Spring Break in Los Angeles April 3-9,2010

My Aunt Janet's house for Easter dinner. I am officially the favorite niece. First one from my side of the family to come to California and visit her. The boys loved talking to Scott about baseball and you see house close they are to the food.




Jacqulin loved playing with Teyah and Donovan.


We gave Teyah and Donovan a set of Resurrection Eggs. I think Teyah liked them.


Aunt Janet cheers Scott and Marizka on in the great dance demonstration. They were actually imitating Pat and Janet a.k.a. Panet's dance style.






There were 16 of us for dinner and it was fabulous. Aunt Janet must have cooked for days. There was so much fabulous food, the table was decorated beautifully and of course, there are these marble salt and pepper shakers from Italy... Wow!

Christmas with the Totckys 2010.

This is my family: In birth order with spouses...Lisa, sister in law, Tommy, oldest brother, Charlotte, oldest sister and Mike, Sonya, sister closest to me in age, and Billy and me and Bert. Can you imagine having 4 kids in 5 years and then raising them by yourself? My mom was a saint!!

The grandkids minus the oldest, Garrett. We really missed him. These kids are just a hot mess and they are in no particular order at all. I'm surprised there isn't a blur in the picture from the first Great-grandchild, Layla. We tried but she was having no part of it. It may be illegal to sit by your sibling: this is Alex, Luke, Amelia and Jacqulin. Alex and Amelia are Charlotte's kids.

There are so many pictures to post it's been hard to go through them all. This is me and Bert we really enjoyed hosting Christmas at our house.

DNow 2010 - Shoeless!

DNow is Discipleship Now a weekend retreat for 6 - 12 graders. The theme was Shoeless, based on Romans 10:15, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news."
The kids stay locally in homes all around the area. We hosted 10 6th grade girls, 2 college leaders and a couple extra helpers.
This is the group that stayed at our house. They were wonderful! Great kids. I loved having a house full and I love that they had their first DNow experience here. I pray this weekend made a profound effect on them forever.


This is Erica, my hero and helper. This was taken Saturday at lunch. I think I'm an emotional eater??! We look a little crazy but we had a blast. I honestly would have been exhausted without her help. It was just nice to have another person help prepare meals and get 10 girls showered and out the door to be on time to activities.

We got lost in the woods, no really, we took a little hike to do a Bible study in a cave. Never found the cave, heard coyotes howling and really didn't know where we were. Some where in the woods of Brentwood. It was a fun adventure though. Of course we had hot chocolate and snacks.




Having teenagers is turning out to be a lot of fun. They played a ton of games and used up some energy. You know, that energy, when you start getting slap happy because you haven't had any sleep.




Kids everywhere! Great college leaders.

Sunday School lesson from the Olympics

This was way too easy. I should thank these girls for helping me teach Sunday school last week.

I help teach Jacqulin's class of 6th grade girls. This week the lesson was on being a peacemaker. Jesus was a peacemaker and if we say we are followers of Jesus Christ then we need to follow his lead.

This is so interesting to me because our culture shoves this behavior down our throat. We promote what colleges are party schools. Don't flip on MTV during Spring Break week, you will blush. But, when a bunch of girls party with the name of their country written all over them, and then people find out some of them aren't old enough to drink, then we get all morally correct and talk about how horrible their behavior is. They disrupted the peace.
I took these pictures to my SS class and reminded the girls that if you say your a "Christian" then that's like wearing a jersey with "JESUS" stamped all over it. People don't pay much attention to you until you do something wrong and then they will have a field day. So, what does a peacemaker look like? You know, gentleness, kindness, self control. All those things you learned in Sunday School.
Actually people are watching everything you do all the time. So, who's jersey are you wearing today?

March 1, 2010 A new year, a new time, a new beginning!

