Music Monday - Matt Maher

Sometimes you can come across songwriters that just have an added depth to them. I like Matt Maher for this reason. He tackles some issues that are close to my heart, around community and being connected; the worship aspect of communion and the idea of garden. This song was the one that struck me today. You can check out his site and listen to his whole album for free.

An optimistic moment

The sun shone today. I think it has been at least 6 months since that has happened, so that is my excuse for what transpired today....

The girls and I planted a row of snap peas and transplanted strawberries. I know that it is still January and that I am crazy, but I just couldn't help it. The defining moment came when I was hand tilling the girls' garden boxes to make a row for them to plant. Bear asked me why there was a hard white crust on the dirt. I picked up a piece and had to laugh; it was a layer of frost about 2 cm thick.

My moments of optimism are few and far between. Today was one of them.

A whole bunch of Christians in one place.

There is a conference in our fair city that happens once a year. It is held in the largest conference centre in town and has a missions focus. Which basically means that nearly every Christian organization/school/non profit has a booth there and they try and convince you that what they are doing is what you should be supporting.

In the beginning years of that little ministry that Hubby and I started with another friend, we would often bring our little 'ghetto' booth there. It was 16 hour days, handing out pamphlets and pimping our ministry. Needless to say, I hated it and Hubby loved it.

For years we've boycotted this weekend. Mostly because I felt such a disconnect from authentic ministry and what I saw there. And the fact that it was lame. There is youth rallies there and for years they have been consistently horrible. I mean, seriously, you have the opportunity to gather hundreds of youth from this area and you get a speaker that cannot connect to youth? It seems like a tragic waste of an opportunity. I think it all came to a head one evening when I was taking a break from our booth and went to get something to eat. As a booth person, you are required to wear a name tag/badge. So the food court was full of all of us wearing our little tags proclaiming that "We are doing the work of God." While I was waiting in line for my food, I watched a group of name tag wearing folks absolutely berating this poor food court employee for giving them the wrong juice.

Now, I'm the first to admit that I often walk through life looking and acting nothing like the Jesus I proclaim to follow. But really? You are there, representing faith and service and you can't treat the person serving you food with any bit of grace and love??!!??

I know. I'm a judgemental hag. I tried to redeem myself today by taking the girls. It was actually Hubby's idea and we went with one other family. (That is the key I realized. Take someone else with you to dull the pain!) It was fun to watch the girls realize that every booth tries to bribe you with candy; they "trick and treated" with enthusiasm. I felt super popular though, we ran into 40+ people we knew in ministry at various booths. It was good to connect and hear where people are at. We even made a couple connections in preparation for our around the world family trip. The girls enjoyed a kid's time with crafts, stories and movies and we all enjoyed the sky train rides.

Still not my favourite activity to do, but not bad. Plus I got lots of great design ideas for work! I wonder if I can count today as work hours????

Getting near the end.

In the last couple of days I've been asked about the end of the 36(5) project of blogging. Here are some of my answers:

• Yes, I am dreading the end of it.
• No, I don't know if I'm going to continue and in what format.
• Yes, I want to do something with all the posts...a book perhaps with an appendix for comments.
• No. I don't exercise or read my bible as consistently as I've blogged this year.
• Maybe...I've cheated a couple of times. But that's for me to know and you to never find out.
• Yes. My blog has gotten me in trouble a few times.
• No, I don't regret it... life is always about learning. This is my life.

Reasons I love my village.

• At any given time you can see blue herons and bald eagles.

• It is small enough to walk just about anywhere.

• It has an abundance of local farms that sell just about anything.

• It has a WestCoast Seeds Store right around the corner from my house.

• It also has a store that sells all sorts of Dutch foodstuffs right around the corner.

• It is almost always sunnier here.

Sometimes it is just good to remember these things.

