His Touch

Lately I've been thinking a lot about how you can feel God's love through the embrace of a loved one or even the touch of a stranger. We need that sometimes when the hard times are too much to bare and our lives are filled with sadness. I know that God is there always. He knows the plans He has in store for me and my family and for my friends. I don't know that plan though and when I see people struggling it is so hard for me to understand all of the suffering. I've learned to put all my trust in God. I pray to Him, I ask of Him, I talk to Him, I listen to Him, I receive Him, I love Him. He is with me always and when my heart is breaking and sad, He always knows how to give me a little squeeze and let me know He is still here. 
I've been surrounded by heartache this year. I have a great group of friends. They are my girls, they are my Foxys. Five women. Each one of us has been suffering a great deal this year. One of us is fighting for her life. She has made courageous decisions and sacrifices that few could ever fully understand. She is our fighter and we are her army. We will stand behind her, beside her, and with her through every thing. She is our world. She WILL beat cancer. I don't care what doctors say, I know what God says, He is who I serve and who I trust. Another one of us has been fighting a numerous amount of illnesses off and on. She is in pain more times than not. We have fathers who are gone fighting for our country, fathers who have to work on the road to provide for our families. Financial troubles, emotional issues. Raising babies alone, young and old. There is so much heartache in our lives. I am sad for my friends. 
I don't know his plans for us but I do know great things will come of them. I know that He is there for us and He will show you if you pay attention. I was at the store the other day and it was a hard day emotionally. I was with Colton and he was walking down the toy isle showing me what he wanted. I told him he could get a puzzle(a cheap one). He didn't want that one, he wanted the bigger spiderman puzzle. I had to tell him no and that he could ask Santa for it. Trying to get his mind off of it I showed him a puzzle I liked and told him to tell daddy that mommy wanted it for Christmas. He looked at it and then grabbed the one he wanted and said, "Okay and you tell Daddy I want this one". It was beyond cute. There was an older gentleman and a woman about my age on the same isle. They kept laughing at the things Colt was saying and they passed us several times. When we were at the checkout and I was paying, the man came up beside me grabbed a hold of my shoulder and handed me a bag and said, "Santa wanted your boy to have this. Merry Christmas". Then he walked off. I almost started crying. He had bought the puzzle Colt wanted. It wasn't about the puzzle. It was the touch of a stranger. The touch of God. He showed me His kindness and His love through the giving of another. 
You may call them Secret Santa's but I call them blessings from God. He knew what I needed when I needed it, something so simple as the touch of a stranger. 

The family that laughs together......

Colt had his Christmas program at school last week. Before we headed out we took some uh..family pictures?!

Aww thats a nice one

Oh the boys are getting crazy

Fine, Momma will play too

He went and did his face that cracks us up every time!

Come on, one more nice one please

Haha! I'm gonna get you! 

Family Time!

That was fun. You probably are just waiting to hear about the Christmas program though huh? Oh alright here it is..

We got more video on the camcorder but I need to find my cord to upload them. He is the fourth one in from the left side(closest to the tree). He just stood there mostly. Oh and in case you don't catch it....there is a crotch grab at the very end of the video. :) I'd like to thank Dy-nan-a for pointing that out for me. Haha.

Dinner, Presents and a Wedding

On Christmas day we went over to Jay's moms house. He was still feeling ill and he had called to let her know and he said she sounded very upset until he said that we were still coming. I thought it was alittle strange that she would be upset, I mean sad yes but upset no. So off we went to his moms house to eat Christmas dinner(well lunch...it was 12:30pm). We get there and everything in the living room is rearranged differently than normal and so we take some pictures in front of the tree and then there is a quiet knock at the door. His mom goes to answer it and its a man. The way the house is set up is so that there are two living areas separated by a doorway and we were in the furthest one from the door but you could hear and barely see what was going on. So he comes in and he introduces his wife to Maggie(my MIL) and I'm standing there thinking who is this person. His mom didn't say anything about anyone other than the grandparents being there so who is he? And if she invited him to dinner why doesn't she already know who his wife is? Why did she just ask if he needed anything? No he doesn't need anything but to change into his coat? What? Shouldn't he need to just take his coat off from coming in from outside? Wait a minute? What? No way? Seriously? O.M.G!!! It all starts to come together in my mind so I run over to Jay and whisper in his ear....I think your mom is fixing to get married!!!! He just looks at me like huh? So then she walks past us and she looks at me and I look at her and we are both giving each other that look like we know whats going on but not saying anything. So then she says 'You'll find out in a minute' and I of course have to open my big mouth with 'I think I already know'. She was like 'Aw man Kristin already figured it out!'. HA HA. Oops. Sorry. So then after the guy comes back into the room with his wife, Maggie gets the bible out and lays it on the table and says we are going to do things a little different this year....We are getting MARRIED!! :) So yeah we had a surprise wedding on Christmas Day. Maggie and David have been together for like 15 years just never tied the knot so it was a great special surprise. We are super happy for them. I was very honored that they chose us to be there for the special moment in their lives.

