Giggles…

What would you do?

H6 and I had just finished a little time in the pool together and were getting dressed to go home. La La La… WAIT A MINUTE!!! Where are my underpants????? I rifle through the bag again and realize, I have grabbed two pairs of underpants from the clean laundry pile, but they are both size 6X.

The thought of putting my jeans on without underpants on was unthinkable. I started to panic. What do I do???? I had to think fast because soon H6 would be coming out of the shower, so I made a split second decision. You guessed it. I pulled on the size 6X.

Rrrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiipppppp. But then, it was OK. Good enough to get home in anyway.

Suddenly, H6 comes storming out of the shower stall. “Moooooommmmmmm!! Those are MY underpants. And now they have a HUGE HOLE in them!”

Did I mention these little shower/changing stalls are NOT sound proof and that the entire locker room has just been informed that I have my daughter’s underwear on, which now have a nice big hole in them. Nice. Very nice.

A Must Have…

Craig and Megan Dunham, great pals from the college days and beyond, have just found a great house in St. Louis they are going to buy later on this month. Believe it our not - YOU CAN HELP THEM BUY THIS HOUSE JUST BY ENJOYING SOME SUPER FUN MUSIC. More on that later….

What to say about these two, except that if you can think of a great memory with a friend of yours, I probably have one just like it with one or the other of these two. We all met at Eagle Lake Camp in the mid-90’s. Eagle Lake is an amazing camp for kids located in Pikes Peak National Forest in Colorado, and run by The Navigators, a nondenominational Christian ministry.

Megan and I bonded right away. Counselors who sneak snacks together, stick together. We giggled all summer long and into the following years, sending each other very random packages filled with gag gifts and long letters about the trials of love. We also nearly giggled Megan out of her love life, by annoying the heck out of her boyfriend Craig.

Craig was my boss at Eagle Lake, first when I was on summer staff, and later on when I came on board year round after graduation. He was more than a boss though. He was (is) a true mentor and friend. We sang together in one totally rad band, “Red Letter Edition,” for a couple of very fun filled summers up at Eagle Lake. Now here’s were this all comes together.

One of the very creative ways Craig and Megan are raising the funds for the down payment on the house is by selling a great collection of Craig’s music! 15 very fun songs (a few of which are sung by yours truly) are available for download for just $10. $9 will go to the down-payment-fund and $1 will go to the camp, Eagle Lake, were we all met and where Craig started recording his music.

So, here’s your chance to support a super great cause! These folks are the real deal. A wonderful family (they have 4 great girls!!) with an opportunity to land in a great home after renting and waiting while Craig has been attending Covenant Seminary.

Go on - get yourself some fun music right now. Great for you AND THE KIDS to dance the day away to.

Why Selling Your Home Is Just Like Going to Seminary…

OK - It’s really not, because I know some people in seminary and they are working hard and I really respect them SO SO MUCH. But, selling MY house is like ME going to seminary in that it is a very stressful, wonderful, difficult process of sorting out all my terrible theological roots from the better ones, and trying to live and make decisions, or not make any decisions because there aren’t any unfortunately to make when your house has not sold, based on the better ones.

When I realize I’m believing something “American” versus “Biblical”, it’s challenging to just toss it out the window and have a good day. I need to do more than toss out the bad, I have to learn the truth - which is hard to do when you are also trying to keep 3 monkeys going to hard they pass out in bed every night. BUT - it’s not impossible. Just hard. And I don’t like hard things.

Lord, in the spaces of my day where I’ve tossed out the bad (like, remember when I was really mad at you for not giving us one of the those “AND THE DAY THE SIGN WENT UP WE HAD A FULL OFFER - PRAISE THE LORD” stories to share in our summer newsletters), and am waiting on a little moment to ground myself in your truth, would you be my strength? Would you please fill in those holes so that fear and terror and despair don’t creep in? Would you give me the discipline to care for my children and rejoice in them, when I want to crawl under the bed and journal about what I’m thinking and feeling? Amen.

