These Sweet Moments

Well, things are finally slowling down after the holidays and with that I am taking more time to appreciate the girls and all the sweet and funny things they say and do. Like the song says "time falls away", and I wish that I had a photographic memory so I can remember it all before I forget it. Will I remember how small their piggies are right now or how high their sweet voices are or what it feels like to be wrapped in such small little arms? I try to to write it all down, but time slips away and that moment is forgotten. Today was a challenge with Natty - she was her usual naughty self - some call it busy, but it's just a nice way of saying the same thing. I feel bad giving her that label, but she is truely the most challenging child I've ever delt with. Her favorite thing to do is sit in my lap and suck her thumb, but life is busy and so she does the other favorite thing she does best - hang on the fridge or cabinets crying that she needs "cheese" or "canny". When she inevitablly doesn't get what she wants, she throws her temper tantrums, which come by the dozens these days. She learned to say "no" and "mine" this past week and they are my least favorite words coming from a toddler's mouth, BUT in the taking of my time appreciating her tonight I got to watch her swim in the tub and climb into her bed all by herself and sing along with me for the first time as I sang Adel Vise to her. It was one of the sweetest moments I've had with her and it melted my angry heart. When we were done she clapped and folded her hands to say her prayers and giggled when I prayed for her to not be naughty tomorrow - not a coinsidence:) She said Amen all by herself and I thought what a cool little person she's becoming. Aaron is gone tonight, so Bella and I are going to have movie night. She is waiting for me so patiently. Her teacher's brother is in the hospital tonight with spinal meningitus and is unconscious. They have decided to let him go and tomorrow will be his first day with Jesus. All their kids and family will be coming in from out of town. If you could pray for that family. I can't imagine what they must be going through right now and I know that they could use all the prayers they can get. God bless!

Our Trip

We are finally home from our trip and I have been trying hard to figure out how to describe a trip of a lifetime. I just don't even know where to start. I feel blessed that the army gave back to us, after I feel like it's taken so much time from our family. I thank God for that bonus and my wonderful friend Shannon for mothering my children for me while I was gone. No one could have done a better job. Bella is still talking about all the wonderful things they did together. It warms my heart to know that they were so happy. Our favorite place in Australia was Cairns - that's the city that the Great Barrier Reef is off of. It's really the whole area around it that was amazing. There were rain forests and parks and waterfalls galore. We just couldn't get enough. My favorite day of the whole trip was snorkeling in the reef. I felt a little bad that Aaron couldn't go scuba diving, since he is licensed and it would have been the best place in the world for it, but he stuck with me and did not have a pleasant time. For some reason he got stung by five jelly fish, and bit by not only a parrot fish, but a barracuda as well -it was a small one. He was miserable, but I was in awe! The neon fish and reef were just amazing. I don't even know how to describe it. I wanted to stay there forever. It was like another world. I got to hold Koalas at the zoo in Cairns too, which was my second favorite thing about the trip. They are so sweet and they smell like eucalyptus - go figure:) That was always a dream of mine from as long as I can remember. We thought that the outback was amazing as well, but it was just so different. It was so hot and dry. The red rock formations there were very interesting and the life of the Aboriginal people was fascinating. Sydney was just beautiful. It felt like they took England and plonked it right down in the middle of the Caribbean. The buildings were cool and the foliage was tropical. The weather was perfect there - spring time with flowers blooming every where. We visited the big aquarium and took a tour of the town. We went to the famous markets and had a lot of fish and chips. We didn't enjoy Melbourne as much, but we spent most of our time on the Great Ocean Road tour that showed us all these cool rock formations in the ocean. We stopped at lots of parks along the way and saw the beach where they filmed that surf movie with Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze - Point Break. I got some cool shells from that beach shhhhhh;) It was the most beautiful part of the ocean I've ever seen besides the reef that is. We saw wild Koalas sleeping and trees. Wow! I feel so blessed to have gotten to experience that! Our next stop was New Zealand and that was a trip with-in itself. It was only a three hour flight and a couple more time changes. We started in Christchurch, but we weren't there that long. It was a cute little town with a lot of galleries and artists. It felt a little like Ireland did. We took a boat ride down the river like in Italy. When we got to Queenstown, it had just stopped raining and we were greeted by the most beautiful rainbow I've ever seen - it was enormous! We went on lots of tours there and got to see the places where they filmed much of the Lord of The Rings films. We got to take lots of trips up the mountains by way of the gondola. The view from that, was extraordinary. We could see across the lake to the mountains. Wow again! We ended the trip by paragliding off the top of Bob's peak. Aaron just had to do it and I'm usually up for anything, but the idea of crashing and orphaning my girls didn't sound appealing. OK, so who was the one that crashed on their first attempt off the cliff? Oh yeah - that would be me! APPARENTLY our chute only half-way filled with wind when we went running off the edge of the mountain. HMMMMMMMMMMMMMmmmm.I couldn't understand my Aussi tandem jump coach. Their accents are so thick:0 "Negative, negative". Iyiyiyi I hurt my arm, but it was OK. I saw my life flash before my eyes as I was sliding down and clinging to every last pebble and blade of grass. (Sigh) My legs were shaking when we did our final run off the other side. Can you imagine? All of our 13 flights connected great and we only had one long delay, which ended up allowing us to feed wild wallabies in Alice Springs, so all worked out in the end and I came home feeling so relaxed. Happy healthy kids and we survived jet-lag. Thank you God!

