My AWESOME girls!

We love the Awesome 3000.  This was the 30th annual event in Salem.  This was the Rowzee's 3rd annual Awesome 3000.  I probably posted the last 2 years about how great Avery did.  This year I get to brag about both my girls.  Both girls ran a 1.5k, which is .91 miles.  They run with their gender with kids in their own grade.  There were 180 girls in Allie's group and 240 in Avery's.  Are you ready to hear how great they did?  I know this isn't nearly as exciting for anyone else but their mother, but I can't help pretending like you care.  Avery has gotten 8th place the last 2 years, which is a little strange.  Even stranger is that she got 8th place again!!!  I'm so proud that she's so determined.  Now for the wild card: our Allie-girl.  Rich and I figured she'd probably do really well.  I mean, there has to be SOME kind of positive way to direct all that energy!  But we also thought it was possible she'd come in dead last just to be a stinker.  Nope!  She was SECOND!!!!!  I could hardly contain myself (scratch that - I DIDN'T contain myself) when I saw her come back in that stadium in second place.  Toward the end we saw a girl behind her start to catch up with her.  She looked back and saw that girl and it was over - she picked up so much speed!  There was no way that girl could have caught her :)

We sprayed their hair pink this year and I got them crazy socks.  There are so many kids in that stadium and this way it was a little easier to pick them out of the crowd.

Rich and I are super proud of our girls :)

Land of the Lost

I live in the land of the lost.  We are going almost every second of the day.  I'm lucky if I get home at one o'clock with Allie.  I emphasize the "with Allie" part because that means she begs me constantly if I'll play with her or watch her ride her bike outside and it's a miracle if any housework gets done.  I pick up Avery at 3:30 and we have a short time at home to eat a snack, practice piano, and talk together a bit before we shoot off to soccer... or tee ball practice... or a game... or church... or piano lessons. 
Ok, so there's my whining.  I have been losing things like crazy.  It's not really like me.  I am not the most organized gal on the block, but I am usually able to keep track of our things.  Rich loses things around the house quite often and looks and looks for them.  I always find them :)  Well, I haven't been finding them lately! 

**I lost my keys for a couple weeks and thought I was going to go crazy without them.  Turns out Avery had them and absent-mindedly tossed them in the garage behind my dry storage food.

**Rich left his shoes on our front porch.  Those didn't get lost - they got "ganked".  That's gangsta for stolen. 

**Allie has two pairs of shoes that she wears almost exclusively.  She has lost one of each pair - at the same time - several times over the last few months.  She wore whatever extra shoes I could find for days before I was finally able to locate the missing matches.

**I lost my sunglasses.  I was so bummed!  I loved them and I really didn't want to buy a new pair.  I had worn them to a tee ball game at school on a Tuesday night.  The rest of the week I looked everywhere for them.  On Saturday we went to another tee ball game at the same field, but our team was playing on the other side.  I stopped on the side we had played at on Tuesday, just to visit with an old college friend, and looked down and saw my sunglasses!  They weren't broken or even bent!  Avery was with me and we both celebrated.  It was a good moment to talk about how God might not care a ton about my sunglasses, but He cares about me :)

**Rich lost his ipod.  This was a big one.  This was a big splurge for Father's Day last year and we definitely aren't going to replace it if it goes away for good.  We prayed as a family and I asked for friends to pray that we would find it.  We were counting on being able to use it on our mission trip to Guatemala (more details on that in a different post).  Well, after missing it for a week, Rich's dad calls and it turns out it was in his couch!  Thank you, Lord!

**Avery lost her soccer cleat.  I looked everywhere.  My whole family looked everywhere.  Tonight I realized if she didn't find it by tomorrow for her game, I was going to have to come up with some more cleats for her to be able to play.  I decided to look in our hallway closet one more time, and there it was in plain sight! 

