Update!!!

September October November update

Wow! Time has zipped by. My apologies for dropping the ball. I guess buying a new house will do that to you, and loosing a loved one (My Grandpa on my Dad's side....my first true love besides my dad) sigh, and starting a new business. I jumped on the Direct Sales band wagon and now sell Jamberry which you can check out here! ---> mollzmani.jamberry.com <---

That's all I have to say about that....well that's not true. I love the product and love sharing what I love so now I sell it. If you have no idea what I'm talking about I'll happily explain it all to you! Just send me an email :)

Back to the whole reason I'm posting OUR HOUSE!!!! Picture an adorable brick house with a huge picture window and a single car garage two doors down from the middle school and a block and 1/2 from an elementary school.  Other than after school traffic and school busses loving our street I love our new home. We bought our house from the original owner that had lived in the house for almost 50 years. Some things look original to the house! When we looked at the house for the first time it was literally like walking back in time. However, nothing was worn out. Except the plumbing but it's functional just not ideal. And that is a whole different topic. Since then we have done some updating. Marcelyn's room was the first major project that I headed up and did most of, Chris has done basically all the rest. Marcelyn now has a light blue room. It turned out a bit darker than I pictured it but it's a HUGE improvement to the mustard (or as I call it Winnie the Pooh) yellow. Who knew yellow would be so hard to cover up!!!??? Uuuhhhggg but I learned that the previous owner loved color. The room had been baby blue, olive green, and mustard yellow. Since then Chris has been winterizing our great outdoors and taming our forest. Most people have a wooden privacy fence. Well we do too it's just still alive and it's just extremely green. Some might call it evergreen. Our entire backyard is fenced with cedar trees. It's so tranquil and lovely back there....just don't be barefoot it's painful. I have mixed feelings about the trees but I do love them more since one of our youth group kids said we need to build a wardrobe in the alley, because our backyard is like Narnia and that would be the entrance. Gotta love creativity! 

This weekend we tackle part one of the kitchen remodel. Preparing for the new range oven. We knew when we bought the house that a kitchen remodel was inevitable since there wasn't a dishwasher and everything in the room predates our parents' childhood and just to fit our refrigerator we had to take out a cabinet. We knew something would need to be fixed sooner or later (we were thinking and hoping later) but about a month ago the wall oven died. And since it was old enough to be true vintage and antique, parts weren't readily available.... wall ovens aren't cheap nor are they the same size as they were in 1958 so we decided to go with a normal range cooktop. Well there's a cooktop ontop of a super handy cabinet, which will be dismantled today....well finished the cabinet has basically been take apart already. 

Thanks to my awesome handy man hubby. He truly is amazing. Step one is to get a functioning oven!! With a small cabinet next to it. I'm super excited. I think we may also paint the cabinets if we pick out a color.....but that will be a long weekend project. Like uhh maybe uhh Thanksgiving (to anyone reading this that would want to come help paint) weekend. We haven't decided on colors yet so it might be Christmas. I will be posting updates on Instagram and Facebook. I'm so excited. This is the first time I've ever gotten a brand new oven cooktop. My last one was an awesome score off of a local classified site. It was totally God because I needed something specific. This go around it was in the budget to go big. It's nothing bigger than normal it's just awesome and we got a pretty good deal on it. 

Oh and the coolest part about our new house is with the money/equity from our old house we had a nice down payment plus leftovers for renovations so all of our remodeling and updating is payed for with CASH!!! 

Well it's late and I'm on toddler duty all day (nothing out of the ordinary) plus keeping hubby safe and capturing what I can on camera. 

I'll sign out with a sweet picture of the Marcemallow. 

She has figured out she's now tall enough to climb up on our dinning room chairs. In this picture she's doing her favorite activity watching for bunnies. Buhh as she says or raaaw. Her vocabulary is impressive. My favorite is when she calls me mommy it sounds like wowwy but I have a name now instead of her wining at me. She's growing up!!! 

August Update

Holy Moly! This year has been so incredibly full I'm blown away! This past month has bad tons packed into it as well.

First July 29th my Grandpa graduated into heaven.  It's been expected and dreaded since Grandma passed away a few years ago, so it wasn't sudden or thankfully, too soon.  We (all cousins and grandchildren) were able to say good bye and he died peacefully and quickly. I'm not ready to share in detail what happened, because it's still so raw and weird that he's actually gone.

