Cox & Kin

hi all. it's been a busy few days. and today will continue. i'll try and post a full detailed update after things start to calm down. just wanted to pop in and say hello!!!

Verse for the Day Colossians 1:9 For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. Passage for the day: Colossians 1: 3-14 TIME has a way of defining true friends. I have discovered that passing years and growing distance are ineffective obstacles to the mutual love between my friends and me. Perhaps it is because of our common walk with the Lord that we can just pick up where we left off whenever we are together. And these are the dear ones I will spend eternity loving. Of course, prayer is an important part of continuing that bond. Colossians 1:3-14 is and eloquent description of a Christian's prayer for her friends. Even though Paul had not even visited the Christians at Colosse, his love for them through Christ was strong and arent. One Sunday afternoon soon after our wedding, Michael and I were getting ready for the weekly Bible s...

ok, so i normally don't do this, but i feel a tug and need to ramble for a few minutes. firstly, this passage keeps coming to me: But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God-- having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them. So you are wondering why this passage keeps coming up aren't you. Well, look all around you and what do you see? I will tell you here what I see, I see the end times! I see lovers of money and contriband. I see people who are afraid to admit they love the Lord and act on the power that is given to us as CO-HEIRS WITH CHRIST. I see all of the things listed in so many places in this world around me. Most of a...

A couple of years ago, I had a cd by The Afters this song has stuck with me since that cd. It has since been scratched and I don't know if I can find it anywhere anymore, but I felt like I needed to share the lyrics with you all. A situation occured last night and this is what I feel God is telling me to share with those involved in the situation that happened. Look outside It's already light and the stars ran away with the night Things were said, words that we'll try to forget it's so hard to admit I know we've made mistakes I see through all the tears but that's what got us here If love is an ocean wide We'll swim in the tears we cry They'll see us through to the other side We're gonna make it When love is a raging sea You can hold on to me We'll find a way tonight Love is an ocean wide I'll stay right here It's where I'll always belong Tied with your arms Days like this I wish the sun wouldn't set I don't want to forget W...

God has been giving me words more lately. I love it when He speaks! Today, he gave me Psalm 139. Here is what the New Intenational Version sounds like: PSALM 139 (NIV) >1 O LORD, you have searched me and you know me. 2 You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. 3 You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. 4 Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD. 5 You hem me in—behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. 6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. 7 Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? 8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, a]">[ a ] you are there. 9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, 10 even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fas...

So, I have been doing the yo yo thing when it comes to dieting... I'll do the healthy food thing for a while and then not. Well, a friend of mine suggested that I do this website that is a food journal thing. Well, it suggests that to be at the weight I want to get to, I need to loose a pound a week. That's entirely healthy. So, I started journaling my food today, and even with making a bowl of homemade veggie soup (with ramen noodles in it) I still have to find a way to get up to 1870 calories per day. This is going to be a challenge for me as I don't eat breakfast on a regular basis. I know that my body is in starvation mode, and I have to coach it out of there. I will do this!!! I will be doing a weigh in on Wednesdays at 10 am. This way I can kind of keep track of my weight better and see where I need to improve. In addition to a food journal, this site also does an exercise journal, I am going to be taking advantage of that too. In fact, I am finishing up my...

Yesterday, we had a great day!!! We got to see Dee Dee, Dave, Gilly, and Chase. It was the first time we have seen them since Grandma's Surprise 80th Birthday Party! Here is a recap of the day. 7:00 a.m. Dawn wakes up and Kenzie gets up too. 8:00 a.m. Time to wake Ryan and Maddie up. 9:00 a.m. Take Shaun, Seth, and Deborah to Calusa on our way to Roy and Carols. 11:00 a.m. Leave in 2 cars to go to Clearwater Beach. While on the way, Ryan drops a pill... Then Ryan and Dee Dee switch cars incase there was seperation. On the trip, we took a wrong turn, but we all got there at the same time so we are good right! Time for swimming, sunbathing, building sand castles, and burying the kids. It was a good time! Kenzie even got to see dolphins for the first time. (See, the beach we usually go to, you don't get too many dolphins surfasing, but at Clearwater you do.). 2:50 p.m. Load up the cars and see who can get back to Trinity first LOL! We all made it at the same time! C...

