Christmas with the Michaelis'

Christmas - it was only 2 months ago! But, like the Type A that I have always been, I am staying in order with my posts.

We spent the holiday with my in-laws and had a fantastic time. Grandma started a Christmas tree for Justin and has an ornament for each year.


The weather was bitterly cold, but Justin braved the wind by going out and was a pooper scooper with Grandpa. With three dogs in the house, there was plenty to do.


Grandma got a gingerbread house for Justin to make. My wonderful husband took the reins and helped Justin through the tedious craft.


I was quite impressed with Justin's fine motor skills, and how insistent he was in making it look just like the photo on the box.


Justin worked on this thing for a full hour while we listened to Christmas CDs. I just sat on the couch and took photos.


The proud boys and their finished product.


We went to the train exhibit at the Mayborn Museum with grandma and Uncle Kevin while the other men played golf.


Justin loved all the trains.


So many trains


Anytime I can try and get some bokeh on a photo


Justin always loves the tornado


Ryan's girlfriend, Stephanie, got to spend some time with us. Her and Ryan gave this Lightning McQueen game to Justin for his birthday. Derek decided to leave this addictive device at Grandma & Grandpa's house. My mom never allowed video games in our house, and Derek had them at all times. So it's funny to me that he is more adamant than I am about limiting the use of games around Justin.


On Christmas Eve in Waco it snowed! Such a treat that Justin has gotten to see so much snow this winter.


Even Roxy got to run through it while on a bathroom break.


The one day the weather was nice we all ran outside to release the cabin fever.


And I invited my camera along as well. The time of day was just too perfect not to take some photos of my boy.


I am still rather obsessed with the placement of the sun when I have the chance to manipulate it.


Derek used to ride this tractor when he was little.



Steve & Kerry gave Justin a solar powered car for Christmas. We had owned it for 2 weeks before the sun ever came out for us to try it. It was so much fun! If your shadow got in the way then it immediately stopped. Pretty cool even for me.


So did I mention that Justin was waking up early this holiday? As in 4:50am on Christmas Day? Yes, I had dreamed of waking up, cuddling together in our bed, and letting him open his Compassion Child gift from us. I think that before 5am that I was so out of it that that warm fuzzy feeling had not come out from under the covers yet. But nothing stopped the happiness of this little boy!


As usual, Justin was the distributor, and most of the time the opener, of the gifts.


He had such a great time the entire morning. Thank goodness for the in-laws because he didn't get much from mommy and daddy, much less we still don't do Santa. Somehow I think we are okay since we had a trunk full of things on the way home.


Ryan loves Duke basketball, and when he heard that Derek had befriended Shane Battier (a former Duke player), a little birdie told us that he would love a signed anything form him. So for those that know Derek, you would know that he never enjoyed signing autographs for himself in sports because he was just too humble. And never would he run up like the fans and get one for himself. So please imagine the love for his brother as he went over to Shane's house, basketball in hand, and watched him sign a ball. He said he has never been more embarrassed. Thankfully Shane knows him well enough to know that this wasn't normal. Ryan was truly thrilled, so all the hard work paid off.


The one thing that all the boys played with all morning was the nerf gun. Derek saw our Sunday School teacher's oldest boy with one, and he was determined for Justin to have the same thing. I don't know who has more fun with it?


Taking a breather from all the fun.


The dogs, who had sat quietly, started to romp around for our enjoyment. Roxy, always the villain.


And we did manage to take a Christmas card photo of the family on Christmas Day. This was right after I fell asleep on the couch at 11am after being awake for about 7 hours by then.


Such a treat to be with Derek's whole family. We don't get to see his brothers as often, so all of us really had a great time being together. Finally, last post for 2009!

Claiming the bird

I almost twisted my ankle last night. I am surprised that I didn't wake up with more of a limp. The story seems quite absurd now that I have slept on it, but in the heat of the moment, I couldn't think of anything else.

I was taking Roxy out to potty last night before going to bed. Derek and I had a date night thanks to the last minute babysitting offer from my brother. I was uncharacteristically in a pair of heels and still in my date night garb. Roxy runs over to the neighborhood cat, Miss Kitty. I notice they are both looking at a dark something in the grass. All of a sudden Miss Kitty picks up the item of curiosity and takes it across the street, with its victim chirping in protest.