We enjoyed a wedding, ate dinner, had wedding cake, and opened presents. What better way to spend Christmas Day!

Christmas Spirit

Wow! What a week! We had a pretty good Christmas. We went to my parents house on Thursday evening to celebrate with my side of the family. It was fun. I love spending time with my parents. Maybe because when I was younger I never wanted to be there and now that I'm older and have a family of my own I appreciate them so much more. I don't know what I would ever do if I didn't have them. It would absolutely crush me. Sob Sob Okay moving on.....
My sister and her kids were there so it was a full house. Lots of delicious food, great gifts and lots of love shared! My poor husband though, his sinuses and allergies were bothering him really bad. I ended up having to push us out the door to leave because I could tell how miserable he was feeling. :( He very rarely gets sick and when he does he hardly ever complains.

I was worried about how our Christmas was going to turn out but it was good. Jay had enough energy in him to get Coltons bike put together when we got home from my parents and then we called it a night. We had decided to have our little family Christmas on Friday morning(Christmas Eve) so that we would have the entire day to just lounge around and play with all the presents. Colton woke us up around 8am so we laid in bed and let him go discover what Santa had brought. The previous night after I had gotten in bed Jay brought me my glass of water and told me I could NOT leave the bedroom all night long so I was banned to my room. ha ha. Santa had some tricks up his sleeve. So when we came into the living room to see what Santa brought Colton I found out he had also left a surprise for me. A BIKE! I've been wanting this bike for many months now but I didn't know Jay knew which one it was. I had briefly pointed it out when we were out shopping for presents once but he didn't stop and look at it so I didn't think he had even noticed it. It was a great present!! Thanks Santa! I also got some awesome cozy socks, a cute pink camera case, and a itunes gift card that I was secretly hoping for! Now for my nerdy gift I received that was super awesome was the Harry Potter Bluray disc-set!! I love LOVE Love all the HP movies but only have 3 on DVD and the rest on VHS so getting them ALL on bluray ROCKS my WORLD! :)
I've been watching one every night.

Oh yeah you probably want to know what Colton got huh? :) He also got a bike and helmet from Santa. He got a desk/chair that he can use to eat at or color and Pinocchio movie. Mommy and Daddy got him Toy Story potato head set(has woody, buzz, potato head, and Jessie characters), TS alien, TS Hamm, TS Rex, 3 sets of PJ's, slippers, 2 ice age movies, a woody and bullseye, and some clothes. He had a great Christmas.
Jay got some movies, disc golf basket, a snow shovel, OU jacket, ipod speaker, and games.
We opened all the presents and then I went and got us some breakfast. We ate and then Jay was feeling bad so he took a nap and I took Colton out to my parents to get my camera that I had left there. We stayed for a couple of hours and ate leftovers. Jay was able to get a good nap in and when we came home we watched his new movies. It was a nice day together just wish he would of felt better. I'll write about our other Christmas celebration in another post later. My sexy hubs just got home! :)

Ornaments!

Picture post of some of my favorite ornaments. Enjoy! :)

The 1st ornament I ever got. From my Momma. I love it! 

