I ♥ Birthdays!

This weeks theme at I ♥ Faces is Happy Birthday!

This was our birthday boy back in February! He turned 3 years old and we had our selves one fun party!

Here he is in the bouncy house!


Also this week is a special "Pets" category.

I wanted to share this photo of one of my Aunt and Uncle's pups.

Isn't she just the sweetest? She was really shy and didn't really want her picture taken but she was just to cute to resist!
Click on the button below to see more birthday pictures or to join in and share your own!

Oh the things you'll do for a sister!

This is Andrew and the soon to be Mrs. Topel.

My big sister is getting married in, lets see...

21 days!

I'm flying to Florida in a week and a half.

Of course i'm excited to see my family and friends. But there is a down side... Geoff and Elijah will be staying behind! "sniff sniff" It'll be just me and Ethan, who is a little attached to me at the moment, flying over for two weeks.

Two weeks with out my little boy! Fourteen days with out kissing him goodnight or snuggling with him when he wakes up.

That's it... I'm sending Rachel instead! Don't try and stop me. I've made up my mind!

Tell me, how can I leave my curly haired, flower bearing three year old behind!?

I'll do it for you, Crystal.

In other news...

Our four month old Ethan rolled over from his back to his tummy on Thursday!

I was vacuuming the house and he was laying on the living room floor on his back. When i finished the rest of the house and came back he was playing on his tummy! He's done it a few times since then and Elijah is a great encourager yelling "Good job, baby Effan! Good job!"


Rachel is back from visiting the family in Scotland. The boys were happy to see her when she came back! I was too!
I'm hoping she'll write a post about her trip. I want you all to "meet" the family in Scotland. Geoff's sister Alison, her husband Gavin, and our 4 nephews and 1 niece.

Elijah's friend William came over yesterday. They had a gret time playing out back. Chasing bubbles and racing cars. Chasing bubbles is so much more fun when you have a friend with you!

I'm off to do some much needed grocery shopping today!

Fix It Friday

Fix It Fridays gives us a chance to learn new editing tricks from each other. I ♥ Faces provides the picture and we play with it and then share it with each other.

I just learned yesterday how to color part of a black and white photo! I thought today would be a good chance to practice to see if i could do it without looking at the directions.

My Edit:


The original:
Visit I ♥ Faces to see all the other creative edits.

What are you all doing this weekend? Relaxing? Working?

"Our" Plans

"A man’s heart plans his way, But the LORD directs his steps."
Proverbs 16:9

"Show me Your ways, O LORD;

Teach me Your paths."

Psalm 25:4

For those of you who have been visiting here for a while you'll know that my husband and I hope to do overseas missions one day.

If you'd like to start from the beginning and hear how and where I met my husband and what we've been up to since our wedding almost 5 years ago, you can read this and this and this.

All caught up? Now you'll know what we are doing here in Northern Ireland this year.

The mission organization that we are planning on working with is New Tribes Mission (NTM) and the way they work is that they train and equip the missionaries but the local churches are the ones to actually send and support the missionaries. So it is necessary to have a "home church" in order to go on and work with NTM. Our home church will be the church here in Northern Ireland.

We've been getting to know the people in our church here and talking to the pastor. He came over last Monday to talk things through with us. We shared our thoughts on where we would like to finish the missionary training and he shared with us what the church is thinking.

It was encouraging to find out that we are on the same page and are thinking along the same lines.

The plan is to stay here until a new class starts next January. That would be January of 2010. During the rest of our time here Geoff and I will be visiting some area churches and sharing our plans desire to serve the Lord over seas as missionaries.

Mr. Smylie (our pastor) asked if we could make up a short DVD presentation to share with the different groups we'll speak at. A DVD explaining the work of NTM and a bit about who we are and what we plan to do.

Mr. Smylie just phoned us last night to let us know he'd confirmed things and we can begin the application process.

Since the class starts in January we'll have the summer off before resuming classes in the fall. So we'd come back to Northern Ireland for the summer to catch up and reconnect with people here.

So the end of 2009 will most likely find us making another trans-Atlantic move back to the US to finish my last year of missionary training in Missouri.

Like the verses say, we realize that we can make all the plans we want but unless the Lord is the one leading us the plans will be useless. He is the one to determine where our lives go. We need to be listening closely so we can hear His still small voice.

I'm so thankful that we can trust the Lord to direct our steps. That way we can always be secure in the fact that we are were God wants us.

And there's not better or safer place to be than where God wants you.

So even as we make "our" plans we pray that they are also God's plans.

I hope you all will stick around and come along on this journey with us. I have a feeling there will be a lot of interesting experiences coming up that you won't want to miss!

But most of all through this crazy journey of life we pray that God will get the glory out of everything we do. That we will be open to be used in whatever way He pleases.

"Trust in the LORD with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths."

Prov 3:5-6

Look at his smile!

Today is a beautiful day!

