As we get ready for an Easter weekend, I thought I would share some ideas we did from our Easter family night last year….the day of the Tornadoes!

You can read about Resurrection Buns and Writing on your Easter Eggs here.

I also plan on doing Empty Tomb Cookies this year.  Here is the Recipe and Scripture references for those….

Begin this recipe on Saturday, the day before Easter.

1 cup whole pecans
1 teaspoon vinegar
3 egg whites
pinch salt
1 cup sugar
zipper baggie wooden spoon or a wooden meat hammer
duct tape or packing tape
Bible

Preheat oven to 300*F.

Place pecans in zipper baggie and let children beat them with the wooden spoon or hammer to break them into small pieces.

Explain that after Jesus was arrested he was beaten by the Roman soldiers. Read John 19:1-3.

This came home from school the other day and I thought it was just precious!

Dear President Obama,

my name is Parker. Are you a Christ Follower? How are your dauters? How old are they? When are there birthday? My birthday is Dec. 7.  God bless you

from

Parker

Age 8

What a crazy week we had last week. We helped out some friends and kept their kiddos a few days, kept my niece over the weekend and the kids were out of school! Not to mention that Emery got strep throat. Needless to say, we had a packed week and weekend. On Friday, we took the kids and Lauren, my niece to lunch and bowl. This was one of the best things we have done in a while as a family. The kids did great! Bradley actually was beating Jason and I through the 7th frame. I kid you not! I think that says a lot about Jason and my skills as well as Bradley’s!

Friday night Jason and I went to Romance and Roses, which is an annual night out for married couples. I LOVE that our church is actively involved in strengthening marriages.  I can’t say enough about what a blessing it is to be on a staff that values our marriage and seeks to protect the relationship that Jason and I have with each other.

So, come Sunday night, it was all about celebrating as a family!  I will be honest, I am not a big fan of  V-day.  But, it does make for an easy family night!

Parker helped me get ready by cutting out a lot of hearts…she also set the table for us!

This is an easy night to decorate for…just throw out some red and call it done! I used red hots, red candles, heart plates

and white serving pieces.  I also picked up some fancy glasses at the Dollar Store. Such a big spender, I am!

For dinner, we had heart shaped pizzas from Papa Murphy’s and breadsticks.

Here are the fancy glasses with cherry 7-up added. Yes, we had several spills….

For dessert, we had Red Velvet Cake Balls

…they have the face only a mother could love,

but were yummy….I am laying off the cake balls for a while….they do too much damage to the ol waistline.

maybe they were a little messy….

We also had chocolate covered strawberries…white chocolate and dark chocolate.

Emery had been battling strep throat, but her meds kicked in and she was able to

join us at dinner.  She is such a trooper..

Next, we all wrote out things we loved about each other.

I helped Bradley a little…

He liked that Emery plays with him, Parker helps get him breakfast,

dad plays wii with him and how his mommy loves him.

This was really cool to hear what the girls wrote.  It is also fascinating to see how they listed

things about their daddy that they loved and just said I am the best mom or that I love them……not sure what all

the psychology of it means, but it is interesting none the less.

The look on their faces when reading their notes and hearing what others said about them is priceless…. (even with a low grade fever)

Jason had also written out scripture on love on some of the hearts. So, we read them, talked about them and how we can live it out….simple devo.

Next, we played a little game of pick up stix, conversation heart style.

We used some sticks and tried to see how many we could pick up in 30 seconds.

This

was harder

than you

might think (check out the tongue for concentration)

Then we tried to use our hearts to make sentences….yeah, not so much!

Afterwards we dumped out the hearts and let the kids build away.  Emery make a city with hers…

and Parker just kept stacking hers…

I hung our hearts in the window to help remind us about loving each other

and about loving Jesus….

Another one in the books…..

The Stews have been quite busy lately.

Last weekend, we went to Knoxville to visit the grandparents and for me to have a visit with a family who are adopting.

