Happy Mother's Day!!

It has been a perfect Mother's Day for me so far! We went to church this morning, where Elijah made me his first homemade Mother's Day card and proudly presented it to me when we picked him up! I love it...it's so cute and is a great reminder that parents are there to help children "bloom" in their love for God. When we got home, I played Uno with Elijah while AJ made lunch! Not just any lunch either...breakfast lunch! Mmm...that's my favorite! Also, yesterday AJ got a rose for me and a rose for my mom! I thought that was really sweet!

Anyway, I was thinking a lot this weekend about the mother's who have inspired me. There are so many, but I thought I would focus this post on the mother's in my family who have encouraged me and taught me different things that I hope to use in my own mothering.

First...my mother! I love my mom! She has always been one of my favorite people ever. When I was little, I wanted to be with her all the time and I loved to show off for her and make her proud. My mom ALWAYS encouraged me and let me know that I could do anything I set my mind to! As I grew older, she became more of a mentor. I would ask her for advice...sometimes following her advice and sometimes not...and I would go to her for comfort when things went wrong. I told her everything about everything! After I left for college, she became one of my best friends. I guess the thing biggest thing I learned from her is to be a mother when my children need that and a friend as they get older and need that. She is my favorite example of a mom, and I always feel so blessed when I realize that she is MY mom and I get to keep her forever! :)

The next mother I want to talk about is my sister Nikki. I remember when she first had Nick. I was in 8th grade, and the week after she had him, she brought him to one of my volleyball games and let me carry him down the bleachers to introduce him to my friends! She was always so proud to show him off, and she was really relaxed about letting other people hold him. I always loved that, and when I had Elijah, I let anyone and everyone hold him and took him everywhere right after he was born! It really was so fun to show him off! :) Another thing I have been learning from her is to let my kids be who they want to be. This is going to be hard for me because I want my kids to dress how I want them to dress or act how I want them to act, but she has showed me that it's important to let them be who they are! Her kids always talk to her about things and love to be with their family at home, and I think a huge part of that is that she lets them dress and act how they want. They feel like she truly accepts them no matter what. That is a great mom! I also feel so blessed that she is my sister and that she loves Elijah just as much as I have always loved her kids! It's so neat that my son loves his Aunt Nikki and is always really excited to see her!

Next on the list...Christi! I am not a creative person AT ALL, but she is! She is the most creative person I have ever met. She always seems to find such joy in creating different projects and showing them off. She has always let her kids create things, too. She comes up with really neat projects to do with them and really develops their creative sides. I want to do that with my kids, too...even though it is much harder for me since I do not know the first thing about being artistic! Kids like to create things, though, and I need to allow Elijah to do that more. I need to just let him get messy and try things out! I'm really happy that Rick married Christi because she is so much fun to have in our family! :)

Now to Emily. Emily has become such a great friend to me and someone that I can talk to about the ups and downs of my life. And a lot of those ups and downs have to do with my son! I always tell her this, but I admire how she is ALWAYS prepared as a mom! She always has a hundred snacks in her diaper bag or purse just in case her kids get fussy, she makes them great lunches and plays with them and shows them she loves them all the time. She is great at disciplining her kids without seeming too harsh. She can say one word and Hunter will stop in his tracks and listen to her. She adores Sophie and I can already tell that they have that special mother-daughter bond that every daughter wants. She also loves the Lord so much and teachers her kids even now about Jesus and reads them Bible stories and prays with them all the time. I look up to her a lot and I think she does such a great job not only of being a mom but also a wife!

Anyway, I was just thinking of these ladies today and wanted to say how much I appreciate them and love them and look up to them! They are great women! I think it's so neat that God places people in your lives to teach you how to be a wife, mom, and friend. We would be lost without those examples!

Happy Mother's day, Moms! I hope you enjoy being with your family today, and I hope that you feel appreciated! You all deserve it! :)

19 Weeks...

Well, I don't have much to say, but I am 19 weeks pregnant now and almost half way! It's so exciting! AJ took a couple of pictures of me today, so I thought I would share my baby bump! It's fun to be at this stage of pregnancy! I can feel the baby move so much now! It's such a fun thing to feel the baby moving (and dancing, it seems sometimes) in my tummy. It makes me feel like he/she is having such a fun time in there! :)

I also got my hair cut on Wednesday! I have had it long for quite a while, but I got it cut pretty short this time! It feels good to swing my head back and forth, and I like the way it looks! It's so easy to style.