Then August 1st we signed papers on our new house! Talk about an emotional roller coaster.... Backup a few weeks.... We were battling back and forth with realtors on our house trying to come to an agreement on a price and when we finally came to an agreement we were super excited. Days later I got the news that a former co-worker and a best friend of a close friend of mine had suddenly died of cancer.  She was young and had only been diagnosed a few weeks before. It was a huge blow! That week was a roller coaster of emotions. That was hard going through that, but it was nothing compared to what would happen in the coming weeks. We finalized the sale on our old house, Chris went on a missiontrip to Mexico City with the youth group.  I'll write more about that in another post all together (Maybe even have Chris write that post) and then we closed on our new house and moved. The original plan was to take all week to move room by room, but with the plans for Grandpa's funeral it didn't work out that way.  Monday was the day. We got keys for our house at 9am and by 9:00pm we were 90% moved in. We thought we had gotten everything, but as days went by we realized we forgot some stuff. Thankfully we sold our house to a good friend. The funniest was I completely forgot two drawers in our island.

Now to tell you about our new house!!! I'm so head over heals about this house. We knew we had found a fantastic house, but it really has become one of the nicest houses I've been in....but I may be a little bias. I'll try and give you a word tour....I haven't had much time to take very many pictures but checking out the hash tag #lofstromhouse on instagram will give you a little peek into where we are.
Front door: the front porch is a cute stone platform with three steps up to a white door that's the perfect amount of class...not to fancy that it's  pain to keep clean, but new and nice enough that it doesn't tell the age of the house. The first room you come into is a living room which is connected to the dinning room. Both rooms have amazingly HUGE picture windows. The best part is they have been replaced recently so they don't leak as much as the original windows would.  The living room has oak hardwood floors. Mom and Dad got a us a nice swatch of carpet as an area rug for now. It was super hard covering up the beautiful floor, but Marcelyn wasn't handling the hard floors all to well. She was tripping over the floor because her feet or socks would catch because the wood was actually more grippy with shoes or bare feet...either that or toys that she was used to playing with rough and tough would move out from under her when she was climbing on them and her head would hit the floor....needless to say she was not liking the floors. I hope I never forget the day we laid the carpet down. She was so giddy and goofy! To say that she LOVED the carpet was a huge understatement. I'm not sure I had ever seen her that goofy before. It was hilarious. I think it also was the fact that her four favorite people were all centered on her and she had all of our attention.
Bedrooms: As you walk towards the dinning room there is a small hallway that leads to the bedrooms and one bathroom. The first bedroom is ours and has lovely RED wallpaper. It has an elegant design on it, but it's most DEFINITELY 1959 awesome!  >_< lol next is bathroom number 1 and it's in need of help....but mostly just a facelift. All could be fixed with a little bit of cocking, tile adhesive and paint. The only part about the bathroom that blows our mind is the fact that there aren't any electrical plug-ins....NONE. Not in the hallway and none in the light in the bathroom....good thing I'm low maintenance >_*  lol!!! I look forward to redoing that bathroom. The best part of that room by far is the tub! It makes me super nervous when bathing Marcelyn, but it's so deep and long. We aren't 100% sure, but we think it's a cast-iron with a porcelain overlay.....there's a fancy term for that, but I'm drawing a blank. Next is Marcelyn's room. It was the first room that we painted...it's much better now. Before it was a lovely yellow color...HAH lovely....try mustard or as we called it WINNIE THE POOH yellow. >_< it was painful.... both bedrooms had nice sized windows. The best part is they are the kind that swing open hinging from the top instead of sliding up like normal windows. This makes them super nice because on cool rainy days I have have the windows open and all that comes in is nice cool air. (We slept with the windows open last night) Kitchen: back into the dinning room the kitchen is just to the right through a sliding pocket door. I thought I was going to hate having such a closed off kitchen, but it has quickly turned into my favorite room in the house. The kitchen is small, but highly functional. I miss my island, but I really do like my new kitchen.  We measured things before we took the leap and I wasn't looking any kitchen square footage at all. The only thing that I'm missing immensely is a pantry which we will build in over the stairs (hopefully soon) with access from the dinning room. The dinning room and kitchen are probably the most dated rooms in the house. The dinning room has lovely olives on the wall. It appears to be wallpaper, but at closer examination we think it could be shelf paper given the width of the strips of paper on the wall. It's growing on me....Picture this. Silver metallic background that is shiny and a few different shades of green olives all over the wall....ALL OVER THE WALL!!!! Thankfully it's only the one wall. I'd like to find a way to bring the wall into the new millennium, but I'm stumped. I like lime green, but usually in flowers or something pretty....not something that's THAT GREEEEEN. O_O
Basement! YES! WE HAVE A BASEMENT!! But before going into the basement you must take a quick peek into our ATTACHED garage :) =D single car oversized garage complete with loft and work bench. Now downstairs. First door is the utility room/laundry room and extra storage access under the stairs. Then on the left is the 3rd bedroom with a huge closet. Next is a small living room with a kitchenette off to the side (it's currently Chris' office space) with a couple of walls the come in from the sides to separate the two spaces. The back down the hallway is bedroom number 4 and a nice bathroom with a shower. The basement had been fixed up quite a bit with new carpet and paint. We learned recently that the shower may not have been the best thought out....Chris found a window that had been covered up by the shower.