About a year ago, I started working part time for an agency that completes a homestudy for families who are wanting to adopt. This is one of those things that God has
completely took be surprise. I was set on one path, but as usual, He has another plan! Needless to say, I am loving working with families who are
adopting. If you have any questions about adoption, please feel free to ask me. I would love to answer your questions!

So, while we were in, we had a blast. The reason I chose this weekend, was so my sweet man could go watch some VOL basketball. He LOVES UT basketball.
They were playing on Thursday night and Saturday afternoon, so we took the kids out of school and headed to Kville.
Jason was able to go to both games and I actually went with him on Saturday. It was so fun! It had been awhile since I had been to a game, so I was pumped.
They introduced the new football coach while we were there, Coach Derrek Dooley. His kids are just darling!
We won both games which made it even better!

Friday night we went to see the Harlem Globetrotters.

The kids had fun. They were funny, but it is sooo cheesy.  My favorite part, without a doubt was the mascot Big G.

It was really cute!

We also went to see Grandad at work. He is a bailiff for one of the judges and wanted us to come by! Bradley had a blast. He got to experiment with the xray machine and made many friends in the process!

Last night, I was able to take the girls to see 101 Dalmatians, The Musical.  Mom, Kim and I got season tickets to the Broadway series at TPAC.    They decided not to go for various reasons, so I took the girls. I will be honest, I was not looking forward to it.  It was raining, it started at their bedtime, I had to drive downtown and I was tired.  But, we persevered and they really enjoyed it.  Beauty and the Beast is coming in June and we are planning on taking all the girls!

Here are the 2 pictures we took before we left.  As you can see, I am taking my time in decorating the hallway!  I also have very few pictures of me with my offspring.  Ohh, the trials of motherhood…

fun times with my girls…

So there is a snapshot of what we have been up to…

I am planning a family night this week.  Anyone want to join me??

2009 was quite the whirlwind for our family.  Jason and I experienced some amazing highs and some challenging lows.  As a result, we are both sensing the Lord leading us to be more intentional in just about every area of life….faith, family, friends, finances and our home (it doesn’t start with an f but I was stumped!).

Here is how we spent our past year….

JANUARY:

We spent New Year’s Day with friends, bowling…quite fun!

Our church officially changed its name to Lifepoint Church. This has been an amazing year at our church.  We launched a second campus,

moved to three services, and are sending out teams to Thailand and Belgium in the next year.  We are so blessed to see God moving in a real, tangible way!

FEBRUARY:

We launched our Stewart Family Nights…all centered around a theme and a devotional.  I love these nights, but they are a lot of work! So worth it though.

I am looking forward to picking up the pace again this year.

We started with Colors night..

and had Backwards Night. We started with dessert and ate under the table.  Kids loved it!

Lauren, my niece, had her birthday party at a rock climbing place and Parker and Emery gave it a whirl.  Emery loved it!

AFRICA…..how you changed my life!  Jason and I spent 10 days away from our family on a mission trip to Africa.  It was amazing,

heartbreaking, life changing and all the things you think it would be.  You can read about our journey here.

MARCH:

The house was painted while we were in Africa and was starting to feel more homey.

The girls also started a new soccer season, which was great!

We celebrated Bradley’s 3rd Birthday at our home!! We had a golf party and it was a blast!

We also went to Knoxville and spent some time on the girls’ Spring Break with LuLu. We went to WonderWorks and had a great time!

We also went to The Creative Discovery Museum in Chattanooga with our dear friends, The Hales.

APRIL:

In April, we took a girls trip to Atlanta for the weekend to celebrate Emery’s 6th Birthday.

Our big outing was to the American Girl Store and Bistro.

We ate at the bistro and added a cake to celebrate!

We shopped our hearts out in the AG store….

We also celebrated Easter with some fun activities to highlight the Resurrection…

MAY:

We honored Emery’s actual birthday with a date with Daddy.

She loves going out one on one and this was no exception..

