surprised by motherhood

I just finished this really great book that I had previously started but put down for a bit to read something else. it is amazing how God can use the beautiful words of a book to speak right into you heart and at just the right time.

the book Surprised by Motherhood by Lisa Jo Baker is just what I needed to read. she talks about how she never imagined being a mother and I wondered if I would relate or even connect with anything in this book because all I ever wanted to be was a mother.  there were so many things though that I connected with in the book even though our desired were very different.

being a mom is way, way harder than I ever thought possible. here are a few quote from the book that really hit home for me and helped me through this motherhood, struggling process.....

"I understand because I, to, walk the tightrope between my old habits and my new ones, and as a mom, I want to be present in mind as well as body. smartphones make it easy to pretend."
I don't want to pretend with my little people or with those that I love and love us. I want to be real and true and honest.

"It's funny how having a mom and becoming a mom are so profoundly connected."

"But moving forward is usually impossible without first going back."
I feel very stuck here. My hubby encourages me to meditate and remember my younger years and while I had a pretty great childhood it is difficult for me to contemplate on it and connect with how things were when I was a little girl.

"Becoming a parent is a lot like breaking up with yourself. There are all these things you used to love about yourself and your life. Those late-afternoon naps. Those spontaneous movie nights. The tidy house and pretty things that could easily break. Lots of pretty things. Unbroken pretty things. Uninterrupted meals, sleep, bathroom breaks."
No one ever wants to consider themselves as being selfish but I think that may be part of the problem. there are some selfishness that I need to consider and let go of to continue to be a better mom.

"Some days you've done it right-you've been reasonable in the face of irrational toddlerhood and you've bent low to meet the needs of tiny humans straining against their own limitations. You've reminded yourself that you're the grown-up, and you've tried really hard to act like it."
That is the problem though, right there, that we act like the grown ups that we are. (so hard sometimes) that we guide our children through the struggles that they are going through. that we remember that they are just kids and that they don't have the same coping skills that we are equipped with, even when our coping skills don't seem to be on point.

"How my parenting had mostly been a mixture of embarrassment and frustration."
still remember that girl who could be judgy about the way people were parenting their children (even thought I didn't have any) and now that girl is a parent and has way to many judgements on her self in how she parents and the worry about what other people think. working on releasing those fears and frustrations and embarrassments to Him.

"I saw how long it had been since I had enjoyed him."
in the book, Lisa Jo, wrote a note to her second born and before I barreled though and read her's I wrote one of my own:

So that I embrace the full of life child that God has blessed me with
So that I enjoy her presence and words
So that I relish in her learning and curioursity
So that I see the tender heart that she has
       -her love for singing
       -music
       -twirling
       -gymnastics
       -all things pretty
so that I love her for who God made her. not who I want her to be or others think she needs to be
so that I encourage her through al of the awesome-ness that is her.
completely opposite of me, but maybe, just maybe, everything I need

"No, God doesn't ask us to trade who we are for the label of 'mom'."

"But I believe God loves us too much to leave us flailing in our self-centered universes, so He delivers these tiny reflections of ourselves into our homes with earthquake effectiveness."
Trying to look into the mirrors of who my children are and see them as a reflection of me and maybe that reflection has more smudges than I thought. They are more like me than I realize and sometimes it is the not so good, like me parts.

"And I will keep opening my arms, and we will keep teaching each other what it looks like to give up the pieces of ourselves we thought we needed, in order to make room for someone else."

"I care about slowing down, doing less, being present more."

Friendships

while roaming the wide world of the internet i came across this beautiful prayer for girlfriends  that i wanted to share. take some time to read it over. thankful for the girlfriends the God has placed in my life during every stage of my life. they have all and still continue to teach me something.

Simple 2

Here are a few more shots of my attempt at implementing simple in my photos

thank you Ashley Ann for the guidance. sign up for Ashley's Snapshots class for a more detailed description of how to implement this in your photo taking.

Simple

I have been working through AshelyAnn's Snapshots photography course and trying to take what she is teaching and really apply it. hoping that it all sticks. here are some of my photos that tried to capture simple.

every year for the past few years our small group has made valentine's cards for a local nursing home and delivered them close to valentine's day.  last year we got the kids together and made them together but we ran out of time to plan for that this year so we just decided to make them at home and on Moday we will all meet together to hand them out.

