The Moberg Family

Category: Elliott

  • New Mercies Monday: Another Year

    New Mercies Monday: Another Year

    I’ll come clean–I was going to skip blogging this week.

    Yes, I had a birthday, but, well…I honestly just didn’t have too much to say about it this year. (I know, I know…which is surprising for this normally long-winded girl…)

    Until there I was at the gym right before the fitness class started, chatting with my Zumba friends, and one of them mentioned that she wouldn’t be there Thursday night because she had a funeral to go to. Apparently her daughter’s friend had just finished his first year of college and he and a bunch of his friends were celebrating…by jumping off a bridge into a river. Well, her daughter’s friend drowned.

    We all said our “I’m so sorry’s” and then the music began to play. Normally, my Zumba hour is my “let’s-pretend-I’m-on-a-professional-dance-team-and-actually-good-at-it” hour, but not tonight. I couldn’t follow along with my usual carefree-ness. I couldn’t stop thinking about that young man whose life was over when it had barely begun, and about his parents who were obviously sitting somewhere, completely devastated. Did he know the Lord?

    And then my mind wandered to me…and to all of the incredibly stupid, stupid, stupid things I did back in the day, all in the name of “fun” or “celebration”…and how any of those things could have ended the way this man’s life did.

    He has been so merciful to me. 

    He gave me another year. He has given me so many years. Thankfully my stupidity level has significantly decreased since a.) I surrendered my life to the Lord at 18 and b.) since I have gained a tiny bit of wisdom over the years (I found an ENORMOUS gray hair on my birthday…proof of my crown of wisdom, right?!!) but all those years of just being unwise…of feeling invisible…of thinking nothing could harm me…He was there. He kept me. He guarded me and protected me. Every.Single.Time I hear a story of how someone’s mistakes early on are wreaking havoc in their lives today, I hit my knees in my heart as I listen. Because that could have been me. No, that SHOULD have been me, save for the grace of God. 

    “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:8-10).

    I have been saved not only from physical death, but from spiritual and emotional death. I have been saved from living a life of immorality, I have been saved from the death of anger, unforgiveness, bitterness, resentment and fear. I have been saved from the chains of insecurity and confusion and hopelessness. He saved me. I am His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works. 

    Thank you, Lord, for teaching me to walk in them. Thank you for giving me another year to do so.

    “If we are faithless, He remains faithful; He cannot deny Himself” (2 Timothy 2:13).

    Cheers to another year of knowing and loving the Lord with all of my heart. And cheers to my dear (local) friends and my precious, precious family!!

    Celebrating with queso and sweet friends!
    Birthday morning snuggles with my favorites…

    These two…they are SO into wrapping presents. Daily I will find a new “present” to open and inside is one (or many) of my possessions. Selah literally gets so excited to watch me open one of these “presents” that she shakes and squeals with delight from her tippy toes on up. Here, Selah wrapped up tons of our crafting stuff. When I opened it and delighted over the array of tape and crayons and markers, she just beamed with pride :). Oh, how I love her!!!! And Elliott made me this puppet out of an old vitamins box! CUTE!!!

     

    And, a birthday date with this man and some lobster-stuffed shrimp. Mmmmm……

    My love.

     

    How about you? If you’re reading this, He’s given YOU another day. Have you seen His mercies? Have you received the free, undeserving gift of salvation? 

    With much love,

    The gray-haired, birthday girl 🙂 

  • New Mercies Monday: Receipts & a Penny Horse

    New Mercies Monday: Receipts & a Penny Horse

    I am constantly trying to see the Lord in all that I do in a day. He teaches us all the time, and I don’t want to miss a lesson from Him. So, so often I understand His character through watching my children and taking note of the way my heart, as their mother, responds to them. Because if I know how to give them good gifts, how much more so does our Heavenly Father? (Matthew 7:11). So I let Him teach ME about Him through parenting.

    One particular morning…”errand morning” to be precise…my little girl had just had it. She had been on the edge all morning, but when we rolled our little Costco cart out of the building and towards the car, the receipt (you know–the one where the kind old man had drawn a portrait of my daughter on the back with a marker, curly hair and all?) was taken captive by the tornado happening in the parking lot. She had had her heart SET on taking that receipt home…cutting it into pieces and gluing it onto construction paper. She had plans. She had dreams. And all of them were blown into oblivion with that huge gust of wind. She totally and completely fell utterly apart. And as I attempted to unload our groceries into the back, all the while clinging to that enormous Costco-sized watermelon with all my might in hopes that it would keep me anchored, my darling daughter had her face plastered against the car window, shouting out suggestions through heaving sobs of how I could “just chase after the receipt.”

    It was literally so windy I was afraid WE were going to blow away, and against my better judgment I attempted to try and explain to her how far away China was and how, at the rate the wind was blowing, her receipt was surely already there.

    “BUT WE CAN JUST GO THERE!!!!” she sobbed.

    “We would have to take a plane, and then our groceries would go bad.”

    “WELL YOU CAN JUST CALL THE POLICE!! PLEASE, MOM!! JUST CALL THE POLICE!!!” she begged.

    How do you gently explain to your crushed 3 year old that her receipt is not important enough to call the police for? Oh my. So she cried hysterically all the way to the place where we pick up our milk. I tried to reason with her and sympathize with her for a few minutes and then I just stopped talking, quieted myself, and let her cry. Because, come on, she was devastated and therefore totally unreasonable. And I get that. It just didn’t feel like a moment to correct her. She was refusing to be comforted by me. How many times have I been too busy pumping my fists and shouting suggestions at God that I have refused to be comforted by Him? That was an insightful question to ask myself.

