Christmas at Church

Dressed up for Christmas at Church

Beautiful Christmas Babies

Check out the ornaments Sissy!

Cherish's new thing when taking pictures

is cheesing while saying "CHEEEESE!"

I love this one of her...

My beautiful big baby girl! Chas is

growing up WAY too fast! Isn't she precious!!!

CHRISTmas

*Santa Came*

The girls had fun this year with the whole Santa thing, as Chas really got into it. Even though we do play "Santa," we make JESUS the top priority of Christmas. Each year we have the tradition (and always will) of starting Christmas morning out with the true Christmas story... Jesus' Birth. This Christmas Eve day we helped Chas with making her very own Nativity scene so that she could take part in telling the Christmas story Christmas morning by acting it out with her very own figures... She did wonderful...

Chas bringing in the Wise Men!

Making Cookies for Santa! Clay and I got the best end of this deal ;)

Chas with her "thoughtful" heart, had to make Mrs. Claus

and the reindeer one along with Santa's!Writing Santa a letter!!! (And he wrote back too!)

The girls Christmas Morning with their toys!Cherish got into Santa's left over cookies

during the opening of her presents...

you can see her top priorities :)

We thought it was hilarious!!!!

Cherish got her very own first Baby doll!

It came with a doggie-- her favorite!

This was such a precious memory to us... Cherish loves BOB the tomato!!! And Chas came up with the idea (again her thoughtful heart) that she would color Cherish a Bob picture for Christmas. So she did, and she folded it up and put it in a little baby stocking and hid it in the tree until Christmas morning. Cherish loved it as you can see and the picture is now hanging over her crib!!! Sweet memories!!!

Thank you Lord for sharing some of your greatest treasures with me... MY FAMILY!

Cherished

~One of my Favorites of our Cherished Cherish Daisy~

Cherish and her Daddy...
I told him that he looks like
he's got a Santa belly with the
wind blowing his shirt. They are Precious!


Sweet Baby face!

Kissing Daddy!

Merry CHRISTmas from our Family

We pray you have a very Merry CHRISTmas and Happy New Year! May we all remember that Christmas isn't about getting or giving the materialistic gifts, but ALL about God giving us the greatest GIFT of ALL in the present of His one and only Son, Jesus Christ.

If you don't have a personal relationship with the only one who can FILL all your voids and empty places, we encourage you not to go one more minute without asking HIM into your life today as Lord and Savior of your heart. You will come to know a LOVE like none other in doing so!

We all are sinners (Romans 3:23) in need of a Savior, which is why Jesus came to this earth many Christmas' ago. He came to die so that we might live. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life (Romans 6:23). Simply believe with your heart (not just your head) that Jesus Christ died in our place, ask Him to be your Lord & forgive you of your sins (1 John 1:9-10). He is the GREATEST gift you will ever receive. Remember that all you have to do is receive His gift of salvation... no strings attached. It is a free gift that has already been paid for. May you experience an unfathomable Joy in Jesus this Special Christmas Season!

Our Sweet Hearted Oldest Baby Girl,

Chastity Denise Weed

(almost 4 years old)

Our Precious Baby Girl,

Cherish Daisy Weed

(17 Months)

"Yummy..." Chas loves Candy Canes!

Can't you tell Miss Cherish is totally up to something! "Who me, Mommie?"

As a touch of humor to your holidays... look very closely at our youngest girl's finger... LOL!

~Happy Holidays~

Ballerina Chastity

My beautiful Ballerina with her sassy new hair cut.

After 1st dance class...doesn't she look bigger already!
(with her snack--she worked hard for that one:)

...okay so she is still looking like my baby in this one.

Chastity had her 1st dance lesson today! She was bubbling, she was so excited. And I wish you all could have been there to see her come prancing out of the Dance Class so proud. Chas and her friend Hannah came walking out holding hands as if they had bonded and now shared something so dear to both their hearts...the gift from God of dancing. Something every little girl (or female-- young or old-- for that matter) loves to do!

Showing us what she did in dance class and all she learned...