We also ended the school year with Emery’s Kindergarten Graduation. Where does the time go?

The kids also planted a garden with Poppy.  That garden was very plentiful…

The kids were also in a production at church and Bradley made his debut.

He wore his sunglasses the whole time and came very close to stripping off all his clothes…those preacher’s kids…

Parker had her first speaking part in the History Fair at school. She did great!

Jason and I also started P90x and managed to complete most of it…until the addition started.  It worked for us!

JUNE:

Emery had her dance recital and performed in two dances..loved it!

She also was on the praise team for VBS at church…

But, by far the biggest thing we did this month was start an 1100 square feet addition to our home.

Two trees had to come down and my kids loved watching the initial progress…

Ready to pitch in.

JULY:

This month, we had a lot of fun, enjoying summer.

The kids, Mom and I went to Mississippi to see my family. This was a great trip and I totally

had a moment where I realized my kids are getting older and somewhat easier to travel with!

We also potty trained t his summer and it was BRUTAL. PLAIN BRUTAL.

The kids on my aunt’s farm.  They had a blast on this trip.

We also had Kid’s Camp.  We invited our good friend, Callie Grace, to come stay with us and attend.

She did and it was AWESOME!

Lastly, the girls started 1st grade and 2nd grade!!

AUGUST:

We had a safari family night at Rainforest Cafe. This was a fun night out. We were needing a break from

construction and this did the trick!

Bradley also started back to Mother’s Day Out two days a week! He loves it!

We bricked the addition and got many a questioning looks when it looked like this…

SEPTEMBER:

Then, we painted the brick…Lafonda Sagebrush was the color and 31 gallons later…

the house looked like this…

Jason took a much needed Annual Golf Trip and while he was away, my dad

and I landscaped the majority of the house…

That was an exhausting 3 days!!

But, worth it…

OCTOBER:

The kids had two weeks of Fall Break and on the second week, we went to DISNEY WORLD!!!

6 days at Disney World.  We had a great time, but wow, not the best idea on our parts during the middle of construction.

But, the kids did amazing and we will cherish that trip always.

We went with the Hales and we love traveling with them. Our 6 kids did SO WELL and I love “doing life” with them!

We came home and hit it hard on the addition and were finally able to move in!!!

It looks so different now! I will post new pictures soon!

Having our own bathroom, closet and a master bedroom again, can not be put into words! It is so sweet and I feel so

blessed and thankful…

NOVEMBER:

We spent a lot of time finishing up a lot of details of the addition.  We still had a lot of painting!

But, for Thanksgiving, we went to Orange Beach, AL for several days to be with my parents and sister.

We had a great time, fabulous weather and of course, lots of shopping!

DECEMBER:

We finished up a lot of work this month and are very close to having all the details done!

We celebrated Parker’s 8th Birthday!

Here she is on her day with a new bible, a fish and some flowers! She had a sleepover with her BFF’s and a joint party with a friend at

a bounce place.  She is growing into such a sweet girl..

Bradley was a Wise Man in the MDO Christmas play.

He did so good.

Lastly, we celebrated with all of our family for Christmas.

(My camera memory card was placed in emery’s new cam, which was left at Jason’s aunts…pics to come)

This has been an incredible year…high highs and tough lows.

Looking back, I am so thankful for this life I lead, the God I serve, the man I married, the children I get to raise, the church we call home,

the family that love us so faithfully, the friends who support us and the school that teaches our kids that Jesus is enough.

My prayer is that I am found more faithful, more loving, more patient, more giving and more in awe of Jesus in 2010….

Blessings.

I have so many pictures to post, but Jason has most of them downloaded on his computer.  Isn’t that how is always happens!

So, I am going to post a few of the ones I do have.

We had a total blast.  We arrived on Saturday and headed straight to Magic Kingdom.  We spent the rest of the day there!  When we got to the hotel, we found that Bradley was broke out in some major hives.  He got his first dose of Benedryl.

