Don't Leave

The truth is, I'm having a hard time finding inspiration for my writing with out my lost sidekick "the camera."  My phone camera just isn't cutting it.  However, as I've mentioned many times before, I love this space and all the stories it contains.  So here are a couple that I need to remember.

1.  Several weeks ago I left TLC's A Baby Story on in the background while the girls and I played.  I didn't think much of it until I found Libby later with a baby stuffed in her shirt, lying on her back in the baby tub, grunting while she pulled said baby from the bottom of her shirt.  Hmmmmmm?

2.  Remember all the posts I wrote about Maggie being a sweet girl that rarely cried?  Well, she turned 15 months and all that changed.  Sister can throw a fit with the best of them.  They  are spectacular and I can't seemed to remember how to navigate them.

3. Kev is away this week so maybe I'll write more, and stay up too late.
4.  Apparently I am now interested in listing my posts with numbers.
A post that flows like an epic novel is coming but not tonight, for now here's a crop of pictures from my phone...wha-wha.

Grace and Peace

Things

There are some things that I need to say.

#1 Kevin was trying to paint the deck and Libby asked if she could help.  He told her that she could talk to him while he painted. She sat down on his legs because "it looked like a good seat" she said.  Then she picked a flower and told him that he needed to paint it for her.  He obliged her request for a painted flower.  I love that she picked a flower bc it needed to be painted and I love that he painted it for her.

#2. When I was a little I always wanted to climb up a ladder with my Dad.  He always said no, and I always wondered what was up there that he didn't want me to see.  Today when Libby asked Kev if she could go up his ladder he said  no and I asked him why.  He said it was bc when he was little his Dad always told him off for going up the ladder, so he thought it was good family tradition to carry on.

I suggested that he let her climb it so the mystery behind the latter would be gone and perhaps she would stop asking us.  He said she could as long as she wore a helmet.  He is the more responsible parent.

#3.  The girls made rainbows the other morning and took them outside in there pajamas and no shoes.  I think that this summer it will be a constant battle to get them to wear shoes or clothes for that matter.  What will the neighbors say?

 #4.  Speaking of the neighbors, Maggie loves ours.  Their names are Robin and Ernie and she would choose them over us on any given day of the week.  Robin is similar in stature to Babs and has the same hair color, it is the only thing that I can think of that would make her brave enough to go to people we are just getting to know.

#5.  Speaking of Maggie, she loves Libby.  This is a demonstration of the morning hug she gives to her should Libby sleep later than us.  I wish this was a better picture.  I wish that someone didn't steal my camera.  I wish that you could hear them laugh from where you are.

#6.  A while ago I realized that Maggie wasn't talking nearly as much as Libby was when she was one.  I wasn't worried or anything, I added it to the list of their differences.  These past couple of weeks she has really been trying though.  Sometimes she just whispers.  I can see her thinking about words then quietly she tries to say "please," or "puppy," or "be-be"(baby).  She also helps me call her big sister by saying "bibby," or "sissy", which really just sounds more like a hiss :).  She tries to stay shoes, duck, and nose.  She can shake her head yes and no and she signs for many things.  Clever girl.

#7.  If I was writer I would write a children's book about Libby.  She looks like she is dancing when she walks.  Sometimes her hair is so wild that I wonder where she's been, but I think that it is just part of who she is.  She talks to her "friends" all day long and I find it to be simply enchanting.  It just confuses Kev.  For the record, lately she has been talking to and about Buzz, Jesse, Belle, and just this week Diego, which is funny b/c she I don't recall her ever watching Diego.  She tells me all the stuff that they do together and then just laughs about it, like it is the best thing she has ever heard.  

 #8.  Between you and me, I don't want her to grow up.  She is so good at being little.  Similarly, I don't want Maggie to stop being a baby, she still curls up so perfectly in my arms at night.
They are foolish statements to make, but I think them just the same, probably about once a day.

That is all I have to say, but please oh please, remind me to write about the day I left The Learning Channel on in the background while a Baby Story was on.  I'm still dealing with the repercussions of that day.
Grace and Peace
xoxo

Confessions

This weekend my dad and I took the girls to a park.  The sun was shinning and the wind was blowing.  Libby perched herself on a rock that overlooked the bay and Maggie chased the gentle tide.  It was picturesque to say the least.

 Of course I had my camera.  I captured things like their little feet sinking in the sand and the breeze dancing through their hair.  I had the camera bag across my chest and the actual camera slung across one shoulder for most of the day.  I sat down on a bench next to my  Dad and packed my camera back in the bag.  Maggie yanked herself up onto bench with us and knocked the bag to the ground, then my phone rang and I opened the front pouch of my camera bag to see if it was there.  That was the last time I remember seeing it.  A few minutes later Maggie started walking off, so we just followed her and headed back towards the car.  A few hours later, when I went to look at my pictures again I realized it was gone.   I searched high  and low for it, went back to the park, filed a police report, asked Facebook friends to pray for its happy return, all to no avail.

