Summer time

Summer vacation has officially started for me and I love it!!!  It is in he fantasy stage right now. Me and the kids wake up giddy in the morning and lounge around, then swim or have friends over, I know soon this will get old and I will here "I am bored,what are we doing today". But for now I will bask in my happy moment. My oldest daughter is entering into a new phase. She is only nine but acts like a 13 year old. Jesus help me!!! I love her dearly, but she know which buttons to push and can get under my skin. I think this will be an amazing summer for her, as we have some great trips planned that I will be stretching and exciting for her.   

My miss Raya is amazing!! I have seen more of who she is this year. We decided to let her stay in preschool one more year and she was the star of the class. We have always felt that she would have a heart for the fatherless and broken and it has always amazed me to see her in action. She loves without barriers. Banning and I were brought to tears watching her. There is no reason for who she picks, but it is most of the time the one person in the room who needs the most love. One person who she has picked to love said I don't understand why she loves me so much, I am embarrassed, I never did anything to make her love me. Isn't that how Jesus loves us though, we can never do anything to deserve it. She  is so powerful to watch. 

I will end now with a story about a day in my life. So I love yoga. I was at my class and it was a tough one with all ladies at least 5-10 years older than me and they all kick my butt. So we were doing a pose called the crow and I would not be defeated, but as I did it I started to fall. Now if I would have let myself slowly fall I would have landed on my face. So in my brilliance and quickly threw my arms and legs out and landed flat on my stomach making such a loud noise the entire class stopped looked and laughed. Nice!!!! Of course I was laughing hysterically, why because it is so funny when people fall especially if it is me. Today I am so sore I cannot move. 

Talk to you soon, 

seajay

My Son

Hello all,
My son is amazing! He is so funny or he thinks he is. When he does a trick, like throwing a ball he laughs and throws his head back like somehow his ball toss was the funniest thing ever. I should record it for you to see it is pretty funny. He is seriously the sweetest boy ever. He just seems to know when someone is good and will walk up and take there hand. It is the cutest thing. Recently we visited my 86 year old granny who is amazing. She lives on 5 acres and takes care of the land and 3 homes by herself. I hope I got her genes. Anyway Lake just loved her and walked up and took her hand an said come on. They walked all over her property and she showed him everything. I loved it because this woman was so instrumental in who I am. I want my kids to truly experience her greatness and this felt like he got a taste of it.
On another note when we were visiting my granny my friend Molly came to visit. It was so great. She has a little girl and her and Lake played. I loved watching it, because Molly and I spent many a day with granny playing on that property. So amazing to see your friend in their kid. What a treasure addison is, we had so much fun. It was like watching one of your childhood dreams come true. Molly and I always pretended to be married to men that were friends and we had kids together so to see our kids playing was amazing. Of course when we were kids we married men like Tom Cruise and Matthew Broderick. It was the best day being with my family always makes me feel so safe, accepted and most of all happy. I would say the thing my family gave me was the confidence to know that in their eyes there will never be anyone better than me. I hope my kids know that in their life with me. We all deserve to be super stars and I am one in my family.
Thanks for listening!

Hello
So I wanted to extend a hello and welcome to my new friends in New Zealand. I hope you enjoy my crazy life. My husband is actually closer to you than me right now as he is in Austalia. The first night he was there he had the biggest spider I have ever seen in his hotel room. Hopefully one day I will get to meet all of dana's new zealand friends in person. Thanks for taking care of my friend. She is amazing, isn't she.
Not to much going on in my life, except everything! my puppy who I love is great except she keeps getting sick, that is not so great. I keep having to give all my money to the vet, bummer for me. My honey is traveling like crazy this month so I have been alittle crazy in return preparing mentally for him to be gone and me be completely on my own. Which always makes me laugh because in reality i do most of the things on my own, I think the stress comes from knowing he is not just a phone call away if i needed him. But I am capable of handling anything ( do you like my self talk ). Really though anything that has ever happened with him gone God has always got me through and it was not that big of a deal. Isn't it amazing how big things look when you worry about the future but when you are in the moment you are okay. Shocker, Gods word is true and he is good! Hee hee!
Alright I am going to sign off because I want to write a different blog, but wanted to say hello!

