Caden and Taylor both love their snuggle time with Nana, only she can get them to sit still for over an hour, her secret…..rubbing their back!!

Baseball time!

My brother, Charlie and his wife Magdalena stopped by on their long drive from Austin to NY. It was so great to visit with them for a bit and Caden and Taylor LOVE their Aunt and Uncle. As soon as they walked in the door a “let’s chase Caden game” began! Lot’s of tickling and hide and seek filled the night!

Think Caden did something silly when I was taking this photo, hence Magdalena’s face!

Shelley, Moses and Abraham also joined us, Stephen was on the business trip with Chris. It was so good to have a full house, I love company. I caught this cute pic of Abe and Shelley! precious!!

Not sure what to think about turning the big 3-0, but this past weekend made it worth it, well expect for the baby girl keeping me up at all hours! I will turn 30 all over again if it means I get one great weekend my mom and then the next weekend is spent with my in laws! Lucky to have a great family!

There are lots of pictures below and even more on the pictures page. go check them out!

As soon as we arrived on Thursday we went straight to our hotel, The Marshall House, dropped our bags at our room and walked to Mrs. Wilkes. We were told by many to go there. We didn’t know they closed at 2, until it was 1:30 and we were at the hotel. Luckily, because we got there at 1:45 there was no line at all (usually there is 1.5 hour wait) and we got to sit and eat with Mrs. Wilkes grand daughter. It is family style southern food. 2 main courses and 22 sides including summer squash, collard greens, sweet potatoes, cream corn, and yummy biscuits…just to name a few!!

After lunch we did as girls do and started shopping! They had the cutest boutiques!

The Paris Market was by far my favorite shop there! I got some great ideas for decor in the house!

The historic downtown of Savannah is one mile wide by one mile long. There are 22 squares/parks throughout that are just gorgeous. In almost every square there are historic churches.

The Candler Oak, over 300 years old!

The First African Baptist Church

Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist

The homes of Savannah are gorgeous as well! I would live in any of them!

The Mercer House, The home of Jim Williams in the book The Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

Thursday night we hung out at our hotel for the wine and cheese time and met some other out-of-towners.

On friday we took a tour bus of the city. I am so glad we did! There is so much history in Savannah, it was nice to be able to know some facts about the beautiful city that we were walking around for 4 days. My mom on the bus!

The Six Pence Pub that is featured in Something to Talk About

Headed to River Street! A cobblestone street of shops and yummy restaurants all along the river!

We ate some delicious seafood at Wet Willies. I had shrimp and grits!! It was so good.

After lunch we shopped some more and then went back to our room to get ready for our birthday dinner at The Old Pink House and a show at The Savannah Theater. We saw “I love you, your perfect, now change!” Pretty funny show!

I had the BLT salad, it was so good with fried green tomatoes!

The next day we did more shopping and had lunch at Papillote, a french cafe. It was so good, check out the pic of our sandwich that we split! Yes- those are apple slices on top!!

We then decided to take the city bus to Bonaventure Cemetery. I am so glad we ventured out of the city to see Bonaventure. Yes walking through a cemetery is a bit creepy, but also peaceful and so intriguing, especially a historical cemetery. Here are a few pictures from our trip. Including musician Johnny Mercer’s grave site.

That night we headed back to River Street to get some beer and raw oysters! Yummy!

It was an AWESOME trip! I am so blessed to have a wonderful husband who kept the kiddos and a fun, active, amazing 60 year old momma who likes to take adventures in new cities!

Check out the awesome cupcake stand that Cory’s dad made!

Hostesses with the mom to be. Kristin, Cory, Kelly and me

Kelly and I

My parents with Kelly

Got to shower the parents to be with lots of love and baby gear!

Kelly and Josh

The blessing Tree with “Wishes for Clara”

Beautiful flowers

While I was at the shower Caden got to spend some great quality time with Nana and Grandpa!

trip to the zoo!

There are more on the february slideshow!

And homemade pretzels had to be made! Yes, even homemade dough!! I impressed myself! ha They sure were good!

There are more fun January pics in the slideshow. go check them out…you know you want to!