A trip to the Aquarium

Today was Bear's class trip to the aquarium. It is always risky volunteering to drive 5 year olds anywhere, but a trip into the city definitely qualifies me for sainthood. Or a good old pat on the back. The van ride was noisy, 4 kids talking at the top of their lungs, veggie tales baring on the stereo, then into the the classroom at the aquarium for a puppet show and some rules. Bear and 2 friends were assigned to a group with a young man whose shirt proudly proclaimed that he was on Work Experience. My 3 kids went from rowdy to the perfect trifecta of silence. He tried to get them to come with a team name. Nope, not happening. At one point they were all hiding behind me.

I knew then that I would need to step up my game and become That Mom. The mom that was uber excited about everything! And asked questions! And always talked with exclamation points! Finally the kids loosened up and started engaging. Poor Greg, he had a schedule and was sticking to it. He just didn't realize that if kids see a scuba diver in a tank, they want to see it. Not some boring sea cucumber. I did convince him to go off track and let the kids see the Nemo fish.

At one point we were climbing a spiral staircase when one of the kids tripped on the top step, falling hard to her knees in front of a parent with a toddler. She quickly got up, with no help from the other parent and followed our leader. As I was walking away I hear the mom said to her toddler, "See that girl? She wasn't watching where she was going and that is NOT good."

Whoa...what??!!? Seriously? That is what you tell your kid after another kid bails in front of you? I spun around and was ready to give it to the mom when I realized that she would probably just lecture her toddler on crazy people and frankly I felt bad enough for her kid that I decided to let it go...but just barely.

We ate lunch by the belugas, and went through the rainforest display. 12 five year olds imitating really loud blue parrots? Yeah. REALLY LOUD!!! Luckily the sloth didn't wake up. As we neared the end of the display, another parent and I commented to the teacher how amazing we thought she was for doing this every day, 6 hours a day. Her comment back was that she couldn't imagine doing this when she got old, like when she was 40.

Ummm??? Hello? I'm almost 40, or almost in my late thirties! So what are you sayin'? Yeah, I kinda wished I'd said something, but again, I was rising above. (Plus I thought it was really hilarious that she is so young that 40 is old!)

Made it back to the village with one kid asleep and 3 others is feisty moods. Lucky for me there was still an hour and a half of school left, so I threw the kids out of the van lovingly dropped the kids off and went for a coffee.

Another day of stellar parenting by yours truly.

The End

ps. There are no pictures of Bear because most of them included her classmates and I don't like to publish pictures of other people's kids unless they call me Auntie.

Drawing a total blank.

It was bound to happen, 354 days in and I've got nothing.

So, I leave you with a link to a blog of a pastoral/counselling couple that I respect and admire and their thoughts for 2011: The Ducklows

Melatonin hangover?

This morning I woke up, got up and promptly fell down. My head felt 10 sizes bigger than it actually was and was spinning so fast I literally could not figure out which way was up. It took an hour to get up, with stomach churning. Thankfully the girls were amazing and very helpful this morning. The biggest test came when I was faced with getting them to school. Walking was out of the question and driving seemed pretty risky. However, we drove slow and the long way around and no problems...until I got home to notice that Pookie, in her desire to help, actually did not pack her lunch in her backpack. Back into the van and another slow round trip. Then back to bed till it was time to pick up the girls.

The only thing I could chalk up this sudden vertigo to was the fact that I'd had a cup of warm milk and a dose of melatonin. I've taken melatonin before and have woken up slightly heavy headed before, but this was a whole new level. Hubby is convinced that it wasn't the melatonin, but I don't know...sudden vertigo for no good reason?? That may be more frightening than never taking melatonin again.

As I was in bed cursing the spinning room I had time to ponder the whole reason I took melatonin in the first place. One of the side effects of having S.A.D. is that you can suffer from insomnia. Or in my case, the waking up every 1 - 1 1/2 hours for a period of time. I'd hoped that melatonin would be a more natural way of helping me sleep.

So, tonight, no melatonin, but a cup of sleepy time tea (which is incredibly hard to drink since I'm more of a Tetley drinker with milk and sugar). I'm not real hopeful, but anything is better than this melatonin hangover.***

***If this post makes no sense, I blame the fact that I can only look at the screen for 30 seconds at a time***

Pictures

I've been a little wordy lately and very lacking in pictures. But then I realized that I don't have a whole lot of new pictures of the girls. Got to work on that these next weeks. Any way, here is a photo of the girls in their Christmas dressed from Hubby's parents! I've already had several requests from parents of girls younger than mine for these dresses when Bear and Pookie out grow them.