here are some pictures!!

Well the Marcemallow is up! I better get the rest of my day going! Thanks for reading. I look forward to sharing more of our adventures with you as we settle into our house more.
There's so much more to share, but I'll quit for now!

Blessings
The Lofstrom Family

Weathering Storm Season

WoW!! I'm curious to find out how serious of a storm we just had roll through. Our house had minimal damage thank God. We only lost a little skirting on the north west corner of our house. The picture shows that we lost a lot more, but it just nocked it out and we will put most of it back.





Chris said that we should have only lost 3-4 pieces. We are blessed considering what happened all around us. Our neighbors just to our south (G-6) lost a corner of their shingles and possibly more damage, but nothing visible from our front porch or yard. Our neighbor to the west had a tree limb (roughly 5"-8" in diameter) fall on his truck. Then down the street a big cotton wood tree lost a sizable amount of branches. The whole street was blocked off by them and now there is a rather large gaping hole through the canopy of the tree....so sad.
It has been a few years since we rode out a storm that intense from our house. I usually like to get out if we know the winds are going to be above 60mph. I've heard that we had 75mph or higher wind speeds this morning. It was an adventure for sure! The power was out for about 10-15 minutes and at one point it was raining so hard that I couldn't see the playground. For most of the storm it was raining so hard that I couldn't see the row of trees south of our neighborhood. The most humbling part of a powerful storm like this is watching huge trees get whipped around like grass....that's when you know it's one powerful storm. No hail though so that was nice. Just lots of wind. lots and lots and lots of wind. I think our garden will be okay too. Two of our tomato cages were blown  over, but it didn't look like the plants were broken off anywhere. Just a little smooshed.

In other news Marcelyn continues to grow! She's walking and running more confidently and loves using a step stool to climb up on the couch. 

However the funnies thing lately has been watching her play and pretend with some of my toys from my childhood. More specifically "little people" from Little Tike. 

She's been making them talk, but what makes me laugh is she tries to sit on the chairs. We figured out she sits on similar chairs in the church nursery so why not try sitting on these too?!! What a goob!

What personality and spunk she has. It's so much fun watching her grow up. Well it sounds like she's up so I better get after it. Have a lovely day!!

Thanks for reading!!

June update!

AHHHH So much excitement, so much crazy and so much change. 

I seriously didn't know life could change so much so quickly. I'm not even sure where to begin. Our anniversary came and went....I think I'll start with house details.