Elijah is loving the warm weather! He has been spending a lot of time outside riding his bike! I love how happy he is to run around and explore outside! I'm so excited to spend time with him outside all summer! I am free from school now, so I am going to soak up all this free time and enjoy these next few months with just Elijah! :)

Anyway, I just thought I would share some pictures and make a little blog. I know it's such a deep, thought-provoking post! :) I hope you all have a great weekend!!!

A Soccer Mom Dream

When I was growing up, I always dreamt of being a "soccer mom"...that perfect mom who took her kids to all their games, sat and watched and cheered loudly! I wanted to do fun things with my kids...be creative and always spend time with them, encouraging them and loving them. I wanted to bring my kids to church every Sunday and talk with them afterwards about what they learned, and hopefully be able to pray the prayer of salvation with them at some point in his young life! I wanted to be perfect.

I have only been a mom for 3 years and I already feel like I've failed at a lot of things. I feel like I don't spend enough time with Elijah. I feel like I don't do enough creative and fun things with him. I feel like I don't read him enough Bible stories or pray with him enough or talk to him about Jesus enough. I have been FAR from perfect.

I want Elijah to think back to his childhood as a fun and happy time in his life. I want him to have good memories of the things we did together and be proud to say that we are his parents. It seems like I have so far to go to become the mother I want to be and the example for Elijah that I want to be, and now we have another little soul coming into our lives soon.

It is such a huge responsibility to have kids and to raise kids. I mean, we are the first adults they see and learn from. We are their whole world for the first 5 years of their life! I am not at all where I want to be in my walk with Christ, or as a person. And I have felt such an urgency lately to get things together so that the person Elijah remembers when he grows up is a woman who was devoted to Christ and devoted to her husband and devoted to her children. I know I will never be perfect, but I can't just let that be it. I need to always be striving to be better, if not for myself, then for my children.

I'm excited to meet this new little one that is set to arrive in October, and it does make me happy to think that even though I'm not perfect by any means, I am the perfect mom for Elijah and this new baby. God picked me to be their mom, and I feel so blessed. I couldn't ask for a better son than Elijah! He is funny and smart and sweet! He can always put a smile on my face, and I'm excited to see what this new baby's personality will be, too! :)

Relationships...

Ugh...the service was great this morning, but also very challenging. It was about relationships and one thing that stood out to me is that you want to keep harmony in your relationships but that doesn't necessarily mean keeping the peace. I have always struggled with confrontation...I would rather just be miserable myself than confront someone who has hurt me. (unless I'm super close to that person...but even then it's very hard for me.) During the service this morning, a woman was brought to my mind. I don't have a very good relationship with this person and even though I'm certain she would never see this blog, I would never post her name. Anyway, I felt convicted because I haven't been praying for her like I should...or at all really. Pastor Dave said this morning that we need to pray and bless the ones who have hurt us, and that it is very hard to be upset with someone you're praying will be blessed. I realized that there are a lot of people I haven't prayed for...not just this one person, and I felt very convicted that I need to be praying for people every day. I made a list when I got home of those people that came to mind that I wanted to pray for everyday and stuck it in my Bible. Anyway...back to my main point...I know that sometimes you need to keep your mouth shut and try to let things slide, but sometimes you really need to talk it through to reach that point of harmony in your relationships. That is one of my biggest weaknesses, but I'm going to try hard to pray about it and to listen to the Lord about when I should or shouldn't talk things out with someone. This is going to be a struggle for me, but I can work on it and maybe someday it will be a strength of mine! You never know, right? :) Anyway...great message today!

Last week of school this week! YES! And...even more exciting...one week from tomorrow is when we get to see our baby on the ultrasound and hopefully find out if it is a he or she!! I can't wait to see that little miracle on the screen and feel even more like I am pregnant and there really is a baby in there! :) I'll let you guys know how it goes! :) You may have to wait a while to find out the gender, though, because we're leaving for Minnesota right after the ultrasound for the week! Suspenseful, right?! :) Have a great week!

I finally get it...

Hey you guys! So this weekend I went to the Beth Moore simulcast called So Long, Insecurities. Let me tell you...this was the best conference I have ever been to. I think my heart was just so ready to let God speak to me and work in me. I have struggled with feeling free my whole Christian life. I was saved when I was 8, so I was pretty young. I have had times when I felt close to God, but I don't think I truly got it until this weekend!

