the countdown begins....

Can I just say that this is the BEST mail we've gotten in a long time?!! 

we are so excited!!!!!

whoohoooo!! 

extremes

YIKES! It's cold outside today... 

and we even got SNOW last night!!!! 

(NOT NORMAL FOR SEATTLE THIS TIME OF YEAR!) 

Check out our front yard this morning 

(Anna with my parents before we took them to the airport today) 

As we've had some crazy extremes in temperature this week, it has been a reminder of the extremes you all are continuing to deal with.  I am praying for God to give you grace to continue to adjust accordingly, to learn to be patient with one another, to be as flexible as Gumby when needed and to keep on learning to love each other well... 

200 and counting...

just saw this and smiled that the miles4Jens continue... 

200 and counting. :) 

XOXOXO

sending you some Lego love...

from our home to yours.... 

Happy Thanksgiving- 

may you all make the best of it there in Pittsburgh

and may it be a cozy time with just the two of you! 

coffee and marriage

I read this post this week and thought you'd appreciate it...  XOXOXO 

"The other morning, my husband said, “I love you.” Well, actually, I just heard “I love you.” What he actually said was “here’s your coffee,” as he set down my favorite mug on our bedside table. Leaving me to nurse our daughter in the quiet bedroom, he walked out to begin the lively breakfast dance of frying potatoes while our three-year-old and five-year-old scampered around the kitchen–leaving an obstacle course of LEGO creations and Play-doh mines for the cook.

It may seem like a small gesture, but truly folks, handing a cup of coffee to a tired mother is like crafting a ballad of undying devotion.

Coffee, the love story, was woven into my ideas about love long before last week. I’ve been drinking coffee since I was too young to drink it (come to think of it, maybe that’s why I’m so short). It’s a ritual. A mood-lifter. A necessity. A life-long love affair.

When I woke up the morning after my wedding, I heard my groom tiptoe-ing out the door of the hotel room–returning a few minutes later with a cup of coffee for me. He brought a few packets of sugar and some half n’ half. He knew exactly how I drank my coffee–barely discernable through all the sugar and cream (don’t worry, I’ve since grown up and learned to drink it black).

He wasn’t a coffee drinker then, but he wasn’t thinking about himself. He knew that a good day for his new bride started with a cup of coffee.

I remember sitting up in bed on that May morning, trying to wrap my mind around the idea that the handsome guy I could see over the top of my coffee mug was my husband.

“So this is marriage,” I thought to myself.  And it was marriage. That tiny act of thoughtfulness was just as much marriage as the joy and laughter of our wedding celebration and our first passionate night together. These little sacrifices for each other that fill our days are highly underrated. It’s not the grand gestures, but the tiny ones that lay the foundation for an epic love story.

 We undervalue the daily grind of marriage. We fear the everydayness of it. We seek the passion and romance of love, but worry that it comes hand-in-hand with a rigid monotony as if the idea that facing day-to-day life with one person instead of having the freedom to move from one relationship to the next is a downside. A drudge. A bore. Day after day. Year after year of a mind-numbing rut to be stuck in forever.

Kind of like when I wake up to a new day and dread that monotonous cup of morning coffee. Such a chore to drink it–chained to the same old beverage day after day. Ugh. Coffee. AGAIN. If only I could switch things up with a morning chai latte. A cup of green tea. Some other caffeinated soda? Bring back SURGE, perhaps?

Oh, wait. That’s not what I think at all. And apparently I’m not alone since the majority of Americans are also daily drinkers of the heavenly stuff.

So is that critique of marriage really fair? Do we view other facets of life as oppressive merely because they are woven into each of our days?

I treasure my cup of coffee, not despite the fact that I drink it daily, but also because of it’s everydayness. I delight in the fact that this good thing, this cup of joy, is woven into my days. And I love my marriage for it’s everydayness, too. That this sacramental grace flows through the days and week and years.

