Holding Loosely to my Plans

Today, the boys(Matt and Cole) were out the door bright and early for a day in Chicago. Matt takes both youth groups to the city every year with the lesson in mind "be ready to fill a need". The kids all bring back packs full of food, hats, mittens, etc to hand out to the homeless. This year, they once again had around 100 with! Quite the sight, all gathered at the train station! It is a long day in the cold and walking, and my little ones would not quite make it, so I stay home-especially since my number one babysitter had the nerve to go with them:)

The girls and I spent a few hours this morning cleaning, and then they all went out to play in the beautiful winter wonderland that had arrived overnight. I never tire of the squeals that occur when they first open their eyes in the morning and see the first snow fall! After lunch, they all suited up again for a second round out in the snow, and I was all set to sew for a few hours.

This was my pile of mittens and hats all ready for me.

But about an hour into sewing, Joslyn came running in to get me. Madi had hurt her wrist and was struggling to get into the house. Madison had rolled a snowball the size of herself! And when it got to heavy to roll anymore, she backed up and took off running at it to get it to move. IT DID NOT MOVE-but her wrist did! After getting her all dewinterized and calmed down, I iced, elevated her wrist, and gave her some IB profen. But in a few hours it was obvious she needed to be seen by a Dr, I could not even move her wrist without causing extreme pain to her. Matt was already on his way home from Chicago by that point, so when they got home, I fed him and Cole when they walked in the door, and we then took Madison to the ER. We were actually a bit surprised to find out from the X Rays, that she did indeed fracture her wrist. So she is in a splint to immobilize the wrist and we will be seeing an Ortho Dr on Monday to get a cast put on.

I think what has really helped me to love being a mama of 5 kiddos, is learning to hold loosely to my own plans, after long weeks of school, ministry, work, etc-the weekend is welcomed with a sort of sigh of relief and especially when it seems that there may even be some quiet time that is unscheduled. But most of you know, that can change in a heartbeat. But instead of getting frustrated, I am learning to take a breath and count my blessings. It is so easy for "plans" to become an idol, to become all important, but they are only things themselves and are just not as important as those we love. Today I needed to put that into practice-all those projects waiting-didn't get done-but I was able to make some memories (even in the hard times) with Madison and Matt. I know some day, she will look back and laugh at this, and hopefully she will not attempt to win a battle with a monster snowball either!

And of course, the Lord's timing is perfect-Ellie once again has been a soothing balm for Madison after a hard week-first with the loss of her guinea pigs and now her wrist. Ellie is playing the roll of Nana from Peter Pan-taking such good care of the kids.

She made sure to help keep Madison's arm elevated.

The Before....

Cole and I are just about to head out the door for haircuts. It has been months for me but for Cole it seems about every few weeks now that he cut his hair shorter. I know-"shorter" but for Cole, compared to just over a year ago, this is short! However, that relative statement is about to really change! He wants to buzz his head-ahh! I do not think I have seen him with hair that short since he was Noah's age! I will post after pictures later! Joslyn was sweet enough to take the before pics for us. We had a good time laughing-and i actually got some real smiles out of Cole instead of the pose for a picture smile.

The Rescue of My Wedding Quilt.....

A few years ago we decided to get a dog. We had finally bought our first home, we had settled in, we thought we were done having wee ones, and it seems quite perfect to add a dog to family life!! So, that is how Max came to be in our family. We rescued him as a puppy, he was a beautiful husky lab mix with quite the character!!! He was already housebroken and crate trained-could it get any better! We found that he would be much quieter if we laid a blanket over his crate at night. It just became routine. Then life took a drastic change of course for us. We found out we were expecting our fifth wonder!! This news for us was awesome! But also very scary-as I have hyperemesis with my pregnancies and it had increased in severity with each one. I quickly became bedridden and had a home nurse to help care for my needs. We, as a family struggled, but have always been amazed by the Lord's grace and blessings through such a difficult time. But, our poor newest member Max didn't get the best end of the deal! This energetic pup, spent a lot of his time in the crate because I was unable to spend time training and playing with him, and my amazing husband was playing Mr Mom and Dad to our four other kiddos. Max dealt with his boredom in ways like eating everything in sight or reach even when he was crated! One dreadful morning I had come down to get him out of his crate and had discovered that our wedding quilt had been eaten!!! I honestly could not even tell you who put it on his crate-most likely it was me, simply being to tired and sick to even care what I grabbed when I tucked him in for the night. But, my heart was crushed and for at least a year I am sure, the thought of what happened to the quilt would leave a huge knot in my stomach. The quilt was from my Husband's Grandma who has passed away now, and I had always looked at it as an heirloom. Well, I gathered it up and folded what remained and put it awya on a shelf in my studio. I just couldn't part with it and had a vaque hope that I would someday find a way to repurpose it. Well that was over two years ago, alot of life has happened in our family. We had our little Noah-who I always new I had yet to meet. Our oldest son is now not the only brother of 3 sisters! We sadly passed Max on to another family who could enjoy his energy as we began again with the newborn stage in our home. And just this past weekend, I finally repainted our kitchen in a sunny yellow after collecting blue dishes for 3 years!! Little did I know when I picked out the colors for our kitchen 3 years ago, that our wedding quilt would be the cherry on top! I finally pulled my beloved quilt off the shelf today, grabbed a pair of sissors with my heart thumping and made the cuts! The quilt now lays lovingly on my island as the centerpiece and brings with it a wonderful bundle of memories!!! Most of which, I can now smile at.