How do you cheat???

We just finished up a book in our ABF(Adult Bible Fellowship-aka-Sunday school) class called choosing to cheat. It is not what you think immediately think it is about though. It is about how we sacrifice family time for work, hobbies, or other stuff. I know that this is something I struggle with often. Even though I only work part time I still feel like I cheat my family. It is a constant struggle to try and make sure I am taking care of there needs. But what we learned was in the end there will probably always be someone who looses. When we had kids and I went part-time we have always said if it came down to it and work made me choose work full time or be at home with the kids I would choose my family. that is an easy answer but often the questions are not that cut and dry, do you stay late to try and get ahead or impress the boss. Do you stay because everyone else is working late and you do not want them to think you are a team player? Ultimately when we do this we are cheating our family. So I am trying to be better about this. I am trying to make baby steps and improve. It is not always easy but it is what God wants me to do, I need to pray about it and rely on him to get me through and if it is not working take a good look at that also. Maybe the job you have really does require you to work 60 hours and not 40, ultimately maybe that means you need to take the steps to find something else, because in the end who will be the one's who really loose when we cheat will it be our boss, maybe but probably not (I think if we are honest we realize we are all replaceable) it is our families. So how do you cheat? If you are interested in the book it is by Andy Stanley and is a short little book so it is an easy read. Anyways just something for you all to think about and ponder, I know I am.

House projects and stuff

Well, we have been busy lately around the Harper household having several different things done. We are in the process of stripping wallpaper and painting our guest room, we had an attic pull down put in, trees planted, and we had window tint put on all our windows. Hopefully this will help with our electric bill this summer, now if only we could find a way to lower our gas bills. It cost us over $92 dollars the other day to fill up Heath's car. It honestly made me sick to think about it. So back to the home improvements. I took a few pics of the kids in front of the trees, and some in front of the backdoor the other day. We had taken the blinds off so they could put the tint on and the sun was coming through and shinning on Austin just so, I had to grab my camera and try and get a few shots. He was so cute he was watching the dogs, and they were looking back at him, of course I was not fast enough to get any of those but I got some other good ones of him with his favorite ball. I forgot to mention he was only in his diaper because we had a blow out and I was about to get him dressed when he crawled off. He just loves to be naked. Here are some of the ones I liked the best:

I just love how the light was coming in the window and he is so focused on the ball.

I just love those fat little hands

If you look close you can see one of the dogs in the window looking back at them.

We also had soccer this weekend. Allie's team is 4 and 5 so they are doing much better than last season. They have one the last 3 in a row and only have one left, it is fun to see them improving. I just hope they do not loose all that improvement over the summer, we will have to practice with her more. . I am also including a few action pics from the game. Allie was not super active in this game but she had fun so I guess that is all that matters. Allie is the one on the right in the first picture.

Hi ho Hi ho, it's off to the ER we go!!!

OK so as you can tell by the title Heath and I spent what would have been a great date night (his mom was in town) Saturday night, in the ER with Austin. He has this reoccurring ear infection, that gets better but I don't think goes completely away, in my opinion. So he had been on meds for 10 day and i forgot to refill the prescription last week until he started running a temp on Friday. I gave him the meds and Tylenol and he seemed to feel better later that day. His sleep was kind of fitful so i knew he was fighting the pain and fever and when he woke up Saturday it was up again, but again after meds he perked up some, although not as much as the day before. But we had stuff to do and Allie had a soccer game so off we went. After the game we went to the Mall with Heath's mom. Austin started to get pretty fussy before left and you could just tell he felt crummy by looking at him. By the time we got home he was burning up, I mean very hot to the ouch so I took his temp and kind of freaked out as I watched the number keep going up 101, 101.5, 102, ... up to 103.3. I took it again ant this time it said 103.5, I took it several more times and each time it only varied .1 or .2 degrees so i knew it was high. I called the after hours nurse line and they said to bring him in and that our Dr, preferred him to be taken to the ER and not an urgent care place so off we went. The Dr, checked him over- his ears were very red, did chest x-rays, and a flu and RSV test, all of which he HATED. It was one of those awful nights as a parent where you have to hold your baby down while the Dr's and nurses poke and prodded them and they scream at the top of there lungs, pretty bad. Then they gave him a shot of rocefrin (sp?)- which is a very painful antibiotic, and we had to wait to make sure there was no reaction. Right as they were about to clear us to leave we noticed Austin had 4 or 5 hives on him so he was having some sort of mild reaction. We then waited about 30 more minutes and they seemed to get better and no new ones showed up. The gave him Tylenol and Motrin to get his temp down to a manageable range and once it was were were able to leave. So 4 hours later we went home with a sick and worn out baby boy. Poor baby took a 4and 1/2 hour nap yesterday and was still falling asleep at dinner time. I just know tubes will be coming soon. So that was our exciting date night- I bet you can't top that one. Hope you all had a better weekend then ours.

