From Step-son to Son-Happy Birthday to my Favorite TEENAGER!!!!!!

Lawton, where should I even begin? What a joy you are to be around; to laugh with and AT! When you were 7 we didn't get along much, ok, at all. As you have grown and as I have learned to be a better mom (thanks to Zane) I have a true love for the person that you are and look forward to the man that you will become. You are sarcastic, tender hearted, great with kids, love God, smart, handsome, and I could go on and on. I remember when we would say that we hated one another, boy how times have changed. I LOVE YOU with all my heart.
It has been 6 years since I became your step-mom and we both have changed so much. I look at you and see a very bright boy changing into a young man. You have touched my life and made me love you for you. I am so glad that we have gotten closer. Your love and friendship mean the world to me. I enjoy the talks that we share and when you open up your heart to me about even the smallest things. I love to watch you replay what you learned in youth on Sunday morning, your whole face lights up. I love to watch you hang out with your friends that you have made here. I love to watch you show Zane tricks on the trampoline. I love to watch you sing and jam out to your i pod. I love to watch you just grow into the person that you are. You now have your own ideas and thoughts and even though some may be a little weird b/c your 13 they are YOURS! We mold you and give you advice but all in all you are the type of person who knows what they want, they just need reassurance sometimes. As I watch you, I think you are too hard on yourself. You are insecure about things. I pray that you will find that security within yourself through God. You are very bright. You will make mistakes along the way, but you will learn from them and we will be right here to lift you up and catch you. You are very blessed to have so many people in your life who love you. 4 parents, could you get any luckier, and we all love you!!
Your teen years will be so much fun. Enjoy them full speed ahead! Look forward and don't look back. Make memories to last a lifetime. Oh, and you can stop growing now b/c you are already taller than your dad and Uncle Aaron!!! You can grow some more later. I love you my favorite 13 year old! Lawton and Uncle Aaron (above)
Lawton with his friends at 13 b-day party (below)
Lawton making Zane smile in the ER after Zane broke his leg
Me and Lawton 2 years ago at the Rodeo
Lawton and Zane at the Alamo in March 2008

Lawton last summer at the River
Lawton's soccer last season
Lawton with his Dad and Mom
Lawton with his new braces cleaning my mower for me

Happy Mother's Day

Lance with Oma Klein, Steve Klein, and Aaron Klein






My Mom and Dad Mother's Day last year!



Gail with her two boys and below being silly


Momie, Donna's Mom, Oma Klein, Gail, Donnas two sisters, Donna, Me and Zane


ME and My cutie patootie


As we always do, Mother's Day is usually split. One year we go see my mom and the next we stay here with Lance's mom. This year it was his turn to share time with her and celebrate her being his mom. On Saturday Lance's parents decided to come to our new home so we could honor just her without grandparents being around. Lance and Aaron cooked for us and it was wonderful. We also had great dessert that we bought for ourselves from Costco. The men had it easy and their clean up wasn't so hard either.


On Sunday we slept late and headed to Fredericksburg to honor ALL the moms in the family. We had a nice time and it was short and sweet. After lunch we hung out at Bear Creek for the afternoon. Lance and I didn't have Zane with us and we went down to the creek to check things out. We saw so many snakes. Lance got a gun and we started shooting at the ones we would see. He killed 4 snakes in the swimming hole. We NEVER see snakes down there like that. The only kind of good snake is a dead one! All in All we had a nice time.

On other notes....I would just like to say thank you to my mom who is my hero! She taught me how to love Jesus and be who I am today. She never stopped praying for me even when she was madder than hell at me for the things that I would do. She taught me how to forgive and be who God called me to be. She taught me to love myself and be secure in who I was. She taught me that just because life gets hard doesn't mean you give up; you pray! She is so wise and full of spiritual life you just want to soak up at all times. I am so proud to have a mom who now is my friend. I love you!!!


Now, for my second mom, Gail, Lance's mom. I am so blessed to be part of your family. I thank you for giving me a man who knows how to love me and care for me. He is so genuine and he gets that trait from you. You have raised a man who is wise and doesn't take his children for granted. You have never treated me like an outsider or just the wife. Thank you. I enjoy spending time with you, shopping with you, sitting on the porch with you and just talking. You have given me another mom since mine is so far away. Thank you for being a wonderful Mother-in-law! I love you.

Favorite Things

To buy a little more time in the bed after Zane comes to wake me up, we play different games. This morning it was "What is your Favorite ___________?" I found this quite interesting because half of what I thought he would say was sooooo not the answer I thought. WOW! Do I even know my own child? OK so now I know because I asked. I think that I do that a lot; I just assume the answer when I really should have asked the person the question. I think I avoid asking a lot because I don't want to be bothersome or I want them to think that I already just know. I guess I can always learn a thing or two from my three year old. Don't ASSUME. ASK!

