a blog; unplugged

Friday, January 6, 2012

"Go big or go home." ~ mother of the year

I'm running out of space to store all of my "Mother of the Year" awards. There just simply aren't enough shelves and walls...

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There's the time I accidentally sent Ryan to school with a bottle of wine in his backpack. Never mind that the wine was free from a wedding the Saturday before and never mind that I simply stuffed the contents of the entire car into Ryan's backpack when I was cleaning it. Whoops. I must have forgotten those 'contents' when I reminded Ryanie to grab his backpack on Monday morning. IT was pretty odd seeing a 7 year old grabbing a wine bottle around it's neck, scolding me for putting "alcohol in my lunch!". This little mis-hap could end with a Jeff Foxworthy's "Where's your sign?" but I think a Lisa McElroy's "Where will you hang {it}?" will suffice.
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Or there's the time when he refused to eat his lunch and a para pro told me so. When I walked into the cafeteria to see what was up, Ryan was all up in sorts. So maybe, just maybe, I forgot to pack him a {new} lunch and he was staring at last Friday's (aka-sat in a hot car all weekend long) lunch. Whoops. "Where will you hang {it}?"
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You should have seen Gage at his Christmas pageant a few nights ago. Never mind that he had his lines memorized. Or that he sang the songs beautifully-hand signals and all. The icing on the cake was when he gave JD the "rock on" sign when he spotted him and then began "machine-gunning" the audience. "Where, or where, for the love of mothers-of-the-year, will I hang {it}?"
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Like I mentioned, mother.of.the.year. Seems to be a title that just hunts me down like Dog, the Bounty Dude.
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It's me, though. It's, {us}. Jd wonders why I even care that Gage's Me-Board is just so or Ryan's education binder is tabbed and labeled. He laughs it all off but he wasn't the one...the one sitting in the chair at our Chiro. appointment yesterday when I got thee BIGGEST M.O.Y award yet. Let's call it a moment of silence. Silent shame. Silent I can do better. I'm not going to bother writing down all the grimy details; I'm just going to publicly hold myself accountable by typing it before my own eyes. It's never to late to do it right, right? (It's nothing MAJOR, but kinda is, you know?)
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And so it is, Go BIG or go home spoken from a true Mother.Ofthe.Year. Some people make new year's resolutions. We are in the process of a total family makeover. I don't know if we'll survive. . .but 2012 will be different for us.

1. No sugar.
2. No TV (except 2 hrs. on non-school nights)
3. If there's something we want our children to know, we will embrace the responsibility to teach it.

I know this stuff is probably pretty basic for most people. I guess maybe we just fell off the wagon? Whatever the case, it may be a pretty bumpy road back to the straight and narrow. Stay tuned.

Sunday, January 1, 2012

Let me tell you about the {lines} on my face.

Oh man. When you get your boys in the woods, watch them {bloom}. Sit back, smile and see the joy rise up out of their souls. I love that the first thing Ryan does when he gets in the woods is breathe down deep, the pine cone-y freshness that is {boy} and {joy} all rolled up together. Gage is starting to notice the smell of it all too.

Watch as they learn to skate on thin ice; a metaphorical taste of what is to come with {life}. Ironic how fun it is now.

We journeyed into the woods on this day, soul-searching. JD had just gotten home after working all night. All {3} were in the tub. I looked up at my weary husband and said, "Let's go sledding in the mountains today". You should have seen that night-shift blue shade fade from his face and bright lights take the place within him. Talk about the colors of a flame! He was packed, four wheelers and all, before I had the kids dried, dressed, and ready to go.

I've been reading "Wild at Heart" and am realizing how important this man stuff is. These adventures. These woods.

On this day, we were in search of a good time. A good {family} time in God's country.

JD remembered seeing a "really cool bee hive" in the woods so we spent a good portion of him pulling the boys and I on two connected sleds through the woods, searching for the elusive hive. What can I say, I'm a sucker for a cool bee hive.

We found it. Unfortunately someone else had as well, so we got to see what was left of it. JD was right - it would have been cool. Instead though, I found THEE perfect Christmas tree. I propped my camera up and even got a timed family picture. Ahhh, the fragrance of adventure. It's good stuff.