Congratulations again Amir and Karrie!

Check out our scuba diving video on my facebook page!

We recently attended a wedding where we sang In Christ Alone as part of the ceremony for the bride and groom. It struck a chord in me that day as a mom. At weddings a chord that is typically struck in me is “I’m so thankful for my marriage” or “I love Chris so much, how can we make our marriage even better?” Or maybe even just the wonderful memories that our wedding gave us start racing through my head. But this time was different. I walked away wanting to be more on fire for the Lord in my motherly duties. Don’t get me wrong, first and foremost I see myself as a woman of God, loving her husband with enough love that overflows to her children. But, that is not always the case, the kiddos seem to come first more often than not and poor Chris gets put on the back burner. But with that said, I KNOW that my marriage comes first and it is always something I am working on. However, since that wedding I feel the Lord has been working in me as a mom. In the last month a few things have taken place, conversations have happened that I just can’t shake. Not that I want to shake them, but usually I move on, start focusing on something else, or just plain forget! I know what your thinking….”in the last month”….that really isn’t that long of a time, come on Melanie…but for you mother’s out there you know that a month is like 10 years passing you by, especially with little ones around. The days go so fast and before you know it it’s Christmas again! So this time around I am NOT going to forget what chord was struck in me. And I think because the Lord has struck the same chord in me 3 times in the last month, I am going to act on it.

As of right now, my action is going to be writing. Writing in this blog things that happen to me as a mom that I feel the Lord wants me to share with other moms, to-be moms, friends of moms, etc. I also plan to compile some research regarding the topic below….so for you mom’s out there that know me personally(who am I kidding, no one reads the blog that DOESN’T know me personally) be prepared to answer a few questions for me in the next few months! I really want your opinion on what I am about to unfold below!

First off…you must listen/watch this song…

When The Passion was released I was in my last semester of college and living abroad in Australia but there was no way in the world I was going to wait to see the movie until I got back to the states. So myself and a friend, who was in the same exchange program as me, went to see it in theaters the weekend it was released. Obviously I was not a mother at the time, but walking away from that movie I had a overwhelming feeling for Jesus’ mother, Mary. The movie as a whole shook me to my core, as I am sure it did for many of you. Having loved the Lord with all my heart since I was 11, and always being a visual learner, that movie brought a new meaning to Jesus dying for MY sins. To watch a mother go through the death of her son was very hard for me to see, yet breath taking at the same time knowing that Mary trusted the Lord enough to watch her son go thru the things he did.

I am sure some of you know those lyrics by heart, I do not. So when I heard “In Christ alone! who took on flesh…Fulness of God in helpless babe!” the first time it reminded me that Christ too was a baby just as Caden and Taylor were/are. Fast forward to today at church we sang In Christ Alone again, this time as we sang those same lyrics above, the image of Mary holding her son came to mind. My mind finally, Lord’s timing I’m sure, put two and two together….Oh.My.Gosh…Jesus was a “helpless babe” just like Caden and Taylor. Just like all the other precious children out there. For some reason I always pictured Jesus as a very independent, strong, all knowing man. But for a period of his life he was a baby, a toddler, learning to feed himself, learning to go potty, learning to read, learning not to run too fast or he might fall. He too, needed guidance from his mother (and father) just like Caden and Taylor. Wild concept to me…maybe some of you are thinking I am crazy right about now….duh Melanie he was a baby, hence Christmas, Jesus’s BIRTHday!! yeah, yeah, just hear me out.

The scripture for our church service today was John 2:1-11…

1 On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, 2 and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. 3 When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.” 4 “Woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My hour has not yet come.”5 His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” 6 Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.[b] 7 Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim. 8 Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.” They did so, 9 and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside 10 and said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.”11 What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

