Holy Week

Happy Palm Sunday! We are having a lot of fun this Easter season so far! Our church is putting on an Easter drama portraying the ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus and we are participating as a family. Mark is playing the drums for the live band and the girls and I are participating in the crowd scenes.

In the recent months God has pressed upon my heart to begin preparing for conversations about salvation with Reaghan. She is only 3 and I know her understanding of sin and salvation are limited, but even so, I've been looking for resources and tips on explaining salvation to her. I am so glad that God began preparing me before I knew why! He knew what was coming in Reaghan's heart because she has expressed a lot of questions and thoughts the last several weeks since we've been practicing for the play... "Why is Jesus on the cross?" "Why are they hurting him?" "That makes me sad." "I wish he was okay." "How will Jesus come out of the tomb if the rock is there?"  These have lead to sweet discussions introducing my girl to the concept of Salvation through Jesus' death and resurrection.

To keep her thoughts turned towards Jesus this week we decided to add something interactive during our nightly bible reading. We usually read out of the Jesus Storybook bible during our morning "school" routine and another children's bible in the evenings, but I found a Holy Week reading schedule using the Jesus Storybook Bible from Erin over at Home with the Boys so we are going to use that for our nightly family bible readings this week. We made a Holy Week calendar to go with it so after each reading Reaghan can glue paper cut outs or draw a picture that corresponds with the event in the story. I'm totally being lazy right now and just snapped a picture of it while sitting on the couch writing this post, but here it as after our first reading tonight! (I found the original inspiration here from pinterest... this blogger is longer blogging but her site is still up for reference.)

Reaghan loved it and is anticipating how we will fill each square. I love that when I showed her the biggest square for Easter and asked her if she remembered what happened on that day she answered, "That's when Jesus comes alive again!" We are going to keep it on our fireplace this week so it is front and center!

I have a lot of Easter Printables saved on my Pinterest Board for Reaghan to color and complete this week during our school hour to help build her anticipation for Easter. I love using Pinterest as a resource for these types of things! I really want to cultivate a spirit of excitement for Easter in our home that is similar to that at Christmas time!

How do you celebrate Holy Week? I'd love more ideas!

ShamrockOn 2018

Sunday I ran the Shamrock 1/2 Marathon in Virginia Beach.

I love to run this race (2015, 2016) whenever I can because it is

 so close and its my favorite distance to run!

It was my first race after having Lilly. I took more than 6 months off from running after she was born last year because of experiencing a pelvic organ prolapse following her birth. I went through physical therapy and gave myself plenty of time to heal before running again last fall. When I did I kept my mileage low, 3 miles max, but I finally decided in January that I was ready to start increasing my mileage again! So on a whim, I registered for the 1/2 Marathon. It probably wasn't the smartest idea because it only gave me a few weeks to progress from 3 miles to 13... but it worked out fine! Other than being really sore the day after.. I knew I wasn't going to run my fastest race ever, but I did finish better than I expected, 2 hours and 7 minutes, so I was really happy with it.
(A similar time that I was really excited to achieve back in 2012)  

Here is my race day taken from my Instagram stories:

I finished the half feeling pretty good.

I have lofty goals to keep up my mileage this year and, Lord willing, complete another full marathon this fall and then a 30 mile race on my 30th birthday in December!

(Doesn't that sound like a great way to ring in my 30's?!? I think it will make my birthday memorable, if nothing else!)

It's grand and feels a little intimidating right now thinking about it, but I've done a full before so I know it is possible for me!

I am praying that I can stay healthy and diligent this year to meet these goals!

Lilly's Birthday Party

When Lilly woke up on her birthday mommy, daddy and big sissy all went in to her bedroom together to get her singing Happy Birthday. I'm so glad we got it on video because she was not impressed with our morning singing voices! It was sad and hilarious all at the same time. Thankfully a special treat of Mickey Mouse waffles cheered her right up.

By lunch time I was beginning to think it wasn't just our morning voices that she didn't like. She wasn't a fan of her birthday in general for most of the day. We were all feeling better that day but decided to spend it at home resting anyways since we had been sick the few days before. I'm glad we didn't have anything planned, because she would not have enjoyed it!

During her nap I did take Reaghan to the store to pick out a gift for Lilly. She kept talking about wanting to give Lilly a stuffed teddy bear for her birthday like her favorite stuffed bear so I took her to pick one out. When we got home Lilly was up and in a MUCH better mood so we decided to venture out for a family birthday dinner at YNOT pizza. It was a nice dinner and Lilly made a  friend with the little boy in a highchair right behind her, turning to chat with him between bites of pizza.

     

When we got home we gave her the special bear from sissy whom Reaghan appropriately dubbed "birthday bear" and the fun ride on toy from mommy and daddy. 

And then we ate cake together.

For her birthday party we had family come over for the afternoon for some chicken BBQ and "winter ONEderland" fun. We like to decorate for birthdays but we don't go too crazy!

