Thanksgiving Wrapup

Oh, I had visions of Thanksgiving posts waxing eloquent with all the amazing thoughts about thankfulness and contentment and trusting God and blessings and... lots of whatnot. But that ship sailed before I had time to write about it. I'm still grateful, thankful, celebrating God's goodness... but the words I had in my head to write about it flew away... so I'll just post the pictures from our wonderful time with our family this holiday season. Most of them are poor quality, cheap-flash pictures, and I didn't do any editing... but they tell the story better and more quickly than I can type so here they are! :(

 My adorable nephew Elliot. :)

 Carolyn got to help set the table with Ammy's pretty china. I remember doing the same thing at my Granny's house- it was always really special!

 Crescent rolls.

 Even Nora got to help. :)

 Love the expression on Nora's face here. :)

 Apple for apple pie. We sure did have a feast, though I don't have any pictures of it! :)

 The menfolk watched a lot of football on Thanksgiving Day, and they volunteered so sweetly for KP after dinner was over!

 Dad took a nap on the couch in preparation for his volunteer job as chauffeur for our first middle-of-the-night Black Friday shopping experience. :)

 Shelly and I had a fun time, despite some long lines! We spent an inordinate amount of time weaving through the aisles at Target- but got some fun stuff and more importantly spent some fun sister time together. :) We pooped out at 4am and went home. Laura got a full night's sleep, since she wasn't quite as interested in deals on children's clothing. ;)

 I think my favorite thing I found was this set of 2 matching fleece pullovers for the girls. :)  So cheap, and they loved them! :)

 Friday (after we slept in! :)) we had "little Christmas," trying to hit all the fun Christmas activities we did growing up, all in one day. :)

 The grandkids helped pick out a tree for Ammy and Papa.

 We took a family picture (this is the best we got- at least you can see everybody's eyes!)

 And some cute cousin pictures!

 I can't decide which one I like best!

 We decorated the tree with all the ornaments we grew up with!

 Here Nora is instruction Elliot on how to do it correctly.

 She was very careful to try to hang them "just so."

 Carolyn doesn't care for pictures, but she did like hanging the ornaments and hearing the stories behind some of them!

 The hangers were a little bit tangled. :)

Finally, candy cane cookies just before bed. Then a Christmas movie, and we were all whooped!

Busy, fun, wonderful weekend! I am so thankful to have family (on both sides!) that really ENJOYS each other. It is such a blessing to be together! :)

Thanksgiving Feast

Yesterday was Carolyn's "Thanksgiving Feast" at her pre-K class. It's a fun thing that I get to be one of the "room moms" this year, so I get to help out with things. My cohort is an experienced room mom, so she knows exactly what to do, and helps me learn the ropes. This little party was so much fun!

 All the kids had hats like either Pilgrims or "Native Americans" (they still call them "Indians" at Carolyn's school... but I'm pretty sure that's not PC these days). I thought Carolyn looked so cute in the paper hat. :)

We feasted on fruit, cornbread, popcorn, and grape juice. I had to wake Nora up from her nap after only about 45 minutes so she was pretty grouchy the whole time... maybe next time there's a party at school, I'll get a babysitter. :)

And here's Carolyn with her beloved teacher. This woman is 100% amazing. I may have mentioned it before. But she exactly the kind of person I would love to be. She has so much energy, heart, enthusiasm, and love for God- she is someone who naturally makes everyone around her want to be the best version of themselves. I would love to be the kind of person who inspires others to be better, love God more, love life, and be thankful. Plus, she is an outstanding teacher. :)

Buried!

That pile of envelopes on my table is the orders I mailed out yesterday! I sent out 24 packages yesterday... and today I've got another "work day" so hopefully I'll get caught back up to a sane level soon. Busy season making bows... my "love-hate" relationship with them has been mostly "love" recently; I've been doing better with keeping the balance by trying to restrict my "work time" to early mornings before the kids are up, leaving me freer most days to resolve things early in the day so I have more space to really be present with my family. I also take 1-2 "work days" weekly so that I have some real dedicated time to work on my business. I never really thought life would take me where I had essentially a part-time job working for my own self. But this is where we are right now, and I am thankful for the outlet, for something that makes me feel the sense of significance as an individual that tends to get buried under the overarching "mommy" role. It's also, admittedly, nice to feel successful at something in a time when a lot of our thoughts, money, time seem to revolve around attempting to resolve this big failure that I'm dealing with.

