Breakfast with Wookie; considering yellow architecture. #kidswokids
11/15/2012
Louritta, 9 months
10/30/2012
42 Most Needed Bible Verses
05/07/2012
This is one of the many Bible verses that I have clung to, used as spiritual food, in my life trials. Especially now as a mother of three young children, enduring more than I sometimes feel I can bear, I find that I need God’s word consistently throughout my day in order to keep me focused on what is truly important in this mothering life.
In my first year of motherhood, I started memorizing Fighter Verses. They were incredibly helpful in my fight of faith and I am so thankful I started on that journey. But then more verses came to the forefront of my life through Bible reading. I started adding those important verses to notecards or scraps of paper and posting them around my house. Some verse cards were eventually taken down because they were so worn, only to be remade in desperation at a later date.
So, I took my most needed verses and did them up properly. I mean the ones I searched for in tears, that gave me much needed strength in weakness, that focused my blurred vision for life, that whispered to me “this is the way, walk in it.” I thought I’d share them here for anyone else who might benefit. Here are my 42 Most Needed Verses. Print them up, post them, cling to them. They are His word to His chosen people, after all.
42 Most Needed Verses (PDF)
Jack’s Obsession
05/04/2012
Grandma Lewis gave the kids a ziplock bag that was full of a variety of little balls. Some were rubber bouncy balls, some were covered in suction cups for climbing down walls, some were soft pompons. For a time, Jack was absolutely obsessed with this bag of balls. He’d carry it around along with a little basket and move the balls from the bag to the basket, from the basket to the bag, from the bag to the basket – ad nauseum.
So, Josh made this fun little GIF of Jack and his bottomless bag of balls. Gotta love it.
Lol5
04/23/2012
I have found a treasure trove of old digital pictures in a folder brought over from a hard drive. Yeah, baby. I think I’ll share a few here for posterity’s sake, and also because they are just awesome. So, many years ago, Josh and I got into Lolcats (man, it sounds like a drug or something). For those not in-the-know, Lolcats are basically pictures of cats with poorly spelled captions on them (in Impact font, with borders if you want to really get it right). I made a few for Josh using our cat 5 (her name is a number) as my kitteh model. (Yes, I meant to say “kitteh”.)
Here they are!
Eight Years of Blogs, In Review
04/23/2012
I have been making many changes to this blog. My silence over the past year is a testimony in part to my hatred of the (now old!) blog design. It is difficult for me to write with something I find to be horribly broken. The rest of my silence was because of the chaos of my life and my choosing to put my energies in other places. This has served my family well in the immediate sense, but has robbed us of recording memories and observing God’s hand in our life over time.
I blame Twitter and Facebook.
I have successfully left MovableType for WordPress. So far it is a refreshing change that was long overdue.The new blog design is almost complete. It’s not my best design work as I am opting to just tweak a simple template. I have better things to do. Thank you to my sweet Joshua for all of your help. ♥
Updating the blog has involved me going back to the beginning (July 2003) to add tags and categories to all of my posts. Reviewing my life in this way has been a very enlightening experience. It feels like I am forty years older (and hopefully wiser) than the girl who wrote all of those posts over the past eight years. My tone and style of writing is very immature (I would have called it hip), as are my opinions (I would have called them wise). I am tempted to go back and add “naive,” “short-sighted,” and “self-centered” as tags to all of those old posts. However, I am glad that I was honest in what I said, but I did have a very strong desire to delete half of the posts lest someone see how foolish and sinful I was.
And am.
It then occurred to me that this blog stands as a testimony to God’s amazing grace. I am a sinner. You can see it in the posts of this blog. I’m sure you could see it even more clearly if you looked into my soul. And God loves me anyway. Relentlessly, abundantly. But, because of that Great Love, He continues to refine me as I run the race of the course set before me. And so, I will strive to continue writing in this space so that, Lord willing, I can look back in another forty years chuckling at how unwise I was at age thirty-three.
Uncurling
04/05/2012
Having a GREAT day today. Little bumps here and there. But mostly, days like this, make me feel like YES! This is what I am supposed to be doing! And look at my children blossoming! Before my eyes!
And I feel wonderful and blessed and thankful.
Also, the boys are being pretty good. That helps.
ENCOURAGING: I read part of a blog this morning where she talked about ART RULES. As in, “rules” she was taught about making art in college. And she talked about how they hindered her ability to make art. Things like colored pencils are for amateurs, paint big or not at all, don’t fill in your lines, don’t pre-plan, pre-plan (contradictory!), etc. And how they make the artist a bit neurotic. So, when she feels hindered she sees if she can trace it back to an art rule, then looks it in the face and rejects it straight out.
So, this was VERY freeing for me. And I found myself saying, “Where there is a mess, something is being MADE.” And decided that I will allow healthy messes to occur DOWNSTAIRS (so there is at least a place with peace upstairs!) and we will just live with it, tidy here and there, pick up each evening, etc. And I have found this freeing of my ability to love my children. And I have found it to be freeing for Caleb to exist. So far he has created many many things today. All because the supplies are available.
I was a fan of the “make supplies available” until I had children that could possibly be killed by them or could destroy my new house with them. Then I fell into the panicked “OH MY GOSH PUT IT ALL AWAY!!!” part of motherhood. I’m slowly learning to uncurl again.
Jack Loves Spring
03/24/2012
Jack is an outdoor kind of guy and has been so happy that we can go outside! Without coats! With rain boots! Oh, happy day!
Here he is enjoying some dried leaves and sticks. (He’s age 2.)
Louritta’s Green Sweater
03/23/2012
I knit this sweater for Louritta in this green yarn that I just loved. I used the Log Cabin Baby Pullover pattern from Lion Brand Yarn. It was a very easy and fast knit that was pretty straight forward.
The pink flower was crocheted by my mom and I sewed it onto a clip. It can go in her hair or on certain kinds of clothing.
I think she’ll fit in it now through autumn, which is great! Love it! Love her even more!