    We arrived and I unbuckled my red, swollen-faced little girl, grabbed our milk box, and we walked inside. I set the box down and…

    There, stuck to our milk box, WAS A COSTCO RECEIPT. With a curly-haired little girl drawn on the back. I had to blink about 700 times but it really was there. I checked the items and they were items I buy, but not items I had purchased on that particular day. But still…it was a virtually identical Costco receipt. I knelt down, showed Selah the receipt and talked to her of the Lord’s mercies towards her. That there was no way I could have orchestrated that, but God did. That God knows her heart and her desires and He cares about them…because He cares about her. Her receipt may not have been important enough to a police man, but it was important enough to God. So there I was, talking to her, but more than anything I was talking to me, because I desperately need to understand that lesson. That when I am screaming and crying and hysterically shouting at God, and He is silent, that that doesn’t mean He doesn’t have a plan. It’s just not time to find the receipt yet.

    So then we headed to the next grocery store to get the few items we need from there. And Selah decided she MUST sit in the blue car cart. I mean, it was a matter of life and death. I explained to her for the third time that we only needed 3 items and we had to hurry if we were going to get the items, drop our groceries off at home and make it to Elliott’s preschool to pick him up on time (thankfully we didn’t have to take a detour to China anymore!). And she lost it. Sobbing and hysterically crying all the way into King Soopers. She had finally calmed down by the time we got to the cream cheese and we made our way to the check out as I checked the time for the billionth time since setting foot in the store.

    After paying, the teller slipped a penny across the counter. “Would she like to ride the horse?

    “The HORSE?” I asked.

    He looked at me, dumbfounded. “Yes, the HORSE…you know? The penny horse? The penny horse is the only reason people shop here!” We had been to that store dozens of times and not once had anyone mentioned this horse that was apparently the main attraction and certainly had I never been given a penny to ride it! I looked in the direction of his pointing finger to see a brown toy electronic horse, with a “1c” sign hastily scribbled on with spray paint. I will admit, we are not “grocery store ride” people. I have never even glanced twice at one of those things, but I will say that 1 penny wasn’t a bad deal at all! My mind raced with the fact that my little one had been hysterical for the better part of the last hour and that she certainly didn’t “deserve” a ride on the penny horse and that we didn’t have two minutes to waste in this particular moment…when…

    Mercy. I could see God’s mercy. Not getting what we deserve. God seemed to be going out of His way to give my emotionally-unstable little girl new mercies that morning. And I certainly wasn’t going to get in His way. I gave up my agenda and bent down, for the second time that morning, and explained to Selah how the kind man had given her a penny to ride the horse, but how really it was God giving her yet another new mercy. She listened intently as I preached my little sermon and when I asked if she would like to ride the horse, she stared back at me with those big blue eyes, mouth open in wonder, and slowly nodded her head up and down. Because sometimes His mercies come in the shape of recovered Costco receipts and penny horses.

    The Penny Horse.

    Thank you, Lord, for all of our new mercies this week. I refuse to miss seeing YOU and your heart for us in the little moments of life:

    The Moberg version of Saturday morning cartoons…
    “How did the deer cross the road?” “By using the crosswalk, of course!!”
    Spaghetti Squash Chefs!
    Homeschool Space Tinkering Day…we made instruments and learned about Space with Quinn and Kari!
    A preschool Mother’s Day tea with my boy who was the first to let me be a mother full-time. Thank you, Lord, for this little miracle of a man.
    Mother’s Day…with my kids and my Mama in beautiful Colorado!

    And last, but not least. Elliott’s hunger for reading is just exploding. He’s reading so much!! He and Brian read the Bible every night and a couple of weeks ago he just started sounding out the books of the bible. So Brian went through them with him and the rest is history. Check out our little man!!

     

     

     

    Your turn. What new mercies has God given you this week?

  • New Mercies Monday

    New Mercies Monday

    This week, I was blessed with double “Jillian” new mercies!

    My sweet friend Jillian from Tacoma was in town and I was SO blessed to get to grab a quick breakfast with her. Such a treasured friend. We met because she was my student teacher, which seems like EONS ago!!! But I knew we would be friends from the moment I read her application and profile. Definitely a kindred spirit and her friendship has blessed my life. I didn’t even think to snap a pic!! It was such sweet fellowship to see her!!

    And THEN, my OTHER dear Jillian (Jilly-Bean, to be more precise) sent us package!

    First of all, WHO ON EARTH sends a package this beautiful!?!! I’ve never received a package where the box itself is a piece of art!!!

    I’ll tell you who. Jilly Bean. Artist extraordinaire. Seriously–I mean that. She is UNBELIEVABLY talented. Check out her work here!!

    I’ll tell you what’s a new mercy–HAND-ME-DOWNS!!! We are SO blessed to get boy hand-me-downs from Jill’s boys and girl hand-me-downs from Kari’s girls.

    The box was FULL of amazing treasures, including these AWESOME Lightning McQueen slippers for Elliott. Olivia also passed down two sets of jammies for Selah (although they are probably close to the same size at this point since they are just a few months apart!). The kids TORE through the box like it was Christmas day and then immediately stripped their clothing and tried everything on. It was so darling to watch. They were SOOO thankful, just squealing and giggling with delight. So precious.

