My parents bought tickets for Little Bug and me!

We got there a little early and had a hot dog lunch.

Then the show began and this picture shows how intently Little Bug watched (even if it is a little blurry).

We saw tigers

the flying trapeze

clown acts

elephants

and a crazy 8-motorcycles in a ball act!

At intermission Little Bug wanted to ride the

escalator!

Here we are standing in front of the WAY over-priced circus trinkets for kids! I seriously couldn’t believe some of the prices for that stuff. Ridiculous.

I enjoyed an outing with my big girl. Dave stayed home with Sweet Pea. The circus is NOT the place for little Sweet Pea at this time in her life. I kept imagining her there and I probably would have been crying right along with her! I was so glad she was home safe and sound with her Daddy.

Thank you Grandma and Grandpa for treating us to a day at the circus!

I was 24 years old, a third year teacher to 4th grade students. In fact, I had just gotten home from teaching all day when I met Dave who was standing in the kitchen talking to my mother.

He was 21 years old! Yes, just 21 years old! In his last year of college.

At first I view him as such…the kid my kid brother roomed with. (At that time, Dave was my brother’s roommate and he had been invited to dinner that night.)

We met, ate a spaghetti dinner and I am not really sure when I started seeing him with different eyes. I am sure I could go back and look at my journals, but it was probably around February or March.

And I was sure that he kept coming to Thursday night dinners because of 1) the food and 2) my Pup. But as it turns out, he was a teeny bit interested in his roommate’s older sister and by June we were dating.

A week after we crossed the line of “just being friends” we knew we were to get married. And so 11 months after that, we did.

I’m grateful God chose Dave to walk this life with me

.

I’m also taking a little blog vacation, but check back on New Year’s Eve because I do have a “The Year 2011” post that I will publish that day!

Day 12: I am thankful that we got to see Jennifer, Dave and Tater today!!!

Day 13: I am so very thankful for our connection group at (our church). They truly are an extension of family!

Day 14: I am thankful for Similac coupons/checks and deals on Craigslist for formula. Because of Sweet Pea’s very sensitive stomach she has to drink the pre-mixed Similac Allimentum formula which is close to $10 for one jug which lasts her only about 48 hours!! Needless to say, we are spending A LOT of money right now on formula! However, because of these coupons/checks and a Craigslist deal K scored us, we have only paid about $5 per jug since she was put on this formula in Sept. That is a whopping 50% savings, which makes a HUGE difference! And yes, if you have any Similac checks/coupons that you are not using, I will gladly take them off your hands!

Day 15: I am thankful that today family starts arriving for Thanksgiving!! By the end of the week, Uncle G, Aunt E, Jonathan, Erin (plus Baby in her belly!!), Wesley, Uncle J and Aunt N will all be here!!!!

Day 16: I am thankful for the two women who chose LIFE for my daughters. They both could have very easily chosen the "easy" way out of an unwanted pregnancy, but instead they chose LIFE and then they chose ME to be their baby’s mother. I am forever grateful for the two women who chose adoption (LIFE) for my little girls and for God who orchestrated it all!

Day 17: I am thankful for time spent with family. There is something special about siting around the table playing board/card games with family.

Day 18: I am thankful for cooler weather today!

I know.

Send me my award pronto.

For Most Creative Costume.

If you don’t know what I am talking about, click here to see what Little Bug was last year for Halloween.

Here is my explanation.

I went to the second hand store and didn’t find any good costumes there for a decent price. In this phase of life, I just can’t be creative and make a costume for Little Bug.

She always sees her Lady Bug costume hanging in her closet and wants to wear it.

So…I figured…why not??

I bought those black pants (at the second hand store) for $2.50 and wa-la, Little Bug had her costume.

She doesn’t remember she was a Lady Bug last year and I highly doubt my parents’ neighbors will either!

Happy Halloween!!

(And no. Sweet Pea isn’t going to be dressed up as anything this year. Like her big sister on her first Halloween, Sweet Pea will sport her “pumpkin onesie”. Any bets on what Sweet Pea will be next year??? hehe!)

With the click of another seat, this stroller becomes a double stroller!