Our 1st Family ornament 2008

Colton's 1st Xmas 2008 from his (Godmother) Aunt Coco

1st Christmas 2008 from Aunt Cassie

My BFF Coco gave me this one! 2008

And I gave her(coco) this one. I bought one for her, one for me. 2008

2009 Family ornament

Colts 2nd Xmas 2009

Our 2010 Family ornament

Colton has a Toy Story ornament for this years (his 3rd Xmas) but a certain someone thinks its his toy and keeps taking it off the tree. Its in his room somewhere I'm sure. :) You may also be wondering why if Jay and I have been together for so long (8 years in January) then why do we only have ornaments dating from 2008, well we never had a tree before then. We had THREE Jack Russell Terriers that liked to get into and destroy everything so we just figured it was too much of a hassle. I never realized how much I love having a Christmas  tree until we had Colt and I finally broke down and bought one. Now I put it up as early as I can but once Christmas is over, its over, so I take the tree down right away. :)

Stitches??

So today was super eventful. Jay ended up coming home around 8am. He got the day off so he was going to take me shoe shopping. I've been needing a new pair of tennis shoes for awhile now so I was very excited. Colt and I got ready to go and after I got Colt out of the bath and wrapped the towel around him BAM he slipped and fell. And of course stupid me, I had wrapped the towel under his arms and he said he was cold so i fixed it and wrapped it over his arms so he didn't have use of them. He couldn't even try to catch himself when he fell so what hit first? His chin. He split the bottom of his chin open. It was the worst feeling ever. It didn't bleed too bad but there was my baby with his chin split open and my heart just stopped and dropped to the pit of my stomach. I didn't know what to do. We finally decided that he needed to go see the doctor to make sure he didn't need stitches. Oh how glad I was that Jay was home from work when this happened, I would of been like a chicken with its head cut off had he not been here to keep me calm. He is the one that is 'in control' when everything is complete chaos. Love him. Anyways so we took Colton to the urgent care and they fixed him up and numbed it and then put on the liquid stitches stuff. He did great and didn't cry. It was pretty exhausting though. I'm glad he is okay. The doctor said he didn't break through all the layers of skin so that's good. I'm so thankful they didn't have to give him the 'real' stitches. I can't even imagine how bad that would of been!

Afterwards we stopped and got him some more breakfast and then came home. I went and did some grocery shopping and got myself some new shoes. Yea. Tomorrow I am going to my church for our special Christmas service. If you haven't already then check out the video a few posts below. The service is going to rock and I hope everyone can make it out. There are 8 showings and it is free and just a great thing to go to and take the family. I'm really stoked because my Momma is going to come with me. I've been asking her to come to church with me since I started going so I'm glad she decided to make this her first service. I hope she continues to come with me. I would really like to share this experience and journey of getting to know God with her. She does her church at home and studies every day but I want her to come to church with me, stand beside me and worship & praise God together!
Also have a couple of friends that I'm really praying for right now. One had to say goodbye to her husband as he set off to deploy for a year. The other is having to say goodbye to her baby. My heart aches for them.

Storytime with Santa

Cassie and I took the boys to our local library for Storytime with Santa this past Tuesday. It was um...fun? Colt didn't want anything to do with it. He preferred to run around the children's section and look at the books than sit in a group of kids and listen quietly. We were the parents that allowed their kids to have free roam and go in and out of the storytime room. I know the other mothers were disgusted with us but hey my kid was happy so who cares. I did get him to go sit down long enough to color a picture and steal a box of candy canes. Okay he tried to steal Santas box of candy canes....twice. I didn't let him get away with it though. See I do have morals! :) Pretty much when Santa walked in, Colton RAN out! Oh and did I mention that one of those OTHER mothers was probably pretty ticked off when she got home and looked at her pictures of her precious baby sitting on santas knee only to see me and Colt fighting over the box of candy canes in the background. Oops. Sorry.  Colton and Gabriel had fun running around the books and chasing each other and we had some great laughs so all in all it was a good day.

Santa, Lights, & Pirates...what?

Last week Jay took us to Rhema to see the Christmas lights. We got out and walked around and froze our toes. They had hot chocolate and Santa but there were so many people there and the lines were long so we skipped all that and just looked at the lights. Colton loved it and wanted to run up and touch the lights so daddy carried him most the time. My favorite part was seeing the horses and the super cute donkey! We will probably go back again closer to Christmas to get more into the spirit of the season.

I am almost finished with my Christmas shopping, I just have one thing left to buy and I know what it is just haven't found the right one yet. I've been shopping pretty much all day every day all week long. I'm exhausted! I've had fun spending time with my Mom though. Here's a few more pictures from the week.

AH HOY MATEY- I see you! 

Merry Christmas from Santa Colton