    Later in the week, Selah and I got a little girl time and she wanted to play Bingo. We were towards the end of a round when she suddenly started dumping game pieces on my board, and then LAUGHING ABSOLUTELY HYSTERICALLY. She did it again and again to the point where I was laughing hysterically at HER laughing so hysterically and then…it happened. She got the hiccups. When she laughs so hard that she gets the hiccups, (which she does a lot) I just absolutely lose it. I think it’s SO RIDICULOUSLY FUNNY. Anyway, I finally grabbed my phone to try and capture the moment. We must have laughed for 10 minutes straight.

    My girl who always has us in stitches.

    And THEN, I was cleaning up our craft room when I found THIS little gem! I am SO thankful that I write things down because I had totally forgotten about this picture despite the fact that I had just written down the caption a few months ago! Selah drew this picture back in February, handed it to me, and explained what it was. I wrote exactly what she said on the back of it:

     

    Come on, now. Who is this girl?? Her imagination!!!!!!!!

    And last, but CERTAINLY not least…

    While I was making dinner, Brian embraced me and said, “Happy Anniversary, my Love.”

    My brain immediately started rattling as it was not computing…what is today…May…May what?…May 2nd…what is May 2nd….AHHHHH….

    “The day you proposed to me!!!”

    I am certain we have forgotten this anniversary many times, but this day we didn’t.

    What a new mercy. We were just laughing through our dating story with some new friends on Saturday night. What a story :). But (almost) 7 years in and I couldn’t be more certain that God’s mercy was on my life and my heart while we were dating to open my eyes. Boy was my little heart guarded and hurt and BOY did it take me some time to realize that there was no other man on the planet that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. But God dropped the walls off my heart and confirmed in my heart that Brian was the man. Every day I am thankful for him. Every day I am thankful for God’s mercy in opening our eyes because they were certainly CLOSED to each other for a long time!!!!! 8 years of friendship+6 months of dating+3 months of engagement=new mercies every day. Thank you, Lord, for this man.

    Promised to each other for 7 years!!

    And if you haven’t read our *incredibly* lengthy engagement story, you can click here :).

    YOUR TURN!! What new mercies has God brought to your life this week?!!!

     

     

  • New Mercies Monday

    New Mercies Monday

    When I shut down my facebook account over a year ago now, I made a mental note to blog more often. And well, that didn’t really happen :). My zeal for writing and recording in this virtual scrapbook here has somewhat windled down to birthdays and holidays. Most of that, quite honestly, is that I’m so tired in my spirit. It’s been an incredibly weary-ing few years in many aspects and when I look in the mirror, all I see is tired. 

    Virtually every night before bed, Selah asks if we can sing, “Great is Thy Faithfulness.” It is the song that I listened to on repeat in the weeks and months leading up to her birth and the song I played over and over while in labor with her. It’s the song that steadies my fears. He is faithful. Always. Every day.

     …Remember my affliction and roaming, The wormwood and the gall. My soul still remembers And sinks within me. This I recall to my mind, Therefore I have hope. Through the LORD’s mercies we are not consumed, Because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness. “The LORD is my portion,” says my soul, “Therefore I hope in Him!” The LORD is good to those who wait for Him, To the soul who seeks Him. … Though He causes grief, Yet He will show compassion according to the multitude of His mercies. [Lam 3:19-25, 32]

    The beginning part of the chapter is much of how I have felt these last few years, but…BUT. I recall to mind, constantly, that His mercies are new every morning. Selah reminds me daily. (Of course she does–that is what her name means!) I am so thankful for her reminder to make me stop and think about how great God is and to meditate upon his mercies. Last night I asked her to tell me what had blessed her about the day and she rattled off a list several minutes long of all the things she was thankful for. She finished, smiled, looked at me, and returned the question: “What are YOU thankful for, Mommy?” My heart is abundantly blessed by who she is.

    And so…this little series is born. New Mercies Monday. Rather than devoting the start of my week to simply meal planning, grocery shopping, cleaning and laundry, I want to devote them to Selah-ing. To stopping, to pausing my to-do list, and to meditating on the new mercies that God has poured out to us in the previous week. Because, He is worthy to praised. I am so grateful throughout the week for the ways the Lord has lavished us, but sometimes, you just gotta testify! Can I get an amen?!

    Monday: An afternoon in Denver with Elizabeth and her darling crew. Elizabeth, my gentle-spirited, wise, like-minded friend. So thankful she is in my life.

    Popcorn and play time!

    Tuesday: Sometimes I see so much of myself in my kids, and it tickles me to my core. This particular day, I saw me in my dear Selah when she asked me to tape the broken arm back onto this (ancient) Playmobile man. (Have you read the Gecko story? Well, if not…take a peek. I re-read it today and was majorly encouraged!)

    All taped up and all better!

    Wednesday: “A day at the zoo with Kari and Quinn is like a milkshake to your soul.” (Have you read that verse in Proverbs? It’s true.) So ridiculously blessed that we get to do life together, even if we do live 30 minutes apart.

    The zoo was epic. We hugged a (fake) giraffe, fed and pet (real) giraffes, fed the birds, pet a pony, climbed a (fake) elephant, watched a (real) elephant take a bath, rode the carousel, played at the playground, watched the lion cubs frolic and wrestle…all with the wonderful company of our dear friends!

    And so of course we ended the day with milkshakes!