Sunday we went to Hollywood Studio.  This was a good day. We were still figuring everything out and walked around aimlessly a lot.  I took Bradley to the First Aid station and almost to the walk in clinic but it was a 2 hour wait not including the shuttle waits and rides.  He was dazed most of this day, due to multiple doses of Benedryl.  I still have no IDEA what caused him to break out, but the rest of the week, he was broke out in itchy welps.  Poor guy.  He did have fun, though.  We loved the Toy Story Mania ride, Rock N Roll Rollercoaster (the adults, the kids we scarred for life on this one!), Star Wars ride, Playhouse Disney Show, Monsters Inc, Laugh In and the Army Men from Toy Story.  They were walking around and were really funny! We ate at the Prime Time Cafe and it was really fun and the food was good!  FANTASMIC! was amazing.  Bradley cried quite a bit, but he persevered, triumphed, suffered through it and enjoyed the end.

Monday we went to Epcot.  This was a great, long day.  We went to the Land exhibit first and got fast passes to Soarin’, which we LOVED.  LOVED.  We also toured the greenhouse. We also went to the Sea exhibit and  rode the Nemo ride and look at the Aquarium.  We ate at Coral Reef that night and it was all right. The food was good, but the atmosphere was not that big of a deal.  Some of our favorites were Test Track, Mission Space, Spaceship Earth and the character meet and greet.  When we finally made it to the Nations, we only had about an hour before our dinner reservation, and the girls were going to do the Kim Possible World Showcase Adventure.  The dads totally ran with this while Ashley and I had Ryan and Bradley.  We barely made our reservation and didn’t see anything but Norway in the Nations.  When we finally finished dinner, the IllumiNations fireworks had started so we watched them and hustled to the bus stop.  This day was fun, but there is so much to do.  It seemed like we waited a lot to do our fast passes, but it was still a great day!

Tuesday we went to Animal Kingdom. More to come later….

Wednesday we were back at Magic Kingdom. More to come later……

Here is at least one picture from our trip!

Here is some random facts from our trip:

1. We used a travel agent.  She was amazing.  She made our reservations for the hotel and for all of our table service meals. The best thing was that she  made a list of each park and an itinerary of where to go, what to do, which ride to fast pass, and had a great list of insider tips! This was vital for us as we negotiated the parks with 10 people, 6 being little!

2. We went when they offered the free dining plan.  SO worth it.  Basically, if you stay in a DW resort, you get a table service meal (sit down), a counter service meal, and a snack per person, for each day.  This saved us loads of money, which we are all for.  We also got to ride the bus to and from the parks, got to use the extended hours, and once we were there, we really didn’t have many out of pocket expenses.  They are still offering the free dining plan through December!

3. We stayed at this resort.  Being a family of 5 limited our options, in our price range, but this worked well. It was a basic hotel room with a trundle bed. We were rarely in the room, so it was good.

4. We made the rookie mistake and tried to do EVERYTHING in each park…. which left for long days and late nights.   This made it hard to get up super early, but we did our best.  It also left us exhausted on top of already being exhausted from getting ready to go to DW! But, it was fun!

5. We got to Magic Kingdom before it opened one day and that was the BEST thing we did.  We zoomed through rides and shows for the first few hours.

6. Bradley was allergic to Disney….not even kidding.  He broke out in hives the first 2 days and itchy, welps the remaining days.  He tested for egg and wheat allergies as a baby, but has done fabulous the last year.  Not sure what he was reacting to, but he was in a Benadryl haze the entire time.

7. We rented a double stroller from here.  We did this for several reasons- they were cheaper, they were more comfortable, they delivered it to our hotel and with our kids still relatively young, we knew that a double would come in handy.  And, it did!

8. We took advantage of the Fast Pass option.  I honestly don’t know why in the world you would wait for 20 minutes to an hour for a ride when you can fast pass it, come back at your designated time and basically hop right on.  With small kids, this was a lifesaver.

