choo choo!

the potty train is here.

when my sister was little, we were on summer vacation and talked about how when we got back home, she would get potty trained. so she started talking about "the potty train" and how it was coming to our house on july 6. the phrase has sorta stuck.

so the potty train has arrived at our house.

the playroom - all ready to be peed in!

carpets are rolled up, underwear is bought, towels are stocked, i've got a super enthusiastic and encouraging older sister to help out, and we've got minimal plans for the next few weeks.

big boy! 

i'm so glad that one of my jobs as a parent is to take and share photos that will one day embarrass the heck out of my kids. 

so we'll see how it goes. matthias goes between being really enthusiastic and absolutely uninterested - like in two minute time spans - so i'm knocking on wood.

from our family to yours....

....Merry Christmas!!

if i was on top of it enough to do a christmas card, these would be our pictures. and i would have totally sent you one. but now you get to see our christmas cheer and not hang us up on your refrigerator for the next few months. unless you want to. 

merry christmas, everyone!

weekend update

it's finally starting to look like christmas around our house. i hadn't really done much as far as gift shopping, christmas cookies, talking with the kids about christmas, etc. until the teen mops christmas party was over. so this weekend was the start to our short holiday season. it was quite busy, but lots of fun.

friday night we had some friends come over for dinner at the last minute. the kids played great together and watched a movie, while jason, shannon, and i enjoyed dinner and games. we introduced shannon to one of our nerd games - ticket to ride - or as jason calls it, the gateway nerd game. we had fun and i think we may have a new couple recruited for nerdy games. we'll see. we also made chex mix, which is one of my new favorite activities. i made it for our christmas party a few weeks ago, for the teen mops christmas party, for our church christmas party - and there is always some leftover. homemade chex mix = delicious. the highlight of friday night was when the kids cleaned up the toys completely unprompted. we have shannon's kids to thank for that - it's never happened with our kids before.

saturday was busy, busy, busy. jason had to work for a few hours and then wanted to try out a new gym, so hiba, matthias, and i decided to hop on the holly trolley and enjoy the festivities. it was....well, it was a lot better idea in my head than in reality, but it wasn't too bad. we met up with shannon and her kids, and leslie and her family - some other friends from mops. i've ridden the trolley a few times with my kids, but it's usually pretty empty. well, not when it's free and includes coupons to all sorts of fun things downtown. nope, then it is very crowded.

we rode from the little rock side to north little rock and got off to peruse the argenta market and have lunch. there was free hot chocolate, which matthias immediately spilled all over himself. when we got to lunch, i realized that my shirt was soaking wet....from where i was holding matthias. because his pants were soaking wet. and of course, i didn't have any clothes for him. so he changed into hiba's cute little pants. luckily, he is huge so they wear the same size and the jeans i had for her were just a little girly. so lunch finished without any huge problems, but then we missed the trolley by about a minute, so had to wait at the stop for about twenty minutes for the next one to come. we opted to not go get pictures with santa during this time, which meant six kids running around at the bus stop, trying to run into the road, collecting apartment hunting magaizines....fun times. finally the trolley came and we were first in line, so we all got seats. and as soon as i sat down, i smelled an awful smell coming from matthias. and of course i didn't have any extra diapers. because why would i? and i wasn't going to change him in the middle of the trolley, so we just suffered for the ride and then leslie came to our rescue when we stopped.

whew. so we went home and took naps.

in the evening, we had a christmas party with our church peeps. i love our church peeps. they are awesome. hiba was a little bit sick (which seems to be a recurring theme when we have fun church functions), so she and jason had to stay home. but they watched christmas movies, ate popcorn and chex mix, and had hot coco. matthias and i went to the party and had a fabulous time. we're in the process of selling our church building and finding a new place to meet, so we did advent and communion at the party. there was also a lively round of christmas songs, which matthias loved. he found some jingle bells and danced his little booty off. and then of course he was loud and disruptive during silent night and our ending prayer, but no one seemed to be upset or judgy (except for me. i was totally judging myself and my lack of parenting skills), which is why i love my church peeps.