    Thursday: Lull in the week=Let’s try a new pizza place! Have you tried it? MOD pizza? I guess it started in Seattle. It was fun! And had very yummy pizza :).

    Pizza Pizza!!

    Friday: My parents had us over for dinner (which is always a bonus!) along with another family and I made a new friend!

    Saturday: Blizzard! Family snow day.

    Sunday: So encouraged by the Word of God and the parsing of Scripture with other believers at church, who challenge all of us to live according to what it says.

     Want a bonus?

    These are from the previous week but I just couldn’t help but add them here after sorting through the pics on my phone…

    **The kids BEG to help me in the kitchen preparing meals. A couple of months ago I taught Elliott how to slice up some zucchini for dinner and Selah has been pleading with me to let her try. That day was the day. She was in heaven…just look at that face!! So thankful for children who are eager to serve and help.

    I snapped this photo and then set my phone down quickly so I could helicopter her cutting!! (Yes, I just made “helicopter” a verb all right!!)

    **I just adore this picture…it cracks me up!!!

    A hot chocolate date with the kids!

    Well there you have it! God’s new mercies on us this past week. This may take on a different form and may not be every week…who knows!

    How about YOU? What mercies were new to you this past week? Will you join me in testifying??

  • Elliott’s 5th Lego Birthday!

    Elliott’s 5th Lego Birthday!

    Elliott turned 5 on March 20–a phrase he has been telling EVERYONE he has met for the last 8 months or so: “Hello, my name is Elliott and I’m turning 5 on March 20th!” To which the person would almost always respond, “You’re 25?” To which I would jump in and correct, “He’s TURNING 5…” Hahaha! I think we’ve had that conversation at least 100 times with various strangers in various places!!

    He requested going to breakfast at Mimi’s (“I want to go to the breakfast place where we sat by the emergency exit and had apple sauce!”). We wrapped up a couple presents for him and Selah helped wrap hers. He got to open one first thing in the morning and then we hid Selah’s present and our other present for him in his car seat to find on the way to Mimi’s.

    Can you see the train Selah drew on his present? She and Elliott are sleeping in the back. I was so impressed! We made him his very own return address labels, personalized with his name and a picture of him at Lego Land!
    Elliott’s new favorite color is blue-ish green, with navy coming in at a close second. I had just found this shirt on the clearance rack At Gymboree for $2!! Win!!!! Perfect birthday shirt!!!

    That afternoon, special guests Grandma, Grandpa and Aunt Angela drove in! We packed them back up in the car and headed to Grampa & Nonna’s house for the Mauss family birthday celebration.

    Happy Birthday, dear Elliott!

    Now, for his actual birthday party…this is the party he’s been planning for well over a year. Last year I was thinking he would want to have a Lego birthday, but he approached me in January telling me he wanted to have an animal birthday party. When I suggested a Lego party he responded, “I would like to have an animal birthday this year and a Lego party next year when I turn 5.” What can I say…the child has my party-planning blood in him!!!! So the last time we were at Lego Land, I was sure to take lots of pictures of our boy in preparation for his 5th birthday party!

    One afternoon I showed him lots of pictures from various Lego parties and we talked through what exactly would bless him at his party. He has very strong opinions about what he wants! 🙂 One of the first things we did was design this shirt together. He told me exactly what he would like (a light blue shirt with a dark blue lego guy, but with a hat, and he wanted the lego guy to also have a light blue shirt). I designed the CUTEST little Lego guy with a hat, but Elliott didn’t like how the bill went to the side…so we ended up with this…which I tried to strongly urge him to go with the sideways hat instead, but he was insistent on this, because “the bill goes in front, not on the side.” I think it looks like a helmet 🙂 but he loves it! So…win!

    Elliott and the helmet Lego Guy!

    The next thing we did was make a zillion lego crayons out of all of our crayons for party favors.

    His favorites were the multi-colored ones, so we made sure that everyone got one of those, too.

    Next it was time to work on invitations. Oh my, these were too much fun to design and the kids had a blast making the outsides look like Legos. One of the things Elliott was insistent on was that the party colors were: blue-ish green (turquoise), light blue and dark blue. So everything from the invitations to the decorations were in those colors. We had a picture of Elliott with Emmett and Brian figured out how to make the background transparent and I put together this little ditty:

    Elliott punched out the dots with my circle punch and put foam stickers on them. Selah played around with the dots for a while and then helped attach them to the actual invitations :).

    Next up, we worked on painting this Lego Man together, and of course, the kids had to make sure he “worked”! And, as you can see, we decorated the doors to our craft room to look like Legos, along with our front door.

    I convinced Elliott to let me draw the hat “sideways” so it actually looked like a hat :). I sketched him out on a box that I had painted white, and Elliott painted (most of) him inside the lines I sketched.
    Next up, I printed off tons of pictures of him from Lego Land and put them on Lego brick backgrounds, and then the kids “built” Lego towers out of the pictures on the walls.

    Brian framed these two pictures of Elliott at Lego Land out of Legos!

    And how can you have a Lego Birthday party without Lego soap??

    We saved jars for a couple of months and made them into Lego Heads…

    I think they are adorable!

    I printed off the Happy Birthday Lego sign from here. I covered our t.v. and two boxes with Dollar Store tablecloths, then wrapped paper bowls with the tablecloth scraps and taped them onto the boxes. And thanks to the Blizzard that blew through on Elliott’s birthday party day (more on that in a minute!) I got the idea to cover up the picture that normally hangs on our mantle with the last tablecloth I had left and printed out the Elliott 5+ sign. Also, we used the scraps leftover from his birthday invitations to make the multi-blue colored Lego banner.