Chris and I have been looking at moving for a while now....technically since we bought our mobile home. It was our goal to buy our house to be able to to turn around and sell it as our down payment on a bigger house.  That plan and dream is finally become a reality and it's so stinking exciting I can't even put into words how excited I am. That is the single reason my update for June is so late this month...I've been waiting for it all to be somewhat concrete. Well today we signed a purchase agreement on our house and should close on it by next week. Tomorrow our new house gets inspected and we should close on it in about two-three weeks. wooohooooo!!!! I get so excited thinking about our new house.... It has 4 bedrooms and two bathrooms and is located blocks away from an elementary school and is across the street from the middle school. It's an adorable brick house in need of some good old fashioned TLC. It has only had one owner and she hasn't updated anything since it was built. She died not too long ago and left it to family and they have fixed a few things to make it more sellable. Such as painting the basement and putting down some carpet. The basement had those yucky lenorlium floors (that I hope aren't made from asbestos) and tacky white walls. But there are two good sized rooms down there plus a full bathroom, family room and laundry room. The only thing that needs immediate attention is the laundry room. It is currently unfinished and the door doesn't open up because the ducting passes just close enough that the door bumps it. All easily fixed....we hope. Then upstairs...I'll start from the front door, as you enter there is a nice sized living room and strait ahead is the dinning room. To the right of the dinning room is the kitchen. From the living room is a short hallway to the two bedrooms that are upstairs. And in the middle of the bathrooms is a very nice sized bathroom. Not a whole lot needs to be done upstairs except painting and redoing the kitchen. I will admit the kitchen kinda stresses me out a bit. Right now it's super small, but we are looking into what it would take to canteliever some cabinets into the garage and knock the wall between the dinningroom and kitchen out. The part that makes all of this super hard is the fact that the stairs are between the living room and the kitchen. So even if we were able to knock the wall out it wouldn't be completely open because the stairs are there. Many hours have gone into thinking how to fix this issue. On the bright side though we have about 800 more square feet of living space and a garage. The backyard also has a slab that we could easily build a yard shed on top of.  The biggest selling point for me through this whole process has been how much potential this house has. It literally is a blank slate and we can do whatever we want because EVERYTHING needs to be redone. 

Well I could talk about the house for a while. I'm super excited about it. That's not all that has been going on though! Marcelyn turns 18 months old in about a week and that's just insane! She's so tall and starting to get bossy. She scared me a bit this past week. It was actually a week ago today. We went to the pool Monday evening as part of a community event so we got in free. We were playing on one of the toys in the water and she wanted to move on to the next thing ,but instead of getting off near me she hopped off and started going the other direction so the toy was between me and her...she lost her balance and went under. Thankfully Dad (Chris) was right there to snatch her up. She wasn't fased at all. Thank God. She absolutely loved being at the pool. The next day she spiked a pretty high fever and was really grumpy. By Wednesday nothing had changed even with meds which is very unusual for her. She had a crying fit and was tugging at her ears so I thought maybe she had gotten an ear infection from the pool so we went to the Peditrician.  I was wrong she didn't have an ear infection she had somehow picked up a virus called Hand Foot and Mouth disease. Sounds much worse that it really is, and thankfully much worse than it actually was. She got over it a few days later and hasn't shown any signs in a few days. She had been grumpy for a few days before we went to the dr. But just thought it had to do with teething or her being the age she is. The weird part is she had also been scratching and pulling at her tongue. After learning that the virus was an itchy throught it all made sense.....The only part that really made me concerned was that I could possibly pass it on to someone else or that there wasn't anything that I could do to make her better. We just had to wait it out for the virus to run its course. 

The other eventful thing that has been a little alarming has been my Grandpa. He has been having problems with his breathing. He had surgery on something a while back and it took quite a bit out of him, but he's more comfortable.  There for a bit he had to be off blood thinners to help heal the incision.  Which was hard on his heart so they put him on different heart meds which was hard on his kidneys....but thankfully that's all past. He's been moved to the nursing home now instead of assisted living.  

Chris is doing well. He says work is eerily slow, and there's no real way of knowing when things will turn around. Gas and oil prices keep going down which is nice, but it's really hurting our community.... Thankfully we know that job isn't our source. Our God is Greater! Chris is also still the youth pastor and loves it. The youth group took a little break for the last bit of May and into June and just started back up last week. It's encouraging to see him so passionate about something. I'm getting to help out finally! I'm so blessed to have family close by. Marcelyn gets to go spend the evening with my brother and sister-in-law which right now are her favorite people. Next month Chris takes a trip with a couple of the kids in the youth group to Mexico City.  Since the house has been such a project we've kinda put that trip on the back burner. He leaves Jully 23rd and will be gone until the 30th.  Funny thing is I still don't know a whole lot of details because we've been so busy with selling our house. I have been on this trip before though so I have a pretty good idea as to what they will be doing. I'll leave the details of all of that for the July post!

Well I think that's all I have time for today! 

Don't forget to follow us on Instagram for picture updates!

@cmlofstrom #lofstromadventures 

And #babylofstrom for pictures on Marcelyn 

May update

May is going by rather fast! I have a few minutes so I thought I'd post SOMETHING at least. 