The boys 'harvested' the tree and we fashioned a system for getting it back to the trailer in one piece. It all worked out marvelously. What a {perfect} day.

Now, admittedly, this isn't the best picture of me but it tells the story.

See that tip trailer? Yeah, it spells disaster. As darkness was approaching and the McElroys were loading, adventure turned...sour. JD {accidentally} drove his four-wheeler through the back of our car. GASP. Pause for affect.

More pausing. More affecting. More GASPS.

Can you hear the echoing screams of "I told you that would happen...WHY didn't you listen to me?" That would be the role I played. I know. I'm not the supportive, compassionate wife I would like to be.

It was a quiet ride home narrated by JD with one sentence, "If you had stood where you wanted, we would be driving to an ER right now and you'd probably look a lot like Ryan" (who has no front teeth at the moment). Nu-ugh. I probably would have lifted that four-wheeler like She-ruh and none of this would have happened. Phshaw.

I end the story here for one reason. It's a line on my face like the song humming along to this story suggests. It's what makes us, us. It's the lesson {learned} because sweet friends, there's ALWAYS a lesson.

I can choose to forget the scene with my babies in the tub.

I can forget the light in {12} eyes when their souls hear, "woods".

I can forget about the two sleds and one beehive in a pine tree.

I can forget all about skating on thin ice and the echos of laughter ringing through The Blues.

I can forget about our family's picture, everyone looking (finally).

I can forget about thee most perfect Christmas tree EVER and the joint effort it took to get it {home}.

You see, I can forget all about that and remember the {dent}. (IF I choose to).

This year, this year absent from blogging, I've spent remembering more dents than all the rest. It's easy to do because they are everywhere. But believe you me, the light in these eyes of mine is returning, looking up, watching, and waiting for the Lord to ignite. The dents are fading and the Lord's fire is refining.

Saturday, December 31, 2011

A New Year

I'm alive. The family is alive. And hopefully in 2012, this blog will have a little more {life} in it as well. Looking forward to a comeback!

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

{1,000}

When something in your life is OF God, you have to share it. You just do. And when the proverbial 'wind' blows, you must chime. You must. You must {move}.

Consider this my first move. Movement.

God certainly works in mysterious ways; perhaps growing less mystical as time passes on. When I look back on the last year or so, there are pieces. Big ones; little ones. Pieces that seem to fit while others sort of hang in the balance. I guess it's not surprising to me (and yet is at the same time) when I pick up a book and am shocked by the way it seems to sew the pieces of the last year together.

Ann Voskamp. She's a blogger that a dear friend of mine suggested I read. Her writing style is free verse poetry and I'd describe her sentence structure as backward. Instead of writing, 'the dog ran down the road' Ann would write, 'down the road, the dog ran'. For some, it's frustrating to read. But for me...her words, they are like a lullaby for my heart. For the first time in my life I pay no attention to punctuation. The message is sung straight to my soul. Anyway, Ann wrote a book that sat for almost an entire month in my Amazon cart. Since its arrival, I haven't been able to put it down.

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If you had to make a list of 1,000 'things' in your life that you love...1,000 ways you are blessed...1,000 gifts...could you? 1,000. It's a scary number, especially when it starts with 1.

I started my list last night.

1. A husband who loves deeply.
2. Friendship and french fries.
3. "Mama" through a toothy grin.
4. The delete button on facebook.

"This act of naming grace moments, this list of God's gifts, moves beyond the shopping list variety of prayer and into the other side. The other side of prayer, the interior of His throne room, the inner walls of His powerful, love-beating heart. The list is God's list, the pulse of His love - the love that thrums on the other side of our prayers. And I see it now for what this really is, this dare to write down one thousand things I love. It really is a dare to name all the ways that God loves me. The true Love Dare. To move into His presence and listen to His love unending and know the grace uncontainable. This is the vault of the miracles. The only thing that can change us, the world, is this - all His love." from One Thousand Gifts, Ann Voskamp (2011)

Won't you fall in love one way at a time? Unwrap the gift He has given by giving it a name (and number).