Bring on the Rain!!!

Well, let me first say we made it through the storms last night (not like you could not tell since I am typing this, but what a night it was). I woke up last night around 3:30 to the storm and the sirens going off. I immediately jumped up woke up heath and got in mom mode. Which for me means turn on TV and confirm yes we should wake the kids up and take them downstairs and all hang out in our little powder room. The TV was not on 1 minute when the power went out-that was it grab the kids and off we go, I did manage to find a flashlight and grab my Walkman so we could listen to the Radio. The sirens stopped as soon as we got down stairs but when the local weatherman said he had called his family and told them to take cover I knew we should stay where we were because he lives near us. I tried not to stress and tried to make Allie think it was all a fun game, I think I pulled it off pretty well because she has not really brought it up today. We made it back upstairs around 4:30 ish and Austin went to his bed and of course Allie stayed in ours. We woke back up around 6:30 to find we still had no power. I got moving feed Austin got Heath up and talked to my mom. She had managed to sleep through it all- lucky her!!! We headed to her house to eat and hangout and that is when I realized how bad it really was in our part of town. No power anywhere near us, traffic was a nightmare, trees snapped all over the place. It took me over 30 minutes to get to her house and she is less than 5 miles away (and that was trying to take the side rodes because the main one was worse). Our house so far appears to have fared very well. We are one of the lucky ones, we have some fence damage but overall it looks like we got out OK. Our power cam back on around noon, only after I had taken ALL our frozen food over to my mom's to put in there freezer. My sister's house is not as lucky she has roof damage and her power is still out and almost every house on all the streets near her have roof damage. I realized just how much God was taking care of us when I saw that. It can all be fixed but it is such a hassle, and stress.
We are thankfully all safe and sound, God has once again shown me how lucky we are and how blessed we are.
Looking outside now the sun is shinning bright and the clouds are gone, and just like the storms in our life God has brought us through this one and is showing us his glory and his mighty hand. Just like the storms last night will help to produce new growth, I know I grow from all my personnel storms. I also know that sometimes I forget to thank God for bringing me through my own storms but find it so easy to thank him for keeping us safe in the literal storms. I pray that during the storms in in our life we lean on Christ and grow but I also pray we would thank him for those Storms. I know I am a much better person for trials I have gone through, and so today I thank God for my storms and for what has come out of them.
Well this is not the original Blog I thought I was coming here to do but it is just something God laid on my heart. I pray you all are safe and sound and can thank God your your storms. Meredith

My Big Girl

Wow time has flown by, today Allie had Kindergarted roundup. I can not believe in about 4 1/2 months my little girl will be in school all day everyday. I really do not know what I am going to do on my days off without my girl to run around with. I know I will still have Austin and I am sure we will find stuff to do but I am so used to running her to activites and such that I can't imagine not doing it during the day. She was so excited about going and seeing the school, unfortunately at her school this is just a time to fill out all the forms not a time to go and look around the school like we thought, so she was sad when we left. I think I am going to have to work out a time for he to go and look aroud one day with my Aunt (she works at the school Allie will go to). They said they actually do not have a time to come around and see the school until the Friday before school starts which seem really late to me for such young kids but I guess that is just what works for them.

Allie's "make-up" soccer game was the other night, they lost but they played really well. I can really see all the girls getting better. They are so fun to watch, I hope she wants to play again next year. I have a few pictures but she is such a girly girl we can not do to many, if she see's you trying to take her picture while she is playing she will stop and pose for you, not the best thing to do while the game is going on. Last night at her practice she was playing goalie and after each time she picked up the ball she would wipe off her hands, her coach thought it was so funny because his daughter is not that girly. She never cares if she gets dirt or grass on them. Oh well that's my girl.

Well I guess that is all for now I am going to try and attach some recent pics from easter and soccer, etc.

Go Team!!

Run Allie Run

The cutest easter Bunny around!!

1st Try

OK so this is my first time at doing this. this is a short one, i will try it out before I send out a full on blog. Allie has a makeup soccer game today. She is so excited, I think she actually thinks they are going to put on make-up. She is so cute in her little uniform. I will try and send pics soon. Her team is not very good they have only won one game but they have so much fun it makes it all worth it.

I thought I would try and attach a few photos of them recently. We went to the arboretum recently here are a few cute ones: