A Poem

I have read many many poems online and I couldn't seem to find one that was according to what I believe, so I decided to write one this morning.

You belong to our Father in heaven.

We know you were never really ours,

But somehow we still feel a loss,

And think of you for hours.

We still love you little baby

We will always remember you.

As the weeks pass, we remember the milestones.

Would we have dressed you in pink or blue?

We know God has a plan

And is wiser than you or me.

We know you are in Heaven baby

And someday we will be.

You are up in Heaven

And we love you just the same

As both of the two children here on earth

That we got to give a name.

We bought a little teddy

So we would always you remember.

In my heart little baby

You will always be an ember.

We never got to hold you,

To kiss your little cheek.

We never got to know you,

And now God’s comfort we seek.

He takes great care of all His children

To Him we are of great worth,

More than anything we can fathom.

Both His children in heaven and here on earth.

Lorelle DeBoer

Written Jan 5, 2011

Matthew 5:4

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

2 Corinthians 1:3-4

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.

Romans 15:13

May the God of hope fill you with a joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Making and Decorating Gingerbread cookies!!

Ok as I promised here is the making and decorating gingerbread cookies post! It's mostly pictures this time...
:-)
We decided to wait till Daddy got home to decorate the cookies because I felt bad for him - he is always missing out on all the fun because he is at work :-) So we decorated cookies after supper.

The plan was to have an early supper, then decorate cookies, then put the kids to bed and then do the dishes. But we ended up having a late supper, then we decorated cookies, and while we were decorating Linda called and asked if we wanted to come over and play a game, (Well I don't usually like games unless they are loud and busy but and not too much strategy... looking after two kids and playing a strategy game means I loose). :-P Matthew really likes to play board games though :-)
We all headed over to Nate and Lins for the rest of the evening. Miriam and Dylan played for a few minutes and then were put to bed. I read a book, Nate watched hockey and played Xbox and Matthew and Linda played Carcassonne :-) That sounds like a very relaxing evening to me! :-) . (I have a hard time relaxing at my own house because there is always something that needs to be done) Then we headed home, plopped the kids in bed then I quickly put a roast in the slow cooker so it would be ready today to cut up and make into croquettes, made some orange juice and headed to bed. The dishes never did get done :-( They are still sitting on my counter waiting to be washed, dried and put away. But I have more important thinks to do, like type up a blog post! :-)

Ok so back to the topic of this blog post...
I forgot to buy candies for the gingerbread cookies so we had to use what we had in the house... made for some interesting decorating :-P

Rolling out the dough and cutting with the cookie cutters. (I think next year I will buy some new one's :-P )


All baked and cooling off - I baked them a bit too long :-( Oh well with all the icing and candies on them no one will notice :-P


Cooled off and ready to decorate!


Making the icing... note the messy kitchen!


Waiting to decorate... Dylan was VERY upset because he wanted to eat everything right away!


And so Dylan starts his second supper...


Miriam getting the hang of things...


Dylan eating... a few candies did end up on the cookies.


Matthew says he never decorated gingerbread cookies when he was little... WHAT? I'm gonna have to double check with his Mom :-P
So according to Matthew - this is his first time decorating gingerbread cookies!! :-)


Miriam figured out that the more candies she puts on now, the more she will get to eat later!


My fancy bell, I am not proud of the decorating I did last night... but they will taste good :-P I still can't really tell the difference between the cookies the kids decorated and mine... Hopefully the gingerbread house turns out better :-P


MMmmm! Still munching away!




add a bit of ... red... (well it was supposed to be, but it's more pink than red)


Matthew's the artist... The name of this work of art you ask?
Gingerbread Girl...


I love the cookies Miriam decorated! ... all gummi bears! :-)








Yay! some candies on this one!


Yummy!







Tray #1


Tray #2 (can you tell which ones the adults decorated)?


And now I really should go do those dishes, and cut up the roast...
Hope you all have a fabulous day!

Miss you

Still miss you baby, always will... would have been 16 1/2 weeks now :'(

I know that others have gone through much more than me - miss-carried later, had still born babies, lost baby's that were only a few hours old, lost baby's only a few weeks old, and lost children, husbands, siblings and more!
But that doesn't make me feel any better I'm still sad about the little one I was never able to meet. :'( It also doesn't mean that I shouldn't feel sad just because I got an 'easier' burden. It just means I lost a little one and I'm still sad about it.
I think I'm as 'over it' (for lack of a better term) as I will ever be, but I don't think I'll ever be not sad. I also don't think I'm taking it any harder than any other Mom out there, I'm just talking about it. :-)

On a happier note - post coming up tonight or tomorrow...Gingerbread cookie making! :-)

Family night/Gift Opening

Yay!! The day Miriam and Dylan have been waiting for!! Miriam has been asking for quite a few weeks now - "When are we going to open presents in the stockings Mom?" :-) And Dylan jumps up and down and says "hip hip HURRAY!"
We had originally planned to open them on Monday night, but we decided to open them Saturday night instead because ... well we were kinda bored.. lol. So after Saturday night baths Miriam and Dylan sat on the couch with some popcorn, and opened their stockings!!! :-) Here are a few pictures of them opening presents... they both got a stocking of presents to themselves, they also both opened a large present which they have to share with their other sibling.



Waiting...


YUM!! We all love popcorn :-)



YAY! Open away!



a Brush! ...She doesn't look so sure about it in this picture but she was actually quite thrilled! :-)



A Franklin DVD! :-)



Dylan gets a car, and Miriam some stickers to put in her journal!



Dylan gets another car (to play with on the new carmat) :-)


And now... the big presents!