The teaching at our church was more on Jesus’s disciples having an epiphany about who Jesus was, but alas I had my own epiphany! I felt God calling me as a mom, a friend, a mentor even, to share my stories, my findings, my epiphanies with others that might be going through the same things as me and to lean on others that are going through it as well, to learn from others stories. As a mother, when you come to the realization that part of your duty is to teach your child about the Lord’s unveiling love and to raise your child in a Christ filled home your “job” can quickly become overwhelming amongst the daily grind of teaching manners, potty training, rules, discipline, playing nicely together with friends, deciding which preschool to send them to, eventually teaching them to read, algebra(that’s Chris’s job when the time comes!), chemistry, etc. And then helping them make good decisions with their life..which college, which girl/boy to date or supporting them through a break up or a bad grade or a job that they didn’t get. I am getting ahead of myself here, my kids are only 3 and 1. Nonetheless, Motherhood IS overwhelming. But to know that Mary went through it gives me hope. And she went through it with at least 5 kids known in scripture, and one of those being Jesus, our Savior.

That scripture above is one of the handful of times that Mary interacts with Jesus in scripture. Unfortunately, as mother’s we do not have a lot of guidance in the Lord’s word from Mary as a mother, none really in those years that Jesus was a baby, toddler, young boy. Yet, I desire to learn from Mary, I wonder how she disciplined Jesus, how she and Joesph taught their children to obey their mother and father and most importantly what her role was in supporting Jesus in His calling. I want to break down the scripture above in my opinion. To know that Jesus and his disciples had “also been invited to the wedding” shows us that Jesus is well into adulthood by now, he is not living with his parents anymore, he is an independent young man, listening to the will of his Father, our Lord. So when Mary gets Jesus involved in the ordeal of needing more wine I saw that as a mother’s guidance to help her son see God’s will. As a gentle push towards where the Lord intends Jesus to go. As if Mary knew that he was suppose to make water into wine, she trusted the Lord enough to listen to the holy spirit and guide her son in the right direction.

At Jesus’ age he really didn’t need his mother’s guidance, so when as mother’s do we let go? When do we put our child’s life completely in the Lord’s hands? In my opinion and something that I have to work at EVERY SINGLE day is the day you decide to have a baby, to adopt or find out you are pregnant. That is the time you put your child’s life in the Lord’s hands completely!! Yes, easier said than done. But if you truly live your life for the Lord every day I strongly feel that you will get guidance from Him for the fulfillment of your daily tasks as a mom or a mom to be. You will say and teach the things to your kids that the Lord wants you to and you will know when to take a step back, sometimes after you have already put your foot in your mouth, but that is how we learn to follow the Lord’s will, with failures. I am by no means there…I second guess myself CONSTANTLY(even in writing this blog)…but I don’t want to live like that, so I want to join together with other moms and figure out how to be a Modern Mary. A mom confidant in the choices she makes. (the term Modern Mary came to me while singing In Christ Alone this morning…go figure) You would think that just knowing to trust the Lord as a mom would be all you need to know, but just knowing is not enough when it comes to dealing with a temper tantrum in the grocery store or guarding your daughter from all the worldly elements that will tell her she is not beautiful in this life. It will take more.

As a dear friend recently told me “The enemy only knows what you do and say, he does not act on our thoughts, so we need to act on our thoughts.” Here I am acting on my thoughts, and yes this blog has taken all of nap time and then some to write. And as Caden plays trains on my legs right now, I wonder if writing this was what I was suppose to do, or should I have stopped writing and taken my kids to the park as soon as they woke from their nap? Who knows!? I just know that I am excited about writing more for us Modern Marys that are trying to teach our children the Lord’s gracious love while keeping our kids happy and healthy.

I feel a connection to Mary as a mother. The Lord had put this connection in my heart and I want him to use me in any way he can.

And to add: caden said he wants to help me so I asked him, “How can I be a good mom to you?” His response: “please get me a treat.” looks like I have my work cut out for me! Geesh! At least he said please.

I leave you with yet another song from this morning. Learning to give the Lord all of me is going to be a life long endeavor, but a fun one!!

I promise future entries will not be this long!

The yummy desserts!

Me and my bestie!

Taylor LOVES to ride in the back of the bike! haha

Corban prefers to be pushed!

Caden and Taylor with Riley!

The whole gang just before midnight! Minus some that party hopped to other parties!

Once the clock hit’s midnight we always bust out “Happy Birthday” to Chris and this year was no different! We all slept in the next day then Chris headed out to play golf with a friend!

