It's a new season..

Where in the world have I been!! I have no idea.. ..Something about raising and shepherding the bodies, hearts and minds of 3 children has kept me busy! Elijah is such a good baby but I find that he loves his momma and is seemingly attached at my hip=) I love him so. I truly understand the mother, son bond like never before. I’ll cut all those crazy mom-in-laws out there some slack. Lol XOXOX We have been busy, the girls have my heart as well. They are such good girls and we are starting to see evidence of who they are going to be when they get older in character and giftings. Love the opportunity we have to watch them grow and be able to pray into and mold these strong character traits into something beautiful to be used for the Kingdom!

Ok, well thanksgiving has passed and so has Christmas! What, crazy sauce! It is almost 2012! Our lives have been insane but the revelation of the Lord comes like that sometimes. I never ever want to be comfortable in this world. It will burn someday but the Kingdom of God will live forever and I pray to learn to spend every waking moment going after His Kingdom! Whether I’m wiping butts for the glory of God or washing dishes or discipleing some dear to my heart sister. I want to go after Him, I love Him, I want Him to reign in my heart, soul and life. The Lord has been continually pruning our hearts of cares of this world and we are learning to a give ourselves to Him. It’s been amazing. We 'suck it up' sometimes but we are learning to live for the Kingdom and take His Grace as needed! In Christ name we live! Amen.

There has been a lot stirring in my heart but for now I am gonna just post a few pics and call it good for now.=) These are October-December pictures. Peace and Prayers, my loves!

This is our October/November!



we went to the pumpkin patch




and made silly faces



This face melts my heart..

 

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our little robot




Haunt the Zoo



we are in love with these two guys

Trick or treat down the street with our Robot, Elephant and Monkey=)



This is a little of our December photo shoot

I know they say that everyone thinks their kids are beautiful but come on now... who wouldn't fall in love with these faces.  xoxoxo 

My pouty Princesses


Ok, that is it for now.. I have no pictures of Thanksgiving and Christmas because i was a naughty kid this year and didn't take a bunch of pictures=/... i'm gonna try to scrounge up some but not promising anything.
Happy New Year my friends! xoxo

WE’RE IN!!!

 I haven’t updated in a while so wanted to throw in a quick blog update. We are in our house now. It is unfinished and kitchen-less at the moment but we LOVE it here. We absolutely know it was the Lord’s will and there is such a peace just being here. We are so blessed! Also just as a side note, Ryan has been grilling a lot which works great as we don’t have a kitchen. It is perfect though because as he is grilling outside the kids can play outside, which means break for momma. Can I get a holler?!! Whoot Whoot!

  The Lord has been teaching us so much. We are daily being taught His blessings and mercy. He has been and continually will be pruning our hearts of weeds that have no place in His kingdom. It’s been painful at times but so necessary and the peace from giving your all for the Lord is great. One of those “weeds” that He has shown me of late is that I let myself get such a horizontal view on things; and that I let the enemy detour me from keeping my eyes in the Kingdom of God. I can work myself/my mind into quite a little wreck and gain nothing but wasted hours or days of worrying or being anxious over things I CAN NOT change. Even with good intentions, this is still sin. I NEED to TRUST MY LORD and SAVIOR. I am so pitiful at this at times.

So pretty much I am learning to listen to His Voice and set my eyes on His Kingdom no matter what is going about me. I fail. I fail miserably at this at times but then He reminds me and I set my eyes on Him again. I’ve come to the notion that the most important part of repentance is the “turning away” of what it is that we had our eyes on. I don’t know why it is so hard for us as believers to learn to live and trust Him in everything. We need Him! We need Him not just as or Savior but also as the Lord of our lives! I need Him. I pray and hope to grow and love Him more and more with every step of this journey He has me on.

 I am so very thankful for all that He has given me! I am so blessed and this is Thanksgiving month so I thought I would write a few things that I am especially thankful for:

• I am thankful for the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. I do not know where I would be if it wasn’t for his mercy. He is Good. He is Great and if you don’t know Him you should try Him out. You won’t be disappointed!

• I am thankful for my family, all of them. Ryan and I have awesome support systems on both sides and I know we haven’t been easy on either one of them! Xoxoxo

• I am thankful for my babies. The Lord has blessed us with three beautiful crazy children and I am not perfect but I seek to shepherd their hearts and share the love of Christ with them. They are my first and foremost ministry and I consider it a great honor to be able to answer that call. We don’t have tons of riches but I wouldn’t change any of it for the world. I am called and I WILL answer.

• I am thankful for my Sweet Sexy man that I get to stand beside in this journey. Ryan Allen Vandenberg, you rock my world and I am so in love with you!

