The Merry Month of May

It's time to play "catch up."

I feel like I often spend too much time playing this game, but sometimes, you gotta do whatcha gotta do.

So, I've decided to be merry about it. Yep. It's time to spend a few minutes catching up on the merry month of May.

At the first of the month, we found ourselves in celebration mode in Rochester, MN, at the wedding of my niece, Lauren Wynn, to Ryan Residence. It was beautiful, holy, and joyful!

Delightful table/name cards

Mayowood Stone Barn was beautiful.

Succulents for centerpieces

Sweet nieces from the PNW came in for the festivities

My brother, Andy, dancing with his daughter, Lauren

Three of my beautiful nieces with a grand nephew and grand niece thrown in!

I'm a sucker for Daddy/daughter pictures

The next weekend was Mother's Day. It was the first one for me without my mom. It's still weird to know that. I miss her.

In our world of social media, it's always interesting to see what ends up there on those kind of days. Some of the kids did the IG thing, some didn't.

The ones that didn't still love me ;)

Our annual jumping pic where one of us didn't jump

The Cali kid harkened back to 2012

We also celebrated this girl's 24th bday this month! 

About 6 hours after those fun pictures....

Mayday! Mayday!

My Lou and I picked a bad time to miscommunicate. We were about 2/3 of the way through a delightful bike ride when I thought we were going left at a corner, and he thought we were going right. When you are riding side by side, that doesn't work. In the middle of our collision, I screamed and then both of us proceeded to hit very hard asphalt. Lou's right collar bone took the brunt of his fall. My right rib cage took the brunt of mine. We've both also enjoyed some bruising and road rash. Good grief. Talk about an unexpected inconvenient event! Not what we had planned, but seeking to glorify God in the midst of it.

Two weeks after our wreck, Lou had to have surgery to fix that broken collar bone and make it line up and heal correctly. Grateful to God that all went well.

The doctor is the patient

You can imagine the teasing we're now receiving as a result of our Mayday! moment. I laughed out loud when I received an email from my brother, Andy, with the following limerick.

Well, four days after the wreck, broken rib or not, I was going on a long planned for and much anticipated trip with friends to To Kill A Mockingbird land. Sue Roweton, Marla Kemp and I have been chatting about going to Monroeville, AL, the home of the author of TKAM, Nell Harper Lee, for over a year. Every spring, her home town puts on the play on weekends. We hit town to enjoy the 2nd to last show of the season. Such a great time with the dearest of friends.

And, if you haven't read To Kill a Mockingbird, stop reading this, and order a copy and read it.

So, so good.

Side trip to Selma, AL, to walk over this and remember. #bloodysunday

Lots of interesting things to see/read in the Monroe County Museum

1st act of TKAM is outside

Not gonna let a little rain stop us!

Selfie stick fun

A short week after my Alabama jaunt, my man and I journeyed to Fayetteville, AR, with 4 of our buddies to celebrate our friends, Marla and Wes Kemp, birthdays. We toured around the town and the University of Arkansas, where we've sent 4 of our kids and a ton of our money. Then, we spent a bunch of time geocaching!

If you haven't Geocached, you should. With the help of a handy dandy app, wave points, and clues, you go on a "treasure" hunt for the caches. Once you find them, you write your name in the log in the cache and, of course, take a picture. I think we found 6 while there. Tons of fun!

Marla, Wes, Lou, me, Connie, and Kerrick

We called ourselves the Liber8ors :)

I actually didn't travel the entire month. I stayed home long enough this week to watch our good friend, Lane Nutt, plow up our garden spot. Talk about a good neighbor!! 

He and his wife even ran over later that day with some extra corn seeds and planted a couple of rows of that for me! I think I'm going to garden like this every year!

Well, here we are at the end of the month. I've included so much - and left out so much.

Each full, busy, hard, easy, happy day is such a gift from God, isn't it? Each marriage, each Mayday!, each trip, each friend - all gifts of grace.

I'm grateful. Just as I know you are for the gifts of grace in your life.

Thanks for stopping by and sharing my merry month of May with me.

Blessings!

Smile for the Camera!

It's Mother's Day 2014, and if your family is like my family, you might be snapping a few pictures today.

As I was thinking about that fact, it reminded me of one of the earliest posts I ever wrote (published in January 2011). It focused (pun intended) on parenting and picture taking, which are pretty appropriate thoughts for Mother's Day. I'm not exactly sure what the "rules" of republishing a blog post are, but I figure the blog police might be lenient on me cause it's Mother's Day. :) And, according to my blog stats, it wasn't widely read (26 views, to be exact). Yikes! I'm telling myself that happened because it was one of my earliest posts and not because it was that terrible. 

With that said, I hope you smile just a little when you read the following: A little something about parenting, picture taking, and people I love. 

This pic was taken in the early summer, before Mary Grace entered the world of braces. I saw it for the first time about a week ago when I was turning on my mom's ipad. It's her wall paper.

     It's now one of my favorites. And, once I saw it, I made a mental note: "use on your first parenting-oriented post."

     "Parent." How can the word that describes such a big job only have six letters? If I could give it a hashtag on twitter it would be

#youarenowcompletelyresponsibleforanotherlifeyoubetterdoagoodjobortheywillberuinedforever.

     Well, at least that's how I feel some of the time. Which brings me to the two poems that follow this introduction. For whatever reason, my mind jumped to writing these as I was looking at this picture. At first, I was only going to write one - the more serious one.  My bent is to seriousness and "Take Two" reflects what I feel at my core.  But the lighter one has also been true for us. Now, I don't remember the circumstances around taking this particular picture. I don't remember anybody being bent out of shape because I was taking it. But there have been picture-taking times when people have been unhappy about it and forced the smiles.

     So it is with parenting. Different days bring different "takes." They are all real - no denying that.  But they are all God given gifts, designed for his glory and our joy. I'll take that.




                                                                                     Take One    

I made them pose beside the door,

Could you believe it caused a war?

They smile so sweet and look at me,

But thoughts inside we do not see.

What’s really going through their mind

If written here, would not be kind.

They want to get this over soon

Their show’s on pause in the other room.

They humor me, they often do,

And I assure, “We’re almost through!”

The button clicks, they see a flash,

The smiles are gone and off they dash. 

 Take Two

Can those fourteen eyes possibly see

What they do to this heart in my chest?

It beats, it pounds, it swells, it breaks,

For those souls I love the best.

I study those faces and remember days

That I lived together with them.

The bond of blood, the bond of time,

May those memories never grow dim.

I've laughed, I've cried and felt such angst

Could our smiles fade to that black?

They do, they touch, but they don't stay.

Forgiveness and love bring them back.

God, thank you, thank you, my mouth stumbles to say

What is felt in the depth of my being.

Those lives are a gift given to me

I wouldn't believe, but for seeing.