Meli's world

Dear Emeli Sofia, My princess, my chiquita, mi niña linda! Happy 5th birthday! Today you are 5! Its such a huge milestone.....  As I lay here next to you watching you sleep I can't help but thank God for your life, for choosing me to be your mom and for letting me experience such a love. You are everything I didn't know I needed. You are one brave young lady. And though you just started kindergarten less than two weeks ago, you have already matured so much into following directions, making friends and being away from grandma or family for such a long period of time. It probably makes it easy you already know so much from your alphabet, to colors, and simple math. This past year has brought ypu lots of growth. Its a big difference to when you cried everyday refusing to go to pre-k. Its awesome to see your personality blossom and watch you become the unique you you are right before my eyes. You love swimming!!! And fashion trying different colors, hairstyles and ac...

The past couple of weeks  I have really been diving into the goodness of God and just wanting to get plugged into more of Him, and to seek Him more. A couple weeks ago our pastor said "Draw near to Him, and He will draw near to you" James 4:8 ..... so what do you do when you want to be closer? You seek Him more. It all started with me really digging deep into the study I've been doing Saturday nights with the kids in family ministry. The one theme we have been learning about is all the things God entrusts with and one of them was experience. We don't always choose what happens to us or what we go through but it's all about what we do with those experiences.... and then came the women's event "Unshaken". That kind of went with the theme. Because here I got to hear from women of God like Nagmeh Abedini whose pastor husband has been violently imprisoned in Iran for 3 years. Her testimony, her strength and her unwavering faith in God was inspiring. ...

  I know it's been a while since I last wrote, so why not break the dry spell with what I've been going through and what I'm learning. School started about a month ago here in Florida. For my little one Emeli, that meant starting pre-k. I'm not sure what she envisioned it to be but she was super excited. She talked about it for weeks, we went shopping and she couldn't wait to start. The first week went ok. Then the next week, she hated the place. She was refusing to go. Crying about it at home. Didn't want to talk about school at all and just was making herself miserable and anxious about it. So we did what every parent would do and switched schools. She started there fine too. And it seemed to be a more hands on and playing curriculum than the other school. However a couple days into it, again she was refusing to go. Except this time we knew she loved it. She was coming home talking about her friends, all she did and how nice her teacher was. Thi...

I know its a bit of a change from the usual Lessons with Manny, but I do have two kids. And just because she is 3, that does not mean that there's nothing from me to learn from her. Or at least to be reminded of things. Before I sat down to write this, I was in my room charging my lap top and going through some things in my notebook, when all of a sudden she got really quiet. She was in my room going though my drawers when all of a sudden she is no where to be seen or heard. I got up and she wasn't behind my sleigh bed. Instead she was in my closet. Wearing my heels. She'd gone in there so quietly closed the door and was trying on all my shoes. She seemed so surprised that I caught her in there. She seemed to thing if she was quiet enough and she did it behind closed door, no one would know. Of course, I wasn't mad. She looked so cute and told me she wanted slippers like Cinderella. I was more concerned she'd get hurt but I had to take a picture of this little ...