A few more pictures

Here are a few more pictures.  I realized I really haven't been putting many pictures up of Braelyn and she's changing quite a bit, or so I think. :)

 

Here she is in her top drawer.  I had to take it out to fix the slide on it (Dad...the back of it pulled out and then the front pulled out too again.  I put lots of glue on it and put it back in pounding it down.  Hopefully that will help)  The clothes that are in that drawer are being washed because we think she might be getting big enough for 12 month clothes!  That's the sock and accessory drawer and holds her next-size-up clothes.  She's not too small for 9 month clothes, but we think she might fit in 12 month, so we might try some outfits and see.

 

I couldn't help but take this picture the other day.  You probably can't see it well, but the back of her hair was curling.  She fell asleep in my arms and was all sweaty.

 

Here is the sleepy baby.  I love how she looks asleep, though for some reason I always think she looks like a turtle, don't know why. 

Happy baby!  This is Braelyn at Autumn's.  Autumn said she was so happy that morning, just making herself laugh, playing outside.  I also really want to get a picture of her top teeth.  If they stay at the spacing they are at, she's going to have a big gap between her two front teeth!

Tangle Prayers and pictures

OK, here's the info on what I ended with yesterday.  The idea behind tangle prayers is that we've all been taught to pray by closing your eyes, bowing your head, and folding your hands.  The idea behind that is that it closes out all distractions.  However, there's another way to pray:  seeing something in nature or around you and praying that way.  Tangle prayers is praying through drawing, coloring, etc.  Our Women's Bible study at church had a lady come out and talk to us about it.  Her church has made a sort-of ministry out of it.  It came out of the book "Praying in Color", which I haven't read, but I kind of want to, because I'm not certain how this completely works yet.  She basically says that the acts of drawing and coloring help her concentrate on prayer, so she prays as she makes designs.  The name Tangle prayers comes from Zentangle drawings, which are pattern drawings.   Drawings like this:





I am not an artist, and neither is the woman who came, she uses stencils.  Anyway, I came away with two or three really interesting ideas.  First, she had us write a prayer in graph paper, one letter in each square, no punctuation.  That was an exercise in slowing down to really think about what we are praying.  I thought it was really cool for a classroom because the person next to you can't really read what you are writing, so I think that would be neat to do at school with the kids.  The second idea was making cards and keeping them in an organization tool (she uses baseball card sleeve holders) for each person you pray for.  While you are making the card (name on front, design drawing on back) you pray for the person and then in the future you can take out their card as you are praying for them and tangibly lift them up in prayer.  Finally, the large part of what she was showing us was her prayer journal.  She has a sketchbook she keeps as her prayer journal.  She draws a design on the page and uses one page for a whole month of prayers.  She writes her prayers as a little blurb around the design.  Anyway, I don't know if I've done it justice, but I really enjoyed her talk.

I got un-lazy and got the camera and cord...

Braelyn and I at a winery in Tennesee over Christmas break

 

Braelyn likes to chew on my earphones.  It's weird.  

 

Here is one of our new rugs.  We decided our old ones were...well...old.

 

Our new kitchen table.  Nate decided we needed one that would seat more than 2 people.

 

 We went to the park one day and put Braelyn in the swings...