     

     

    And with that, our living room was ready to go!

    And THEN…a blizzard blew in on the morning of his birthday party!! On the third day of Spring!! And it was a bad one…we realized within a couple hours of waking up that no one should be on the roads. So a hundred text messages later, and we were able to move the party to the next afternoon. Elliott was pretty sad, but after agreeing to let him put together a practice Lego Man (the first craft activity of the party) he was in much better spirits :).

    And Aunt Angela makes everything better 🙂

    And THEN…he got to open his gifts from Grandma & Grandpa and Aunt Angela…..

    A sand box and sand toys! The kids had a BLAST playing in the sand box on our kitchen floor…while the snow and wind beat on our house outside!

    Which meant I had all day to keep thinking of new Lego ideas and finishing up the old ones I had had…it’s a good thing we didn’t have TWO snow days or this party would have been out of hand!!

    We got the favor bags all ready to go. I designed, printed, and cut out the Lego circles with my Silhouette and Elliott attached them to the bags with foam stickers. Each friend got a lanyard and Lego badge with their name on it, a laminated tag with their name, a Lego notebook, Lego crayons and a Lego coloring book that I put together.

     

    We set out the food and drinks. We looked through several different types of Lego cakes, and Elliott really wanted the kind with M&Ms on them, and he really wanted it to be blue. Brian is *highly* opposed to food coloring, so after doing a little research we picked these up at Whole Foods. They are made from vegetables so there is nothing artificial in there. I thought they worked out great and were a great alternative to food dye. The colors are not nearly as bright and bold as regular food coloring but they totally accomplished their purpose! These Lego Brick cakes were definitely challenging for me to make as I’m not super gifted in the baking arena and the frosting didn’t turn out as smooth as I had imagined it would 🙂 but Elliott loved them and that’s all that matters, right!! I also whipped up some Rice Krispie Lego Treats to have a gluten free option on hand.

    Elliott wanted a Lego man on his brick, and he picked a firefighter…in case the candles got out of hand, the fireman would be there to assist 🙂
    We wrapped juice boxes to look like Lego bricks (downloaded from here) and Elliott and Selah built the fork and napkin holders!

    And now for the actual PART-AY!!!!

    Guests arrived and Elliott handed them their Lego badges to wear. The first activity was creating your own Lego guy, which I cleverly re-named “DO YOU WANNA BUILD A LEGO GUY?” in honor of the Blizzard the day before. (Get it??? Sung to the tune of “Do you wanna build a snowman?”!!)

    We had yellow Lego guy cut outs (thank you, Silhouette!) with shirts, pants, hats, stickers, googly eyes, crayons and markers so the kids could decorate them. They didn’t put as much effort into them as I thought they might (note to self: most 5 year olds are not as into crafting as my son is!) and some finished as quickly as possible so they could play in the bin of Legos on the floor :). We also had several Lego coloring sheets set out as well.
    Here are some of the finished Lego guys sticking up out of their bags…cute!!!

    Next up was Pin the Head on the Lego Guy. This game is always such a hit!!! The kids each decorated their own Lego head and then took turns trying to pin it onto the headless Lego man. Everyone was cracking up!!

     

     

    Then we played Lego Bingo. I downloaded the Lego Bingo cards from someone else who had designed them, but we changed up a lot of them because, as Elliott puts it, a lot of them “don’t bless God.” It’s true. What is with the terrifying Lego pieces that are out there? Anyway, it was cute because we used pictures of Elliott at Lego Land and it made the game a lot more fun and personal.

    We used Legos for our markers and this game was also a big hit!

     

     

    Then we had a spoon race…which team can carry the Lego pieces on a spoon into the Lego head the fastest?

    And finally, Lego Creationary: each child builds something out of Legos and the other kids try to guess what it is! This was fun!!

    Then it was cake time!

    And I almost forgot on the day of, but thankfully Elliott reminded me! Presents!

    And everyone got their photo in the Lego man, of course!

    What a fun group of kiddos!!

     

     

    Our Big Man!!
    And of course Selah wanted a picture up there, too 🙂

    5th Lego Birthday Party SUCCESS!!

    And as if we hadn’t had enough fun, that night we went to Red Robin for his free birthday burger!

     

    Happy 5th Birthday, our beloved Elliott!!!

    (And in case you’re wondering…yes, he already has his parties planned out for the next 4 years!!!HA!!!!)

  • Christmas Countdown in Pictures

    Christmas Countdown in Pictures

    I’m taking a break from my normal long-windedness 🙂 and blogging this year’s Christmas through pictures! Enjoy!

