Still Got It

Since Jeff was super sick on Easter, I took the kids solo to all the festivities (poor guy! And poor me, if I'm being honest). Our first stop was to my Grandma's Lutheran church. It was a long hour and 15 minutes for the kids, although the big kids did amazingly well aside from when we sang a certain "Hallelujah" song and Carter leaned over 4 people to shout-whisper to me, "This song is from Shrek! You HATE Shrek!" thankyouforthat,son.

Towards the end of the service, I Jack started getting a little antsy so I decided for his good to take him out to the foyer and just wait for my parents and Grandma (who Natalie and Carter were sitting in between) to meet us out there.

As I walked with Jack down the stairs from the sanctuary I noticed a guy - about my age I would have guessed - staring at me. I looked behind me to see if he was waiting for someone, but no, he was looking right at me. It was obvious. I'm 8 months pregnant walking with my 4 year old not so gracefully down a flight of stairs and you know what I was thinking?

That guy is totally checking me out! 

I know, I know. Totally immature (and completely fleeting) thought, but it did cross my mind. He was staring at me (and I didn't even have toilet paper on my shoes or anything!). I was pretty ashamed of myself for even caring proud of myself.

Anyway, Jack and I kept walking and sat at the benches by the front doors and started playing I-Spy-With-My-Little-Eye until church was over and the rest of our family met us there. As we're gathered in the crowded room outside the sanctuary we're saying our goodbyes (they were all headed to my Aunt and Uncle's house and the kids and I were headed to Jeff's parent's place) when my Dad's cousin and his wife walk up to us and say hello (we didn't even know they were there). Since I hadn't seen them in forever I quickly introduced them to my kids and then Dad's cousin says, "Oh, and our son, Bryce is here, too! I'll bet you guys haven't seen each other in YEARS!"

"Bryce" squeezes through the crowd and it was at that moment I realized that when I was walking down the stairs earlier, I wasn't getting "checked out," I was getting recognized... by my cousin.

So this year Easter was pretty eventful. My husband couldn't go because he was sick and I (being left all alone and apparently vulnerable - ha!) got humbled by thinking I was getting checked out by my third cousin. Nice.

Luckily the day got better from there on out. Even though I didn't get hit on by any family members.

Spring!

I think Spring has officially, well, sprung.

We've got rain.

We've got snow.

We've got sunshine.

We've got birds chirping.

We've got an overgrown lawn that needs mowed, (but it probably won't dry up enough to get cut for another month or so).

We've got kids with way more energy than the finicky weather allows for.

We've got bear hunting.

We've got baby showers.

We've got kids that want lambs and who may or may not have suggested we just pull over on the side of the road next to a field and "grab a couple" because, "they have so many lambs, they surely won't notice three missing..." Right..

We've got packed schedules from here through, well, July.

We've got flowers blooming.

We've got a prego Mama who knows that she's only got about 7 weeks left to go (seriously, YAY for Baby Boy!).

We've got veggie starts in the window sills.

Spring!!!

James

I've been doing a Bible study on the book of James (sorry if you thought I was announcing a baby name...) the past few months with a few of my friends and I am just amazed (and humbled!) by how much conviction and truth and amazingness was packed into the 5 short chapters that are the book of James.

One big concept of James is the idea of "perfection." I've often struggled with the idea of needing to be perfect I know, it's laughable, but seriously, I knew in the Bible it said that we are called to perfection and I've struggled with trying (and obviously failing - repeatedly) on my own to be what I thought this "perfect" meant I needed to be (thus having feelings of failure, self loathing, and guilt immediately following the inevitable "imperfection").

It says:

Matthew 5:48 "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."

James 1:4 says, "Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be perfect and complete, not lacking anything."


Packs a punch, no?

So anyway, after burying my head in the sand (so to speak) and feeling like I should have never even done this Bible study because surely I'm not cut out for this "perfection" thing, I read these words that were literally music to my ears:

"His call to perfection is not about achieving an abstract state of moral perfection but about living holistic lives before God...To live a life of perfection is not to make all A's or to never miss a Sunday at church; rather, it is to live a life true to our identity as children of an utterly untemptable God who never changes, shows no partiality, and has no darkness in Him at all."

- Melissa Moore Fitzpatrick

Perfection is not having a lot of money or the perfect body. It can not be found in social status. It is not about having a clean house or kids that never misbehave. It is not about never messing up or making mistakes. It is not about having all of our ducks in a row at any given time.

Perfection is not something we can achieve on our own (no matter how hard we work at presenting ourselves as such).

True PERFECTION  can only be found through living a life buried in the saving grace of Jesus Christ, God's son, the only example of pure perfection.

I am so unbelievably grateful for His grace and mercy. Neither of which I will ever deserve, but both of which I have humbly accepted. Daily.

