Oh, when things don't go as planned

So, want to know something crazy? Here it is, we were to be moving our entire lives tomorrow to Oklahoma City! I haven't written about this yet because I've been too emotional about the whole situation. But here I write to add this "event" to the story of our lives.

The beginning of July Mike got a big bite on a job being a Campus Chaplin at a Christian college in OKC. After MULTIPLE interviews and even an overnight drive down there, we felt like this was exactly where the Lord was leading our family. There was not one hesitation about this move nor how quick this would all happen. Yes, of course it was crazy insane but our hands were open to where the Lord was leading and we TRULY believed this was where the next chapter was opening.

Mike accepted the job and we were preparing for a big move in a matter of 3 weeks! I've realized there is SO much more involved in a move than just simply packing up your lives. So much emotional energy goes into it that what I realized. We had to come to peace about uprooting our lives here in the 'Ville. That was HARD! We've really come to LOVE small town life, we've really made some dear sweet friends (that brought me to tears to imagine saying goodbye to), I love my job at the hospital and I was so sad to leave it, Brody was enrolled for preschool and we've gotten to listen to him the past year telling us where he was going to school every time we drove past it ;) I was so sad to put all that to rest and change the plan. BUT, with the Lord's help, Mike and I came to peace with it all and were so excited about this next step. We packed up over 1/2 our stuff to put it in a storage garage, cleaned every nook and cranny and a For Sale sign sat in our yard. We were ready. 

Then literally at a drop of a hat EVERYTHING changed. We were getting ready for a big moving garage sale when Mike got off the phone and told me the package the college had previously offered (and that he accepted) had changed and there was a huge miscommunication. What was now being offered would have made me need to work full time also. Having both of us working full time does not line up with our family goals. We had to put our family first. Yes, even though Mike would have thrived at this job (oh my! he would have done GREAT!) we just couldn't do it. It was a tough call Mike made to un-accpet the job.

What a blow! Yes, we may have been a bit dramatic about it all, but it kinda felt like a death. We had reached a goodbye point here in the 'Ville and all of a sudden we were needing to revert back. I had already given my 2 weeks notice at work so I needed to make sure I still had a job (thankfully I did!), got Brody re enrolled for school, called our realtor, and moved back into our home. It's been a roller coaster of a ride to say the least! 

I'm not upset with the Lord, really I'm not. Yes, I admit in being all human, there have been times where I just haven't cared to spend time with Him because well maybe I guess I am a bit upset. Yea, I was upset. I was upset with how much energy we put into this. How much we sought His guidance, and how we just blindly trusted Him. We really thought this was where He was leading and then this sudden roadblock. But here is where faith comes in and where I wont waiver! He does have a plan in all of this, I know that without a doubt! This goes back to our family word for the year, "Trust" from a verse in the book of Joshua "Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your god will be with you wherever you go."

We've returned to the original plan. And are doing great with it! I'm working at the hospital and Mike continues to work on his doctorate while staying home with the kids. Yesterday he really told me seriously how he likes being home and I was able to seriously tell him how much I enjoy working. We are all happy :) The added extra family time has been awesome! In fact we have even planned a camping trip out to the Smokey Mountains this next month. We will soak up every bit of time we get together and are so thankful! Maybe the next time we think we are moving we wont mention it until we are pulling out of our driveway with the moving truck all loaded ;)

Our kids were SO happy to not leave their sweet friends!

This is how I found the kids the other day. They brought in all their blanket and pillows to Parker's crib. I added Parker to the chaos, can you find him? ;)

Nothing cuter then a little baby crack ;)

Parks is getting so big!!

First day of School!

 Today was the day our oldest FINALLY got to go to school! ;) I say finally because I'm pretty sure he's been begging to go to school sense the day he was born. The last year he's been so excited to drive past his school and point out E.V.E.R.Y. time where is was. He was made for this I'm almost certain ;)

 So I'm not crafty or even have the time to think ahead and to be crafty. I've seen kids take pictures with cool chalk boards for fancy pictures pointing out their first day. I brilliantly got out my computer and printer and printed this black and white beauty ;)

 Funny faces :)

 I was proud of myself, not too many tears! As we prayed in the van together I got a bit chocked up, but held it together very well!

 This is Brody's friend, Carter. They met up before school and compared water bottles and back packs! Melt my heart!

 Walking to his classroom. Aubrie was a bit jealous that she didn't get to stay also. I think though she's going to LOVE the added attention at home ;)

 Somehow Brody knew exactly what to do. He walked in and said "hi" to his teacher, put his backpack away, grabbed his markers and sat at his seat to color. He was oblivious to us even leaving. He was so ready to get the camera out of his face!

