Macro Flower

Thanks to my friend, Haar, I now know how to use the function of the macro flower on my camera. It enables you to take really nice close up pictures. I love taking close ups, but they never turned out right until yesterday. Unfortunately, I had uncooperative subjects.

Here's Juliet right before her tantrum:

Here's Zoey before she threw her breakfast on the floor:

Okay, Ricky was the only one who didn't mind!

I'm just amazed because in the past, I would not have been able to take close up pictures that turned out so nice. I hope tomorrow is nice because I'm going to take more pictures!

GOLDEN NUGGET: Learning something new about the camera that I've had for eight years!

Rosemarie Agbalog Leonor

In honor of her birthday, this blog is dedicated to my sister, Rose. For those of you who don't know her, she is married to my brother, Angelo Leonor. Anyway, she's going to kill me for this, but I have a few things to share about her.

The first time I met her was at my niece, Aleysia's, 2nd or 3rd birthday. She stayed for literally two minutes and left. My first impression of her? Very cute and short...perfectly my brother's type.

Another memory of Rose was the first year we started hanging out. For some reason, she thought my husbands name was AR-mel and not AM-el. I truly believe we tried to correct her a few times, but I don't think she heard. We told my brother to tell her in private, but somehow, he never got around to telling her the real pronounciation to Amel's name. In fact, he thought it was hilarious. So, for a whole year, she would call him Armel and everytime she did, we would end up cracking up behind her back. I know it sounds mean, but I think it's one of those, "you had to be there" moments. Finally, my brother told her the correct way, and the next time we saw her, she said it the right way! We still laugh about it to this day.

Rose is a true foodie. You can count on her to come up with delicious dishes and if you're invited to a party where she is doing the cooking, you should count yourself blessed! She's also a neat freak, so if you need help cleaning up, invite Rose, she does it automatically! : ) I could go on and on about this girl, but the most important this is that she loves God and she lives for Him each day and it's apparent in the way she treats her husband, children, the rest of her family and friends. I love you, Rose! May God give you many more birthdays to bring glory to His name.

GOLDEN NUGGET: God has truly blessed me with amazing sisters, and Rose is definitely one of them.

Just an ordinary day

For those of you who know Amel, you know that he is kind of a work-a-holic. He does not waste one minute of his life. He is either studying, in a class, cleaning the garage, meeting with someone, or working. Most women complain that their husbands lay around the house and don't do anything. I've never made that complaint in my life. My complaint is that he can't stay still. Don't get me wrong, most of the time, this is a good thing. But sometimes, the kids just want to be with him and he needs to stop what he's doing and do just that. Last night was one of those times. After dinner, he wanted to clean the garage, but the kids wanted to play with him before bed, so he played ping-pong with Ricky and Juliet. Afterwards, Juliet wanted to play Rockband, so we played the drums together while Zoey "sang." I wish I had taken a picture of them, it was the sweetest thing. They had a blast doing very ordinary things. It was one of those rare nights where he had no meetings to go to and nothing to study for and we had no where to go...and it was great.

GOLDEN NUGGET: Knowing that my children's happiness is mine as well.

Precious Ones

My daughter Juliet is such a character. She says the funniest things almost everyday. For instance, yesterday, she was having a bad attitude about something and I had to have a little talk with her. After our talk, she gave me the saddest face and said, "No one wants to be nice to be nice to me." I looked her right in the eye and said, "I'm sorry, Juliet, but no one is going to be nice to you when you disobey. That's not how it works." She just scrunched up her face and started to cry. A few hugs and kisses later and an apology from the person that hurt her and she was her spunky self once again. Oh, Buggy Bug...

Anyway, speaking of children, I serve every other month in the children's ministry preschool Sunday school. Honestly, it is such a joy to serve there. I really enjoy the age group that I have 4-5 years old. I've taught several lessons over the years, but something struck me yesterday as I was giving the very, very short lesson on Zaccheus. In my lessons, I have an introduction, the body of the lesson, application, and review. During the application time, I was trying to fill up the time by going off my notes and telling the kids how they needed to be eager to see Jesus, just like Zaccheus. As I was speaking from my heart, I was able to look each child in the eye and I realized that there's a precious soul in each of those little bodies. God is powerful enough and gracious enough to reach even the hearts of these little ones.

There are days when this is tough to see, especially when they're not listening for one reason or another, but I'm thankful for these days when I'm clearly reminded of my purpose here on earth: to spread the gospel and bring glory to His name.

GOLDEN NUGGET: Being reminded that the most important thing of all, our salvation, is in the hands of our loving, Almighty Father. May we never cease praying for those who don't know Him, especially those precious little ones.

Afterschool

Since we've moved, Ricky had to start going to Wardlaw. Coming from Dan Mini, this school is nice. Don't get me wrong, Dan Mini felt like home. It was actually harder for me than it was for Ricky to leave that school. But driving all the way there from our house was taking it's toll. I'm thankful that Ricky was finally transferred after Christmas vacation.

Anyway, as nice as this school is, it does have it's problems. For instance, trying to get out of the parking lot afterschool takes forever and a day. Thank goodness Ricky likes to run because he runs to our meeting spot and we run to the car and on good days we're out of there in less than ten minutes. One day, we were out of there in three!

The past couple of days have been so nice and so I decided to do a little experiment. I was going to wait until the traffic died. While waiting for that to happen, we decided to play on the play structure. Guess what? It took 15-20 minutes for the traffic to pass.

In the meantime, the kids were having a blast, burnt off all that extra energy and spent some quality time with each other. Is waiting that extra 5 to 10 minutes worth it? You bet! Next week, we're going to play four square and I honestly can not wait.

GOLDEN NUGGET: I found a built in, guaranteed, quality time with my kids...outdoors!

Happy Valentime's Day!

Amel and I actually celebrated Valentine's day yesterday. We've made it a tradition to celebrate the day before because the actual day is always busy. I really don't believe in this "holiday" because I think it should be Valentine's day everyday. Nonetheless, I still enjoy going out on this day. Since it was a Wednesday, we had limited time since the kids were at the building and their Buzzie Bee and GTC classes were going to be done at 9pm.

Anyway, we went to one of my favorite restaurants, Olive Garden. We had to take Zoey with us, which is fine because she's pretty easy going. Zoey is very sweet, but she eats more than Juliet and Ricky put together. As soon as the food came out, she started eating non-stop. I wish I had taken a picture of her belly after dinner, it gets so big!

I hope you all have a great day and are able to spend it with the one you love.

GOLDEN NUGGET:Amel bought me a non-corded gift...ROSES! He did good!

Ricky is profound

Ricky is growing up to be a very thoughtful boy. We've had many interesting conversations regarding many different topics, but something he said to me last night struck me. I was talking about how they need to behave when we're out and to listen to me so that they don't get hurt. In the middle of my "speech" Ricky says, "Mommy, you sound like you want us to act like adults. But we can't act like adults, we're just kids!" I just stared at him and I didn't have a response. I finally had to tell him that he was right. I did expect him and his sisters to act like adults at times and I know that's not fair. I told him that he still had to obey his dad and me because of Ephesians 6:1 "Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right." But I will make sure to remember that they are just kids and not adults.

GOLDEN NUGGET:God using my son to correct my way of thinking.