A small sorry to all my blog followers!

Mother Goose Birthday Party at the Park Today. The kids really enjoyed being outside, playing with their friends, spending time with Mimi and Poppy, watching the ducks and turtles in the pond, eating hotdogs, chips, cake and listening to fun nursery rhymes from the Mother Goosse.

The sun is shining and our bellies are feeling better!
Horray!

Well, its been almost two weeks since I've last blogged and partly due to laziness and the other part due to having the whole family being hit with the inevitably horrible stomach virus. It has taken more than enough time for all of us to get back on our feet and actually feel like doing something. You know I'm not 100% when I only log 4 miles in my running journal over a ten day period. I did for the record run a short and slow 3 miler on Friday and felt pretty good. Better get myself juiced up quick because that Broad Street Run is only 4 short weeks away.

"My poor little pale baby"

This is a picture of Samara sitting at the kitchen table in her car seat. What a character. She has been refusing to sit in her own seat for any meal lately and I had to wash her car seat from when she was sick so she wanted to sit in it for her breakfast the other day. Today for the first time we buckled down got out her booster chair again and made her eat her entire dinner sitting in her own seat. Mission Accomplished. Hopefully it lasts. Don and I haven't had a meal with out her on our laps in days.
On another note, since our stomach flu hit we were blessed to have the help of Don's mom here for the entire time. Somehow she escaped getting it. I felt really bad because Gramma was excited to have a busy weekend in store with Egg Hunts and Birthday Parties, etc.... but none of that happened. All we got was a really sick family with a great big pile of laundry. We did manage to have a nice dinner one night before I got sick. I should have known that Don and I couldn't escape two viruses in one season with out getting this one. Gramma was happy to have been here to help with the kids while Don and I recouped and we promise that the next visit will be more exciting. Now all the laundry is done and the house is back in order just in time for Easter.

Egg Hunt #1
Freezing
Windy
Quick
Cold
Winter Jackets
Locke Ave Park
Moms' Club

Egg Hunt #2
Sunny
Exciting
Beautiful
Mandy's House
High School Gang
Wow...we need to stop having kids

Dying Easter Eggs
Connor and Samara really seemed excited to get into it. I put everything out on the table and they both layed their heads down like they were ready for bed! Once we got going they had a blast. The tub was blue after their bath. I thought it was pretty cool that the newspaper I layed down had a big picture of the Resurrection of Jesus on the front page. Just a coincidence. God is always with us!

My parents are here so it will be exciting to spend Easter all together. It's been years since we have all been together on Easter and we are spending it at my Uncle's house so it should be a great time. This past week we had two Easter Egg hunts, A birthday Party, Book Club for Mommy, Dying Easter Eggs and tons of coupon clipping to get caught up on my last two weeks. I even had to gather all my coupons and receipts and head over to Acme to collect my money that Don spent on very expensive groceries. I got over half the grocery bill back! Couponing definitely pays off and thanks to Acme for having the best customer service. No questions asked they just clicked away on my bundle of coupons and gave me the cash, didn't even look at my receipt. Even though I did buy everything I had a coupon for.

The biggest milestone of the week is that Mara learned for the first time how to blow Bubbles...Yeah, Yippee, Horray... for Samara! I can't believe how fast she is growing up. So for the past few days we have been through a lot of bubbles. Bubbles spilled on the ground, on our clothes, in our hair and even in our mouths.
Just had to sneak in a picture of the beautiful flowers that Connor and Pop Pop have been picking for Mommy each week from the woods in the backyard! They just scream EASTER!

I also want to throw in a quick post about the MOPS talk on Thursday because it really meant a lot to me and I know realize that I use the words " I'm sorry" far more than they really should be used. The talk was all about "Forgiveness" and since Good Friday was coming up they wanted to talk to us about ways to get your kids to understand Forgiveness and for the parents to understand it as well. Jesus suffered and died on the cross to forgive us from our sins just like he wants us to forgive one another for all the sins we commit everyday. Simple accidents like spilled milk are okay for an "I'm sorry, Mommy", but hitting or talking back or yelling are things that we need to ask for forgiveness from. We should teach our kids to ask for forgiveness more often from acts on one another. God gave us our hands for holding one another, touching, feeling and loving and not for hitting. So we must take the extra step to teach our children what our hands are for and when they use them wrong they should say for example, "Samara, I'm sorry for hitting you, Do you forgive me for doing that to you?" Even we as parents should say to our kids, "I'm sorry for raising my voice at you and losing my temper, Mommy loves you so much. Can you please forgive me for losing my patience this morning"

It is not uncommon for Christians to have questions about forgiveness. Forgiveness does not come easy for most of us. Our natural instinct is to recoil in self-protection when we've been injured. We don't naturally overflow with mercy, grace and forgiveness when we've been wronged.

Is forgiveness a conscious choice, a physical act involving the will, or is it a feeling, an emotional state of being? The Bible offers insight and answers to these and many more common questions about forgiveness. We'll take a look at the most common questions and find out what the Bible says about forgiveness.

Is forgiveness a conscious choice, or an emotional state?

I believe forgiveness is a choice we make through a decision of our will, motivated by obedience to God and his command to forgive.

The Bible instructs us to forgive as the Lord forgave us:

Colossians 3:13
Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.(NIV)

How do we forgive when we don't feel like it? How do we translate the decision to forgive into a change of heart?

We forgive by faith, out of obedience. Since forgiveness goes against our nature, we must forgive by faith, whether we feel like it or not. We must trust God to do the work in us that needs to be done so that the forgiveness will be complete.

I believe God honors our commitment to obey Him and our desire to please him when we choose to forgive. He completes the work in his time. We must continue to forgive (our job), by faith, until the work of forgiveness (the Lord's job), is done in our hearts.