cousinlove

tovi, cruz, abby and i loaded up our car this weekend to watch our two nephews in the bay area (side note: remember when my entire life could be packed into my small mazda? yeah, that seems like a dream to me too). so that was two adults, two dogs, three toddlers, eight naps to orchestrate over two days, approximately two thousand cuties consumed, a seemingly endless parade of poop, and frankly, a minimal amount of meltdowns! tovi and i high-fived each other all weekend long. we made it our goal to love on our nephews, give them some special one-on-one time with each of us, and start creating some awesome relationships between these three boys. it was priceless to see them laughing with each other, coming up with funny games, and the whole thing just makes me hopeful about this family that we're all building together. can't wait for the new littles to join this crew.

what {we} wore last wednesday

oh it's monday, and i think you know how i feel about mondays. i love mondays so much that i can even catch up on all things i was supposed to get done last week. like blog posts. and dishes. 

(pretend i didn't tell you that last part)

 here is what we do in our house from morning until night: we bowl.

we are bowling fiends.

cruz rushes downstairs in the morning, sets up his "track" (two buses, naturally), i set up the pins, and then let the bowling joy (or tears of frustration) begin!

there is an old family story about one of my uncles working at a bowling alley as a kid. his job was to reset the pins after each throw and for his pains he was paid a penny per pin.

let me tell you, from where i'm standing that doesn't sound like a bad deal...

I'm looking for someone to set up my pins...

I pick you!

cruz has been eating so. much. oatmeal. like, so much that we had to upgrade to the costco pack of oatmeal this week. so. much. my son has many fine qualities, but eating oatmeal neatly is not one of them so immediately after breakfast we change (after a little diaper time, of course).

my sister-in-law gave this shirt to cruz for christmas and i couldn't wait for him to wear it! too cute. 

we've been practicing our "faces." cruz calls this one "surprised."oh, i could just eat him. 

+++

and here's how i've been dressing the bump lately.

after 18 weeks i was officially in maternity pants zone. i pulled on a regular pair of jeggings one night before we went out, and tovi very kindly mentioned, "i think those might be a stretch."

but of all our outfits this week... this one is my favorite:

we're having a girl!!! 

wednesdays just got even better. 

out of the mouths of toddlers

cruz: lion eats meat.

me: that's true. what does cruz eat?

cruz: cruz eats bars.

me: that's definitely true. what does abby eat?

cruz: abby eats food.

me: you're right. we always ask you to get abby her food. what does mommy eat?

cruz: mommy eats vitamins.

i guess it could be worse. if he was still up at 9pm every night, he would have said, "mommy eats ice cream."

{january} 10 on 10

thursday was the tenth of the month, and once again i got close to taking ten pictures, but didn't quite make it. as my dad would say when he's being silly, pert'ynere but not plum. but that's just my dad.

so here's what we were up to on one random day in january.

6:30am. i wake up early in the morning and try to get through my devotions and making my daily to-do list before i hear babbles and snatches of song coming from cruz's room. i've been reading through the she read truth: fresh start daily devotional. every day is another story of someone in the Bible that got a fresh start or a second chance (this is basically everyone in the Bible, so it's encouraging). 

7:45am. i am getting cruz out the door for a morning at daycare. he loves daycare, so i don't tell him we are going until about ten seconds before i'm ready to head out the door as i have learned the hard way that if i tell him too early he'll just run out the front door and stand by the car. here i asked him to show me his happy face. enjoy.

8:45am. i am alone in the house and that is miraculous and wonderful. lately i have been loving going back to an old fashioned spiral-bound daily planner. love. it. it makes me feel slightly more organized and i like the visual-ness of it better than i like looking at my schedule on google calendar (although i still use that too).

 10:35am. i am getting ready for a meeting with crushcakes, a local cafe and delicious purveyor of cupcakes.

11:45am. the owner of crushcakes is awesome! as i leave, she boxed up some cupcakes for me to take home. delicious!