Daddy and Chas have a special song they always dance to call "Cinderella"

by Steven Curtis Chapman. This is them dancing to it...

This one above is absolutely priceless to me!!!

Here is where she said... "I gotta tell you a secret Daddy."

..."I'll always be with you Daddy," she said.

Which as you can see in this picture melts him, bless his heart! She says this every time they dance, so I was delighted to catch it in the picture so we can remember it forever. And, so I'm sure Clay will attempt to hold her to it...LOL! Sweet memories that we will cherish in our hearts forever! Thank you Lord!!!

My Man

Well, Clay got his first Green Head this week. This season I do see a little less of him because of his love for Duck Hunting! But here are his latest trophy ducks... enjoy!!!! Oh and if you were wondering no I haven't went hunting with him and we DON'T eat them either. Although he wishes we did! LOL-- Clay is dreaming of mounting this crazy thing! If he had of just let it live it would be flying in action and not on a wall. Guess it will one day join his Buck (which Cherish calls our dawg dawg) and my HUGE bass LOL (which she calls a fish... dish) on my laundry room wall.

Holding Hands

Thanks for ALL yalls prayers. This has been a tough, busy and hard week with having a very sick little baby with double ear infections running back and forth to Huntsville, plus on top of that being at Dinner Theater each night at church. But Praise the LORD the ear infections are gone and we are starting to see the adorable funny Cherish again (as you can see in this picture)!
This was actually on the way home after the last Dr apt. I thought they were so precious holding hands! Cherish is actually tell Chas something that seems to be very important... LOL!

We hope you all are having a blessed CHRISTmas season!

Check back for more Holiday pictures of the fam...

Decorating the Christmas Tree

Cherish's favorite toy is a Simple BALL! So she of course thought all the ornaments were balls to play with. Needless to say all the fragile ones I have out of her reach or far back in the tree. But so far (with the exception of a Snowman) she hasn't pulled anything off the tree... still we have to constantly remind her though and I'm not putting any bets on the tree staying standing. Ours is a little wobbly in the stand and she did fall into it yesterday...LOL! Still standing though!

Cherish loves BOB just like her big sister always did. She will yell "Bob!" when she sees him anywhere. So she was very delighted to see the BOB ornament. However I couldn't let her really play with it due to it being glass. She wasn't too happy that she couldn't hold it on her own. But she settled with giving it a kiss and letting me put it on the tree...far out of her reach!
I had lots of HELPERS!!! Excuse the PJ's-- it was a not going out day,

so lounge around and put up Christmas decorations---

the perfect day for not getting out of PJ'S!

(Notice Cherish's hand in the pic above...her new thing!

Potty training may be coming quicker than I expected with this little one...LOL!)

Chas really did help hang ornaments. She is precious!

1st CIRCUS Trip

Daddy surprised his girls with a trip to the circus! We all had a blast!!!

Being SILLY at Intermission! We didn't know at the time but Cherish was beginning to develop double ear infections at this time, however, she still very much enjoyed the circus as well!

Please pray for her as we hopefully get over it this week.
Yes we even got Chas some Cotton Candy

(Pure Sugar) and of course she LOVED it!!!

The girls loved the excitement there and

I must admit their Daddy and I enjoyed it just as much.

From watching the awe in the girls eyes to us being big kids amazed too!

Our silly Circus CLOWN!!!

Chas continues to call the Circus the Clown station.

I thought that was cute! She is growing up too fast!

Marriage encouragement by BETH MOORE

Hope for Any Marriage
Scripture Reading: Psalm 127
Today’s Treasure: “Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain” (Psalm 127:1).

A couple of months ago Keith and I were asked if we’d be willing to come to the newlywed department on a Sunday morning at our home church for a Q and A session. Since I no longer teach a Sunday morning class on a weekly basis, we were able to say yes and, joyfully, didn’t kill each other in the lapse of time between the invitation and the presentation. This morning was our morning. As we drove the fourteen miles from our home of twenty-two years to our church of twenty-four, we were both a little quiet. Not a bad kind of quiet but an amazed kind of quiet. I think the question most on our minds was who’d have thought it? Who would ever have thought we could have a healthy enough marriage for a long enough time to be a little help to about a hundred couples just starting out? Certainly not Keith or I.


