Dallas

After my week in Atlanta I was home for 2 days and then headed with the kids to Dallas for 2 weeks.  Collin was out at the Pepperdine lectures with first week and then joined us in Dallas for the second week.  As always we had a great time with family!!  For the most part the weather was great and we were able to do things outside which the kids loved!!  It's always nice to get back into our routine back in Denver but we do miss being near family in Texas.  Thankfully we have been welcomed back home with some amazing weather!!  Of course I forgot my camera but I have a lot on my phone so here ya go :D.

all ready to head to Texas!

my poor suitcase was not treated nicely by the airline.  I had to get a new one to get my stuff home.

shopping for flowers with Aunt Heather

silly girl standing in front of the fan

baseball and campfire with Aunt Mo

we had a blast with Kiki and Bear at the Dallas Auboretum

We helped Kiki plant flowers at her house.

Then we played in the sprinkler to cool off!

Of course we had to have donuts from our favorite place by Kiki and Bear's house!

After the first week at Kiki's house we headed to Dede and Pop Pop's house!  We missed baby Luke!

We were really happy for Daddy to join us after his trip to Cali!

We sure do LOVE our cousin!

Basketball was the sport of choice this trip!

Then we hit the pool to cool off!

We had a blast at the Aquarium with Debbie and Dede and Luke!!

Addy really wanted to be a baby again and spent a lot of time in Luke's carrier!

I enjoyed some sweet snuggles with my nephew!!

LOVE this precious picture of these sweet babies!!

#OC13

The last week of April, Collin's mom came to Denver to help with the kids so I could head to Atlanta for the 2013 Orange Conference.  This was my second year to go with our children's minister, Anne Marie.  This year 2 other ladies from church went with us and we had a blast.  OC is an amazing event!  We learn so much about improving our children's ministry but also have a great time worshiping!!  It was so much fun hanging out with these girls for the week and I hope we can do it again!!

Sillys

The other day Maddox and Addison both decided to put their Mickey ears on before church. They were being super silly and kept wanting me to take pictures of them. I just love these silly kiddos!!

Pray for Boston

I'm sure by now you've all heard the tragic news of the bombings that occurred at the finish line of the Boston Marathon today. 

Events like this for some reason stick with me. I can't turn off the news and I can't stop thinking about it.  It's not that it makes me fearful of things that could happen to me, it's more that I can't shake the sadness for those affected but these terrible acts.  

Another thing, and I know I will be in the minority in this but for some reason, along with the victims, I have this strange not really compassion but some feeling I can't fully name for the people who commit these horrible crimes. I always seem to find myself thinking what happened in this persons life that led them to this point.  At one point they were an innocent child much like my Maddox and Addison.  Then something happened.  They experienced something tragic themselves, they have some untreated mental illness, they let the Evil One take over...the list goes on and on.  It's heartbreaking to see all of the pain and hurt caused by these people who have somewhere on their journey taken the turn that lead them down the roads that end in these horrific events. 

Our world is filled with so much darkness and despair and I hate it. I hate that innocent men, women and children are killed daily worldwide because of senseless violence.  I hate that our world, God's creation that he said was good, is so war torn.  I hate that Satan has so much control over so many people.  I hate that violence is the norm my children will grow up in.  I hate that people think guns and more war and violence is the answer.  I hate that that all of this stuff exists for me to hate.  It all just makes my heart ache. 

As Christians, we know how this will all turn out in the end.  We know who wins but that doesn't make any event like this easy to deal with.  It still hurts and its still unbelievable when these horrendous things occur.  

Just like when any other tragedy like this happens my prayers are with all of those involved.  I pray God will bring a peace that surpasses all understanding.  I pray He will bring healing both physical, emotional and spiritual.  And I pray, as naive and cliche as it sounds, that God will bring physical peace to this violent world we live in.  I long for the day when there will be no more violence, no more gun, no more hate, no more killing, and no more evil!!  Lord come quickly!!

