Danny found Grace a princess bicycle last summer at a garage sale...the lady having the garage sale, upon seeing Grace's excitement over her new "wheels", knocked the price down from $5 to $2. A steal! Just needed a bit of cleaning up, some WD40, new training wheels, and a little TLC, and Grace would be the envy of the neighborhood. It took close to an hour to get it in working order (good thing Daddy knows about bicycles), then Grace donned her Princess helmet (a girl's gotta match of course) and proceeded to take her first spin around the driveway. It was a short spin. Lasting all of about 5 seconds...long enough for her to throw her leg over the bike, sit her little bootie on the seat and then promptly fall off. Luckily...I had my camera ready when the "accident" happened and I was able to document the drama.

No amount of convincing could get her BACK on the bike--as you can see from the picture below--Daddy tried to show her how FUN riding bicycles can be and that "look even Daddy can ride it"...but she insisted upon going inside for a popsicle. Leaving a grown man, riding a VERY small bicycle....This was last summer...2008...the remainder of the warm days were spent riding her quite study little red tricycle.

Flash forward to 2009...about a month past her fourth birthday and MUCH more mature and grown-up . We had a run of unseasonably warm weather and spent most of our days (except for naptime) outside. On one of these sunny mornings, Grace asked me to "please put on my helmet"--then she wheeled her princess bike out of the garage, threw her leg over the seat, and pedeled off saying something like "I'm bigger now...see my legs are long...I can ride my bicycle"

SHE put this outfit together...There is NO way I could even stomach that much pink...

It's amazing to see them grow...empowering and bittersweet all in the same moment. She is quite a character and each day with her is an adventure. I love you liddle bike riding diva...xoxo, Momma

God is funny...

I often get "caught up" in life and fail to see the humor that God presents to me...just to make me smile...I am quite convinced He loves to see me smile. Of course, I am continually reminded that God has a wonderful sense of humor...He reveals this to me EVERY stinkin' day through my children. They are beautifully crafted, perfectly made...He really did a nice job with them...they are joyful and curious creatures, sometimes they are naughty--very naughty and SOMEtimes even this is funny (see previous blog re. Grace turning Sam into a "spaceman")...but the BEST part about both of my children is the humorous way they go through life...I would be silly not to credit it back to God, I am certain He had quite an adventure creating them. But sometimes God chooses to tickle my funny bone in what I consider to be serious adult matters and He makes it glaringly obvious that His hand is at work in the unnecessary worry of life. Earl and I have recently started the Dave Ramsey course called "Financial Peace University"...it is a very intense course that teaches people how to manage their money and "dump" debt. Now, even the WORD "budget" makes me twitch--you know the tiny muscle at the corner of your eye?? Yeah, it makes THAT muscle twitch...makes me worried and uneasy and FREAKED out...But Dave says that couples MUST have a "budget committee meeting"...they MUST communicate, must be "on the same page" about money. Sooooo we did it. We just sat down and tackled the most intense budget we have EVER taken on in our 7 years of marriage. The first thing, the VERY first thing we did was to pray...we asked God to move in our lives, to guide our decisions and help us to manage our money so that we might further His kingdom. It took us a little over 2 hours (the budget, not the prayer)...I think we broke the calculator. We crunched numbers, we double checked, triple checked EVERYTHING. It was SERIOUS eye-twitching business... As we started to finish up and finalize our numbers, we came up with an extra $20 on one form...what???!! (there are TWO forms...one that is more general and another that is VEEEEERY detailed) Where did THAT come from...why do our forms not MATCH?? $20 is a LOT of money...you can do a lot with $20...WHERE DID IT COME FROM??? WHERE?? $20 times 12 months is...wait, give me a second...$240!!! So we scrutinized the pages (yes, I said "pages") of our newly formed budget...we poured over them...we added up the numbers again and again and STILL...$20...but from WHERE??? Then we found it...It was the VERY first thing we had written down, over 2 hours before--our promise to give to the Lord, right there...under the "giving" section. We had written a total that was $20 MORE than we had promised to the church earlier in the year....somehow it got lost in translation from one form to another. God is funny...He was right there...in the middle of this most "serious" meeting. And He was REMINDING us WHO exactly was in control as well as appealing to my need for a bit of humor in the midst of it all. Just to reassure you--we are currently "even" now...the budget is right on and everything adds up....and we're STILL married (happily I might add)...whew.
I AM...funny, loving, involved in all the little eye-twitching details of your life...I AM...