Here are the reasons this stroller won out:

 1. It can be a double stroller or a single stroller!

As the woman at the town center said, “The best thing about this stroller is that you aren’t forever stuck with a double stroller once you don’t need one anymore!”

That’s when I knew this would be it!

When the time comes and Little Bug no longer has need for a stroller, the second seat comes off and I’m left with a single stroller for the child who still needs to be in a stroller. And…should there ever be a need to have a double stroller again, with the click of a seat, I can reattach the second seat and have a double stroller again.

2. I got a HUGE deal on this stroller.

We purchased the stroller, second seat and a car seat adapter so that I can snap Sweet Pea’s Graco car seat onto the stroller.

That was an over $600.00 retail value!!

But you know how much I paid?!?!

With Amazon gift cards we receive from participating in a promotion a while back and a deal Amazon is having where you purchase the stroller and get a second item for FREE, we paid…

$100.90!!!

I love a good deal and this was better than a good deal!

3. The seat flips around so baby/child can face you or the world.

4. The canopy looks like it will actually keep the sun out of baby’s face!

I look forward to many adventures with my girls using this stroller!

Kishkush says that people always ask her two things: 1) Where was God on that day? and 2) Why did this happen?

Her answers are profound and probably not what you expect.

Kishkush said that after the attack well meaning people would try to somehow make sense of the attack by saying things like, “God has a plan for you” or “God is in control”. To Kishkush, those statements don’t bring any kind of sense to the tragedy she has experienced.

Kishkush shared that through this she has learned that “working it out is not a prerequisite for understanding”.

Human nature wants to work it out (the bad things that happen in life) and make sense of it.

That statement is so profound to me because human nature wants to make sense of even a horrible tragic event like the one Kishkush went through on December 18, 2010 and the one that happened 10 years ago today on September 11, 2001.

But there is no sense to be made of one human being stabbing another human being multiple times, over and over again. And there is no sense to be made of human beings hijacking airplanes and flying them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing hundreds upon hundreds of innocent lives.

There is nothing that can make what Kishkush has experienced better.

In her booklet Kishkush writes, “I will never forget the attack and I will never get over it, but I believe that I will get through it, and it is the love of God Himself, expressed through others, that is pushing me through. It is a process that will take a lifetime. And that’s okay.”

Human nature wants to “work it out”.

Sometimes, something is so tragic, it just can’t be “worked out” and “made sense of”.

Kishkush has learned that is okay.

During the final moments as she stood before the congregation Sunday morning, she answered the two questions people always ask her.

Where was God on that day?

Kishkush said, “He was there. He was there in the beautiful blue sky and in the birds singing.”

Why did it happen?

Kishkush simply said, “I don’t know. It just did.”

I think we could say the same for the events of 9/11. God was there in the way humanity came together in those moments, months and years after the attack and we will never be able to make sense of 9/11.

Over the past almost 9 months, Kishkush has learned that evil and good reside side by side.

I love the way Kishkush described this. Forgive me because I am about to explain something without using proper musical terms because I have forgotten the musical vocabulary Kishkush used to explain this.

Kishkush played something on the piano at first that sounded harsh and wasn’t very pleasant to listen to. Then, she played that part along with some harmony (or melody?? or something like that) and then it sounded beautiful all together.

That’s how she describes the attack. The "bad" and the "good" were both present that day.

Kishkush is learning to do life with that “terrible, yet very sacred, day” a part of her life forever.

As I have thought about 9/11 today, I have prayed that the family and friends of those who lost their lives on that horrid day have been able to somehow bring some “melody” back into the song of life. That harsh sound of that day will always be, but I pray that somehow, someway, there has been some beauty added back into the song of their lives.

I certainly remember.

I was 20 years old, in college and a paid nursery worker at my church.

That Tuesday morning, Brooke and I (yes, the same Brooke that I have asked you to pray for many times!) were at church keeping the nursery for Tuesday Morning Ladies Bible Study.

Someone mentioned that something bad had happened in New York. At the time, I didn’t know how bad it really was.

When it was time to leave, I went home and turned on the television.

It was probably around noon.

I literally was glued to the television screen for the next twelve hours straight. I could not turn it off. The shock and horror was all-consuming. It was unfathomable and incomprehensible.

