Merry Christmas!!!!

Team Murphy wishes you all a very Merry Christmas!!!

Holy Holy Holy

Holy, holy, holy who was and is and is to come!

I was frustrated and burdened tonight and didn't know what to do, so I worshiped God and prayed to Him and asked for His clarity. My time with Him was so wonderful and life giving. I don't know what your days presently hold, but I want you to know of the One who would love to hold you through it all.

God sent His one and only Son into the world that we might receive eternal life. Jesus was born in a stable and came as the light into a dark world. If your world is heavy, or dark, or confusing, or good but you'd like it to be great... I pray for you. I pray that you would give your life to Jesus the One who lived and died that you might have an abundant life. Your road will not always be easier but I promise it will be fuller, richer, deeper than you could ever imagine. God is magnificent and beautiful, wonderful and worthy of praise. May you encounter the God who made you, who knows you, who loves and adores you. May you surrender your moments, your plans to Him. He promises to do exceedingly above and beyond what you could imagine. His ways are perfect and His burden is light. He is the hope I need and Jesus is the answer to any and every problem I face. May you too experience God in a new way in this Christmas season and throughout the New Year!

Love you! Kirstin

Anderson/Murphy/Rusch Christmas

We have the privilege each year to celebrate Christmas with both sides of our families on separate weekends. So this past weekend was our time with my family. Here we are during a game of frisbee golf. :)
My parents and the boys decorated for our weekend in November and they did an adorable job...it was warm, cozy and everything Christmas! Both of my littles are in 2 of their favorite presents above...Caeden Star Wars pjs and Caleb, buzz lightyear. Infinity and beyond is heard far and near when suited. :)
Too cute for words!
Oh the excitement and joys of giving and receiving gifts!! And in the bottom corner you can see the manger scene, the greatest gift of all! Thank you mom and dad for raising us to appreciate our Savior and for being selfless in numerous ways, we are grateful for our time together!

O come, O come Emmanuel

I listened from the other room as Caeden played with these sweet toys and spoke out loud to himself, the story of our Savior Jesus being born. When I finally came in this is how he had arranged them. I could have cried at the sight. What a wonderful picture to start out this Christmas season... eyes turned to behold the beauty of the One who came to save us and love us and give us an abundant life! Light of the World....may your light so shine through us this Christmas and always that others would be drawn to you just as they were at your birth.

Happy Birthday to me!

I was so blessed to celebrate my day with so many special people in my life! My best friend (Since Jr. High) Breanne came into town with her 4 kiddos from Utah and her sweet parents and all joined us for my Birthday dinner at my mom and dad's. :)
My boys made me feel special all day long singing happy birthday and saying it all the time. We started out at Denny's and then went to church, naps and mom and dad's. It was a wonderful day! Thanks to all my friends and family that sent texts, emails and phone calls to add in the days "specialness." I sure am grateful for the last 32 years and consider myself blessed!

Thank you mom and dad!!

My parents are wonderful! They are wonderful for many different reasons, and one of them is for their great ideas! My birthday is tomorrow and they were heading up to Show Low for 2 days before (this Th to Sat) and they offered to take the boys so that I could have two days to do as I wished. Wow, what a gift! Thursday night Jay and I were able to have a quiet dinner together, and go shopping, talk a ton and really enjoy some time just he and I. Friday I was able to do a few chores and go shopping for 4 hours by myself. I rested and read and painted my nails, it was awesome! Then last night 2 of our amazing couple friends from church joined us for dinner at PF Changs and games at our house.

Christy, Lisa and I during games. The six of us played Loaded questions and all cracked each other up til midnight, oh my goodness I can't remember the last time I was up that late playing games... so fun!
Yeah for free chocolate dessert on the "Chang er"
Our clan... Nathan, Christy, Kirstin, Jay, Dan and Lisa. We are all quickly becoming each others best buds.... and our kids all love hanging out too (when we include them. :) God, all six of us consider ourselves so blessed by the friendships you have brought together, thank you!

Jedi Training

One of the greatest joys as a parent is watching your children enjoy life. As you know Caeden is a Star Wars fanatic. At Disneyland they had a show called Jedi training and they choose people from the audience to participate. Caeden got chosen. They robed him, taught him how to use his light saber to fight Darth Vader and then DV came up out of the floor with smoke and storm troopers and he got to "fight" him. :) Here is a little clip.... enjoy!

