september

(this post is dedicated to you, joel-the best twin God could have ever given me. and max-because in one way or another, you have consumed a lot of this month.)

september has been a very busy month. busy with what? i wasn't sure about that myself until i looked back at my pictures for the month. in chronological order...

lots and lots of rain, which has made our yard a friendly place for these horrid little fungi to pop up. they look like nerf darts, but smell terrible. i can stand in the yard and smell them without even being able to see them. weird.

lots and lots of outside time, in spite of the fungi. because we know all to well that winter will soon close in around us and we have to try to store up as much sunshine as possible for our little solar-powered bodies.

moving rooms around. my poor husband bears the burden of moving the furniture around way too often because i get tired of being home all the time and need change. i don't really like change in my life, but i LOVE moving furniture. (and by "i" love moving furniture, i really mean, i love saying "hey tim...." and watching him cringe and his eyes twitch as he waits for what will come next.)

this time was legit. max needed to be out of our room for many reasons, but neither him nor ben sleep well enough to be put together. so we moved our room instead to give the boys their owns rooms. tim doesn't like asking other people (like the many very strong family members who live very close) to help, so he does it by himself. to move our king sized mattress upstairs he harnessed all his rage (hence the glowing eyes) then sandwiched himself inside. he amazes me.

moving the rooms led to a lot of exhaustion and i'm still working on getting everyone, and everything settled. bleh. it's definitely gotten the moving bug out of my system. (another fact: although i like to move furniture, the idea of moving to a new house terrifies me. that's why we bought this one. we didn't want to move, so we bought the house we were renting. not really, but kinda. )

and then MAX TURNED ONE!!! YAY!!! yep, we officially survived a whole year with sir maximus mittens. (i know, a pretty badass nickname. he's gonna love it when he's older.)



their was ample celebrating and we still have one party to go. we love you maxey baby.



we were also visited by an alien. a cute, shaggy alien who spent the night with his brothers at our house. in addition to my own two, it seems like there's always a couple extra boys around here, just for good measure. makes a gal feel safe. or crazy. mostly crazy.



more enjoying sunshine. and destruction.

and lots of wildflowers from our walks. the boys love to pick flowers for me. jackie, one of my beautiful sisters, always has seasonal fresh flowers around their home and it's such a simple, happy thing. it's a good reminder to slow down and enjoy all the beauty around us.

i guess that's about it. it always amazes me how looooonnng and short a month can seem all at the same time. so long when tim's working late for the third night that week. but so short when it's all said and done.

i am blessed.

long days

some days i feel like this. so spent that i think my arms could fall off if i have to do one. more. thing. (her arms, though, in fact, were smashed off by an irritated boy named damien, er, ben. i did not handle that moment with grace. )

yesterday was one of THOSE days. i will neither confirm nor deny that i locked ben outside in the rain for a brief moment. on purpose. a dear friend called me today and she was having one of THOSE days. (although i don't think any children were locked out of her house.) my day would have been another one of THOSE days, but i sought refuge at my parent's house. twice. when tim called and reminded me he had to work late, i called my mom, begged, and loaded up the boys again.

hope all is bright and sunny in your neck of the woods. i'm off to pray for grace. and patience. and a whole bunch of other virtues i lack.

**i tried to post this last night but the formatting was being weird. then max woke up, and decided he didn't want to sleep....for most of the night. amazingly, even after only getting about 5 hours of interrupted sleep, we had a great day today. ben was a total doll. sweet, helpful, a good listener. praise the Lord for answered prayers.

***can someone please tell me why i occasionally can't get paragraph breaks. i'm getting hulk angry over here. like right now. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. (i now have bulging muscles and am green.) oh. now it's working. please excuse me while i go decompress.

giving tree??

i know my next post was supposed to be "deals" but this caught my attention. i was reading this post over here and i thought it would be interesting to get your opinions. reading through the comments on the post, most people agreed how they loved the book. am i a heartless person? i have never really cared for the giving tree. i have always thought the boy was selfish and ungrateful. the only way i almost appreciate the story is if i think of the tree as God and His love for us. on a parent/child level, i think the book is unhealthy. i think too many parents allow themselves to be completely consumed by their children in a really unbalanced way.

also in the comments, several people mentioned the book love you forever. although this book is kind of cute, it mostly just creeps me out. the refrain of the book is something like, "i'll like you for always, i'll love you forever. as long as i'm living, my baby you'll be." (don't quote me-we don't own the book.) you have to read it to really understand. but i think parents are too attached to their children in our society. my aunt, who teaches love and logic, calls these parents "helicopter parents" because they are always hovering over their children, "protecting" them from anything and everything that could happen to them. (reading the comments on amazon for these two books is VERY interesting.)

really, the proper order of things should be God, spouse, then children. right? and although i will be the first to admit that sometimes i put my boys before my spouse, as i rule, i really shouldn't. i think that's where so many of the fissures that slowly erode families begins. i've known many parents who turn away from the Church because it won't condone the behavior of their wayward adult children.

i don't think my parents were perfect, but even as a teen i appreciated my parent's clear message-basically, we'll always love you but there are some things we will not tolerate. and most especially, that if i turned away from God and his Truth, than i would be turning away from them. it was my decision to make. and although i know their hearts would have ached, i knew they were serious. maybe it was because they had eight kids, so a few of us were dispensable ; ) but really i knew it was because they truly understood the role and gift that children are. it was a very good thing knowing that by no means did the world revolve around us. we were entitled to nothing. and maybe that sounds harsh, but it really actually made me feel more loved, because i knew it was a real love.

hmmm. that turned into a bit more than i had planned for. how about these to lighten things up...

he commits to the requested emotion so well.

morning sun and bed head.

getting ready for the garage sale. i put $.25 on this critter and still couldn't get rid of him.