my baby turned 2 today...



Happy birthday to our sweet Daisy Grace!

 

This girl is such a joy to our family.  We are all just in love with her!  She has an amazing personality, and she is very squeezable and loveable :)  What a blessing she is to us!

 



Happy birthday, Daisy!  We love you and thank God for you!!

the church.

We recently finished up our Ecclesiology class (basically a study of the Church).  Before I put my notes away from that class, I thought I would just share some thoughts on my blog.  I learned so much truth and have so much to think about from Ecclesiology, and I don't want to forget it!  So I thought the blog would be a good place to store my (somewhat random) thoughts :)

*the local church is always and only made up of living believers and is limited to location, while the universal church is made up of all believers, dead and alive, and is not limited by location.

*All churches have the same Head--Jesus Christ.  We all have the same goals--we should all be what CHRIST is about!  Of course, diversity can be fine, too.  But there should NOT be this competition between churches.  There should be unity.

*the local church is a way of life...not a meeting.  Meeting together in an organized manner is important, but being a part of the local church is much more of living life together functioning daily as the body.

*a MAJOR theme running throughout all the Scriptures:  the difficulty of life in this world and the need to persevere.  And we cannot do this by ourselves--we need the Body.

*the local church should be close, intimate, serving and sacrificing for each other.

And lastly, for anyone who wants to read this quote, I think it is amazing.  It is from a guy named Radmacher, and our Ecclesiology teacher had it in our notes.  I just love it.  It is on the Church as the Bride of Christ and the amazing-ness of this love that Christ has for the Church:

"This love is even more amazing in the light of the infinite distance of nature between the lover and the beloved.  Never was there love that fixed itself upon an object so much below the lover.  Nor has there ever been an instance of such love to those so far from being capable of benefiting the lover.  Among men the lover looks upon the beloved as one capable and fitted to complement or benefit the lover.  But Jesus Christ is above want.  Again, never was there any that set his love upon those in whom he saw so much filthiness and deformity.  Men may set their love upon those that are inwardly very hateful because they are ignorant of them.  They do not know what is in them.  But Christ knew perfectly all of man's filthiness (Heb. 4:13).  Again, never was there a lover that set his love upon those that were so far from loving him.  Every natural man has a mortal enmity against Christ.  And this enmity is infinitely unreasonable, for Christ has never done him any wrong.  Yet, knowing of this contempt beforehand, Christ was pleased to set His love upon them.  Finally, never was there any love so beneficial to the beloved.  By means of Christ's dying love, the beloved is rescued from eternal destruction to fully enjoy Him for all eternity.  All of this is just a mere glimpse at that knowledge-surpassing love of which the apostle speaks and which is pictured in the beautiful bride metaphor."

a milestone in kaine's life

 

He lost his first 2 teeth!

 

 

I just love this kiddo :)

Celebrating Halle (and Daisy)...part 2

(click here for part 1)

 

We were so glad we could spend lots of time in our hometown this past week!  NTBI had spring break, so we headed home and stayed the week in Nathan's parents' house.  Thanks, mom and dad!

 

Since we were home, we decided to have a double birthday party for Halle and Daisy with our families.  Halle already turned 5 last month, and Daisy will soon be 2 at the end of April.  So we just combined them together, and it was lots of fun!  (Click here to see last year's double birthday party).

 

Herre are the birthday girls with their cake, which Halle was able to help me with this year!  My girl is getting older!

I wanted to get a picture of the two girls together before the party started, and I thought the results were so funny.  Here is what it takes for a mom to get a decent picture of her two young kiddos (and I believe the real problem is the littler girl...ahem...Daisy):

 

(this one is my favorite):

We had lots of guests...

(this next picture cracks me up...the grandmas and my girls were supposed to do "silly faces".  haha!  I guess the grandma's don't get into the silly face thing like the kiddos)  :)

Kaine and Halle were explaining their "game" that they made for everyone.  They decided to do an Easter egg hunt for the adults, since (and I quote):  "The adults have been doing so much for us this past week, so we want to do something for them."  Awww...I love my kids :)

This was what Halle was most excited for...her gifts!  She was beyond excited for this part.

And after she opened them up, she promptly set them up all around her, and didn't even want to eat cake and ice cream!  She just sat in the middle of her toys and played the rest of the time.

Daisy showing off her new pink slippers from Aunt Susie:

Layla and Ivy have been getting along so well!  They sat together while eating cake and ice cream and entertained each other for so long.

Of course, Grandpa Jim spent time playing with Kaine!  And we didn't know it, but at the party poor Kaine was coming down with strep throat.  :(  Poor boy...towards the end of the evening we couldn't find Kaine anywhere, and then I looked in his bed and found that he had put himself to bed...I knew something must be wrong with him at that point!

The other kids loved playing in this huge cardboard "city" that Nathan's dad had made them earlier that week.  They loved it!  Thanks for doing that for them, dad--it was such a great idea!

(haha...I caught Ivy eating these little styrofoam balls!  She is so funny!)

 

 

Such a fun party.  We always love the chance to get both of our families together, because it really doesn't happen too often! 

 

Now, we are back in Michigan to start our last stretch of classes here at NTBI.  Such a bittersweet time, but more on that later!  Have a great week!