It's sounds weird but I breathe a little easier when March rolls around. We've had such a fantastic winter with 7 snow days. Even Jacqulin said today "we've had enough, you know?" Yes, we've loved every one of them but it's so exciting to see the daffodils peaking their heads up.
February is a difficult month for me and I guess it always will be. Five years ago in February I had just said goodbye to my Mom and sat with heavy heart knowing I would never hear her voice say "Well, hello Debbie Dootles!" Actually, I guess I didn't know I would never hear that again. Your mind plays tricks on you. I scrolled through caller I.D. on our home phone the other day and saw "Mom" listed. My heart leaped into my throat. I then realized that I'm the "Mom" on the phone. The kids had programed my number under "Mom."
That brings up another reason February is difficult, I am a Mom without one of her children to kiss or pray with every night. Olivia Elise went to be with her grandmother, "Gaga," 5 weeks after my mom died. I was 19 weeks and 3 days pregnant. How they know down to the day blows my mind but, that's what the nurses and doctors said. Olivia wasn't considered still born even though I counted her 10 little fingers and her 10 little toes. She was perfectly formed except for a tiny whole in her tummy. Grastroshcesis is the medical term for that place that didn't close. Babies are born with this condition but Olivia didn't make it.
My sister, Sonya, sent me a devotional about dying children going to Heaven. I've never had a doubt but, it's always good to hear a theologian confirm your thoughts. I was also reminded that God told Jeremiah "before I formed you in your mother's womb I knew you." That is SO cool. Mom used to read all kinds of scripture to us about God knowing us and knowing when we sit or stand.
So, this year I really thought I was sailing through February. My Mom's birthday is February 6th so I mentioned that to the kids and the fact that she would have been 75 years old this year. Wow. And now we have little Obed to pray for. I've posted his picture before but, I would love for anyone who reads this to remember to pray for Obed.
We chose to sponsor Obed through World Vision because we wanted to honor Olivia in some way. Olivia died on February 15, 2005 and Obed was born on the same day. I love that his name starts with an O too. We haven't gotten an updated picture but he did send us a Christmas card and drew a picture of a green car. It's beautiful and proudly displayed on the refrigerator.
So, I made it through another February. I had some sad days, some emotional days, and some great days. As a matter of fact, the weekend leading up to February 15 we had 13 girls at our house for a Bible study/retreat. There were times in the last 5 years I knew it was only by God's grace that I was putting one foot in front of the other.
Take a long deep breath, March is here and God is good.

A bridge to somewhere - everywhere!

One thing we've been waiting on to finish the kitchen is the floor. You know, it needs to be the last thing you do so you don't get paint on the floor or get it scratched moving an appliance or something. We've scheduled the floor to be refinished 3 times. Our weather has been so entertaining this year that the workers weren't able to get to us a couple times. Our entire first floor is hardwood. I love it. However, we knew we would have to move out if we got all the hardwood refinished at the same time. We decided they could just refinish the kitchen right now.

Guess what? You can't get to our bedrooms if you don't go through the kitchen. I had just about decided to go get a cheap hotel room for a couple of days but, Bert kept saying he could build a bridge. Yeah, right! Well, he did it and we used it and got to our bedrooms just fine.

Doesn't the floor look beautiful? They did a fabulous job and I think the smell is gone now.

Snow, and snow, and more snow... January and February, 2010

We didn't send out a Christmas card this year. I think it's the first time since the kids have been here so, that would be at least, 14 years!! I hate we didn't get a card out, because it is our only communication with a lot of our friends and family and because it allows me to show everyone how talented Bert is. Anyway, I thought this would be a great time for you to see how much the kids have grown.
This is my baby girl, Jacqulin, she's almost as tall as I am and gorgeous.




This is a lot of snow for the south, it's a little deceptive though. I heard a lady on the news talking about people from Tennessee just don't know how to drive in the snow. I was very offended, we can drive just fine in the snow thank you very much. However, no one does well on ice. After about 3 inches of snow it started sleeting. We were sitting in the den and could hear the ice falling. Jacqulin went outside and picked up the top layer of ice. This is why we can't drive well.


By the way, February is almost over but as I write this, snow is flying outside, again. Very strange for Tennessee. The kids have had 7 snow days out of school. As a matter of fact, this is the last week of February and this will be the first week the kids will go to school for an entire week since the middle of December. This makes me giggle, what a great winter. I wish we would all go to 4 day work weeks.