Category Archives: 2 Mi Familia

All things family-related. My husband and me, the children we made, the grandbebes that thrill us now. Our whole great big, loud, messy family. Love! *sigh…

Happy Birthday, Jovanie!

1 Christ is All, 2 Mi Familia, 3 Celebrations & Festive Events, Stuff I Actually Think, , , , ,

See Jovan’s posts from last year here and here.

 

Happy 22nd Birthday, Jovan Marie Rhoades!  Happy birthday, o daughter who joined us later than the rest, by a covenant vow to the one son.  Happy day, Jovanie, careful and attentive mommy, devoted Rocky-lover.  Happy day and life to your gentle heart and creative spirit.  Thank-you for that world-lighting smile and for the easy laugh you share.  Thank-you for choosing our family.  Thank-you for knowing you were born to be a Rhoades and joining the ranks of the chattering as if you’d always been here.

Though from the time we met, it was always obvious you were sweet-spirited and kind, respectful and honoring (and loved Rocky like crazy!), who could have known what an amazing woman you would become?  Who could have divined that the same radiant girl who captured my son’s heart by her beauty, both inside and out, would also be such an amazing wife – watching over Rocky, staying close to him, living the adventure that is life with him?  And could we possibly have fathomed  what a loving, fully-devoted, and thoroughly enchanted-by-her-baby mother you would be?  You are doing it right, with Averi, Jovan!  You were born for this!

 

So, I wanted to give you these gifts, not wrapped in glittery paper or festooned with deliriously happy bows (although that imagery does make one think of you), but rather a snapshot of the things I am believing God for in your life, the prayers of my heart for you.  These are the gifts I pray you will open and receive on your birthday for the coming year:

  • I pray that you will go after understanding, wisdom and spiritual insight with all your might.  It is easy after, having been the baby of your growing-up family and then being the youngest in ours (your married-in-to family), to sort of let “the big kids” take charge and  maybe, at times, walk all over you.  And it is true, they are a couple of steps ahead in life and they have some things to share, but God has placed important things in your hands.  He has called you to a place of responsibility as a wife and a mommy and there is no one else who can take that place.  So get wisdom, sweet daughter!  I pray God will pour it out on you as you pursue Him for it! 
  • Fearlessness in the battle.  There is an enemy, Jovan.  He will fight you for your family.  But to be forewarned is to be for-armed.  God looked through all eternity and knew He could trust you for this job.  You are gentle, yes.  You are careful not to run over people’s toes.  But I also see the warrior spirit in you – absolutely aware at every turn where the battle lines are drawn.  I pray for God to be your to be your shield of protection and your deliverer.  I pray He will give you the needed courage at the right times and that you will have no fear – because you are not alone!
  • The joy of the Lord for the strength you need.  I am praying for an outpouring of an abundance of clear, sparkling, life-giving rain to wash over your heart and mind.  I pray you will be known as one who laughs right our loud in the face of danger!  I pray that you will have everything Jesus promised in the area of joy: complete joy, and a full measure of His joy.  I pray you get so much joy – it will splash on everyone else! (Ps 28.7; Ps 4.7; Jn 18.11; Jn 16.24; Jn 17.13)
  • A double-dose of continued creativity.  You are becoming such a “virtuous woman” in the Proverbs 31 sense.  I admire that in you.  I love that you are sewing things for Averi and constantly looking for ways to create beauty and comfort in your home.  I see how energized you are in the creation process and I am praying more of that for you!
  • The ability to receive the love admiration that surrounds you.  You are likeable.  You are loveable.  You are some one people want to be around.  You are accepted.  There is nothing wrong with you.  You are the person God created you to be – He did not make a mistake.  And?  You are alive and you are well because of His hand on your life, His call in your heart.  It is OK for you to be thankful about that, to unabashedly enjoy living.  So enjoy it!  Receive all the love that surrounds you, my sweet girl.  Breathe it in!  Grab it with both hands, free of guilt or trepidation.  Live and love!

Happy Birthday, Jovan.  I love you with my whole heart.  You are worth so much to me.

We are blessed to call you one of our own…Mom

NOTE TO SELF:  Investigate-are there any pictures of Jovan without Rocky and Averi in them?  Anywhere??? 

pictured – ALL with her life loves: Jovan with her cherry cheesecake at the family celebration a few days ago; Jovan and fam in a farm field a few weeks ago; Jovan at a big pasta night a month ago;  and Jovan where you will often find her – on the floor playing with Averi.