OK, well our game went like this:

What is your favorite food?
Answer: POPCORN
I thought hummm didn't know that one. I thought taco

Shirt?
Soccer one
I thought, what I hate soccer, please choose something else. Let's just move right on

Candy?
All, but I don't like peanuts
That one I knew

Drink?
Chocolate and Vanilla shake from Snogit (SONIC-Zane language)
I thought, anything my mom is drinking because I ALWAYS still hers

Game?
Pooter HERMIE (Computer games-Zane language)

Toy?
gun
I thought it would be a tractor

Thing to do at Ms. Lilia's (pre-school)
Play on the Playground

Thing at Ms. Linda's ( a wonderful pre-school teacher who is opening up an in home pre-school; so awesome)
Learning about the rain with the rice

Person in the whole world
Laney
Of course I was expecting my name right at that moment

Color
Green
I knew that one


Here is Zane with Laney; his favorite person in the whole world!!!

HAPPY CINCO DE MAYO

Living close to San Antonio is like a whole new world sometimes. Where I grew up I don't remember anyone celebrating days like these, but now I live in the Good Ole Hill Country and well, I have experienced a whole new culture! So in celebrating this special holiday, Zane and I had a little Fiesta Party of our own.








He loves hot sauce and chips! It was actually really hot too and he gobbled it up! I love watching him eat spicy food; he just inhales it. He doesn't have much of a choice considering when I was pregnant with him all I ate was hot sauce and jalapenos!







Here is my little Davey Crockett. Nothing to do with today, but well the Alamo is in San Antonio and he refused to put the gun down while I was trying to get this picture!

From National Day of Prayer to My Prayer

Today I met my husband with Zane and Laney (little baby I'm keeping for now) at our churches tent behind our favorite coffee shop The LOFT. We were there joining others in our community for the National Day of Prayer. We were gathered with so many during this time around our nation to pray for our leaders, our children and our communities. It was really great to hear other pastors in the area speak about their hopes and prayers for our community. I listened to one women speak of children and being an inheritance and how we should listen to little children for they truly know so much about our heavenly father. It is so true!! How Dads should rise up in our homes and be the Godly man that their children see and spend time with them. It was amazing! I spoke out loud, "YES!" I then realized that I was the only one speaking back to this woman and decided to just close my mouth which is really hard for me to do most of the time.

After getting home and doing my busy work around here, I began to pray for the men in our nation. I prayed that they would rise up and be the great fathers that God is to us. This issue has been tugging at my heart a lot lately as I hear women speak of their husbands as fathers and the relationships or lack there of with their children. I know lots of women who feel guilt for asking the dad to watch the kids while she does something on her own or even giving them baths and putting them to bed. It truly saddens me to know that these men are not the fathers that God called them to be. He called them to be an active role in their child's life. After Lance got home I told him about this and some things that I was thinking about doing and he thought it was a great idea. His heart and he knows that his calling is to help new dads or just dads in general find who they are and what they are supposed to be. How they are supposed to help in every way with their child. Lance got a taste of not having his oldest around and missed out on baths, bedtime, homework, reading, and dinner every night. He said this is what men take for granted because he did too until his divorce. He is very involved in parenting and watching Zane. I truly am blessed and I pray that other dads will get on board. I pray that they will want to be the Father to their children like our heavenly Father is to us. He wants to spend time with us!!!

A woman's work is never done!

Ok, so as I sit here and type may I just add that my 3 year old just got out of bed and said, "Mom, don't be mad , I just need to go potty." He went to the potty, pulled his pants back up and said, " Goodnight, I love you." He then closed his door and went back to bed. That was a proud Mommy moment.

On other notes......since we have been in our new home it seems like I never just "sit" anymore. Our house has doubled in size and I stay so busy. I am constantly cleaning and well, there are still boxes and rooms that need some serious help. I finally feel like those women who never stop. I absolutely love yard work and I didn't get to do much of that before, but now we have this awesome yard that needs some extra care too. It is so great to be busy in our own home. I am loving every second of it. Yes, even the mowing too! We have some BIG plans for our backyard and I am so the type who would like to get it all done RIGHT NOW!! I'm a little OCD by the way when it comes to certain things. I know that it will just take time and well, more money than we have right now. I look forward to seeing the finished product of what our dream yard will be, probably right before we decide to sell and move to our 1000 acres that my hubby dreams about finding. THEN MY WORK WILL TRULY NEVER BE DONE!!!!!