since i last posted... well here goes: last thursday, i posted the challenge lo that i did. I have since then done 2 more challenges. they are on another forum and they can't be posted here yet. not because the rules say that but because i don't want them put here just yet. so here's the update: friday: ryan worked and kenzie went home with yaya from school. maddie and i got cc from the bus. we all three then cooked chicken broccoli spaghetti alfredo and garlic toast. it was soooooo good!!! saturday: we watched isabel for angelena and took her to yaya's house so i could print the bible verse that i needed for bookmarks i made for my church am womens group. i'll be uploading the pics and doing another post about that. kenzie, kaylie, and maddie got in the hot tub and isabel swung on the hammock. i am not sure, but i think she was scared of the jets in the hot tub. sunday: we went to first/second services at church. i have to say the special was wonderf...

So, here's the challenge. And above, you can see my entry. Kenzie had done crosswords or circle a words (I can't remember) with Gigi and I snapped a pic of her doing it. I absolutely love the design of the sketch we were supposed to use for this lo. It allows for a simple, yet stunning layout. It allows room for journaling as you can see that I added as well as plenty of negative space! And the breakdown goes like this, picture was taken from my collection, background paper was from k and company the best of k and company pad, the circles were literally just picked out of my scrap box. I didn't even look at the papers, i just did a random pick. the lettering was taken from an old sheet of alphas i had and I think they worked out great!!! Simple yet Stunning! Thank you Scrap Fit for the challenge.

So, how are you this morning? Do you want me to make your day? Well, here goes my attempt... Star Rork is having a give away!!! Go check it out! Its a beautiful scrapbooking kit! I know I fell in love with it. The instructions are this: Follow the above link to Star's Blog. Read the post about the give away. Follow her blog. Comment that you followed it. Then post about the give away on your blog. See how easy that is. And the drawing is Sunday!!! Get in while you have a chance to! Good luck. Happy Blogging. Awesome Scrapping! Have a great day! I'm off to Church !!!

Last week, I entered a blog hop. You go around leaving comments and becomming followers of blogs for the entry. Well, there were tons of prizes. I was able to win one! It's a Making Memories Calander! So thank you for making this happen for me! It was really nice to win something and not just enter and never hear anything back. I had tons of fun with it! Now for the regular stuff: The girls have been really good letting ryan sleep this weekend given he has been working night shift to help his employer out. I got up andtook them to church today and they loved it! It was a fabulous service. If you would like to see some of our video's, go to CCWC and click on the video links, otherwise, you can tune in live on Thursdays and Sundays. Kenzie wants to go to the lock in on friday... we shall see how she feels at the end of the week....

Ok, so I crashed! yeppers! I decided to join a challenge blog! Twice a month, I will be posting scrapbook pages that I have done for a challenge. This time it was this challenge. It was quite fun. I had wanted to do another Halloween page for some time and had enough left over pictures to do this with. As you can see, the orange paper is all glitter paper!!! We had to use black, therefore the trim and the black cat along with some black stickles. I also have more sparkle in the way of green stickles on the shutters that are falling off of the house. As well as the purple stars have been stickled with purple stickles. This house has a rope coming from the window because Cecilia being a witch decided to sneak out to go Trick or Treat! I loved doing this because it was a challenge, but all in all, it was really fun and I will be doing this more often!

Yesterday, we went to Wally World for some "window shopping" for about an hour. I needed to get out of the house and needed to price a few things anyway, so as soon as we get there what does Maddie see? A Port Richey PD car sitting right out front. "MOMMY, A COP IS AT WALMART!!!!" she scrams so the whole world can hear her. So, I acknowledge that there indeed is a police officer in the Walmart and continue on putting her in a cart and going about my business. As we are heading through the store, the two officers come around the corner and Maddie points to them getting really shy. I said, "Yes, Honey those are the officers who's car is out front." and they stop to talk to her. One of them gave her a badge and told her she was his "special police officer for the day" It was so cute! Of course, I did not take my camera! We were only going to walmart afterall! I didn't expect being able to get a pic of her being the officer for ...

