My Cute little sweet Sophia you are in all ways very cute but also so complicated. I really have never had a hard time getting my kids to eat, especially when they were this young. Sophia is my eating challenge. Here are some examples of her weird eating habits.

• She will not eat cut green beans (canned) but she will eat Long whole green beans (canned) she also prefers them cold and will balk at them until they become cold on her plate.
• She LOVES cheese shredded, not finely shredded, not cubed need I explain more.
• She will not eat a PBJ sandwich unless the bread is toasted.
• She will not eat grilled cheese sandwich unless it is cut in long thin strips like french fries and it is cold from sitting there.
• She prefers Mott's apple sauce to all other brands.... wow it stinks when Mott's isn't on sale.

These are just a few of her funny eating habits she has all the normal ones too, like:

• Loving and laughing so hard when she drops her food to feed Toby. . .
• Throwing her cup when she is finished. . .
• Throwing her plate when she is finished . . .
• Grabbing and having to hold on to the spoon with now every bite. . .
• Loving "Meat sticks" (those NASTY smelling little smoochy hot dog things from Gerber's)
• Loving to smash meat sticks in her hair. . .

Oh the joy of feeding a one year old!

So I was cooking eggs and like I always do I cracked them open into the pan. . . then this happend .. . . .



TWINS? . . .. ..EWWWWwwww... Next time I will crack them into a bowl first.

"Why My Husband is the Bomb"

I have always heard that God uses perplexing situations to teach us silly humans lessons, humble us, grow us to be better people, and all that jazz. I guess I have been waiting for God to do this for me. A lot of things that have happened in my life I look us to Him and shout: "WHY!" Well, I am very humble to say that today God used this silly ridiculous court thing in a completely REMARKABLE way.

The whole time I was waiting for our case to he heard ( two hours give or take) I was thinking this is just SO DUMB! I have forgiven these people, the money has already been gracious given to Jeff and me, these people have NO leg to stand on WHY ARE WE HERE GOD!! Well silly little Me would have NEVER expected what would happen during this Judge Judy like fiasco. Let me just tell you a quick story. . .

We are sitting, waiting our turn, in the back of the court room, this part was very tedious because we got to listen to all these other cases that were just SO silly, it was really hard not to laugh many times. AND we were the last case. He calls us up there says a few things then has us "Swear" on nothing to tell the truth etc. (That's right; no more God in that court room for sure now. . .right?. . .) We all sit down Jeff and I had discussed that He would do the talking primarily. This was hard for me I am such a control freak but I just rolled with it. So Jeff starts talking to this Judge, My control freakisum blurts out something. I can't even remember what. The Judge said something like, " Sir do you have a problem with your wife?" uhhh.. Then he turns to me, " Mam, if I hear you out of turn once more you will be sent out and I will not hear from you period. Is that CLEAR!" WOW thank you for that one God. It takes someone that powerful I guess here on earth to bring the SMACK DOWN to Control Freak #1 Heidi. But he (the Judge) and God (the BIG Judge) DEFINITELY shook me and got my attention. But wait that isn't even the cool thing I learned. So, meanwhile, Jeff is talking, so smooth, so articulate, diplomatic, unemotional, PERFECT. It was like "who is this guy, and why am I SO lucky to have him on MY TEAM?" That's right, I really don't remember what Jeff said, or even what the other people said, in all its silliness. God just let me zoom in on my husband and show me who he is. I guess I was really not fully aware, up until today, what a catch I got when Jeff and I married. WOW. Leave it to God only to make this silliness reveal to me how much of a gift I have in the man I married. Oh yeah, and how much I need to respect him way more then I sadly have done up to this point. I can say that I am defiantly changed by this in way huger ways then I ever would have imagined. I am forever and permanently changed. Who knew, God could use this like this. Wow, I am now officially in Aw of My Husband and God.

Ode to small claims court. What can I say I thought this was just going to go away by itself. I really never imagined to actually going in front of a judge for something so silly. For those of you who do not know what the whole situation is I am sorry but it is really not that important for me to hash it up and ramble on about it. We will just say that there are people on the earth that are very stubborn who even when they are not even a tiny bit right they are "STILL RIGHT". (By people I do not mean Jeff or Me at least not in this particular situation.) Anyhow we have done everything in our power and our Realtor has done everything in her to honer God's word and keep this thing out of court, but it is just not worked and Tomorrow is the big day. Well let me get to the point of this here Blog.
Tonight the kids got their sermon on Forgiveness. It was the whole "let you who hasn't sinned throw the first stone. . ." deal, no one threw a stone. I definitely can not throw a stone (so to speak) at this couple who has put us through all this unnecessary stress. I would love to . . . Literally. . . but THAT is exactly why I will not. I observe my own life, I think of all the stupid "little" sins I do ALL day long, constantly falling and having only the hand of God to help me back up to my feet. So for my own sake, because God has told us to love and to forgive like he has, for us I have chosen to forgive this couple. I just wanted it to be on record I guess. So I can now have some accountability to follow through with my forgiveness by choosing not to ever hold it against these people. I must say I do hope our judge tomorrow is as cool as Judge Judy, just a fun thought.