A warm 50 degrees and sunny. We have a wonderfully fresh breeze blowing through our windows.

You might remember this post about how Elijah was praying for a bike of his own.

Would you like to see the answer to that prayer?


Pat and Ruth found this bike in their garage when they moved in last autumn. It sat there until they heard of Elijah's wish. And then they brought it over for him and he has been "working" with his new bike for the last two days!

So today he decided he was going to wash his bike...

He loves the basket on the front. It's perfect for loading treasures like rocks and bottles of bubbles.

Elijah got to see how God some times works through people to answer prayer.

It's amazing to see how God takes care of even little boy's prayers. He cares about the small things too!

Silhouettes

{love stories}

This was taken in January. Just two weeks before our Ethan was born.

Rain on our picnic!

We prayed for a sunny day all week. But I guess the Lord knew we could handle a little rain on our picnic.

Some friends from church invited us out and took us to Carnfunnock Country Park near Larne.

We picked a table under the trees to help shield us from the worst of the drizzle.

There's George, Elijah and Geoff on one side. Ethan in his car seat. And Ruth and Julie Anne on the right side.

The rest of these pictures are from George's camera.

There was a great play park for the kids that Elijah enjoyed! His favorite part was this long slide. He would go down the slide then run back around to do it again and again!


The picture here on the top left is Geoff and Elijah finding their way through the maze. What fun!


On the drive home the clouds cleared up and the sun was shining brightly!

We went back to their house and ate delicious Chinese take out and played a round of Settlers. Ruth won again!

We had a really great day! I'm so thankful for the friends we are getting to know here. God has been so good in giving us wonderful people to get to know where ever we go!

Free Chocolate Fridays

I'd be a bad friend if i kept this to myself...

The countdown clock says 3 minuets until you can get your coupon for free chocolate!

Starting at 9 am EST get your free single-size package of M&Ms, Milky Way, Snickers, 3 Musketeers, Twix or Dove.

Mars is giving away coupons for free "Real Chocolate" every Friday starting at 9:00 am and ending at 11:59 pm. Each Friday the first 250,000 people who register for coupons will get free chocolate. That's right, 250,000 each and every Friday through September 25. And better yet you can win up to four times! You are limited to a total of 4 coupons per household, but you can only get one coupon each Friday. You should receive your coupons by mail in approximately 6 weeks after winning them.

Just go to http://realchocolate.com/ and keep reloading until you can fill out the registration form.

Homeschooling Preschoolers?

I want to throw this out there for you ladies to help me with!

Many of you have experience in homeschooling. And I know I'll be able to get a lot of advice from my own mom who home schooled all three of us kids. But I thought it would be interesting to get some other perspectives too.

Our Elijah is three so he doesn't have to officially start school until the fall of 2010. But he already loves to say his letters and numbers (with help!) and he's really good at naming colors.

I want to be prepared for when the time comes. So I'd love to hear what you all do/did for schooling at this age.

What would you do for a little kiddo just starting school? How did you make it fun and interesting for little ones learn?

Do you have any tips or lessons learned that I and others reading here can learn from?

Thanks in advance for your help!


P.S. Alicia, i'm always impressed with all that you do for your class. I'll be watching you for ideas! =)

Sweet!

Theme: Sweet

Do you know how hard it is to take a decent picture of food!? Really hard!

This Yogurt Marmalade cake i made last week was sweet and so yummy!

You can find the recipe here.

Our Door Is Always Open

I had so much fun today! We had visitors!

Donna along with Ruth and her mom Pat came over for lunch and part of the after noon.



This is Pat making daisy chains after lunch from the flowers in our back garden.



There was a couple hours of warm sunshine this after noon so we had to take advantage of it and go outside.

Donna had brought Elijah a kite. Here she is helping him to fly it.


Easier said than done...
Poor little guy! He looks so dejected that his kite won't fly!


Maybe Donna can get it up in the air. We needed more wind!


Ruth brought one of those bright parachute things with handles all around the edge for grabbing. I don't have any pictures of it because i was too busy playing. Playing with Elijah of course. =)

But Ruth got a bunch of pictures!
Ethan got a lot of love...

With Pat.
First time wearing his hat. I used to think it looked so big but it fits him now!

With Donna.

With Donna again. She rocked him to sleep!

An Early Morning Visitor

There's just no foolin' you all!

Yes, the mystery photo was a dandelion cropped from this picture...

I'm going to make it really hard next time! =)

It's been really wet so we've been trapped in side most of the week. I try to get Elijah out in the back yard between rain showers.

Speaking of the back yard, look who was there yesterday morning...

We have a big window in our kitchen over the sink so I had a great view of him and I could tell he saw me too! It was so nice to have his early morning company as I poured my first cup of coffee.

We had a meeting with our pastor last night. So i'm going to be sharing what our plans are in the next day or so.

I hope you all are enjoying your week. Thanks for stopping by to visit!