My first born turned seven years old this past Thursday, July 2nd. We've been so busy that is has taken me this long to get a post up. I wish I had done it earlier and let it autopost, but oh well. If I had, then you wouldn't get to see these great birthday pictures.
We started her birthday with opening all of her family gifts. Grandpa and Granna came over to watch. Mommy and Daddy got her one of the Just Like You American Girls dolls. She was so excited. The rest of the family pooled their money and we were able to get her several outfits, a trundle bed and some accessories. She has decided to name her doll, Jessica - which means "gift" - since she was her birthday gift. Smart girl!
After opening the gifts, we took Rachel to the church for the Thurific Thursday activity. They spent three hours playing in the Family Life Center. She had a lot of fun and her friend Jessica came home with us. Jessica and Rachel share the same birthday, only Jessica is one year older. Jessica's parents are Rebekah's Sunday School teachers.
Her party started at 3:00 p.m. and we had it at the Fun Factory of Cabot. It is a Jump Zone knock off. After a rocky start and argument with the owner, we ended up having a great time. Rachel loved it and had a wonderful time with all of her friends. She received some more great gifts and ate some yummy cake. Brandy at The Littlest Cake Shop made it for us. She did a wonderful job!
Rachel, in honor of your birthday, here are seven things I love about you!
1. I love that you are now my sister in Christ since you asked Jesus into your heart.
2. I love your servant heart. You were so nice to serve all of your party guests their cake and water, even when we said you didn't have to do it.
3. I love reading to you. I love reading the American Girl books to you. I hope we can continue these special times.
4. I love to hear you laugh. Your laughter is one of the sweetest sounds I know - especially when we play the tickle game.
5. I love your kind heart. I love how you are friends with people that don't have many friends. You are sensitive to their needs and hurt when they hurt.
6. I love seeing and hearing you read. I love to read and I hoped that you would learn to love to read as much as I do. You read 51 books this past June and I am so proud of you!
7. I love watching you and Rebekah playing. You are a great big sister and I have seen you teach Rebekah so much. Keep setting a good example and I hope you and her are best friends forever.
Here are some pictures of Rachel's special day. Enjoy!
It's Friday and you know what that means! Yep, another edition of Show Us Where You Live Friday! This week is master bedrooms!! I love the master bedroom in our house and can't wait to share it with you all. Like many of the weeks before, I will link you to my previous post on this from this past November. I didn't include the master bathroom last week because it was on the same post as the bedroom. So, this week you get both the master bedroom and master bathroom. Our bathroom is so big and I love it too! So, I won't make you wait any longer....follow THIS LINK to go see our master suite! (I even show the insides of my closets - eek! They don't quite look like that now!!)
See you next week. I think the theme is garages and yards...
It's another edition of Show Us Where You Live Friday! I missed last week, so I'm going to catch up this week! Last week was bathrooms and this week is laundry, bonus and playrooms! I don't have a bonus room, but I do have all the others! And again, I have already posted these pictures, so I'm going to leave you with links to all the previous postings. Hope you enjoy the tour!
Follow THIS LINK to see my girl's bathroom. It's a jack-n-jill style in between their bedrooms.Follow THIS LINK to see Nana's bathroom. I have already shared this bathroom when I showed her bedroom - they were both on the same post. But here it is again in case you missed it!
Follow THIS LINK to see the half bathroom. It's red and I love it!!And the master bathroom? Well, those pictures are on the same post as the master bedroom. Next week we show off our master bedrooms, so I will wait until next Friday to post that link. But if you wander around some of the previous links, you will find it. :)
Follow THIS LINK to see my laundry room and our cubbie area as you come in from the garage. And now the playroom.
I just realized today that I had not posted pictures of our playroom. When I did the tour back in November, our playroom looked like this and this and this. You see those posts were posted the first of September and that room looked like that until DECEMBER! Very frustrating. The front of the house STILL isn't completely finished today!! But that's another blog post for another day. Now, onto the playroom!
Here is a photo of the door. It is immediately to the right as you come in our front door. This is a shot of it from the dining room.
This is what you see when you are looking through the doorway. It's not a very big room, like 10x10 I think. But, once we don't need a playroom, we will turn this into our office.
Another shot from the corner right behind the door. It is really nice to have a space for all of their toys!
Another view from the opposite corner of the doorway. You can see a little of our front door there in the left side of the doorway to the playroom. I took these pictures this morning and the sun comes up on this side of the house. It is always very bright in here in the mornings.
Here is a view standing in front of the large window. On our original house plan, this room didn't have a closet in it. I knew I needed the closet space, so I added two! We pushed the room out more and added these. I am so happy with that decision!!
