Titus and Amelia's Baptisim

I am one happy Mom!  All of my children have been saved and baptized now.  We had a baptisim service on May 7, 2017.  It was kind of quick notice so my family wasn't able to attend due to other plans.  I was disappointed about that, but my kids didn't want to wait any longer.  Josiah had already been baptized so it was Titus and Amelia's turn.


Now, you may have noticed that I hadn't done a blog about Titus getting saved yet.  His salvation was one that I didn't witness so I felt I had to watch him to see how I felt about it.  Ha ha  I know that sounds terrible, but here's his story.


April 25, 2015 was the day before Maynard's birthday.  Titus and Josiah were in their room praying before bed.  Maynard and I was already in bed.  Both boys came running into our room and Josiah announced, "Titus just got saved!"  Titus was smiling and looked at Maynard and said, "Yep!!  I got saved for your birthday, Dad!!!"


So, you can see why I may have doubted that.  Ha Ha  Anyway, the last 2 years when the opportunity would arise I would always ask him whether he was saved or not.  No matter how I questioned him or even tried to get him to say he wasn't saved, he always declared he was and I couldn't talk him out of it.  So if he feels like he's saved than who am I to question him about it or not!  Just because I didn't have the sweet moment with him like I did my other children, doesn't mean he didn't get saved.  Salvation is that simple.  I think people make it more difficult than it needs to be.


So when it was announced that there was going to be a baptisimal service at our church, Amelia and Titus were both ready.


We ended up with 11 of our young people getting baptized that night.  How exciting!  We have such a great group of kiddos in our church.  They truly love the Lord and want to do what's right.

Titus was the only boy out of 8 girls.

They all went in order of their ages.  Look at that tall girl next to last in line.  Looks like she should be up closer in line.

Titus testifying.

Amelia's turn.

  Now Amelia had this big long testimony ready.  She had practiced and practiced, but when it was time to testify, she only got out, "I want to thank the Lord for saving me!"  She said she got too nervous.  So cute!!

She had a smile in all her pictures.

 I had both of them pack extra clothes to change into.  They just got baptized in their church clothes, because it was just water and wouldn't hurt their clothes.  That way they only had to change one time.  I got so tickled when I realized Titus had chosen a Goodwill bag to pack his extra clothes in.  No shame!!!  Ha Ha

I'm thankful for my church who don't leave the little children out.  They stress salvation and the bible to them every chance they get.  Going to a Christian school has been an added bonus to them as well!!!


I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.  3 John 1:4

Suprise Disney on Ice trip

So several months back I asked Amelia if maybe one day she would like to go to Disney on Ice.  She had to ask questions because she wasn't too sure what it even was.  Her most important question was "Do we get to skate too?"  As most of you know she's really into skating right now.  I told her "no", that we only watch the Disney characters skate.  Her reply was, "BOORRING!!!!"  So we never really talked about it much anymore because I knew I would get the same response, even though I knew she would love it if she went.  I hadn't even checked to see when the next show would be.


One day my friend Heather asked me if I was interested in going with them to Disney on Ice.  This was right in the middle of us still living at the Hotel and I was a little hesitant to say "Yes".  She had 2 extra tickets at a reasonable price and did Amelia and I want to go?  We could even ride to Lexington with her.  I talked to Maynard about it and we both agreed that the boys would rather do something else and he absolutely didn't want to go.  Ha Ha  I told her would go with her and Amelia and I would have a "Girls day out" and daddy would do something fun with the boys.

Here's a video of when she first found out she was going.  I thought I was videoing the first part when I actually told her, but I wasn't.  I had her a special shirt made to wear that day and that's what I gave her to surprise her. 
She found out at school, the day before, that her friend Lacie was going to Disney on Ice.  Then she continued to beg all day about going.  Lacie wasn't supposed to mention it and she had accidentally found out herself that she herself was going.  I kept telling Amelia that we would go maybe next time.  She was so persistent, but I wanted to surprise her so bad and she wasn't letting me.


The boys were kind of mad, which I suspected, but Maynard took them and spent the whole day with them.  They got to go bowling and ate at Taco Bell.  They were happy with that, so all was well.


As far as our trip, it was great!!!  Absolutely wonderful.  Amelia took it all in.

 
 We enjoyed the show and even enjoyed our snacks that was hidden in our purses.  Sorry, I'm not paying $25 for popcorn, Disney!

Snow White and the 7 Dwarves were my favorite.

My pictures were saved from my Instastory so that's why they look different here.  I did do a few pics and live vidoes on Instagram so my boys could see some of it.  I didn't video the whole time though like this lady did.

She videoed her grand kids the whole time during the show.  You can see in the picture that she was using my legs to help hold up her arm.  I was laughing so hard I couldn't even tell Heather what was wrong.  I just had to motion with my eyes.