“…this daughter-in-law, who loves you so much, why she is worth more to you than seven sons!” Ruth 4.15 The Message

Scary!

2 Mi Familia, Stuff I Actually Think, ,

It is plum frightening to think how much I’d be missing if I weren’t a grandma!!!

Pictured – the grandbabies at the church HarvestFest tonight:  Gavin as Darth Vadar, Hunter as a farmer who takes care of animals, Guini as Princess Leia,  Gemma as an Ewok and Averi is a strawberry!  Kudos to their wonderful mommies (those are my girls!!) for creating all of these costumes for their kids.  Who knew they’d be so talented?  Well, me actually!

An October Sunset

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Pictured, left to right: Averi, 8 months; Hunter, 4; Guini, 3; Gemma (in Gavin’s grasp), 1; Gavin, 5

O God, thank-You for these, my amazing five!  They’re the reason I was born!  They are my heritage-the gift You have given me.  The eternal things I place in them are the legacy I will leave. 

I pray Your Word will always be in their mouths.  I pray that Gavin and Guini, Hunter and Gemma and Averi will grow up hiding Your Word in their hearts and will choose, even now, to serve You and You alone.  I pray these five, my little amazings, will seek You for wisdom and will receive knowledge and understanding from Your heart for their lives.  May their worship rise to You.  May their song reach Your ears and bring You joy.

Thank-you for the gift of them, Lord.  I will tell my grandbabies of Your faithfulness.  I will declare Your great works to this generation.  I am watching for the spiritual harvest, Lord.  Because I am sowing to the Spirit – I am watching for the harvest…

I am so honored God has brought me this incredibly noisy, full and increasing heritage.  He is making all my dreams come true…Gavin, Guinivere, Hunter, Gemma and Averi’s “Nonna”

NOTE TO SELF:  I have earned the gray hair and grandma wrinkles-even if I don’t yet wish to avail myself of them.

 

“Enjoy the good life…everyday of your life.  And enjoy your grandchildren…”  Psalm 128.6 The Message

All in the Family

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Just got back from 3 days in the mountains (beautiful!!!) where we kicked off Leaving a Legacy (an arm of Get the Word Out! Intensives). 

The teaching team was Mary Jean Powers (my co-mother-in-law-co-Nonnas-we-share-Hunter),  Joy McGinnis of Seattle, our daughter Tredessa, Dave & Tara, our daughter and son-in-law and Dave and I.

It was wonderful and difficult.  I exposed myself and got honest.  Dave and I both told on ourselves, about the places we have failed in raising children who have come to know and seek after God for themselves.  

I told them that:

  • It is never too late to become the family you might have been.  Don’t give up.  Get the Word into your home and family and serve God fearfully with all your might.
  • I am still learning to parent in this new season.  I still have to apologize for things as the Holy Spirit reminds me – from both years ago and a few days ago.
  • Raising kids who’ll love the Lord?  It’s gonna take at least Forty-Thousand Days of Purpose!  Sorry, Rick Warren.
  • And-we have all have dirt under our fingernails.  We’re sowing something into our children’s lives.  We may as well be sowing the incorruptible seed of the Word of God to get the spiritual harvest that God’s Word promises in Gal. 6.  Is your family at a crossroads or troubling time?  Stand on the promises: read ’em, speak ’em, believe ’em, bury them deep in the soil of your heart in faith.  Then?  Eat the fruit!  The harvest WILL come!

Dave taught on journaling as a way to leave your written legacy and not only taught about the blessing (learning to verbally speak blessing over your children), but prayed a bessing over the fathers and fatherless young men who were there.

I wondered aloud, at one point, if there was anyone who could possibly have messed up parenting more than I had.?  Even though Mary Jean and Joy claimed they could have (and maybe we all had that potential), I am so grateful to be living to see the faithful hand of God in our lives, as a family.  We’re still living it and tripping along the way sometimes, but I am so glad for the opportunity to encourage other families that God is faithful.  He promises – and He will keep those promises!  I was honored to get to pass that message along!

Blessed to be a blessing…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF:  Keep living the legacy.  You have to live it before you can give it away.

pictured: the view just outside our cabin door – if you look very closely, you can see some snow on the rocks from a few days before…we had 70+degrees; my husband praying for our son-in-law Dave just before he (s-i-l) reciprocated.