Don't ask me why I was on a mission to save that bird, but I was. I ran across the street as Miss Kitty taunted the frightened bird. I kicked, pushed, and yelled at the cat, but she kept her stealth walk towards her prey a constant. It was almost unnerving how she would not stop for each punch I would try to send her way. I tried to pick up the bird, and then it flew a few feet away. All of a sudden Chloe, the Wilsons' teenage kitten, swoops in and grabs the bird. Miss Kitty and Roxy, who has just been an avid spectator during all this, are frantic to find the missing bird. And oddly enough so am I. I am on my hands and knees in the darkness looking under bushes to find Chloe. I was so close, and felt so defeated. I look towards Chloe's house and see one gleaming eye in the darkness. I jump through the ditches of my neighbors yard (wearing heels, might I remind you), and am running towards the young cat. I pass a huge branch and turn back to grab it. This is where I almost fall over from twisting my ankle so sharply. All for a bird! I then hobble run with the branch in hand towards Chloe, who is harmless, might I add. I am thrashing the branch at the cat's face (Dawn, forgive me), and she is just as adamant about slowly continuing to torment the bird. I was almost alarmed at the strength of the small cat. I finally somehow kick her out of the way and grab the shaken and injured bird.

None of the animals know I have the bird. I run home and walk in the door to find Derek with a puzzled look on his face, wondering where I have been for the last 20 minutes. I show him the bird, and start rushing out that we need to put the bird in the nest in our tree. No honey, I stammer, I don't know if its this bird's nest, but I cannot let those cats get ahold of this bird again. Yes, honey, I know this is all about the circle of life. So Derek calmly gets a stepstool and deposits the bird in the nest. I literally almost drop kick Miss Kitty out of my driveway as her and Chloe sulk off to find another prey.

Why go into detail with such a silly story, much less my insistence on saving one bird? While I was trying to find the bird after Chloe ran off with her prey, I could hear a voice inside of me saying, "Don't let the meaning of this escape you. Just like you are protecting that bird and hunting it down to save it, so am I doing the same thing for you and your family." So it became almost a fight for my family against the sea of darkness we have been up against these last two months. It reminded me of the scripture we went over at Beth Moore this past week as talked about spiritual warfare: "Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air." 1 Corinthians 9:25-26

Beth talked about how we can be one of four people when we are fighting a spiritual battle with the Enemy. The first is someone who keeps punching aimlessly until we eventually hit something. The second is someone who punches everyone around them, passing blame, because someone made them this way. The third almost girl swats at the air, not doing any damage whatsoever. And the fourth takes aim and punches right at the angry enemy.

We cannot choose our war, but we can choose if we are going to be warriors. I had this eerie feeling when I was watching those cats both take multiple blows from me and just continue walking slowly towards that bird, that the devil is the same way. He has a slow, methodical patience as he keeps walking slowly at us, taunting us with each little thing that can get under our skin. And as he occasionally carries us off as we chirp in protest, can we honestly say that we are fighting a beautiful fight? Are we even fighting at all? Psalm 27:3 says, "Though an army besiege me , my heart will not fear; though war break out against me, even then I will be confident."

Right now I feel like my family is that bird. The Lord will swoop in and grab us out of the fight, protecting us as the enemy is searching the ground for our trail. But the Lord's timing is not my own, which is why I continue to keep a heads-up on my enemy.

"I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the Land of the living." Psalm 27:13


And on a lighter note....

Derek recently told a buddy whose little boy just started walking that nothing prepared him for the day when Justin just all of sudden finally started dribbling the basketball. I didn't think Derek would react one way or the other, but now he and Justin are always outside shooting hoops with a smaller Baylor basketball from Papa and the goal at the shortest level possible. On Presidents' Day, when the high got to be about 45 degrees that day, Derek and JT were outside for at least 2 hours that day practicing their basketball skills. Whether or not Justin has any skills remains to be seen, and really is not a big deal to us one way or the other, might I add. But he definitely has a love for sports!

He shoots...


...he scores!


Christmas photos finally making their way to the blog later this week! Check it off the list.

January - where did it go?

For a girl who was so pumped to almost be caught up on blog posts, I sure did let the month get away from me. But I have noticed, due to the small number on my google reader each day, that January seemed to do the same thing for everyone else as well. And I STILL haven't done a post about Christmas. Oh well, it will come in it's own due time. I just haven't had the motivation, time, energy, etc. to get around to editing my own photos from Christmas, much less all that went on in January. That's the problem with shooting in RAW - I have to edit the photos to put them on the web, and an album of 70 photos always seems a bit daunting. Wah, wah, wah, right?