I just thought that this was so cute I had to share it. I came across it when I was putting all my pictures and video on my new computer. Hali was about two and a half. . . enjoy!

I had been thinking today about what to post. My life has been so crazy lately. I could go on and on about all the recent crazy stuff. Like our 2 trips to the E.R. in 3 days, or our crazy half finished house. I guess I was in a very thankful mood today so I have decide to make this blog in terms of things I am thankful to God for instead of crazy crap in my life.
Sophia... Sophia... Sophia... you little naughty girl. I would have never thought it would have been so easy for you to unscrew a CHILDPROOF pill container and quickly gag down a couple of mommy's pills. All while I was standing only a couple of feet away. "Dear God thank you so much for placing your hand on Sophia and keeping her little body safe during 8 oz of liquid charcoal session and a 15 hour watching period at the hospital."
Wow, I love our house. "Thank you God for our beautiful house that you are giving me the energy every day to turn into a home. Thank you also for having this coming Monday, in court in your hands. Thank you for the BEAUTIFUL fall weather. Thank your for providing us with the resources for this AWESOME new computer that I'm typing on. Thank you for Ethan, Hali, Sophia, Jeff and even Toby. Oh yeah Thank you for only letting me sprain my leg and foot when I feel. Thank you for giving me the right words to say for my sister in law. Thanks for being GOD! Amen."

October has been a hard month for me for the last 2 years. Many of you know that Hali's dad died 2 years ago on October 30th. Well today I got some terrible news from Findlay. My 11 year old nephew father died this past weekend. The circumstances are so similar to Hali's father. . . I need to call my sister-in-law. . . but I haven't a clue what to say. I could tell her it is gonna be all right, but that wouldn't be true. I could tell her it wasn't her fault, but she will have a hard time believing that right now. I could tell her Brandon (my nephew) will be just fine, but he really will not. I am so deeply saddened by this but I can not cry, because I feel like I have no tears left. Basically I am reliving my tragedy through this awful event and I just don't think I will be much help to Her. I guess when I call her I will say. . . I will pray for you guys. . . for nothing I do or say is going to reduce the pain they are feeling only God can do that. . .If you pray. . . Please pray for the family, and my nephew and sister-in-law especially.

"My baby sloth."

Before and After. . . I am so excited to have a new niece. She is so chubby and cute and sweet. I got to see her when she was only about 12 hours old. WOW it makes me want another baby, I only wish I could skip the whole pregnancy and labor parts. Well let me say Amanda you did a GREAT job with this little Laina Chicky. She was definitely well fed and loved and I am sure you guys are gonna make great parents. Congratulations to Amanda and Kyle on my new sweet little niece Laina Vea!

Swimming in Lake Michigan in October who would have thought it was possible. Not me that is for sure. I thought it would be fun to live down by the lake so that is where we rented between houses. It was a fully furnished summer rental that was "off season" so we got a pretty awesome deal. It ended up being much less then a hotel. Plus we got the benefit of really good beach weather almost the whole time we were there. I actually got more of a tan in that last six weeks then the whole summer. We walked down to silver beach park about every day to play in the morning. We also loved going to the Saint Joe library that was right up the street, and the little toy store down town. It was a little cramped and the beds were really uncomfortable, but it was really kinda like a little vacation. I have now however decided that real "on the beach" living is not from me because it is just too dirty. I think that I swept up sand about 3 times a day and it still was in our beds and the carpet no matter what. What it really all boiled down to was it just wasn't home. The kids knew that. Ethan had a lot of behavioral issues because of it and it was always really awkward and not very tranquil at bedtimes. About 3 weeks in Ethan said to me in tears one night "Mommy I don't love Mr. Owls rental house anymore! I just want our old house." (Mr. Al was our landlord) So any how it feels so good to be finally home, but at least we got to swim in warm Lake Michigan in October, something that will most likely never happen again.

