songs of blessing~

During our worship at church this morning, I was doing something I often do, and I thought, "I should write about that..."


So, as it's Sunday afternoon and a certain little guy would rather be swinging than sleeping, I was reminded of that...


To give credit where credit is due, I will say that I got this idea from Vange. I just saw her doing it in church one day, and thought..."What a wonderful idea!"


So, what I do, is if we are singing a song where it would be appropriate, instead of singing it about myself (I'll give an example here in a minute), I sing it over my children.


This morning, it looked like this...

"May they give you their hearts,
May they give You their souls,
May they live for You alone.
Every breath that they take,
Every moment they're awake,
Lord, have Your way in them."

My children are exceptionally cuddly with me during worship at church, probably because I'm sitting still and not bossing everyone around :o) so it's usually pretty easy to just cuddle with them, hug on them, touch them, etc. while I sing blessings over them. My heart's desire for them, above anything else, is that my children would know the Lord and love Him with their whole hearts from a very young age, so I love singing blessings over my children. I used to lay in bed with Anna at night (did I really used to just have one child?) and just sing and sing. I did it some with Caleb and Ethan, too, and then with the others when they were small and still nursing, but Anna really got it the most.


Another thing I've always done is pray the Hebrew blessing over my children at night when they are babies and I'm still laying them down in their bed in our room. With some modification...

"May the Lord bless you and keep you,
May the Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you,
May the Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace,
And may you always love Jesus first...above all else."

That has always been one of my favorite and sweetest memories of laying down my babies at night.


So, the next time you are worshipping or just whenever you think about it, take a minute to sing blessings over your children...

"Jesus, be their Center,

Be their Source, be their Light, Jesus..."

"Jesus, be their Center,

Be their Hope, be their Song, Jesus..."

"Be the fire in their hearts,

Be the wind in their sails,

Be the reason that they live,

Jesus, Jesus..."

"Jesus, be their Vision,

Be their Path, be their Guide,

Jesus, Jesus..."

my birthday girls~

I've been a mother now for nine years already, I can't believe it! While Moriah celebrated her 4th birthday last Wednesday, Anna celebrated her 9th birthday the day we left for Florida.

Anna had her two girl cousins come over and have a girls' night slumber party where we had all the other kids (except Haven) off spending the night with family. We took them out to eat, came home and made chocolate oatmeal cookies (yum!), and then pretty much gave them free reign over the upstairs. Anna wanted a karaoke machine for her birthday, so the three girls spent pretty much the whole night singing, dancing, doing skits, plays, stand up comedy, and who knows what other fun girl stuff. As a side benefit, Glen and I pretty much got to have a date night with everyone gone. Lots of fun! The next morning was church, and as we weren't meeting my sister to pick up everyone else until later, we got to have lunch out with just Anna at our favorite Chinese place. Let me tell you, once we realized we weren't going to have everyone else, the three of us all immediately thought...Chinese! We can all fix our own plates!

Moriah hasn't had an official party yet as all we usually do is have an extended family kind of thing where we celebrate several at once, so in the next few weeks, we'll have a birthday party here for Moriah, Anna, Glen, my sister Kristen, and my sister Dyana.

Moriah's birthday is extra special as she decided to come 15 days early so that she could not only be born on Rosh Hashana (the Jewish new year), but also her daddy's birthday.

So....Happy Birthday....to my two sweeties,

May the Lord pour out His sweetest, most fun blessings on you in this coming year. May He speak to you and draw you ever closer to Himself. May you know with your whole heart, mind, and spirit, how much He loves you.

Love,

Mommy

the state of my brain~

~asdfjkl;asdfjkl;asdfjkl;asdfjkl;~

Make sense? A total jumble of thoughts in a repeating pattern.

That, is the state of my brain.

Whoa. That is all I can say about my life right now. This sixth little sweetie has thrown me for a loop! A big one. I feel like I am going around and around, upside down. Only to come to a stop, and have this giant roller coaster take off again. And this over the course of maybe an hour or so. Basically, my brain is just one big jumble of things to think about, things to do, things to get in order, goals I have, things to change, things to tweak, child training that needs to take place, babies to feed, diapers to change, baby weight to lose....you get the picture. Anyway, I haven't felt the ability to be able to sit down and organize anything on paper (the computer..whatever...you get the picture). It always helps me so much to write, though, that I really should have probably been doing it anyway.

For some reason I had put this pressure on myself though, that my blog needed to be all about being encouraging and helpful to others, and I do want it to be that, but I also started it as a way to journal for myself, and hopefully as a fun thing to have for my children when they are older. So...hopefully....I can get it going and keep up with it a bit better than I have in recent weeks. I will give due warning, though. One of my passions is to learn to and be able to manage my home with excellence, and at this point in my life, that means a lot more concentrating on school. I had what felt like lots of free time over the summer, especially being in my baby moon, that I could just blog and blog, but now that the baby moon is over and "real life" has once again become a necessity, I am having to prioritize. So, I do plan to continue to blog, just probably not quite as often. I do have some fun stuff and more important stuff going around in my brain....if I can just get it to come in for a landing maybe I can write about it.

my disappearing act~

Yes, yes, I am still here and still in one piece. Which, truthfully, after the last month, is really a miracle of sorts. Due to some super over-active postpartum hormones, getting ready for our vacation last week, and the vacation, I've not been around much in blogger world. I do miss it, I like blogging quite a bit.

So, here I am...but just long enough to say hi. I am officially taking off the next week, possibly two, from my computer in order to get some much needed order back into our lives. I had the best intentions of beginning our homeschool year during the heat of summer (I am a firm believer - through experience, mind you- that children do much, much better with some structure and routine in their lives, not to mention some good old-fashioned work). But you know how that goes....the best laid plans of man...

So, this week I am spending all of my free (ha ha) time planning out and organizing our school year. Anna, Caleb, and Ethan start tomorrow at New Song! Yay! They are so excited, and truthfully, I am too, as they do miss their friends, and I miss my structured weeks. Having some time off to just get used to having a new little guy has been nice, but we are all antsy to get back to normal life. We did just come back from an overwhelming trip to Florida, that, while nice to get away as a family, was unexpectedly stressful due to adding an infant to the mix. But more about that later, along with some hopefully cute pics :o)

So, school and schedule planning coming up. And if you think of it, please pray for me as I am dealing with some super strong post partum hormonal stuff. You would think I would expect it by now. My body always tries to have a period when my babies are around 3-4 months old, and then nothing else until 12 months or so, but I can tell my hormones always go through a pretty significant shift at that 3-4 month postpartum mark. I begin to fight some pretty rough depression and overwhelmed with life kind of feelings, I gain weight, and my babies grow and grow. My newest cutie, Haven, is about to outgrow his 3-6 month clothes, and he just turned 3 months a few days ago! The severity of my hormonal stuff seems to increase with my bigger babies, and Haven has been my biggest so far. (I still haven't posted my birth story yet, have I?) So anyway, prayers would be appreciated!

See you later!