And that's the irony - I almost got a post ready of our laidback January in the middle of last month and then everything just started to slowly come to pieces. January was of of the most relaxed months I have had in the past 2 years. I kid you not - until the end of the month the three of us have never spent so much time together on the weekends with just us. Somewhat sad when you think of it. And just when I thought I could go on forever in this world of no commitments, nothing on the social calendar, and no worries, well, there were other plans for this family.

It all seems small, but when you write it all down you can see why the stress of it all can just weigh on you. Our downstairs heater became quite the entertainer for about 2 weeks. This was during the really cold weeks in January, with lows in the teens here in Houston. It would work starting about 10am each morning, and would start to act up around 5pm each evening. My heater guy would get to my house every day at, you guessed it, about 10am, and it would miraculously be working. We would think that everything was fine, and then would come downstairs each morning and it would be 56 degrees downstairs. Never has the Michaelis household bought so much firewood. After fixing the flame starter, the thermostat, and finally the blower, we got the heater to work on its own all day long.

In that process of never feeling warm for half the month, I started taking uncharacteristically hot showers. It was the only time of the day where I just felt the thaw come out of my frozzzzzen toes. So imagine my surprise when I go to the doctor to check out a spot on my collarbone that I thought might be a Staph infection that would never clear up to get a diagnosis of eczema. I literally whipped my head around at the physician's assistant. I had not had the dry itchy skin disease since I was 14 years old. So not only do I have a steroid medicine I have to put on everyday, but now I have to take lukewarm showers. Brutal - back to frozen toes, and now I am having lesions pop up on my scalp. So not use the hairdryer maybe?

Then my sweet dog, Roxy, keeps me up all night itching. I literally want to banish her from my room for the day when I look at her belly and see fleas. All. over. her. And did I mention I was sitting on my bed when I saw this? All my bedding goes to the cleaners, we get our carpets cleaned, treat our whole house with lovely insecticides, and even bathed Roxy in Dawn dish soap. I still imagine little black bugs crawling on me at night in my bed.

Derek last minute got a new pacemaker put in. And in case you are in shock that he even had one, you are not alone. He got one when he was 16 years old in high school. With this surgery he now has his third pacemaker to keep his heart ticking. Justin now tells us that when he grows up he wants to be a daddy and get a pacemaker as well. He can't wait to have surgery. Might need to pull him aside and tell him there are other aspirations in life than wanting a pacemaker.

Justin's school has an auction in March and somehow I got the job of taking all 70+ kids' photos, editing them, and developing them into 8x10s to make money for the school. That, my friends, is why you have not seen a single photo on this blog in almost a month. I wanted to be done with it, and just finished editing on Friday. Freedom! My biggest helper in getting every single one of those kids to smile was mini marshmallows. Go buy you a bag and strap them onto your camera strap. And get a personality and tickle the little fellas as well. That always helps. But seriously, I had kids following me around the playground, begging for a smile in exchange for a marshmallow. I haven't never thought anything was more funny.

One of the harder children to photograph was....drumroll...my son. Not because he was uncooperative but because he gave me too much of a pose. I had to crop this photo vertically to get rid of the arm he had slung on the fence. I finally got the photo that Justin chose for the auction, but not without trying very hard to get a relaxed pose.


And no, that was not THE photo.

Once again, I know that I still have to post about Christmas, but the least I could do is share what my sister-in-law, Kaki, talked me into making. Now remember that I am not crafty, but I have to admit that this Valentine's Day wreath was so easy to make!


After basically copying this post on every little detail, like buying the same ribbon with the white piping to cover the wreath with, we had ourselves a winner. I do admit that I ran out of ribbon and finished the rest of the wreath with red, yes red, duck tape.


These fun damask cupcake liners came from Hobby Lobby. I bought 6 packages of 50 each each, and we used almost every single one of them. Kaki has never been a wreath girl, whereas I have 10 of them, sitting in my attic, just waiting their turn to be used. I love having a creative member of the family to help spur me on in these areas! And I even bought my first glue gun to commiserate this firsts of making a wreath.


I know this post is all over the place, but I had to throw this in the randomness of it all. My neighbor, Dawn, owns Pickles and Ice Cream, a super fun maternity store in the galleria. She does booths at a lot of markets around town, and recently had a booth next to Angie's Cake. I know a lot of you make cake balls (and actually enjoy the process), but I have never had the urge to make them myself. And why would I after tasting these pretty puppies?

Dawn gave me a sampler box with a dozen cake balls, chocolate, vanilla, and chocolate mint. Derek, Justin, and I have never made more affirming noises while eating our bitesize desserts. She makes all sorts of themed balls, like these that would have been fun for the Super Bowl. Anyways, me thinks I am going to have to place an order of these sometime soon.