Hi everyone, boy not having a computer stinks! We are finally in our new house so I will have to have to fill everyone in on the last month or so. But this is a special blog for my little Sophia. As you know she celebrated her first birthday September 23rd. She is getting so old! She is very cute and very talkative and outgoing all though she hasn't quite mastered the English language, just the normal "mama, Dada, boo boo", she really has a lot to say in "Sophiaish". She has not yet stood up with out the help of pulling up on something, and so she can not yet walk. For these things I say she can take her time! She is pretty good at going up and down the stairs, and crawls very fast. She is eating almost all table food now as she has recently turned up her nose to baby foods (I don't blame her). She was about 23 pounds at her year check up, which is only about a half of a pound up from 9 months but she was about 2 inches taller. Look like she will follow in Ethan's foot steps and stop growing for a while now. Well what a sweet little toddler she is turning into. Happy belated Birthday Sophia!!

Big decision Day One...
And now on a completely different note. . . Today is Hali's first day of kindergarten, again. Yes we decided to let her take yet another year of the old "K" last winter. She was struggling in school and it was mostly about her maturity level. The teacher would ask her to do something requiring three steps or more and she would get this glazed look on her face and turn to her classmate and begin to converse about the latest "Littlest Pet Shop" Pet she bought over the weekend. After the winter conference it became clear that she may need another year of kindergarten. Our teacher, though very nice, was a first year lady. She was fresh out of Student teaching and younger then me! (Just a side note, that I think that is crazy, but oh well.) Some people have made comments to me like; it was the teachers fault, what about no child left behind, this WILL ruin her life, she will know that she is a failure, what about all her little friends, or (my favorite) ARE YOU SURE YOU ARE MAKING THE RIGHT DECISION?? What do you think people, of course I'm not sure! I'm blogging about it for goodness sake! Well here is my prayer for the day and it is a pretty simple one for such a complicated issue.
Dear God, please help Hali have a Great first day of school. Amen

Well all went great yesterday with our Home inspection. We are buying a very well built home. When I walked in I was a little bit nervous because I had only looked at the house once. I was afraid that I wouldn't like it as much as I thought I did the first time. I was wrong. I loved it more now then ever. God is working everything out, like He always does!

So how many people do you know what think to themselves . . . instead of living in this big fancy house w/ 3000 plus square feet and all beautiful curb appeal. . . lets not. How much is a fancy house worth? To many Americans it is something they work really hard to achieve. Jeff and I decided to build our big fancy house three and a half years ago. Neither of us were Christians and we thought that this was just something that everyone did. You know the "American dream" Get married have kids, build the largest house you can possibly afford, buy a couple of new cars, a pool, a dog, a big mortgage. . . We were just going along with the "spend all the money you can so that you are happy" mantra.
Well two years ago something happen to Jeff and me. We became Christians. All of a sudden things seemed different. The things we had valued so much before seemed kinda silly. We really started to notice that the most important things were our faith and our family. The shell they were in was something that really was not all that special.
We started thinking about "Down sizing" about a year ago. We thought about our house mostly. We love it it is our "baby" we built it and picked out everything in ever room. I started thinking how we could be just as happy in something smaller, more modest, with less square feet and less of a payment. I started talking to Jeff about it in March. We started praying about it, and started to feel like this was really something God wanted us to do. SO in June we listed our house. We really had no idea if we could even sell in this horrible market, and in a new subdivision where you can just build your own house down the street for less then what you could buy ours. We told God that if this was really his will that it was all up to him to find the people for our house and a new house for us. Well he found them. Pretty quickly too, we had our house for sale for 4oish days or so. Now we will see if this house we have picked out will be it for us probably for a LONG time. (We HATE moving.) And guess what we get a pool! Please pray that God will keep working out the details for us, and that we will be patent with his timing. We will miss our home, but home is where your family lives I know that is really cheesy but it's true.

Get back into the blog of things. . .

Hey everyone who still comes here to check this, I am so sorry for the crazy long time of no posting. I thought I would at least post some pictures of the kids so you can know what they look like now. Life is so crazy lately. We are moving on September 6th. I will follow with more up dates and some pictures of the new house. Hope all of you are well!

My baby is 6!! man time flys!
Ethan is 3! What a big boy!

Sophia is 11months!

March was a very fun month some her are some Highlights:

Ethan and the great "Poop-fest"!. . . I need not explain.

Sophia continued to get huge she weighed in at 18 pounds 9 ounces at her 6 month appointment. She is so sweet and chubby! She LOVES Hali. If Hali is in the room she will not even eat, she just turns and giggles at Hali.

I feel like it has been WAY too long since I last posted something so here is what has been going on at the Iliff house. . .
In February after valentines day. . .
Hali had a piece of art work at "The Box Factory" for a week. This was a real big deal to me because I think that she is such a great little artist and there were only 5 pieces from the kindergarten classes at Roosevelt that were displayed there.

The picture called "Cave Painting" was suppose to be like those old pictures on the wall of caves. Yeah! HALI!!!

Sophia got a taste of something over then milk, these are some of the first pix she has gotten MUCH better now doesn't really even need a bib. . .

