy bed, just so that it is easier for me to put him down. Nope, my belly is not SOO BIG that I cannot lay Eli down gently, of course NOT ME!

The other day while bathing our chocolate lab, Blair, Eli most certainly did NOT desperately want to get into the tub with her and I most certainly did NOT allow him to do so, nope NOT ME! So this next picture is just a figment of your creative imagination! Don't worry I use baby shampoo on our dogs, so no worries about soap in Eli's eyes!

scratch that...

Baby Stellan is on the regular pediatric floor... eating like a champ... WITHOUT oxygen, an IV, or antibiotics or ANY TUBES! plugging right along towards going home to be with his big brothers and sister!

Mocha Club

Chris and I decided that we wanted to get involved

Darfur has been entangled in a deadly conflict for over three years. At least 400,000 people have been killed. More than 2 million innocent civilians have been forced to flee their homes and now live in internally displaced-persons (IDP) camps in Sudan.

By supporting "Sudan Regrowth," you will be sustaining two projects:
The first is in the village of Nyamlel, where you will help fund an orphanage for 400 children that have fled as orphans, as well as provide care and rehabilitation for former sex slaves. This work provides all the necessities, including medical care and education.

The second is the relief efforts for those who have fled to the wild with no shelter. You will provide mosquito nets to prevent malaria, wells for clean water, tarps that serve as shelter from the elements, food, and desperately needed medication.

Two Rebel Groups have the political aim of compelling the government of Sudan to address underdevelopment and the political marginalization of the region of Darfur. In response, since early 2003, the Sudanese government's regular armed forces and the Janjaweed (gov’t backed militia) have targeted civilian populations and ethnic groups from which the rebels primarily draw their support. Please become an active part of the solution.

If you want to get involved too... here is a link to join our team! It is $7 a month that hardly takes a sacrifice for such an amazing cause!

Christmas Massacres Kill 400+

I recently posted a video about the DR Congo and how the women are being raped and the children abducted! As we were all enjoying the peace of Christmastime, there was chaos taking place across the ocean. I have edited the article, but if you would like to read the entire story please click on BBC NEWS



The LRA are notorious for abducting children and mutilating victims.

More than 400 people have been killed by Ugandan rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo in attacks since Christmas day, aid agency Caritas says.

The head of Caritas in DR Congo told the BBC some 20,000 people had fled to the mountains from the rebels, who have denied carrying out the attacks.

An eyewitness told the BBC that five people in Faradje had their lips cut off by Lord's Resistance Army fighters.

They were told that it was a warning not to speak ill of the rebels.

'Hacked to death'



News of the attacks in north-eastern DR Congo began to come out after the weekend when the Ugandan army accused the LRA of hacking to death 45 civilians in a Catholic church near Doruma.

Bruno Mitewo, head of the Catholic aid agency, says that from information they have collated from their parishes on the ground, more than 400 civilians have died in the attacks.

He said that in Faradje 150 civilians had died, almost 75 people in Duru and 215 in Doruma.

The victims had been hacked to death and forced into fires, he said.

"All villages were burned by rebels... we don't know where exactly the population is because all the villages are empty," he told the BBC.

"We have almost 6,500 displaced who are refugees in the parishes of the Catholic Church around the city of Dungu, more than 20,000 people displaced are running to the mountains," he said.

Those who were hiding in the bush and forest were mainly the young, as the LRA tends to kidnap children and recruit them as fighters, he said.

Tens of thousands of children have been abducted to be fighters and sex slaves.

Countries from Uganda to the Central African Republic have suffered 20 years of terror inflicted by the LRA.