Dear Dad,

It's been a month now since you've been gone and we are all still sad. It's been so very hard on Nita. She's so lonely and unsure and missing you so badly. Dad, will you give her a sign that you are there? Will you remind she's not completely alone and beckon the angels to release peace over her during the hardest, quietest, loneliest times? She needs to tangibly feel the presence of the Father and of you to comfort her broken heart. Dad, we miss you so much.

Did you see that I framed some pictures of you on my coffee table? I keep the one from your funeral on my kitchen counter so that I can look at your face every day. It was so very hard to see you laying in that casket, not moving and void of life. As your body laid there Nate and I stood by you not really sure what to do, say or think. Your two kids, barely adults ourselves thrust into losing a Dad and forcing us into a new phase of life. A life without a Dad.

I love you, Dad, and I am SO thankful for the time we got to have this year. Thank you for the memories and for the amazing legacy you left behind. I hope that I make you proud with the way I live life and love others around me. Watch over me Dad. Remind me to BE AMAZING and live this life to the absolute fullest. Your passing so early made me realize that I really need to make the most of every week I'm given. I don't want to spend my weeks focused on laundry, cleaning up the house and managing the bill. It's made me think more about what I'm focusing my life on, standing up more for what I think, believe and want. God has a plan for each of us, an individualized plan that will grow us as individuals, as givers as we bless others with the overflow of our abundance and as believers as we step out on faith each time you call us out of our comfort zone. Dad, remind me to not become complacent in life. Remind to trust the Spirit as He asks me to go further than I want to go. Remind me to love bigger and more selflessly.

I have faith that you are in Heaven helping to prepare a place, a beautiful mansion, the perfect place for Nita, Nate, Andrea, Jordan, Mackenzie and all the rest of us that you love so dearly.

Love you, Dad!

Christmas 2011

So I'm ALLLLMOST done shopping and it's two days before I need to be ready for Christmas. I've shopped, I've baked, decorated, done the parties, the ornament exchanges, the Christmas programs and I've shopped some more. I've wrapped a few presents and made candy, and you know what I didn't do...I didn't send out a single Christmas card. I KNOW!! It's awful!

There's that "Good Girl" of mine, the perfect Christy in my head that stands off in the corner smirking at me and reminding me of how I could have done it better and all the things I'm NOT doing. Gawd, I'd like to punch her. I was making such good strides learning about how I cannot be perfect and all the striving to be as close to it as I could was really hurting me mentally and spiritually. And then Christmas season hit me like a Mack truck. I keep reminding myself that these things are really all materialistic and people will forgive me if I don't send them a gift or a Christmas card, or a thank you note for the lovely cookies they dropped off. But Perfect Christy keeps needling me about every detail. WHAT IF my mail carrier is secretly hoping that I leave a small token of my appreciation in my mailbox and bc it's not there he'll actually be "accidentally" misdirecting my important mail? What if he is harboring this ill will all year round and every time I wave to him he's actually thinking about how insensitive I am. *shaking my head* It is a sickness I tell ya. I'm loopy. :) He's not thinking that! But these are the things that Perfect Christy reminds me of in these hectic times. And she never gives me credit for all the good and generous things I DO do. Perfect Christy can stuff it, bc you know what? I've done really good things this Christmas season and all my friends and family KNOW I love them all year round and the most amazing Christmas gift isn't going to make or break my relationships with them. Christmas presents are wrapped and ripped open in minutes, but the relationships and the memories are not built on gifts it's what I do with the people I give the gifts to. Boom! That's called keeping it real.

All that said...I'm whipped. I'm done shopping. I'm over the hustle and bustle, the lists and the pressure of Crazymas. I'm ready for Christmas day to be here so I can relish the day with my family and kids just lazing around in our PJs, eating, watching Christmas movies and just enjoying each other.

Merry CHRISTmas to all my friends, family and followers (yes, all seven of you!)

Hiding

I'm hiding from my kids right now. Shh, don't anyone make a sound or else I'll be forced to punch you in the neck. And.I'm.Not.Kidding.

*sigh* I really don't know what's going on with me lately, but I cannot get enough alone time. I find myself trying to nap more, drive more, steal away from the children more and it's never enough. Add on top of that the fact that our children are quite honestly going through an upswing of hyperactivity, and I'm basically ready to split. Not split as in, pack up a bag and catch a Greyhound. No I mean crack, go bonkers, go to the dark side of Mommyhood. I can feel myself griping, pushing them away and hollering for them to QUIET DOWN a lot more and it's not totally just me being tired of it all, they are really acting up more as well. Scott even mentioned it the other night, like "what the heck happened to our kids?" Tonight I took my bowl of lentil soup and tried to sit quietly on the front porch step while I ate it, but the Winter chill was too much and forced me back inside. I hung on as long as I could ducking behind the dead straggles of Clematis hoping it would break the wind enough, but not even close, so in I went. It was the first time this year that I've had that thought "Oh God, this is going to be a long, hard Winter, isn't it?" and panic streaked through my heart.