Choo! Choo! Train Cake for Hunter

2 Mi Familia, 3 Celebrations & Festive Events, 4 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, Stuff I Actually Think, , , , , , ,

  

Whereas last year’s firetruck cake (see here) was about 80 pounds and I toiled in fear over it, I have now realized I am not really “into” novelty cakes and was very relaxed.  It was simple and straightforward (with Dave explaining to me what a train must have) and instead of doing lots of piping and icing stuff, we “glued” Tropical Twizzlers and M & Ms and Dots, along with a couple of varieties of cookies onto this train cake for Hunter’s 4th birthday.  Dave piped windows for me and I came up with mini-Kit Kats as the idea for the railroad ties.

The board it was on was 13 inches wide by 3 feet long.  The engine was 3 2-inch layers of cake at it’s highest part and was 4″ wide by 14″ long. The other cars were 8 inches and 12 inches long, respectively.  The “coal” was a box of Junior Mints.  It was just plain white cake wih the almond-infused buttercream, which, it turns out, Hunter is not a fan of.  He wants his icing (which he prefers to cake) to be plain, old vanilla-flavored.  Next time, Magoo, next time. 

The smokestack was my favorite part: icing glued cookies, and a “Dot” base holding a cocktail pick threaded through popcorn for the smoke.  Pretty cute!

 

I had looked at a bunch of train cakes online and cracked up at them and wondered why people would even post them.  Then mine turned out like theirs.  Ha!  But there wasn’t any sweat and the grandkids loved it. It was quick, simple, easy, fun and in the end the candy was the huge hit!

There are still vats of buttercream here…takers?…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF:  A Candyland cake!  YES!  Using MMF and lots and lots and lots of candy!

pictured: the cake, the chalkboard in the kitchen;  and Hunter at his house about to blow out his candles!

Fall Frost

1 Christ is All, 2 Mi Familia, 4 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, Stuff I Actually Think, , , , , , , , ,

I think we had an actual, true frost today.  I know it was 58 degrees in my kitchen when I started up the coffee pot.  And no, I will not turn on the heat, yet.  I am a die-hard.  Can I make it to November?  This is the question. 

Most of the plants seem to be perking back up, even though I have done nothing to save them.  Even the zucchini, whose leaves froze and look soggy, dark and droopy, are boasting some bright new flowers in response to the returning sunlight – after 3 very overcast days.

I am studying and preparing for the Leaving a Legacy Intensive kick-off this weekend, but keep getting distracted by 3, small adorable orange moths of some sort.  Though they are probably depositing some evil larvae all over the garden as we speak, I think I will call them butterflies because they are delightful as they frolic,  alternately swooping and circling and tag-playing, with sunning themselves on the patio and garden rocks  Try as I might, and though I swear I have seen them all in the view-finder at once repeatedly, I cannot seem to get the camera to click quickly enough to capture all three, though they are dancing and prancing about just inches from me here near the glass doors.

Yes, the garden is slowly, but surely shutting down for the year, but it makes each plant that is still showing all the more ravishing, makes me more grateful.  Why, the petunias are practically haughty today, all purple and abundant, flowering with gusto, unaffected by the cold – perhaps even encouraged by it?

  

  

Today I am praising God for: the return of the sun…hot coffee (and decaf for when I have reached my limit)…the 3 fanciful orange “butterflies” performing gleefully outside my window…the grape tomatoes, packed with flavor, my morning snack…the love of a good man: my husband, my friend, my lover-the one who talks me off the ledges…my family, both the one I came from and the one I am getting to create, still…e-mails in “secret code” from grandkids…people who know how to pray…the sweet Presence of God, who joins me on the first sound of a song……First frost-warm home…the wisdom of the Word (I am in Proverbs today!).  And the temp in my kitchen has reached 63 degrees.  I am thankful!

Blessings in all things to you and yours!…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF:  So glad I didn’t get in a hurry to uproot the sagging sunflowers (see photo here).  Yesterday they were the host to a couple of amazingly beautiful bluejays and I got to watch!  What would I have missed by stripping them away before their whole work was through?  Get back to Legacy notes…

Pictured, top, left to right: the orange “butterflies” sunning themselves on rock and concrete.  Bottom, left to right: the first two were taken through the window on the Dahlia plant that is apparently enthralling the little “flutterbies.”  Finally, the mum, quiet the summer through, has now exploded into this happy hello in its off-the-beaten-path locale.  I snapped  it chasing butterflies.

UPDATE  10.14.08 – I have been informed that my 3 little orange “moths” were actually baby Monarch Butterflies.  I didn’t know Monarchs were ever this small?  I hope they keep visiting!

