So, now WE need prayer!

Little Sophie is ill and we are a little bit concerned. She has been seen by the pediatrician today. He was able to give her something for the vomiting and it is really starting to work. However, he was not able to rule out appendicitis because her tummy was so tender. He is going to check in for an update in the next hour or so. He said her symptoms would get worse as the day progressed if it was appendicitis (running fever, pain in one area vs. all over, etc.)

In the meantime, Sophie has started running a temp of 102. She also is still complaining about the tummy hurting. Just not sure what to think. The vomiting has stopped, so that is a good thing. But the fever is relatively new....

Will keep you posted. Please keep praying for Stellan as well. He needs the prayers a whole lot more than we do!

P.S. - I will explain the Twitter sidebar a little later on when I am not dealing with a sick little princess!

Prayers Needed for Stellan

Guys, I have added a new button to my blog. I found this blog because Angie ("Bring the Rain") linked to it on her blog. Sweet story this mommy has. Her fourth baby, a little boy they named Stellan, was diagnosed in utero with some heart problems that doctors were certain would make it next to impossible for him to survive once he was born.

There were tons and tons of prayers lifted up for this family before he was born. He was born COMPLETELY healthy. However, he is now in the hospital with a severe case of RSV. He is in intensive care and there is a good possibility that they are going to have to intubate him because he is having so much difficulty breathing. Please pray for Stellan and his family today. You can click on the "MckMiracle" button to the right to read his mommy's blog for updates.

Love to you all.....

Ella and her lovies

Sweet Ella

Oh, our sweet Ella is such a girly girl. She only wanted two things from Santa Claus this Christmas - a baby doll and a toy called "Lucky the Incredible Wonder Pup". Bless her heart, she tries so hard to say all of that but it is a mouthful even for me! Needless to say, she got both of them yesterday. She was so funny because she would open one present and need it completely opened and out of all of its packaging before she was willing to open another one. We thought we would be there all day if that were the case. They make those packages next to impossible to get into! We finally got her moving along a little bit faster when she realized that there were baby dolls involved. All in all, she ended up with three new baby dolls yesterday. I think that means that she has a total of seven or eight now.

I let each girl spend about $10 picking out a present for their daddy. It can be anything in the world (as long as it costs around $10!). Ella's choice for her daddy this year - a baby doll. I am dead serious. He plays a game with her at night where he takes her baby doll and runs off with it. So, she wanted him to have his own baby doll to play with so he would quit taking hers. She, of course, ended up playing with "Daddy's baby doll" most of the day.

Not only does she play with all of these dolls, but she also wants to sleep with all of them! I counted last night, and I think she sleeps with about 20 or 25 animals, dolls, blankets, etc. I am constantly going in to her room when she is not looking and weeding out some of the stuff in her bed to make room for the "popular" lovies of the day. I swear there are times when there is no room for her in the bed! I plan on taking a pictures of it soon so that I can post it for you to see. It is quite funny to see - she needs all of those in there with her, you know!!!

"For unto you is born this day a Savior, which is Christ the Lord."

I love Christmas. I have loved Christmas for as long as I can remember. I love the sights, the sounds, the smells, the tastes of Christmas. But most of all, I love the story of Christmas. I love the security that comes with knowing that the Father sent His son to this earth to live the life that I should have lived and to die the death that I should have died. And because He LOVED me enough to do so, I am free. Free from my sins and free from the burdens of this life - He holds me in the palm of His hand. Sure, He gives me my own crosses to bear, but I know they are just there to push me deeper and deeper into His loving grip. So, for that, I am learning to be truly thankful. There is a peace that washes over me knowing that He loves me with a love that will not let me go. I am broken and fallen and a complete and utter mess in every sense of the word most of the time, and yet He loves me. And I mean REALLY loves me.