We were an accident waiting to happen. Both of us broke up long term relationships that seemed vastly more promising to take the risk on one another. Two things drove us together: strong physical attraction (I’ve long since said it was a good thing Keith was handsome. Still is.) and matching sets of emotional baggage. We were each the cutest messed up person the other had ever encountered and we began the rockiest marriage this side of the divorce courts. Our college friends made bets on us and called us the couple least likely to succeed. Our parents were galled. They liked our ex-boyfriend and girlfriend better and couldn’t see for the life of them one single thing we had in common. Keith’s parents were in shock at the wedding and mine were in mourning.


Keith took a cut in pay when he went from his successful father’s allowance to a real job. After being told I’d need surgery to conceive, I turned up pregnant the second month we were married and the financial pressure nearly suffocated my new husband. Despite my inability to help bring in the bacon, I am convinced that God sent us our firstborn as a little Elmer’s glue to give us some extra incentive to stay together. I loved Keith. I hated him. I adored him. I deplored him. I resented him. I lamented him. And I loved him again. Often in the same day. He invariably felt the same way.


We’ve made it, my man and I. We made it to two stools in the newlywed department of Houston’s First Baptist Church. We lived together long enough to testify to what Keith said so beautifully this morning: We are a miracle. Never think God doesn’t perform miracles anymore. Our marriage is one of them. I looked at the lines on his handsome, tan face as he told the young men to pray for their wives and my heart surged with love and gratitude. Above all, to our unfathomably powerful and gracious God who simply believed in us when we didn’t believe in ourselves, but also to that man sitting next to me on the stool at my church this morning. I’d like to tell you two reasons why. Keith has been a handful in plenty of ways but he has some characteristics that, to me, exceed what I’ve ever experienced in an interpersonal relationship.


One is that, where I am concerned, the man has kept no record of wrongs. I have done my share of things to tear at our marriage in our history together. Some of those things he could have thrown up to me every time he needed extra ammunition in a conflict. He’s never done it. Not once. When I have sincerely (he is the fastest bull-reader in the West. He’s onto insincerity in a second flat) and tearfully asked Keith’s forgiveness for something, I have gotten it. Once and for all. Kind of like Jesus. Keith has done plenty of things I could have held against him, too, but you’d have to be a pretty big loser to keep a record of wrongs with someone who doesn’t.


The other is that Keith has always been willing to talk through something with me. You will never meet a manlier man than Keith but his heart is as tender as warm butter. I realize how blessed I am when a wife tells me her husband just won’t talk about their problems or a broken place in her heart. Keith has always been willing to talk something through. My man, handful that he is, has also been the first of us to go face to the floor before God when he knew we had acted stupid and needed God to restore us.


I am a blessed woman. Not because I’ve always had a great marriage but because I have a man willing to change, willing to say he’s wrong, and, more than anything else, willing to fall in love again. I told the group this morning that I could have walked away from my marriage about seven or eight years into it and justified for the rest of my days why I left. I could have thought to myself for decades to come, “I’m so glad I got away from that jerk” and I would have missed the most precious, fulfilling relationship of my earthly life. And the hardest. Many of the people you know who divorced really could have been happy and healthy if they’d waited it out, humbled themselves before God and one another, and gotten over the hump. Please don’t misunderstand me. The last thing I want to do is condemn people whose marriages have ended. Many of them have suffered plenty. Furthermore, Keith and I have had such sin in our lives that we’d dare not cast a stone. This devotional is a plea to those who haven’t divorced (yet) to stick it out, stay married, and let God perform a miracle in your hearts no matter what has happened. The difference between divorced couples and long-married couples is not the amount of problems. It’s not the amount of passion. It’s the amount of pure, unadulterated tenacity.