Me and my guy.

Last night my mom called needing some grand-daughter time and wanted to have the girls for most of today. Never one to deny my parents some quality time with the girls, I agreed. So this morning after dropping the girls off, Hubby and I headed off to spend the day together.

We went and did the man/tool shopping to use some of Hubby's accumulated gift cards, then a couple of hours of restocking our food supply. We got a coffee along the way and just took our time.

If you didn't get the significance of that last sentence, let me repeat it: We. Just. Took. Our. Time. No rushing because of impatient kids, or because I need to go get them or had to go to work.

But the best part of the day was not the good feeling of getting the house/larder all stocked up (although that was pretty sweet)...It was the chance to hang out with Hubby without a real agenda. We chatted about serious stuff, we teased each other, flirted, goofed around, shared some of our struggles and some of our hopes and just laughed. It was a good reminder to me how much I love this man and how much I enjoyed just being with him.

I'll stop there before I get too sappy...

Shape ups

Today I watched a woman cross the street in front of me. She was moving awkwardly and I couldn't figure out why. Finally I saw her feet, she was wearing beige shape ups. I don't get this trend at all. First off, they look horrible. And they make you walk kinda funny. I get that it is suppose to "tone your thighs and bum"; but the only people I've ever seen wear these shoes have been skinny women.

Although, I seem to remember having the same sort of hostility towards Crocs. And now I need to wear them when my arthritis flares. I sincerely hope that no other bodily failure forces me into Shape Ups!

I'm no Chinese mother.

I realize that I'm a bit late to the game, but I actually had this post sitting in my drafts for about a week. While reading one of my favorite mommy bloggers, Dooce, I linked to this article about Chinese mothers. All I can say, is OH MY.

If you haven't read it, go read it now. Really. Then come back to this post....

OK, crazy right??!!?? I am such a lightweight when it comes to mothering. I can barely do 15 minutes of spelling homework, never mind hours and hours of drilling 'boat, float, coat'.

Today I was chatting with a friend during her break from her class. She said she could barely make it through the article because it brought up all her emotional baggage of growing up with a Chinese mother....though just a few moments before she was bemoaning the fact that piano and violin lessons were so time consuming for her kids. Another student joined the conversation. She is a recent Chinese immigrant trying to navigate child raising here in Canada. She hadn't read the article, but admitted that it is a struggle to understand the differences.

I have to admit. Some of what she says makes sense. I do think we are overly concerned about our children's feelings. And I do think we overpraise for mediocre work, though you'd never find me ripping up a homemade card from my girls. But the reality is that I could never put in the sheer amount of time it would take to be a 'Chinese mother'. That's hours of threatening, begging, yelling, stomping, driving, working and spying. It sounds exhausting.

I may not be a Tiger Mother, but I am a Mamabear.

The Jesus Storybook.

When we had the girls, each of them got a multitude of 'bibles'. Most were baby stories about certain characters of the bible; often with huge gaps between stories. Some were filled with sickening pictures of blonde, blue eyed angels, some skimmed over the truth of the story and most were just plain bad.

I wanted a bible that gave a honest voice to the stories, pictures that were artistic and beautiful and covered most of the bible. And most of all, I wanted the stories to be written in such a way that it captured the girls' imagination.

I think I've found a winner in this book: The Jesus Story book; Every story whispers His name.

It is beautifully illustrated. The stories are detailed and interesting, and take several 'stories' to tell one story. For example, the story of Moses is not just wrapped up in one story, but we are on story 5 of Moses and are still reading about the escape from Egypt.

But the best part of the book is how it ties each story into the story of Jesus. Not in a cheesy way, but in a way that reminds us that the bible is not a collection of random stories. It is one Story, with one Author who has a plan for His creation. The book reminds me as a mother reading to her children that all these stories, all my stories, all your stories, are all woven together in a beautiful tapestry by God.