And then I will end with a complete 180 from most of this post. This past month has brought my family an enormous amount of spiritual oppression. A friend at our Sunday School women's dinner termed her life with that phrase, spiritual oppression, and I thought it was a most appropriate phrase. I am not going to go into much detail, but my heart has been so heavy for the last several weeks. I cannot remember the last time I have been on my knees so many times each day. I was talking with a buddy at the park today about it, and she and I were talking about how so many families right now are going through the same thing. So many prayer requests of people just feeling beat down. And then she said what I have been feeling for almost 2 years now: "The Spirit is on the move, so the Enemy knows his time is short."

The Spirit is on the move. But so is the Enemy. So families like mine are just crying out to the Lord, begging for mercy. I knew that this semester needed something different out of me. I knew it when I felt the need to only do one biblestudy, to start to pull out of some of my social obligations, and to just be still. I have been telling some of you for a couple months that the Lord wants me to be still in the beginning of the new year. It was to prepare me for the fight that my soul has been dealing with. My mom has always joked that I am the Advocate for the family. If anyone says anything or messes with anyone that is dear to my heart, then watch out. Shani is going to be all over it. And that's how I feel right now - almost like I need to bare my teeth at the devil as he keeps messing with those that I love so much.

The one study I have been involved in this semester is Beth Moore's Heart Like His. I have been craving some Beth homework, and I finally got a study with one. Ironically, every single day of homework there is a verse that speaks to me that directly relates to this darkness that has come over my family. The Lord is going to get so much Glory from this, as He always does. He will work it out.

My buddy Jenn gave me a CD for Christmas from the church we used to attend. Faithbridge has always had great worship, and their new CD, You Alone are God, has been the CD that I will associate this season of life with. When a song is running through my head these days, it's one of the ones off this CD. Today Justin and I were driving home from a birthday party in Spring when a huge thunderstorm hit. The rain was so loud that Justin asked if I could turn up the music louder. My local KSBJ was not doing it for me, so I put this CD in. I think the Holy Spirit was giving me a chance to crank the music with Justin along for the ride. I gratefully turned up the volume and just worshipped to my favorite song on the CD, Healer. With one hand in the air and tears in my eyes, I just spent a few great minutes of quality time with the Lord.

I am just asking for prayer. The Spirit is on the move, and the Body has never been more important to stand together to fight the mess that keeps coming out way. I finish this very long post with the words from the CD. I will catch up on posts later. Story of my life. But for now I need to go back into the battle. Isn't it great that we know who will win in the end?

Healer
We are people in need of grace
We are bound by all our mistakes
Here in our weakness can You bring your strength
We are in need, we are in need

We lift our song to You, the healer of our soul
Would You come and restore the things that have been lost
We have no life except the life You give
Healer, heal us

You are gracious in all Your ways
Your compassion, it never fails

As we draw near to You we cannot help but say,
"We are amazed, we are amazed!"

Calling for grace, calling for mercy
Calling for love, calling for You

Holy Cross Jesus Story

I just took my last injection for fertility shots last Saturday, praise His name!  So we wait and come Valentine's Day we will know the next road to take.   No matter the outcome, He will blow our minds with the outcome.  Of that I am sure.  Whether the very next step is a pregnancy or adoption, it's exciting and scary all at the same time.  May we be overflowing with joy even if our circumstances do not change.


Speaking o joy, our family is filled with when the Junods grace our home with their presence.  They came into town in December and we ate up whatever free time they could offer us.  They came to stay with us one night and then into the swing of things we all went.


Justin was always correcting me that it was not a Christmas program but a Jesus Story that we were coming to.  Brooks and Barrett were troopers to come watch the production.

Last year he refused to wear his sheep hat, so the fact that he was in full costume was greatness.

Such the poser, cocking the hip and everything.

And even a wave.

The boy has some lungs.  Not necessarily on tune, but he sang his little heart out to Jesus.  Bless him.

Then we went to sing happy birthday to Jesus.

Smiles with Luke & Barrett.

Me and my boy.

Brooks went to the car with Georgia and Wendi while Barrett stayed behind to ring the bells to good ole Amy Grant's 'Come on Ring those Bells'.

We went by the room for a quick gift from Mrs. Walstead.  We have loved every minute of his three year old class this year.  We had a brief stint where they suggested he go on to Kindergarten in the fall.  But after receiving peace from the Holy Spirit about our current course, we are pumped for another year at this small, precious school.