I don't want to feel this way.

I really don't blame the weather either. I know many mommies have a hard time when the clock falls back two hours and the sunny, warmth retreats to Florida, but it doesn't seem to affect me like that. It's just that I can't seem to get away. I can't get a rhythm of my own bc there is always someone right there with me, begging for attention. Even now as I type this Zach is screeching from downstairs, "MOOOOM. Mooommy. Mom. Mama. Mooooooom? Moooooooooom!? " It's not until I say "For the love of all that is holy, Son, WHAT DO YOU NEED!?" that he'll lower his voice to a whiney girl pitch and ask/tell me what he wants. Ugh.

Lord, I really need your grace during this season. I'm leaning into what I'm feeling, but also acknowledging that it doesn't have to be this way. I don't want to be miserable and crotchety with my kids and I do not want a long hard Winter. Speak to the hearts here and change the moods in this household to LOVE, JOY and PEACE again.

Chicken Noodles For The Soul

Oh man, what an amazingly wonderful day here...weatherwise, anyway! I have to chuckle because yesterday was one of THE WORST days I've had in a long time. It was one of those go back to sleep and wake up tomorrow kind of days. But today...*big inhale and exhale*...today is fine Fall day here in Ohio. It's cool and overcast, and you can just taste the apples hanging in the nearby orchards. Today is the kind of day you want to pull on some comfy socks, a floppy sweatshirt and make comfort foods with lots of butter in them. Mmmm...butter.

So that's what I'm doing. I decided to go on ahead and make up some homemade egg noodles. I've never done this before but I've seen my mom do it a few times and I know my hubby's grandma could do it. She's actually given us gallon sized Ziploc bags of her homemade noodles and man, they were tasty. So here's the egg noodle recipe I use and instructions.

2 Eggs
2 Cups of Flour
2 Pinches of Salt
A splash of milk

Beat the two eggs with a splash of milk and combine with the flour and salt. Knead the dough until it's fully combined. Let the dough rest for 15 minutes (it's pretty hard at first.) Roll the dough out on a floured surface until it's quite thing (remember, the dough will plump when cooked). Use a knife, noodle cutter or pizza cutter to cut the dough into strips (as skinny or wide as you'd prefer). Dust both sides of the noodles lightly with flour and air dry them (I really don't know how long, just until they are dry or you REALLY need to cook them. LOL)

I'm not a die-hard homemade noodle fan, but my hubby is and he even said as I was making them today "if you can make super yummy homemade noodles, I'll be yours forever." Ha ha ha, silly boy, I had you at "I could do your laundry."

So I hope you're having something soul-filling and yummy tonight, whatever it may be chili, chicken noodles or something warm, gooey and baked at 350!!?

Happy Fall/Autumn!

I think if we polled the church, a big chunk of us (myself included right now), would say we don't spend an ample amount of time with God. That's a first big step in a relationship. When we realize that spending time with God, actually in His presence, feeling Him exchange His love with us as we confess His wonderfulness in our lives and beseech Him his power in our lives...then the DESIRE, the appetite wakes up inside to spend MORE time with Him.

I use to wonder...how can ANYONE spend an hour, let alone hours, praying? I wander off after ten minutes! But when it stops being a list/something you NEED to do and becomes an affair that you are stealing chunks of time away from this life to relish Him, to drink in His pure, intoxicating measure of unadulterated love...He opens up something inside of us, opens our eyes more clearly to His words to His intentions in our lives, it opens the communication wider. Then is becomes less of something you NEED to do and more of what you WANT to do.

It's quite like any other relationship in our lives...if we didn't talk to our child or our spouse all day, but we thought about them and had good intentions of talking to them or spending time with them, the relationship grows cold. It's the interaction, making the relationship a priority, getting in there and feeling the soft skin of your child's face, taking time to hear the twinkle in his/her voice, listening to the knock-knock joke the 50th time and really laughing at it...spending time with a person allows you to understand who they are. God's no different. Don't allow the pastor on Sunday to be your only experience of God bc that's not YOUR experience! God has a dance card with only your name on it.

Spending time with Him (whatever that looks like in your life - it's different than mine) is going to allow you to hear Him and give him the opportunities to wipe away corrupted teachings and replace it with His pure words of adoration, admonition and truest love.