    Get out the Christmas decorations and decorate your felt Christmas Tree!
    Go pick out our Christmas tree!
    Put up Christmas lights!
    Make Christmas gifts for our friends! (A project I envisioned doing for many more friends, but these were FAR more difficult and time-consuming than I had anticipated…so only two friends got gifts this year!)
    Build rocking horses together!
    Take out all of our Christmas and winter books!
    Journey to Bethlehem as a family! (“Breakfast in Bethlehem”…a breakfast/crafting/interactive living nativity put on by a local church! We all had SO much fun!!)
    Counting with Christmas Trees, Pom-pom sorting, Pipe Cleaner Straining…
    Zoo Lights!
    Stained Glass Nativities
    Snowman Pancakes!
    Elliott’s Christmas Program at Preschool
    Reindeer Cookies!
    The kids’ program at church, Nativity Stickers, and Christmas Magnet Pattern Blocks
    Gingerbread Men with the McCabes!
    Nativity Window Clings!
    The North Pole!!
    New pajama shirts (made by me because I couldn’t find any Christmas p.j.s that I like this year!!) and popcorn and a Christmas movie!
    Make baby Jesus some cookies and cupcakes…out of playdough!
    Christmas Eve…the kids each got to open one present (a new puzzle for each of them) and we all worked them together. Then church!
    Christmas Eve family shots!
    Christmas Day!!!
    Christmas with the family!
  • Pre-K Man!

    Pre-K Man!

    Our big 4 year old started Pre-K this month! He is going to a very small little preschool that we just love so far. The director is wonderful, the teachers are incredibly loving and…his good buddy Malachi is in his class!! How could it get any better? 🙂 This preschool as the option of letting the kids stay an extra 45 minutes afterwards to eat lunch. I was not even thinking about that as an option but when Elliott found out about it he begged me to let him stay. So…alas…I let him stay for lunch on the first day (sniff, sniff…) And as you can see below, that is one of his top three favorite things about school!

    Some stats:

    Age: Almost 4 1/2

    Height: 44 1/2 inches

    Shoe size: 12

    Clothing size: 5T and 6

    Loves: CRAFTING. Oh my, how this child loves to craft. He could literally sit and craft all day (and often does!) He loves to write letters to people and make cards and pictures for others. He also still LOVES to read and build.

    When he grows up he wants to be: “A space man and a firefighter.”

    Favorite part of Pre-K so far: “Eating snack and eating lunch.” When I asked if there was anything else he said, “I have one more thing…that Brooklyn is there!” and then he got a huge smile on his face, turned beet red, and ran away… haha!! 🙂

    Happy to be going to school again!
    These two…
    bbb
    The mandatory goofy picture
    We made these jars together and picked flowers for his teachers…
    Walking into school with the cards he made for his teachers, his backpack, and his lunchbox.
    Malachi!

    Meanwhile, back at the ranch…us girls went and got coffee and hot chocolate at our favorite little local coffee shop…and then went to the park, of course!

    I love my girl!
    This was her requested activity during Elliott’s first day!

    We went home, ate lunch, and raced back to pick up Elliott, whom we missed so much!

    Selah joining the big kids for the last part of lunch on the first day…

    All in all, it was a great first day and a successful first week of school!

  • Elliott’s Last Day of Preschool

    Elliott’s Last Day of Preschool

    Well, it happened to be SNOWING in MAY on the day of Elliott’s very last day of preschool (shout out to Colorado!). So, if you can get past the terrible picture quality of the last day {indoor} photos taken with my phone, you can see the changes in our big man and his little sister in just one school year…

    So grown up!!

     

  • Elliott is FOUR!!

    Elliott is FOUR!!

    Towards the beginning of January, Elliott suddenly said to me, “Mommy, I would like an animal birthday party.” I hadn’t talked to him about a party theme, but I will confess that I already had his entire birthday planned out in my head–with a different theme! I’m not used to my kids being able to articulate their desires like this :). So, I’ll admit–it took me a couple days to be inspired, but thanks to some help by Pinterest, I was fully hooked in no time. And it was SO MUCH FUN to do something that was initiated by Elliott!

    When I asked Elliott what was most important to him with the animal birthday party, he said, “I want REAL LIVE ANIMALS there!!!!”

    The hilarious part about that, is that Elliott is TERRIFIED of animals. Seriously. He’s always been utterly fascinated by them, but he doesn’t want to be anywhere near them. Selah has acquired the same fear. We’ve definitely had some breakthrough over the years, but both of them are still terrified.

    Going to the zoo itself just wasn’t practical this year, so we decided to have the zoo come to us! I pressed and prodded Elliott, reminding him that he’s often “a little” scared when he’s near animals, but he insisted that he wanted to see real live animals. When we got everything arranged and I told them we would have “REAL, LIVE animals” coming to our house, he was so excited. And when I asked him what type of animal he would really like to see, he boldly exclaimed, “A LION!!!!!” 🙂

    So…party preparations began a few weeks prior to his birthday, because the kids and I made all the decorations. Oh my, it was SO.MUCH.FUN preparing together! Elliott L-O-V-E-S crafting and so it was incredibly special for him (and Selah) to be an integral part of the decorating. It was so awesome spending a few weeks making animal crafts and for the kids to watch our home slowly transform into a little jungle…

    The first thing we made were my absolute FAVORITE decorations…I can’t get over how adorable these turned out. Both of the kids made each type of animal, so we had two of each kind–one big and one little. I just cut a Trader Joe’s bag into rectangles, and they stamped their hands right on each one! Then I added the details.

     

    We hung our animal handprints around the house amidst jungle vines…

    We printed off pictures of animals and found their heights, and put them up next to our growth chart so the kids could see which animal they were as tall as. Then, we decided to turn the growth chart into a tree! The kids cut out most of these leaves by themselves, fringes and all, and then put their thumbprints on them to make a few different types of bugs crawling through the trees!

    He’s as tall as a tiger!
    Can you see the bees, ladybugs and ants crawling on the tree leaves?