3pm. so two year olds are weird? cruz's latest "thing" is "bowling" with all my hairsprays. morning til night. bowling bowling bowling. fortunately for him, i have a lot of hair spray, volumizing mousse, dry shampoo, etc to make the full bowling set. i think he even slept with the hair spray. 

5:30pm. this is the aftermath of a playdate with some new fun friends. why haven't we done more evening playdates? the kiddos played, megan and i ate hummus and chatted. it was awesome. evening playdates are the best. 

7:06pm. brush 'ems! (see also: hair spray)

7:21pm. dear friend, until this very moment pictured, i had believed in my heart of hearts that i had bought food for dinner. i did not. i ended up with a dinner of leftover lemon chicken, mashed potatoes, and crab rangoons. 

after "dinner" we turned on the heat, cuddled up, and watched a few episodes of the office. lovely day. 

my great aunt lorraine and biblical womanhood

{via}

earlier this week i was asked to write a review of wild by cheryl strayed (and i get to hear her speak on monday!). i was going to also publish it here, but then i started another book, and even though i am only 7% through it (thank you, kindle), i think i'll write about that one instead. (i really enjoyed wild, by the way. could have done without so much backstory, but overall very well written and almost made me want to go camping)

not too far back in my family line on my dad's side you will find the conservative mennonites and the amish. i also grew up in the mennonite church, but it was decidedly not of a conservative bent. when i was younger, i was in an big little-house-on-the-prairie phase, so our conservative mennonite relatives just seemed like modern day pioneers, and i was pretty into that. 

my great aunt lorraine, conservative mennonite, was a godly woman with a wicked sense of humor and who never seemed to mind my questions about her lifestyle and practices. she never cut her hair, and every day she wound it into a bun on the top of her head and covered it. some of my clearest memories of her are from a weekend i spent at her house when i was a young girl. she stood in the kitchen before bedtime, backlit by soft lights and unwound her bun. her back was to me because i wanted to see how long the braid really was. it reached her feet. 

when i was a little older i asked her why she and her sister always covered their hair. she took me into the guest room at my grandparent's house and we sat on the bed while she opened her Bible to 1 corinthians 11: But there is one thing I want you to know: The head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God. A man dishonors his head if he covers his head while praying or prophesying. But a woman dishonors her head if she prays or prophesies without a covering on her head, for this is the same as shaving her head... And isn’t long hair a woman’s pride and joy? For it has been given to her as a covering.

this is not a passage of scripture i understood well then, or frankly, understand well now. but i will tell you this: aunt lorraine spent her entire life obeying this command and her obedience turned her braided bun into a crown of glory. i cannot wait to see her dancing before Jesus with her hair unbound. can you imagine that beauty?

this post is about a book, i promise. you see, paul's command to women to cover their heads is just one of many, many commands in the Bible regarding women. some of them are great. some of them seem crazy. and everyone thinks they have the monopoly on how those scriptures should be interpreted. 

for myself, i've always felt like i stuck out a little in the "achieving biblical womanhood" department. head covering? no. super awesome homemaker? hahaha. you jest. i'm not even particularly good about being "submissive" (whatever that means). but i also love being a woman. i believe that God created me as a woman for a reason and i embrace that. femininity is definitely a part of my personality. so i've felt stuck. i never felt like there was a model for me to follow. can anyone else relate? 

and then rachel held evans came along and wrote a year of biblical womanhood. 

like i said before, i'm 7% of the way in, and i've wanted to high five her on every page. she gets it. she gets that becoming a woman of God is more about becoming a child of God than a super awesome lady. she gets that homemaking is about service to the people we love and about finding God in the every day rather than about achieving some standard of perfection. rachel has changed how i view the proverbs 31 woman. most of us growing up in evangelical circles have battled with the expectations set by that particular piece of scripture, and i have come away embracing rather than fearing it. and also, for good measure, rachel's hilarious. i can't wait to keep reading and growing and talking about this book over coffee with my girlfriends. i think you should read it too!

at the end of day, i know God is not finished with me yet, as a woman or as His child. and when i dance in heaven it will be with whatever crown of glory He gives me (although it won't be for homemaking).