P.S.-pictures and current events to come soon

IT'S MOVING WEEK!!

Ok so, I know that I promised to get a new post up with our summer activities pictures and a sweet dialogue of it awesomeness….

But….the dog ate my post or

 My cat ate it or

   Emma flushed it down the toilet or

     It got swept away by a tornado after a lawn mower ran it over and tore it to shreds…..

       Or maybe I have just been tooooo busy!!! 

All of these things are plausible and some of them highly probable besides the fact that we don’t have a kitty=( Soon soon though, daddy WILL allow an outside kitty! He promised!

Well, since we are moving in just a few short days and I highly doubt I will get it done or I mean re-done=*), here are a few pics to tie us over…k thanks!

We are all still in love with this guy.

and this guy...

Love this one with tiny Eli.=)

(thanks Aunt Sarah for capturing this memory!)

and this face melts my heart...

even when it looks like this face

and lets not forget about these faces

We are staying smooth as babies bottoms and smelling better too after our baths which are highly necessary after this

Emma deciding to take over Leila's bed for the night....=/
(she is dead asleep here=)

or

Abigail's snuggle time with Leila!

Ok so that is a little bit of whats been going on. Sorry my facebookers for all the repeats of pictures, i am just too lazy to upload some new pics or maybe my dog ate them all or my cat or... well, you get the drift. Muah!!

Wait!! I almost forgot that this guy......

now looks like this guy!!=)

Also I have to say because it's my blog and I am quite partial to him that he is just the sweetest cutest thing i've ever seen! Yes. That is all. XOXOX

Happy trails to you until we meet again!!

P.S.-Next post will be from our new house!!=)

You say potato, I say potata!

Ok, I know, It is cheesy. But I think that they are just the cutest!! Enjoy!

This is the newest Disney Junior show.=)

Summer days, Summer blues and Summer praise!

 I find myself being a little busy these days with my three young charges in tow wherever I go. That rhymes and was not even intentional.=) Ok, no, really we have had an amazingly hot but blessed summer, seems like we were traveling every other weekend and just keeping busy. I did go through a little bit of post pardon type thing. We had tons of family up after Elijah was born and I would get sad when they left. I missed my family so much but I would just reclaim God’s goodness and I know we are here for a reason! Though it is hard sometimes I wouldn’t change it for the world. He has proven Himself to us time after time and, oh man, He is good. He is good now, yesterday and tomorrow and forever! We are in such an exciting season and I can see the Lord moving and can feel him working in my heart and life. I love the weeding out that He is doing, it’s painful at times but I pray and desire for there to be less of me and more of Him!

  The kids are growing like weeds! Emma and Abigail are the same size and Elijah is much bigger than the girls were at the same age. Daddy is very proud. Elijah is just the sweetest thing ever! He is such a good baby and his temperament is amazing and we are all in love with him. Emma and Abby are amazing with him. They are also great entertainers and Binky hunters. I love my sweet little family. It is most definitely harder going places and dates are few and far between but we wouldn’t change a thing. We are blessed!

  Oh and did I mention that we bought a house! Long story short, we prayed about it and felt like the Lord was telling us that we were going to be in El dorado for while longer and that we had His blessing to go ahead and buy a house here in Kansas. We found a house that we liked. It was a “short” sale (like a last chance for owners to sale before it’s defaulted on) and we prayed and felt like the Lord gave us His blessing and we put a bid on it. We missed the deadline and the house went into foreclosure. We were a little bummed but trusted our maker and just waited and watched for the house to come back on the market. Well, it did and for almost 25,000 less than before. Put a new MUCH lower bid in the next day and we got it plus it came with a 2 year home warranty! =) It’s not huge but it was an awesome deal and good investment! Especially because of my handy dandy husband whose got some awesome carpentry skills! But most of all….IT HAS A BACK YARD!! We are super excited about this! My 2 and 3yr old need somewhere to play and my favorite memory and thing to do is to sit on the front porch with my parents and drink a cup of coffee. Yes, we did this even when it was a thousand degrees outside!

=) We should move in by the end of this month. I really need to start packing. =)

  Ok that’s about all I have right now. I’ll throw some pictures up soon to dialog our summer events. It’s been fun and excited season. Knowing that no matter where God takes us or what He shows us that we are blessed and His Kingdom will rein forever. This world and all that’s in it will burn someday but our King and His Kingdom will be forever. Learning and trying to remember this when we get caught up in the good things God gives us. I want to desire God above all things, even the good things that come from Him! May we all learn to do this in our lives, to set our hearts and desire on Him most of all!

