life with the Thompsons
After months of trying and a little frustration on the part of both Daniel and his would-be instructors, Daniel has mastered the Sit n Spin! If you watch his right side closely, you’ll see the reason that it took so long. Both his right hand and foot are impeding the process instead of helping; hopefully soon he’ll be able to use those to help too!
I’m hosting the BUNCO group that I attend for the month of November and so our obvious theme is going to be Thanksgiving. Therefore I’ve been reflecting on things that I’m thankful for a little earlier than usual. Instead of giving you a long list of the blessings that God has poured into my life, my plan is to focus on one at a time and truly take the time to be thankful for them individually–hope you’ll be able to endure it.
I’ll start with the biggie – the Gospel. It’s simply amazing. God loved me when I hated Him and made a way for me have a relationship with Him by doing the unthinkable, allowing His Son to sacrifice Himself in my place. This fact has indeed purchased all of the happiness, peace, and pleasure that I am able to have in this life and secures the everlasting pleasure of His presence both here and in heaven. Whoa (or as Daniel would say “Oooooo!). What’s even more astonishing to me is that I daily turn away from what I know to be true, choosing sin instead, and yet He continues to be faithful in His love for me. God’s provision of salvation is by far His greatest blessing in my life and the one that Brian and I daily pray that He will give to our sons-it’s better than health, wealth, fame, or any other worldly measure of blessing.
I feel as though I owe you an explanation because most of you know that Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays and I hate it when people skip over it because it doesn’t get a lot of hype. So it may seem odd to you that I have a Christmas theme in early November, but honestly I was tired of my old theme, and WordPress is much tougher to manipulate than my Blogspot blog so…
I’ve even thought of changing my blog over to Blogspot but I’m afraid it would confuse too many people. So alas, Christmas has come early to my blog.
Moving, along with a spurt of new skills and a trip to Asheville, means that there are a lot of October pictures so hold on to your seat or come back later if you don’t have time to watch them all now!
Sadly, all of August was lost in a camera-less house and so we have to move straight into September. Happily, there are some cutie pictures from September!
We’ve borrowed my mother-in-law’s camera for the time-being so finally, here are some pictures. I’m going to break the pictures up over the next few days so that you aren’t so overloaded that you don’t look at them all! So here are pictures from July-enjoy!
Well, we’re moved in and settled in enough that I feel like I can do something other than unpack during my non-Daniel time. Getting a house in order is not an easy task when you only have 2-3 hours to work each day. Mostly we’re unpacked though and as soon as I finish all my sewing projects and Brian finishes all of my painting projects (poor guy-it’s tough work being the husband of a pregnant perfectionist), I’ll be officially ready for Jack to arrive.
Daniel has grown SO much in the past few months and is, without a doubt, a little boy now. Good thing there’s a baby on the way or my withdrawal would be much more severe. Over the last couple of weeks, he’s mastered climbing the stairs on his feet instead of on his hands and knees and has successfully busted his mouth on the hard porcelain tile floors in the new house. His therapy is once again underway after a short break in the action due to the move (we had to be transferred to a new agency and one new therapist-we were able to keep his fabulous PT. Hooray!) and we are continually amazed at God’s faithfulness in bringing him along day by day. Hopefully I’ll be able to post a few pictures soon-gotta run now though because I hear whimpering in the crib!
This morning, I spoke with a specialist who has been reviewing Daniel and my daddy’s medical records (Dad had a stroke when I was in high school) to try to determine whether or not Jack is at risk to also have a stroke or related problems. Interestingly, doctors were unable to clearly say why either of them ever had a stroke.
Diagnosis: Only the Lord knows.
As it is, they could run lots of tests on me to see if there’s anything wrong on my end but even if there were, they couldn’t do anything to protect Jack so…since I appear to be healthy, we’re not going to do much of anything. I’ll have an extra ultrasound (woo hoo!) at 36 weeks to rule out any major happenings (it would not have shown Daniel’s stroke-it would have to be something that is large enough to be visible on the ultrasound). Then after Jack arrives, he will undergo brain imaging just to be sure that everything’s alright. Lord willing, everything will be fine and we’ll bring him home quickly. Pray that we will continue to trust that God knows exactly what He’s doing and is not in need of our assistance!
When I was a kid, my family used to sing this gospel song named “Movin’ Up to Gloryland” and recently I’ve been singing it in my head because we are moving (again). It wasn’t that long ago that we were in the throws of packing, but here we are again. We’ve rented a little house (hooray for “not apartment”) in Rocky Mt. and will be moving next weekend so please pray for my attitude and patience with Daniel as I finish up the packing that needs to be done!
PS-There were several videos for the song to choose from on YouTube but I decided to pick this one so that you would be able to see that my family wasn’t the only family in America who listened to this music. I know that this will be difficult for some of you to believe:)
OH! I forgot to mention that I have delighted in writing “the boys’ room” on everything that will go in Daniel’s room (which he will be sharing with Jack as soon as Jack moves out of Daddy and Mommy’s room).
I’ve been wanting to read Treasuring God in our Traditions by Noel Piper for some time, and recently sent out an email to the ladies in our body to see if any of them owned and would be willing it share it. Thankfully, one did (Thanks, Shelley!) and sent it home with Brian on Monday after he’d been at the Johnston house. Some of you know my intense love of books so it won’t come as a surprise to you that I tore through those 100 pages in the in-betweeny times of the last day and a half. There was SO much encouragement for me in those pages.
I expected to find (and did find) ideas for our family holidays. I’ve been thinking about them a lot this year since Daniel is old enough now to begin participating in ways other than eating and ripping up paper. There were many ideas that I am contemplating; at my request, Brian is going to read it over the next few days (although he also loves books, he probably will not be gobbling this one up the way I did) so that we can discuss certain aspects of our holiday traditions and how we want to approach them starting this year.
However, I was also blessed to find encouragement for myself as a stay-at-home mom. Encouragement to not waste our days together during this important time in Daniel’s life. Sure-he will never remember that this morning we read scripture together after breakfast, but if we do it every morning, it will become part of what he recognizes as part of our routine or as Noel states it, an “everyday” tradition. Of course Brian is the spiritual leader of our home but as the parent who is staying home, the bulk of the daily teaching and pointing to Christ falls to me-what a privilege! If you feel like you’re just getting through the days and taking the opportunities as you see them, I encourage you to read this book and begin to plan and be intentional about how your daily routines and traditions point your children (or nieces, nephews, neighborhood kids, church-body kids) to the Lord!