I sat here today and thought about loving someone SO MUCH that I would be willing to sacrifice one of my girls so that person could live. It is something that I cannot wrap my mind around. And yet, that is what we are celebrating today. We are celebrating the birth of one who would ultimately die so that I could live. So that John and Ryan and Sophie and Ella could live. So that you could live. The idea really does overwhelm me and humble me. It is something that I do not deserve.

Last night, we went to Christmas Eve service at church. It is one of my favorite worship services of the year. It really is a short service, but always so rich and sweet and precious. I was moved to tears this year (what's new, right?) at the sound of my precious girls singing along as best they could to songs about the birth of their Savior. Ella is our little songbird and she did the best she could to sing what we were singing, even if she just sang the ending sounds on the words. I have been trying to sing "O Come All Ye Faithful" with them each night after we read our Advent story for the night. They both know all of the words to that song, so it was exciting for them to get to sing it during the service last night. Dr. Young then read the Christmas story out of Luke 2. I just cannot help but look ahead to Easter at each Christmas Eve service. As we take Communion, I sit there and think about the fact that we are celebrating the birth of the One who came to DIE for us.

I have done the best I could to talk a lot with Sophie this year about what Christmas is really all about. Ella is still just a bit too young, but Sophie is at the perfect age to start "getting it". We talked again tonight about why we celebrate Christmas, and I really do believe that it is starting to click in her little mind and that God is softening her heart so that it is moldable. That has always been my prayer and to see it start to come to fruition in God's perfect will is an awesome thing. Again, I am humbled. To have these girls entrusted to me is such an awesome responsibility. But at the same time, it is such a wonderful gift and blessing.

This has been a wonderful year in so many ways. This is my week to slow down and really reflect on that. Now that the hustle and bustle of shopping and wrapping and baking and shipping is done, I intend to do just that. I plan on having my two oldest girls do the same.I think it is so easy to get stuck in "the moment" when things are scary or sad or stressful, and we (or at least I) have a tendency to focus on all of the negative aspects. We get scared and overwhelmed and tense and anxious. Things that seem so big and impossible to overcome in the moment are, in actuality, very small when you look at them in hindsight. So, this week, I am going to look back in hindsight. I am going to focus on the ways that I made my God so small. I am ashamed to think about all of the times that I did just that - thought that my God was too small to handle something in my life. And, I am going to choose to look at this year all over again - this time looking at how BIG my God was throughout it all. I am praying that 2009 sees me remembering Him as a God who is mighty to save.

For those of you who read this (if anyone at all reads this), I assume that you are reading because you love our family. Thank you for loving us. Thank you for the countless prayers you have lifted up on behalf of us and our girls. We love you all so very much.

"The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make His face shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace." Numbers 6:24-26

BIG NEWS!!!

This past Thursday night, Sophie and I were able to attend a surprise party for Missy, who has been a part of our lives for a very long time now. I (Whitney) originally met Missy when I was a freshman or sophomore in high school. Her mother, Cindy, lived with her three children just a few apartments down from us in Cordova. Missy would spend a lot of her time hanging out with my brother who was her same age. Missy's older brother, Matthew, actually graduated from high school with my sister, Erin.

I lost track with Missy and her family for a number of years until John and I were planning our wedding. I went to meet with the wedding planner at Grace. Lo and behold, it was Missy's mother, Cindy. What a small world and what a blessing from God to bring this sweet family back into our lives! Missy has been babysitting Sophie since she was born and she really is a part of our family now. We really think of all of them as being a part of our family.

On Thursday night, Missy's boyfriend Craig proposed in one of the most romantic, fairy tale proposal stories you will ever hear! They are getting married in June of 2009. Our sweet little Sophie will be one of their flower girls, and I have the honor of being one of Missy's bridesmaids. We are so excited!!!!

I am including some pictures of Missy when she first saw Sophie at the party that night. You can tell just from the pictures how much they dearly love each other.






Congratulations, Craig and Missy! We love you both very much.

Sophie's New Room

Without further ado.....