What the Lord has been doing to me, in me and for me!

This is a little of what the Lord has been doing in my life of late. This is an excerpt from a letter I had written to a sister in Christ. I just wanted to say before you read to take heart in the fact that sometimes the Lord has to break some things in our lives in order to make them into something more beautiful! I feel this so much. After every season that I’ve been in that was full of storms and heartache, when the sun returns Christ becomes more glorious than I have ever seen Him before!. I am thrilled at all the breaking He has done in my life. I WANT AND NEED HIM MORE! It is well with my soul, my friend! 

" The Call to accountability could not have come in better timing in affirmation to my heart and calling! I too have felt a necessity and burning for this kind of fellowship. Ryan has been praying about the Lord’s putting in him a desire to start a new work for the Kingdom. He had asked me to pray about it as well and I did, albeit halfheartedly. I just felt inadequate and to put it plainly too tired to even think about the work of it. Oh how selfish my little self can be!  Whelp, the Lord has been revealing to me a lot of things or "platforms" in my heart that I’ve given satan a place to preach at me and not even know it. I am being broken for Him.

  A few weeks ago I had a breaking of myself in my spirit for my children. It was just one of those really bad, hard days where I fought with my sweet little sinner Emma and just felt completely overwhelmed, inadequate, and exhausted. I let the enemy tell me I was unhappy staying at home and being here ( Kansas ) and that he had conquered me. Oh how many times “I must needs” to be broken. So I did what I always do on these days, I threw a fit, a big ugly nasty fit. I cried, I whined, and I may or may not have thrown a few things (I should probably add that it was not one of my children ;) It’s funny to me how often I let myself get to these points before I cry out to God. In my own selfish sinful nature I have to get the “ugly” cry out of the way before I give it over and cry out to the Beautiful Maker and Redeemer of my sweet children and myself. (Breaking Point). In this one sweet instance of horrifying ugly Becky, the Lord revealed something to me that I have harbored in my heart so deeply hidden that I didn’t even know was even subconsciously or consciously there; or at least I had ever acknowledged it there. I AM A SELFISH BEING!

 In this instance my selfishness being dealt with in my calling as a stay at home mommy. I love my children and would never ever want to leave them with anyone else everyday to go off to work for some other person that is not the nearest and dearest to my heart. I am so selfish and am ashamed to admit it but I love myself more than my children at times. I take care of their needs; spank them when necessary; try to teach them to do right; and where the proper place is to put their bodily fluids. But I realized that I could do all of this and still hold selfish desires and laziness in my heart.(to sit, relax, not play or hold them, not pray or shepherd them when I didn’t feel like it- some of the examples)  Oh this was news to me. I prided myself in being a do-it-yourself lady. I have three kids, three and under and live away from all blood family and I can raise MY children all by MYself without any help. (Breaking Point) Can you hear my heart in this? I’m tired and exhausted and yet I still pride myself in doing it all alone. (sin sin sin stupid stupid stupid) I want to be better; I want to purposely be with my children. Not just to teach them right from wrong and take care of their needs but to shepherd their hearts and love them as my Father loves me. I want to let myself be a part of the body that the Lord has placed me in and not just try to do it alone. I NEED to be vulnerable to my sisters and brothers in Christ. I need to lay down my pride and let them weep, morn, have joy, and laugh with me.

 Ok so we know the Lord revealed I’m selfish with my time with my children and prideful in doing it alone but I was still an awesome cookie cutter wife. I had NO selfishness in my heart toward Ryan. HA! And yet again a few weeks later…Breaking Point! The Lord revealed to me that I give myself some sort of entitlement in our house; an entitlement to be tired cranky and lazy with my husband because I gave birth to three kids and keep our home (semi) running smoothly. I mean shouldn’t Ryan bow down to me because I haven’t slept through the night in 3 years because I was either carrying or caring for the fruit of his loom. False. I realized that I am just filled with this hidden sinfulness and selfishness in my heart and I pray that the Lord would continue “weeding” my heart of these things.

When we were praying the other night and the Lord revealed to me that I am selfish in my relationship with my husband. I am cause division because of these sins I had this hidden so deep inside me for far too long. I want to follow the Lord’s call whatever it may be, whether to start a small group or giving up more of myself in some other way, it is the least that we could do for our Savior. I want to serve God and Follow Him and His Will. We have a great testament in our own personal lives of how awesome and amazing that this can be. But I thought I “needed” to be mentored by someone to take care of all my issues first before I could help anyone else with theirs, right? False. I might as well walk around with a binky in my mouth with a diaper on holding someone’s hand. NO, The Lord is calling and I WILL answer, whether it takes the ugly cry first or not. I would love to ‘as we are going’ thru this journey to become like the Word says “iron sharpeneth iron” with the body. I need this. I need more than comfortable relationships with people that do not challenge me spiritually. I need more breaking and more sharpening. Whether one helps with the breaking part or the Sharpening part, I do not care, for it is necessary. I can’t promise that there won’t be some ugly crying along the way but I do long for the growing together as the body of Christ, Specifically with our personal relationships with others in doing so being the Church, not just going to a meeting."