Marcelyn is growing up so fast. I probably say that in every post but seriously though. Check out this picture from March 

And here is one of her just this week 

Ok so maybe pictures don't capture what I'm talking about but there was a morning a little over a week ago where she woke up and it was like she grew 1/2 an inch in all directions. She has outgrown most of her 12m clothing some pants and t-shirts fit, but she's been in 18m onesies since before she was a year old.  Her vocabulary is ever expanding and perfecting. Although differentiating between drink (jeese) and please (sheese) is still a challenge (adorable but a challenge none the less) She LOVES to be outdoors, and bubbles are her latest delight. 

Mother's Day has come and gone. Marcelyn and Chris got me pretty flowers to put in my flower pots outside. Be sure and check out pictures of those on Instagram @mollz2 or @cmlofstrom 

We also planted a salsa garden. Chris posted about that on his Facebook page. 

Suzanne came to visit the weekend of Mother's Day and we all went down to see Fort Larned. 

They also came with Apple gear questions 

Which we happily answered. 

We had our first "tornado threat" of the season last weekend

We spend most of the evening close to a basement. (At my parents house) this is the only time of the year I hate living where we do. 

Tonight we finish up our last night of Kids Club until next fall and start gearing up for VBS at the end of June.  Chris and I will be part of the Leadership team again this year. I'll most likely head up crafts and Chris will most likely head up games.

I'm drawing a blank as to what else has happened this past month. Looking ahead though June is going to be great. First though my birthday is in a week and I'll be 28 (gasp she told us her age). June 11-12 Sharon Daugherty, from the Bible School and church Chris and attended while in Tulsa, will be here. I'm really looking forward to that and of corse our anniversary. It's hard to believe it will be 8 years already 🙈 

Well I'll just share these pictures. I absolutely love them but I'm out of time to write what stories go with them. 

Well I better run! There are lots of details to finish for tonight. Thanks for reading!!

April Update

Oh. My. Goodness.
This month has been full full full!!!
This past weekend we had the dedication for the church and open house. It's wonderful to say that our church building is FINALLY DONE!
I was in charge of making the slide show of all the construction pictures. It was so cool to see how we all came together as a body and captured the whole process rather well. I didn't ever get real good before pictures or fully complete pictures, but the process was still amazing and you could tell how bad things were before we started. Unfortunately the video is pretty long so I can't post it here, but I'll look into sharing it on youtube or facebook. That project is the main reason I'm so late in posting this month. I can't believe April is already more than 1/2 over! My birthday is almost a month away and I'll be 28 this year!

One of my favorite tulips from my garden.

Spring is so pretty here this year.
We finally got some substantial rain this past weekend and wow did we need it.

The view from the bridge

It's amazing to see the impact of something as simple as a few inches of rain. This past weekend was an answer to prayer. It calmly rained for days and most of it soaked right in.
This picture on the left is pretty mind boggling to think that just 24 hours before us being there where we stood was under water. I'm not sure how much but my guess was about 2ft or so. There were definite lines of water movement where we were standing and trash bags and debris in the trees to the right of what's show in the picture. Plus you can tell the steps across the way are wet and packed with mud.

Marcelyn is growing growing growing! She's almost 20lbs now. 

15 monthday picture <3 td="">

helping Daddy dig a hole for our new
pampas grass.

She absolutely loves being outside and can say several words. She understands most things that I tell her which is a lot of fun to watch. She surprises me every day with a new word yesterday there were about 3-4. Sadly I'm drawing a blank as to what they all were, but her favorites are "go" "stop it" and "phone" She says "please" and it sounds like jeesh or cheese which is absolutely adorable. If she does have to be inside she loves playing with her Minion ball that her Aunt Brandy gave her during our last visit to Tulsa. Today however her favorite activity was splashing in the water that we collected during all the rain this weekend.