Our camera is gone.  I'm mourning it's loss.
Seriously.
 I didn't know how attached I was to it.  Today is actually the first day that I have even been able to look at my blog with out feeling very sad.  Our camera was only about 9 months old, we bought with birthday money from our family.  It was such a nice camera, I really didn't have to put much effort forth to get really lovely pictures.  The saddest part for Kev is the loss of quite a bit of money...The hardest part for me should be the same, but actually I am having the hardest time getting over the pictures that I lost.  There were so many beautiful ones on there.

I feel pretty helpless about the whole thing.  I don't know what we'll do to replace it.  Anybody have any suggestions for how I can make some extra money on the fly?  We leave for the mother land next month and it would be a shame to not have our own camera to capture Maggie's first trip across the pond.

 Until the time comes that we replace it, or by some miracle someone returns it, this blog will be accompanied by pictures from Instagram.  Thanks to my cousin Jill for snapping these few on Easter Sunday.

Thanks for the great pictures  lost camera.  You are missed.
Grace and Peace and Instagram

PS When I wake up at night, I'm still praying that the person who took it will feel bad about not turning it in and take it to the park rangers :)

Train 'Em Up

I have to remind myself that today, April 1, 2012, on the way to church our precious Little asked us "why did Jesus die on the cross, and why did it roll and roll?" (I think she meant, the stone in front of the tomb).
What an amazing opportunity we had.  I sure do hope we answered right.  I think we said something like "to pay for our naughtiness, our sin, Libby. We all do naughty things, so he took the consequence for us."  Then she said "Jesus was very naughty?" and we said "No, Libby he was never naughty, he was always good."  Then she said something like "Mommy can we go back to the 'dilly circus, I really like the ponies."

I don't know how much of the conversation she understood, or how much she took in, but I know that she is listening.  She hears what we are telling her and explaining to her because she asked the question.
I read recently on a blog post from a friend something along the lines of 'we are not trying to raise perfect children,we are trying to raise adults that love the Lord'...I'm sure that I miss quoted that, but you get the main idea.  I so often forget this.  I don't want my kids to be the bully, or the selfish one, or be impolite, or mean, or nasty.  I often think or assume that they just know how to be good and therefor should know how to not be bad.  How very foolish of me.  Sinning comes natural to us all.

If we knew how to be good on our own, we would have never needed the Savior.  It is only through his perfect goodness that we are good.  It is only through his perfect goodness that I am able to teach them how to make right choices.

I have to remind myself that at 3 and 1 they probably aren't going to get it all and that is okay.  At 3 and 1 they are going to be selfish, mean on the occasion, defiant, and all those other things I wish they wouldn't be.  I have to remind myself that they need a savior, and I am not that savior, but Jesus is.  As their parents we have an amazing opportunity to point them to the One who can make them right.  The One who truly is their Savior.

She asked again tonight (repetition is always the way with her) "Mommy, why did Jesus die on the cross," "because He loves you so much Libby, he didn't want you to have the consequence," I said.  Then she said "And he loves Maggie, and you, and Daddy."  "Yes Libby, He loves us all so much, he took the consequence for us all."

They are listening, even when we think we are talking to ourselves:)
Grace and peace

This Post Comes To You From A Not Proud Moment

When I was a young girl, old enough to have to sit in church, I can remember ignoring whatever the preacher was saying and peering out the long narrow windows and wondering about God and who He really is.  I would say in my head "God, if you are really real make wind blow so that I can see that tree move."  The trees would always gentle sway, if even just a tiny ripple in the leaves.  I never doubted His existence, but often I have failed to recogniz His perfect control over my circumstances.

When I flip through the pages of this blog I see beautiful pictures, of a seemingly beautiful life.  Truth be told a picture captures one moment in life, and neglects to tell you what happen before and after the picture was taken.  A picture neglects to tell you my Little rarely heads instructions.  She tries me to my very core and reminds me how very, very lacking I am in so many areas.

 A picture neglects to inform you that on the day I took these pictures, I vowed to myself that today was the day I was going do it better, today was the day I was going to be present, today was the day I was going keep it together.  Yet somehow, at the end of this day, and so many others I felt like I failed.

Raising children is the best job I have ever had, but I have to say that after the last few days I have said out loud "Am I really cut out for this."  It is the hardest thing I have ever done...I can not remember a time in my life when I have ever been pushed so close to the edge, and I don't even know what edge it is.  Anger?  Frustration? Insanity?  I'm not sure.

