Father's Day

Our Father's Day weekends are kind of unique in that Jack's Adoption Day also occurs on that weekend each year.  Matt adopted Jack two days before Father's Day, three years ago.  So on Saturday, they spent the whole day together celebrating and talking about "guy stuff".  They told me that guys don't take pictures so I don't have any for you.  I do know that they spent most of the morning at their favorite spot though...

Yesterday I decided to give Matty V a free day.  I didn't plan any activities except a Father's Day meal and dessert for him with his presents.  And what did the man decide to do?  Spend the whole day working outside with his boys.  They planted grass, watered the lawn, helped me refinish a cabinet I am working on, and rode bikes.  Quite contrary to Mother's Day when he gave me free afternoon and I journaled and read a book. :) 

We had his favorite meal, chicken pot pie and he asked for a Boston cream pie for dessert this year. Every year we make our Daddy a collage of our favorite pictures of him throughout the year in black and white.  We are really hoping to have a wall to fit them on one day as he now as 5 of them!  The boys also write in their book to him which they do on his birthday and Father's Day.  They answer the question "I love my Daddy because..." which is so sweet and so funny to see each year.  For instance, Jack said I love my Daddy because he taught me how to fish, ride my skateboard, and he's the best dad in the world.  Boston on the other hand said, I love my Daddy because then I get to put stickers on this Father's Day page if I tell you I love him.  He did go on to say he loves that he plays with him and watches movies with him.

Happy Father's Day darlin.  We love you dearly and think you are the best Daddy in the world!

Keeping our eyes on Jesus

“And I realized something, as I tried to untangle my sadness and anger and confusion.  I had believed that the miscarriage was an open wound that would only be healed by a healthy pregnancy.  So I’ve been waiting on a pregnancy to move me out of this terrible season of loss.  And I’ve been weighing down a pregnancy that doesn’t even exist yet with truckloads of expectation and pressure.  I realized that I need to close the wound now and that it’s unfair, to me and to an unknown future, to leave it open any longer.”  Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet

I said to Ellen about a month after we lost the baby how I just wanted to be pregnant again because that would make it better.  She responded in true Sue Ellen fashion with, “I know your heart well enough to tell you that one life will not replace another.”  I cannot even begin to explain how true those words are.   I wanted to be pregnant again so bad because then it would all just go away.  A baby would be coming again, the pain would go away, and we could move on.  That’s not the way it works though.  When you bury the hard parts of life, they always come back, believe me…they always come back.  It was not until God completely broke me down to the point that I had to let go, that He brought us another baby.   My close friends who had had a miscarriage kept telling me that there would be a moment when God would take it away.  Now that is not to say that I would forget, but I would feel a peace and be able to move on.  I told every single one of them that I didn’t believe that was ever going to happen for me and then I was completely caught off guard when it did.   It was Easter weekend and God just broke me down.  BROKE ME DOWN.  It began at Good Friday Service as I was worshiping beside my dear, dear friend who had lost her baby two weeks before me.  We raised our hands and we worshiped amidst deep, deep pain and loss.  Then the clips from The Passion began.  I could barely even watch them.  I don’t even know how to describe what happened in my heart during the following 9 minutes of that movie but God just broke me.  He also freed from a lot of bondage that I didn’t know was still there. 

The Lord wanted me to go through that, He needed me to go through that.  He needed me to be released.  Once I was…on Easter Sunday we would find out we were pregnant. 

“Nine months ago, the world was so different. I was so different. The concept of pregnancy was so different to me, so innocent. Of course I knew women who had miscarried: my mother, my cousin, my friends. But like anything, when it happens to you it’s like waking up to a conversation you’ve heard before and only now grasp, and you realize entirely anew what they were talking about, what they were trying to find the words to describe.” Shauna Niequist

 I was not at all prepared for how losing a baby would change my life.  I didn’t realize that it wouldn’t go away.  I honestly thought when we miscarried, “okay this hurts like hell, but I am sure in two weeks I will be fine.”  Its 5 months later and the pain has subsided but it has not completely vanished.  I still have every email and text message that was sent to me on the day that we lost the baby and the weeks that followed.  I cannot bare to delete them.  I am going to carry this pain for the rest of my life.  That is the part I wasn’t prepared for.  We are not going to welcome a baby into our home in two months.  He got to go HOME sooner than I expected.  I just don’t know that those words will ever come from my lips without tears in my eyes.

