Working From Home

Ross, like sooooooo many other people now, are working from home! He brought our old kitchen table up from the basement and set it up in our guest room to make an office. He also brought all three monitors home from his work office to help his home work station feel more like normal. The girls have been very good to not bother him and let him work, which I'm sure he's very thankful for! His working from home now sure it a change from his working from home that I posted about here in March 2011!

Quarentine Paper Chain

Springfield is now under a 30 day stay at home order. It began Thursday, March 26 and will hopefully be lifted and not extended on Friday, April 24. Thursday morning we made a paper chain with 30 chains to tear off for each day we are quarentined. We put it on our mantle for decoration. I think it looks nice and springy and is a fun way to see the days tick by. You can watch them work on it here!

Happy Birthday Gumma!

My Mom's 69th birthday was Sunday, March 15! They came over for dinner that night to celebrate her birthday and we had a nice time together. Molly dressed up for the occasion and was so proud of herself for setting the table! We had cinnamon rolls instead of birthday cake and had fun singing happy birthday to her. You can watch us sing to her here! Happy birthday, Mom! I love you!

Take Captive Every Thought

This has been a weird week. One filled will so many, many different emotions...disbelief, anxiety, sadness, anger, confusion, worry, etc. Quite frankly, it's a week like no one who is living today has ever experienced. A week that has coined a new term which I'm sure will make its way into the dictionary:  Social Distancing.

My girls are on spring break this week and my husband took the week off from work for vacation. These are some of the things we were going to do this week:

And these are the things we ended up doing:

In case you can't tell what we did, it's nothing! We didn't go anywhere this week, but stayed home and played inside and outside on our driveway the few times it wasn't cold or raining. I'm not complaining, because everyone should be following this and not going out unless needed for food, medicine, or essentials, but it's just so weird! And disheartening because we had some fun activities planned and were even going to spend a few days in Tulsa hanging out there with friends and being tourists.

I did go out this morning to the grocery store to get a few items and it was just weird and sad. Several people wearing masks, the toilet paper aisle was still empty, and several shelves were still bare from being ransacked last week out of fear of the unknown. I kind of get that, as we've been a bit tempted to go "panic buy," but we haven't. While driving, I really tuned into what one of the DJs was saying on the local Christian radio station I listen to. She was talking about ALL the information, whether it is good, bad, true, or false, that's floating around for us to hear. It's all over social media. It's really the only story on all of the local and national news broadcasts. It's the reason for the national, state, and local press conferences that are on each day. It's even in my emails as each day I receive a message from a new store telling me their plans during the COVID19 pandemic. The DJ talked about how overwhelming all of this information is and how it can start to negatively affect her. She said she's really having to turn it all off sometime and remember to "take captive every thought" so as to stay sane and grounded.

I loved her little devotion on this verse that comes from 2 Corinthians 10:5:

"We demolish arguments and take every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and WE TAKE CAPTIVE EVERY THOUGHT TO MAKE IT OBEDIENT TO CHRIST."

I have heard this verse several times before and realized in that moment of hearing it on the radio that I never really understood what it meant (or maybe rather I never really needed it) until now. Right now is such an easy time to get freaked out and very scared about what's to come. It is so easy to consume your mind every single minute of the day with COVD19 information. It reminds me of 9/11. At one point I realized I had to turn the TV off and stop watching all the coverage. It was just too sad and overwhelming to hear about anymore. I'm finding the same with the current situation we're living in. I'm drawn to find out whatever I can about it, but yet need a break!

There has been a lot of processing information, too, and processing information is where "taking captive every thought" really comes into play.

• When you start to wonder if social distancing will continue into the summer...take captive that thought to God and pray asking for a quick healing and cessation of this virus. 
• When you wonder if your kids will get to finish their school year...take captive that thought to God and ask him to provide a way for the school year to continue and the kids to not miss out on upcoming special events. 
• When you wonder if you will we run out of food and have to start rationing what you have...take captive that thought and ask God to keep your pantry stocked and help you come up with ways to make your food last longer than normal. 
• When you wonder if your family or you will catch the virus...take captive that thought and ask for protection upon your family and yourself, remembering that "...he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed." 
• When you wonder if you will die...take captive that thought praying that "...yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; your rod and your staff, they comfort me." 

When I've felt myself getting scared or nervous this past week I have had to just turn my mind off of it and remember that God is in control. I was "taking captive every thought" without even realizing I was living that verse out! God knew all of this was coming and has a plan and a reason for everything that is going on. God will sustain us through it all, even if it does get bad. Take captive every thought to God. Take your thoughts, your worries, your fears, and anything else you are thinking or feeling about life right now to God and ask Him to help you sort through it all. Ask Him to give you peace admidst this crazy, never before experienced storm of life. Take captive every thought. And wash your hands and stay home! :)

Gifts From Lucy

Lucy is so creative and loves to put things together! One day she gave me this gift, which was a bottle of soap she found in the cabinet. She taped a note to it, put it in a gift bag, made some tissue paper for the bag, and very excitedly gave it to me. I was so impressed with her tissue paper because it was actual paper! Looking at it, you would never know it wasn't tissue paper, but instead was colored copy paper. I love that about Lucy! She is so creative and comes up with things that I wouldn't think of to do. Her creations often end up being something very smart, too! She has such a sweet, kind, caring heart! She was just so thrilled and happy with herself when she gave this to me. :)

Barbie Birthday!

Molly wanted a Barbie-themed party for her 5th birthday, so we had a Barbie-themed birthday party! I had fun working on it for her. I made a Barbie head for her to play pin the bow on Barbie with. I made a Barbie bingo board so we could play bingo. And, I made her a Barbie cake! The cake was fun and kind of stressful to make, but I think it turned out pretty good! The hardest part was piping all the frosting on. I am not the greatest at that, but I'm proud of how it ended up looking! Molly loved it and had a great birthday, so that's really all that matters!

Big And Little Shopping Carts

One local grocery store in town has little shopping carts for kids to use. We have been using them for as long as Lucy was big enough to start pushing one and I have loved this so much! The kids have so much fun with them and they're very cute, too! It is a bit tricky at times and I really have to make sure they're steering correctly, but just a lot of fun! We don't go to this grocery store very often, but did a few weeks ago and Molly was very excited to get her cart. Lucy was reluctant to get the little cart like Molly because she said she was too big/too old for it. So instead she took a big cart for herself to push around the store. :) She certainly is growing up!

Molly Selfies

Molly likes to steal my phone whenever she can and take pictures. She had fun recently taking some selfies. :)

Silly Girls

Ross was out of town last week for work when when that happens I let the girls sleep with me. I don't mind and it's a lot easier doing one bedtime instead of two! After we were done FaceTiming with Daddy, the girls played with my phone some taking pictures and had fun rolling around on the bed. They are so silly! You can watch them here!