2015 and a photo of us from 2013 (we are still unsure about where our 2014 picture is)

I love this one because you can see the one that she crumbled up and threw to the side but she is still smiling as she moves on to make another card

this picture has no relation to the card making but little girl asked me to play a game with her. it took forever to get set up but then we started to play. games have been a big thing for her recently. it has been fun playing them with her and she is getting really good at some of them. we are still learning and working on how we act and react when we don't win. this shot was random. my camera wasn't snapping and I angled it away from her face and just shapped. I was fooling with the focus bottons or something. anyway I got his picture and loved it even though it doesn't have her face in the shot.

Snow day

you wouldn't believe that just a few weeks ago we had snow but it is true.

the kids got our of school early and no lie, not too much later the show started to fall.

we are usually sleeping when the snow is coming down and we wake up to a winter wonderland to play it but this year we were able to watch it fall and it was magical.

it was confusing for the kids though because all that they wanted to do was play in it.

they were in and out for a while and it accumulated enough for some play time. the next morning after a big breakfast they were ready to go again.

Dear

Future Daughter-in-Law,
Here are a few things you should know before joining our family.  First it is nothing like i have ever expected but everything wonderful, even in the hard times. We can be loud. Man we can be loud.  I, personally am more introverted. But, put me in my home, with the people I love and the small parts of me that is extroverted comes out. It is like living in a house of four firstborns, i mean there are technically only three but my daughter is all her own and brings a new-ness to this parenthood thing that we never experienced with our son.

We love big.  We jump full into relationships with those we love.  We love adventures. They can be big or small, either way we love it. We desire to have a better relationship with Jesus because we know that we are never going to get it just right.  And ultimately we have prayed for you over the years. I never really considered this aspect of relationship with someone what i have yet to meet, but when heard of people who pray for their future daughter-in-law, i knew when we found out we were having a son, that i would spend a number of moments praying for you. for your health, your family, your childhood, and your relationship with the One who made you. I don't know what your life, before we meet you will be like, but know that i have prayed for you through it all.

Know that marriage is not always perfect because we aren't perfect people, but love is a commitment and like one of my favorite song speaks of: "Love is a shelter in a raging storm, love is peace in the middle of a war, and if we try to leave, my God send angles to guard the door, no, love is not a fight but it's something worth fighting for."(by Warren Barfield)

Welcome to the Family sweet Girl.

Mom moments

stages of life are strange and fun all at the same time. i am not in a stage of life anymore where i am diapering and changing and bathing children. I still help little girl in the bath but my son is completely independent in the showering department, and has been for awhile. however, this whole showering thing is going to give me a heart attack, i just know it. i will die running to the bathroom to check on golden boy. why? you may ask. it has nothing to do with my worry of his safety but realizing 5 minuets into his shower that i forgot to take his hearing aids out. i haul to the bathroom, heart pounding, shower curtain pulled aside and check to see if they are out.

funny thing about growing up, they grow up in more areas than just being independent with showers. he has become more and more responsible for the care of his hearing aids. i get messages from his hearing specialist at school saying how proud she is that he is advocating for himself when it comes to his hearing aids. he lets them know when they aren't working correctly or needs new batteries. he has been so great about all of that and i love hearing about it from the ladies at school that love and care for him.

i need to calm down and realize that he is growing up, becoming more responsible, and caring for his hearing aids. i still will probably run to the bathroom, heart pounding, worried that he has forgotten to take them out a few more times (i am mom) but it is getting better and i am realizing what a sweet, grown up, responsible, guy that i have. he makes me smile and makes me proud.

Firsts of the Year and Ever

Golden Boy's Basketball season started on Saturday (at least the first game of the season.) They played so well. It is always fun to watch.

Little Girl played with two of her friends while the game was going on.

Little girl gave gymnastics a try this week. It was her very first time really doing anything like this. she dances and sings and moves all the time. hope that she will love gymnastics and put all of that energy to good use.

she  loved getting to walk across the balance beam

Bathroom Updates

Bathroom update and the headaches that come with living in an old house.

don't get me wrong, i love our old house. it has grown on me over the 10 years that we have lived here. (that wasn't always the case) but doing a remodel on an old house can be a bit challenging.