sunday was great. jason, my wonderful husband, let me sleep in so i woke up to coffee and breakfast being made. since we had church on saturday night, we got to just take it easy for the morning. jason and i went over our christmas lists and figured out what gifts we needed to get. he took matthias in the morning and went shopping for the girls. before they left, hiba gave two requests - a sword like the one matthias has and a tiger she can sleep with. matthias actually found both of them and is super excited that he got presents for hiba. so far he hasn't told her what they are, but we'll see if that lasts till next sunday. in the afternoon, i braved wal-mart and got grocery shopping and christmas shopping all knocked out. so now presents are wrapped and under the tree, christmas music is playing, cookies are being decorated every day, and we are talking about Jesus' birthday a lot. yay for christmas time!

Jesus, the mechanic

apparently, Jesus likes to fix our car. which is just fine with me. i'm definitely not going to complain about that one.

we recently had to have our headlights fixed. which was kind of necessary, but also kind of expensive. but instead of stressing out, i really did just know that it would be taken care of. the china trip used up a good bit our our savings, but we had enough to pay for the car. and buy food. and buy christmas presents. and give presents away. i think i had a bit more perspective on how much we really have this time around.

so we paid for it, i said a little prayer asking God to not let anything else break in the next few months, and went back to life. simple as that.

and then we got an unexpected gift. that was for just over the amount it took to fix the car. which means we can still pay for the car. and buy food. and buy christmas presents. and give even more presents away.

a teen mops christmas

hi there. remember me? i used to write things here - sometimes funny, sometimes about my kids, sometimes thoughts on life? yes, hi.

i'm not really sure what has happened since thanksgiving, but i do know that we've been busy. i'll try to post about anything exciting or interesting that i think of, but really, let's just get this ball rolling again.

so it's christmas time! i love christmas. i love getting presents for poeple. i'm pretty sure my love language is receiving gifts, but not just stuff. real gifts, that mean something and are heartfelt or something that is especially needed. and so i love giving gifts like that too.

one of the thing that my parents were great about is making christmas about giving. especially about giving to people who don't have as much and can't give back to us. we would serve at salvation army christmas meals, get gifts for kids through angel tree, help out families in town that we knew were needy. and i really loved it. my dad especially would get really excited about giving, which was definitely passed on to me. and i hope that i can pass that on to my kids.

and last night was the perfect chance. we had a christmas party for our teen mops meeting, which included loading the moms up with presents for them and their kids, diapers, and food. it was a really fun night and i loved seeing them all get presents. i know that some of them would get stuff anyway and aren't really needy. but i also  know that some of them wouldn't. or at least wouldn't get stuff without stressing out about how they can get presents for their kids and food at the same time.

i took hiba and matthias shopping earlier this week to get gifts for a few of the moms and kids. it was neat to be able to talk about why we were getting things for other people and not for ourselves. we had to stop by chick-fil-a to get something for jason, which was also a perfect opportunity to explain to hiba that we wouldn't get food, but instead we would use that money to buy presents for kids who need them. she was actually more excited about this idea than i thought she would be. it was a little hard for her to walk through wal-mart and see all the toys displayed and only pick things for other people, but she did a great job and i think even got it a little bit - as much as her 3-year-old mind could understand. and she didn't tell any kids last night that we got them presents because their mommy would not be able to, so that's a good thing too.

hiba did a great job too of not being sad when she didn't get any presents to take home with her. i did assure her that she would get presents on christmas, so she was ok with that. matthias was great too. mostly because he didn't know what was going on. which is fine too.

i hope the rest of christmas can stay focused on giving. i've been pretty wrapped up in planning the party, making sure there were gifts for everyone, etc that i haven't really done christmas stuff for us. so i hope that as i shift to getting presents for our kids and jason that i can stay focused on giving meaningful gifts and can keep sharing the idea of giving with hiba and matthias. it's been really fun to see her understand that it's not about her, it's not about getting things, but it's about giving things because of Jesus' birthday, so i hope that trend will continue over the next few weeks.