Love and dedication

I have been very blessed to be surrounded by many committed, loving, dedicated marriages.

My parents have been married for almost 34 years.

Curtis' parents celebrated their 27th wedding anniversary shortly before my mother-in-law passed away.

Both sets of my grandparents are still living, and are still happily married.

This past fall, my Papa fell. Since his fall, he's faced an uphill battle to recover. He's struggled with physical therapy, reoccurring infections and hospitalizations, and saddest of all, bouts of dementia. Through it all, my amazing Grandma has been by his side. She will spend the night at the rehab center with him, reads to him, talks with him and gives him hope.

After watching this video, I was reminded of how blessed Curtis and I are to be surrounded by so many amazing marriages. We also have a great cloud of witnesses in Curtis' mom, and his grandparents, watching as we strive to have a godly marriage.




The kind of love and dedication shown in this clip are rare. A marriage like that doesn't come easily. But it's always worth the fight. That's one thing that I've learned in the mere 10 years that Curtis and I have been married. A good marriage, a lasting marriage, a committed "till death do us part" marriage, doesn't just happen. It's a fight, a hard, sometimes uphill battle. But God rewards faithfulness. That's the promise and the hope that Curtis and I have.

Saturday

Half of my children are enjoying a quiet Saturday morning, watching TV and having some milk. The other half of my children are still sleeping.

Happy Saturday!

And isn't it nice to see that the spitting that happened yesterday had no lasting effect on their friendship. If anything, I'm almost afraid that it strengthened the bonds of brotherhood.

Conversation

Me: Micah, did you spit on Timothy?
Micah: Yes.
Me: Why?!?!
Micah: I thought it would be funny.
Me: It's not funny, it's gross.
Micah: I'm sorry.

The thing that astounds me about this conversation is how calm, and ordinary it went. Even I shake my head at my life, thoughts and conversations.

Poor Micah

Micah somehow managed to slam his finger in a kitchen cabinet, while standing on the counter.

No, it's not broken.

Yes, he's quite miserable.

These boys are really making my life exciting....

Oh, Benjamin....

On Monday, I heard a very odd, very loud noise coming from the boys' room, where the three older kiddos were playing.

I was in and see this.....
and quickly realize that one of the fan blades is no longer attached to the fan!

I think my reaction went something like, "Who???..... What???...... How????" Benjamin fessed up and said, "I did it, Mommy. I throwded a ball into the fan. But I did not know it would break! That was an assident. I am sorry!"

Sure enough, I found the blade in the hallway!
Happy Valentine's Day, Curtis! You get to fix a fan ceiling fan right before our house goes on the market again!

Boys......

What really happened

Aren't the pictures in the post below lovely? You could almost look at them, and this that we had a sweet, fun, enjoyable, just as planned Valentine's Day.

But what's the fun in that?

Curtis and I have a long, sorted history with this particular holiday, all starting with a virtual rose. Valentine's Day just never seems to work out for us. Since we've had kids, we've been able to move towards more of the fun side of the holiday, worrying less about the romantic side of the holiday.

Last year, we had a 12 day old preemie. We did nothing to commemorate the day! Nothing! I have a picture of Timothy in his "First Valentine's Day" outfit, and that's it.

So this year, we wanted to do something special for each other. In an attempt to avoid that craziness of the day itself, we decided to go for the "movie and take out at home after the kids go to bed" route. I went to Krogers to pick up some special desserts, and corndogs for the kids, and was immediately hit with Valentin's day, in all it's glory!



I made my purchases, dodged some balloon ribbons, and headed home, armed with cheesecake, chocolate dipped strawberries, adult beverages and a movie. Curtis went and picked up Chinese food. We also got a little Valentine's Day bonus......



a sick, screaming baby who wouldn't sleep.

Happy Valentine's Day!

We tried again the next night, only to deal again with our sick little one.

Valentine's Day itself brought t-shirt making and exhaustion. At this point, Timothy had put us through five straight nights with little sleep. In true, parents of four style, we folded laundry and watched a movie.

We were so hard core this year, we even bought each other cards! However, the card I got for Curtis is still in the van, and the card he got for me is on his dresser. Maybe we should just save them for next year?

The really bright spot in our attempted celebration of the day was that Curtis brought me home a dozen red roses. Made my day (and week, and possibly month!). I love getting flowers, especially roses, and it was such a treat. He also showed what an awesome dad he is by bringing Elizabeth home a pink rose.

So though our plans were far from what we expected, it was a wonderful time of celebration!

Valentine's Day

Cell phone pics of Timothy

Life has been moving at an alarmingly rapid rate. I can hardly believe that we're already half was through February!! Here's a little update (thanks to pics from my cell) on the one year old of the house.