One last look at my sweet, grown up boy before releasing him to the world! Well gosh, now I'm going to cry! He is going to love school! Why we choose this pre-school is that it's M-W-F from 9:30-12:00. So just a short little bit to get him used to being away. He had such a great time!! He brought home a book order form and has LOVED looking though and re-looking through it. I didn't feel old taking him to school but I feel old seeing him be excited about the book order! I remember bringing home book orders and begging my parents to let me get book ;)

We had some very special visitors come visit last week! Grandma Carol and Grandpa Richard all the way from Iowa :) The kids just ate up all their attention!!!

 Grandpa Richard brought flashlights. You would have thought B and A have never seen one before as they were by far the major hits of the week!

 Close by is a super cool Zoo that we have never been to. After seeing how great it was I'm kinda embarrassed we've never been before. These animals were so close to us!

 First time carrying the Parks Man on my back, he even took a nap back there :) Because this is my blog I can do this. Don't judge me by what I'm thinking either ;) I'm SOOOO grateful for my Rodan+Fields products. NEVER in my life (until recently) have I looked at pictures of myself and honestly and truly think I have great looking skin!  Blown away on how much I love these products!! Grandma Carol became a Rodan+Fields girl also :) Yay! Okay, commercial over :)

 If you ask Mike how he liked the Zoo, his response is like a 10 year old boy ;) He LOVED it and here's why. At a big Zoo we get excited if we see an animal move it's head the slightest. Here, ALL the animals were super active. It was always feeding time on the tour and so we saw them eat, run around, go swimming and even mate! (yep, we really saw that and yep it was really awkward tying to ignore Brody's questions on why the lions were doing that!!) HA!

 You see that bear? No zoom to my camera here, he is really that close!

 I just love this boy!!! He had been begging to go to the zoo for weeks and so he was one happy fellow!

 Sweet Sis got a bit tuckered out! This NEVER happens where she just falls asleep, but it was super adorable :) Very thankful the Zoo owners let us use this wagon!

Grandma Carol and Grandpa Richard came at such a great time as we had TONS to talk about with a very recent and very big potential of us moving!!! Oh man, I just said that! Stay tuned, some big news may be brewing!! News that can only be explained about how faithful and simply cool the Lord is! :)

Happy Birthday Aubrie!

We celebrated Aubrie's 2nd birthday last week! I can hardly believe my baby girl is 2! Time just goes quicker and quicker. I'm not sure if I'm sad about that or excited about that either. I really do enjoy the kids getting older. I like the when we can talk to each other and just play together. But then again, pretty soon I wont get to tuck them in at night because they will be all grown up and out of the house, and that brings some tears! So thankfully we are only at 2 for this girlfriend! :)

 We had a very low key birthday party. Aubrie DOES NOT like to be the center of attention one bit. She becomes so shy and quiet the second she gets overwhelmed. We wanted her to be comfortable and have fun so we only invited over 2 of her friends to a Strawberry Shortcake ice cream sundae party :) Simple decorations, on the patio, and toys set out in the backyard, it was perfect!

 Of course no party is complete without a crazy big cake! My friend who makes our cakes called the morning of her party and told me she may have gotten a little carried away by the size of her cake ;) Ha! I would say so. We will be eating cake for the next month from our freezer, not a problem! :)

 

 I always tell others that Aubrie just needs super girly things. With having a big brother we have so many "boy" toys. Poor girl, that's what she plays with (Really though, boy toys are so much cooler!). But she got 2 tea sets, necklaces, wings, tutus and games. We are set :)

What a great party. Aubrie had a blast with her sweet girlfriends and never once became shy!  Bummed I didn't get a family picture. Parker wasn't feeling the greatest and slept the entire party. I was so proud of Brody and how he did a great job at celebrating his sister and had no jealousy issues of why she got to open presents and he didn't. Very proud momma! :) Happy birthday sweet Aubrie!

My 3 favorite products!

