I was the 9 year old who spent hours in her room listening to and memorizing Amy Grant songs.   I was the 12 year old who thought that leading circle time with four year olds was a priviledge and a joy.   I was the teenager who knew all the Psalty songs and Gospel Bill songs just as well as Petra and Mylon Lefever songs.   I was the newlywed that sang YMCA camp songs to my husband for fun.   Now I am the mom of four kids who all have fun with music and God is number one in …

  She's growing up! Olivia might be small on the outside, but she is growing big on the inside. It seems like she grew up overnight. This week, Mandi came to me and said, “Mom, Olivia is so sweet. When I opened my eyes this morning, she ran over to me and told me to not look. She wanted to surprise me by cleaning our room.”   The next thing I knew, Olivia was asking me if she should empty the vaccum cleaner container, because it was full and she needed to vaccum.   Later in …

    Today, Olivia was practicing playing the ukulele. She decided to work on Hound Dog. I was overseeing her practice and she asked me to play it on the piano. I played a few chords and then asked her what the chords were. She grabbed a notebook to write down the chords. When she set the notebook down on the keyboard, it changed the setting on the keyboard to gunshots instead of piano. I, of course, did not realize this. So when I started to play the piano and out came gunshot sounds, I …

Yesterday, I was singing and worshipping along with a few songs. One of them was "Thankful for You" by TobyMac. I couldn't help but dance and cry with joy.  It feels like the song was written for our family and the decisions we are making. Toby's words ring true when he sings " It's never been my dream to see my face in magazines."  We talk about this all the time. This is not our goal.  "It's always been about the music, praying God would use it to set some …

    I have seen plenty of pictures of x-rays of the human foot . But today I saw an x-ray of Olivia's foot for the first time.

My first thought was, “God, you are faithful! All these years of Olivia's life, you have been at work, forming her bones, exactly the way you planned. Now your handiwork is revealed. I am in AWE of YOU!”

It was just an x-ray. The technicians see them every day. But this was my little girl's x-ray. My little girl's foot. My God who formed the foot. And this x-ray was visible proof of His faithfulness!

P. S. Olivia is healing just fine.

 She fractured her foot this week and at first Olivia was not too happy about it. She was fine (besides crying when she tried to walk on it) until the doctor said, “We have a fractured foot.” Then the tears began to flow. She was clearly overwhelmed. Her little detail oriented mind could not process those scary words.   But, she seemed to like that at least once a day, Mommy or Daddy would have to carry her. And while they were carrying her, they would chat about the day.   …

  Occaisionally, someone will say that Mandi is going to be famous. She doesn't like it.   Don't get her wrong. She loves making music. She loves performing and ministering God's love. She loves making people smile.   And she wants to do big things. She is ready to travel, to sing for lots of people and meet lots of people. She is pumped.   But tell her she is going to be famous and she cringes.   She wants everyone to know, she is just a kid.   A kid who loves Jesus and …

    We are not playing the lottery. We are following the lead of the Holy Spirit.   For about a year, my husband and I have been getting nudges and prompting from the Holy Spirit. God is going to use our family for something big. Well, in truth, He already has. It has been an honor to be one of His children, to be part of advancing His kingdom. We have been youth pastors, children's pastors, and head pastors.   You know what that means. It means poring everything you have into doing …

 This past weekend we met Jason Castro.   We were at Rock the Universe, a huge christian concert at Universal Studios, waiting to watch Toby Mac's concert and I decided to check Mandi's twitter account. I was surprised to see a tweet from Jason Castro saying that Mandi and Olivia's video was the cutest thing he had ever seen.   I looked at the concert schedule and saw that Jason was going to be singing in a few minutes at another stage. And after that he would have an autograph session. …

  For every video that we make, there are several steps we have to take to get it done.   Mandi has to find a song that she loves and just can't stop singing. We have been known to spend days searching for the right song. That is why we love song suggestions. Practice, Practice, Practice ( for days) When we decide that we are ready to record, we have to find the right spot to record. We have to make sure the lighting is good. One time we decided to record in a closet at night and Mandi looked …