We got so many cute pictures from her party of her opening her presents you definitely wouldn't want me to post them all because I'm pretty sure we're the only ones that interested in her antics, but I do want to remember how she took her time looking at each present that she opened and how she walked around the room showing everyone what she got after she opened them and giving thank you hugs and kisses. It was precious.

I'm so thankful for our family that have helped us raise this little one this past year.

She doesn't know now but one day she'll be grateful for all of the people that are loving her and investing in her life.

Praying for a wonderful, healthy second year of life for you, Lilly Pop!

We love watching you grow and we know this upcoming year is going to be full of fun and not so fun challenges as you learn obedience, kindness, and ways to express yourself, discover more likes and dislikes and grow in curiosity, bravery and sweetness. 

<3

My precious girl, may you always be wise about what is good, and innocent about what is evil.

Lilly's Birthday Weekend

We decided to do something a little different than we've done before and take a fun trip for Lilly's 1st birthday just the 4 of us. We haven't taken very many trips or vacations just the 4 of us, usually we are joining other family members for some sort of family fun trip, so we were really looking forward to doing something just the 4 of us and decided to go to Great Wolf Lodge for 2 days. : )

Unfortunately it didn't really turn out the way we were thinking!

The night before we were supposed to leave I went out to eat to iHop after work with some friends. When I told Mark that's where we were going he made gagging faces and told me iHop was gross and he can't bring himself to eat there. I laughed, rolled my eyes at him and still went and had a fun time. I got home late, into bed around 1 a.m. and by 2 I was back up and in the bathroom... Where I spent the rest of the night. In the morning I was feeling still feeling queasy but much better than the night before. We had planned to leave around 10 a.m. but decided to wait a little while and see if I continued to improve. At this point I was sure I was feeling bad because of something I ate the night before, especially since Mark put it in my head before even going that I could get something bad. Since I was feeling a little better we still went!

We checked into the Lodge, took the girls to the Water Park for about an hour, until it was time for dinner, and had a great time! The girls loved it.

We went and got dinner, I was actually pretty hungry by that time and even though I wasn't feeling 100% I was MUCH better than that morning. We came home and got the girls bathed and into their jammies and did the fun evening activities that Great Wolf Lodge has for the kids. They did a little craft in the craft room...

Went to a PJ story time in front of the their big fire place and then we stopped for a fun snack on the way back to our room.



We had a fun Kid's Suite with a little nook room that looks like a log cabin with bunk beds and its own TV. Reaghan thought it was awesome that she had her own "room" in our hotel room. We went to bed looking forward to a fun filled day at the Water Park the next day... but apparently I didn't just have food poisoning...

In the wee, dark hours of the morning Reaghan woke up crying about her belly hurting and sure enough she got sick. *face palm* This of course woke Lilly up. I think I was in denial about the fact that this was an actual sickness infiltrating my family so I just brought the girls back to our bed and we squeezed in a few more hours of sleep cuddled up all together (a silver lining) until Reaghan woke up sick again. At that point I knew our little trip was over so once Reaghan was settled Mark went to grab something quick for breakfast for him and I from the Lodges little cafe so we could start packing up. While he was gone Reaghan needed the bathroom again and I somehow cut the top of my foot on a carpet tack while I helped hold Reaghan's hair back at the toilet and simultaneously tried to keep Lilly from toddling in.

When Mark came back he told me that he was actually starting to feel sick too and within minutes he was needing the bathroom. You guys. It wasn't good. I knew we needed to get out of there, but how in the world were were supposed to drive an hour home with a sick toddler and the other adult that could either drive or help the toddler was sick too?! I'm not sure how we did it but I managed to get the bags out and then get my sick family out the "back door" to the van before going back in the check out. I made sure to tell the staff about the sickness so hopefully they took the proper steps to sanitize and protect themselves while cleaning the room for future guests.

Praise God that neither Mark or Reaghan actually got sick on the drive home. It was seriously an answered prayer because once we got home it was a different story. I had to try to hold back the tears of disappointment as I drove my family home. We had been looking forward to this weekend for several weeks. I couldn't wait to create some fun memories with my husband and our sweet girls for Lilly's birthday and I was so upset that it had turned in to this. I was mad that I misinterpreted my own symptoms because I so desperately didn't want to cancel our weekend.  I felt so guilty that I may have exposed so many people to our germs during our short stay at the Lodge. I just knew the next big news story was going to be about a stomach bug outbreak at Great Wolf Lodge! I felt horrible.

Thankfully Mark and Reaghan's sickness only lasted 24 hours as mine did and we were all much better by the end of the weekend. I spent several hours disinfecting every surface and bedding in our house and thankfully Lilly made it through unscathed and we spent the day following the sickness, her actual birthday, together at home and made it out of the house for a quiet family dinner.

The trip didn't produce the memories that we thought we were going to make, but it was definitely memorable! And thanks to that silly carpet tack that cut the top of my foot, we got a free night stay to go back another time. ; )