Spring Break Zoo Trip

During Spring break, my mom and I took the girls to the zoo. With our zoo membership, trips to the zoo should be a lot more frequent for the Krull girls! The best part was meeting the giraffe named after me. What? Oh, yeah...I'm probably a little too short to be inspiring any giraffe names. Oh, well. It's still cool.

Preschool Easter Party

Yes, I know...Easter was almost a month ago. However, with losing my email and trying to get my blog up and running again I got very behind with my posting.

Ella had a fun Easte party at preschool--complete with Easter bonnet and egg hunt. They took paper plates and cut the middle out. Glued flowers to the top and tied ribbons to the sides. The girls were just too cute. The boys made "ties" out of paper, too. What a lovely class they made.

Lucy's Big Day

Recently I have been volunteering at Ella's school. When I go up there Mrs. Joy lets Lucy come into her classroom. This is VERY exciting for Lucy, as she feels as if she is as big as the other kids. I am so glad that she is getting to know Mrs. Joy, since she will be her teacher next year. Lucy is like a rock star when she goes into the class. All the kids get so excited and start calling her name. As you can see in the pictures, she demands full attention when she is there.

Look Familiar?

Much thanks to Jennisa for restoring my blog page. I love that girl and I have never even met her!!!

Remainder of Easter in Maryville

More images from our Easter weekend in Maryville. Just a few that couldn't be left out of the scrapbook. (That will, by the way, rise from the ashes like a Pheonix)

Grandma and her girls

Erik and Lulu dying eggs (green, of course)

Ella and Abby

Lu making a funny face with Grandpa

5 beautiful girls

What a funny picture of Lucy. I just wonder what she is thinking.

Easter in Maryville..Part 1

Every chance we get to head to East Tennesee we jump on it! Holidays always seem like the best time since there is usually a free vacation day worked into the mix for Erik. So, like usual, we packed up and headed to Maryville for Easter. The weekend was full of activites and the girls (and Erik and I) had a blast. It was really one of the most enjoyable trips we've made up there in a while. Things were so laid back and we just concentrated on having a fun time.

We stared the weekend with an Easter celebration at Erik's parents church. There were games, arts and crafts, baking and of course, the Easter story. Then on Easter Sunday the kids celebrated with an egg hunt. There were over 600 eggs hid and only 40 or so kids to hunt for them. So you can imagine the huge basket of eggs we came home with.

The picture above is of one of the three bunnies that were outside the church when we got there Sunday morning. Isn't that funny?

The girls before we left for church. The cutest bunnies I've ever seen!

Ella making a mad dash towards more eggs.

This is Lucy crying because Grandpa did not understand that she wanted to go back and pick up the green egg she saw in the grass. Not just any egg, mind you. A GREEN egg! It is her favorite color after all...

Lucy finally finding the green egg (that was strategically placed by Mommy while she was not looking)

Really! Lucy LOVES the color green. This is her Easter basket.

Lucky Me!

And just as God would have it....a really smart friend is coming to my rescue. Well, at least to an extent. My friend Leslie read my cry for help and is quite a bit more techie than I am. She thinks she can help me restore a good bit of my old blog. I might be able to even repost all my old entries. And I finally heard back from the lady who did the design for my blog and she said that after she returns from vacation she would see if she can get my design back up. Wow! I really needed that today.

Did I mention I was lucky? More like blessed....

Starting Over....Still Stinks!

Starting over. Who's ever really done that? I guess it means different things to different people. Right now, starting over is effecting every single area of my life. And I mean EVERY area.

All I can say is that after a long struggle with a "beast" I am finally starting to figure out who I really am. I've always known whose I was, just not who I was. It's going to be a long tiresome process, but I am ready to begin the journey. I've been ready to tackle this monster for a long time, just haven't had the courage.

If you read this post you have a little insight into what I am talking about. I knew that there was an old Kate and a new Kate, but I did not know the very root of the difference between the two. It's rather quite complicated and not something I desire to share, but it's been a very informative journey over the past week. I'd been praying some time for the answers and I just assumed that God was not ready to reveal them to me. What I have discovered, however, was that I was not ready to listen to him. In fact, He has been telling me for some time but my ears and heart and mind had been closed.

Don't we have all have a tendancy to do that? Try to fix our own problems? I'd been pouring myself into about 4 months of Bible studies searching for the answers. When all along I knew what the problem and solution was. I just didn't want to accept it. It was too hard and I wanted to take the easy way out.

So if all this self-discovery has not been hard enough, my stupid self responded to a hoax email that somehow caused me to be kicked out of my Google account. That means that I lost my email account AND my blog. Now, the email was one thing. I can slowly recover that loss, but the blog is another.

My blog has been my diversion for almost a year. I have poured my heart and soul into that thing. It has been the scrapbook of my children's life since last June. I stopped filling albums with pictures when I started my blog. I stopped journaling all the fun things my family has done because I had the blog. And while the memories are not gone, the tangible proof is. I think I can still print out all the pages, but not in the manner I had wished. My dream was to have a hardback coffee-table book of our life's journeys for every year I wrote on my blog. This has been a rather hard pill to swallow. First the whole dealing with my personal issues, then losing my blog. Once again, it the later may not seem like a big deal to you but it's so special to me.

But during this time, I have had to remind myself to put things into perspective. While my issues are important to me and are my current reality, things could be worse. I have beautiful, healthy children, a WONDERFUL, loving husband and an amazingly perfect God. One who is right here with me through this all. One who will never leave nor forsake me. He IS my very help in trouble.

Edmund C. Bentley once said "Between that which matters and that which seems to matter, how will the world know we have judged wisely?"

What will you chose? I know what I have chosen. My life, my family and my God. If I never post another blog entry, never send another email I have to care less because I learning that good mothering (and being a wife and daughter) comes from the inside out. We have to become what God meant us to be so that we can help others be who they are meant to be.

So as I raise my "cup" to toast this new beginning in my life, I welcome you to join me. Do you really know who you are? Most importantly, do you know WHOSE you are?

Starting Over.....Stinks!

this is my new blog site. i will explain why later. this really stinks!