 

Splashin’

Would you believe, I actually had to look up on the internet how to do this to my girl’s hair? I’m seriously lacking in all hair knowledge. It turned out great, but I forgot to take a picture before we all ended up here…

Turns out the Y across town has a super fun splash park. What a find and FREE too with our membership. Again, why have we never had a Y membership before? We are all enjoying it so, so, so, much.

This next one is my fav. This little ring of water would rise and fall kind of randomly. Picture H6 pretending she is controlling the whole thing via her singing loudly and waving her arms wildly.

And because now I think it’s so fun to post pictures my children have taken of me - I offer you this…

Only in America

Last night, Ben and I watched “The Kite Runner.” We were both very moved, and went to bed with a genuine and heavy burden for Afghanistan, especially the children there.

Only in America could I go to bed torn up about Afghanistan, only to have a small hissy fit this morning about my Zumba class being messed up.

Turns out all Zumba is not created equal. I drove all the way to the other side of town to a different YMCA last night to squeeze in another class for the week. The instructor was different, but I thought - it can’t be that different. Well, it was. I guess there is a “Genuine Non=Prompted Zumba” and there is what I’ve been doing at my gym, which is the “Dancing to Latin Music with Prompts.” Confused? Well, I guess real Zumba is not prompted, meaning you just watch the instructor do a certified “Zumba” routine, and you try and learn it. My class is just a dance/aerobic instructor who is teaching us real Latin dance steps and throwing some aerobics in along with it  - AND she is prompting us with a little microphone thingy. So, I totally couldn’t get into this legitimate Zumba class, and left half way through.

This morning, I went to what I hoped was my Zumba class, but the other instructor was there filling in. I asked her if she was going to do the “Non-prompting” kind of Zumba. She said “Yes,” so I left. I hope that didn’t hurt her feelings, but I was seriously SO DISAPPOINTED ABOUT THIS I NEARLY BURST OUT IN TEARS!!

So you see, this flipping on and off my concern for God’s world can only happen here. My Zumba class mess up was seriously SO IMPORTANT to me today, the entire country of Afghanistan faded away. I do not like when I have days like these. The smallness of my perspective humiliates and defeats me. Imagine my surprise when I began to rant in my mind about Zumba, only to hear the still small voice of the Lord ask me, “Are you still planning on praying for the children of Afghanistan today?”

To my dear friend Steph, I know you are totally laughing at me right now, which you should be. I love you!  

A little tiny bit more on Worship

There is just a little bit more to say, actually, about leading worship yesterday. At one of the services, as I scanned the crowd looking for Ben, (and hoping like crazy he was able to wrangle our 3 monkeys by himself into clothes and the car), I noticed a woman. Let me preface by saying I DO NOT HAVE CLAIM TO HAVE PSYCHIC POWERS. I could totally be making this up, but you know when you “catch a vibe” from a person?

Well, I was catching the vibe that this lady thought because I was up on stage, with a microphone, a tiny bit of talent, and a smile on my face, she thought I was perfect. I could feel her envying my life, and thinking about how I probably had a perfect hubby, perfect kids, super nice home, happy, happy, all the time - happy. You get the point.

You know, she probably could have been regretting eating the donut she had for breakfast, but it did get me thinking a little. Probably more people than I realize think my life is pretty perfect, and I’m grateful for all the blessing I do have, and there are many. But my life is NOT PERFECT PEOPLE. And, lady in the 7th row - just in case you read this blog (snort) here’s the real me…

Wet hair, no makeup, carrying a lovely green grocery sack filled with soggy crackers (because something leaked) and not enough water for my kids who were burning up because I forgot to put sunscreen on them.

PS: After my son took this lovely picture, I told him it was time for us to leave the park, and he promptly melted into a screaming pile of hissy fit and totally embarrassed me to death. The end.

Worship

Nothing really to say, except that leading Fernando Ortega’s, “Our Great God” with an amazing worship team, is perhaps one of the most fun things I’ve done in the past 5 years.

