Sisters

Here’s another picture of the girls in the cul-de-sac. Can I tell you how much I love living in a cul-de-sac?! Such a blessing.

Here’s our backyard. Yep. The retaining wall is as far back as it goes, since we can’t really play on the steep hill. And this is our make-shift sandbox, since we don’t have our swing set with the sandbox under it or our free-standing ladybug sandbox. Laney LOVES playing in the sand. This small patio gets tons of use.

Our property actually goes up to the top of the hill. This is a huge adjustment for us, since we came from a very big backyard. But I was so elated that it only took Hugh 20 minutes to mow the grass! Yes! I’ll take that anyday. We have a small space to the left of our house where we hope to put a swing set. Unfortunately, our swing set didn’t fit on our moving truck. It’s presently at Matt’s house (Hugh’s brother) back in Wake Forest, NC, and I’m still trying to figure out how we can get it down here without paying hundreds of dollars. We really miss our swing set. 

Here’s part of the backyard too. See where the really pretty green grass is? 

Well, that’s not our yard. (snickering) We hope that in time it’ll be green. We have the small triangle patch, but I am SO thankful for our small patch. It will be just great for our family. 

Laney and Mattie at the playground. Mattie seems a bit uneasy about sitting on the space shuttle alone.

I don’t think Mattie wanted to sit on the spaceship.

Nope, she didn’t. Laney put  her arm around Mattie to comfort her.

The purpose of our blog is not to put only the nicest pictures and stories up, although we do love to share those, but we hope that our every day life, including our struggles AND our joys, are apparent, so we can share REAL life with you.  We always want to live transparently before you, and it’s so good for my heart to live that way, as well. I also plan to publish everything from our blog into a bound book, so as to cherish and remember every. single. moment. This is my main avenue for journaling now.  This Mama can’t hardly remember anything anymore! With that said...

At this stage, with Laney a little over 3.5 years old (four months until her b-day) and Mattie a little under two weeks until she is one year old, we are knee deep in some serious sibling training.  Mattie loves Laney to pieces, but we are working with Laney on being gentle with Mattie, being okay with the fact that Mattie wants to be a part of Laney’s projects (aka: destroy her train tracks, doll house, tower, etc), and when Laney loves on Mattie, that she doesn’t hug (squeeze) her too tightly.  Laney never really showed any rivalry, jealousy, frustration or aggression whatsoever towards Mattie at all for the first 9 months.... until we started moving. Ever since we moved, our daily lives changed, and we had lots of changes in our family. We were packing constantly, sold our house, moved from one place to the next, our daily schedule turned into mayhem for a while...and somewhere within that mix, a little rivalry began. And she is three years old, which to me is one of the more challenging, yet the most joyful ages in a chid’s life.   Laney loves Mattie to her core and when they giggle and laugh at each other or chase after something together down the hall giggling like crazy, it makes my heart skip a beat. When Mattie laughs at Laney, that only encourages the game of making Mattie laugh more. :) I love it!  So precious.  One of the many prayers for my children is that they would love their “neighbors” better than themselves, starting with our family being our closest neighbor.  This is most definitely for my heart as well. I have to work on my selfish heart to be obedient to what the Lord asks of us multiple times throughout the Word (Mark 12:28-31, John 13:34-35 and in Deuteronomy).  

I’m just so happy that we are in our HOME now and have no plans of moving anytime soon.  For those of you who have older children or are a few steps ahead of us, we’d love to hear how you used the Word to train your children’s hearts in said matters, for we know and firmly believe that  "All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.” 2 Timothy 3:16. Amen and Amen!  :)