bsmiles and sunny days

Sometimes I feel like I'm going crazy. Deisha, for obvious reasons, keeps me extremely busy when she's awake. It's not that I can't put her on the floor in another room while I work in the kitchen or clean the bathroom. The thing is, when she's awake, I have am constantly aware that at any moment I could be pulled away from what I'm doing and have to tend to her needs, whatever they may be, immediately. It makes getting anything done difficult. So why is it that when she's asleep, I'll start a project, and then maybe another in the middle of that one, and then start a list, and then come in here and sit down in front of this blasted screen and just veg until she wakes up and is needy again? Then I'm frustrated because I can't get anything done. Even though I just blew an hour in cruising who knows what right here. I just don't know. Maybe it's a self-control issue. Maybe I really am just losing it and looking for something to bl

This is what ours looks like. Jasmine decorated everyone's glass with a candy cane... so cute. Kennedy baked a cake and peeled potatoes for me. I love having helpers! This year's prep was so much better than last year's. Gotta love national holidays! Little man is way too cute for his own good! Gobble, gobble, gobble. I forgot this Nana tradition and Kennedy said, "MOM! Apple turkeys! We forgot to make apple turkeys!" This was last night at Wal-Mart after we'd already been to the grocery store and all of it's chaotic bliss. So I said, "Alright, let's get the marshmellows and we'll use the apples I bought for the apple crisp." Which they used and then almost immediately removed the candy and marshmellows from after these shots were taken. I mean, it's a tradition. We take them very seriously, which I am SO thankful for this year because our little traditions kept us busy while we were so far from home. I love that there's n

See, what had happened was... I found Facebook, see. And when I'm uploading pictures like this, I can chat with my friends, all my thousands of wonderful friends online, you know? Instead of just staring at that doggone bar and hoping it will go faster now since everyone else is at work, right? So for more photos, you can find me on facebook. And by the way, this is what California does to people like me.

Let's just be real honest here, I don't have time to keep this thing up. I mean, I think about it every day; I think about how I'd love to share all my new recipes with you, the perfect bread recipes, how to get the graham crackers to stay crunchy, the homemade laundry soap that is saving me fat cash each month, not to mention the brilliant and hysterical antics of my crew. I could write for hours every day. More than that, and what I really would like to do, is sit down here and spill my guts about how unsteady I feel about our country's future, and how I've never felt more unsure of my children's well-being as US citizens. I'd love to share my heart about how the mercy of God sustains me far beyond what I am capable of doing on my own. I want you to know about how I get up every morning at the crack of dawn and work from sun-up until sun-down without stopping and without ever accomplishing everything I set out to do. It's a real mystery. I want to tell

My girls... Look at this kid. Bless his pea-pickin heart. My camera shoots out an orange beam that always distracts her from smiling. Somehow we got past the beam, but her eyes still shot open on the first flast. Hahaha! She loves kisses! Yikes. Kennedy is standing on the brink of being a teenager. She still carries a doll around the house and shops the baby clearance stuff every time we get close to it. Jasmine is a a real-deal Baby Whisperer. I feel totally confident putting her on the job when the screaming begins. We had a costume birthday party last weekend and this is how we went. Aren't they something?

There is no sound like the sound of new laughter...

If you have children that know my kids, you may be interested in checking out these little sweethearts. They are updated WAY more often than mine. And they're nuts. And I adore them! http://www.thediariesofkennedysutton.blogspot.com/ http://micahsfireblog.blogspot.com/

I think about you, my faithful readers, everyday. I thought about you last weekend when I was baking all day, and I thought about you all day long while I chased my kids back and forth across town to and from soccer games. There are so many things rattling around in my head that I want to write about, but I don't have time to load pictures, and I even if I just sit down to write, I rarely have time to complete a thought without interruption or total diversion. While I have a few minutes, I thought I'd unload some of my random thoughts. I have a lot to do. Right now, at 10:19pm, the pressing thing is the kitchen floor. It's a mess. I mean, it's bad. The dishes are done, the groceries are put away, and the trash is out, but the floor: yikes. Instead of tending to the pressing things, you know what I do with my time? I cruise Facebook. Here is a lovely opportunity to catch up on all your long lost friends, look at their lives, see how they interact with their friends, see