The puppy is here! So far the transition has been rather smooth. We took lilly ( that is the puppy's name) for a walk to day. I was so excited, lilly was not. She did not ever walk, she rode on lake's lap in the stroller or elli and raya carried her. It was humorous.
You know how you have those pictures in your head of what your life will be like, then when you are right on the brink of the picture unfolding, CRASH! Reality sets in. My reality looked like this. I finally have a dog and I am being a good owner by walking it, but my dog won't walk. It is freezing outside and my daughter is wearing a sundress and flats. Her hair is flying all over the place and she is soaring along the road on her scooter. I am cringing as I watch waiting for fall.
My son has a odor about him, I quess cause he is a boy and I bathe him but he finds a way to smell again. So the odor is definitly crashing my picture into reality. Okay it was not that bad, but in my picture my kids had their hair done, and were dressed. Not flying wildly about the road. Lastly is me. In my picture I of course am very cute and stylish. In real life I am wearing my favorite jeans from 5 years ago and the biggest yellow windbreaker you have seen. I woke up late this morning so I just pulled my hair back wet. Just not the day you want the model hunters to find you lets just say. Cause the model hunters are always our looking for an exhausted mom to use as a model.
Catch you all up on life soon.

Gathering my thoughts

Well my life feels like it has been swept up in a tornado. So much is going on, good and stressful. 

Because I am slightly insane I am getting a puppy. I just don't have enough on my plate, so you know I will add a dog, not just a dog a puppy. Perfect! I am in the process of getting my house ready for a puppy. Isn't she cute though, we are going to call her "Lucky Lilly Liebscher" Dana aren't you excited one more animal to love.

We just ended our Jesusculture concert here in Redding. It was amazing! Banning and I now have to try to recoup before the next string of travel and conferences.

Work has been exciting, it is really encouraging to have people say I am doing a good job and want me to work for them. More about that another day.

So one day I was driving home from work, exhausted it was a long day. I had to work late so Lake had to be at work with me for the last hour. He pooped as soon as he got there of course. I did not have a diaper and it smelled so bad that is stunk of my office, Dr. Liebscher's office, and the Psych Lab. I just kept praying please don't let anyone come in right now. Right as I am finishing up I check the flights of one of our candidates for professor and find that it was cancelled so I am scrambling to take care of this. I get on the phone with the rental car place to make sure they will have a car and Lake starts screaming, it was awesome I felt really professional. So I finally get to leave and go pick elli up from school. As we are driving home elli decides to help lake by reaching behind him in his seat to find his binky. She pulls her hand out and wipes her hair out of her face only to find out when she looks at her had that she has lake's poo all over her hand. She then proceeds to stick her poop covered fingers in my face when I looked at her she had poop all over her eyebrows and in her bangs. I simple pulled over on the side of the road and laughed. It was either laugh or cry and laughing felt better. 

So now I sit on a couch with a headache trying to relax and get ready for my next week. Who knows what this week will bring. I am sure it will be enjoyable, stretching and as always dramatic. 

My house smells

This is my first ever attempt to blog so we will see how it goes. I am pretty random so forgive me if this does not flow together well. 

So for the last two days I keep getting this gross smell when I am in my living room ( I know disgusting) but I can't find it ( I know even more disgusting). So now I get to deep clean everything in hopes of finding the stinky culprit. In my head there are a few options of what this stinker could be: a. rotting yogurt ( my son has a obsession with yogurt and spills often) b. something one of my many cats could have left ( embarrassed to say how many we have, lets just say I am the old cat lady) c. Here is my final quess and I hope it is correct that one of my children has gas and is letting silent but deadly's out. I will fill you in if I find out what the smell is.

My son has recently started stuttering, it is a little disturbing. I am sure it is a simple developmental thing, but because of who I am it worries me. I am working on this.

My daughter, who is fearless, was riding her scooter yesterday without shoes on and crashed. She mutilated her toe, it is so gross. I won't torture you with a photo. She insists on eating chicken noodle soup all the time so that her toe will get better. Awesome! She is pretty funny.

Personally I am on a journey of change. It is good, but change is hard. Someone once told me that pain is the strongest driving force for change. I don't want to wait for the pain to come before I decide that change is necessary, so I will face my strongholds and trust the Lord that he made me who I am for a reason. I will express my needs even though people could fail to meet them, I am valuable enough to have needs. I will follow through and finish what I started even though this could mean I will fail. So a little insight into me. I am messy, but happy, and I insist that I will find joy in anything. Laughing  makes me remember not take myself so serious.

Hope you have a delightful day!