Family Worship

One of the biggest things that I was challenged with at the .mom conference last weekend was making sure that I am leaving a legacy of faith to my children. I work so hard to make sure they have all these great memories but am I really leaving them the best memories of what it means to have a relationship with Jesus Christ. So Matt and I talked about it and we decided that in order to really start being intention with teaching and leaving that legacy we were going to have a family worship night once a week. We decided on Wednesday because usually for us that is a pretty low key night. We are going to make sure that every Wednesday we get into the Bible as a family begin to uncover God's truths for us.

Last night was our first family worship night. Matt planned a great fun little activity for the kids with blocks and building. He talked about creation and how God made everything out of nothing! What a wonderful concept to learn! We did some singing together!
And we read the Bible.

And prayed.

I think I have always gotten stuck on having these great fun family devotions. That takes a lot of time. We want to just focus on getting into the Bible and learning truths from God. Our first family worship night was a huge success. I hope we begin to build those memories and a legacy of faith!

When You Have A Little Sister

A little while back I wrote a post on When You Have A Big Brother. Well I caught a "when you have a little sister" moment.

Yep Ben the boys, boy all dressed up in jewelry. We will have to remind him of this picture in about 15 years when his girlfriend is over.

Amazing Race

So about 3 months ago we decided to get rid of cable. It really hasn't been that big of a deal over the summer. No real new shows and we stayed so busy we didn't notice. Now that fall has hit we are noticing the lack of TV a little more. Football games have been a serious issue but we have worked that out with ESPN 360 on the computer hooked up to the TV. We can watch most of our "shows" on the computer so no real big deal. The biggest issue was being able to watch The Amazing Race. It is our all time favorite show! We watched it for the first time on our honeymoon and we have been hooked ever since! We love it!! It combines some of our favorite things in travel and competition. We really hope to be able to be on it one day. Seriously we have filled out applications in the past just never turned them in. We really want to do it!

Thankfully we are able to watch it the day after it comes on TV on the computer!! So last night was the big premiere night! I baked brownies and we gathered around the computer to watch! It is going to be great as usual. I love that we can all watch it together. The kids love all the challenges and the competition as well. Such fun family times and memories!

Awesome Weekend!!

It was an awesome weekend for everyone in the Eckley family! I had the privilege of getting to go down to Birmingham to the .MOM conference with 4 of my awesome friends. We had a blast. The conference was amazing. 1400 moms there just learning about how to be better moms and how to teach our children to love Jesus. It was great!! We heard some amazing speakers and I learned so much. I was so excited to see some of my favorite blogging moms there. I sat in on a panel discussion with Pricsilla Shierer (yes the one and only), Amanda Jones (Beth Moore's daughter), Angela Cotrell (Travis' wife) and Sophie (better known in the blogging world as BooMama). It was awesome. Here they are! My favorite speaker by far was Angie Smith. Her testimony was amazing and she was so funny. I left so challenged to want more and better things for my family. Everything about the conference was just amazing. I can't wait to put it all into practice. One of the funniest moments at the conference was getting to see the Duggar Family. Yes the 19 Kids and Counting family. They were there. It was kind of crazy. Made me laugh. They took up about 2-3 rows just for them.
I had a blast. Thanks Hannah, Hollie, Kelly and Jessica for going with me. I hate I didn't get a picture with all of us. We had so much fun!

Well back at home the rest of the Eckleys had a great weekend as well. They packed alot in! Mema and Opa kept the kiddos after school on Friday and they had a great time at their house. Saturday morning Ben had a soccer game and then they went up to Buriett on the mountain with Granna and Grandaddy. They had a blast exploring and seeing a bunch of animals!

Saturday afternoon Matt was super brave and took the kiddos to the Space and Rocket Center. It was free museum day so they got in free. They had a good time (although Matt did say he was glad they didn't have to pay). This is Ben with space bacon!

I was glad to get home Saturday evening to see my sweet family! Poor Kate started running a little fever Saturday night so she and I stayed home from church yesterday. She was sort of pitiful looking yesterday but she is doing much better today!

So that is a quick recap of the awesome weekend!

Changing of Seasons

Ok I have a confession to make... My name is Emily and I am a children's clothes buying addict. I really do have a serious problem with overbuying clothes for my children. They have so many clothes!!! I may need professional help!! In my defense I get them all at seriously great deals. Really I rarely pay over $5 for anything. My goal is to be able to sell the clothes and make back what I paid for them. With this problem comes an overwhelming task each time the weather starts to change. I have to change out their closets. It is a daunting task. Putting up the old outgrown clothes and bringing in the bins of new clothes. It is a great workout for sure but it wears me out! This week I decided to tackle the big change out...

Kate's room in the middle of the giant mess. Her closet neatly organized and ready for fall.
Ben's room in the middle of the mess.

His closet neatly organized for fall.