And sometimes we all need that reminder.

A little moment

Yesterday a mom stopped me at the school to talk to me about Pookie. She commented that every time Pookie talked about her family, she focussed on her dad. How happy she was that he comes home early and is home on the weekends. And it is true. The girls rush to the door to greet Hubby every day. They love goofing around with him, 'helping' him, just being with him. Pookie especially loves to read with him (since he is much more patient than me).

I love that our daughters are so in love in with their dad; and that their dad is so in love with them.

Monday Suppers

The last 2 Mondays we've spontaneously invited folks to share dinner with us; at the very last minute. I don't know how often you have to do something to make it a tradition. Or a thing. But I like this thing/tradition. The meal is not fancy, but we eat together and share what is going on in our lives.

I like it. Mostly cause it is not scheduled, not pre-planned. No pressure, just friends sharing a meal.

I wonder who is coming to dinner next week?

Facebook status of the day.

"Dear woman beside me in the bowling alley. Thanks so much for displaying the fact that you are going commando under your jeans. It was super fun explaining you to all the 5 year olds at the party."

Let me tell you, it is awfully distracting to have someone's behind exposed, I'm talking a good half of said behind, when you are bowling with 5 year olds. And this wasn't some young girl behind...it was an old momma behind.

The questions, oh the questions! Good times.

My father's homeland

As a rule, I try not to watch the news. I find it to be a litany of the horrors that is liable to make me grieve that fact that I brought children into the world. The girls are at the age where they can understand the fact that some people think it is acceptable to gun down political figures when they disagree with them. Or that planes can crash, or that grown ups hurt kids.

But one cannot live in this world ignorant of what is going on. And one issue that I'm watching closely is what is happening in my father's homeland of Tunisia. Tunisia was originally a French colony and has a big Muslim population. I don't know a lot about my father's history there, but I do know that he left Tunisia in his late twenties to study in Holland/France, met my mom and they ended up in Canada. He refused to go back until about 6 years ago and my parents had plans to go again this spring, but with all that is happening....not sure anymore.

Tunisia has always held a bit of mystery for me and it is on my bucket list to visit. But for now, I pray for my father's brother and his family as they weather this uncertain time.

A Day.

Today was one of those days that was just maddening, on every level. Work. Personal. Church.

I was unproductive, or not as productive as I would have like: Work.

It was frustrating: Personal.

It was maddening: Church.

The lone bright spot came in the form of a unexpected phone call from a friend, thanks G. And the worse part is that I can't really blog about it for fear of repercussions.

Huh. This is probably where old fashioned friendships and face to face conversations used to come in.

The Beauty of Different

I want to find and read this book. And embed this concept into my daughters' brains so deeply that it just becomes an intrinsic part of who they are.

Conversations with a 7 1/2 year old.

Pookie has made a good friend at school. A friend whose family raises 'fancy' rabbits and Pookie was excited to see their new litter. When she got home she was very eager to tell us ALL she learned about rabbits.

Let me set the scene. Pookie and I were sitting on the couch together with Hubby sitting in a chair to the side, basically behind Pookie so I could see his face but she couldn't.

Pookie: Mom, do you know how baby rabbits are made?

Me: Umm...how about you tell me?

Pookie: OK, you take a girl rabbit and put in a cage with a boy rabbit. Then you wait 5 or 6 minutes. (Picture a look of horror on Hubby's face right here)

Me: 5 or 6 minutes?

Pookie: Yep. Then there are babies in the girl bunny and it takes a whole calendar month for bunnies to be born. They are pink and cuddly.

Me: Sounds like you learned a lot about bunny making.

Pookie: Yeah, I loved it.

Y'all, I know there was a huge teachable moment here. A chance to talk about sex, love, marriage, babies, waiting. But I was a coward. A big fat coward. I was waiting for Pookie to ask any or all of the following questions:

• Did it take you and Daddy 5 or 6 minutes?
• Do you have to be married to have babies?
• What about X & Y who are trying to make a baby, but they are not married?
• What about W & Z who are both girls/boys, how do they make babies?