When I lived in Chicago, I discovered this cool little book that inspired me everyday. I'm sure you've heard of it, it's called "Life's Little Instruction Book". There are a bunch of 'em now, but back then it was pretty new and I loved reading it because it always gave me one more tool for my life tool belt. I read years later that it was written by a man who wrote it for his child before he left for college. It had all the information he could possibly pass on for this little bird leaving the nest. It never occurred to me until this minute how lucky we are. Right now Dale is teaching his class to the kids. Every Wednesday, Dale fills their heads with all kinds of valuable teaching that he would never, in any other situation, have the time or opportunity to give them without serious discipline in scheduling. But, because they are home, he is able to think through the things he wants them to learn and the seeds he wants to plant, and then spend this few hou

It was a few weeks ago, but these pictures were so cute, I had to share them. She pranced around the house like a princess all day. Now if you ask her, "Are you the big sister?" she says, "No, I da pwincess." This is the little Cinderella cake the we bought at Albertson's to commemorate the occasion. She fell in love with this cake and Dale and I were trying to avoid a real cake, so I decided this was a good fit for the little princess. We all got a little sliver of the dress. It was so good (I love grocery store bakery frosting) that I was tempted with the giant cheeseburger cake that I saw there last night. Here I'm skimping on groceries, saving $.40 here and $.67 there, and I had to talk myself out of a five dollar indulgence. What can I say. I heart cake. Leila loves the part when we all sing happy birthday to her. It's the best part of the whole day. She adores it. You can see it on her face. Here she is with the tiara and earrings. So

I have this great friend that apparently knows me very well, which is rare because my life is like a locked diary and I don't ever share it with anyone. Ever. No details; it's all classified, if you know what I'm saying. She called me about a week ago and after listening to me moan about my troubles for awhile, she said, "So what's the plan? I keep waiting for you to blog some new plan, and I'll know that you're OK." And that was all I really needed to hear, a reminder to live deliberately. Honestly, for the past few months I have been just trying to get by hoping something would change and the blues would clear up on their own. Well they're not. So I decided to devise a plan that would: a. save us money, b. help us to eat healthy foods again, and c. get me organized. After some hunting, I found this awesome website that was just what I needed to kick myself into gear. This gal lives on $50 a week and tries to eat organic as much as possib

Alright, the reality is that I'm not depressed, I am severely overwhelmed. Today I received four of the twenty-some boxes that I'm waiting for so we can proceed with a successful school year. I have cardboard boxes and plastic bubbles full of air that I need to find a place for so that I'll have the supplies in the event that we don't finish the school year here in California. (I know, it's a long shot, but I'm an optimist. And my mom is a woman of faith.) I don't have a place for it. My shed is full of other stuff that I'm saving for who knows what reason. I can barely keep up with my regular housework on top of shuffling our storage space to accomodate these things, and trying to meet the needs of all these little lives around me. I haven't cooked in a couple of weeks. (Hey guess what! Chicken nuggets tomorrow too!) I get overwhelmed with the guilt of not being a competent teacher, not praying for each one of them everyday, not meeting my husband o

The kids in our neighborhood all went back to school this week, so before that happened, I snapped a couple of pictures of their summertime activities for posterity's sake. This little stinker, don't you just want to scoop her up? I do too! And I do every chance I get. Trek and Tre were play fighting on the trampoline this morning and Trek clocked Tre in the nose; Tre came in with a bloody nose howling about how he was going to get Tre back. Micah came storming in shortly after snarling about how Trek better watch out because he was going to get it back. I reminded them of Jesus's forgiveness and told them that they needed to forgive Trek. After a couple of failed attempts, I let them know that if they didn't practice forgiveness, I was going to get them back. They're all best friends again. Jasmine is such a mommy already, she always takes to the little ones immediately. This is a continuation of the tea party she hosted on our stoop the day before school starte

For a few months, I've been vicariously doing weight watchers, using the manual points calculator and logging my food journal on Word. After some prodding from other users, I had decided to sign up for Weight Watchers online; my manual entries were not cutting the mustard. As a matter of fact, I plateaued and then started to gain weight so I was doing something wrong. While I was on the Internet searching for some answers and found this goldmine: www.sparkpeople.com It's a lot like Weight Watchers Online, only it calculates fat and calories and is totally free! I've been using it for a little over two weeks and only have about five pounds to lose to meet my goal weight. I'm so excited about it, I just had to share it with you here. One thing about it that really intrigued me is that the guy that started it is a multi-millionaire and set it up and made it free to *spark people* to lose weight. He is a health philanthropist. I look forward to getting on everyday,

I love this outfit; someone that Dale works with gave this to her and I had to get a picture before she outgrew it! This shot is clearly on a rainy day in Deisha's world. She still fusses, but the sun is starting to come out for her. She's smiling and laughing and learning all about her hands because she is constantly investigating them. I love that!!! I just took this picture a minute ago. For about three shots she smiled right before the flash. On the other four she smiled right after. She's gonna be a stinker just like her older brother and sister. Get ready world, there's another Sutton on the horizon!

