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| I love how Ella feels the need to stand on a stool if she was president! |
Ella brought this book home she made in kindergarten titled “If I were president…” On each page was a different thing she would do if she was president. The last page (above) melted my heart!
On Saturday night, the girls went with James to a daddy/daughter(s) dance (held at a local church)! The girls had a great time having a tea party, dancing the night away, and there was even a carriage ride at the end!
I let James take my old camera so the girls could take turns taking pictures of each other! I was pretty impressed with how the pictures turned out (my little budding photographers)!
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| safe in daddy’s hands |
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| a strong man to look up to |
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| only he can make her smile this big |
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| down on one knee! |
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The best pictures, though, were those that James took of the girls “interpretative” dancing(?)
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| these sisters love to dance! |
Here is the carriage that they rode in at the end of the night. Unfortunately, their picture in the carriage didn’t turn out, so James took this of random people.
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Is this Rapunzel’s horse? (check out the braid!)
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After a long break from soccer, the Paquette’s are back, this time with Asher! (The girls are happily in ballet and hip hop.) James is the coach, and if you measured his happiness by how much he has spent on new “coaching” clothes and soccer equipment, you would say he is LOVING it! 🙂 Five out of the six kids on the team are from our church, the Austin Stone Community Church. Hence, we named the soccer team-the Rolling Stones! (We also live in the same neighborhood!) Here is James with Asher (pre hair-cut!) on the first day of practice on Thursday.
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Asher had a lot of heart this morning. He was always running with a big grin on his face. However, he mostly ran NEAR the ball and didn’t quite understand you are supposed to KICK the ball, (especially when the other team had it). This is my favorite action shot of the morning, and it was before the game even started!
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| running drills with daddy |
Here is James giving the team a pre-game pep talk. I love how Asher is listening intently and how the other players are “eyeing” the other team across the field!
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| Caden’s big brother, Cole, is the unoffical “assitant coach” |
Asher ready to start with his “mean” game face on! He reminds me of Ella‘s soccer face back in the day!
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| I’m ready for you! |
Asher got the ball!
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| go busta! |
Asher had many supporters at his first game! Cousin Caden came to watch (and grandma and grandpa too)!
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| thanks for coming cuz! |
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In the 4th quarter, Asher was done. 🙂
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| sucking the fingers and holding the ear… |
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| #7 just like daddy! |
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| Malachi, Asher, and Caden-friends for life |
I took my first maternity photo shoot on Wednesday afternoon! Things got a little messy…
Click here to see some of my favorites!
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It’s a Girl! |
Happy Ash Wednesday! Although we don’t celebrate Ash Wednesday, it does mark the beginning of celebrating Jesus’ death and resurrection for many!
And this year I want to make an Easter countdown for my kids. I know Easter changes each year, but I still want to anticipate the big day by reading the true Easter story from the Bible in the weeks leading up to Easter. After some thought and research, I decided that we are going to teach our kids about the prophecy of the events surrounding Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection in the Old Testament and the prophecies fulfilled in the New Testament. There are 18 main prophecies, so therefore I am making an Easter countdown for the 18 days before Easter. This year, the countdown will start on March 22nd.
