I Should Be....

Tomorrow morning I am hopping on a plane and flying west to visit a dear friend of mine who now lives in Battle Ground, Washington. I should be upstairs packing and putting the final little things in my carry-on but here I am playing around with my silly blog! You know I have been having some big-time blog-envy, not healthy at all! So I humbled myself, admitted my covetousness and asked for help from a friend who's blog is absolutely adorable. She shared some of her tricks and so I have been doing my best to employ them. What do you think?

snowed in!

This is what our house looked like yesterday afternoon. At this point it had rained for almost 24 hours then turned to snow Friday morning. By 11 a.m. the Traeton's school called and said, "Come get your child immediately." So with that we began our comfy, cozy weekend at home drinking hot cocoa with marshmallows, eating Easter candy, reading stories, playing in the snow and having snowball fights and making a snowman. We still have to hit the sledding hill. Because this is a spring snow it is very, very wet and heavy - pretty much slush. Everyone's snow clothes are so wet, dripping actually, it takes a long time for them to dry for the next outing.

This is Todd and the children shoveling the driveway the first time. We have shoveled it several times since.

Elias did his best to help out but he still hasn't figured out how to put his thumbs in the thumb-holes of his gloves. This puts him at an extreme disadvantage, not having thumbs to pick up the shovel.

When school let out we brought home two neighbor friends to hang out with us for the afternoon. We had tons of fun painting rocks, pictures and making mosaics. Good times had by all!

Todd, Traeton, Addison and Elias are itching to hit the hot tub right now. Everyone is suited out except for me. Since it is not Todd's favorite thing to take our three little jack rabbits into the hot tub alone I should sign off to join them.

Rob This Day?

I woke this morning later than I prefer and by our two-year-old, a double whammy. This is not my ideal way to begin the day. I like to be up before our children so I can steal some time to myself with our Lord. It is the only quiet, unruffled time of the day.

I also woke with my head swirling with all the 'stuff' of life. Stuff I am doing and stuff I am not doing. Stuff I am pleased with and stuff with which I am not pleased. Stuff I would rather be doing and coveting others because they are. I am stuck in a worldly mindset this morning.

That mindset is not a good place to be settled ever but especially on the morning of Good Friday! As I poured out my frustrations to the Lord (Elias was happily stationed in front of Sesame Street and Traeton was restlessly reading in his room) the Holy Spirit showed me that this is all spiritual warfare... Satan is distracting me from the most important focus of the day. Satan is trying to rob this day from Jesus Christ who suffered this day for all of us. Satan is doing what he does best as the father of lies and that is tricking me into thinking all the stuff of this life is more important than the stuff of heaven.

So with a refocused perspective and a fresh view of the day I am choosing to ignore Satan and his wiles and instead focus on our Savior.

Let this be a day of clear perspective for you as well.

Antiquated Already?

Greetings friends...

I believe I have figured out my animosity with my blog! For months and months I have been vowing to spend more time blogging, to use our blog as a more consistent way to keep in touch, to go deeper with the content of my posts and to ultimately glorify our Lord through this avenue.

But after months of trying to figure out how to change the look of our blog, to add precious backgrounds and graphics I admit defeat. I just cannot figure out how to change the elements on our page. I view lots of super creative blogs with all kinds of personal touches but how in the world do they add them! I can barely add pictures and I am sure I am doing something wrong there because of all the steps I have to go through to get them up.

I am totally embarrassed to admit that I just don't get it. I am quite worried the technology world sped by me years ago and is travelling so rapidly I may never catch up! This is so humbling but I think I may be antiquated already. Barely in my thirties and clueless on how to add personality to our family blog. Can anyone tell me how to get rid of that silly '565' in the headers of this new template?

Alrighty then, now that I have vented I am feeling like I can move onto stuff you all actually care about.

Our spring / winter breaks were fabulous. Both Addison and Traeton have returned to school. While they were home we packed our days with lots of stuff, some fun and busy and some lazy and without much direction. With each passing break from Stone Mountain Elementary (fall, winter and spring) I find that I am supremely satisfied with our modified traditional schedule. Two weeks for each break allows for one week of travel and one week of recovery/down-time.

That is exactly what our spring break looked like this year. Our first week was spent in Surprise, Arizona with my parents. We drove down which marked our first official family road trip. I had the whole drive built-up in my head as a pending horror film but I was extremely pleased as it turned out to be a lot of fun.

This was also Todd's first time to experience Surprise. I say experience because it is truly an experience. My parent's house is in a retirement community. It is extremely clean, quiet and slow. I find it a place of true refreshment and Traeton sees it as the perfect place to live once he flies the coup. Poor baby will have to someday understand in order to live in this area one must be at least 55 years of age.

I will leave you with some pictures of our time there...

Thanks for visiting.