we had plumbers come out and give suggestions on what we should purchase, like brands and all. so we headed to a local plumbing supply store (not Home Depot or Lowes, although we did go there too)

we were looking for a toilet, toilet seat, replacement knobs for the shower and vanity and a new vanity.  We looked around and were a bit over whelmed at the cost of some of the items. someone asked us if we needed help, my initial reaction was no we are just looking. then my hubby says to me, well maybe we do need some help. but we continued to look. we started with the toilets and found the brand that the plumber told us to get, Gerber (not to be confused with the baby food)

then we looked at the faucet items that we needed. we searched and searched for something to replace these three knobs but weren't able to find them anywhere. this is where asking for help came in. we had a gentleman that first helped us with the toilet selection and answered come questions about the Gerber brand toilets, there were three (good, better, best) we decided to go with the better model. he did talk about the no slam seat and i was hooked. especially after hearing my friend Lindsay talk about loving her no slam seat in her new house. that all seemed to go fairly well. then it was deciding about faucets. the gentleman that was helping us said that they don't really make this kind of faucet anymore. that he could probably get us one in a chrome and glass knobs but the circle ones were code now. of course then we had the problem with what to do about the other tow holes then. he showed us a conversion plate that he had to go onto the tile to hide the holes and then you place the on off controller over that. see the picture below.

during this whole buying stuff process my hubby called the plumber letting him know about some of the changes, like the face plate for the shower (mainly that)

the next morning he got a call from the company saying that the plumber that was assigned to our job had called out sick and would be out all week. my hubby asked for another plumber to come out and the guy who came out basically said that the first plumber was a new plumber and under quoted us and got in over his head on this project. WOW! what had we gotten into. 

back at the plumbing supply store: 

the gentleman showed us which sink faucet was the matching one to this shower set up and we got it to replace this old thing (that was really my main reason for doing any of this)

the kids had a hard time turning it on and turning it off and it would drip or run all the time.

you can kind of see the back splash in the picture above. i will get to that in just a bit.

so we have our toilet covered (and the toilet seat, sheesh)

the shower and sink faucet now on to a vanity. here is the old one. it use to be white or maybe ivory is a better word, or even better yellowed ivory. shook i don't know.

it was ugly. when we repainted and went with the Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse theme for the bathroom (embracing the yellow tile) i painted the cabinet black on the outside.

since we were changing some things out we decided to go with a new vanity as well. we measured the width and went looking. we really wanted some drawers and not just the double door cabinet.

what it looked like once the vanity was removed.

the tile was a mess

my wonderful husband did a lot of cleaning and scraping there and when i got home i just had a bit more scraping to do with the blade.

 we found this vanity and really liked it (it apparently came with a solid white top (which i think that i would have liked better) but by the time we knew that this one was already installed)

Remember that picture of the old sinks backsplach? HERE IT IS! another thing we didn't realize was that the back splash was there to cover up the four holed in the tile that is behind the sink. we researched what to do about that. this company doesn't have the same marble (or whatever it is) in a back splash but they have it in a side splash. however, they cost a little over $30 and they are about 4-5 inches short for the back splash. we thought that we could buy two and then cut them each to fit and then just have a seem down the middle where the faucet was but we really weren't willing to drop $60 on it with the cost of everything else. i think that we decided that we were going to get a small piece of composite trim and cut it the right length and put it there.

 that wasn't the extent of our bathroom vanity woes. the plumber told us that the drawers weren't going to work because of the piping. we went back and fourth on what we were going to do and came up with keeping the drawer system but cutting the bottom drawer to fit (thinking that was going to be the only one with the problem. or we thought about taking it out and putting in a basket) well come to find out it was both bottom and middle drawers, once it was installed and we were now looking at cutting both of them. 

here is what the drawers looked like out.

we removed the silver piece

my father in law cut the back end off

we measured from the front of the drawer, 12 inches (we cut about 4 inches off of the back of the drawer)

this is the back piece that we gorilla glued back to the drawer

we let them sit overnight and then next day i attached the silver pieces back on and slid them into the vanity

here is the top drawer opened

and here is one of the bottom ones. ( i think this may be the middle one but i had the bottom one opened too.)

needless to say we have it pretty much all completed.  there is still some major shower cleaning to do but i just don't want to do another thing right now. it is crazy how messy the whole house can get over one room being in disarray. things are slowing getting back in there but like i said s-l-o-w-l-y.
we like the look of everything (even though i told  my hubby over and over, we should just rip out all of the tile) again we are embracing the look of the yellow tile and the colors of everything else work for now. i don't think we will have the Mickey and Minnie theme forever. If you have some suggestions of themes that could go with yellow tile i would love to hear it.

First Book of the New Year

Well i have finished my first book of 2016

Simply Tuesday by Emily P Freeman

i am torn on how much it really counts for 2016 though. 

see i started to read it at the end of 2015 and had high hopes of finishing it before the new year but i didn't.

i am however, quite delighted to be carrying it over in the new year to have read. 

it was only the last 3 or 4 chapters that i needed to read but i am so glad to be soaking up some more of this books goodness in this new year.

link above for more information about the book and author.