Did I mention I have a problem? They have so many clothes! I really am trying to get better. Of course right after I changed out for the season it turned hot again and we had to pull back out the shorts and t-shirts. Hopefully it will turn cool soon! I was wanting to decorate the house for fall but it is just too warm for that right now. Need a nip in the air to pull out the pumpkins.

I am so excited for the weekend. I am getting to head to Birmingham for the weekend with 4 friends. We are going to Lifeway's .MOM conference. It is going to be awesome. Can't wait to tell you about it on Monday! Have a great weekend.

Random Day

I have struggled this week with what to blog about. We are settling into our routine of school and work so life is just not very exciting. So I thought that I would just take some pictures throughout the day of what life is like for us on a normal day.

Everyday we make at least 2 trips over "the mountain." Some days it is many more! It is not really a mountain but a large hill. It is a crazy, curving road but it is beautiful. Then I dropped these cuties off at school. Kate did awesome today. After weeks of crying, for the first time she didn't cry! YEA!!!
Then I headed into work. Our work has been really busy lately. We are getting a huge number of referrals. I didn't see any patients today but I had a lot of phone calls and paper work to catch up on. This is my cute little office.

After work I ran up to work at church. Tomorrow night is the big ladies' dinner. Since I am on the women's ministry committee and this is our big event of the year, there has been lots of work to do!! I decorated 2 tables. They turned out pretty cute.

Then it was off to pick up the kiddos. And it was home for nap time.

And playtime with Ben!

Every afternoon I think I pass out pounds of goldfish. They are the go to snack around here lately. I buy them in bulk!

Then it was outside for some playtime! It was really warm outside today but the kiddos enjoyed riding in the golf cart.

Matt and I cleaned out the garage. It was looking rough. A little girl told us this summer that we had a messy garage. I guess it was time to finally clean up! It is looking good now.

Then it was dinner. Kate made a huge mess as always. The girl cannot stay clean!

So I guess that is the randomness that is our life! Not all that exciting but it sure is fun.

More Pinterest Love

Before I start the post, I have to put some pictures up of post bath cuteness...

So I am still loving Pinterest. It is just full of so many great ideas! It inspires me to be more crafty and make things! I just love it.

So we were invited to a family friend's wedding this past weekend in Savannah (makes me feel old because Molly was the program attendant at our wedding and now she is married). We weren't able to go but I wanted to send some special gifts. On their invitation they had a cute graphic monogram. I took it and had it blown up then just framed it in a 12x12 frame. I thought it turned out super cute! This was my own idea but I am sure I was inspired by Pinterest somehow.

Also as a wedding gift for Molly I made this great Christmas ornament. It is a fun keepsake for the new couple and a good way to recycle the wedding invitations you get. I thought it turned out super cute. You can see how to make it here. I actually made one for Matt and I as well. It is something to do with that half a box of invitations we have left over. Let me know if you have any other great uses for them!

My new love on Pinterest is the food. It is an easy place to keep all my recipes I want to try. I have been trying out some new ones and so far they have all been great. For Kelly's Grandma's birthday party I was supposed to bring fruit. I didn't want to do normal old fruit so I found this awesome recipe for a fruit salsa. It was so yummy with the cinnamon chips! You can get the recipe here.

I am always looking for good crockpot recipes. I love putting dinner on at 7 am and not having to worry about it again until we are ready to eat! Tonight for dinner I made this super easy beef stroganoff. It was really yummy! You can get the recipe here.

I promise not to do too many Pinterest love posts!!

Bathtime Cuteness

I don't think there is much more fun to a kid than bubbles and colored bath water! Love the giggles and squeals I hear coming from the bathroom at night. Love these cuties!!

Football Weekend

I love weekends in the fall that are full of football. Really I don't think there is much better. Since ours was totally full of football it was awesome. Started Friday with Auburn cuteness being worn to school. Friday night we took in our high school's football game. So the high school we went to was never very good at football. In fact I think we won something like 2 or 3 games the whole time I was in high school. Friday night they lived up to their reputation. When we left near the end of the third quarter the score was 56-0. It was a total slaughter. Oh well. We didn't really care. The kids had a great time checking everything out. Our favorite part was the band anyway. We got to sit with our friends Jeana and Derek which was great. Kate loves Miss Jeana (and yes Jeana is wearing a Grissom Band Parent shirt!!)
This was Saturday morning's Auburn cuteness! We were ready for some football!! So the Auburn game didn't go as well as we would have liked. But that was ok. They had to lose sometime. Andrew and Kelly came over for the game and spent most of the day hanging out with us just watching football. I made some fun football food (nothing better than football food - a.k.a. dips!!!) After the Auburn game we played one of our favorite board games for several hours. Matt got the expansion pack for Pandemic so it took us a while to figure out how to beat the game. It was lots of fun. Glad we could hang with Kelly and Andrew. I think we watched football from sun up to sun down on Saturday. Love that!!! Sunday was church activities all day plus lots of things getting done around the house. The weekends go by too fast!!!