I also wasn’t prepared for the emotion being pregnant again would bring.  We have had 3 ultrasounds in the past couple months and I have not looked at the screen until Matt has seen the heartbeat and told me to look.  I have literally felt a weight taken off of me in the last week since the doctor told us we are now in the safe zone.  I have finally begun to think and dream about a nursery.  Miscarriage took away the innocence of pregnancy to me.  Before, I always assumed we would have a baby in 9 months because that is how it has always happened.   Surely after being a single mother and encountering all the loss that entailed, God will not take a baby away from me.  That is not the way that it works…that is not the way God works.  How can He make us stronger people if we never go through anything hard, excruciatingly hard?  The family verse that hangs in our living room and that we pray over our children every night is, “Let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.  We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith."  Matt read that to me on our wedding day and we truly believe that is a calling that God has placed on our lives as a family.  It doesn’t say we will run the race til we don’t get what we want and then we will quit.  Because then it would be easy wouldn’t it?  The race isn’t easy, I didn’t sign up for an easy race so I could collect my trophy and go HOME.  I signed up for the hard race, the race that is worth running, the one that you have to run with endurance and keep your eyes on Jesus to finish.  Because we are choosing to run with endurance I now have two more eyes in heaven that I can keep my eyes on. 

Vacation Bible Blast 2012

This year we set sail upon the Dawn Treader to learn that we are EXTRAORDINARY in Him, MIGHTY in Him, and we are CHANGED by Him!!!

Set up Day

Boston and his buddy, Judsen "helping" set up while eating M&Ms and coloring

Jack and his friends putting together dragon gliders for the Preschool Game Room

 My Daring Dragon

Worship was incredible...absolutely incredible!  300 kids with their hands up worshiping to 

The Great I AM!  I got goosebumps every time!

VBB blesses our family every year.  I am so privileged to still be able to lead over the Preschoolers each year and see how God works in each of their hearts as He speaks to them throughout the week.  I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE that. 
Even more so, I LOVE watching how the Lord works in my children's hearts.  It was Boston's first year to be in VBB and he had a blast!  It was hard for him to be away from Jack so long but he eventually settled in with his friends in class.  And Jack looks forward to this all year long...he loved it!  Thank you Vanguard Church for yet again impacting our children's lives and teaching them how incredible their Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ is!

Jack's 1st Spiritual Birthday

Yesterday we celebrated Jack's Spiritual Birthday!  What is this you may ask?  It is a celebration of the day that he was baptized by his Daddy!  Of course we began the day with a water celebration because what would a baptism celebration be without water!

Jack requested that we all just spend the day together at home.  He wanted to play outside, ride his bike, watch a movie, and eat dinner and sundaes together.  So that is exactly what we did!  Daddy even got him a card and a new cross... a standard military issue cross (obviously a guy thing.)  

We are so proud of you sweet boy!  What an honor to celebrate what an amazing young man you are and who God is shaping you to be as you follow Him.  I love how when Daddy prayed last night he thanked God for all the ways that He has spoken to our family through you.  Your heart is so open to the Lord and I pray that it always will be.  We love you Jackson!

We aren't in Kansas (or the Springs) anymore...

One week in, we are finding that we really love being out of the city. I had mixed feelings at first, with Sunflower Market not being right down the street, almost all my girlfriends living in the Springs, and the first day we were here I had three appointments in the Springs and had to figure out not driving back and forth every time!  However, these things are outweighing all of that...

 A pond with ducks behind the library.  The library gives you free food for the ducks! 

The boys and some of their buddies at the pond

Jack wanted to go to the Farmer's Market.  We could walk there!  He rode his bike and I walked.  He was amazed when we went shopping afterwards that he could park his bike outside the little shops downtown.

Jack and his kettle corn from the Farmer's Market

The latest in log cabin building.  Apparently it has a restroom inside because little boys have been saying that they have been able to use it.  However, I am a little afraid to ask or enter in.

The lake is 5 minutes away instead of 45 minutes! 

 There is lots of wildlife (and bugs!)

Our favorite mentors, friends, and babysitters The Schwarz Boys are closer than before!

Caleb and Moses


Water Gun Fights have become all the rage!

So gross!  We are going to have to better explain how water gun fights work to Mo.

The ship the boys made to watch the rainstorm.  It was appropriately called The Dawn Treader.  According to Boston, there was also "dawn treasure."