My forward facing big boy loves "talking" on his toy phone that he got from Elizabeth for his birthday. "HI!" is a new favorite word.

Last Friday, Timothy got sick. High temp that hit in the afternoon and lasted through the night. Which meant there was lots of this.....
but not a lot of sleep. Which left us all feeling like this.....
Thankfully, after a full six days, he's fine. Now we just have to get him sleeping well again!

Four Forward Facing Funny Faces

I now have four forward facing kiddos! Wasn't it just yesterday when I took this picture??
What a difference a year can make!

This is Timothy's new "I see a camera, so I'm going to smile" face. Love it!! He was also a little frustrated that I was taking his picture. He's been fighting off a nasty virus, and was a not happy about being in the car. He was also a wee bit confused to be forward facing.

No training wheels!

It's a beautiful day here today. We've opened up the house, we're working on some garage cleaning, and the kids are riding bikes. After Curtis finished fixing Micah's bike tire, he asked Micah, "Do you want me to take your training wheels off?" In true Micah fashion, he responded, "Okay, Daddy."

While Curtis got the training wheels off, I checked on napping Timothy, grabbed the camera, and came out just in time to see......



He's a natural!! It was tearless, calm, and no problem. Just like Micah!

Micah, Mommy and Daddy are so proud of you! Every day you do little things to show us how much you're growing up. Today, you did a big thing!! You are growing up so quickly, and we love watching you and seeing you grow into such a sweet, calm, hard working boy.

Furthering the Kingdom

The Krajca family is working to further the Kingdom of Christ, one bunny at a time.
My sister, Shannon, is going to the mission field in about a month. She had the sweet bunny, pictured above, but wasn't going to be able to take him with her to Australia. So we've adopted Jasper the bunny.

He's currently living in Elizabeth and Timothy's room. Elizabeth is the main person to care for him, and she seems to really enjoy having him as "her pet".

Micah and Benjamin are rather indifferent to the fact that we have a bunny, which is why there are no pictures of them with Jasper.

Timothy LOVES Jasper. He gives the bunny hugs, sits in front of the cage "talking" to the bunny. But his favorite game is "Where's Jasper?" Jasper's favorite hiding place is under Elizabeth's bed. When we ask Timothy, "Where's Jasper?" he crawls over to the bed, and lays flat trying to see the bunny.


Curtis and I like to joke that we are Furthering the Kingdom by keeping the bunny. And though I know that's helpful to my sister, that's not the only way we can further the Kingdom. We've also chosen to be monthly supporters of my sister as she heads to Australia with MTW.

If you've been looking for a way to further the Kingdom, I strongly encourage you to head to the MTW website, find my sister (Shannon Johnston, going to Perth, Australia) and look at joining her team and financially supporting her. It doesn't take a lot!! I was always the person who had other things I needed to spend the money on, or just couldn't make it work, or some other valid excuse. But when Curtis and I just decided to do it, it all worked out. It's been exciting to see our children's heart for missions grow as we as a family support Shannon.

Project Yogurt

I enjoy chocolate yogurt with strawberries and chocolate sprinkles.

I enjoy self serve yogurt.

I enjoy supporting companies with a purpose.

I enjoy supporting companies that give back to their customers.

I enjoy hearing about a company that's run by a homeschool grad.

And I REALLY enjoy free yogurt!!

This evening, in true Krajca style, we had a pajama run to Project Yogurt, where we were able to enjoy FREE self serve frozen yogurt.






We had a fantastic time tonight!!

And in my opinion, Project Yogurt is better than other self serve frozen yogurt places I've been to. Their chocolate was incredible!! If you haven't tried it out, GO! It's located next to Gold's Gym in Bryan, by the HEB in the Tejas Center. I would highly recommend it.

My life....

.... in Facebook statuses.

Kierstyn Krajca:

Me: Benjamin, why are you being so naughty?
Benjamin: Because I'm a dirty little sinner.
Yeah! No joke.

is having a classic Monday. Bummer.

is trying to convince her children that there really isn't enough snow to sled. :-) Sure is pretty though.

is wishing I had a personal assistant, a maid and a baker.

must have looked rough when the Schwans man came to the door. He recommended the margarita mix.

is thinking that for Timothy's b-day, I'll just add batteries to all the old, dead toys and wrap them up.

is so sleep deprived I messed up a batch of boxed brownies. That's new mom tired, but I have an almost one year old. Hurry up and feel better, baby!!

needs to know how to spell my name phonetically.

Wordless Wednesday

4 Firsts

Happy birthday Timothy!

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

In the blink of an eye

We blinked, and Timothy decided he was ready to work on this walking thing. He's now walking much more, and doing a very good job at it!! Go Timothy!!