Have a sweet week!

My apologies to any readers who have given up chocolate for Lent. These were fun-- a first trip out for my mini-Bundt pan, and very pretty sprinkled with the confectioners' sugar. But I kept thinking of them in angel food, with strawberries we will pick in late May. A good antidote for this cold day, pouring with rain.

I'll be taking a little break from posting until the end of the week-- in-laws coming today, a friend borrowing our kitchen for a photo shoot on Tuesday, and my last portrait shoot for a client on Wednesday. This stay-at-home, take it slow mommy is feeling overwhelmed.

My usual response to being overwhelmed is to think of other projects that are more exciting than what I am doing right now. Weird, I know. Like painting the bathroom. (Actually, painting all the interior rooms we have not painted yet, but starting small.) Going to a nursery to photograph zillions of flowers. (Weary of my indoor winter vignettes.) And maybe trying this ?

Not sure if I could with my less than stellar vision. But who could resist a tea towel with the Eiffel Tower embroidered on it? I ask you. . .

Ash Wednesday Meditation

Ash Wednesday Meditation

Snow clouds gather as I emerge into this night.
My breath is white smoke and my forehead bears
The clumsy cross, what’s left of all my spent
Hosannas.
Burning beneath it, the memory of oil
And promises, Your whisper, “beloved,”
Breathed on me in consumed yesterdays,
Tomorrows unblemished as white stones,
And on this night.
Lenten promises and foresakings
Set before me, a plan to meet You, I pause,
Between heaven and earth, this midweek cold
And Easter morning, dust and dust, death
And resurrection. All my pretty plans
Burn brightly in offering.
I find You want only space made for You:
The nod for the blessing of waking,
The drawn-in breath before kneeling,
The forty-fold admission that You fill
Utterly, in a world that knows gluttony
Or lack. My frosty breath is prayer,
For bare altars, dry jug let down
For well-water, an empty tomb,
A me-shaped vessel for Your Lenten portion.

A Matter of Tone

Last night was not a beacon of familial bliss here. Worn from weeks of sickness and cabin fever, we had little patience with the little guys. They weren't listening and following our directions, we were weary of food battles and picking up toys, and truth be told, a bit weary of each other. John and I went to bed, discouraged and expecting to trudge into the week.

But this morning, we got up a little later, since Joshua did not have school, and the boys slept later still. We had our coffee and tried to summon the energy for the day ahead. As John went to shower, I headed for the kitchen and the sun just beginning to peep over the sills. And with some inner wisdom deeper than my complaining thoughts, I started pancakes, a rare weekday treat. Laid a pretty table, sliced strawberries and poured juice into airplane glasses. By the time squinting little boys stumbled in, the last pancakes were in the pan, a golden plateful warm in the oven. My few minutes of preparation were more than rewarded with their excitement, bright faces, hearty appetites. And the day began on a far sweeter note than I expected, one that carried through their interactions with me and each other.

It seems to me that this is one of the great responsibilites and gifts of parenting, this gift of setting the tone. The atmosphere we breathe over our little ones shapes the time we spend with them. It may not be true that love, attention, care and focus always grow peace, but it is hard to have a peaceful home where the adults there do not pursue these values.

I am thankful as this day closes for the character of the Father, whose every act toward His children, whether blessing or discipline, is rooted in grace and love. Because this grace is His prevailing language, we are safe with Him. He makes a Home for us in Himself.

As a flawed mommy trying to follow such a parenting model, I must choose to turn away from the ungrace of keeping count of the wrongs of yesterday, and meet my boys ready to embrace mercies new every morning, for all of us. Many days it is for me an act of will and my grace-language is spoken in butter sizzling in a pan, clean socks, one more story.

Pass the strawberries. There are plenty to go around.

Sunday Solitary

I have been sick. Not the for-real, gotta go to bed sort, but the wishy washy kind of cold that just sort of nibbles away at energy and patience. It is the same one that has been making its way through us all this last month, and Mommy last of all.

John has been wonderful, taking the boys to a birthday party yesterday and leaving me with a quiet house and two hours on my own, and has played with them non stop, so I can be peaceful and still, under his grandmother's quilt.

Today I am not 100%, but I can imagine that I will be soon. Grace to you and peace this Sunday. A book and a quilt are a good prescription for any number of ills.

Valentine Votives

We made these little candle holders last week. Baby food jars plus decoupage glue plus squares od red and white tissue paper. Very low-tech, and the boys loved it. They have been pretty to have around, their rosy glow lighting breakfast, especially on this gray, drizzly Valentine morning.

I love Valentine's Day. As the one girl here at the Circle K, (see post below) it is my chance to indulge in all things, well, um, not GI Joe. Just as Easter lets me unleash my inner pastels.:)

I hope it is a day of loveliness for everybody, or at least a respite of pink and red and candlelight and chocolate to ease winter's hold. I am off to make brownies and use my heart-shaped cookie cutters on them!

Feel the Love

As I type, I can hear the laughter of the boys, getting their bath from Daddy-- daredevil underwater Matchbox races, something about eating the soap-- and I am once again in the happy position of eavesdropper on the boys' club.