I was thinking about it yesterday (ha! I think about it every day)- and I think that what I really deep down in my heart desire is just to be healed, whole again. I don't feel like it is so much about a baby anymore as it is about just not wanting to be broken. Physically- what is hardest for me is to look around at others (I just about broke down in church on Sunday when they had a baby dedication!), see the vibrant pulse of life within them or wrapped in blankets in their arms- and feel that my own physical reproductive potential is so compromised that it will take a true miracle for me to ever know what that is like again. No guarantees; I could be completely reproductively finished at 30 years old (28 in fact, because that's how old I was when Nora was born). I grieve over the loss of that internal hope that my body possesses what it needs to nurture and promote life.

But when I get down to the real "stuff" underneath, I realize that the physical is only the surface- it's an avenue that God has used to enlighten me to the brokenness in my heart. Feeling so powerless physically makes me realize how much I depend on my own self- my intelligence (ha!), physical capacity, finances, plots and plans to make life turn out like I think it should. I think I had to really get down into this place of brokenness to realize that what I need is not a baby to hold in my arms to make everything all right again and prove that I'm not broken.  What I need is for God to do a miraculous work in me to put me back together again, to seal the broken places together again so that I can be complete, whether or not He ever does answer the prayer I repeatedly pray. I don't want to walk through the rest of my life, dreading and surviving announcement after announcement from the people I love, each one sending another dart of shame and sadness, as if to say "Ha! See, other people are "normal." Other people's bodies work the way they were supposed to. Too bad yours doesn't, and there's n-o-t-h-i-n-g you can do about it!" My heart needs to be whole so that it can hold joy that isn't yet my own but comes from the Lord- so I can spill His love and joy out over my friends' blessings. I need healing for my heart because it is in humility and open-handedness I will find the way to live as He wants me to. It is only in laying down my purposes for my life that I will find His, and in finding His, find the fulfillment and peace that my heart longs for.

"Trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight."

Writing

One of the coolest things about the past few months has been seeing Carolyn's amazing intellectual growth and increasing maturity as she's been at school daily since August. I'm sure that some of it is developmental (she's always been one that does things on her own timeframe and rarely gives any warning that a new skill is about to emerge), but a large portion of the credit for the astounding progress she's been making has to go to her fantastic teacher. I have never had much success at interesting Carolyn in letters or really learning much of anything at all- it's like there's been a "wall" there. But lately it seems the floodgates are opening, and she is suddenly SO interested in letters, words, sounds, everything. She loves to write with a Sharpie marker, as below.

 You can read YMCA, God, Bed, Carolyn, Nora, Mama, Dad, and several nonsense words with backwards lowercase "h's" (last week was "H" week at school). I also see a lot of "RSVP" because that is a word she's learned from a Fancy Nancy book. :)

Some of it makes less sense, though I can still get "cat," "bed," "horse," and "toy" out of this... this is pretty characteristic of her drawings lately. Most still feature Rapunzel as a main character, along with Carolyn (now being drawn with long hair as she is growing it out, and always with bangs since she knows that if she grows them out she will have to wear hair clips to keep them out of her face ;)), Tinkerbell (hair on top of her head), Nora, and Baggins the dog. Also she likes to draw houses.

So, so fun to see her mind expanding, and, especially, her confidence blossoming! For the first time I think she is beginning to get that heady sense of her own potential and she is taking more risks (trying things she doesn't already know she'll be good at ;)) and learning so much! We have parent teacher conferences next week for her and I am looking forward to seeing what her teacher thinks about her progress this year. Pre-K was definitely the right decision for her. I absolutely love where she is; the school is great, the kids and other parents are great, and the teacher is absolutely superb. I have met very few people that come anywhere close to her passion, engagement and ability to love with abandon. She is exactly what our Carolyn needed for this year. :)

More Thoughts

Here are some thoughts for tonight.
1. I need to blog more. I think the reason I have such a block about it lately is twofold- one, I'm just out of the habit, and two- I have TOO much to say quickly. There are always all these thoughts floating around my head that really do deserve an outlet... but I rarely have time to sit down and let them out. I need to get back to being okay with mediocre.

2. Sisters are GREAT. I love Having a sister, Being a sister, and being the mother of two girls who Are sisters. I especially love watching Carolyn and Nora's sister relationship develop. Yesterday Nora had some small (but very grievous ;)) injury, and I was comforting her, and when Carolyn heard Nora crying, she came out of her room, very gently put her arms around her sister and said "it's okay, Nora. I love you." And then Nora, sniffing, said "I love you, too sisher..." melts my heart to see them love each other. :)

3. God uses pain to equip us for ministry. Relating back to #2, although I am sorry that my sister had to experience the struggle she did before my nephew came into the world, I am grateful that when I call her to tell her that things didn't work out (again) this time, she can say "I know. I understand." It's easier to feel as though someone shares your trouble when you know that they really do "know." I hope that some day I can use what this journey has meant to me to encourage others. Maybe that's part of the redemption. I certainly feel as though I could use a little bit of that right about now.