Today in particular I am on one of those edges.  The edge of doubt I guess.   Earlier, before we left home I had completely lost my cool with my Little...like really bad.  While I'm being honest, I completely lost my cool  with her yesterday too and the day before that.  My patience is frazzled and since I'm being honest so is my joy, love, peace, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, and my self control.  Ironically these are the very things I have been (trying)to teach her this month.

 I was driving home from running some errands. The prospect of going straight home and tackling lunch and nap time (a subject which would require its own post) was discouraging, so when Libby piped up from the back, "Hey mom, can we stop at a park" I just thought "yes, please, let's go to a park and you can run and run and wear yourself so tired that any energy you would use for disobeying me will be used up and you will go straight down with no questions asked."

I sat down on the stairs to the slide and cried.  The girls ran circles around me, they laughed and played unaware that the very person that they look to for everything was certain that she was failing them.  I started to ask God where He was in this.  Where was He in my everyday?  In my cleaning up breakfast, in my baby with a fever, in my tantrum throwing girl, in my teach them something good, volunteer for something good, love my husband, make the dinner, tame the laundry?  Where was He?  Then as if He knew I needed it, a gentle breeze moved my hair and made it stick to my face....I looked up and saw the trees swaying, only a little ripple, and I knew that He was telling me "I'm right here, where I've always been."

I'm going to be okay...I just had to get that off my chest.
Grace and Peace
xoxo

We're Not In Kansas Anymore

The other day my friend offered my free tickets to a traveling circus.  About three weeks ago we took the girls to see Barnum and Bailey's Circus and they loved it, and to be honest Kev and I really liked it too, it was very impressive.  So when my friend said she had free tickets, I thought "why not" the girls will love to see another circus.  I looked up the name of the circus on the internet and it looked pretty legit...that is until we realized that the actual show was miles and miles from town in a cow pasture.  Libby said "Mommy is this circus in a meadow?"

 In my head I kept telling myself to give it a chance...then the first thing I saw when I walked in was this sign.  Well, that was after the sign that said $32 for adult tickets...What?  If I had paid for this experience  I would have been highly disappointed.

The acts we saw included but are not limited to
1.  A clown that pretended to act drunk...at least I hope he was pretending
2.  A miniature pony act that actually got away and ran into the crowd...I'm not kidding...rainbow colored ponies mixing with the patrons
3.  A lasso wielding cowboy that got tangled in his own whip and used a small Schnauzer as his prop
4.  A man and a woman who frolicked around a white tiger in a cage that was a big as Gus's crate (this was just sad...and unnerving at the same time)  They did this for 1 minute and called it the white tiger extravaganza
5.  A lady who spun around on fabric in a costume that was a little bit like something a stripper would wear...she too got tangled up like her co-worker the cowboy
At this point I realized that I needed my camera b/c if this  experience did not land us on the evening news as witness to a circus show gone bad, I was going to need proof that we were there.
The second half had some more slightly offensive clowns, roller skaters, and our favorite an Old English Sheepdog act.   It was like Gus on parade...but literally, on Gus's dirtiest most shaggy day, he hasn't looked quite this bad ever and that is saying something.  This was a rag tag bunch...they were mildly entertaining though.

Lastly, the pinnacle of the show was the elephants.  Let me just pause here to say that my camera does not have any zoom.  It is a fixed lens so the pictures you see are pretty accurate in showing that we were sitting basically as close as you could to the ring.  

 Have you seen one of those elephant gone mad videos?  You know the ones where the elephant gets tired of living in captivity with trainers that don't treat him right and then just starts trampling everything in sight...This was the only thing I could think of as these magnificent animals preformed tricks 3ft from my babies.... 

When the show was over, I breathed a sigh of relief that the news didn't show up with angry animal rights protesters and of course that we didn't get trampled on by elephants or eaten by the white tiger.  The girls frolic in the field for a few minutes before we left and I looked back in disbelief that show I had just witnessed even existed. This is what my face looked like the whole time I watched.

I think that Libby was pretending to be the lady that spun around on the fabric in this picture...have mercy on us if this is the case.

 Maggie is wondering why I subjected her to such madness...

I had to document this experience.  It was like nothing that I have ever seen before. If I was a film maker in search of a new reality show to film I would follow these carnies around.  I think it would be fascinating in a disturbing sort of way...you know like the show "Hoarders" or "Intervention," not in a "Say Yes to the Dress" sort of way.
Happy Circus...please don't tell anyone we were there! :)
Grace and Peace

Sprout

 Spring keeps on teasing us.  I think that it is almost here, at least I did yesterday.  Then we tried to leave the house today and had to come back for coats.

I'm sewing today and ignoring normal chores in order to make our widows look pretty, so until I have time to ignore to normal chores to stop write on this blog I bid you
Grace and Peace

I wrote this last week.  I really am ignoring normal chores to type this sentence.  These pictures are from last Monday when it snowed.  Forecast for this Monday is sunny and 72, our wardrobes are so confused.