... thought I fell off the face the earth??? Well I didn't. I'm still here. We had Tre's birthday, which I've been meaning to write about and post pictures and haven't yet, so I thought I'd wait until I got that done, but I have to load the pictures. For some reason loading the pictures seems like the most daunting task and I just haven't gotten it done. I even bought batteries and everything... it's just one more thing. So I have this baby that cries all the time. OK , she doesn't cry all the time. She only cries when I can't hold her and she wants me to, or she's falling asleep and she really doesn't want to, or she wants to nurse instead of take the pacifier, and I can't sit on the couch all day long. As much as it might simplify my frustration, I just can't. I had resigned to the fact that she was fussy during the day, but after I got her into bed, she would sleep until daybreak. Whew. I had from about nine o'clock to sev

I have, countless times, been disappointed in my life. Disappointment should be a friend to me. I am the queen of dashed expectations. I have said for years that if I could just lower my expectations of circumstances I would live a more simple life laced with sweeter happiness. But somehow I cannot make the shift. I am an optimist almost to a fault. While it strengthens my faith on certain levels, filling me with hope, it also trips me up time and time again. There's this war inside me between the acknowledgement that I have everything I've ever hoped for, and the daily let-downs that threaten my peace. It's like swinging from branch to branch- I get one thing resolved and swing on to the next so I can fret over it. It's strange because I know I have everything. I lack nothing. But I freak out if I get a bill I didn't expect or a phone call that bugs me. I don't know. Someday I'll find a balance and learn to live in quiet submission under the sovereign

This is what we look like now. I've never been very good about setting up appointments to have our pictures taken. I always thought it was a little too expensive to get a bunch of copies of us in the same clothes with the same smile. As a matter of fact, our family portaits consist of: 1. A freebee that I got from the Welcome Wagon where we met with a guy set-up in a hotel room smoking and watching the Simpsons across the hall from his *studio*. I gotta admit, Dale and I both breathed a little easier when that one was over with. 2. A picture taken for the church directory when we were on staff. I probably would've skipped it if we hadn't been required to show. 3. The generosity of a truly gifted friend and photographer that gave us a couple of photo shoots as gifts after the birth of babies. www.beckynovacek.typepad.com **If you are driving distance from Omaha, call her.** Now that we've been spoiled by her creativity and ease behind the camera, it's hard

A few years ago we went all out on Easter clothes for all the kids. Kennedy had a really fancy dress for the Military ball, so Jasmine got a fancy dress. Tre was really little, so he got a little short outfit, but Micah, being the big boy that he was, needed a suit. I would have been content to go to Target and find something reasonable because that's the way I am, but Dale wanted to buy him a really nice suit. He found one at Burlington Coat Factory, made by Fubu , that cost a lot, LOT, of money. I went along with it, thinking he could wear it for a couple of years and it would ultimately be a practical purchase. Needless to say, Micah wore the suit twice before he outgrew it. Tre , somehow, has been able to fit the suit ever since. To say he's built leaner than Micah is kind of an understatement. If boys were two-wheeled transportation, Tre would be a ten-speed, Micah would be a Harley. The kid is about the turn six and the suit is a 4, but he still slides right into it. T

While Daddy was gone, we had a slumber party in the living. I've been looking forward to the fort building all week. So during the Spongebob marathon, I built the fort, while Micah looked on in awe of my skills. He was pretty excited about it. So was Max. This is what it looked like from the inside from the left of the front door. Behind Micah was what they called the back porch because that's where the window was open and it was about fifty degrees outside, so it was cold once you climbed out there. Eventually, Micah and Jasmine dragged their blankets and pillows in there for the night. This is the green room, where Max and Scooter slept. They never want to miss out on the action. If you can't tell, we're underneath the dining room table. Tre started to putter out at about ten o'clock. He tried to stay awake, but he was pretty exhausted from getting up at 7am and then a marathon of his own including running, jumping, yelling, stomping, bouncing, cutting things, te