If it was just a little bit warmer I would have let her play in it more, but I couldn't get past her freezing hands and runny nose. We went to the dr. Monday and I think we picked something up while we were there :(
Friday was her 15 month check up and they wanted to give her shots to her then. I knew that she normally runs a fever and is rather grumpy for a few days afterwards so I asked if we could wait until after our HUGE weekend....and boy am I glad I did. She still isn't back to herself. On top of 3 immunizations she also had to get her iron levels rechecked.....rough rough rough. I'm so thankful to have my wonderful husband. I'm also thankful to have a healthy baby girl. All went well and I'm glad to have it all over with. Below are picture I took earlier this month. It's hard to capture good pictures of the Marcemallow nowadays because she's SO BUSY! I love it though. More adventures are ahead for us. Marce and I signed up for my first HRC class. (hmmm how to explain HRC...Hays Rec Commission....) We go on Thursdays to the gym and play play play. The class is called Little Climbers and is for toddlers Marcelyn's age (9mon-18mon) range. I wasn't able to capture any pictures this last time because I was busy chasing Marcelyn from one end of the gym to the next, but I'll try and paint you a word picture. Imagine yourself in a full-size basketball court with stations of activities spread out. Two of the stations are soft shapes to climb on made out of the same matterials as gymnastic mats. Other stations include a ball pit, things with wheels (trikes, cars and push carts), small toys with wheels or that can be pulled by a string, and Marcelyn's favorite, beach balls the size of her. I'm not sure why she loved them so much but she played with those the most. I wasn't all that impressed at first thinking how is this going to entertain her for a whole hour, but it did and she PLAYED HARD.

#Selfie

All dressed and ready for church. Purse and ALL!

2 seconds later I took it out myself

Mommy braided my hair AND put a bow in it!

Well I probably better quit for now. I'm writing during nap time, and I've heard the Marcemallow make some noise a few times. Plus its getting late and we have Kids Club tonight!
Thanks for reading!!

Random post

Hello

I've been posting a lot of "long posts" on Instagram lately so I thought I'd just do a whole post today instead of another long post. 

I actually had my phone in the right place today! Marcelyn sang along with her favorite show this morning. It was so cute!! Just when I think she may have gotten bored with this show she does something new to show she still loves it. 

I didn't actually didn't capture her singing, but I wanted to document the moment so I snapped a picture. She sat in the recliner for most of the show and babbled along with the "Peg+Cat" theme song. You may be thinking big deal Molly, but she's grown up with this show and had loved it since she was 3 months old. At that age she's just watch and coo with delight, but soon she would dance along and now she sings 🙂 I'm looking forward to seeing what she does next. 

March Update!

Well well well how about that. I posted last month and here I am posting right on schedule *happy dance*
Oh. My. G.O.O.D.N.E.S.S. The past few weeks have been tough tough tough. Feb 23rd we received heart breaking news that our step nephew ended his own life at the young age of 15.  That was a Tuesday and the following Monday was his funeral.  There's something horribly wrong with having to process something like that. Prayers are needed for our sister-in-law and brother-in-law as they grieve.  We were able to be in Tulsa for the whole weekend which was nice. On our way home however we received more sad news when back in Hays good friends of mine lost their dad in a construction accident.  It made state wide news and shook the whole town to the core. Saturday was the funeral for him and it was packed. My nephew's funeral was full too and all I could think of was "if he would have knows this many people cared" ...sigh....

In happier news Marcelyn is learning to say real words. She babbles adorably all day long, but it is a lot of fun to see her connect things when she learns a new word. Everyone in her world is Dad-da including Mom, Tripod and the nursery staff at church.  Her latest word that surprised me was "peach" one of our latest acctivities has been to play with boxes as building blocks to learn how to stack things. One of the boxes we use is a case of peach cups. She carried the box to me, handed it to me and very clearly said "peaches!" It was adorable.  She's learning please, she says it sometimes but hasn't connected why she needs to say it yet. Today though, it was super cute. I sat down with a snack and she wanted to some so she came running over saying "peese, peese, peeeeeese" ooh alright. :-P

Well that's all the exciting news I can think of for today. Tonight is our 2nd Achievement ceremony for our Children's ministry on wednesday nights. It's the first time we've done one on a wednesday night. In the past we've condensed all we do into a 15-20 window of time and presented everything on sunday morning. Now that more than 75% of the kids that come don't come on Sunday mornings it doesn't make sense to having it on a Sunday....excpet that it gets the whole family in church.

February Update!

Hello Friend!
Love is in the air, but spring and Easter are just around the corner. Happy Ash Wednesday btw (I'm not sure this is a happy holiday though) I absolutely love this time of year.  The days are getting longer the weather will be warming up soon and the sense of all things new gives me such excitement.  I love Christmas time too, but Easter is by FAR my favorite holiday celebration. The two holidays go hand-in-hand (can't have one without the other) but I'm a pastel artsy personality type. I was in Hobby Lobby and noticed Easter decorations are out already....I almost bought one of everything!!!!

