Happy (Belated) Birthday to Dad and Mom Coulter

At the end of August, Mark's dad and mom both celebrated their birthdays within a couple days of each other. It was a very special birthday for both of them this year! They have blessed many people throughout their ministry with their never ending love and generosity. They love their family and place great importance on spending time together and cherishing those relationships.
It has been quite a blessing for me to not only find an incredible man to spend the rest of my life with, but also to have a great set of parents to go with him! Riley and Karen are both very loving, caring, supportive, wise and encouraging. They have been a constant source of encouragement and guidance in Mark's life and have made him into the man of God that he is today.
Another blessing to both Mark and I has been to see them transform into grandparents this last year and a half. They both absolutely love and adore Kaley to pieces. They so enjoy being able to come and spend time with Kaley and be a part of her life. You will usually find them playing outside or sitting on the floor in a sea of toys and it is as if there is nowhere else they would rather be! We thank God for the incredible gift that Riley and Karen are to our lives. Happy belated birthday dad and mom. May God richly bless you this coming year.

Into Your Presence

I heard this song on Life 100.3 today during their praise and worship Sunday. I had heard it a couple of times before, but only caught the very ending and could never find it because I didn't know what the song was. Today I heard all of it and then found a video online for it. I love this song!

Into Your Presence
My heart longs for You, My soul thirsts for You,
Show me the place where I can go and meet You,
Underneath Your waterfalls, Deep will call to deep,
Rapids and breakers will wash over me, I long for You in a dry and weary land.

Take me into Your presence, into your courts, Lord I'm longing to worship,
Face to face, I will bow at Your throne, I was made for this alone

Why so downcast oh my soul, put your hope in God
For I will yet praise You my God and Savior
At night Your song is with me, By day Your love surrounds me
I lift up a prayer to the God of my life, I long for you in a dry and weary land.

Take me into Your presence, into your courts, Lord I'm longing to worship,
Face to face, In the holy of holies I will say that You only are my God.
I long for You in a dry and weary land
I will say that You only are my God.

Kaley's first week of "school"!

Kaley went to daycare for the first time a couple of weeks ago. I always knew that the daycare at our church was great, but I didn't realize how great it was until our own daughter was a part of it. Her teachers are Miss Claudette and Miss Julia. They were so caring, compassionate and encouraging as Kaley (and mommy) got adjusted to our new normal. Kaley had many firsts these past two weeks and has done amazingly well. Mark and I count it as a huge success in our parenting skills that while she missed us, she quickly became accustomed to her new surroundings and made connections to her teachers and to the other kids. She has made a little "friend" which is so cute to see!

Her first week she marble painted a leaf, pushed her stuffed dog in the stroller, played with playdough, rice, water and leaves in sensory play, and made some cute art projects. Kaley also learned this really cute chicken/stomping/sumo dance routine. I have yet to catch it on camera, but it is adorable. She has always loved dancing around to music that she hears, she just now has some choreography to go with it!

The daycare is such a great place. Her teachers absolutely love her. She always gets quite the welcome when she comes in the morning and even her classmates get a smile on their face when she walks in. There is a ton of teaching and learning that goes on and her day is filled with a lot of fun and interesting activities. As far as the next best place for Kaley to be, I am thrilled with the choice we have made. We couldn't have asked for anything better! I'll blog about my journey through this a little while later, but for now, here are a few pictures to enjoy!

Having fun with getting her picture taken:)

Kaley's many masterpieces!

All is well again!

All is well again!




All is well again!

This past month has been a little crazy. Shortly after getting back from Alaska, Kaley and I headed down to Minnesota/Missouri for two weeks. While I was down there on the second to the last day, I had my computer lying on its side and Kaley came into the room with a water bottle. She went over to where the computer was, opened up the bottle and attempted to take a drink. As luck would have it (or my stupidity) the water spilled down onto the computer. It wasn't a whole lot of water, but some did get on the computer. I quickly picked it up, turned it over and tried to dry it off as best as I could. When I went to turn it on, nothing happened!
When I got home, I took it to a computer guy who took it all apart and tested the various areas and came to the conclusion that the mother board wasn't getting any power. He said that he didn't see any signs of water damage, but either way, the computer was toast! So, then I had to wait a couple more days for them to get a new computer in and transfer everything over.
While I was waiting for all of this to happen (which ended up being close to two weeks) I was using a backup computer, which decided that it didn't like the blogspot page, so I couldn't sign in and thus couldn't write any new posts. Here I had all these things i wanted to write about, birthdays to catch up on and vacations to talk about, and I couldn't do any of it.
So, long story short, I now have a computer which is working and I didn't lose anything from my old computer. Now I get to play catch up!

In limbo for awhile...

I know that I haven't written on here for almost a month!:( It's not that there hasn't been anything going on in our lives, quite the opposite. Kaley and I have been on vacation for two weeks and then my laptop stopped working so it has been in the shop for the last couple of days! So, as soon as I get that back, I will update the blog about our travels and our family's adventures over the past few weeks. Be back soon hopefully:)