PotD: Sunflowers

Genesis of Us

This morning my best friend went into my kitchen and made me my favorite coffee, prepared it just how I like it, brought it to my bedroom and put it on my nightstand as I was struggling to make the transition from asleep to awake. (It was a hard transition. I had a cranky toddler crawling all over me.) I was then told how much I was loved and asked if there was anything else that could be done for me. 

If there was ever a best way to wake up, this is it. Well, minus the cranky toddler. And my best friend? He's also my husband.

The Husband is a great guy. And I really can't say I've done anything to deserve a man as wonderful as he is. I can't. But what I can do is look back on our life together so far and find out why we have this bliss.

We were college sweethearts, which is an upgrade from the rebound couple we originally were. Born out of a yearning to forget old flames, our relationship started on a shaky foundation that was soon shored up by an inability to be apart. It was my first college romance, and I struck gold. 

We made some mistakes along the way. Some were apparent even in the moment; others, only the growth of wisdom over time made clear. We were immature and still growing up, and we said things or did things (or didn't do things) that were maybe unhealthy or just stupid. 

But we never ever gave up. The hardest times were when we were separated by distance or responsibilities. He was in a difficult engineering program, which required more and completely different methods of study than my "easy" biology major. He worked long hours off campus. Later, he took a seven-month internship more than 200 miles away. I shrunk into my wild, early-twenties emotions, the worst of which, to my credit, I was able to hide...er, I mean, shield him from.

When he asked me to marry him almost two years after we first met, I was so shocked I accidentally plopped my elbows into my dinner in an effort to bury my surprised face in my hands. I was completely caught off guard, even if I had already known he was "the One." Apparently I also forgot to actually say "Yes," leading The (now) Husband to lose a few pounds of sweat. He explained why he didn't wait any longer to ask me: after he had recently moved away for his internship, he couldn't imagine his life without me. Why wait?

We got married a year and a half later (too long of an engagement by far, but that is a story for another day). We lived together during most of that time, and that was when his method of being awesome really began to take off. 

And this is the secret: He always puts me first. 

As a real-time example, as I finished typing the last sentence, he came into the room that I'm writing in. He mentioned that I had already fixed something that had broken, and I replied, "Yeah, but I need the pliers with the wire-cutters on them. I couldn't find them. I have some long ends on the wires."

"You need the pliers? I'll get them for you!" he beamed, as he picked up a level I had used on the job. 

"Oops, I forgot to put that away," I admitted. I really would have done it, but I forgot it was there.

"No problem! I'll put it away when I get the pliers," he said with a smile.

Do you see what I'm saying? I haven't done anything out of the ordinary to "earn" this. He's always just done this. I didn't wash the dishes for an embarrassingly long time when I lived alone: he would wash them all when he visited without me asking and without comment or complaint. I didn't even think to cook dinner: "What can I cook for you?" I mentioned that I wanted some shelves above my desk to hold all my books and stuff. I didn't even ask him. But he had a full set of shelves up before the end of the weekend. I mentioned a couple of times over the years that it would be nice to have a guitar again. And even though it was on my heart, I never said much about it because it was really quite frivolous. Then one day he came home and tentatively put a brand new guitar in my hands and waited to see if it would be well-received. 

Ladies, I'm not a crier. I didn't cry when he asked me to marry him, I didn't cry at our wedding, I didn't cry when any of our three kids were born. But I cried like a baby when he gave me this guitar I wanted but never specifically told him about. I'm not a "gifts" person; I don't like buying them and I don't like the weirdness of getting them. But I've never felt so loved as when I did in that moment. It felt like that act of love kind of summed up our relationship: we go forward in faith and love and in a quiet trust that we each other's best interests at the forefront.

I'm not sure how many wives can count their husbands as their best friends. And I'm sure there are moms, possibly without a husband by choice or circumstance, whom I have offended by, well, boasting about my awesome husband/best friend combo. To those who don't know the joy of this bond, all I can say is that I am sorry. But some things demand to be memorialized in writing. We've had more than a decade of love and I hope we will get many decades more. I'll toast my coffee to that.

Whoops.

Today I found out that I spelled Stitch's middle name wrong on her official birth certificate. Maybe it wouldn't be such a big deal if she wasn't named after someone very special to me.

I am definitely feeling like Mother of the Year and Granddaughter of the Year material right now.

PotD: Art Table

PotD: Temporary Order

PotD: Harbinger of Spring

Ramblings on illness, and This Week's Menu

Viruses, bacteria, and their ilk must love my family lately. The Husband was ill for most of the weekend with what we figured out was either norovirus or food poisoning (the entire office got it), and Oompa Loompa (that'd be my 5-year-old son) has had a fever off and on for the last four days. Friday he woke up at about 10 p.m. with the most frightening cough/stridor/gasping for air I've ever heard. I was thisclose to calling an ambulance, but we got him calmed down and thankfully had no more croup symptoms for the rest of the night. It scared me so much that I slept in his bed with him that night so I could keep watch, which he absolutely reveled in. That boy.

It's funny how illness can affect different people differently. Oompa Loompa has always had a bad time with coughs, and this wasn't the first time he's had a croup-like cough (although it was the scariest). When Munchkin was little, she would get sick with the stomach flu more than the others ever have. She also has an interesting array of innocuous anatomical anomalies. Stitch is the only one of my kids who has ever been on antibiotics (PRAISE THE LORD!), although she started her run early with and eye infection/possible cellulitis at ten days old.

