Easter for me...

Without a true church "home" this year, I wasn't sure what Easter would look like for me or for us as a family. It turned out to be the best Easter I have experienced in a long time--maybe ever.

I was jogging the other week and I swear God told me (not in an audible voice, but nonetheless, I "heard" Him) to invite this single mom I work with, Rhoda, and her daughter. I had heard a lot about Rhoda's sister, who was also a single mom to 3 kids, and decided to invite her as well. To my delight, they were all able to come, and here are some snippets of our Easter "experience:


1) Life is all about perspective. Rhoda's sister, whose name is Rachel Sr. (not to be confused with her daughter, 4 year old Rachel Jr.), stood in our back yard and exclaimed over and over how lucky we are to have such a nice view. By "view", she meant all the backs of houses that we can see. We hate our "view," but to her, it was beautiful.

2) The most precious food item I have ever received is a squashed loaf of old bread by the slice. Rachel Sr. brought it, and she couldn't have been more sincere and generous to offer it. For her, that bread represented a lot of meals. I felt almost sinful accepting it, but for fear of offending, I graciously thanked her (for bread! To her, it was surely manna...)

3) Rachel Jr. throwing up on our porch and my precious husband cleaning it up.

4) The sounds of 10 kids playing in our back yard, jumping on our trampoline, and searching for eggs...is wonderful.

5)Spending 3 days at various stages making a lemon curd mousse cake for dessert was well worth the time, energy, and dirty dishes.

Yesterday was meaningful to me because it was about something bigger than myself. Rather than look at having people over as exhausting and effort, it was a gift to me.

When everyone was leaving, Rachel Sr. jumped out of her car again to give me another hug. It was a very childlike, innocent, gesture as she was running down the street, boobs a flyin', to thank me one more time. As she hugged me, she gestured towards Dan and said, "I hope God sends me a man like that. With extra kids and all" (referring to my step children, Tyler and Madison).

Though her perspective into our family was only for 3 hours on a Sunday afternoon, it felt like a long over due refreshment for my spirit.

I want to shoot the dogs

I have never been one to endorse animal cruelty, but I think I am on the brink of looking into stockpiling mass amounts of chocolate and force feeding it to the various dogs who live around me.

Imagine that you are exhausted because of being home for a week with two sick children and you have also been working all day...your husband lovingly offers to wake up with the children at 6:30 am so you can get some more rest before you have to go to work for the day. Of course, I am no fool, and I accept this offer. Just as I am about to nod off for a few more hours, the cacophony begins. There are 3 mastiff dogs who live behind us that bark INCESSANTLY.

Dan has gone over there to ask them to try to be aware of their dogs barking. I have called animal control, but what good does that do? Filling out a report seems to be worthless.

I am literally at my wits end. If any of you have any suggestions as to how I can overcome this obnoxiousness, let me know. For now, I just want to cry into my pillow that I can't get any rest in my own house, in my own bed.

And, for the record, telling me that many people can tune out incessant dog barking and that I should invest in earplugs will only make me grumpy.

World Wide Web

This is Dan's favorite website. I am only including this because I finally figured out how to post web links. It has only been 6 months of blogging. This is typical of my personality in many ways. If something is too difficult, I tend to wimp out. However, this is not the case with marriage, motherhood, and other such things. It is only the case with cleaning toilets, especially all the urine around the base, and of running more than 5 miles at a time.

I may never have any clever websites to add into my blogs, but at least now I have the option.