Dylan opens a gumball machine... (He LOVES the one in the church nursery!!)



Miriam yells to me in an excited and slightly confused voice... "Mom it's a carpet!?" haha!


The new presents kept the kids nice and quiet Sunday morning!! :-)




Matthew and I bought a few small presents for each other as well, but because our hands were busy opening them, and the kids aren't allowed to touch the camera, there are no pictures of them :-)

Tomorrow we are planning to make some gingerbread cookies, and the gingerbread for gingerbread houses, and on Thursday or Friday (not sure yet) we are planning to make the Gingerbread houses with Auntie Rachel! Hopefully I remember to take pictures of it so I can share it with you :-)
Also planned for this week - gift opening with the DeBoer's, making croquettes, making olibolen (don't know how to spell it, but you know what I mean - dutch oil balls), hopefully some sledding with Josh and Shannon (and auntie Linda) :-P, a wee bit of cleaning, laundry/everyday stuff, and some last minute present wrapping :-)


Hope you are all having an amazing week!

First of all, I hope you are all having a great December! We sure are!


The reason I haven't posted in a while is because both Matthew and I have been and still are pretty busy working on getting a bunch of stuff ready in our newly renovated church building! The Grand Re-Opening is this Saturday! :-)
Matthew is on the sound committee and he is setting up a bunch of new equipment and tweaking the old stuff trying to get it to work a bit better :-)
I am on the Nursery Committee and having a grand ol' time painting, going to meetings, organizing, cleaning, and the list could go on and on.
I really enjoy seeing and participating in so many people getting together and making things happen so fast :-)
We are also both doing a few other things like, making the slide show, making up some fruit trays and again the list could go on :-P
Both Matthew and I are super duper excited that we are almost done! We have been up past midnight many nights these past weeks and together we have been at the church building almost every day for the past 2 weeks. :-)
We are also thrilled that we don't have to worship in the school anymore. With him being on the Sound committee he (and one or two other guys) had to set up the sound equipment every Saturday night, and take it all down after second service on Sunday. And me being on the Nursery Committee I had to with the the other ladies on the committee and ladies that helped out, move the desks and set up the Nursery in a classroom every Sunday morning, and take it all down and pack it away and set up the desks again every Sunday after second service (on the other hand our two kids thought this was great cuz there was no one watching them for 1/2 an hr or so every Sunday after church) :-P We are super thankful the School let us worship in there but it's also nice to have a few extra hours a week back :-)
We both enjoy being busy, but it will also be nice to have a bit of free time during the Christmas holidays! Maybe we can do a bit of sledding, make gingerbread houses, gift opening and do a few more fun things with the kids. :-) And also my house could use some major attention! :-P
We really enjoyed working with all these amazing talented people during this renovation, we have really gotten to know our church community so much better :-) So many people put in WAY more time than we did on this project and I'm sure they are pretty thrilled to see that it's almost all done! I hope they can rest up a bit over the holiday season :-)

Since the Immanuel Canadian Reformed Church website now has a picture of our newly renovated church building on it I think it will be ok if I post a pic of it on here for all of you :-)



I'll leave you with a few pictures of my cute kids Miriam and Dylan sitting all cozy on the couch watching leapfrog dvd's and munching on some popcorn popped in our new popcorn popper, we are all pretty excited about it around here :-P

December!

From our family to yours - Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Wishing you the Blessings of Christmas to enjoy all year long.

(Click picture to enlarge)

Pictures taken Oct 2010 by Sherene Barendregt Thanks Sherene, we had a great time! You take such nice pics!
Click on the link below to see more amazing pictures this talented lady has taken! :-)
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Winnipeg-MB/Sherene-Barendregt-Photography/151756331526751

Writing Christmas Cards :-)

It's that busy time of year again, time to write out Christmas cards and sent them all around the world to family and friends. Most of the time this is the only mail most of our relatives get from us during the year. I try to send them out to all of our family and friends, but we both have big families and it's hard to keep track of addresses etc. (I printed 300 pictures this year!)

Anyway, I thought it would be a good idea to let Miriam and Dylan choose a pack of 18 cards from Superstore so they could give them to their friends, that way while I was writing my cards, they could write theirs. This sounded like a good plan until I actually tried it... Lately Miriam has been super interested in numbers and letters and how we use them, she kept asking me what I was writing. I asked her if she wanted me to help her write her name, she got super excited and just about jumped off her chair, lol, so I moved to the chair next to hers and showed her how to make an 'M' she made one on her card, then I showed her how to make an 'i' and she wrote that too, I was super duper impressed! We continued until she had written her whole name, she was soo proud, and so was I! 3 1/2 and she can print her own name. :-) The only downside to this was.... that was 1 out of 18 cards and now she wanted to write her name on every card.... that was going to take a while. I asked her if it was ok of I dotted her name on every card and she traced over the dots, she thought this was a great idea, so that's what we did, she also thought it would be a great idea if I dotted her friends names and she traced those too. Needless to say this card writing thing didn't turn out the way I expected it to so - I still have to find some 'free' time to write my cards, but I am super impressed that Miriam wrote 18 card with hers and her friends names on them, she drew some pictures too, all in one sitting! Again, pretty good for a 3 1/2 yr old I think!

Dylan also wrote out some cards and was a tad jelous that I was helping Miriam so much, so I helped him a bit with his cards, but his attention span is far less than Miriam's and he would come and go while we wrote our cards. Below are a few pictures of Miriam and Dylan writing their cards :-)



The first time Miriam wrote her own name all by herself!



Miriam writing her own name! :-)





This one of the one's Miriam traced...


Dylan decided to practice writing with his mouth...lol