Our 10Th Anniversary Trip

Hey all! We are just about ready for our trip now and I wanted to leave you with our itineraries in case we crash on one of the 12 or 13 flights we will have in store for us. OK we are flying from Chicago to St. Louis to LA to Sydney to Cairns (the great barriar reef) we are there for three days and then to Ayers Rock and Alice Springs for a day each and then back to Sydney for three days to Melbourne for two and then we fly to New Zealand and we will be in Christchurch, Queenstown, some smaller towns and Aukland for a total of five days. We leave Thursday for our trip, but we may be going to Chicago on Wednesday night depending on the weather. In case we don't see any of you before the trip - have a happy Thanksgiving! We love you all!

The Roath Family Christmas Exchange List

Names: Who you buy for:
Vickie- Kelly wants mixing bowls
Mike- Emily
Carrie- Cate
Lee- Chris
TJ- Vickie wants candles from Yankee candles Orange/mango or Christmas
scents or Bath and Body Works gift card
Meghan- Mike wants either a gift card to Home Depot or Texas Roadhouse
Jeff- Carrie wants a cardigan sweater size small any color
Kelly- Lee wants i tunes gift card or Frank LLoyd Wright calendar (@ the
mall)
Rick- John
Lynn- Jeff didn't request anything, but like video games and movies (Best
Buy Maybe?)
Chris- Lynn wants gift card to Sephora, Borders or fresh scented candles
Cate- Rick wants a gift card to Outback, Red Lobster or size M hoodie
Emily- Meghan Wants a gift card to Old Navy or Borders
John- TJ wants a gift gird to Old Navy or Borders

OK guys - if you haven't gotten back to me by now, I had to get this posted, so I can go on my trip and I won't be back until the middle of December. If John isn't going to be at Christmas then just let Mike or Carrie know and we'll adjust the draw. I won't see many of you for Christmas, so have a merry one and eat lots of turkey for me - love you guys!

My Craft Shows

Hey all - I wrote about my craft show and about my business on my Whimsical Creations blog, so if you want, you can click on my blog to the left of this post to find out how I did. It's been a while since I updated on the family, so here goes. Natalie just cut her 9Th tooth yesterday and 10Th tooth today, which to some may seem like no big deal, but for her it's huge! Most toddlers have their full set of 16 closer to 13 or 14 months, but Natalie is almost 19 months and she eats more than any child her age and can barely chew her food! We joked that for Halloween she was our Jack-O-Lantern. We are so happy for her. She is speaking small sentences now, but you really have to know her to understand her. It's cute though to finally have her communicating with us. I just wish she would stop her whining! This weekend she finally started watching TV. Bella at one year-old would sit and watch almost an entire episode of Sesame Street, but Natty just realized the TV does more than turn on and off and it was cute to witness. Bella was watching cartoons and Nat walked past the TV and then stopped, sat down, then layed down and put her hands behind her head and watched the rest of the show. I couldn't believe my eyes. This week we finally had to put a lock on the pantry doors. All day long she cries because she is hungry and if I don't feed her every half hour or sooner, she brings me cans and boxes from the pantry to let me know what she wants. I was getting so frustrated. I hate locks on the cabinets, but it had to be done. The other cute thing that happened in the last month was Natalie wanting to hold hands with Bella when we pick her up from pre-school. It brought tears to my eyes. Bella has been getting ready for her Christmas pageant at school and she has a speaking part that she's practicing and I can't wait to see it. She started Awana this fall as well and she is now in the cubbies class. It focuses on the kids learning Bible verses and she gets patches on her vest if she learns enough verses. She got three already and I'm really surprised at her memory. She retains the ones she has already learned and gets ready for new ones. I was never great at memorizing, so I'm pretty proud of her! She still loves school and her best friend Isabelle and she'll be in her first ballet class this winter. She talks about that a lot. We leave for our Australia trip in one week and I'm already worried that I'm going to miss the girls too much to enjoy myself. Please pray for our safety and for the the girls. Please pray for my friend Shannon who will be caring for the girls - she'll need it - they are so busy!

Halloween 2008

Hello to all the friends and family who tune in to read about our crazy family! We had a great Halloween at the combs household. Bella had her Fall Harvest party at school on Friday and I helped out with that. The kids were so cute. Thanks Shannon for watching Natalie Jane for me, so I could attend. Bella was so excited that she couldn't sleep during nap time, but she was still in a good mood for trick - or - treating. Natty on the other hand was a bear. She didn't want to pose for pictures in her costume and she wanted me to hold her the whole night. She did pretty good when we walked around the neighborhood. Thanks Aunti Shannon for coming with us - you made Bella's night. She was so proud to have you there. Both girls had so much candy it was falling out of their buckets! We walked for almost two hours. I did get to hand out candy for 10 minutes or so and it was nice to actually be in a neighborhood this year. I was pretty happy about that. This past weekend I did my first craft show and made out pretty well. This Saturday is the next one, so please pray that it goes even better than the last one. I'm even getting orders off of my blog store, so thank you for all who have been shopping - I really appreciate it. We leave for our trip in 18 days. Please pray that I'm not too anxious about flying for so long. I'm not worried about the sitting for 18 hours, but I am worried about crashing to my death. I don't want to orphan me sweet girls. I don't usually worry like this, but I would like to actually look forward to my 10 year anniversary without anxiety.

My stained glass blog store is now open!

Hey friends and family - I finally have my blog store open and running. I have projects posted that are up for sale and I can also customize those pieces to your liking in terms of color and size. I will be at Holy Cross Lutheran Church for the next craft fair on Nov. 8 SAT from 9-5. I would love it, if you can post this blog site on your family blogs, so others might take a look as well. I am getting orders by word of mouth, which helps tremendously. I'm trying to make this more of a career and hope that it will work out accordingly. Thanks for all your support - take a look, even if it's only for fun:)