She could not have been more excited and we could not be more pleased. It is absolutely beautiful. Made me cry to think of her as a teenager in that bed. It is happening way too fast. She slept so well in there last night and told me this morning that the bed was "just so cozy". :-)

Yay! Yay! Yippee!

Yes, in the words of one Ella Koski: "Yay! Yay! Yippee!"

So much has happened since I last posted. It has been a sweet time, a trying time, a sad time, a happy time, a thankful time, a funny time, a joyful time, a time of learning patience (NOT my strong suit - those of you who know me really well know this already!), a time of remembering all that we have been blessed with, a time for understanding that we can never take any of it for granted.

I will fill you all in on some pretty funny stories in a later post (hopefully sooner rather than later). But, for now, I want to explain why we are so excited at our house. It really did leave Ella jumping all around the house screaming her signature line of excitement.

Sophie's "until you go to college" bed and furniture arrived today! It is absolutely beautiful and just fits her to a tee. She is at school right now and has no idea that it will be here when she gets home. I have already taken some pictures but will wait until she sees it before I let you see it. She would be very upset with me if she knew that "everyone else" got to see it before she did!

Love you all!

Fall Pictures

I have been meaning to post these pictures for a while and just keep getting sidetracked. We let the girls stuff some pumpkin bags with leaves two or three weekends ago. An easy way to get help raking leaves without anyone actually thinking that they were working. The little girls really just wanted to jump in the leaves over and over again. The weather has just turned cold here in the past week or so. We have been really lucky to have great outside weather to play in on the weekends when Daddy is at home.




We also made the drive over to Selmer on that same weekend to find Sophie's "until you head off to college bed". We went to the same store where we bought her big girl furniture when we moved her out of her crib. When the painters were here a couple of weeks ago, we had to move Ella out of her room for a night. It was the perfect time to move her into her new BIG GIRL room. She has been sleeping in her crib without the side rail since she turned two, but this was a whole new adventure. Ella loves routine and loves things to be just so. Well, it seemed at first that she was having none of this new room stuff.

She kept telling me that she was in Sophie's room, in Sophie's bed, with Sophie's rocking chair, all the while looking at me like I was the biggest moron on the planet for not knowing where to put her to bed. It took us about half an hour to get her to sleep, but once she did we were down for the night. While she was at school the next day, I was running around like a mad woman - putting Ella's rocking chair in that room, Ella's clothes in that closet, Ella's toys in the cubbies. When she came home, I took her up there and you could tell that it just "clicked" with her. NOW it was her room. She has not looked back since. She is so proud of herself and loves to tell people that she is now sleeping in a big girl's room. I will post pictures soon of her in her new big girl room.

Sophie's furniture will be delivered in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, she is already in her new room, but she is sleeping on the couch bed. She, of course, thinks this is the coolest thing ever and really could care less if she ever gets her new furniture because what is in there right now suits her just fine.

It is a sweet, sweet sound...

...when our five-year-old asks me, "Mama, when's the next time that you get to pray over me?"

Oh, praise God from whom all blessings flow!!!!

The 7x7 Box

You might notice a couple of new boxes on the side of our blog. I (Whitney) am a follower of a lady named Angie who has a blog that she started when she found out that her unborn daughter had something called Trisomy 18 and that there was no chance that the child would survive. Her blog is so sweet, so real, so raw at times, so brutally honest, so encouraging, so uplifting, and so inspirational all at the same time. She has a way with words. Once you start reading, you just will not be able to stop.

There have been many times that I have been moved to tears by her blog. A lot of times it reminds me of the loss of my sister, Erin. Now, in no way can I compare my loss to that of carrying a child for nine months and knowing half way into it that the child was not going to survive. Her pain is much deeper than mine. However, she and I are alike in that we both chose to believe that our God was sovereign. That what He did was right and was good in accordance with His will for the lives of the people we loved. We chose to continue loving Him, serving Him, TRUSTING Him with our lives.