Ethan kept up with his boy thing of being naughty and getting time outs. . .

Here he has done his "Makeup" like "Moms" With Markers!! Very cute little naughty boy.
Stay tuned for updates from March and April!

Well last year I got really ambitious. It was because of a friend of mine who loves to stamp. I recently read on her blog that she stamped all of her kids cards this year too. Well I was a little lazy this year and I didn't have all of her "Valentine" stamps to borrow because she moved away. So here are my kids doing theirs.

Hali, bless her heart, took about 2 hours to hand write ever name, her name and a heart, and picking the "perfect" sticker for each card. She would screw up a letter and have to start ALL over. She is very hard on herself. Luckily there was 36 cards and she only needed 21. When we picked out her Hello kitty cards Ethan was there and he HAD to have some of his own. Even though he is not in school he has to do everything that Hali does. He got some Cars cards and adorably scribbled on each of them the whole time Hali was writing hers. I swear the only time he has any attention span is when he is trying to be just like his big sister. Anyway they were very cute here are some pictures. Happy Valentines Day to all of you!

Well I bet you may wonder why it has been so long since I have updated this thing. Well it is simple really and to sum it up with two words: RSV and Roto-Virus. Notice I colored the last word brown. I did this to illustrate what the word really represents. Here is a quick update if you are unclear of what both of these illnesses are.

RSV: This is a virus that presents itself as a very runny nose & cough. The mucus is much more sticky then most other common colds and most people will get this and never know it. I just takes a little longer to get over so it may turn into other things. The only people who seem to get very sick with this are baby's under one year old, or kids who have had it before (when they were baby's). They cough almost uncontrollably, to the point that their hands and feet or lips may even turn blue. They have a "wheeze" when they breath out. Their breath seems to be very labored and quick. You can also see their ribs raise and their tummy's suck in with every breath. It is a pretty scary thing. For more info on this check out this link: http://www.healthline.com/search?q1=rsv&utm_source=serp2&utm_medium=google&utm_campaign=serp&utm_term=rsv

Roto-Virus: This is another fun one. Lets just call it a very stinky long lasting version of the stomach flu. Again adults and older kids may get it and though up once, then with some smelly diarrhea for a day or so, then be fine. Younger (over one and under three) or smaller kids seem to get this one pretty bad. I have read that it can last 1-10 days "on the average". This not as scary as RSV but DEFINITELY more messy. For more info on this check out this link: http://babyparenting.about.com:80/cs/healthissues/f/rotovirus.htm
Also I though I would mention how I clean up the ""messys"", because most people I know do not know about this product and it works REALLY GREAT. It is called Simple Solution. You can find it at Pet food stores. There are no other Carpet cleaning products that I think work as well. Here is a link about it: http://www.bramton.com/products_us/stain&odor.htm

Well now Sophia had RSV and Ethan has Roto-virus. Sophia was in the hospital for 3 days last week. They had her hanging out in an oxygen tent. I stayed with her the whole time, it was very boring, but I got to take a lot of naps.
We got home from the hospital last week Friday and that was when Ethan first vomited. He was really bad until Monday, when he woke up and "wanted waffles!" Well He had a huge breakfast and a smallish lunch but by dinner he was cranky tired and didn't want to eat. He went to bed and an hour later we had to change the sheets and the covers and the pillows and even the stuffed animals. It has been almost exactly that way all week. Except last night when he tried to make it to the bathroom. I joked with Jeff "At least we don't have to change his bed!" Jeff didn't think it was that funny. Neither did I.
So we will be calling the carpet cleaner with our income tax refund, and paying Hospital and Doctor bills.
Oh Yeah you might have heard on the news about "The Blizzard of 2007". It is all true two feet of snow sit on the ground everywhere that it hasn't drifted into four feet.
Well happy winter Everyone!

Ethan's "big boy pants". "Look at my muscles!"

Ethan and Sophia. Ethan loves to play with her "bug mat".

OK so we got our new camera FINALLY. We love it, and now we can

put recent pictures of the kids up again. So here are some of the latest.

So sweet, So cute, SOPHIA ... Hali is so smart she writes really well.

Heidi's been playing with Photoshop.

SNOW!!! It is about time! The kids love it, but it has been too cold so far to build a snow man.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Years. We did! Now if only we could all get over these terrible colds. I just took Sophia to the Doctor yesterday because she was just screaming and crying all night and day. He thinks she has a viral flu. Anyway, they weighed her and she was 14 pounds and 6 ounces!! She might be sick but she is defiantly "feeding the fever" if you know what I mean. I hope to post some recent pictures soon, when we get a new camera. It sucks when things just disappear especially when they are so important for preserving memory's. Oh well.