Hallelujah.

Our Summer So Far

I think I mentioned something about a prayerful, inspiring post coming soon. Don’t ever pay attention when I write things like that. How about a little photo diary instead??

So remember the 5K???

That was fun…but it did leave me feeling a bit, well…

I had to crop this baby down A LOT because the living room was in TOTAL chaos…  Well, then after a few days on the couch, we celebrated H5’s passing to the world of 6 year olds. Because I’m a mean mommy and make my children have their parties at home (because I always did and I just NEED to throw parties for 10 to 15, 6 and unders), there were many decorations to create. Including…

And of course…

That’s a horse, in case you were wondering… All in all it was a fun party. Don’t you think H6 looks pretty pleased?

Along with our daily trips to the YMCA for time in the pool, we continue our quest to visit every single park in Madison, WI even though we have a wonderful swing set in our own backyard.

All who wander are not lost you know. We just LOVE the wandering part.

We name all the parks very suitable names. This one is Purple Park, which lacks a little creativity. Others include Orange Park, Bad Boy Park (where we were once accosted by several very rowdy 8 year old boys), Shady Park, Dinosaur Park, and The One Down the Street.

A couple days ago we sent a photo message to my dad for his birthday. Here’s T4 with his part of “Happy Birthday Grandpa.” Of course, there was much drama about who would hold the Grandpa sign.

We’ve gone down to Dekalb a few times to pray for the campus and take some family photos.

Here’s my favorite picture from our last trip. I told Ben we should have taken our family photo in front of this instead of the beautiful School of Law.

He was probably right. This particular day was very long though. It took a lot of this…

just to get a couple of photos that actually turned out. Would you look at my face in this picture? Can you say, “Let’s get this over with already…”

PS: Please also notice my lethal elbows. One blow from those pointy weapons and you are toast!

All in all, it’s been a very full summer. Thanks for stopping by! Have a great day!

Giggles

I was mentioning to the kids that perhaps we’ll find a house in our new town where everyone can have thier own bedroom. H6 said, “Grrrrreat! Then you and daddy won’t have to share any more. How awesome is that?”

 

Open House Part III

By the way, this blog has officially become my real estate diary and will no longer contain any interesting or thought provoking posts. JUST KIDDING!!!

We did have another open house this past weekend and had 4 walk throughs. One couple was awesome, loved the house and…and…and… can’t afford it. Bummer. They were very sweet, had two boys, perfect… Lord, is there any way $15,000 could somehow make it’s way into their hands.

In case you are wondering where I’ve been these last weeks, mostly at the library. We are trucking through the children’s section like no body’s business. We go nearly every other day and check out a huge stack of 15-20 books. I’m not kidding. We are just strange like that. Then we read together off and on all day whenever there is a boring moment. And because I get bored easily, I want new ones fairly quickly. We will have NO problem completing the library’s summer reading challenge. In fact, it hasn’t even officially begun and I think we are just about done.

I am not bragging here. More like confessing. I am NOT creative and I’m really anti-mess right now because of the house being up for sale. We did potato stamping the other day and after I found the blue star on the wall I had to pack it all up. We seriously do backyard, books, backyard, books, basement, books, then backyard, then books. Thankfully, H6 is a new reader, so this is wonderful practice for her, since she reads about half and I read the other half. T4 is hanging with it, as long as he gets his fair share of non-fiction stuff like “Introduction to Incline Planes.”: L2 likes comedies and puppies.

You would think the librarians would be calling me super mom. After all, I am literally reading to the kids for hours a day. Instead I think they secretly call me, “Pain in the Butt” because every time I come in, I’m leaving a nice little stack of work for them. Have I ever mentioned my issue with grumpy librarians???

I’m learning quite a bit right now - more about faith and fear, and being a good mommy. It’s all still in the swimming around in my mind stage, but I feel a very well thought out and prayerful post coming on - any day now, so be sure to check back soon.

Thanks for visiting. Please leave a comment if only to say - HEY. It would MAKE MY DAY!!!