Sometimes it is just weird to be the only female in this house of testosterone and sneakers and dirt and rowdiness. But most of the time it is unutterably dear. Mommy = Queen around here. For instance, right now I am sporting a pink plastic peace sign ring, presented to me with great ceremony by Joshua. The. Queen. Not even Valentines and I've already got my bling.


But then there is the fun dichotomy-- I am forever drawing cars, fixing forts, assessing which super hero is the most fierce-- I am utterly other, yet one of the fellas. I'm not always great at it. I am an artistic, Jane Austen loving homebody. I like clean and orderly, quiet and serene. Better damsel than knight for sure. But I would miss so much if I did not stretch myself toward that other world, strange, but fun-loving and loud and short-lived.


They are still the sweet ages when they want me with them so much, diving into their games and play. Put down the book. Turn off the Enya.
Put on the firefighter hat. Feel the love.

A Little Project

I have been saving broken crayons for a couple of months, eagerly awaiting making these "crayon cookies." There are directions all over for these, but I linked to the ones I used from the wonderful
Kiddley
I will admit, I loved the result and I think the boys did too, but the best part was really the process. Anybody who has read even a few of my posts can likely tell I have trouble "getting out of my head." But I really got my share of the childlike wonder on this one-- taking these formerly useless chips of crayon, peering in the oven window as they became little molten lakes of color, and then popping them right out after a chill in the freezer.

I think these would make a great gift, in a box in white mini-muffin paper liners, with color names like "grass," "earth," "sky. . . "

A little answered prayer in the middle of this-- as Sam and I popped these lovelies onto the counter, I was fully present with him, our time and love and wonder swirled together, ready to make something else beautiful.

Saturday

A lovely Saturday to you! I am appreciating the gift photography gives, that this rose lives on so brightly, months after it has faded in the vase.

Have a wonderful weekend- make something beutiful!

Mixed Up

I am sparing you a scene of the carnage. We were awakened Sunday night at almost midnight by a deafening crash. John and I bolted out of bed and ran for the boys' room. They were fine, but startled out of sleep and bewildered too. It had sounded like a car crash. In our house.

John called to me that the shelf over my craft desk had fallen, pulled its bolts right out of the wall. I settled the kids and stepped down the hall. Broken glass, silk flwers, paper, shattered decorations covering the top of my desk and in a wide swath across the floor. Foam letter stamps, ribbon, jumbled and mingled with shards of my storage jars. We went back to bed.

Yesterday as I cleaned up the glass and shoveled materials that could not be saved into the garbage, I looked at my piles of paper and idea books and albums. And felt tired from more than just the missed sleep.

I am a scrapbooker. Or I was. Then I picked up my first digital camera, and learning and making mistakes and doing retakes did not have the price tag of processing rolls of film. I became a photographer, graduating to a digital SLR, deciphering Understanding Exposure, taking on portrait clients and buying lenses. Then moving into art photography, making my own greeting cards and selling them. Continuing in that pursuit, always seeking to see, record, illumine.

I loved to scrapbook, and I still love the idea of my words and our memories and images put together and here for us, and later, for the boys and their boys. But I am also a photographer, and by turns a poet and writer, a cook and baker, a shoestring home decorator and a voracious reader.

Those are a lot of passions to fit into the moments a day when I am not mommying and doing the basic home stuff and spending time with John. And I am a bit of an all or nothing person. It is hard for me to accept that I can't do it all, learn it all, be it all at once. That there is nothing wrong with shifting gears from one passion to another as whimsy strikes.

I guess the fear that I won't "accomplish" anything is what underlies my conern. That if I would only apply myself there is a photography career, a book, a published poem waiting to come out of my lens or pen. Is that ego? Or something else?

How do you handle your various interests? When and how do you decide to do something just for you? And the biggie, how do you discern calling within your passions, how do you know when God is speaking a ministry for you within the activities you love?

Addictive

Let me say up fron that I don't sew. I read lots of wildly and wonderfully inventive craft blogs just to torture myself. Some synergy between my poor vision and my poor patience means I am no seamstress.

But I can make these little lovelies, striaght from the tutorial on the always inspiring Wise Craft
. I spent a happy half hour choosing fabrics and buttons and making a little bit of springtime. It has been a nice antidote to the fact that 50% of my little household is sick this weekend.

We rallied enough to go to our nephew's birthday party-- it was such a hoot to see all the little guys bowling. Sam was given to dropping his ball with a deafening thud and waiting, hands on hips, while it meandered down the lane. Good times. I wore the chocoalte, ivory and pale blue flower pin on my denim jacket.

Our prayer for the week is wellness, especially through the frigid weather coming our way. In the meantime I will keep stitching up these little foretastes of springtime.

Snow Day

Or rather, a bit of snow, some sleet, some icy rain. Enough to close the schools, enough to keep John home from work. Snowballs, a little snowman, hot chocolate, and homemade soup. Reading during naptime, watching the birds on the terrace. Counting my blessings, feathering my nest.