It Is My Lovely Bride's Birthday!!!

Happy Birthday, my love. It has been a truly fantastic few years together. We are going to dinner and a movie tonight; "The Blind Side" first, followed by dinner at the Melting Pot, with our friends Ian and Jessie. None of us have been there yet and we've been looking forward to an opportunity to do so. None better than this! I decided to crunch a few numbers and came up with the following information. As of today:

• Sarah is twenty-two years old
• 8,025 days her mother has been a mother
• 3,100 days her mother spent pregnant with Sarah, Sean, Scott, Seth, Shayla, Sharon, Steven, Simon, Samuel, Synthia, and Silas
• 1,534 days in my life
• 1,378 days since I began courting Sarah
• 1,290 days since I asked her to marry me
• 1,025 days married
• 330 days as a mother (of our son Caleb)
• 0 days since her mother became mother to Sarah's youngest sibling (yes, the 11th Phippen sibling was born today!)

My New Hobby

I posted a couple months ago about my need of a hobby. After some great ideas people gave me, and a little research of my own, I have taken up crocheting! All I can really make so far is a Granny Square, but I'm getting pretty good at it! My plan is to make a colorful afghan by connecting all my squares. I was inspired by Attic24's pictures on flickr, her creations are so beautiful!
Here is the 5 colors of yarn I've started with. My Granny Squares are 5 rounds, with a pattern of 2-1-2, as in 2 round of a color, 1 round of the next color and 2 rounds of another color. The plan is that then the whole blanket will be lined with a row of white and purple..we'll see how it turns out! Here are the 17 squares that I've made so far..not bad. I'm really enjoying it. I can make a square in about 40 minutes, so it's a very doable project! The other fun thing is that my friend Jessie has taken up this project with me and she is making her own afghan!

Baby Fever

As my little bug is sleeping, I am struggling with an awful sickness, an incurable disease. One that is known to take woman after woman down, an illness that brings some of the most joy expressible...BABY FEVER!

Now that we have 10 month olds that are quickly moving out of babyville and into toddlerhood, Jessie and I are left to think of days gone by...here's a picture that she showed me this morning. It was taken at her baby shower, the beginning of December last year. Ahh!! Oh we do miss our little bellies! Perhaps one day those bumps will grace us again!

Here is what followed just a few weeks later! Our little boys had finally arrived! (I couldn't resist newborn pictures!)

Sweet Shirts!

A couple weeks ago I finished these shirts for Caleb and Ethan, it's just taken me a while to get them posted! Each one is wearing a shirt that says the other is their "homeboy"!! Looks like they like them, and the Mommies certainly know they're true! These little guys are the best little friends any 10 month olds could be!

Embarrasing Pictures

I finally got some good embarrasing pictures! Ethan and Caleb took a bath together a few nights ago and Jessie and I managed to get some great shots! For our sons dignity, I did leave out the bottom pictures!

My Mantel Redone!

I finally got around to painting my mantel! Ben really hated the color and we decided to go with Tonka Bean - brown. After scraping and sanding a bit, it was finally ready to paint! Here's our before and after pictures, let us know what you think!

BEFORE ............................................AFTER

Veteran's Day

(Ben) Once again, it is time to thank the Veterans you know. You are surrounded by them and even telling one how much you appreciate the sacrifice he made will make his day. This can't be done often enough. It's been several years now since I completed my tours at war, but we mustn't forget our friends and family still sacrificing their time, careers, families, and lives by serving overseas. I'm still in the military and would be honored to go again should I receive the call; our country and our way of life is well worth the risk. I am extremely proud to recognize two brothers serving overseas at war. My brother Mark, USAF, currently deployed to Iraq, and my brother Seth, USArmy, in pre-deployment training preparing to deploy to Afghanistan for a year. Thanks for carrying on one of the most noble careers in the world, guys. Love you both, God bless you, and come home safe.

Mark / Seth with Caleb

The Atonement Child

I just finished reading The Atonement Child by Francine Rivers at the urging of my friend Jessie. It was a hard book to put down once I started reading!

The moral and ethical dilemma's of the story envelope you as you experience life with a young woman who has a wonderful Christian family, is going to a Christian college, and is engaged to a wonderful Christian man who plans to become a pastor. Everything seems so perfect, until she is raped and becomes pregnant.

The reader travels through her emotions with her as she tries to figure out how to get life back to "normal". She tries to get Godly counsel from friends, a pastor, and others about abortion and if it's ok since she was raped. No one seems to really care, and all the "wonderful" Christians around her are pressuring her to just "get it over with" and end the pregnancy.

Her wonderful parents are on the verge of a divorce because of this situation, she is kicked out of the Christian college because of what people 'would think', and her wonderful Christian fiancee let's her go because she is 'defiled'.

I don't want to spoil the ending for you but I will say that this book stirs up so many emotions within the reader, you better have a big box of Kleenex nearby!

A Look Into the Future

The last 3 days we've been away from home, watching 4 kids for friends of ours as the wife and hubby take a little vaca in California! We're so excited that they got the opportunity to take a week together! Wednesday through tomorrow (Saturday) we've been an a future world as we get to experience life with 5 kids all under the age of 8!! As I told Ben after dinner tonight, this makes me so thankful for me free time at home while Caleb naps! There are no naps going on for most kids here and since it's getting so cold (and wet) there hasn't been much playing outside...so there's 7 of us inside this little house!

It's been quite an experience. Certainly a test of my selflessness, or should I say selfishness, since that is the trap I keep stepping into. This reminds me of when someone told us that marriage is the mirror to your sin...I'm finding that even more so with children added in the mix - whether they're temporary children or biological children! Every minute I'm relying on God to help me be more 'others centered', and isn't that how it should be.

Through this I am continually so thankful for Ben. He serves me so well. I spent the first few days feeling crummy, and he was so sweet and helpful. Tonight I'm even feeling better, but as I was giving some girlies a bath, I came out to find he had cleared the very messy table, loaded the dishwasher, and put things away. On top of getting Caleb ready for bed. I am so blessed.

...oh and I want to mention that Ben says the parents have agreed to take Caleb sometime so we can go on a little vaca of our own! :)

10 Months Old

I can't believe it, our little bug has hit double digits! He's as sweet and crazy as ever, and every day I have a moment of "aww" and "grr" with him!! :) He's still not officially walking yet, but taking more and more steps, so we know he'll eventually get there. In the last month he finally mastered clapping, and he's beginning to learn how to feed himself. He imitates us all the time, from body motions to verbalization's, he's learning to find our noses; when we say, "where's Daddy's nose?" he grabs onto it! He still loves lights, and he points to almost every one he sees, and he likes to play with our dimming light switches and make them go on and off. Oh, and I can't forget that he still sleeps 12 hours straight at night and takes 2 naps during the day!