Disney

Yeah Splash Mountain!! Caeden really enjoyed that he could go on so many of the "big people" rides. We hit all the favorites during the day and so enjoyed our day together!!
We didn't know how Caleb would do with the characters, but luckily he loved everyone of them. He also was a huge trooper during the day, he only took a 45 minute nap and was smiles all day long.

Pooh kissed mom right before this picture, it was so cute. Caeden took pictures all day at Disneyland with his "own" camera, and we have all enjoyed looking at things from his perspective during the day. This was one of his shots where we ate lunch. Look below for a video of one of his favorite parts of the day.

Great Vacation!!!!

We just spent 4 wonderful days in New Port Beach, California for my mom's birthday (and Caeden's too). I so love that my oldest son is a lover of the ocean like I am. We were blessed with amazing weather on Thursday Nov 4th and mom, C and I all swam in the ocean. :)
The 4 of us enjoyed a Sunday morning breakfast at Ruby's at the end of the pier which was fabulous!
Here's the whole family at our beach house. We had a wonderful time playing games, eating, relaxing, watching football, swimming in the ocean, playing in the sand and of course taking lots of pictures to document almost every moment. We gathered 4 cameras at the end of 4 days and we had 290 pictures, can we say crazy?
My babe and I on the patio after a 13 hour adventure on Friday at Disneyland. It was a blast, and I will blog about that at another sitting. :)

Caeden's officially 5!

He had been looking forward to this day for months and as you can see the fact it arrived put a smile on his face! What an artistic cake too huh? :)
Here we are the am of his 5th birthday with his 5 balloons. :) It was an extra exciting morning too because he lost his first tooth the night before while eating a burrito at dinner. So we have a new grin for age 5 too! He really is growing up!
This sweet monkey was blessed with parties this year! Here we are at the Murphy family party, and once all the toys had been opened all 6 Murphy men had a toy in hand and were all trying them out, it was quite cute!
This was a little friend party Jay and I hosted in our backyard. We pretty much let Caeden choose what happened and it involved lots of eating, playing star wars and duck duck goose.

Well Caeden, we sure love you! You are surrounded by so many family members and friends that think you are super special! We have loved these first 5 years and are so excited that we will share in your days to come.

Happy October from our home to yours

Too cute for words!
Fishing in the street after a huge rain. :)
Our families first "punkin" patch experience in Show Low.
Daddy can get the cutest little laugh out of our youngest.

Fun with Sassy

My aunt Sassy is in town from Australia and we have been enjoying our time with her! We got to spend a few days showing her Show Low and experiencing real fall weather. :)
Brother and Sister. :)
Happy Birthday cuddles for Caeden. This is the first of 4 parties this week for our bud. :)
Kels, Sassy and I on her first night back "home," at K and J's new house. Yeah for family times!

10-10-10

10-10-10.... what a fun day yesterday was. I woke up and just felt excited by it, I am sure there are things that it probably stood for but for me I just liked the look of it. :) However, it ended up being a significant day for me when all was said and done.

I struggle with letting go of control in my life. :) The God who made me deserves all of me and sometimes I am able to do that better than others. The other days I really have a plan, an idea, something I want to see work out and it is almost as though I beg and plead with the Lord for my way to work.

Yesterday, Jay was on call for work AND he was supposed to lead worship for our 9 am and 11 am services at church. Well what do you know? He got called at 8:30am and had to leave church to go to a hospital about 45 minutes away to pick up things necessary for a surgery at another hospital. Now this is something that would normally stress me out but yesterday I was able to thank God for taking care of everything necessary. Our brother in law Nick was able to move off the electric guitar and lead the 9 am worship and Jay made it back to the 11 am service. It all flowed beautifully and God you get the praise.

Then I attended the 2nd service and really felt strongly that I should go tell one of our pastors that I felt the Holy Spirit guiding our congregation to pray for another pastor of ours that was home sick. I was able to let go of the part that was not wanting to come across bossy and I just followed God's voice and our congregation prayed and I got report today that our Pastor's fever broke last night and he is feeling a lot better today. Again, Lord we give you praise!!

