seven

~From our birthday date~




To Juden~ on the occasion of turning seven,
You asked me if you could stay home from school to have a birthday date with me just like we did last year. It wasn't a tough decision . I wanted to be with you your whole birthday too. I told you to pick a place and you said the English Tea room just like last year and then to walk around the Chattanooga Choo-Choo. This year has been a year of big changes. It's been a leap of independence going from home-schooling to first grade all day. It's changed the rhythm in our home in lots of ways. There has been alot of good things and some hard things too. You're like your daddy in that you thrive in social settings. You want your friends around you ALL of the time and sometimes you have a hard time taking no for an answer. I love your creativity and how you care about other people. You love to draw, do Legos, watch birds and listen to the Bible. That is one thing I love that hasn't changed since I home-schooled you. You draw while you listen and always beg for one more chapter. You are super affectionate and still haven't figured out that your friends laugh a little when you tell them you love them. You love when I go on field trips and come eat with you at your school. Maybe a day will come when you won't want me around but for now I'm loving how you want to introduce me to all your friends and my heart swells as I watch you blow me kisses from the cafeteria window all the way until my car pulls out.
Last year you told me you'd have a baby brother and in just a few short months you won't be my only little boy. You cannot wait to meet him and every night you make sure to give my belly a good night kiss too.
You still love Narnia and you and Daddy have read the whole series, but now you two are reading The Tracker. You love all things art and Van Gogh and still ask to play the violin so we'll see if I can find the time and money to start lessons soon. Here's to six and all its awkward tenderness, disarming vulnerablity, to all its skinned knee graces. To lessons learned over and over, to reminding me of what it means to be a child of God and how deep and wide and forgiving our Father's love is. To ceaseless energy that wears me out and drives me crazy and makes me laugh all at once. To my little man who loves with abandon, and whose smile brightens every one of my days. You are a precious gift of God to us, may you always know that.

Every year I like to write my thoughts but I'm just now getting around to posting them.

art party

My little man is turning seven in just a few days. Last year when Juden turned six he asked for a Narnia party so I wasn't really planning on doing a big party this year. But when he came to me excitedly telling me all about the art party he wanted to have with a Van Gogh cake and lots of things to paint, I could not resist. I knew his art teacher daddy would help make it special and of course he did. Josh made a pin the ear on Van Gogh game (I know, what would Van Gogh have thought?) and Juden and Josh made sure they told the kids a little about who he was. Juden has been fascinated with him for quite some time. He's gotten out every book on him the library has and says he was the coolest artist ever. I wasn't sure about a Van Gogh cake but you know, you can find anything on Google. After lots of icing and food coloring he was thrilled with his starry night cake. The kids painted a mural and made pinch pots and got Van Gogh tattoos. Juden loved all of it.
January is a strange month. We were covered in ice and snow a few weeks ago but last weekend for his party it was like an early spring; plenty of sunshine, mid-sixties and no jackets needed. And less paint inside the house for mama to clean up:)
I felt so thankful for Juden's passion for art and creating, and thankful for his daddy's part in that. They love to draw together and Juden fills sketch books as fast as we give them to him. Here's a beautiful song to honor a beautiful artist. Here's to my little artist in the making.








I found this little monster ballerina under the table after the party, covered in blue making her own creations out of the leftover cake.

Storing Up Treasures: The post where I lay it all out there

Storing Up Treasures: The post where I lay it all out there

January

I am a little stunned to find myself at the end of January already. This month has flown by, although I seem to feel that way more and more. It's been a full and truly wintry month. We had our second big snow a few weeks ago giving both Josh and Juden another unexpected week at home. My sis-in-law had the idea to all get snowed in together. So our families and a few more friends got snowed-in, in the lovely home below and spent a few days getting kids in and out of layers, trudging around in snow, sledding and sipping cocoa. It's been a sleepy month as my belly grows and sleep is more elusive and the cold makes me want to hibernate with books and fire and my precious family. I don't suppose I'm much of a resolution maker, but I do like when the calender turns and it's a new day, a fresh start and time to set new goals and hopes. Josh and did some talking and planning and re-evaluating. I think the one goal that has been the biggest blessing has been being committed with Josh to read the whole Bible through this year. It has been so grounding and unifying to meet together in the Word, gaining strength for each day. Other reflections and hopes for the year:
Read and pray more,
Learn to say no sometimes,
Create one-on-one time with each of my kids regularly,
Have more dates with my husband,
Eat whole and fresh foods as much as possible,
Purge and simplify the house regularly,
View people the way Jesus views them,
Make a practice of hiding his Word in my heart,
Don't stress when life doesn't look like my tidy little lists,
Love people. every. single. day.