 

I just love my Rodan+Fields products! I'm grateful that my skin has never looked so great! On the other hand I'm kinda sad I waited so long to try these wonderful products! I'm still in disbelief at times when I voluntarily tell others to look at my skin, because I've always tried to hide behind my makeup. I've NEVER wanted anyone to ever purposefully study my skin before. Using these products and doing this business really has been such a fun blessing! Thankful I jumped on board! :)

Below are 3 of my favorite products. I use the Unblemish regime at night with the face wash and lotion in the morning. The super cool tool in the picture is the Macro Exfoliator. Once a week for 5 minutes, it leaves you with brighter and softer skin as it sucks off millions of dead skin cells! Gross but super cool ;) So three kiddos at home pretty much necessitates my need for the Multi-Function Eye Cream! Goodbye to my sleepy bags and darkness that were around my eye's sense having Brody! Then the Mineral Peptide Powder is just fun to use if I get ready in the day (an any mom, some days we don't even get to shower!). Once on, it helps to even out my skin tone. It also has SPF in it!

 I would just LOVE to be able to help you get some awesome skin also! Click here and visit my website Rodan+Fields :) Everything comes with a 60 day, money back, empty bottle guarantee! Lets talk soon!!!

 Life has been crazy busy lately! We keep saying to each other, "In a week, it will all calm down" but the week goes by and there has been no calming down in site.  Hmmm.....maybe it's the new normal. Goodness, I hope not!

 The kids are super cute though! I'm not sure what got into them that they all wanted to take these cute brother and sister pics. They were just perfect, strange!!

 My kids really like not wearing clothes.

 Our sweet Parks man is 3 months old and weighing in at close to 15 pounds!! Oh my does he like his milk! Never once did we ever go over 6 oz of milk in B or A's bottles. Well right now we are at 8 oz of milk for Parker! I feel like a cow, P pretty much looks like one ;)

 Sweet sis LOVES giving love! She kisses me, daddy and Parker ALL THE TIME :) She would her big brother, but he wont let her near with those puckered lips ;)

These are Brody's friends at church. Oh my these boys! This was taken right before they went out on stage to sing at church. This is where the innocence ends though. Brody and his friend, Nolan (right of picture) stood on stage and instead of singing were yelling, "Poopy!!!" Yep, that's my son!

Easter Egg Hunt

 I just realized I started blogging about Easter awhile back and never posted it!! Opps! :)



The day we drove back from Florida we went to our church's Easter Egg Hunt. I'm not sure what we were thinking on thinking this would be fun. We drove in that day at 2:00 am, slept for 4 hours before the kids woke up and then went to the egg hunt. We were SO tired to say the least, and on top of that we had to talk to people. Oh mercy! We laugh now at how ridiculous our thinking was ;)

Parks slept through the entire hunt!

Brody and Aubrie really only cared about finding one egg and then wanted to play on the playground. The excitement was over within 5 minutes.

They were really cute though!

I read another persons blog the other day that was about before having kids we always dreamt about how fun things would be when we had kids (does that make sense??) i.e. Easter Egg hunts. We spent more time getting out the door than the actual activity ;) It was a good excuse to get out of the house and enjoy the nice weather if nothing else! Something we did realize Easter weekend was the kids don't care (yet) about the candy in the eggs. We did another Easter Egg hunt at our friends home and didn't want to take the energy to stuff the eggs so we just hid them empty! The kids still thought it was great! I hope we never outgrow that thinking!

Rodan+Fields

 

 

I'm thrilled to pieces to announce that I have started selling a skin care line called Rodan+Fields! My great friend Emily has been using and selling it for a year now and I have watched her skin and complexion transform! I've been using it now for 3 weeks and for the first time ever Mike looked at me during breakfast today and said, "Your complexion looks great! I can really notice a difference sense you began using Rodan+Fields." What!? My husband said that. My husband, whom I love and adore but isn't too into details, actually said that! I'm pretty sure I'm holding my unwashed, spit up on self a little taller today!

So what is Rodan+Fields you ask? You might recognize their names from the makers of Proactive. They came out with a line for adults now. These products are clinically proven, award winning that were formerly #1 brand in Nordstrom! Even though I have been using their Unblemish products for my breakouts and post acne marks, they have 3 other regimens to fit different skin care annoyances. So if you have problems with your skins dullness, dark spots, loss of firmness, dryness or sensitivity give this stuff a try! 

Two reasons I initially tried it out were number 1, I was tired of being 30 years old and having breakouts and number 2, it's all backed up with a 60 day money back guarantee! I then began selling it not only because I love it (I really truly do!) but also because the extra money is going to help "pad" our family come June while Mike resigns and focuses on his doctorate. If your even the least bit interested visit my website http://akaelber.myrandf.com . Once there you can check out the products and even take a Solution Tool to see what would be recommended for your skin type. You can order on your own from the website but I would love for you to contact me so I can give you 10% off and free shipping! This is going to be so fun because I really do believe in this stuff!