| 1 | Jesus would be betrayed. | Psalm 41:9 Zechariah 11:12-13 |
Luke 22:47-48 Matthew 26:14-16 |
| 2 | Jesus’ price money would be used to buy a potter’s field. | Zechariah 11:12-13 | Matthew 27:9-10 |
| 3 | Jesus would be falsely accused. | Psalm 35:11 | Mark 14:57-58 |
| 4 | Jesus would be silent before his accusers. | Isaiah 53:7 | Mark 15:4-5 |
| 5 | Jesus would be spat upon and struck. | Isaiah 50:6 | Matthew 26:67 |
| 6 | Jesus would be hated without cause. | Psalm 35:19 Psalm 69:4 |
John 15:24-25 |
| 7 | Jesus would be crucified with criminals. | Isaiah 53:12 | Matthew 27:38 Mark 15:27-28 |
| 8 | Jesus would be given vinegar to drink. | Psalm 69:21 | Matthew 27:34 John 19:28-30 |
| 9 | Jesus’ hands and feet would be pierced. | Psalm 22:16 Zechariah 12:10 |
John 20:25-27 |
| 10 | Jesus would be mocked and ridiculed. | Psalm 22:7-8 | Luke 23:35 |
| 11 | Soldiers would gamble for Jesus’ garments. | Psalm 22:18 | Luke 23:34 Matthew 27:35-36 |
| 12 | Jesus’ bones would not be broken. | Exodus 12:46 Psalm 34:20 |
John 19:33-36 |
| 13 | Jesus would be forsaken by God. | Psalm 22:1 | Matthew 27:46 |
| 14 | Jesus would pray for his enemies. | Psalm 109:4 | Luke 23:34 |
| 15 | Soldiers would pierce Jesus’ side. | Zechariah 12:10 | John 19:34 |
| 16 | Jesus would be buried with the rich. | Isaiah 53:9 | Matthew 27:57-60 |
| 17 | Jesus would resurrect from the dead. | Psalm 16:10 Psalm 49:15 |
Matthew 28:2-7 Acts 2:22-32 |
| 18 | Jesus would be a sacrifice for sin. | Isaiah 53:5-12 | Romans 5:6-8 |
Here is how I used the Scriptures above in a countdown. I wrote the 18 OT prophecies on a cross that I cut out of poster board. Then I wrote the 18 fulfilled prophecies on scraps of colored cardstock. Each day, starting with #1 Scripture above, we will first read the OT prophecy and then we will read the NT fulfilled prophecy.
(I used black velcro to adhere the colored cardstock to the cross)
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Then I will let the kids adhere the colored cardstock on the cross after we read the Scriptures. (I lightly wrote the same number on each yellow shape and the matching colored shape so I wouldn’t get confused.) By Easter morning, our cross will look like this:
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| Happy Easter! |
All of us were very loved on from our family this Valentines Day! My mom came on Sunday with her usual “holiday gift extravaganza”! My mom also knows my favorite treat is chocolate dipped strawberries and she had them delivered to me!
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| they’re not spoiled 😉 |
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| this is his reaction every time he opens up a new car! |
James did the sweetest thing on Valentines Day for the girls. I told him that he was doing a good job of having the girls fall in love with him first, so hopefully they won’t feel the need to search for love in boys. The girls feel special and beautiful because of their daddy! Of course, we are teaching them that they should find their worth and beauty in their Heavenly Daddy first and foremost! James bought them each a flower and a heart shaped balloon and surprised them in the school cafeteria with Sonic for lunch. James said both girls were blushing and all the teachers were “oooohing and ahhhing” at him for being so sweet to his girls. That made my Valetines Day for him to do that for them. What a man I have!!! (By the way, we celebrated Vday by going to Wicked last week with our friends. It was excellent!)
When the kids came home from school, they got lots of “happy mail” from family! (Getting mail is so few and far between these days, it’s a BIG deal to them!) Then when James came home from work, I made him a scavenger hunt that ended with the clue “you warm my oven.” I bought him a new toaster oven, (that’s when you know you are an old married couple!) and he loved it!
To cap off the holiday, we surprised our kids with “dessert for dinner”! We didn’t tell them where we were going, only that we were going out for dinner. We drove them to Baskin Robbins where both girls had tears in their eyes when we pulled up because they thought we were going to take them to McDonalds. When we pulled into the strip mall and they saw Subway, they were upset. No way they thought we were going to walk into the ice cream shop next door for dinner!
They still are talking about it. 🙂
I mustache you a question…
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James took Asher to his first Monster Truck Rally on Friday night! It was our Valentines day treat to him! (We used to take the kids to the Sesame Street Live show when they were younger.) Asher is more of a “race car” dude, but he still had fun. James said Asher will probably remember the sounds, smells, and sights for a long time!