4. I'm glad that our family has started going through the Growing Kids God's Way class at our church again. It's been a couple years since the first time we took it,  and since we both feel as though this may be an area we may be equipped and called to serve some day as teachers, we decided this is the year for us to take the 20 week parenting course again. We're a couple weeks in and already I can tell that just re-energizing our focus on parenting and having the accountability of a class to attend has been helping.

5. Relating back to #4, we were talking this week about child-centered parenting- the most common philosophy of parenting in our society today, and one we believe is detrimental to family structure and healthy development because it undermines the sense of family as a community and emphasizes the importance and autonomy of the individual over the health of the family. Children do not "make" a family- they join and expand a family. I was thinking about this as it relates to the saga of our journey of the last 18 months. I never thought our family would be "complete" with just the 4 of us- I always wanted to have more children. But it really must be complete, as we are, for our family to be a healthy place for whoever-that-may-be to join (whether by natural birth or by adoption someday). Whoever that little person is that God has for us deserves a healthy and whole family to expand, rather than being born into a vacuum and having a hole to fill before his life ever even starts.

Sometimes I feel so tired of this journey because it has exposed so much of my own brokenness to me, and just about as soon as I start to feel like I'm healing, something happens to make me feel like that old wound just gashes right open again, exposing how broken I really am underneath the surface- how after months and months of this cycle of bitterness, repentance, anger, acceptance, joy, grief- I still haven't gotten the point. I'm still trying to fill a hole, rather than embracing wholeness in Christ and letting Him heal me from the inside, so that there is no longer any hole. Maybe I'm moving a little bit in the right direction... but sometimes it seems as though there is so far to go. But I guess the truth is, God doesn't give babies to those who deserve them (obviously...)- His gift of life, like the gift of grace in Christ, just isn't something you can track down to a formula that makes sense. You just have to trust Him. And I am trying, so I suppose that is something.

6. I need to go to bed! :) My new "work schedule" has me up at 5am most mornings so that I can have all my bows for that day wrapped up by 8am when the kids get up, leaving me more free for the rest of the day. :) So far it's working out well... but only when I get to bed on time!

TV Time

I don't do nearly as well as I used to with taking snapshots of our real, wonderful, messy, everyday life! So yesterday when the girls were sitting almost snuggled together on the couch watching "Little Bear" (an actually reasonably intelligent, not terribly irritating show), I just snapped (with the flash of course which ruins everything) a pic of their dazed, TV-enthralled faces. I love the little bare feet, the hat smushed down over messy pigtails, and the mismatched heart patterned tights with the summer dress. I love these girls with my whole heart. So so blessed I am to be their mom.

Chocolatey

So today we did the Hot Chocolate 15K in Chicago! A little bit crazy maybe- we drove down last night, ran this morning, and drove back home this afternoon! We had so much fun running together! Never in my wildest anticipation of what married life would hold for us, yea nearly 10 years ago now- would I have dreamed we would actually participate in a SPORT together at any time. I am absolutely NOT athletically gifted- but I have learned this year that I CAN run- maybe not really fast, maybe not really well- but I can do it- and running is something that is so individual that I can even feel like I'm "winning" when the only person I'm competing against is myself.

Today wasn't even a "great" run- I didn't eat very well yesterday or sleep all that well last night, so I just didn't feel my best- but it was actually my best time so far for a longer run (15K= about 9.3 miles). We finished in 1 hour, 26 minutes, and 17 seconds- total pace was 9:16 per mile. The last 2 miles I ramped up the music on my headphones and quit trying to talk, and we probably averaged closer to 9 minute miles for the last 2. It felt really good to be done! And because it was the Hot Chocolate run- afterwards there was chocolate fondue and hot chocolate! Very yummy, and a great "date" with my hunky hubby. :) Plus, I placed right in the middle of my age group this time (502nd of 999), instead of somewhere at the bottom, like the last race I did when I checked. :)

After the race, we enjoyed some PF Chang's with Shelly and Bryan and Elliot and the kids and then the little ones took a nap, Brad and Bry watched football, and Shelly and Carolyn and I went to the mall together for awhile. It was the first time that I tried to take Carolyn on a "girl's excursion" that wasn't really totally "about" her. She really did quite well- and enjoyed being one of the big girls. It might have helped that we stopped for a Mrs. Field's cookie and somehow managed to end up at the Disney Store at one point in the trip. :) We don't have a Disney Store here anymore- but I swear I spend more money there than I even did when we had one here! It's just a treat to go now when we go to Chicago.

Drove home, and finished listening to the last book in the Hunger Games series on the way. Learned an important lesson- don't get engrossed in an audiobook while the kids are in the car, unless they are sleeping! Being interrupted at the most exciting point in the story tends to make you a bit grouchier than normal!