There is but a golden thread that weaves it's way through my day. It strings the events together to create something beautiful and one of a kind. Some of the events seem so miniscule and insignificant and others so shattering that my heart hangs low to the ground as I wait for renewed strength to go to the next event.

This golden thread is all that holds me together some days and on other days it's working in and out sends vibrations through the fabric of my day that encourage me to such heights that nothing seems impossible.

What is this amazing rivulet of thread that binds the pieces of me into a patchwork of such brilliance and durability?

How awful would it be to look back at all the stitches of my life and see just one broken, a threat to the whole creation. One broken stitch has the potential to, if given too much stress, break a hole in the entire stretch of events and stages of my life that have collectively become who I am.
No. I see no broken stitches along the seams of my life. Every stitch has been carefully and skillfully placed to create a masterpiece that is to be offered to a worthy recipient.

Today I feel the sting of the needle poking through the events of my day, but I trust the Tailor. I trust the thread's strength and purpose. I trust that the events of today and those of my tomorrows are all going to be part of the unique tapestry of my offering to the Tailor. I am being stitched into something that will bring glory and honor to the One who created me.

Changes

"Wow" is all I can say. The past six months have been chock full of changes, probably too many to even include in this one post. Actually, it's been more the past two months than six, but it started with the home schooling back in December.

So in December Abby and I started homeschooling and it...was...AWESOME. I highly recommend it to any parent who's even considering it as an option. I saw immediate changes in Abby's attitude around the house/family and our mornings went from a level Orange to Green. She use to FREAK OUT every morning either about her paperwork binder or her clothes, as there is a high priority set on these items in regular school, but as soon as we took those two stressors away our home life was a lot easier. And I also noticed a huge difference in our personal relationship too. I wasn't the enemy anymore. Instead we were a team working toward a common goal and the daily lessons forced our communication and collaboration. She had fun learning and so did I! Who knew adding fractions was that easy? Plus, with all the other neighbor kids in school all day my three kids HAD to play together and it became natural to ask to play with each other instead of other friends. THIS I loved seeing.

Abby started 4-H in January and is in the completing stages of her "Eye Spy In The Kitchen" book/project now. We joined a group of mixed age girls in Newark called Forever Friends and they are all so very sweet. They are doing Cake Decorating as a group project and Abby has taken to baking/cooking like a duck to water. SHE LOVES IT! So the book she's doing is walking her through Nutrition, getting to know the basics of kitchen utensils and using recipes. She has to learn about a topic (say Calcium content) and then complete a recipe that corresponds (Making Fruit Parfaits). Now at the end we have to make a simple scrapbook of her recipes, what she has learned along the way and cook or bake something as a final project to be judged. She'll be interviewed about the things she should know from the book and her final recipe. She has loved the 4-H experience so far and I know we're both excited to see how she grows. OH and she did enter an optional contest through 4-H - The Dairy Foods Contest. She entered a Nutty Banana Pudding recipe, which was a basic banana pudding, but instead of using Nilla wafers she used Nutter Butter cookies. And she won 2nd place in her age group! :) She was super excited about the win and already has her ribbons displayed in her room. Bless her heart! Mommy is super proud of her too and I'm so glad for her to have the experience. She's growing up so quickly!

And more recently Scott has decided to leave the company he worked for and helped grow from the ground up to start an Architecture firm of his own. Scott Baker & Associates, LLC opened it's doors on June 1st and is going strong. This was a big leap of faith for us! At the beginning of the year we thought it was our desire to move out of this house and find a new one on more land, but after six months of finding nothing we wanted, our house not having much action as far as buyers and then a bid on our new build drawings came back too high...it was apparent that we should stick right where we are and see what happens down the road. We figured it would be a good idea to get real serious about paying our home loan down and getting out of debt (home loan is our only debt actually). So we met with our Accountant and discussed our finances and that was when he brought up paying our full tithe out of our GROSS income instead of NET. Here is where the step of faith really began. This jumped our monthly tithe by a few hundred dollars. It was significant enough to an eye opener but not too much that it would hurt. So we did it! Our pastor challenged us to give it three months and if we weren't blessed he'd give us every penny back. NICE! So we did...and exactly three months later, the week after we gave our third full tithe...like a tidal wave cresting Scott felt the urging to go out on his own with his work. It was fast and furious how it all happened and while it was a very scary idea there was this underlying peace that HAD to be God. More about all that too come!!

Time to get ready for church today and hopefully some TENNIS later with my man again. I gotta tell ya...it's so awesome to have my own personal coach at my disposal.