Laugh

We've been doing a lot of laughing lately. Monday and Tuesday we went to a marriage seminar called, Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage. It was a great presentation. Nelson and I feel that our marriage is really solid, and hearing Mark Gungor talk about what is needed in a healthy marriage just solidified that. We felt proud of ourselves for knowing what's important and always making each other priorities, but it was good to hear things that remind you how to react to things in your marriage. I highly recommend checking out the website and looking to see if Mark will be in your town, or watching the DVD.

We did buy a book and codes that our needed to complete a flag page. I encourage everyone, married or single to do this. http://www.flagpage.com/ It comes out with your personality type, and your top 5 traits, and then it opens up wonderful communication about why those 5 things are most important to you. The personality types are: Control, Fun, Perfect and Peace. Perfect seemed to ring true for me (not that I'm perfect at all)...but that I'm very detail oriented, and sensitive to things, and like things in perfect order and I have a really hard time when they aren't. It was interesting to hear how when someone tries to get me to get over it and not let me feel the way I should about it that this is squashing the way God made me. So, it's important to know what your spouse is so that you can identify that if you yell at someone who is in the fun category and tell them to be quiet and not in the spotlight that that is telling them that you don't like the way God made them. The book talks about ways to talk and understand people in the different areas. Mark also talked about our children being in these areas and how usually a child in the perfect category can remember being sensitive as a child and being yelled at for something they did and always carrying that hurt with them. It makes me really think about my kids and how they deal with things and want to parent them better. They did an example of a couple Tuesday, and the couple was so different (married 28 years), and seeing how their flag page opened up communication even more and made them think about themselves was really interesting. Mark Gungor said that he does this a lot with the military to get men to talk. You can ask a lot of open ended questions and really get stories relating back to childhood about why this person feels strongly about a certain trait. We thought it was really intresting, and I'm excited to do our flag page soon.

The girls and the babe are doing well. Not too much to report there. Joshua is 17 months old now!! He's chewing on everything as he just had an eye tooth come all the way through and the other three are working on it. He's a full time walker now, and tries to keep up with his sisters and makes quite a few tumbles, since he's not able to run quite yet. He had such a vocabulary rush a couple months ago, and since has just stuck to the 20ish words he says, and he hasn't said anything new in awhile. I'm trying to remind myself that Mikayla did the same thing. She was quiet for so long and then all of a sudden was talking in sentences. Brianna, on the other hand, was our little parrot, and would repeat anything we said. It's funny that as soon as I start to worry about something he does it. This is a really fun age, and I am trying to enjoy it all, but so missing my little baby. We went to a music class yesterday, and it was so so different from the summer when he just stayed right with me, and let me move the rhythm sticks with him. My strong willed boy wanted to do it all himself, and didn't want to be held during the dance, but wanted to shake it all by himself. So strange how quickly he is growing....and don't even get me started on these girls. Seriously, they were infants yesterday and now they are these young ladies...who are being registered for kindergarten April 4th!!!