BLESSINGS FROM ABOVE

Where do I begin. Some of you may know my story and some well, never would have imagined, but here we go........
I was married in 2002 to a wonderful man. He worked as a hydrologist (WATER) and was not the happiest at his job. I was teaching at a local middle school in special education and hated some of the people I worked with greatly. I was a new wife, new mom to a 7 year old who didn't like me much nor I him, and in a depressed state because of people that influenced my job. My husband was stuck in the middle. After much prayer and a change in a department still within special education we became very happy and very involved in the youth group where we attended church. We surrounded ourselves with good christian people and our lives began to change for the better. All was well or so I thought.

Lance had a dream to start up a woodworking and leather company. I was scared but he said that god had told him to do this. After much fear and complaining was resolved for the most part, I gave Lance my blessing to start his company. He named the company HE and I Creations because he said the Lord gave him that name. He worked until his 2 weeks notice and we found a place for him to use as a shop. It was out of a widows home where her husband had done the same thing. The tools and the building were all included in our rent. We got a small business loan, had cards made and I began to find shows for us to attend. We were going full ahead. Lance loved working with his hands and he was so talented and good at what he had done. I was so proud of his work, but we were not selling things and we did not have the money for marketing as we should have. We were slowly going into debt. The woman's nature in me allowed fear to return because we like stability, right? This was by far the most unstable job. I was still teaching but hardly making ends meet. Literally, after paying rent and some other bills we did not have money for food. We still had faith that god would provide because after all he told Lance to start this business. During this time my sister and brother-in-law worked at a food bank and we would get a lot of food from them. Dry milk anyone? We only ate deer meat because we had killed it and processed it ourselves. We were broke. Very broke!! We lived on credit cards and my small paycheck at this time was only 1000 a month because I had not finished the masters program that I had started. I was kicking myself and I began to get very resentful of Lance for putting me through the "poor house." We fell behind on EVERYTHING. One thing was that we never stopped tithing and God always seemed to get us food, pay our rent and all utilities. The major things it takes to live were paid and we seriously didn't know how. GOD IS GOOD!!!!

One morning on my way to work, Lance was sitting at our kitchen table and I just plainly said, please call that man that you had contact with months ago for a job. Just see if he has anything for you. I then walked out the door. I cried a lot during this time, but our marriage was actually good believe it or not. I was just unhappy with the situation and I know now that I did resent him for starting that business. When I got home that afternoon he told me he was meeting David for lunch and an interview. I was so excited, but just listen to just how good god is. When Lance called him David said, Lance I was in the shower this morning and God told me to call you but you beat me to it. He offered Lance a job and it was a miracle and a HUGE answer to our prayers!

We were still in debt and owed lots of money back, but we knew we would make it. Our credit was shot but GOD always seemed to provide for us. Oh our cars would brake down and we seemed to always get the money to have them fixed! It was amazing. Lance joined the Givler Engineering team and worked there for 3 years. During that time he received huge raises and we got prego with Zane. More debt came with Zane because of his long stay in the hospital. God still provided.

With much faith we followed God's command again and I started staying at home when Zane turned a year old. We didn't know how we would make it on Lance's income with a baby and I held our insurance for the family. All I can say is that God knows everything. Two months after I started staying home Lance gets a call from another company for him to work there. He was offered the same pay with benefits and it was only 13 miles away from our CONDO instead of 35 miles. He decided to take it and has thrived at M&S Engineering. He is so smart and I am so proud for what he has accomplished there.

During this time I learned how to fix our credit and all the tricks that you can do to fix it, put ourselves on more of a budget. I started fixing our credit in April of 2005. Let's just say it was really really really bad. I brought it up over 200 points within 2 years. We were still living in the same condo that I moved into when I got out of college and began teaching. We lived there for 7 years. There was no upkeep ever done on the place unless we complained enough. The pipes growled at us, the mold was horrible, the faucets continuously dripped, the deck was unstable, the carpet was shot, nothing ever looked clean but it was a roof over our heads. We decided to take a leap of faith and try to buy a home in a neighborhood where a lot of our friends live, closer to Lance's work (7 miles), closer to our church, and Zane's school. We knew we were supposed to be in this one neighborhood, not sure why. We found a home that we loved that was in our price range and with long waiting and the help from the Lord we were able to buy our first custom home. Everything that we prayed for for years is in this home. It is amazing to look back and think of all the things that we prayed for and see them in this area and in this home. This is not our home, but the Lords for he is just letting us live here. He gave it to us to use for his kingdom to offer our home in times of need. I thank him for providing for us during the hard times, but we now know he brought us through those times so that we may appreciate more and all the little things in life that people take for granted...like clean clothes and dishes and a garage and a nice yard and no screaming pipes, toilets that work, food on the table and a safe place to be!!!!!

We never would have imagined that we would ever be able to buy a home after what we had been through, but with the help of our Savior and him putting the right people in our path, we were able to buy our first home!

Praise you Father for our new home! Praise you for the life lessons you taught us that got us here!