I love coffee.

I remember trying to learn how to brew a proper cup of coffee in college.  Without much luck.  I pretty much just liked the smell of coffee back then, but not really the taste.  I can remember brewing pot after pot and at the end of the day tossing almost the whole thing.  But then the next day I was right back there brewing my next pot.

Fast forward to today.  The invention of the Keurig coffee maker has been very good for me. I now can pop my little coffee pod in and brew only one or two cups of coffee and not have to toss the rest of the pot.  Yeah!  Plus I’ve been able to try out different roasts and blends.

The other day I tried a new flavor:  

It’s delicious.  Soooooo good.  But here’s the interesting part.  This tastes exactly what my mind thinks Hazelnut should taste like.  So when I get Hazelnut, I’m disappointed!  But when I drink this I can’t taste caramel and vanilla.  Isn’t that strange?

Either way, I love this flavor.  So, it’s a win.

We had an eventful weekend which included a trip to Urgent Care with Josiah for his trouble breathing.   We were pretty sure it was just croup but it came on SUPER fast and furious.  His breathing was very restricted and I know croup is characteristically worse at night, so we decided to take him in on Saturday afternoon so we weren’t up in the middle of the night making the same trip to the ER.  The doctor confirmed it was croup–nothing terribly serious–but was able to prescribe a steroid to help open his airway.

All of that to say that we laid low on Sunday letting the medicine do its thing.  Jen came over and we watched a movie that she had rented and watched the previous night with Kailynn:  Miracles from Heaven.

Have you seen it?

It’s so good.  If you haven’t seen it, here’s the synopsis (from IMDB):

Anna Beam (Kylie Rogers) lives with a rare, incurable disorder that leaves her unable to digest food. Despite the dire diagnosis, devoted mom Christy (Jennifer Garner) relentlessly searches for a way to save her beloved daughter. Everything changes in an instant when Anna tells an amazing story of a visit to heaven after surviving a headlong tumble into a tree. Her family and doctors become even more baffled when the young girl begins to show signs of recovering from her fatal condition.

It’s based on a true story, which makes it so much more impactul for me. There are real discussions about faith and heaven and religion.  And I’ll be honest–I cried.  A lot.   A. Lot.

There was a part of the movie that struck me.  The mother was talking with the pastor and he said:

Let me tell you, at the lowest points of my life I’ve tried it both ways: doing everything I can to connect to God, or walking away. And in my experience, one feels a whole lot better than the other.

It reminds me of the unexplainable peace that we can have in Jesus.  Peace beyond our understanding.  I can’t imagine my life without the security of having my faith.  And although I go through my questions and doubts, I always come back.  My heart aches for those who don’t have Hope, or those those turning away.

It reminds me of the verse we are currently memorizing as a family:  Isaiah 40:28

Do you not know?
    Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
    the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
    and his understanding no one can fathom.

We had a long discussion at supper about what that means–“his understanding no one can fathom.”  We cannot fathom the mind of God.  And while we as humans hold memories of the past and hurts that have cut us deeply, God forgives and forgets.  FORGETS.  Seriously.  Try and fathom that!

Ah, that sweet smile.

His contagious belly laugh.

His growing vocabulary.

How he wraps all 5 of his fingers around my one as we walk places.

They way he says, “Mama, where are you?” when he wakes up from his naps.

These are all things I love about our sweet Levi.  Sometimes I need to take a moment and remind myself of the charming characteristics he has.  Especially on days that he is pushing the “Terrible 2’s” to the limit.

Like this past week.

He started screaming when we would put him down for his naps.  Not an “I’m hurt” scream, but rather an “I am angry and will scream at you until you get me up” scream.  An ear piercing, nail-on-chalkboard scream, that cuts to my very soul–igniting my anger.  Sigh.  Yes.  That scream.  And that boy has will-power made of steel.  One day he screamed for almost 2 hours before he finally gave up.  TWO HOURS!  And before you get all worried and sad for him and think I’m a terrible parent for letting him scream that long–yes, I did check on him.  When I would walk in the door he would stop.  He’d start talking to me and playing.  Then as soon as I would turn my back to him or put my hand on the doorknob, he would inhale and resume the screaming.  See?  Just a plain temper tantrum.