This is the closet on the right. This is the girl's closet for all of their games and toys. I love all the shelves!
This is the closet on the left, right behind the door to this room. This is MY closet. This is where I store all of my scrapbooking stuff. I had these shelves custom measured to fit my bags and albums - and they fit like a glove!! I have a table set up right now in the dining room and some of my stuff in on it. So, everything isn't in the closet right now. Wish I wasn't so far behind on my albums!! Someday, someday I will get caught up!!
Well, there you have it. I hope you enjoyed the tour and come back next week for the master suite tour. Have a great weekend!
Today was a very special day in our family. Tonight as we were putting Rachel to bed, she told us that she wanted to get saved. We talked for a long time about what it all meant, talked about scripture and did our best to answer the questions she had. Her spirit seemed ready and I was able to lead her in her prayer to ask Jesus into her heart. Both her Daddy and I are so very proud of her and her decision to follow Jesus.
This day couldn't have been a better day. Her decision to as Jesus in to her heart made a once dark day in my life much brighter. You see, it was 27 years ago today that my Daddy went to be with Jesus. I was only eight years old. Every year on this day, I can't help but reflect on his passing and it would always make me a little sad. Over time, the sadness has lessened, but the hurt is always there. Now, this day has a whole new meaning. It is the spiritual birthday of my first born daughter. It is now a day that will always bring a smile to my face and make my heart happy. My daughter is now my sister in Christ and a child of God. I know I will live forever with her in heaven. This makes me extremely happy.
Rachel, I love you and I am so very proud of your decision. You are growing up so fast and I pray that God will use you in a mighty way. I know He has great plans for you. Always trust Him, seek Him, serve Him and love Him with all your heart.
It's Friday and you know what that means! Another Show Us Where You Live Friday. This week is Home Offices. Currently we don't have a separate room for our home office. We are using part of our breakfast area. It works great right now. Our plans are once the girls are older and we no longer need a playroom, we will convert it to our home office. But for now...this is it.
The large corner desk is my work station. I work from home part time for my best friend and their real estate business. I enjoy it a lot and like being able to contribute some to our monthly income. The smaller desk to the left of my desk is the girl's computer. They both love to play on the computer and it is nice for them to have their own - now they don't fight to use mine. However, they do fight to use theirs!! We have to set a timer and it is a great exercise in patience and taking turns.
Thanks again for stopping by on this tour and I'll see you next week!
Welcome everyone from Kelly's Korner. It's that time of the week when we get to show off where we live. This week is so exciting because I get to show you my two girls most precious rooms. OK...I may be a little biased. Anyway, back in November, I did a whole house tour since we had just built, moved in and got settled in our wonderful new home. Instead of re-doing all I did before, I am going to give you the links to the previous posts. I warn you, I have two girls...so there is a lot of pink!
Click here to be taken to my oldest, Rachel's room.
Click here to be taken to my youngest, Rebekah's room.
I hope you enjoyed this tour and I hope to see you back again next week!
Another Show Us Where You Live Friday, brought to you by Kelly's Korner. Yeah, I know this is not technically Friday. But, I have a lot to do tomorrow and I was afraid I would forget it if I didn't do it now. And I know I can set it to publish tomorrow.... :)
This week is Dining Rooms! We do have a "formal" dining room -- but it is not being used as that. Currently, it really isn't getting used much at all. We recently moved the pod chair and rug into there for lack of a better place for them. Once we got them in there, it kind of made the room a little more cozy and more of a "sitting room" feel. We have tossed around the idea of instead of spending a lot of money on a dining room table and hutch, maybe we could take that money and get a nice (slightly used) baby grand piano?? We're not seriously looking or anything - we're just not "formal" people. We're trying to think of other uses we could use the room for. I would love for my girls to take piano lessons -- and to do that, we would need a piano!! Oh well, here are the photos of the room. Enjoy - and I would love any other ideas as to what we could do!
Here is a view into the dining room from our family room. I love the red, it is called Stolen Kiss from Sherwin Williams.
Here is a shot from the far wall of the dining room looking back at the entryway into our house.
And a shot from one of the corners, looking at the other corner. You can see part of each of the archways that lead into/out of the dining room. Ignore the fan and the rug, this photo was actually taken this past fall for this post. At that time, the dining room was temporarily my girl's playroom.
And here is a shot from the window, looking into the family room. Yeah, this photo was from last fall too. You can tell since the couch isn't under the far window like in my post on family rooms.
In addition to my red walls, I love my chandelier. My husband doesn't so much because he has rammed his head into it many times. He is ready to raise it up some since we don't have much of anything in there right now.
There you have it! I hope you enjoyed this week's tour and I hope to see you back next week. Have a great Memorial Day Weekend and be safe!
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