Angie is encouraging all of the moms who read her blog to participate in something very special, and I for one am all over this one. For the next seven days, I am going to pray out loud over each of my girls seven times, depending upon what they are doing at a particular time of the day. You can click the 7x7 button to go right to Angie's post on her blog. It will show you exactly what I am praying. I am not sure that anyone even reads this blog. However, if you do and if you are a mommy, I encourage you to do the same.

Finding a way to pray for my girls so that they know how important it is has been something that has been on my heart for a while now. I pray for them daily, but they do not know (1) that I am praying for them, and (2) what I am praying for them. I pray daily for lots of things - for their character, their attitudes, their salvation, their protection, their friends, their peers, their future husbands - you name it, I am thinking about it and praying for it. I was so encouraged to find this posting from Angie the other day. It made the hairs on my arms stand straight up on end.

By the way, you can get to Angie's blog and read her whole story if you would like to by clicking on the "Bring the Rain" button on the side of my blog. Leave me a comment if you want to let me know that you are participating in the 7x7 as well. I would love to know what you get out of it, what your kids get out of it, etc.

Coming out of the Chaos....

Ah, the week of painting. What a blast......

I have uploaded a couple of photos for you. This is what our house looked like all week last week. They finished on Friday afternoon. The finished product is beautiful, but we are still coming out of the chaos that was our house last week!

We are doing a good deep cleaning while the house is turned upside down. Things are slowly but surely falling back into their places. Will post "updated" pictures as soon as all of that is done! But for now, I know you wish this was your house last week.......

Happy Halloween

The girls had a great time trick-or-treating tonight. They had both asked to be Ariel for Halloween, but Ella decided this afternoon at 3:00 that she was "scared" to be Ariel and needed to be Cinderella. Luckily, we had a costume that fit her, so she was happy. She wanted to do her own makeup tonight and seemed to really enjoy putting on her pink blush - over and over and over again. That child is so prissy. Cracks us up all the time!

My brother and his wife came with their son, Matt. He was a spider and he looked so sweet. They were all so cute together.



We had to trick or treat in a stroller tonight because Soph fell down yesterday and hurt her ankle. Thankfully it is not broken, but the doctor wants us to keep her off of it this weekend. Do you know how hard it is to tell a 5-year-old to sit still and stay off of her feet?!?!?

Ella made us laugh so hard because she was so protective of her bucket of candy. She would inspect it each time she got through at a house to see what was new. She was so proud of herself for going to the door by herself. Seemed like she thought she had pulled something off by getting all of those people to put candy in her bucket. She would ask us if we liked the candy. She would ask if she could eat the candy. But she would NOT share the candy. She would not even let us hold her bucket for fear that we might eat her candy.




At one point, we looked at the girls and they were very busy inspecting their buckets and taking inventory of their loot!

The Ariel Pumpkin and Chaos at the McKoski House!

Here is the masterpiece of a pumpkin we carved a couple of weekends ago.



Our house is in COMPLETE disarray at the moment. We had some roof leaks in the spring (or maybe last winter - not real sure), and it caused some water stains on our ceilings. Thankfully, it is all covered by insurance. We are finally having the ceilings repainted and our walls are being repainted as well. We have curved corners, so they are having to paint our ENTIRE downstairs.

We cannot find anything at this point! Thankfully, they are about halfway finished. I have some pictures of the chaos on my camera. As soon as I find the cable to connect my camera to my computer, I will download them for you to see.

I am soooo ready to have my house back the way it used to be!!!

Sick Day

Our little Sophie woke up this morning with a sore throat and a tummy ache. After giving it a few minutes and realizing that she was not pulling my leg, I took her in to see the doctor. By that point, it was apparent that there was no way she could be pulling my leg. :-/

Luckily, it was not strep throat, which was my only real concern given the fact that she was complaining so much about her throat (even before the lovely stomach eruptions began). She does have a nasty virus, though. When the doctor walked in, he said something about how green she looked. This did not sit well with Sophie, who asked for a mirror so that she could see how green she was. Anyway, he rubbed some phenagren on her wrist and assured me that, if nothing else, it would make her groggy.