Jay and I had a few moments of quiet conversation yesterday while the boys napped and as we talked about life I realized I was being allowed to let go of other areas of control in my life too. It really makes me wonder why I ever want to "be in charge" when the Lord's ways are so good and so perfect!!

So, 10-10-10 became a significant day for me and I am feeling a new freedom in it. I release all my plans and purposes to you Lord and I ask that you would help still me, to hear your voice and follow your plans all the days of my life. AMEN!

Precious Moments

We took our friends the Bentley's and the Riccio's up to Grandma and Grandpa's cottage this week. Christy and Judah rode with us and Caleb sure enjoyed having his buddy "Udah" by him.

Sweet Arianna having fun in the hammock!
5 children at one time.... that is the most little one's this Show Low house has seen, and the house is still in great shape and they all had fun. :)
We all enjoyed the cooler weather and did the usual golf cart rides, walks, playing with sticks and rocks and eating lots of food. Uncle Dutch and Aunt Jillers... if you notice Caeden is holding up a peace sign that he learned from your Korea pics and I think the even cuter part is Arianna trying to do it with her fingers too. :)

All in all it was great.... there were moments of craziness (especially during the 3 hour car drives) but lots of laughs and fun too! My FAVORITE time was Thursday night. Lisa, Christy and I got all 5 children asleep and were able to sit on the back patio cuddled up with blankets talking about life and praying for each other. It was so fun, we stayed up til 12:30. Thank you God for bringing more amazing girlfriends into my life. I feel so very blessed!!

Some of you may be wondering what the dads were doing during all of this... well, Jay, Nathan, and Dan were enjoying man time with out wives or children and played video games til the wee hours of the morning multiple nights and still managed to get up for work. God had a great idea when He created friendships! We are so happy for our Living Streams family!

Party, Party!

Our friend Ella just celebrated her 4th birthday! We first met her when she was 3 months old, it is amazing how quickly time flies! Ella, may you continue to grow in God's grace and love. Be blessed this year my dear!
From L to R... Ella, Nicole, Jonah, Caeden, Kirstin, Caleb, Bradley, Jenn and Lauren. Nicole, Jenn and I went thru Education at ASU together. Hard to believe we have been friends for 12 years and we sure have grown our gatherings!!! It was so fun to watch all 6 kiddos play and enjoy each other, we actually never had one problem, way to go kiddos!!
And yet another special birthday party for our dear friend Arianna! Happy Birthday sweetheart, may God fill you with His fullness and joy everyday of your life!

Caeden update

Caeden woke up this morning and came running to me in my bedroom saying, "mom, mom I have a wiggly tooth." It's official he is 4 years old and about to lose his first baby tooth. It really feels like he is "moving up in the world" with this. He had to finish his dental work today with the filling of 2 cavities and he was so excited to be able to talk to the dentist about his loose tooth. Who, when looking in his mouth said, "the other lower tooth is starting to wiggle as well." That news made him that much more excited about the whole thing. Yeah Caeden!!

A great story on prayer...

Our friends son's name is Judah and he is 3 months younger than Caleb. We were getting ready to meet up at the park last Friday with Judah when Caeden heard me talking to his mom about his allergy to a medication and that he had hives all over and swollen hands and it had been going on for days. Caeden said, "mom we need to pray for him." I said "that would be great" and so Caeden says, "God we just bless you and thank you and we want little Judah to be healed in Jesus Name Amen." Well wouldn't you know Sat morning Judah woke up totally healed!!! (earlier than the Dr.'s anticipated) Caeden was so excited!

So then he was talking to me about how his friend Luke's dog died and he was sad about it. Caeden said he should pray for the dog to come back to life. And I mentioned that the dog had been dead for a long time and that he wasn't going to come back to life. He responded with, "mom Jesus was dead behind the tomb and he came back to life, the dog can too." So with that said, I let my little prayer warrior pray to his heart's content. And I learned a lesson that day from my 4 year old son. Kirstin, pray about everything our God is big and can do anything!! (I better warn Luke's mom about Caeden's latest prayer.) :)

How cute are my parents?

My parents bought a canoe to enjoy on the lakes in Show Low. This weekend was it's first adventure out and although it is a little hard for them to load and unload off the Pilot they sure enjoyed their hour and a half canoe jaunt. Go mom and dad! Can't wait to try it out!

