Everyday moments

Rain is pretty rare around these parts so the kids were really excited this morning to wake up to gray skies and about 2 minutes of rain. They ran to put on their raincoats and stood outside with their faces to the sky. They loved it!

Nothing exciting has been happening around here. Just the same old thing. Here are a few pictures from this past week.

This is me after doing my Barry's Boot Camp DVD. He really kicks my booty!!

These are the kids still going strong. They love to do the workout with me and I usually have to rewind it for them because they like to do it without me in the way.

We love to have a stash of pizzelle's in the pantry so we make them about every 2 weeks. The girls love playing with the dough and making a mess :-)

Marina is very serious when it comes to baking.

I just love to look at their little hands at work

And these little piggies are the cutest!

Michaela usually eats whatever she plays with.

Here's my little elephant. It's a towel with an elephant head on it and Michaela loves to wear it around the house.

This is how Michaela eats pizza! I turned around for a minute and I here her saying "look mommy, I got make up"

She is such a ham!

As you probably noticed, she does not like clothes! I do dress her in the morning but by lunch she is in her diaper. It's a good thing we live in Arizona!

They sure do keep me busy, especially the little one! I'm always cleaning up some kind of mess that she has made. If I'm not paying attention to her for one minute she finds something to destroy! Oh well, she's a stinker but I love her. She keeps our days exciting around here.

I hope you all have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend! I'm not sure what we're doing yet but I'm sure you'll here all about it next week ;-)

I gotta go, I'm making a few meals for our dear friends from church who just had a beautiful baby girl this past Wednesday. I hope to visit her today and maybe I can post a few pics for you to see!

Love ya,

Marilena

With Hope

I'm sure many of you have heard about the terrible tragedy that has struck Steven Curtis Chapman's family. His 5 yo daughter Maria was killed yesterday when her teenage brother hit her with the family's SUV while he was pulling into their driveway! He didn't see her and the accident was witnessed by some other family members. I can't even imagine the pain that they are going through. My heart is breaking for them. I read that they had just celebrated their oldest daughters engagement and they were only a few hours away from their son Caleb's graduation party. The media is not releasing the son's name who was driving the car, which is totally understandable. That poor boy has to go through the rest of his life knowing that he killed his sister! Let's all pray for him especially, I can't imagine how he is feeling. If you go to Steven's website you can watch a cute video of Maria and you can leave a comment if you want. Steven's songs have blessed and helped so many people through hard times in their life and I know that his family will be carried through this by the prayer's of the thousands of beleivers who are lifting them up to our Father in heaven. I know the song 'With Hope' especially helped our own family through losing our neice Francesca. He probably never thought that song would be for him one day...

"We can cry with hope

We can say goodbye with hope

cause we know our goodbye is not the end, no

and we can grieve with hope

cause we believe with hope

There's a place, by God's grace

There's a place where we'll see your face again

We'll see your face again."

God did not promise us a life without pain but he did promise to never leave us or forsake us. He loves us and grieves along with his children. His heart breaks to see us being affected by the sin in this world. We live in a broken world and it will not be without pain until we are with our Lord in Eternity!

" Father in heaven, we lift up the Curtis family during this terrible tragedy. We know that you knew the number of days Maria would be on this earth and she lived 100% of her life, but it is hard for us to understand why things like this happen. We know that you are weeping with them and you will hold them during this time. Please help them to feel our prayers and to know that they will live again. We especially want to pray for the brother who was driving the car, he must be in inconceivable pain right now. Please whisper in his ear and let him know that he is forgiven and help him to be able to one day remember Maria without the guilt of what happened. They all have a long road ahead of them and we just pray that they will look to you for strength. We pray all of these things in our precious Lord and Saviour's name Jesus Christ. Amen"

Steven Curtis Chapman's website is www.stevencurtischapman.com

Deception

Hi Everyone,

Julio and I went to see the movie "Expelled-No Intelligence allowed" last night with our neighbors. We thought it was very well done and I recommend that all of you see it. It amazes me to hear those scientists talk about how anyone who believes in God is an idiot and that Evolution is a proven fact. The best part of the movie to me was when Ben Stein interviewed the author of "The God Delusion", I think his name is Dawkins, Ben was asking him what his thoughts were on where the first cell came from. Dawkins kept answering with "I don't know" or "nobody knows" but finally he talked about a theory that life was actually seeded on the earth by some intelligent beings! ALIENS!! It was so amazing to me that these super smart scientists thought that aliens are more believable than God. It was really sad. This is one of the reasons why I am so glad to be homeschooling. I want to present my kids with both sides of the argument so they can make their own decisions, I don't want them to be brainwashed into thinking that whatever the teacher or the textbook says is fact. It's Not!! I want my kids to be able to ask any question they want and be able to research it and come to a conclusion based on the EVIDENCE not all of these theories that are not proven.