I smiled to myself and told myself that he should certainly know Sophie well enough by now to know that it takes a LOT to make her groggy if it is not time for her to sleep. Less than ten minutes later, she was sacked out on the table in the exam room. He came back in with the negative strep test and a prescription for more of that lovely phenagren.

Unfortunately, we had to go to two different pharmacies before we found one with the phenagren gel that he had prescribed. The pharmacy tech asked me if I wanted to wait for it. I gave her one of those looks that obviously said, "What the heck else would I do? It is noon and I am sitting here with a five year old sacked out in my arms in her pajamas. Yeah, I think I will be waiting for the medicine that will keep her from throwing up all over me. Thanks so much for asking, though. Just in case I had planned on running her through McDonalds in the time it takes you to get it together for me."

So, they tell me it will take 15 to 20 minutes. I know I cannot hold the child for that long without my arms falling off. So, in the basket she goes. Five minutes later, she is laid out in the basket SOUND ASLEEP. Never in her life has she done that! I got some pictures on my phone. Will have to figure out how to post on here.

Keep your fingers crossed that she is the only one who gets the bug!!!

Pumpkin Pickin'

John and I took the little girls to the pumpkin patch on Saturday night. Our sweet Ryan was too busy being a teenager to come with us. :-) We had such a fun time with them. They, of course, wanted every single pumpkin they saw. It was tough getting them to narrow it down to one perfect 'punkin', but we finally did it.

Here are some pictures of our little "posers" at the entrance to the pumpkin patch.




I found these stencils at Target that let you put Disney princesses on a jack-o-lantern. They were so excited to be able to put Ariel on their pumpkin. On Sunday afternoon after church, we dove in. It was a beautiful afternoon and we had a blast. Of course, the girls only lasted about five minutes before they were completely bored with it and just ready for Ariel to be finished.

Once they each had a turn scooping pumpkin seeds out, they were off to play in the flowerbeds. I turned around to find my bowl full of pumpkin seeds (all ready to be taken inside to be toasted, mind you) filled with flowers, grass, and soil. Turns out, Sophie and Ella thought it would be more fun to make soup out of "that yucky pumpkin stuff".



Here are a couple of pictures of the carving process.



Needless to say, before it was all said and done, John was inside putting the girls down for a nap and I was outside by myself finishing up Ariel's face. She turned out pretty good, though. The girls get so excited at night when it is time to go outside and light the candle. Will post those pics soon!!!

A Trip to the Harvest Festival

These are the latest pictures of Sophie and Ella. They are so funny together sometimes! It seems like I have to take about 15 pictures just to get one good one of both of them. The last one cracks us up. Typical Sophie and Ella.

We took them to a Harvest Festival last weekend with my best friend, Ashleigh, and her girls. It was a blast! I will post more pictures soon. The girls each painted their own pumpkin. They took off through a hay maze. There was a petting zoo with every animal imaginable - cows, pigs, sheep, goats, ducks, rabbits, a turtle, and even a camel!

It was a fun morning and the time just flew by. We were able to buy some beautiful flowers for our front porch. Naptime that afternoon was wonderful - they both slept a couple of hours!!!

It took us a long time....

...but we have finally decided to join the blogging world. I am not sure how long this will last, to be quite honest. Not sure how many people will really be all that interested in what happens at our house each day! The only reason I am really even starting the blog is to allow our family to keep in touch. They are everywhere - New York, Ohio, Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi - you get the picture!

So, I am hoping that (a) I will be diligent in keeping this blog updated, and (b) that they will check it often to find out the latest on what our little princesses are doing.

Hang in there with me. It might be a bumpy ride in the beginning! :-)