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| James had to buy him ear muffs there because it was so loud! |
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Today my girls had their Valentine parties at school (school policy: parties are only to be held on Fridays). I had to drag Asher around the school “party hopping.” You would think he would love all the goodies and juice boxes he gets (not to mention the attention!), but no, this boy does NOT like to go to his sisters’ events! This picture is very telling of how Asher felt about being at school for 2 hours this afternoon…
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Rilyn’s party:
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| Rilyn’s starting to get embarrassed of all the pictures I take… |
At Ella’s party, the teacher wouldn’t let them “read” their Valentines until they got home (think of 22 kindergartners opening 22 pieces of paper each…ugh). This is Ella opening her cards at home and relishing each one…
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| Yes, I will be your Valentine! |
There are two reasons why I’m writing this post today:
#1 February is about celebrating love!
#2 I heard a sermon today that reminded me about my “love story” with James in college.
I have been very blessed to not have had any earth shattering traumatic events happen in my life thus far. When someone asks me to think about your last moment of true and utter despair, I think back to April of 1999-when James and I broke up. We had been dating for a year and a month up until that point, (every month counts when you’re dating!) Christmas of 1998, James gave me a watch (that I still wear everyday!) that was inscribed on the back “Till the End of Time” (yes, my English loving friends, he used the wrong spelling of “till” and I tease him to this day.) Every naive college girl knows that when you give a girl a gift like that, you are FOR SURE getting married, right? I mean, he wants me to till with him til the end of time! 😉 So, imagine my despair, when in April of 1999, James was convicted by the Holy Spirit to end our relationship. He said to me that we were putting each other up as idols in our lives and our relationship became more important than our relationship with God. (He was super holy like that.) I was pretty devastated because he did give me that watch, so now what?
This is where the sermon comes in that I heard today. It was about Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane and that He modeled for us how to act in moments of despair.
1. Matthew 26:37 “He took Peter and Zebedee’s two sons, James and John, and he began to be filled with anguish and deep distress.” We are to invite people into the depths of our struggles. When James broke up with me, I was very fortunate to have the best roommate who knew the situation and how deeply I was hurt. (And that roommate still lives by me today, around the corner in fact, and we live life together almost everyday. It is not uncommon to find us going grocery shopping together in the same car!) Love her!
2. Matthew 26:38a “He told them, “My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death.” We are to share our weaknesses with them. Jen, my roommate, got an earful almost every night. She probably couldn’t understand most of it because I was sniffling back tears.
3. Matthew 26:38b (Jesus said to them) “Stay here and watch with me.” We are to ask them to fight with us. Jen helped me for sure during the 7 months James and I were broken up. One of the best things she ever did during that time was when I opened our apartment door one day in May and she and another one of my friends had written encouraging Bible verses on index cards and taped them all over our apartment! It felt like there were hundreds of verses and it meant so much to me!
4. Matthew 26:39 “He went on a little farther and fell face down on the ground, praying, “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me.” We are to pour our heart out to the Father. Some nights this felt impossible, because all I could do was cry. But during the 7 months of despair, I found great comfort in journaling and the Psalms. I also find creating things is therapeutic for me. So in the summer of ’99, I created this 30 in. x 40 in. board:
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I used all the Psalms that spoke to my heart during that difficult period and typed them up on different colors of paper with different fonts, and glued them together in a stain glass look of Jesus praying in the garden of Gethsemane. I felt like this image of Jesus praying spoke to me most because he was in a moment of despair like me, (of course His despair was infinitely greater than mine!)
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| Psalm 22:3-5 |
5. Matthew 26:39 “Yet I want your will, not mine.” We are to rest in the sovereign will of the Father. The top sentence on the above board is this verse. In my heart I truly wanted God’s will. And if that meant James and I weren’t supposed to be together, then I knew God had a better plan for me. In my journal I wrote, “Father, thank you for loving James and I so much that you chose to separate us so that we may be closer to you. Thank you that according to our strengths and weaknesses you have us each in perfect places this summer. I pray Father, if it is your will, that you protect James’ love for me. Lord, I want you to consume me, not my situation, not anyone else, but You.”
And that is just what He did. I was alone all summer, no friends in town, James was out of state and then out of the country with no way to correspond…I was consumed by Him, and it felt so good. I fell in love with my Savior again and then my Savior brought back my earthly love in due time. It was a true love story.
the paquettes 