    I cut out this grass, but Elliott drew all of these little bugs! Aren’t they adorable!?!!

    Tis little pony bead alligator and elephant were cheapo crafts from Michaels. The kids LOVE pony beads, so these were a hit.
    The kids each made a couple of these monkeys that we kept finding hanging around the house!!! (See the little banana in his hand?!)
    They’re everywhere!
    They each made birds that could REALLY fly! 🙂
    We made suncatcher butterflies to hang from our sliding glass doors. I think they turned out beautifully!!
    After mixing together colors to make orange for the orange handprint animals, Elliott just painted the rest of the paper plate so the whole thing was orange. Then he asked if we could turn the orange plate into a lion. So we tuned it into a lion mask! Then I thought it would be fun if we gave everyone a chance to “be a lion” so we put the mask up on the mirror in the entryway and drew the rest of his body…
    Elliott LOVES penguins, so I thought it would be fun to turn everyone who went to the bathroom into a penguin…so Elliott and I did this on the bathroom mirror :).
    This is his goofy penguin face, hahaha!!

    Right after we decided to do an animal birthday party, I found Elliott in his room during quiet rest time making the coolest cage out of his straw builder things (or whatever they’re called, ha!) I said, “Hey! Should we make this into a zoo cage for all of your stuffed animals?!” He loved the idea, and he and Selah went to work the rest of the afternoon building a cage. Then, he painted this sign all by himself!!! (I did help him with apostrophe…)

    Elliott’s Zoo!!
    We loaded our mantle with some of our favorite animal books, Daddy’s monkey from when he was little, and a zebra 4!
    The day before the party, Elliott helped me make the cupcakes!

    The day of the party…

    We found wild animal tracks leading up to our front door!!!
    The party room is all ready! You can’t really read it, but the banner strung up says, “Happy 4th Birthday Elliott” out of various animal print papers.
    Elliott had a few super special guests fly in for his birthday! His cousin Micah, Uncle Kevin, and Grandma and Grandpa!

    All of his other friends arrived, and they started off by doing the thing that Elliott loves–crafting :). They each had a paper bag set out for them and they got to decorate it using animal stamps and stickers.

    Here’s everyone working hard on their crafts. I love this special moment that I caught between Elliott and Auntie Suz :).

    Then, they got to use they same supplies to decorate the covers for their very own binoculars. While the adults assembled binoculars, the kids got to make these cool snakes out of pipe cleaners and pony beads…again, one of Elliott’s FAVORITE crafting supplies.

    These are Elliott and Selah’s snakes. We talked about patterns and they had a great time creating these!

    And THEN it was time to hunt for animals using their binoculars! Elliott and Selah hid tiny plastic animals all over our living room and all the kids set out to hunt for them.

    Selah would look through her binoculars and say, “I SPY YOU!!!!!”
    Here’s the Mighty Quinn, on the hunt!!
    Look what Micah found!!!

    Then we went downstairs for a little “pin-the-tail-on-the-giraffe”…while half the kids were playing the game, the other half pretended to be monkeys and swung around on our gynamstics equipment in the basement!

    We let Elliott go first and he put the tail EXACTLY where it should go! Ha!! He looked at me afterwards like, “Um, why was that so hard?” Hahaha!!
    Our buddy Malachi!
    Sweet Fable!
    Dramatic Selah 🙂

    Then, it was time for lunch! Highlights included: pigs in a blanket, zebra popcorn, lion veggies, goldfish crackers, animal crackers, penguin gummies, mice-infested meat and cheese tray and meatballs :).

     

    After these wild party animals had their fill, there was a knock at the door…the REAL LIVE ANIMALS had arrived!!!

    The first one was a three-banded Armadillo!!
    You can tell how my kids felt about him!!
    Elliott even had the chance to feed it a live cricket! (It’s hard to see, but he’s holding long tweezers with a cricket pinched inside.) It’s all fun and games until said birthday boy accidentally lets the live cricket loose…
    It was all we could do to encourage him to take a picture with it :).

    Next up was a real live SNAKE!!

    Fable’s face says it all!!! HA!!
    And then, a TURTLE!
    And last, but not least, a Chinchilla!

    The kids all got the opportunity to touch each animal and it was such a fun experience!! Elliott was FASCINATED with the animals and couldn’t stop talking about them…he just still didn’t really want to be near them…as I suspected :).

    After the animals left, we had cake and opened presents!!

    Animals…behind pretzel cages.
    Elliott helped me decorate…and sprinkled some with “grass” and left others white so they would look like snow.
    Blowing out his four candles!!
    Everyone devoured their cupcakes, including this wild girl.
    Elliott’s friends were so generous and thoughtful and he got some super fun gifts!
    The party animals!
    The Moberg Pack!
    Such a fun day celebrating this wild 4 year old!!!

  • Love Comes From God

    There I was…on the bathroom floor…desperate for my son’s heart to change.

    We had just had 20 minutes that made me want to clench my fists and jump up and down and throw an honest-to-goodness 2 year old tantrum. I have been praying more than ever lately for my children to have wisdom (more on that one day soon), because the amount of foolishness that has been prevalent in our home by my dear 3 year old has been…what can I say…MIND-BOGGLING.

    Tonight, after pulling one of his routine foolish antics, I knelt down in front of him as he attempted to put his poops in the potty. Picture it: me, kneeling on our, ahem, “well-loved,” bathroom floor while my strained-face pooping 3 year old looked at me with red eyes. “Buddy…” I pleaded, tears in my own eyes. “Buddy…why, oh WHY, are you being so foolish?”