I have always had the problem of feeling guilty for who I am and the things I have done or do on a daily basis. I have always felt like I just needed to work harder to be close to God. I have always felt like I haven't done my part to be in the Word as much as I should or praise God for everything. But this weekend, Beth said that being a secure woman means to BELIEVE that God LOVES us and FORGIVES us. That's it! He FORGIVES us! He died on the cross for MY sins...ALL of them! I don't have to feel guilty. I just need to BELIEVE that He has already paid the price for everything I have or will do in my life! The most significant part of the conference for me was when we were singing the last worship songs, and I just bowed my head and said "God, I BELIEVE that you love me, and I BELIEVE that you have forgiven me!" I can't tell you how free I felt for the first time in my life! The emotion I felt just swept over me, and I could barely contain the tears! I AM FREE!! And I can be SECURE in the fact that even if no one else loves me or accepts me, GOD DOES!!! And isn't that what truly matters?

There was so much that I learned, which I will share throughout the rest of this week, but I just wanted to share with you all the FREEDOM that I feel now! I am so thankful to the Lord for working it out that I would hear this message at this exact time in my life! :) It's like it was meant just for me! (And I'm sure a lot of other women felt that way, too!) Enjoy your weeks, and I hope you all realize that God loves YOU...FULLY and UNCONDITIONALLY!!!!!!! And not only that, but if you are a believer or want to be...HE FORGIVES YOU COMPLETELY!!!!

These are our names...final answer...

So AJ and I have been feeling the pressure to come up with good names for our little one since we find out what he/she is in a couple weeks! We had already picked out a great boy's name that we both liked so much, but I just wasn't that happy with the girl name. (FYI, I still think it's a boy, but I need a girl's name just in case!) Anyway...yesterday I was thinking about what color I would paint a girl's room and I had originally thought pink/brown, but then I just didn't feel like that was what I wanted. My favorite color has always been yellow, so I decided if we have a girl, we will paint the room yellow with white! Then I got to thinking that our name for a girl just didn't go with a yellow room. I wanted a happy name for our girl. So...I started thinking and came up with one that I absolutely LOVE. So.....here is our pick for names....

BOY: Lincoln Harrison Maldonado
GIRL: Aliyah Grace Maldonado (and we would call her Ali)

I love them and I can't wait to see the ultrasound and to be able to call him or her Lincoln or Aliyah! :) Alright...that's all for now! :)

Oh Springtime, How I Love You!!

Last week was probably the busiest week I've had with homework so far since I've been back in school! I was so looking forward to Thursday after school because that would mean I was done with my last hard week before summer! It felt so good to come home on Thursday night and relax and know that I had nothing major to do that night! I'm so excited that school will be over in about 3 weeks!! YES! :)

I had another doctor's appointment on Thursday morning before school. It went really well and I got to hear the heartbeat again. I was crazy excited to know that nothing is wrong and the baby is still growing in there! We also made an appointment for an ultrasound on May 10! I can't wait to find out if this is a boy or a girl. It will be so nice to call him/her by name! I still think it's a boy, but my husband is convinced it's a girl. We shall see! We actually decided that we are both going to plan something super fun to do with Elijah after our ultrasound and we will do whoever's plans that was right about the gender! So I'm excited!

I made this amazing peach/strawberry crunch on Wednesday! I also made taco salad and we had BLT's this week, too. All of those things made me truly feel like it was finally Spring! I love this feeling! And people have been mowing and we have been opening our windows and getting that fresh cut grass smell in our house...my FAVORITE smell EVER! I love this time of year!

Well, that's about it except that AJ and I had a date night last night! Ross and Emily watched Lij and we went shopping and out to eat. It was so nice. We got a Blueray DVD player because our DVD player was skipping all the time. I love it! AND AJ got me a computer for my birthday! (which is in like 2 weeks) I was so excited! It's an HP and it's white. It's small and wasn't very expensive, but perfect for me! My other computer hasn't worked for about 6 months. I think AJ got tired of always having to share his computer with me!

A last thing I want to leave you with...if you like BBC movies or movies like Pride and Prejudice, then you should watch the show Lark Rise to Candleford on youtube! It's soooooooooo good! Emily got me started on it and I can't stop watching! It's probably one of my favorite shows ever!

Well, enjoy your weekends! We are watching Hunter and Sophie overnight tonight, so we will be having so much fun! :)