Unexpected Outing

So.... flooded out. Not now. But we were. Over the weekend.

I guess technically we didn't have to be - Jeff called home as soon as he got to work on Friday and said, "If you're going to want to get out of the house at all between now and Sunday, you're going to want to pack up the kids and head out within the hour or it's going to be too flooded to get through the road." - so, I (obviously) packed everyone/thing up and we headed down to his parent's place.

We had a fun two days of relaxing, playing cards, playing pool, eating, visiting, and stuff and then by Saturday afternoon we decided to attempt to make it back home (we were thinking positively that the water had gone down enough after hardly any rain all day Saturday).

Riiiiiight. No such luck.

So there we were. Sitting on the impassable road that leads to our driveway wondering what to do. We did what any normal parents would do (turned the radio up in the back seat so the kids couldn't hear and thus give their unrealistic "let's drive to Florida {or wherever they can think of}!" input) and Jeff simply said, "I have an idea" and we were off.

Turns out my husband had quite the plan up his sleeve! He takes us to "town" (Eugene) where he drives to a hotel and gets a HUGE (seriously, it was b.i.g.) 2-bedroom (not to be confused with two-room - it was 2 BEDROOMS) hotel suite (that had just been built so it was niiiiiiice!). Two full bedrooms and bathrooms connected by a full kitchen and full living room and dining room. Huge. Although since we've been practically sharing a bedroom with our kids in the upstairs of my parent's house for the last 8 months, I realize that my vision of "HUGE" could be slightly off from the normal perspective. Nevertheless, it was the bigest hotel room that I had ever stayed at.

The looks on the kids' (an mine, I'm sure!) faces were priceless. They were SO excited! We brought our bags up and before we could even sit down, Jeff says, "Okay, lets get in the car!"

Without questioning where (they were having too much fun with not knowing details) the kids excitedly led the way back to the car where Jeff drove us to a nice Mexican restaurant to have dinner. It was so much fun! We don't normally go out to eat at sit-down places just the five of us because we usually only go when we're celebrating something with other people, or Jeff and I go as a date without the kids, but we were convinced that we need to more often because we really had so much fun!

Following dinner, we picked up some dessert treats and headed back to the hotel room where we hung out together watching TV and laughing and staying up entirely too late. Honestly, it was perfect.

The next morning we had a (super yummy and HOT) continental breakfast at the hotel and then instead of rushing to get packed up and ready to go by check-out time, Jeff called and asked for a late check-out, so we stayed and hung out in our room until mid-afternoon. PERFECTION I tell you. We haven't laughed that hard in a long time - it was great.

I'm not normally one to like not knowing what's going on (or not having any say), but I've got to hand it to my husband - he really did well (and scored even more major bonus points when I saw what the room cost {YIKES} and then saw the price he talked them into - having a husband who's in the business of "business" has definitely got perks!).

Anyway, a weekend with my little family ended up being more medicine for my soul than I even knew I needed.

Oh, and also? I totally love my husband and our kids. Really, really.

Ever have one of those days when you're so emotionally exhausted (for no good reason except that you're in your third trimester of pregnancy so stuff like not getting to the phone in time makes you cry even if it's telemarketers calling) that even though you're trying really hard to keep the sugar intake at a minimum you find yourself mindlessly picking M&Ms out of the Costco bag of trail mix and justifying it by thinking that if you had to work that hard to get a little pile of them in your hand (it's hard work avoiding all the healthy other stuff that's in trail mix) the fact that they're made of pure-sugar has to be negated?

::side eye::

I do.

Might-Have Monday

I might have gone into Target yesterday and spent $63 but forgot the one thing I actually went in there to buy (anyone have a couple of vacuum bags I can borrow?).

As I was driving the kids to school this morning they were in the back seat getting so mad at each other over something so dumb it made me want to pull my hair out. I might have been so unbelievably frustrated with their fighting that I literally yelled at them the verse in James that talks about being slow to anger. Oops.

I might have made homemade bread today and as I was waiting for it to rise (it wouldn't!) I realized that I had doubled only half of the ingredients.

We love a lazy day with our little family.

We slept in.

We watched cartoons.

We built a blanket-fort in the kids' bedroom.

We laughed as we watched the kids make their way slowly up and down the stairs trying not to hurt their sore muscles (from roller skating last night at a birthday party).

We made fruit smoothies.

We watched NCAA basketball (because it's March, and that's what you do on a Saturday in March).

We listened to the rain as we snuggled on the couch.

We laughed as we watched the baby wiggle and shift around in my tummy.

We said, "yes!" way more than, "no" to our kids.

We stayed in our jammies (and didn't feel guilty!).

We listened to Natalie and Carter challenge each other to checkers by the fire while Jack was taking his nap and we were reading in the living room.

We love a lazy day with our little family.