At Living Proof Ministries, the prayer requests that most often come to us are for marriages. Today I write to you and plead with you to fight for yours. To try again. To forgive again. To love again. To go get counseling…maybe again. To pray again and again and again and again. And, if at all possible, together. This morning when Keith was asked what one thing he believed I had done that had contributed most to our marriage, he said without hesitation, “I’d get up in the morning and she’d be praying…for me.” Prayer is your most powerful weapon as you fight for your marriage. Pray for God to return love where it has long since waned. Pray for God to create love where it has never existed. Pray for God to give your spouse eyes for you and you eyes for him…alone. Pray for change and be the first one to volunteer. Pray with faith, knowing that the God of the universe is for you. Put space between yourselves and every person (even family members) who speak poison into your marriage.


And, if you haven’t already, get your hind-ends in a church with other couples who want to make it. Keith and I realized today that every single one of the couples in our very first young-marrieds Sunday school department are still together…except the teachers. It’s one thing to say what we believe. It’s another thing when life is hard and other options look appetizing to live what we believe. Fight for your marriage. Do the hard work. And one day you’ll look a young couple in the eye going through the shock of early marriage and be able to say with passion and authenticity, “You really can do this.” And perhaps they will.


Lord, I earnestly ask for the faith to believe that my marriage can be successful. I know that nothing is too hard for You, Lord. I believe You are for us and You are willing to equip us for victory. I ask for the tenacity to get over the hump when we go through seasons of marital hardship. Please birth in us the desire to pray together and pray for each other. Enable us through the power of the Holy Spirit to do whatever it takes to make it. Let us refuse to accept defeat. Lord, may the testimony of our marriage bring hope to others and glory to You. In the redeeming name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
Beth Moore © 2006

Phil 1:9-10

Lord... teach us... that our LOVE may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that we may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ Jesus and fill us with us with your fruit of righteousness so that all the glory and praise may be given to our GOD! Philippians 1:9-10

The Princess & The Bee!

Yes we have a beautiful Snow White Princess and an adorable chubby Bumble Bee!!!! We have way more pictures, however due to much crazy business, health problems and tons of stress, there has been NO time to "blog" lately. Forgive us and maybe we can catch up one of these days... but I'm not going to make any promises I can't keep! Please keep our family in your prayers...we love you all!

Sweetness

Today was another of the many days the LORD used my little ones to speak to me. This story is just too precious not to share it with you guys. May HE bless your hearts through it as well...

Chastity as you most know is my tender & sweet heart. Most everything she says is generated first through her precious heart. Well, after she woke up from her nap she was just laying around (still trying to fully wake up). Our little miss Cherish Daisy is going through this giving lovings out stage (only if she wants to of course). She will walk around giving kisses and lovin's. And might I add Cherish LOVES her sissy (or Tis say as she calls her). So as they usually do when they wake up, Cherish headed over to give her Sissy some lovin's. They gave one another a kiss and immediately I could see Chastity's little wheels turning in her head. Then without hesitation out of the blue, she spoke up and said, "I'm going to put that kiss in my heart, and one day when I ask Jesus in my heart, I'm going to go to heaven and give that kiss to Jesus!" Needless to say my eyes didn't stay dry. To think how much that meant to me, it had to bring a smile to Jesus' heart too. "WOW LORD you are so good, to even use a 3 year old to show your tender love." It blesses my heart to know she is already pondering the thoughts of asking Jesus in her heart (which her Daddy and I pray daily for both our girls) and heaven.

So that was my delight of the day. May our sweet LORD bring a special one your way today as well!

Disney Trip

Chastity's Favorite Princess...Snow White!Our Beautiful Princess!!! Chas chose the colorful hairstyle, Snow White outfit, & Cinderella "glass" slippers, tiera and wand at the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique.
Minnie and us!

Chas loved the Princesses of course!


Mickey and Us!


Sweet tired Cherish... She loved watching all the excitement
and we thank the Lord for strollers!

Daddy and Chas having fun! What a good Daddy!

The girls going for a walk through Disney!