First steps...

Good Evening Family and friends,

Eli has decided to follow in his sisters foot steps and walk before his first birthday! He is all over the place tonight! Over the past week or so he has been taking 2-3 steps and falling and tonight he has figured out that if he pauses he can walk across our living room! Wow...at 10 months old he is now OFFICIALLY mobile! Watch out world, here he comes!!

If you wanna see cuteness, please proceed! :)

Today I decided that 1 year without having an actual portrait taken was silly!! So I took my babies over to Portrait Innovations in Mount Pleasant to have some pictures taken! Elijah has NEVER been photographed in a studio! Miss Sally has always blessed us with on location photo shoots!! :) So Elijah was a little unsure about the whole idea...maybe by the time he has his 1 year old pictures taken he will be a little more smiley! The poor photographer really had to work to get what she did today! This was also taking care of Rylie's 3 year old pictures too! :) She was a HAM!! She kept doing all of these crazy smiles that were cute but not nice looking! LOL

Hope you enjoyed the cuteness!! Have a blessed evening!!

~*~ Love, God~*~

On an earlier post I mentioned I would share the definition of love as given by the family pastor at our church.The Marriage Foundations class is the perfect place to share it! A room full of couples who either want to experience real love with their mate and God or who want to be reminded of how to show that love and be able to receive that love from each other and God. So since now is the first time I have been cohering enough to think since my surgery, here it goes.....

"LOVE: Love is the opening of yourself and bringing someone else into your world for their benefit."

One example of this is from the Almighty, Father God. John 3:16 is a PERFECT example of this.

God so LOVED us that he (opened himself and brought us in through his son Jesus)that he gave His one and only son(for our benefit) so we would not die but have ETERNAL life with HIM! WOW!! If this is How God expects us to love someone I don't know about you, but I know I have a little bit of work to do in the area of loving people.

So my goal for the next 10 weeks is to work on showing this kind of love to my husband and all others I claim to love! Obviously this is not something you would only do for 10 weeks. But to acknowledge that God loves you this way and calls us to love others this way makes me want to learn more about it! It makes me want to share more about it!

Have a blessed day!

Elijah {10 months}

On September 3rd my little man turned 10 months old! Its hard to believe that 10 months has already gone by and in 2 short months he will be 1. My sweet boy has grown so much! In the past month Eli has accomplished some really fun stuff! Check out what this little man can do now...

Eli has accomplished standing on his own:

When Eli found this walking toy he figured out that if he stood up and held onto it he could walk with it too:

When we tell Eli to "cheese" this is the face he makes(and yes we have teeth now...3 of them and we are still working on 3 more) :)

He LOVES to play ball now. It is so cute! He gets so excited and moves his arms and legs so fast up and down!

And last but not least.....Daddy taught Eli and Rylie how to play the DRUMS!!! So we have a regular praise and worship band playing in our house! Its really entertaining as long as you have no phone calls to make or napping to do! :)

In 2 short months our baby Eli will be one year old! Since I am an uber planner I have already started planning Elijah's first Birthday party...it's gonna be "Dog-Gone Cute"!! (hint , hint. Can you tell what the theme is gonna be?? Be sure to check back and see as I will be posting posts on making the decorations and invites all on my own!! )

Also, Kevin and I have started volunteering in the marriage ministry at our church. It is a FABULOUS ministry and has saved many marriages from divorce and also brought many other couples closer to each other and GOD!! Last night we had a great first class and the Pastor in charge of this ministry gave a definition of LOVE. It ALWAYS reminds me that if I really LOVE someone this is how I SHOULD do it. Just a side note though...its not a biblical definition from 1 Corinthians 13 ;) or a Websters definition. Check in here in a few days to see what it was!! I'm excited to share! :)

Have a blessed week!