9. We did some research.  We talked to a lot of people who had gone before us to DW and got a wealth of info. We also checked out these websites: allears.net; Disney World; a guide to DW and discussion boards.

10. We waited til the kids were tall enough to ride most rides and old enough to remember going.  We wanted them to be able to handle long days, waiting and not have multiple, complete and total meltdowns.  So we waited. And , I am so thankful. They had fun, they were excited, they caught the magic of DW and they will have lasting memories.  At least the girls will for sure!Disne

Bradley recently spent some time celebrating with his best good pal, Mason.  Mason had just turned three.  These two are a pair. Individually, they are a hand full!  Together, they are down right dangerous.  They have caused quite a bit of property damage, not to mention tried to turn Bradley’s bathroom into a “swimmin pool.”  They usually end up in Bradley’s shower, soaking wet!

Ryan and Marty got some great video of the two, in the latest sport craze…… Tackle Basketball…..

A few weeks ago, mom, sister and I took Bradley, Lauren and Morgan to the Farmer’s Market and to the fountains by the capital building in Nashville.  So fun, I must say.  Not that I needed anything at the Farmer’s Market thanks to our little ol garden that just keeps on producing veggies.  We are in tomato overload right now.  My mom has frozen quite a bit for us to use and I am stoked about that!

The fun part was taking the kids to run in the fountains… seriously cute pics!

Ready to bolt….. can we say he got his daddy’s skin?

Even Morgan had fun in the fountains…although she probably wouldn’t tell her friends that!

Bradley and Lauren ran from one end of the fountains to the other….OVER AND OVER AND OVER…

Taking a breather….

I love this one because these two are rarely still

Mom and sister Kim.. Trying to stay cool!

This was a fun day we had also celebrating Kim’s birthday.  Next time, I will have to take the girls, too! I know they would love it!

12 is such a wierd number. Not flashy, but yet it marks the beginnings of big things.

Today, marks 12 years married for Jason and I!  I think every anniversary is signifcant, whether it is the first, the tenth, the fiftieth or the twelfth.  Each year marks one more year where commitment and covenant won out over the lies the world tries to feed us.  And that makes each anniversary something worth celebrating, honoring and taking time to look back and dream forward.

Jason and I celebrated our anniversary on Friday in a very low key way. We are up to our ears in addition planning and are also going to Disney in October, so a weekend away just was not in the cards for us.  My parents took the kids for the night and we headed out to have dinner and do a little tax free weekend clothes shopping.  Since we have been exercising and watching what we eat, we have both lost some poundage and are clothes were showing us that they had noticed.  We decided to forgo the fancy, smancy meal and buy some stuff.  We scored some deals and I must say, my man got A LOT more than I did, but he shops big about 4 times a year, while I shop weekly!

As I look back, I am so thankful for this amazing man.  I don’t remember meeting him.  I don’t remember spending time getting to know him.  All my memories of him, from the time we were 11 are of ones where we shared a connection.  Back then, it was a deep friendship that just was.  We didn’t have to work at it and we shot straight with each other, had fun and were simply always there with each other.  He was a great guy…. but he is an even better man.

Our friendship went through highs and lows, ups and downs, boyfriends and girlfriends, distance and closeness, yelling and silence.  It weathered, it strenghtened, it took root until it came time for love to be awakened.  (i am rocking the poetic sentences!)  I never doubted that if I gave him just a piece of my heart, opened the door at the right time, I would marry him.

And that is just what I did.  We dated 7 months, got engaged and were married 8 months later.

Now, 12 years later, I can honestly say that I could not have written a better love story for myself.  I wouldn’t change a thing.  I am a blessed woman and I am forever changed by that boy I met at some point, 24 years ago.

I still heart my dress…

good grief we were young…

Our first dance…. could our pictures look any more dated?

On a side note, our reception rocked.  We had a blast with all our friends….and family!

Happy Anniversary, J!