So, yesterday I did a really cute lo and I couldn't wait to share it here with all of you! Here it is and the story can be found under it! Bubble Time got its name because Maddie had been out playing it was time for a bath and I said, lets go get you a bath. I go to her room to get her Jammies and head to the bathroom and this is what I found! So I ran for the camera and snuck back in the bathroom to shoot the pics. She had put the plug in and started her bath water. She just forgot to take her clothes off! So adorable! I used all scraps for the strips of paper and the mats. I used Gold stickles for the designs around the photos and for the "all smiles" I then used some bling that I got in a kit that was on clearance from walmart some time back. The letters were punch outs that came in another kit. These kits were a collaboration of several different designers, and I do not recall who the designers were. As for yesterday, we had a sleepover with Kenzie, Maddie,...

So, my friend from high school Maria Tibbs gave me a little idea a while back when she blogged about Brian and Brooklyn laying under the tree looking up at the pretty lights. Maddie did it last year and I scrapped it!!! Thank you Maria!

So, Kenzie started school Monday. No, I didn't take first day pictures. I know, bad mom! But really, do you want to see traffic running by her on a major road for her first day pics? I am choosing to wait until the weekend, take her to a park or beach and do some cuter pics of her there for her second grade pictures. Maddie has been so happy to not fight with Kenzie this week. She does miss her sister, but it is so quiet and we are enjoying that. I did get to do a couple of scrap layouts this week. I am waiting it out on uploading them here though. I think I want to start uploading a month worth of lo's at a time or something like that. More to come on that later. The funny story for today. I mop the kitchen. Sweeping the hallway so I can mop that as well and somehow maddie falls into the mopbucket. Pinesol and Water went everwhere. so while ryan cleaned that up, I gave maddie a bath to get the chemicals off of her! She was upset because she thought she was in tr...

So, it has been a busy week! I have managed to get a lot done though. On Monday, we just kind of took a lazy day. Tuesday, we started a few projects. Wednesday, we went and had our orientation and learned where Kenzie's new class is. This orientation was quite interesting. It was totally disorganized compared to last year. It was like the new principal had no clue how to run an orientation. I sure hope and pray that this is not an indication of how the school year will go. First, they announce that if you already know who your teacher is you can by pass the 20 or so teacher's who were bouncing off of the walls to tell you who your teacher is. We bypassed because we knew who kenzie's teacher was, but they didn't tell anyone where to bypass to, so everyone ended up going straight into the unregistered children line. After quite a long wait we were then told, if we were registered to go on to the bus/car rider lines and get our bus passes or car tags. after thi...

So I came downstairs after showering and getting dressed to leave yesterday and Kenzie gasped, "You look pletty!" Ryan and I burst out laughing! She is so funny most of the time. I just had to share with you! We went and spent some time with Pappy yesterday. Nothing major. And I decided on what I am doing for some of our family for Christmas. You will have to wait to find out though. Because I can't drop a line here and have them find out. LOL. And that's the update for the am.

This is my current favorite picture of Maddie! We did do our fair share of goofing off this summer and I happened to catch Maddie on camera! She had these glasses left over from a birthday party loot bag. Simply popped out the lenses and she became the cutest little Nerd I have ever seen! After a long day in the sun, the girls were tuckerd out! If you don't believe me just look at Mackenzie. LOL! She fell asleep before her head hit the pillow I do believe! Go ahead, call me a mean mom. Yes, I held them both under the bucket until it dumped! It was so much fun! But I do have a partner in crime. My friend Debbie was the one behind my camera here! Mommy, this is so much fun, I can't stand still! I am speechless. Perhaps she was taken by surprise by the water spraying from all directions! Just Beautiful! That's all I can say to sum up my daughters! Taking time for a walk and a picture by the sea oats. Maddie had so much fun at the beach that day. She kept trying ...

I just wanted to take a few minutes to recap our summer. I will post the pics that I have chosen for the summer recap in "A Summer of Pictures" after this post. We as you know spent the summer without a vehicle, none the less, it was a fun summer. School starts in a week and a half, so here goes: We spent many days this summer at various beaches. We went to Fred Howard Park Beach, Sunset Beach, and Green Key Beach for the most part. You are wondering how we managed this aren't you? Well in between Roy and Carol allowing us to use their car, we were invited to ride along on many of the occasions with our friends. The girls loved it! And Kenzie has managed to almost perfectly figure out how to doggy paddle in the water! She is doing so good for not having any swimming lessons. We spend most of our hot summer nights in front of the wii. We have come to love this system. We have many games we love, but Mario Kart Wii is Kenzie's favorite right now. She only ...