In other news (the real reason I'm writing today....not just to rant about how much I love this time of year) Marcelyn is WALKING! I posted a pretty cute video on my instagram if you haven't seen it yet be sure and check it out (@mollz2)  and you can also check out the hashtag #babylofstrom for any pictures you may have missed.

I'm also writing to share of my goal for this Lent Season. I always love setting goals for the new year, but this one is only for 40 days instead of a full 365. It's call 40 bags in 40 days. Starting today and going until Easter Sunday I'll pick 40 different places in my house to go through and de-clutter. Today and probably all this week I"ll be focusing on my desk area. I really need to make this space more soothing and functional....rather than a place to capture crap! *squinty-faced emoji*

Well I think I better call it good. Marcelyn is running out of Cherioes and or she's full and they will start ending up on the floor instead of her mouth.... Oh the joys of toddlerhood

Until Next Time! Thanks for reading :)

Marcelyn is ONE!!!

Well that's quite old news by now that January is almost over. Marcelyn Rose Lofstrom was born OVER a year ago. I just can't believe that. She is not quite walking steadily, although she did walk across the living room quite triumphantly :)



January and the new year (Happy New Year btw) cause one to think back and reflect. I made Marcelyn a couple of scrap books for her birthday of her first year. WOW! It was a full year.  Liberty moved into a new building and is still remodeling. That story is blog post in its self. I will say this though Marcelyn was born on the 5th and papers were sign on the 6th for the new building. Major renovations to the main floor started and we moved in Palm Sunday. All renovations should be done in April.
2016 looks like it will be a fun year too. Chris goes to an annual men's conference in Colorado this weekend and that kicks off lots of events I'm currently drawing a blank on. Yes mission trips are being planned and I'll post details when we know them.

I mostly wanted to tell a few stories from "the hood" God has been teaching me a lot lately about my missionary heart.  I try and call our neighborhood nice things like "neighborhood" or "community" instead of "trailer park" or "mobile home park" but it seems the last few months things have just gotten bad. Bad enough that I was getting depressed. I know I've gotten to this point once before, but this time it was almost a helpless, hopeless depressed feeling mixed with anger.  It took me a week to figure it out, but God finally showed me that I need to be praying more.  He also reminded me that He sent me here (to Hays) as a missionary. My mission field is constant and I need to quit getting upset when the world doesn't live up to my standards of the way I was taught to live. They don't know any different. That's probably the biggest shocker I've learned in the last couple of years as I've started to FINALLY gain trust with some families and build some friendships.  I've learned that they all want what we want, to have a nice house, yard, car and life.  The sad thing though is they don't understand that it takes constant upkeep and maintenance to have these things. Most importantly though is that it takes a solid relationship with God. I said I wanted to tell a story though. Here goes.
It's a of a girl with long blonde hair. She comes from a home that's one of the most dilapidated in the neighborhood with a mom that's rarely home. Yet she is the friendliest most outgoing person in the neighborhood. She knows every single kid that has lived here more than a week. However, her school that she's gone to for the last 4+ years closed. She has been coming to our Wednesday night meetings for about 2 years now and made a good friend through that. This August was her first day in a new school and one of her friends from Wednesday nights was in her class. She had already been going to school there for a while and happily made the long blonde hair girl feel right at home. It's my prayer that this long blonde haired girl falls in love with church and sees that she needs to be there.
The other story I wanted to tell is also of another girl. She's (was at the time) very small, shy and insecure. She started coming on Wednesday nights from just around the corner from where our house is. One day I was doing some follow up visits getting t-shirt orders or handing out flyers for VBS...I don't rememeber exactly, but this little girls mom was at home. We had talked shortly here and there, but I had more time this time and she asked me "Are you Molly Dinkel?" I answered "I used to be" She went on to tell me that she remembered me from when we were kids and we would play out a mutual friends house. Hah wow. As we got to know that family I also went to school with some of them too.

Well I think that's all I have time for in this post. It's my goal to post at least once a month and send out e-mails quarterly. I know I've said this in years past, but I'm going to give it another go and hopefully it becomes more of a routine this year. Also I post most regularly on instagram. @cmlofstrom

Happy 2016 friend