(above photo by John Hawbaker)




I thought I'd end this post by sharing another post that after reading I felt I could have written. It talks about the choices we make in our journey and respecting those that make different ones and it so resonates with me. You can check it out in the next post.

white christmas

~outside~


Christmas morning we woke to a perfect blanket of snow the likes of which this area had not seen since 1965. The kids all pounced on our bed staring out the window. It was completely magical for them. Christmas was peaceful this year. We went back and forth from playing in the snow, to tea with friends, to playing new games and then dinner with my brothers little family and sitting around the fire with friends. By far my favorite part of the season though was those simple times spent in worship and anticipation with my little family. We spent most nights by the fire reading, singing and talking about the joy that is the incarnation, the hope He brought to our broken world. We collected catalogs full of Christmas presents for Jesus and let them choose which one they would work toward. This was the second year of this tradition started by Juden last year to help teach them that when we give to the "least of these" we are really giving to Jesus. Our hearts were full as we remembered the power of a baby inside a young girl who changed everything.











~inside~

December loves

Here's a few of the Christmas things we've done so far. We spent the day with Mimi making a gingerbread house. Mimi loves pretty things and her house is full of them...


things that little hands want to touch, things with a story behind them...

and she bakes the best cookies ever.

We had a slumber party with the cousins and lots of sleepovers with Nana.


All the girls went to the nutcracker.




Here's Naya just a few days before Christmas, can you tell?

O Come

(reposted from December 08)

I find myself a few short days from Christmas with a heart full of thoughts. I've said before I'm just a little crazy about Christmas. I love helping to create some of the magic and meaning of the advent season with my little brood. I think there are hints of Christmas in every room in the house; paper snowflakes in the windows and the smell of pine and baking fills the house.

I'm not sure when it happens but somewhere along the line the innocence we have as children is lost. The forever-long wait until the 25th, filled with all manner of festive wonders is traded in for being the one responsible for making it all happen. So days quickly pass with shopping, parties, baking, cleaning, visiting, and just being the mama and making sure everyone is happy. Despite the busyness, I love every minute of it. This year though, something has felt different.

This is a portion of a book called Watch for the Light which I like to remember this time of year.
"What if on Christmas Eve people came and sat in dim pews, and someone stood up and said, "Something happened when you where out at the malls, while we were baking cookies and fretting about if we got our brother-in-law the right gift: Christ was born. God is here"? We wouldn't need the glorious choruses and the harp and the bell choir and the organ. We wouldn't need the tree strung with lights. We wouldn't need to deny that painful dissonance between the promise and hope of Christmas and a world wracked with sin and evil. All of that would seem gaudy and shallow in comparison to the sanctity of that still sanctuary. And we, hushed and awed by something greater and wiser and kinder than we, would kneel of one accord in the stillness. A peace would settle over the planet like a velvet coverlet drawn over a sleeping child. The world would recollect itself and discover itself held in the womb of The Mother of God. We would be filled with the fullness of God, even as we filled the emptiness of the savior's heart with ours."
---Loretta Ross-Gotta
I heard a sermon last week that captured so much of how I have felt this season. This season of advent really is about rejoicing in our manger-born King who became like us so He could rescue us and about our longing for Him to come again. My pastor read this story from a recent issue of the New York Times about a cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe that killed the youngest five children of one family a few weeks back. This month, in this season of celebration, my heart has at times been heavy. We have had some grey days as of late. Some so grey when I woke I wondered if it was still night because the darkness dragged into the day, and I sipped my tea watching the cloud-shrouded dripping mountain instead of the pink glow of morning sun lighting it up. I don't suppose I'd stopped long enough to sort through how I'd been feeling. On one such grey day last week I found myself on a lonely stretch of highway peering through water streaming down the windshield and down my cheeks. There was a weight on my shoulders of loved ones hurting, broken relationships, the struggle of our flesh. I thought of those precious children whose little bodies' fought for life and quickly lost under deplorable health conditions. For the woman whose husband abandoned her this year, the man diagnosed with cancer, the family that lost their house and is broke. What does this baby born so long ago mean for them? And I wept for those children who suffered and for the ones they left behind, wept for thousands of others who are suffering all over the world. I was not despairing but longing, expectant for the day His sword will yield the final death blow to suffering and sin.
Certainly there is no easy tidy bit of rhetoric to dissolve these gut-wrenching issues. But with that said, I cling to the hope that is Christmas. That the King and creator of all that wrapped himself in human flesh was so pained by the sadness and suffering of the people he loved, that he made a plan to rescue us. It didn't end in a manger or on a cross, our Prince of Peace will obliterate and destroy the sting of death and disease. This is what I know, so I wait... and whisper through tears, O come, O come Emmanuel.

Today I held my friends brand new baby girl. Her name is Selah Grace. Selah was taken from the Psalms and is believed to mean to pause and reflect, what a lovely reminder. It is in the light of such darkness that I was awed by the beauty of her tiny face, the wrinkled skin on her hands, her smell. The contrast of such suffering and such blessing. The strength in Josh's arms around me, the sweet spirits of my children, these blessings that I am overwhelmed to be the recipient of. As Christmas draws near my soul rejoices in the love that our God has lavished on us and in the promise of hope and healing.