I can't even remember everything else we lost.  But I'm so thankful for God's presence!  Yes, things feel crazy.  Yes, I'm having a lot of trouble keeping track of things in this very busy season.  But God cares!  He sees my struggles and hears my cries over soccer cleats and sunglasses and He's been so faithful to get me through it.  Thank you, Lord, for caring about my little life with little struggles that, to me, feel kinda big sometimes :)

Good stuff

As I was saying goodnight to Avery tonight, she said to me, "Mom, I think God must be the best artist ever." Of course I agreed, but I wanted to know where that was coming from. After I asked, she said, "Because He made us symmetrical." She went on to tell me that they had learned to draw clowns in art class today and talked about how our bodies are symmetrical. Now, were she in a Christian school, I'm sure the teacher would have taken the opportunity to discuss God's great design. However, she is in a public school and I know God wasn't discussed. But that didn't stop my girl! She found her own Biblical Integration (one of those terms from my elementary education days in college when I had to add that element to every lesson plan). She immediately thought of God's amazing artistry in creating us symmetrical.

This is one of those moments in which I'm reminded that God's will always prevails. He is growing and teaching my children even when I'm not present and even when the teacher has no idea she is being used to draw my daughter into a deeper understanding of her Creator. Good stuff :)

Bring on the crazy

All school year I knew this was coming. Spring. I am working every day. Avery is playing soccer on Mondays and Wednesdays at 5, with a game every Saturday. Allie is playing tee ball on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 5:30 and there will be games all during the week whenever those start. I teach ladies discipleship on Tuesday nights while my kids go their church activities. Avery will go to piano on Thursdays at 5:30 (Allie has been taking it but will not take it during the spring since it's at the same time as tee ball). All of these practices will depend on me, since Rich doesn't get home until 5:45 usually. He will be able to help with some pick ups, but we haven't really arrived to where we're comfortable just dropping the girls off at their practices. This might be the year, though!

I also have two big events in April - hosting my Bunko group at my house and helping to host a table and my school's annual auction. And I have our church's VBS Bible curriculum to write in time to be published for the summer. Oh, and Rich and I coach a coed church softball team that has games beginning the last week in April and guess what night that's on? Tuesdays - the same night as Allie's practice and our church activities. Are you as tired as I am just writing this down?

Anyone have any advice? One of my biggest questions is dinner. We usually eat around 5:30. How am I going to get everyone fed? It seems that on the later practice days we will have to eat early and on the nights Avery practices at 5, we might all wait until 6:15 to eat. But that's pretty late for us. Plus, eating early on the nights of 5:30 practice means having dinner ready by 4:45, since my kids take forever to eat and I'll need to have everyone in the car with gear on and to practice on time.

So I'm trying not panic. God is huge and certainly big enough to help me handle the life He's called me to. I'm very glad I'm not always this busy. I need to take each day at a time and try to plan carefully. I need to start my day in the Word and stay leaning on Him when I start to panic as I look at my messy kitchen and piles of laundry. I think, also, we will be eating more sandwiches and hot dogs - meals we can eat on the go. And, dare I say, maybe a few drive-thru dinners???

Eight years...

*For eight years, my life has not been my own.

*For eight years, I have napped only if I played my cards just right and the gods smiled upon me.

*For eight years, I have stared at my stretch marks in the mirror every morning and thought, "that's a bummer.."

*For eight years, I've dreamed of just leaving the house without packing a snack bag, finding someone's other shoe, filling up a sippy cup, buckling someone in or nagging them to do it themselves.

*For eight years, I've only made dinner a handful of times without hearing some level of complaining, even if it's something everyone likes.

*For eight years, I've considered the hours of 8pm to 10pm "vacation time".

*For eight years, I've cried at every Clifford episode I've ever seen.

*For eight years, I've looked into one of my daughters' eyes and known that she thinks I hung the moon.

*For eight years, I haven't entered my home to greet my family without hearing the word, "Mommy!" screamed and hear footsteps running toward me and have one or two girls jump into my arms.

*For eight years, I've watched my heart walk around outside of my body.

*For eight years I've been a mom.

I thought having a baby meant having a baby. Then the baby became a child. Then the child became a person. Motherhood is so much more than I expected - in all the good and bad ways I could possibly mean! No one has ever made me crazier than my own children, but no one has come close to stirring my heart the way they do. There is nothing I want to do more in this life than to give my daughters a safe, loving, Godly, healthy environment in which they can grow and thrive and become women who honor their Lord.