The Husband doesn't get sick very often, but when he does it is usually the worst out of all of us. Last year a round of hand, foot, and mouth disease tore through our city. Oompa Loompa was the first to get it, then the rest of the kids, then me, and then The Husband. And while we developed a few of the tell-tale lesions here and there on our hands and feet, The Husband got a hundred of them all over not only his hands and feet but also his arms, legs, and face. In his seven years on the job, he had to call into work sick for the first time because nobody wanted him in the office! While he was sick and infectious, I had about 12 different family members in town for a family reunion, and half of them were staying in our house. To top it off, a few months later he lost his toenails, which is also a side-effect of the disease.

Thank God, I haven't been sick too often, because as a stay-at-home-mom, I can't call in sick! The best I could do would be to throw some mac and cheese and some dried fruit at the kids and leave them to the Netflix Nanny. Then The Husband would have to repair any damage Stitch would have inflicted while running wild.

Weekly Menu
Monday: Sukiyaki
Tuesday: Bison Burgers with roasted sweet potatoes "fries"
Wednesday: Kids' Night (Gluten-free corndogs, more sweet potato "fries", carrot sticks)
Thursday: Firecracker Salmon, steamed broccoli, rice
Friday: Lemon Chicken Orzo Soup with Cobb Salad
Saturday: Chicken Marsala (always double the sauce!) over pasta and a side salad
Sunday: Loaded Ramen

PotD: "Salted and Tasted White Croaker"

"This is the saddest pet store I've ever been to."

Stella Olsen Park, Sherwood

Lazy Saturdays are my kind of Saturdays, and February is the month of Lazy Saturdays. It's after all of the major holidays and before the call of spring deludes us into thinking we need to plan the perfect family picnic outings (not that these actually ever happen as planned) or spruce up the landscaping.

This Saturday was a Lazy Saturday if there ever was one. And what better to do, when you have nothing to do, but mosey on down to the brand-new neighborhood playground?

This blue and orange beauty is barely three days old and yet has probably had every child in Sherwood climbing all over it.

Including these ones. 

I'm so very grateful to live in a community where not only are we safe but we are able to enjoy the fruits of prosperity. I mean, dang, I would have been happy if they stopped at clean water and indoor plumbing, but look at this feat of engineering!

The kids enjoyed thoroughly exploring the monstrosity, and I marveled at how beautiful the day was and how all of these families had emerged from their winter routines to pretend it was May.

The weather has been freakishly mild and dry here, giving us some kind of false spring. I feel like Maria in "The Sound of Music," bounding on the hilltop while the sunshine warms my face.

I realize how crazy that sounds, but short winter days can do that to a person.

These were the only rain drops to be found today.

Stella Olsen Memorial Park is located at 22256 SW Washington St in Sherwood, across from Horizon Christian Church. There are bathrooms and walking trails on site, and the park is within walking distance to downtown Sherwood amenities, including Sweet Story bakery and Symposium coffee shop.

Emotional aerobics in my coffee mug

There is nothing more terrifying than throwing back the last swill of my coffee and finding, to my horror, that it contains chunks. Mushy, mysterious chunks.

Then there is nothing like the relief of the realization that I put those chunks in there when I was dipping biscotti into my brew not ten minutes earlier.

And finally, there is nothing like the wave of stupidity that overcomes me when I remember that I did this last week, too.

Busted, Broken, and Bright

I have a lamp. Actually I have several lamps, but there is one lamp in particular that has seen better days in its short life. Here it is:

This is a lamp, my friends, that does not know the meaning of 'defeat.' Mainly due to the fact that it is a lamp. Even so, this lamp has the courage to keep lighting up my living room, despite its broken neck and busted shade, battle wounds from one of my kids knocking it over while surreptitiously hanging out behind the corner table. It is lamp that illuminates the floor behind the table where I grumpily retrieve half of a box of tissues that my toddler Stitch has thrown down there like some kind of Benevolent Tissue God of the dust bunnies. A lamp that highlights my children's artwork, which can only be described as 'not unpleasant' at best and 'stuff of my nightmares' at worst. Granted, it's a large range, but as an example, you can make out the eyeless one-horned snowman that my son made in pre-kindergarten. Creepy.

But I digress. This lamp, it serves us, even when it could probably be described as a fire hazard. In a more self-respecting household, junk. But not here. We won't forsake it, when it tries so hard to put a little light into our lives. 

Sometimes as a mom I feel kind of like this lamp. I feel totally busted, usually because my kids have tripped me up, but the list also includes forgetting to do something important, being neglectful of my spiritual walk with God, and an unhelpful yet irresistible urge to procrastinate, which often leads to self-loathing over my messy house and endless list of to-do's. And when all of these things strike on the same day, my family still needs me, even when this Lampstand would rather hide herself under a bowl where it is nice and private and nobody can poke their tiny fingers into her fluffy belly. (Seriously, is it just my toddler? Or do all of them have a fluffy mommy tummy touching compulsion?)

And just like this lamp, I know that someday I will be made whole. My brokenness will be healed by the one who loves me so much that He bought me with the blood of his own son. Just the thought makes my light shine a little brighter.

I will, however, be pretty surprised if I arrive to be glorified and Jesus pulls out some kind of Holy Epoxy Glue. Will not have seen that coming.