She didn't ask and I felt like I dodged a bullet. I love conversations with my kids.

Goals for 2011

OK. I think I'm ready to commit to my goals for the year and post them here. Of course that means that something will probably happen to kick my ass and half my goals will be out the door! (notice that having an optimist attitude is NOT on my list. I want to be reasonable after all!)

In no particular order:

1. Learn the guitar part for the song Chasing Cars.
2. Read 10 books off the BBC List.
3. Blog once a week on my other blog: Trust my Path.
4. Exercise 3 times a week - walk, shooting hoops or Zumba on the Kinect.
5. Do something once a month to intentionally benefit/strengthen my relationship with Hubby.

There you go. Written on the stone tablet that is the internet.

Making school lunches

I've been lucky this fall that Jackie has loved making the girls' lunches for school. My job was just to stock the house with good options. It is my preference to give the girls good, healthy options. But the immature part of me also wants them to have fun lunches, unlike the lunches I had to take to school. I remember begging my mom for pudding cups, candy, chips, just anything that was cool and fun.

Never happened. Ever. Until I went to college and my parents simultaneously discovered Costco. Only 10 years too late for me...

Now, I'm not really one to buy the girls prepackaged treats like jello cups or packaged rice krispies...but I am willing to make rice krispies treats and jello cups at home for them to take; a lot cheaper and a lot less wasted packaging.

So, in my flurry of housecleaning, grocery shopping and general 'getting ready for the week' busyness yesterday, I made jello cups. And I discovered my limits for jello...Apparently lime jello is over the line for me. It is bright green, smells sickly and with one look you just know that there is no redeeming quality in it. However the squeals of joy that Pookie and Bear produced upon seeing them go into their lunch boxes this morning was well worth it.

No traumatic lunch box memories for them I tell ya!

A blog you should check out.

As I mentioned earlier this week, I came across a list of top Christian blogs. Today I clicked on Stuff Christian Culture likes written by one of the few women on the list. I didn't click on it so much because she was a woman, but rather because of the title. (I'm shallow like that. I'll pick up a book if the cover is appealing or catchy. It could be the book of the year, but if it has a crappy title or cover, I ain't reading it.)

Oh my. Today's post made me laugh out loud. Mostly because we currently attend a church that has one of these signs above the doors. This is my favorite line:

The implication is that you were not in the mission field while you were on church grounds, but in a cozy bubble away fro pesky non-believers and moral miscreants.

Closely followed by this line:

To my knowledge, non one has ever posted one of these signs on the way into a church building, even though a lot of the time you are safer away from a church than inside of it.

I ended up reading about a dozen of her posts and the sad/scary part of it was that I could resonate with nearly all of them. I especially liked her perspective on the 30 day Sex challenge that is currently trendy in mainstream USA churches...as well as her commentary on the American Christians and capitalism. She is refreshingly honest, very intelligent and incredibly funny.

Bambi on the Barbie.

Tonight we had a lovely dinner invitation to our good friends, the Oldhams. When we arrived, the kids immediately disappeared to play and we were left to casually prepare for dinner. At one point we realized that all the food was ready and the kids were still happily playing, we did something that has rarely happened in the 7.5 years that we've had kids.

We ate first.

When the food was still hot. A minor miracle.

And it was delicious as per usual. It was the first time I've ever eaten deer and it was pretty good. The deer was a whitetail deer, and I made some sort of joke about eating Bambi...(out of earshot of my daughters of course!) Then as Jayson was heading outside to get the food, he commented that it was time to get the Bambi on the Barbie...

Is it wrong that I got a weird visual picture of that?!?!? I've watched too many Disney movies, I think.

H3N2

Apparently there is a new flu going around. It has the less catchy name of H3N2, as opposed to the trendy H1N1.

Symptoms include: fever - check, cough- check, muscle aches - yep, headache - had it and extreme tiredness - does 4 days of near unconsciousness count????