At the end of the movie, Ben asked Dawkins "When you die, if you come face to face with God, what will you say to him?" and Dawkins responded that he might say something like "Sir, why did you take such pains to hide yourself?"

God does not hide himself from his creation. His creation is just blinded by the deception of this world!

Marilena

Metamorphisis

Today we released our butterflies. We got them as little caterpillars about a month ago. The kids and I really enjoyed watching them grow from tiny caterpillars to big fat ones and then we watched them form their chrysalis' and finally last Friday they emerged and were beautiful butterflies. We had 3 and their names are Flutter, Ashley and Lazarus. Julio named the last one Lazarus because when he came out we thought he was dead but the next day he was alive! He must have had some problems in his chrysalis because his wings were deformed and never fully opened up. The poor thing could walk around but it couldn't fly. We put some sugar water on a paper towel and put it on the floor of the house so he could crawl up to it and drink. I didn't know what to do. My neighbor Kim wouldn't let me put it out of it's misery so we put it in a little bug house with some food to let nature take it's course. Well, after we let his brother and sister go he only lasted a couple of hours. Marina was sad and she carried the bug house around for a while even after he died. She got over it pretty quick though. Anyways, it was a really cool learning experience for the kids and I'm glad we did it. It is just amazing to watch those ugly little creatures change before our eyes into such beautiful butterflies. It makes me think of how we will be changed in a twinkling of an eye when we get to heaven and we will no longer be burdened with this ugly sin nature and will be transformed into beautiful beings to worship our Lord for eternity!!

What an AWESOME GOD we serve!

Marilena


These are the caterpillars after about 2 weeks.

This is when they formed their chrysalis'. Lazarus' chrysalis' was on the floor of the house and I didn't think he was going to emerge.

This is Flutter.

This is Lazarus in his house.

This is Lazarus. He is alive in this picture and you can see that his wings are all curled up.

This is when we opened up the house and were watching Flutter and Ashley fly away.

This is all three of them in their house. Lazurus is on the right.

Flutter and Ashley.

Our neighbors Braden and Jacob came to help us

let the butterflies go.

Happy Mother's Day!

What a great day! I hope you all had as good of a mother's day as I did.

We started off the day at church and then we went out to lunch at the Macaroni Grill. The kids love it there because they get to draw all over the paper tablecloths. We had a lot of fun and we ate way too much. When we got home I actually got to take a nap, yah! When I woke up I heard the kids playing with their Dad outside. I took a peek and they were jumping on the trampoline while he sprayed them with the hose. They were having a blast so I decided to go out and get a pedicure. It was so nice and relaxing. Later on in the evening we all cuddled up on the couch to watch a movie. I rented 'Alvin and the Chipmunks', and the kids were so excited. The only thing that was missing from my day was not being able to see my own mom or mom in law, but overall it was a great day. I love being a mom! It is the hardest, but most rewarding job in the world and it sure did feel nice to get a day like today to really feel appreciated.

I am blessed,

Marilena

These pictures go with the blog entry below. Sorry I'm new to this blogging thing!

Miracle of the moment

Hi Everyone,

Welcome to my blog!! I'm glad you stopped by for a visit. I really miss you all back home and I'm looking forward to sharing all of the little things that happen in our family with you.

We had a great day. Little Julio had a pine derby race with this boys club that he is in. It's called Contenders for the Faith and it's sort of like boy scouts, but along with learning all of the "manly"things that every boy should know they also learn Godly character traits and have to memorize bible verses. It's a really neat program. All of the boys that are in his club are homeschoolers and they meet at our neighbors house every other Friday. The Dads teach the classes and they built their own pine derby race cars for their woodworking lesson. So tonight was the race. The boys had a race and then the Dads raced their own cars. My guys didn't do so hot but they had fun. Afterwards, the kids were given all of their pins that they earned for the year. Julio was very excited that he earned 7 pins. I am so proud of my little man!

On the way home we decided to go to this park near our house. There was a band playing there and it was such a perfect night that we just didn't want to go home. So we picked up some fast food, laid our blanket on the grass and had a wonderful time. The kids were hilarious. The band was playing country music and Julio, Marina and Michaela danced the night away. They didn't care who was watching them. Usually Julio is a little reserved, but not tonight! He was doing some moves that we never saw him do before and wouldn't you know it the batteries in my camera ran out just as they started getting really into it. I did get a few shots and I'll try to post them for you to see.

So, needless to say, we had a beautiful day. The Lord has blessed me with 3 awesome kids and a wonderful husband. I am truly greatful for all he has given me and I want to make sure that I take in every moment because I know that each one is a miracle. That's why I named this blog "Miracle of the Moment." My babies are growing up so fast and I don't want to miss a thing!

Marilena