This daily grind of marriage isn’t a downside. It’s a quotidian sacred liturgy of life together–and that doesn’t make it lifeless or boring. It’s the tiny, seemingly insignificant moments of grace that build upon each other and knit us together.

Waking up next to Daniel every morning for 3,000 days, eating at least 6,000 meals together, changing a million diapers, losing so many nights of sleep to the care of our three children, wiping down dirty kitchen counters countless times, does that make it any less magical and sacred, any less exciting? No. Doesn’t it become more beautiful over time that we said, ‘yes,’ to living one more day of this adventure together? Like Christmas morning–each year of marriage becomes a little more precious, a little more magical. Not in spite of the time together, but because of it.

Daniel drinks his coffee black. Yup, he didn’t last long avoiding coffee married to me. But then again, we’ve grown more alike over the past eight years. I eat oysters now. He drinks coffee. He makes a valiant effort to sound interested in the minutiae of blogging and I try to understand why running 100 mile ultra marathons is something a human being would want to do. We’ve grown together.

But that doesn’t mean it’s always easy. Sometimes the cup is bitter. We hurt each other. We fail each other. It stings. But as we remove each others masks, and commit to loving the person we married–flaws and pain and all, the daily graces of marriage build and grow. When I look at my husband over my cup of coffee, I see him differently than I did the morning after our wedding. I know him more deeply. I’m less naive, but more in love. I don’t trust the way a young bride does that he will never let me down. In fact I don’t believe that at all. He will let me down. I have and will let him down. We are human, we are sinful, we will fail each other. But after so many days on this adventure together, I don’t worry anymore about giving up somewhere along the road. Because the good thing about marriage is that it’s full of grace. Grace to cover our sin. Grace to hold us together. Grace to not give up on each other.

And sometimes that grace flows through a simple cup of coffee, given at the right moment, so that it speaks ‘I love you’ with each sip." 

http://www.carrotsformichaelmas.com/2014/11/10/what-my-love-affair-with-coffee-taught-me-about-marriage/

it all matters...

"In the thirty-first chapter of the rule, St. Benedict states something so remarkable that I keep coming back to it each night as I stack bowls and dry plates. He says, “All the utensils of the monastery and in fact everyting that belongs to the monastery should be cared for as though they were the sacred vessels of the altar.”

All the utensils.

I take the spnge and rinse the silver sink. Nothing in this skinny kitchen is all that special. And I’ve been living as if my task as a mom, those daily, mundane tasks- the brushing of my son’s teeth, the wiping of his bottom, the dressing of his body, the kissing of the scraped knees, the soothing of his wild terros—as if they were nothing significant, as if they were simply normal, what every mother does.

I’m mesmerized by St. Benedict’s words, that the monks should care for every toodl in the monastery, from garden hoe to the kitchen cleaver, as if they were the very chalice of the Eucharist, the tool that brings the blood of Christ to the lips of believers. 

I am undone.

I’m not sure why I’ve been waitin for this. I’m not sure why I needed someone to say it to me this way. But with Benedict’s words, I feel my world has been reborn holy. Suddenly my life, all these small daily instruments I am packing in my home, and the very sippy cup I fill with milk and raise to my boy’s lips, is an instrument of worship.

How did I miss it before? How was I so sure that God did not value my umimpressinve daily life?

I see my refelction in the dark night window. My short hair is bobby-pinned out of my face. My red sweatshirt hangs loose from my chest. And in the refelction of the glass pane, I see it.

I am a priest. I am a priest of the gospel, holding the chalice to the lips of my son. Carrying the plate of bread to the hungry. My life has value because God has touched every mundane moment with the glow of holiness. It matters. It all matters." 

–     ­Micha Boyett Found

As you all go about your day in your apartment today, as you plan for the wedding, as you organize medications and schedules, as you continue to heal... remember that it all matters... All that is before you can be instruments of worship. 

6 months....

celebrating 6 months with you all today!!!