 There is healing in confession. I encourage each of you to pray about a brother or sister in Christ that you could get together and be the church with on a regular basis. We are designed to do this. To love each other, help each other, build each other up and even give reproof to each other when necessary. We are His disciples! Let us be His disciples to one another. 

                                                                                              With Love and Prayers-Becky

Dad: a Son’s first Hero and a Daughter’s first Love.

 I hope everyone had a great Father’s day! I wasn’t able to be with my daddy this year, but will see him in just a few weeks. Not everyone has good earthly fathers but everyone can have a Heavenly Father! I am so thankful that even though I have an awesome dad who loves the Lord and taught me what it was to be a faithful servant to God, I have the Maker of life and love and peace as my Heavenly Father. There truly is no life without Him! So here is a shout out to my King Daddy and also all the other Fathers I know that have been Fathers of Faith in my life! I love you all!   

me and my daddy

I love you daddy. You truly were my first love. Thank you for your patience and dedication in teaching me right from wrong. You will always be my daddy and I will always be your little girl. I love you with all my heart!



Ryan and his dad



To my father–in-law- I love you too, especially for giving me your son. He is a wonderful father and husband and we both have a great respect and admiration for you. You are truly the best Father-in-law I ever had!)



Daddy and Elijah

Daddy and Emma

Daddy and Abigail

Now to the father of my three beautiful children, what can I say... You are the glue that holds us together. You are my very best friend and the one true love of my life. I was ordained to be your wife and I will always strive to grow in that with the Lords help. You are the absolute best father and leader for our little family. You not only strive to shepherd our children but you shepherd me as well. I know it sounds so cliché but I truly wouldn’t be where I am if it wasn’t for you. When my father gave me to you on our wedding day you took that responsibility seriously and have “for better or worse” guided us in following Christ and His will. And any day with you is better than my best day without you. You are my hero and my love and I adore you with all my heart! The more I watch you with our children the more I fall in love with you. They think you hung the moon. You are their biggest hero and mine too. Happy Father’s day sweet love of mine!

xoxo-love Em's hair in this pic!

i {love} followers!!!

Ok friends! I have a dire request. Ryan has informed me that if I get a hundred followers that he WILL buy me a new computer or mac. We are in desperate need for a new one. So…. if you could just click the follow button to the right =>>>, I would be forever indebted to you. You see I have 3 babies and take all my pics at home and I so need an editing program. Our old computer won’t even upload pictures. Please Please Please, I need a big girl computer to help me grow up right. Promise.

You will not get any emails or junk mail, it just makes me look important=) k thanks! xoxo

I know its a long shot but i believe in you!!

Just makes me smile. Enjoy!

Patience, Prayer and a Pickle Jar….

Ryan and I celebrated our 4 year anniversary on June 1^st. It is so crazy how time goes by so fast. We have known each other for 5 years and been married for 4. Yet, it still seems as though we have known each other forever but that it was just yesterday that we met and fell in love instantly(well that’s how it was for me, Ryan might have took some more persuading=)  but here is a little of the story of “Us”.

Our Love Story:

Hmm...where to start…how about the pickle jar? Strange, I know. When I was about 21 I had gotten tired of the whole dating scene… I had always had a boyfriend growing up and had always just wanted to get married and be a wife and mommy… I was the girl that would go to every youth function thinking, “Well maybe I’ll find my husband at this one.” It was during this season of growth and maturity in my life that I decided I was going to give up looking for my husband and give it all over to the Lord and trust in His timing and His PERFECT will on who He wanted me to be with. Around this time I started talking about it with a preacher named Mark Dunning (who is now pastor of the church I grew up in); and he started to tell me about this pastor that he knew. The pastor had a bunch of girls in his congregation that were always complaining about not being married and not having any good Christian boys that they knew. So the pastor told these girls to make a list of the qualities that they wanted in a husband, like values, beliefs, personality and even small things like hair color and height. So all the girls wrote down what was important to them and the things that they liked and gave the list to the pastor. The pastor stuck all there list in a jar and would pray about the lists and the women and their future husbands and also encouraged the girls to pray for their husbands as well.  So the pastor and the women began to pray and submit the list and their hearts to Christ and it wasn’t a year later that all the girls were either married or engaged. Being the romantic that I am I thought this was a fabulous story and so I decided to take it on myself to write out a list of all the qualities I thought were important in a husband and to start praying over them. (I was a little more specific though, I wrote down 100 things that I liked or found important in a man) And I of course found a jar (an old pickle jar to be exact) to put them in and marched right over to give it to Mark D. I think he was a little surprised. But I was dead serious, if I was going to give this desperate search over to God I wanted to have my heart fully in submission to His desires and to give all of mine over to Him=) so I did and we both started praying. And it was not 6 months later I met my love; and I can tell you with all my heart that I knew the very minute I laid eyes on him, I knew that He was the man that God had for me. I even went home and woke up my parents to tell them that I had met my husband! I give the Glory all to Jesus and I am so glad that I submitted my greatest dream to the Lord so that He could write our love story; I know that HE did a much better job than I ever could have imagined.

Ok so this is how we met… my brother in law Nathan met this guy in college and became really good friends. I remember Nathan telling me for several months that he knew this guy that he thought I would really like and that he thinks we would hit it off. Well, what was I supposed to do? Call the guy up and say, “I hear I might like you and might be your future wife.” Lol. But apparently Nathan had mentioned me a few times among his friends at college; and I later found out that for some reason Ryan felt led to start praying for me. So as it turns out Ryan had been praying for me (this girl whom he’d never met before) at the same time I was praying for him…funny how God is so amazing and fits together everything in perfect timing and order. Finally, a few months later we met; and I can tell you exactly the moment and where Ryan was standing the minute the Lord spoke and His Spirit inside me said this is the one. It’s a beautiful moment and personal testament of His Glory and Beauty. God really does care; and He is Good all the time! Our lives are not perfect because we are not perfect; and we live in a fallen world; but we are sons and daughters to the One that is Perfect.

Oh and about that pickle jar, out of the 100 things on that list, Ryan fit 99 of them perfectly. The only one left was “plays the guitar”. I bought Ryan a guitar for our first Christmas. And even though he still can’t play, he’s going to learn eventually=)

Ryan is my very best friend, my brother, my love, and my soul mate! He makes me laugh when I’m crying or when I’m trying to be mad and just want to be mad=). I love his honesty and devotion to shepherd our family. I know that I would not be who I am or as strong as I am without him. God knew I needed someone special to keep me in line and he made someone just for me. We are partners together for the kingdom of God! Ryan is my brother first and husband second and I adore him with all my heart and I know he adores me too!

This year was a little different because we just had Eli so didn’t get to go on a trip or anything overnight; but Ryan did the most amazing job of making it special for his high maintenance post-partum wife. We celebrated twice, once on Wednesday and then on Saturday when my sister and mommy came up to babysit!)

He had a dozen beautiful roses delivered during the day!



AREN'T THEY PRETTY!



He had planned a special dinner date at home. We put the kids to bed early and had a romantic candlelight dinner. It was quite and peaceful and I am so in love with my sexy husband. He got us Red Lobster to go (my fave!) and made me go to the room and rest while he set everything up!

 

lobster was mine!



He bought me some beautiful diamond earrings! They match the necklace he bought me our first Christmas together (the same Christmas I bought him his guitar ;) so special! He said that he’d been looking for some that’d match for a long time and finally found them. I know he put a lot of thought into it and that’s what makes it special. He is my super star and my hero and I love him.

All I got him was a “coupon book” and an unfinished memory book that’s all about “us”. Lol. But that’s ok; I just gave him a son so he loves me anyway!)

Since Ryan planned our Wednesday date for me, I planned the Saturday date for him! He got to pick everything that we did….

We went to go see a movie in an actual theater!! Ryan chose the new X-men movie. It was good but I was sad that it ended with division and the beginning of war between friends… I only like movies with good endings and that are not depressing. I like to live in fairytale land when I’m watching movies!)  But this was Ryan’s day and he loved it!

Then we went to go eat at a new (to us) pizza place in Wichita called Knollas pizza. To those who don’t know, my husbands 2^nd love is pizza. I’m almost certain he has some sort of ninja turtle blood in his genes…anyways Ryan was devastated that it has taken us 3 years of living in Kansas before we have ever tried this place. Apparently it was that good! Go check it out

Knolla's Pizza East

7732 E Central Ste 123
Wichita, KS 67206

 I love you Ryan Allen Vandenberg, you absolutely Rock my world! xoxo