A little from this week...

The boys and their Papa Chris up north. My dad and I were just talking this past weekend about how much fun he has as a Grandpa and the boys sure love their time with him too. Family... what a fun idea God had!
My munchkins and I. I feel like the boys are in such awesome stages right now! 41/2 and 1 1/2, Caeden is so cute and fun and creative and we enjoy doing school together. Caleb is starting to talk so much, yet they are baby words. He still has his baby chub but his personality is starting to develop into a little boy. Oh how yummy they both are!
Caeden started Karate last Friday and it was amazing! I have so many cute videos that I don't know how to get on here, sorry... but it is a great class. Caeden is our Mighty Warrior and so we want to encourage and equip him in that area. He learned so many "moves" and self discipline things last week we can't wait for another class tomorrow! Caleb thinks it's amazing to watch too, which is great!

RODEO

We went to Taylor, AZ on Saturday night to watch a Rodeo with my parents. It was so fun! It made a huge impression on Caleb as he has talked about the "eee hee's" (his name for horse is the sound they make) and "broke" and "man" and "moo's" for the last few days. He was obviously very concerned with the things that took place. We have been reassuring him over and over that all the animals and people are ok. Kids of all ages were at this Rodeo but we have a very sweet and sensitive little boy, we love his sincere heart!!!
Here are some cowboys tying up a cow during the ranch rodeo festivities. We also saw real bronco riding, it was scary and cool all at the same time.
Here is the clan. :) Caeden at one point said, "mom, look the black cow is on top of the brown cow and going like this...." he had the moves and the noises down, the cutest part is he had no idea they were getting their groove on. :) Jay wondered why none of us were videoing his story. :)

3 Caeden funnies

We were washing our produce after grocery shopping and Caeden said, "mom, look it's a veggie party!" :)

Tonight Caeden was not interested in what I cooked for dinner and kept asking if he could be done. We told him he needed to finish the rest of his food before he would be excused. So.... he asked if we could quit talking at the dinner table because we were distracting him. :) (nice try buddy.) And then during one of the many lul's in waiting for the food to disappear he asked if I could get him some of the "bug cream cheese" for the bites on his legs. :) Hilarious new verbage for anti itch cream. Oh my cute boy!

We are off to Show Low for the long weekend! Yeah for family, cool weather and daddy all to ourselves for a few days!

Caleb...18 months

My little man just had his year and a half check up. He is in the 62% (26.6 lbs) for weight and the 85%( 33.5 inches) for height. He checked out wonderfully with the Dr. yeah! He is talking more and more... here are some of our favorites lately.

We were going to the mall the other night and Jay said, "who is ready?" expecting Caeden or I to respond and little man came running down the kitchen, "I READY." so cute!

This morning he wanted to read a book and I was texting. He grabbed at my phone and said, "all done." :)

Caeden will bother him and he says "ow we" I change his diaper and he says "ow we" Jay takes his clothes off and he says "ow we" we try to redirect him at times and he says "ow we" as you can see this is one of his favorite phrases. :)

He and Caeden will race and he says, "GO" and then "I win," whether or not he actually wins.

He watches all sports programs on tv and says "GO GO GO, Yeah!" and claps for the teams.

He gets put in a time out and says "I ready" when he wants to be done.

You can ask him to put a toy away and he will say "Okay" in the cutest little voice.

When someone asks him a question he says "um hum" and shakes his little head as if carrying on a conversation.

The Dr. asked if he has 10 words or more and as you can see he has moved passed single words and is working toward phrases.

He is an energetic little guy. He continues to love to climb, laugh, throw a ball, hug all his little friends, worship the Lord with song, clapping and raising his hands and he still loves to scream when he doesn't get his way. :)

It has been a joy to watch the development of our little Caleb. This is such a fun stage and we are excited to see more and more personality develop as he grows.

Prescott with the great grandparents

The boys are so blessed to have great grandparents alive and well. We got to go visit Papa Joe Joe and Grandma Shirley at their summer place in Prescott. Aren't these 3 cute?
Caeden reading Grandma a story... where is green sheep?
The clan this morning at the park.
Relaxation... in beautiful weather watching the trees rustle overhead. We played UNO, ate lots of food, took naps and enjoyed our grandparents. Thanks for the invite up and the great time!