Oh internets, what would I do without you?!!?? The ability to self diagnosis the fact that we nearly died from the flu is so helpful!

In other streams of thankfulness for the internet, I came across this Top 100 List of best Christian Blogs. Super interesting and I think I'll try and make my way through the list this year. One interesting fact I noticed was that out of the 100 blogs, only 2-4 (I can't quite remember) are written by women. Why is that? Are there no thoughtful women faith bloggers? Or is it because a lot of women talk about faith more in the context of marriage, faith or self help? Something to ponder.

Indespensable!

I'm taking a fancy computer design course this week. Having this skill will make me INDISPENSABLE at my job!

No, not really...but it is pretty amazing to learn how to use this program and I'm excited to have a job that calls for a bit more creativity. Now to search out magazines and other media for ideas!

***Short post here, because I had deep thoughts over here****

A new commute

This week I'm taking a course downtown Vancity. Now, driving from the village to the big city is foolish for lots of reasons:

1. There is one tunnel and 4 bridges between here and there.
2. It cost $25 a day to park there.
3. Gas is $1.20 per litre
4. It is not very relaxing to try and figure out exactly where you need to be during rush hour.

Taking into account all these good reasons, I decided to drive to the nearest Skytrain station and train in it. So, I parked and paid $2.50 as opposed to $25, bought my train ticket and went up to the platform to wait on my train.

My first clue that this commute wasn't going to be friendly was when a woman decided that the 2 inches between me and the front of the platform was exactly where she was going to stand. OK....no problem, just needed to make sure I didn't bump her into the oncoming train. When the train pulled up, I literally thought I'd be crushed in the madness of getting on. Like this was the only train going into town and if we didn't get on it we were D.O.O.M.E.D! I managed to secure a place near a pole, key for stability. At first I had a nice little 1 foot personal bubble space. By the time I got to my stop, it had shrunk down to 1 cm. And no one smiles in the morning! They all get on, refusing to make eye contact, pushing and shoving to find a spot and then stand in silence. Or in the case of the guy in front of me, listening to really loud Arabic music on his Ipod.

Really, it was a fascinating time of people watching....of course now I've also got a new strategy in regards to finding a spot on the train for tomorrow too!

Song of the Day...

Ingrid Michaelson's Turn to Stone

And so it begins...

Despite violent illness, cross country travel and copious amount of family time together, I'm a bit sad that school/work/life starts tomorrow. We've actually done really well at just being together, taking it easy and enjoying the sun.

Tomorrow starts school, and lunches, homework and activities as well as me starting a new job and balancing home life and work life. I won't lie, I'm a tiny bit anxious about this new transition...which may explain me not falling asleep till 2am last night (that and the fact that Jackie made me stay up till 1 am watching Pearl Harbour).

I'm turning into that person who needs a notepad beside my bedside so that I can write everything down so I can fall asleep. Here's to a new week!

Epiphany Sunday

Epiphany Sunday: The term epiphany means "to show" or "to make known" or even "to reveal." In Western churches, it remembers the coming of the wise men bringing gifts to visit the Christ child, who by so doing "reveal" Jesus to the world as Lord and King.

Today I had an epiphany of sorts. I realized that I needed to be somewhere, somewhere other than where I am right now. I needed to start the year in a place where my soul could be touched with worship, joy and truth and anchored with the meal of remembrance. A piece of bread torn from a loaf, a cup and words of blessing personally spoken to me. Hands that reached out and embraced me, questions about my family and simply loving smiles from across a room.

I feel blessed that there is such a place for me to return and feel at home.

New Year's Resolutions????

I've been trying to think of a different phrasing of "New Year Resolutions", which just seems over done and quite frankly, doomed to failure. However, I'm not that witty or wise. So I did what I do best...link to other bloggers who are witty and wise:

Finslippy

The Happiness Project/Gretchen Rubin

Ask Moxie

I have ideas of what I want to accomplish this year, but I'm still processing whether I'm a Yes or No resolver, what SMART goals I want to do and how many goals are reasonable.

What you are doing? Resolving? Or are you anti-resolution?