You can't steal MY joy....

So, I'm reading this book by Joyce Meyer titled, 'Seven Things that steal your joy.' I was intrigued by the title so I picked it up at the library last week. I had just begun the introduction and I read this:

'Satan is an expert at stealing from us, but his favorite target is not our material possessions; it is our joy. He is always out to steal our joy because he knows if we lose our joy, we lose our strength, and that gives him a powerful advantage over us. So our joy is his main concern. He wants to bring discouraging things to our lives and make us believe that all life consists of is disappointments.
We don't have to let the devil take our joy away from us. No matter what is going on in our lives, we need to stay as happy as we can because then we will have the strength to face whatever comes our way.
One way we can stay happy is not making a big deal out of little things that we should just let go. For example, maybe somebody did hurt our feelings, but getting angry will steal our joy; the answer is to get over it quickly. "But what they did wasn't right," you may say. We have all done something that wasn't right at some time in our life. When we did that, what did we need? We needed a little mercy. What did we want the person we offended to do for us? We wanted them to give us a break. That means we need to sow what we want to reap.'

Hmmmmmmmm.........

'Not only do we need to give other people a break, but we need to give ourselves a break. We need to learn not to be so hard on others or ourselves. Why? Because harshness and unforgiveness rob us of joy.'

Is this speaking to you? It's screaming at me...

Song of the day!

Getting back on track

Have you ever gotten knocked off track of your daily routine(s)? How long has it taken you to get your groove back? Man alive...you'd think something majorly catastrophic has happened around here! I guess I can and should laugh...I can't even keep up with myself!

Spring has sprung around here and there's lots of baby buds on the trees. We went out looking for cattails and pussy willows this weekend...not quite yet. Hubby looked for all the trampoline parts in the garage but that was a no-go as well. There's one load of outside stuff still in AR so I guess that's where the missing parts must be. The bikes are there, our grill is there, our chicken coop and lots more stuff we're starting to miss. Hopefully we can get it soon...

The kids are having a tough time staying focused on school. Having nice weather outside makes it hard to concentrate. We used to take school outside on the trampoline when we were in AR....we're looking forward to that here! I had 3 of our 6 kiddos at the eye doctor today. One got new glasses, one will need glasses in the near future and one has 20/20 vision. Our next adventure (with 5 of the 6) will be the dentist. I already know we'll be starting 2 in braces very soon. Anyone care to donate towards a 'healthy smile' cause? :)

Praise God we've got Grandmas and Grandpas here to help and babysit. It's exhausting doing all this running to appointments. I can't imagine bringing everyone along. We'd be a sight!

My desktop is on it's last legs- I've been trying to download Easter pics of the kids for all you to peruse. I've been able to get them on there (I think), now if I can fight my way online and download them...I'm still using my pitiful netbook- the one that has the black-spider-web cracked screen. I can see about half of what I'm writing...

Did you all have a glorious Easter? We had fun and we were blessed to spend it with lots of family! Hopefully there will be pictures to follow very soon!