I’m not a fan of this stage.

We’ve gone through our arsenal of  disciplining tactics–to no avail.  And by the 4th child we have quite a lot of these tactics!  But with God’s grace and a lot of prayer and a lot of coffee we will prevail!  I will say that by Friday he was getting better.  Not done totally, but it does help that he’s started to lose his voice (from all that adorable screaming, ha!).  I’m hopeful that we’re rounding the corner here.

If you think of it, say a prayer for him.  And for me.  🙂

The other day I was helping in nursery and I had these 3 amigos in class together.  They are all the same age (just turned 3 this summer!) with their birthdays only about 1.5 months apart.  They have so much personality between the 3 of them–it’s so much fun.

Chloe used some of her Birthday money to buy some new clothes for school.  This was one of the fun shirts that she bought.  Isn’t it so cute!?

She is finally able to start switching out her earrings which has been a HUGE deal.  Be prepared to see a lot of crazy stud earrings the next time you see her.  She’s been collecting some cute animals ones that are fun.

This girl is growing up and totally LOVING it.  🙂

I made Jennifer a huge chocolate cake for her Birthday.  I was excited because I was going to use the new (to me) set of stacking cake pans.  It turned out much larger than I expected (2 boxes of cake mix and 4 cans of frosting later) but was so much fun.

Here I am showing off the cake…

And then here is Jen getting the cake on her birthday…

And you probably already noticed that you’ve seen this cake before in another picture…. Yup!  We simply turned the cake and let Levi share in the same cake!  See?  The cake really kept on giving!

(If you look closely, you can see how the back of the cake was eaten the day before!  haha! )

I will say that after we got this Tigger one on, we had a REALLY hard time getting her back out of it. It’s a good thing we took a picture because I told her we can’t put that one back on again!

Can we just take a moment and appreciate how gorgeous and curly her hair is here?  Sigh.  So lovely.  She had just been playing in the water outside…

We had our floor sanded and re-stained this summer.  They are gorgeous.

I didn’t know I would like it so much.  But now that they are done, I just love the new color.  It really helps break up the sea of yellow that we had going (yellow floors, yellow cabinets, yellow stools and yellow trim.  Although I think the real color would be called oak not yellow.  hehe..)

We also asked a friend of our to help swap out our yellow oak trim and start the process of changing it to white.  It will take a while to get the whole house done, but he helped this past month and we have he has done the whole main floor done. It looks so nice and crisp–another thing I didn’t know I would love as much as I do!  He even replaced the window sills which helps make the rooms so much brighter.

And I especially love it in my studio next to the piano.  Soooo pretty…

And how it pops against the darker floors now…

And as an added bonus this process has forced me to dust and clean areas of the house I haven’t touched since we moved in.  I mean, I wasn’t as keen on that as it was happening… extra work for me!… but now that it’s done I can say it was worth it.  Yippie!

Levi turned 2 last week (on the 13th).  He really wasn’t aware that it was his Birthday, so we didn’t do much.  Although we did let him open a couple of gifts and we sang to him.  Actually, the singing part was super cute, because he sang along with us the whole time and then after we stopped singing he kept holding the last note for a really long time.  He thought it was super funny.  (And so did we!)

He had his well child checkup as well and is perfectly healthy and normal.  I’ve pulled up the stats of all the other kids at 2 and for your comparison enjoyment, here they are:

We were walking through Target the other day and he saw this Mario stuffed toy and thought it was so fun.  He kept saying “Mario!” so I let him hold it for a little bit.  I love how he’s hugging it.  I also love how it’s almost as big as him.