So Avery turned eight today. I took her to get her ears pierced. It was a special mommy-daughter date and I soaked in every minute of it! Allie and I get a lot of time together alone - A LOT. I love that Allie and I can have that relationship and can spend so much time together, but Avery and I hardly ever spend time alone anymore. So I was looking forward to our afternoon. We shopped, tried on lotion, got her ears pierced, and had lunch together. It's true - I absolutely LOVE this girl! I love that I can take my maturing, growing girl out for a girlie afternoon and we can both have a wonderful time :) Thank you, Lord!

Spring Snow

On the second day of spring, we got a snow storm. I really don't mind Oregon's weather. Yes, the winter gets a little long, as it tends to be pretty rainy. This winter's December, though, was gorgeous. You gotta take the good with the bad. I am willing to put up with some winter rain to have our beautiful summers. And if you want to have our flourishing trees and foliage, you have to accept the rain. But a dumping of snow on the second day of spring is highly unusual! It snowed for 24 hrs straight.

Raleigh loves that our heat works :)

I think I took this picture a couple weeks ago during another light snow day. After 24 hrs of snow, we had way more than this.

I'I'm not sure why, but this silly picture came out sideways, even though I rotated it. Just tilt your head, please. I really liked this picture of my girls and their doggie. They are growing up! Allie is 6 now, and Avery turns 8 in 2 days!

The End of an Era

We've had our girls sharing a room since Allie was 2. I guess it's been about 4 years. They have a bunk bed and a beautiful room painted raspberry-pink. All along we've planned on letting them have their own rooms eventually, but not until Avery was maybe closer to middle school. Well, lately the fighting has gotten worse. Man, that has to be one of the very hardest things about parenting - hearing your kids be nasty to each other. I know their shared gender and closeness in age makes the fighting almost inevitable, but I refuse to accept it. Rich and I are constantly talking about praying about how to help the girls get along and treat each other with respect.

On top of that, we're trying really hard to teach them responsibility for their own things and helping to clean around the house. Folks, I'm going CRAZY in this area. Since I'm working every day, it's much harder for me to just do their work for them, and I know how important it is to be teaching them to pick up after themselves.

So we've dubbed Saturday mornings as "family clean-up" time. The girls are required to clean their room and the playroom, as well as pick up anything else around the house that's theirs. They also are given one chore (Avery's is usually to vacuum the stairs and Allie's is to clean the doorknobs or windows). Throughout the week, of course, they also need be trying to keep things straight. But I'm just too busy and tired during the week to enforce it much. Last Saturday the girls spent the entire morning whining and crying and finally got their small amount of cleaning done when we said they couldn't eat lunch until it was done.

One of the biggest obstacles to their cleaning is that they can't seem to get along while they clean. So yesterday, during all the struggles of Saturday morning cleaning, Rich announced it was time. Time to move Avery out and give her her own room. She's been asking for a while, but fairly content to stay with Allie. We've been talking about it and thought maybe we'd wait for the summer. But this seems to be a wise decision. I'm hoping that having their own space to be responsible for, rather than basically a free-for-all everywhere, will help them take a little more ownership over their space and things.

I was sad. At bedtime, after we had switched Avery's stuff and they were settling into their own rooms for bed, Allie told me, "I wished she could wait 'til tomorrow to move". She felt a little scared to be alone, even though she's slept alone off and on in the past. I felt sad for Allie and sad that it seemed it was the end of an era. The era of my girls being little and always together. They're both in school and making their own friends and spend too much time apart for this mama's comfort. On the other hand, when they're together there's WAY too much fighting! Well, this morning I went to check on the girls because I knew they were both awake. I peeked into Avery's room first and guess what I found? Allie was quietly sitting on the floor playing a game and Avery was trying to fold origami on her bed. They LIKE each other! They have their own rooms and they chose to be together this morning!

Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe absence will make the heart grow fonder :)