Hunter Magoo – I love you!

2 Mi Familia, 3 Celebrations & Festive Events, 5 Songs I am Singing, Stuff I Actually Think, , , , ,

Yesterday, October 9, on Hunter’s actual turning-four-years-old birthday, I was once again explaining how his mommy had been my baby and I remembered her turning four and how now he was her baby.  The concept is still mystifying to him in some ways, but he pondered, “So that’s why you love us both so much?”  Yes, pretty much – that is why.

Hunter is four.   Happy Birthday, Magoo!  I really really love you!  Isn’t turning four fun?  You’re having a whole birthday week!  Monday you got your new trampoline (mommy and daddy were too excited to wait – so they led him to it, eyes closed.  He liked it, he smiled, he jumped.  Then he said, “I really wanted a motorcycle.”  ???).  Wednesday, on my birthday, all the cousins were at your house and you were more excited about that than your own birthday! 

Then yesterday, we got to spend the day together and wow was that fun!  Shapes and colors and letters and school-work and cousins and play and indoors and outdoors and making funny faces as we sat in Pa-pa’s big leather office chair.  You were my cuddle-bug and silly man.  You asked a million questions (your favorite being “why?”) and you watched some Sprout and jumped some rope and had plenty of candy and Rice Krispie treats and snuggled with me and made me chase you around the house and made me laugh!  But the best part?  When we got out the old vinyls and how much you love the ceremony of changing a record and learning how you must be careful not to scratch them or bump into the player (NOT an I-Pod!).  And I love how interpretive you are in your dancing, from marching your head off to “76 Trombones” from “The Music Man” soundtrack to an aggressive, very modern and physical rendition when I introduced you to “Footloose.”  Kevin Bacon had nothing on you, my little man!  Seriously!  I’m so glad we had this time together…

   

pictured: I knew I had, within the past two weeks, taken lots of pictures of Hunter, but when I went to look at them – they are ALL a blur.  I swear he is looking me in the eye and looking cute when I pick up the camera to shoot, but by the time I press the button-he is already long gone.  But this is the current view of Hunter, in reality.

 

Pictured:  Finally, I snuck up on him as he was side-by-side with his cousin, Gavin, one of his all-time favorite people, and I was ready as I whispered his name and he turned his head!  Yea!  And on the right-Hunter’s first day of pre-school with Nonna, juice mustache and all.

We are still celebrating you, Hunter,because we love and adore you!  Chucky Cheese with mommy and daddy last night and your party still coming up (“I hear a train cake comin’…”).  I love your deep, inquiring melancholy side, your gruff little voice and the cowlick right on the front of your head.  I love your greenish-blue eyes and brown skin and your little M & M toes.  I love that you know a million songs and lots of scripture and that you still determine whether or not you are going to be flying today based on whether you have the Superman cape on or not.  You ARE a superhero to me!

Happy Happy Birthday week, Hunter Magoo.  I love YOU!…Nonna

NOTE TO SELF:  More “Footloose” and other great movie dance sequences for Hunter while he is still living and interpreting the music unabashedly and with great passion!

Crunched.

2 Mi Familia, Stuff I Actually Think, , ,

 

While I was in Missouri, Stormie-the-baby was in a serious, car-totaling accident.  Yes-her beloved Toyota Camry (which was getting about 38 miles per gallon in the city!!) got majorly crunched when she t-boned some crazy driver who decided to shoot out of a parking lot on a whim. 

Because there was very little reaction time, she really didn’t experience a lot of the stress pain you get when you anticipate a crash.  Her air-bag deployed and protected her well.  She is, however, left with a badly sprained left ankle and the bottom of her foot is still swelling from the bruising, as it basically took the full impact of the wreck as she pressed in on the clutch at the moment of impact.  She is on crutches and in a wheelchair and takes f o r e v e r to get anywhere!  It is pretty painful and purple.

 

We are blessed because they have accepted full liability so she should get paid for the work days she missed and the medical bills are being covered.  She is driving a gorgeous blue Mustang rental presently, but will need a replacement here in the next few days.  Help us pray she gets a good and safe car with extra good mileage (she drives across the planet to work daily)!

I truly believe she is recuperating extremely well under her mother’s loving care. 

Thank-You for keeping our baby safe in a crazy world, Lord! …Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF:  Get Stormie’s laundry done. :)

pictured: the crunched car, Stormie’s pretty little seatbelt burn (glad she was wearing one!), and her bruised-up arm.