a few more pictures from our outing

Pumpkin Patch

Well the past week went by pretty well. Eli is "counting" to ten in his own fashion. He has been doing this awhile, but the past few days he does it a lot during the day. It's pretty cute. Yesterday afternoon we went to the pumpkin patch where we were suppose to meet our friends but they ended up coming a little while after and we missed them! We hated that we didn't get to spend the afternoon with them, but we ended up capturing a few family moments and taking with us a pretty large, expensive pumpkin (Chris underestimates his strength and ability to correctly guess the weight of pumpkins you purchase per pound..ha...I love you and thank you for going!). So, that's where these pictures come in.
It was fun afternoon though and there were some animals there that Eli adored. He could have stayed there with the baby cow all day I think. He spent most of his time in the pumpkin patch counting the pumpkins over and over. It is always fun to see him react to new things.
The Lord has been showing me a lot about His timing, which again is so hard for me. We are blessed that Eli is on such a good schedule, and I have become a planner in my own right which I did not use to be. So, now I struggle with things being on the timetable I see is right and the timetable that the Lord has ordained. This has been a continual prayer for me in regards of just trusting His faithfulness and plans. Everything will work out better if our hearts understand that it's not up to us it's totally up to Him.
So, I am going to sign off with those thoughts today. Hope you are able to catch a glimpse of His greatness this day!

Past few weeks

We have had a fairly uneventful past few weeks. No sickness which again I praise the Lord for. Eli is getting bigger by the day it seems and is still addicted to putting together puzzles, taking walks, and looking through books. Those are probably his three favorite things to do at this point. We are attempting to make him eat what we are eating for dinner each night which isn't working well, but we have decided that he has to eat "big boy" vegetables and food in order to be a "big boy". I'll update on this later, but the past two nights he has not eaten dinner, and devoured his snack early. I'll update on this experiment soon though. Overall though he is doing well and becoming more independent by the day. A constant prayer for us is to have wisdom in dealing with new challenges as we walk this road for the first time.
The girls in our small group have been doing a Beth Moore study called the Psalms of Ascent. This has been a beautiful study and I have been challenged in incredible ways to look at God in a bigger way. The lesson that spoke to me the most over the past week...if I could pick just one is the idea that so often we praise the Lord when things are going well, yet don't consult Him about the things that are going on. We praise Him for the blessings instead of praising God Himself. Often we see the blessings of God as God rather than seeing Him in the fullness of Himself. Sure blessings are incredible but that is not all God is about...not even close. How would we praise God in a situation that He asks us to walk that is tougher than anything humanly possible? We have to think of Jesus as more than a giver of blessings, because walking with Jesus is not at all suppose to be easy. There will be hard times on the journey, but the incredible thing to remember is that Jesus is still right there. I always say He is so much bigger than the box we put Him in.
So my prayer is that the Lord will take us down hard paths that require a faith that is so grounded in Him that we will say "He is all we need." I pray that we can live in a way that He would allow us to see Him in both the good and bad times. I pray that at the end of every day we can stop and realize that He has a magnificent plan and we are part of a beautiful yet complex story that involves us just walking the narrow path to HIm while giving Him glory for every step.