Once he came home he wanted to go to the “Flying Field” for remote controlled airplanes. He is such a kid at heart! Here are Caden and Chris watching a plane!

Then we headed to eat at a Hibachi and Sushi place. Some of Chris’s favorite foods!

We finished off his birthday watching 7 days in Utopia. GREAT movie and GREAT end to ringing in the New Year! Happy Birthday again babe! So blessed that you are my man and the kids dad! Love you!

At the Ice Exhibit. Caden and Taylor were not fans. I think it was too cold for them. And poor Taylor’s parka was way to big, she tripped over it and busted her lip. Needless to say we didn’t stay in there long. But we all did manage to go down the ICE slide!

Can’t you just see the excitement! haha

Sophia and Caden became the best of friends. And Everette just LOVED Taylor! It was too cute to see him interact with her!

Caden loved the trains!

Check out more pictures on the December 2011 slideshow

It was an escape the past two days and we loved it! 1st Annual Mechsner/Ballard vacation in the books. We are ringing in the new year hoping for our 2nd Annual vacation very soon!

We started the Christmas weekend by going out to eat and looking at lights on Thursday night. There is one AWESOME neighborhood in Plano where almost every house has lights and there were a few that were timed to music. There were also horse carriages you could rent to look at the lights, that might be on the list for next year!

This was one of my favorite houses:

Caden and Chris really liked the ones that had Disney characters in the yard!

On Friday, Chris’s parents (Nana and Grandpa) and my Maw-Maw(dad’s mom) came into town. We had a relaxing night watching movies. There was a lot of snuggling time with Grandma and Nana.

I got to sleep in on Saturday (yay!!) while the kiddos watched Polar Express with Grandpa and Chris! It is now one of Caden’s favorite movies and since it is also on Chris’s Ipad it now goes to restaurants with us! We were trying to hold of on bringing electronics and toys to the table when we are eating, (at home that still exists) but that shipped has sailed when we wanted a peaceful dinner for our 2nd Annual Chinese food Christmas Eve outing. Ha!

We went to our church’s Christmas eve service Saturday night. It was AWESOME and completely packed! Maw-Maw, myself and Chris actually sat against the wall in the balcony it was so packed! But such a beautiful service. I absolutely love going to church on Christmas Eve, I think it is one of my favorite things. It is always so touching to revisit the true Christmas story and to celebrate the Birth of Christ our Lord. I manage to tear up, if not cry every Christmas Eve.

After our Chinese food we went back home to snap some pictures and open our Christmas PJ’s from Nana and Grandpa! A tradition, I love!

And just because I wanted to share…..

The Mechsner family does NOT always have good pictures. MOST of the time this is what I am looking through at the end of the night, and I am lucky to get a completely good family photo.

Most of the time it’s the kids going crazy in the photo, that is to be expected.

And then other times, the picture is great, expect for the love of my life!! UGH!

A memorable moment listening to The Story of Christmas book, that Grandpa and Nana recorded for the kids.

Finally Christmas morning!! Happy Birthday Jesus!!!

Taylor got a rocking horse from Nana and Grandpa, but of course Caden was the first to ride it!

Taylor loved her nap mat

Nana and Grandpa gave each other the same present!! haha Since I knew it was coming, I had them open their gifts at the same time, pretty funny!

The last gift of the morning was a special one! Chris had no idea this was coming! He was completely shocked!!

Of course I didn’t see Chris again until it was time to cut the Turkey! haha

Caden and Maw Maw helped make Jesus’s Birthday cake! And then Caden went a little crazy with the sprinkles!

Caden was in his room most of the day racing his cars on the wall! Thanks Aunt Sandy for the fun game, so far it has only fallen down twice! ha

We had The Hadley’s, The Glenn’s and The Bunting’s over Christmas Dinner. They are all dear friends to us and we were so blessed to have them join us!

The kiddos

The night ended with Maw Maw reading Caden his new book. And Chris and I taking a drive in the new truck!

We are so thankful for all our blessings! It was so fun to see the kids open gifts this year, Caden really got into it and Taylor just went around the room making sure she had a part in opening every gift!