Snap-EZ Blog

We are enjoying an early spring up here in the beautiful Pacific Northwest…I saw daffodils in bloom nearly a month ago, my tulip buds are showing themselves, our lawn is starting to need to be mowed, and we did some spring cleaning inside as well!

Here’s some signs of spring around our place:

Future Berry, beautiful bloom now!

Waiting to be added to our gardens...

These beauties never completely stopped blooming this winter, and they are in full bloom already!

Spring is for cleaning, and just for fun, last Saturday our livingroom was messier than usual, so we took a before photo, and then had it cleaned all up in 30  minutes!  Here’s the before and after photos:

Before (notice Esther is enjoying dumping out her toy bin???)

After - 30 minutes X 2 women = CLEAN!

We’ve been so busy this year, we’ve been doing homeschooling, music lessons, art lessons, a trip to my mom’s house (with 2 kids),  and many other things.  We’ve also been busy seriously looking at deeper things.  We made some drastic changes to how we live our lives years ago, and have pretty much stayed the course we plotted out back then, but over the last few years we’ve been coasting along and gently breezes have blown us a little off course without our even noticing it!

One change is Esther started sucking her thumb...

So we’ve been re-evaluating some things, and looking at other things with “new glasses” for the first time!  We have decided we need to watch far fewer videos (Saturday nights after baths is all we are doing right now), play more games (we re-organized our school/toy/game-room last week), read out loud more (we just started reading The Magician’s Nephew as a family, with the older member taking “parts”), and in general spending more time together doing things together!

Another big change is Esther is learning to climb the stairs...first time we've ever had stairs...time to buy a good baby gate!

So, that is my “excuse” this time for not blogging in forever, once again!  If you can get on facebook, you’ll find me there…I’m not on as much as I have been in recent weeks, but I try to do little updates there from day to day…I’ll leave you with some before and after photos of our school room make-over:

Before...

After (Westside)

Eastside

Soon we willl be tackloing some long awaited projects…finish painting trim inside and outside the house, and putting in the back yard lawn!  Those are HUGE projects, but I’m sure we can get them done this year!

Our Family Dec 2009

I was looking through some old blog entries and found that in Jan 09 I had looked back through 2008 – first looking at it from the perspective of how we survived our most difficult year to date, and then also looking back at how God has richly blessed and upheld us through that difficult year (2008…The Year of God’s Blessings ).  So I think I should do that again for 2009!

First of all, 2009 was much easier than 2008, that is for sure!  But we did have some trials as well.  And definitely some major blessings along the way!

Winter of 2009 was centered around Esther’s recovery from her open heart surgery.  This went really well and she was able to go without her feeding tube in less than two weeks after her surgery – that was a major blessing!  We were soon preparing for Jeremy to come home on his pre-deployment leave at the end of February.  We had a great week with him, including an open house with lots of friends and family coming to see him (and our new home!).

Springtime found us getting some serious schooling to make up for the previous fall,  working with Esther through therapy to gain strength and begin to learn new skillss, putting in gardens, a new front yard, new driveway, and a great check up at Children’s for Esther.  Esther did end up going to ER once in June – she got croup and was having trouble breathing – but they were able to fix her up and go home – no hospital admits this entire year!  PTL!

Summer was definitely busy – we planned and put on the biggest birthday party ever – it was so much fun!!!  We also went camping – but I was unable to enjoy it very much as I was sick the entire time and ended up with bronchitus and a sinus infection…we finished out the summer with a great day at the beach!  We also dealt with cancer on Esther’s  face that was so traumatic for us as it bled profusely at the least provocation, but turned out fine after minor surgery to remove it.

Fall was a wonderful time to get back into schedules, schooling and planning for celebrating a whole month with Jeremy home in November – we had a great time with him home that long!  We did have some big struggles due to the economic troubles, but God provided for us through it all…even coming through in miraculous ways just when there seemed to be no way to meet all our financial challenges.  We also dealt with cancer on Esther’s  face that was so traumatic for us as it bled profusely at the least provocation, but turned out fine after minor surgery to remove it.

We rounded out the year with our first Christmas in our new home – Christmas tree in front of the window, icicle lights on the house, game nights, puzzles, and best of all, Jeremy was home for 2 weeks again!  Esther really enjoyed her first Christmas…especially the wrapping paper and boxes!

Also throughout the year we’ve seen Esther stop struggling to grow, going from 12 pounds to a whopping 26 pounds from January to June!  She’s refined down to a nice 25 pounds now due to being so active.  When Esther went to her first therapy session at the end of January she couldn’t even hold her head up very well, and could not lift it off the ground if she was laying on her tummy….now she’s camando crawling all over the house, sits up all by herself, gets up on her hands a knees, wave and says “Hi”, waves “Bye Bye”, gives the best baby hugs ever, has a great sense of humor, and loves music and Signing Time Videos!

So last  year, our blessings far out-weight the slight and temporary troubles of 2009,  and I can see God’s hand upholding us through all.  His mercies are new every morning.

I’ll end this post with a comparison photo of Esther just home in Jan, as compared to her at Christmas:

Esther on Jan 9,2009

We had some fun with Esther recently – she has a really unique way of getting around…a mix of camando drawl, the spits, sitting up, and rolling to get wherever she needs to go…

If there's a will...

And as far as eating is concerned, she has no problems with that either:

Esther efficiently eats a piece of birthday cake

Did you seen her palm that piece for later with her left hand???

Hope you enjoyed this evenings entertainment!