Merry Christmas To Me...

Brent made a new blog for me!!!

Starting today, if you want to keep up with our fam, please check us out on

www.minterlife.com

If you subscribe to the feed for this site, you will no longer receive anything. Please subscribe to the new blog. On the new blog, you can also subscribe to receive an email every time I post...

Well, what are you waiting for? Hurry and check it out. =) Brent did an incredible job with the site!! Feel free to leave comments telling him how fantastically gifted he is =)

I love Christmas presents!!!

Family Fun Day

We took the trip to see Santa today. It went much better than last year. Here are the kids all excited with the anticipation of sitting on Santa's lap.


Elliana wasn't so sure about this whole thing once she saw Santa up close...notice her eyes!
She put on her fake smile though when she saw the bucket of suckers next to his chair!We rewarded the smiles with some dollar hamburgers at the food court...
Then after naps, we took some dinner to friends and then drove around and looked at Christmas lights. We came home and surprised the girls by pulling out lights to put on our house. I love Avery's reaction in this picture! Christmas is such a fun time of year!

To Twitter or Not Twitter

My husband, the technology guru in this household, has tried to convince me to use twitter for a few months now. He even created an account for me...something about branding and getting my user name or something or other.

I wasn't too sold on the idea. I mean, who wants to know what I'm doing all the time. For example, if I had tweeted this morning, it would have said something along the lines of

"just pulled into the parking garage at the urologists and heard my 2 year old throw up all over the back of the car"

Followed a few minutes later by...

"as soon as the elevators closed, my 2 year old said she needed to potty really bad. No potty in site...slow elevator!"

I might have even ended with

"2 yr. old running around doctor's office in younger brother's diaper and nothing else. Extra clothes were used after the throw up incident."

Really, who wants to follow me and know all that? I'm not even sure I want to know all that.

Regardless, Brent seems to think its a fun thing so I thought I would give it a shot. Feel free to follow me or not. We'll see how well I do at this whole twitter thing.

Good Friends Are Hard To Find

My best friend from college came down a couple weeks ago. I just love her to death. We were childhood friends but then I moved away in Jr. High. We lost contact sometime in High School and then reconnected Sophomore year of college when we happened to live on the same floor in the dorm. The University of Northern Iowa is a pretty big college so I like to think God had something to do with bringing up together again =)

Hanging out with her last weekend was a breathe to my soul. Its not often you get to hang out with someone who you knew way back in grade school but still loves you anyway! Thanks Jaimee for making the trip...I'm thinking Feb. in Minneapolis??? Maybe we can convince a few other girls to ditch some kids for the weekend =)

My Spiritual Journey

Finding Joy in the Simple Things.

My theme for the holidays =)

In the midst of a weekend of pain, a trip to the ER, canceled plans, and fun but busy holiday events, I'm determined to not miss the joy the little things bring to my life. The joy of listening to my 4 yr old sing the completely wrong words to every Christmas Carol, the joy of my 2 yr. old chasing my 4 yr old saying "wait, come back, I don't even know your name" as she plays Cinderella, the joy of my 8 month old giggling everytime I crawl towards him, the joy of having a husband who drops everything to sit with me in the ER on one of his busiest days of the week, the joy of having friends who change all their plans so that they can come take care of my kids, the joy of a beautiful day where we could get sunburned, the joy of having people to love.....the list could go on, but we'll just leave it at this. The Lord has been so faithful to give me joy in the simple things of life. I'm so thankful for joy.

Goals:

• Pretty much the same. I'm still reading and re-reading the book of Daniel.
  
• Still meditating on Ezekiel 35. The image of God giving me a new heart and his Spirit has become so real and powerful. I just love that image of a new heart. Such a great visual picture for me!
• Still sitting down and going through the prayer of Examen twice a day. I've had people ask why, so here's my thinking. If you've never done the prayer of examen, you should try it. You sit down and evaluate yourself in front of God. Its a great way to keep yourself focused on how you are keeping God the center of life. I do it twice a day because I usually lose it at least once in the morning and need to be refocused and confess and then usually lose it at least once before I go to bed and so need to sit and confess again =) What can I say...kids are my refining fire!
  

Question of the Day

(Brent is getting ready to go hunting)

A: "Do deers hurt you?"

B" No."

A: "Then why would you hunt them?"

We're struggling a bit to come coming up with a good answer to satisfy a 4 yr. old. =)

More Dance

As promised, here's Aves recital.



Can you believe we have 8 Christmas obligations/events this week?!! 5 down and 3 to go. Maybe that's why my kids went stupid with the babysitter =)

I Never Thought It Would Be Our Kids

Tonight we had the kids that all babysitters dread....you know the ones who take advantage of the "nice" babysitter.

I never thought our kids would do it


Tonight they did


Wow, they are not going to like what tomorrow brings =)