Finally, around midnight I had to turn it off and try to go to bed. Sure I could “turn it off” with a push of a button, but I will never forget thinking that even as I turned the TV off, the horrors continued.

Innocent men, women and children had lost their lives that morning at the hand of evil terrorists attacks.

It was hard to wrap my mind around that.

Ten years later, those TV images are still imprinted in my memory and forever will be.

It truly was a day that will never be forgotten and, unfortunately, terrorists attacks in the name of hate for a certain group of people for whatever reason, are still going on today.

Last Friday night, I shared that I escaped the confines of my house and went to my first social event since Sweet Pea’s birth.

I went to my brother’s church because Kay “Kishkush” Wilson, a friend of my brother’s and the victim of an unfathomable terrorist attack on December 18th, 2010, was there playing the jazz piano and sharing a little about what God has shown her since she was attacked.

I sat there mesmerized by every word she said that night.

The way she related her experiences to jazz piano and the little bit she shared about how she is processing and dealing with the trauma afterwards, drew me in and I wished I could have just one day, or just one hour, to sit and talk to her.

What happen to her is…there are literally no words.

December 18th, 2010, Kishkush and her friend, Kristine Luken, were hiking along the Israel National Trail when Kishkush noticed two men crouched in the thicket below where Kishkush and Kristine sat enjoying the scenery of that beautiful December day.

Kishkush has written a small excerpt about that day that she says will be the prologue of a book, should she ever write one. My brother had a copy and one afternoon I sat down and read all the little booklet in one siting.

There Kishkush describes in detail what happen that day.

I am not one to watch horror movies, but as I read that little book, I kept thinking to myself, “This is horror a movie, except, what happened in this book isn’t just made up in some producer’s head in Hollywood. This actually happened to a human being.”

It is unreal and unfathomable that one human being could do what he did to another human being. In fact, Kishkush states that her attackers have “lost within them the image of God – the divine trait that uniquely distinguishes human beings from the rest of His creation”.

As Kishkush is describing what happened on that horrific day, she writes, “We stood side by side, barefoot, bound and gagged. The late afternoon sunlight streamed through the pine trees. The day was wrapping up. I stood there and helplessly pleaded with the sun. I didn’t want her to set. I wanted her to stay up and let me enjoy her beauty again and again and again. I knew that I would never again see the light of day.” (page 13)

At that time, they did not know the motive of these men and what they wanted to do. They stood there at the mercy of evil, surrounded by the beauty of God’s creation.

These men bound and gagged Kishkush and Kristine and then stabbed them with a butcher’s knife multiple times. Kishkush played dead. Kristine let out a moan as the men were leaving. The men came back and stabbed them both again. 

Kishkush lay there literally listening to her friend die. Kishkush just knew she was about to die, too. But even through all the horror, Kishkush noticed the beautiful blue sky and heard birds singing.

Her last mission on earth was a burning desire to get up and walk back to the main path. They had gone off the path to see a very beautiful view that you could see in the particular place that they were at when the attackers found them.

Kishkush wanted her body to be found so that friends and family would know what had happened to her and Kristine.

She walked one kilometer and 200 meters and stumbled upon some people sitting at a picnic bench. She had made it. Now she could lay down and die.

But then she heard sirens and people’s panicked voices shouting for help. People were trying to stop the bleeding and calling for a helicopter. The last sentence of Kishkush’s little book says, “In the distance I heard the wailing of the approaching ambulance, and over its sirens I faintly heard, once again, the songs of the little birds.” (page 20)

Kishkush survived. Kristine did not.

Kishkush spoke again at Wesley’s church during the Sunday morning service. I went with Wesley to hear her speak again.

Kishkush says that people always ask her two things: 1) Where was God on that day? and 2) Why did this happen?

I think those are the heart cries of America during the aftermath of 9/11.

Where was God when airplanes flew into the towers, taking hundreds upon hundreds of innocent people’s lives?

And why did such a tragedy happen?

Kishkush’s answers about her attack are profound and probably not what you expect.

I think her answers apply to the attack on America on September 11, 2001.

I will share them tomorrow.