Phone Dump

Here are some pics I have in my camera roll that don't need their own post but are cute none the less :)

Kid Dates

Yesterday, Collin and Maddox went out for a fun day together filled with lunch and ice cream from Freddy's and watching the Avalanche take on the Canucks. While they were out, Addison and I headed to the mall for a little shopping. She is at an age now where she likes to be down and walking but she tends to fail to follow directions like come this way or don't touch that. Despite that we had a fun little shopping trip. We had lunch in the good court at Chick-Fil-A and then Just strolled around. We even got new matching brackets. She thought she was big stuff with her bracelet on and got super sassy. Too cute! I'm looking forward to many many more shopping trips with my little love bug!!

Family Retreat

Last weekend our church hosted a Retreat up in Estes Park at the YMCA of the Rockies.  We had about 100 people come up and had a great time.  Charlton Taylor a preacher friend of Collin's was the guest speaker for the weekend!  We had a rough night of sleep with the kids and the weather was a little cool but we had a great time and enjoyed spending with time with some of our great friends from church!!

Super excited to be headed to Family Retreat.

precious friends!

Worn out on the way home!

90 Days through the Bible

Starting January 1 of this year, Collin and I embarked on the adventure of reading through the entire Bible in just 90 days.  It was no easy task.  It took a lot of dedication and required me to spend the kid's nap time everyday doing my Bible reading.  While it took some sacrifices in my day it was totally worth it and was an amazing experience. This was my first time to read through the entire Bible and I learned so many things from reading it through as the entire story of God.

Here are some of the main thing that stuck out to me...
*God is faithful!  It was absolutely amazing to see how time after time the people of God fall away and he always takes them back and never stops loving them.  And I'm certain that unconditional love carries over to us today
*There is so much more of an emphasis on our care for the widows and the poor than I had ever seen.  It was surprising to see how many times that was repeated throughout the entire Bible.
*The God of the Old Testament seems completely different than the God of the New Testament.  I'm not at all sure how to rectify that but I think in the end God sent his son, Jesus, as his exact representation so it should be our main goal in life to live as Jesus lived.
*It's so much different to read the Bible through as the narrative of God as opposed to God's book of rules.  The Bible is the story of God's people from the very beginning.  Over and over He chooses the people you wouldn't expect to carry out his plans.  He doesn't pick the perfect people.  He picks the screw up and the sinners.  He picks David who breaks like half of the 10 commandments in one sitting.  He picks an unmarried teenage girl to be the mother of our savior.  And he picks a terrorist to write over half of our New Testament.  What hope that gives us, as sinners, to contribute to his amazing story!
*Relationships are so very very important.  I think after reading this I believe that relationships are more important than doctrine.  I know some people would HIGHLY disagree with this but I stand firm by my belief in that.  The second greatest command Jesus gives is "Love your neighbor as yourself."  I think we so very often forget this.  The way Jesus lived and the example he set shows us that putting people first was a huge priority to him.  I think we often forget this and it shows in the way we treat each other.  How much better would our world be if we took Jesus words "Love your neighbor as yourself" seriously?

What an amazing experience this was.  I am so thankful that I stuck with it and finished then entire thing even when I got a couple days behind and had hours worth of reading to do to catch up.  I would highly recommend this reading plan to anyone.  Yes it was hard but I feel like it was easier than reading it through in a year.  When you do the year long reading you have to stick with it for 365 days where as this was only 90 days.  The light at the end of the tunnel was much closer doing it this way.

For those of you who are interested in the plan we used here it is.  We didn't use an official plan from anywhere.  Collin had the book The Books of the Bible and just divided the number of pages into 90 days worth of reading.  This book puts the books of the Bible in chronological order as opposed to standard canon order.  It also removes all the chapters, verses, and section titles.  It makes the bible read more like a complete story.  It ended up being about 20 pages a day with 12 extra pages to finish at the end. It took me about an hour a day to do the readings.  Towards the end the readings got a little shorter because the books were shorter which made the foot notes and title pages come more frequently.  It was a great way for us to read through the Bible and after finishing it I would definitely recommend it to others.