We got to see an awesome show of Tangled.  It was really amazing and captivating.  There was Snow White, Cinderella, Micky and Minnie, Donald Duck, and so many more.  I am so glad we had the opportunity to go.

So glad that I got to be with my friends and Amelia got to be with her friends on such a fun day!!!

Easter 2017

The week before Easter the kids had activities planned at school.  I decided to make Resurrection Rolls with Kindergarten through 2nd grade.  We had a lot of fun making them and it was so yummy to eat.

Amelia making her resurrection roll.

Kindergarten Class making their rolls.

1st-2nd Class making their rolls.

1st through 2nd accused me of stealing Jesus.  When they bit into their roll, Jesus, the marshmallow, was gone.  It was a cute lesson about the resurrection of Jesus just in time for Easter.  This is probably a tradition we will continue to do every year.


The younger classes also got to have an egg hunt that day.

Josiah's class didn't hunt eggs.  It's sad when they start growing up. His teacher played games with his class so he still had fun.


Friday night I realized we hadn't dyed eggs yet.  I was in town getting last minute things so I picked up what we needed to dye eggs.  We didn't even get started on it until 11 at night.  This is something Maynard always does with the kids.  I try not to help because I tend to want to take control and I kind of ruin the fun.

The next day we went to E-town for the Harper Easter dinner.  We had a cookout at Mom and Dad's.  All the cousins, but one, was there.  We had so much fun.  At one time or another one of the aunt or uncles was playing games with the kids.  It was perfect weather outside for a cookout.  They played kickball and volleyball and lots of other games.  They also got lots of candy and money on their egg hunt.  See, egg hunts at Mamaw's has no grandchild age limit.  I'm not sure what the cut off is and it makes me sad to even think about them all growing up.

All the grandkids, but one.

Dad and Mom

We had a lot of fun and took some tired kiddos home.  The next morning was Easter Sunday and they were excited.

I got them all a chocolate bunny and a special drink.  The rest was socks and underwear.  My kids are actually always appreciative of new socks and underwear.  They had gotten enough candy from school and my parent's house that they didn't need a lot of candy anyway.


We got dressed, took a few pictures and headed to church.  It was a rainy day.  The kids actually had to have their egg hunt in the classrooms at church.  I didn't get any egg hunt pictures because everything got a little crazy.  Here are our family Easter pictures.

Amelia was excited to be matching her Mom!

We had a great Easter with wonderful services.   Thankful for my family and a risen Saviour!!!!

Spring Break 2017

Here's a short blog post about our spring break.  We didn't do a whole lot this year because things were just settling down for us in our new house.


We started out Spring Break with a sleepover.  Girls at my house and the boys at Heather's. 

These girls partied hard!  We realized that having a sleepover in such a small house is hard on Maynard when he has to work the next day.  We finally had to make them go to bed so he could rest.  They had a great time.  Of course, they wanted pancakes for breakfast the next morning.  We met up around 1 to get our kids back, much to all their dismay.  Why do sleepovers have to come to an end?

Amelia had been asking for my sister Melissa to come visit so she agreed to come and stay a few days.  Amelia was excited for Melissa to see her new room.


We didn't do a whole lot, but mainly shop for Easter outfits.  You can imagine my kid's joy about that.  Amelia didn't mind shopping as long as we were shopping for her.  My boys just hate shopping period.  It also didn't help that Josiah caught some kind of virus that week.  He was constantly running to the bathroom so that kind of limited us doing much anyway.  We were all thankful to have 2 bathrooms in the house because no one wanted to use the same bathroom he was using.  Ha Ha


We went to Richmond one day to shop and had a successful trip finding all the kids an outfit.  We had a yummy lunch at Olive Garden.


I did a lot of cooking that week.  Which really wasn't any different than any other week, but we ate good, including deserts.  We also ate out some too.  Not a whole lot.


Since the kids complained about shopping so much, Melissa and I took Titus and Amelia skating.  Josiah was too germy and we left him home.  He wasn't happy, but he got to ride the lawn mower, so that made Titus jealous when he got back home.

Melissa ended up staying through Sunday and went to church with us.  It was actually sad when it was time for her to leave.  I was glad she came and helped us get our Easter outfits together.  She won't lie to you.  She will tell you exactly what she thinks if you ask her for her opinion on something.  She even talked me into buying a $25 pair of shoes that was clearly not made for someone like me.  My kids had to help put them on me Easter morning and made sure everyone at church knew that.  I have since returned them back to the store. Ha Ha


It was nice to have a week off of school and just let life slow down a bit.  We had activities planned at school the next week so the kids look forward to going back.