Kellen's Gift

Kellen has a really cool new toy. We were on our way to church and we had not picked up the mail in a few days so we decided to get it on our way out. Inside was a gift from Great Grandma & Grandpa McDonough. It is a sing along worship book. There are 10 children's Bible songs that have the words written down on the page and the option for music to play while you sing along with a little microphone!

At first Kellen wasn't sure what to do with it, but thankfully he didn't give up. A few days later he grabbed it before bed time and started pushing the buttons on his own. I held the book and sang with him (sorry, I'm a horrible singer, but I'll do anything if it means spending quality time with my kiddo and teaching him more about Jesus). So, now we have worship before bed time, and that particular night he read his Bible too. I would like to get him, "The Jesus Bible," soon. In the mean time, he won't really let us read to him yet, he did when he was little. Right now he likes to look at all the pages, and point out Jesus and he really likes John the Baptist too, I think it is because John the Baptist is so big and burly, (I mean come on, what kid doesn't think it's cool to wear camels hair as a jacket??) It was such a fun night. We were in his bed room for at least a half hour singing, and "reading." I pray he will never get tired of singing and learning about Jesus and what He did for us. So our new night time routine seems to be Worship, Bible Study, and prayer. :-) What a great way to end the day. Here is a short video, and some photos.

 

Singing along together...

 

Getting ready to pick the next song...

You Cannot Escape... The Shopping Cart Monster!!!

So my husband is a pretty funny guy and he is always entertaining our little man. They LOVE to play together and Daddy is so creative that you never know what he is going to come up with next. Including this video below. Kellen has a small shopping cart that he likes to push around the house. When Colin put it on his head the other day he became, "The Shopping Cart Monster." As soon as the cart comes off his head, he goes back to normal. Hope you enjoy the video!

Suprise Date!

Colin and I have been attending a class called "Dynamic Marriage" at church the last few weeks. It has really helped our communication of emotional needs within our marriage and we have really enjoyed it. Early in the week Colin set up a date day for us and left me clues about what the date entailed. Yesterday he (after arranging earlier in the week with his mom) dropped Kellen off to hang out with Grandma for the afternoon and he took me to an Angels Baseball game! We like watching baseball (live) together and it was really fun! He even bought me my first Angel's T-shirt! I've always just worn a red one to the game.

The day was beautiful! It was a little warm... that is why we are a sweaty! Irvin Santana pitched a great game and I got to learn the names of some of the new players. We had not watched/been to a game together since Kellen was born. The Angels won, and then we celebrated with free Baskin Robin's ice cream (free coupon from donating blood at church last weekend.)

The night completed with pizza, wine and good company over at Grandma's house. It was a great day!

Every Day I'm Shufflin'

So my husband really enjoyed the beat to this song called, Party Rock. Kellen sings and dances and begs to watch the dancing Robot daily. It got in his bones! Here is the video:

CLICK HERE TO WATCH 
It would not let me put it in the blog. Watch this one, and then watch Kellen's version below...

8 years ago...

Eight years ago today, I married my best friend. It has been the best decision of my life. We have had our shares of highs and lows and God has kept us together. We have made some pretty incredible memories together in this time. And we've shared our fears, desires, secrets, goals, dreams and so much more. Now, we have a beautiful boy that reflects our two personalities with a little quirkiness of his own and it has gone by so fast! You may be asking yourself, "Wow how do you guys do it?" Here are a few things we've learned along the way (in no particular order.)
1. The couple that pumps together stays together. That's right people, working out together has kept us accountable to each other and God to take care of our bodies.
2. Compromise and selflessness. Neither one of us are perfect, but we learn from our mistakes and press on. When we serve each other we both win! We look out for each other's needs and then our own needs end up getting met. We've got each other's backs. :-)
3. Core Sin. At church we have learned what our main "issue" is. Meaning, how we usually get caught in sin or temptation to sin. We have learned to help each other through these sins and FORGIVE each other. (yeah, the Bible tells us to love unconditionally and forgive so we do that and it saves a lot of unnecessary issues.)
4. Communication. We are not perfect at this, but we've both learned (sometimes the hard way) to talk to each other, ESPECIALLY before confirming attendance to events, activities and spending money. This has saved us MANY arguments.
5. Financial Peace. We attended (and graduated) from Financial Peace University with Dave Ramsey. We learned (after many mistakes) how to take care of our finances God's way and have a completely different outlook on the way we spend the money God has provided us. REALLY wishing we would have learned about this course before we got married or at least when we were newly weds. None the less, we will be saving ourselves years of financial issues because of taking this class. We are not debt free yet, but we are getting there.
6. Stuff is just stuff. Less is more. And the more you have, the more issues seem to arise. We seem to be much happier after removing some of the clutter of things in our life. And we regularly give away and clean out stuff we don't need. It's amazing how much stress extra stuff can cause (cars, clothes, things in the back of the closet that you never use/read/etc). Not to mention how much time is wasted cleaning these things.
7. Take one for the team. Yeah, you can interpret this however you like, but sacrifice isn't always bad. Ha ha!
So, there you go. There is plenty more, but these popped up in my head in the last 5 minutes. Here are some photos of life together over the last 8 years. And here's to many more memories to come!

Dating Days:
My first trip to Santa Barbara to say goodbye. We had been on several dates over Christmas break 1999, our freshman year of college. Shelley, Colin's mom drove Colin, Tymon and I to Santa Barbara to see the campus and hang out. I stayed the night with Shelley in a hotel. This photo is at Westmont a few minutes before we headed back to Lake Elsinore. Westmont freshman must live on campus, and they can't have a car on campus, no room.

 This was my first Easter brunch with Colin, the Bardsley's and the Maietta's in April of 2000. Man, look at my hair (eeeee.)

 This was a trip that Colin and I took to Disneyland, pretty sure it was also in 2000. We didn't go back until like 2006 or 2007.

 We both love the beach. This was at Oceanside beach in 2001 or 2002. The boys covered all but my head in the sand. And then I was real tan when they were done (ha ha!) Good times.

 This was our last night of dating... Christmas Eve 2002. We were engaged the next morning.

 This photo is one of our engagement photos at Westmont in Santa Barbara. It is amazing to see how far camera's and photography have come since we got married. Digital was not really heard of (or used commonly) I had a regular (and crappy might I add) camera. Photos took forever to develop and you didn't get to look at them right after they were taken. Regardless of the clarity, we've changed so much since then.

Here is a slide show of some of our wedding photos. Chris Bence Photography, pretty sure he doesn't take pictures of weddings any more.