    We’ve just been over this particular scenario 41 billion trillion quadrillion times, and sometimes–I will be honest–I resort to this…kneeling on a bathroom floor and pleading with my pooping child. I’m still not sure if that’s better or worse than throwing a tantrum. I’ve been in Proverbs a lot lately, and you just can’t read Proverbs without begging God to save you and your children from the folly of foolishness. You can’t read Proverbs without begging God to soften your heart and your children’s hearts to love wisdom and not despise it. You can’t read Proverbs without begging God to keep you and your children from returning to your/their own vomit. Isn’t it true?

    We had just come from our church’s little community group, where at some point we ended up discussing how when children are asked why their parents love them, they usually respond with works-based answers, such as, “Because I’m good at art” or “Because I obey” or things of the sort. This, of course, is so opposed to the heart of the gospel, which relieves us from the burden of works-based righteousness. We are made righteous because of who Jesus is, and nothing of ourselves. I had Ephesians 2:8 (“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this not from ourselves–it is a gift from God”) memorized as a child, but I did not truly understand the essence of this verse and the gospel until I was an adult. And it is still a battle each day to remember and understand and believe.

    Oh, how I long for my kids to know God’s love for them.

    Oh, oh, oh…oh, I long for my kids to understand that God’s love is unconditional. That we love because He first loved us. That we cannot attain His favor or love by our works, but only because of Jesus.

    I wrestle with this truth and understanding in my own life, but I fight hard each day to understand it because a.) my soul needs to understand it and b.) I can’t teach them what I don’t understand.

    Daily, by faith, one of the ways I try to teach them the little I do understand of His love is by showing them and telling them constantly how much I love them. Simply because they are mine. Simply because they are made in God’s image. Simply because they are eternal beings that matter. To me, and to God. Oh, how I long for my kids to understand love.

    So…back to community group (or “moony toop” as Selah calls it). As soon as I heard that question being discussed, I made a mental note to talk to the kids about works-based righteousness. Though we talk about the gospel frequently, I wanted to start directly teaching them about unconditional love. Just then, Brian leaned over and whispered, “We’ve got to ask our kids that question when we get home.” We were thinking the same thing. We had never thought to ask them such a question and we really had no idea how they would answer.

    Which brings us…home. Remember where we started? Me, kneeling on the bathroom floor?

    I put Selah to bed with such an anxiety in my spirit over the state of my son’s foolish heart. I was talking to Selah, telling her the gospel once again and reminding her why we can forgive our friend who had hurt her that night–only because of Jesus. Only because Jesus forgave us first. Only because Jesus forgave us while we were still sinners. And all in the back of my head I’m begging the Lord to change my son’s heart to be one who loves wisdom and not folly.

    I shut Selah’s door, and wanted to cry. But then I heard Brian’s voice…

    “Mommy…? Will you come here for a minute? Elliott has something to tell you…”

    I braced myself for the somewhat typical half-hearted apology from Elliott, and begged the Lord to give me the grace to truly forgive him and truly have hope for his soul. But instead…I got this:

    “My son, tell Mommy why Daddy and Mommy love you.”

    Elliott responded with a big smile on his face, “Because Jesus said, ‘Love one another.’ John 15:12.”

    I was a little confused…I figured Brian must have done a little lesson on the question we had wanted to ask him, in light of his disobedience. I thought it was sort of an odd way to teach Elliott the “answer” to that question, but I was just trying to go with it…until Brian relayed the whole story to me, with our sweet Elliott in his arms.

    “I asked Elliott why Mommy and Daddy love him, and he told me, ‘Because God tells us to.’ I asked if he could think of anything else…any other reasons why we love him. And he responded by saying, ‘Jesus said, ‘Love one another.’ John 15:12′.”

    Mind boggled to mind BLOWN.

    I broke down into a puddle of tears. I think Elliott’s starting to recognize my “good crying” (ha!) because he just beamed ear-to-ear with pride as my lip quivered and the tears flowed down my face.

    Our 3 year old son responded to the question of why we love him with a Scripture. With a Scripture about the fact that our love comes from God. And, for full disclosure here: I haven’t taught him that Scripture. It was a verse he memorized at preschool.

    And so without my help, or instruction, the Holy Spirit has been working in his heart on this concept…that love comes from God. That we love because God tells us to. (Remember my revelation that God doesn’t tell us our parenting techniques will not come back void, but that THE WORD will not come back void? What a sweet and gentle reminder from the Lord on a night that my faith had dwindled…)

    Oh, there is still, obviously, so much to learn and so much to teach. But the fact that our son has grasped the idea that we love him because of God is the nugget of grace and hope I needed tonight.

    Fellow mamas, let’s teach the Word diligently and faithfully in  our homes, pray like crazy as we do, and trust that God will plant the truths in our children’s souls.

    Lord, I’m praying for my friends tonight, and I’m praying especially for all the mommies out there who, like me, struggle to understand that your love is unconditional. Teach us, Lord. Show us, Lord. Help us understand the gospel and give us the grace and perseverance to teach our children the gospel. Lord, help us understand your love so that we can love our kids unconditionally. Lord, strengthen our weary souls, as we love and pour out and teach and train tirelessly and endlessly…and teach us how to do it in your strength. Teach us how to pray. Amen.