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Have you ever been o-v-e-r-r-u-n with incessant little talk? (Not small talk, little talk: talk from and with little ones) We have/are on a regular basis. And please understand that I know *EXACTLY* where my children get this penchant for communication; I am under no delusions. I am, however, under deadlines for various projects.
Hence, The Talk Tent.
We have one of those collapsible kids’ tents; you know, they’re big enough for forty eight kids to smoosh into but zero adults. In the past, we’ve left it standing in our dining room (because you’ve “met” us through this blog… we’re not exactly “we need a dining room experience” people… I’m just sayin’…) so that the kids could run back and forth as they vanquished dragons.
And on those days when we are knee deep in damsels and knights — and laundry, if I find that I cannot listen to e-v-e-r-y detail of the adventure, I ask them to go tell it in The Talk Tent. It’s a special place, there are always stuffed animals waiting with bated breath (err… fur? bated fur?) to hear of their exploits, and I can still hear most of the saga while finishing my tasks. Later, I get to sit down with them and ask them questions about the pieces I overheard. It’s great fun and they don’t seem to feel too left out when it happens; it’s better for me than, “Hold on, give Mommy a minute, I just need to finish XYZABCQR214z5.”
The Talk Tent definitely Works for Me. What works for you? Head over to Shannon’s and share!
Ann Voskamp, Abba’s daughter and gifted writer, just finished her own list of 1000 Gifts. I had followed her list since she began in November of 2006. And now, I want to begin my own.
So, I’ve created a new page for my list. I started to just do it in this post, but it was getting rawthur long as I find myself very grateful for a lot of people and a lot of funny things.
You *must* go here.
“friends in the business” who are walking right now as living examples of “poured out like a drink offering” and praising Him ever the more.
We met Todd and Angie at the awards a couple of years ago; they are the kind of genuine that makes indelible marks in your mind. Angie is vibrantly beautiful — really, Kelly and I were a little jealous — and Todd is amazing in talent — and humor!.
Darren and I have kept in touch sort of hit or miss with them over the past couple of years. D ran into Todd last week and just tonight I got an email update from Todd that included the link to Angie’s blog.
Oh my word.
I cried as I read the beginning, and then just wept as I scrolled through the story. And I’m still crying.
Crying for this sweet family, bereft of a daughter they loved so intentionally throughout her days on this earth.
Crying at the humble magnitude of Angie’s words, her motherhood, Todd’s “Daddy’s heart.”
Crying in selfish embarrassment because I couldn’t even get my lazy self out the door to the UPS store today.
And crying in awe of a Holy God Who both creates life and sustains it, Who allows physical death and defeated it, Who holds the world in His hand so that everything that is has its being and finds its existence, sustenance, and fulfillment in Him.
And crying at the profound and glorious irony of beauty from ashes.
Holy God,
Oh Jesus! Hold them today — Hold them *EVERY DAY* because this life will be different for them than they’d ever imagined. And I know, You, LORD; You are the God of “more” — exceedingly, abundantly more. Often in ways we don’t nearly understand. Audrey’s life — so very, very short in our frantic finite calculations — will have a legacy; has already impacted thousands of lives; will bring glory to Your Name and people to praise Your Son; has literally changed the course of families, challenging and inspiring the hearts of Mommies and Daddies around the globe. Thank You for this precious family, for their honest faith; thank You for this precious little girl whom we will meet when we get Home. We love You, Jesus. Amen.
So now that this little space and my husband’s really cool space are inextricably connected, there are people I actually know popping in occasionally.
This feels strange.
Primarily because this was where I dumped my brain without concern for what anyone thought. Not that there was anything particularly rousing to write about, nor that any of the people whom I know irl have ever been judgmental (or that they couldn’t just read the archives), but it has sort of produced that 7th grade my-journal-fell-open-in-study-hall queasiness. But because I miss spilling out my guts, I’m about to start again. So be forewarned. 
Also on the awkward side, I went through some old pictures and was looking at the various transformations my hair has experienced over the past few years. Ummm… well… put it this way, I literally had to sit down because I was laughing *so hard* at one picture from high school. And I have decided that, when we all get Home to Heaven, I am going to ask my sweet Mama *WHAT ON EARTH* she was thinking when I was in first grade. Even LittleBit said, “Uh, Mommy? You have pretty interesting hair there.”
When your look is found lacking by a 5 year old, it is a sad day, my friends.
There’s this hilarious Mommy-blog I discovered this week called We Are That Family where the author hosts a carnival on Thursdays for others to share funny pictures and remembrances from their past. So, I might have to post the really great hair-o-rama. It’s been an interesting run, I’ll tell you that.
And I’m left feeling a tad self conscious about my ‘do for church tomorrow. Having seen those pictures (and them remaining emblazoned on the back of my eyelids) I am now concerned about filling in for the Ladies’ Class tomorrow. Because this is the South and how can I teach if I don’t have good hair?????
Jk!
(sorta)
Last night was our prom — woohoo!!!
We do prom on Thursdays for a couple of reasons: one, because we’re a small school, it’s much less expensive to get a *great* venue on a Thursday night than on a weekend night; and two, because we have our roots in homeschool eccentricities — prom on Thursday because we don’t *have* to be at school on Friday.
Except now we do have classes on Fridays, so we’re back to the homeschool eccentricities part.
That’s fine. We’re totally ok with that.
Now, I’ve been chaperoning prom with our humble little school since I started working there, the year LittleBit was born. Back then, it wasn’t as much fun to be a chaperone. But thanks to my “date” for the past 5 years, prom is now a happenin’ place to be if you’re faculty.
So ladies and gentlemen, here we are in all our prom fabulousness:
We’re such hotties
So we go and we dance the whole time, every year. And we chalk it up to ministry each time because really, we’re just saving our husbands the stress and frustration. Ask a guy and I’m pretty sure he’d agree with Darren that the idea of *having* to go to prom every year for the rest of your life is a special kind of torture. So again, it’s all about ministry.
It is really funny; I think part of the reason we enjoy it so much is because it’s not our prom! We’re Moms, for crying out loud, we’re not there to impress anybody, we’re truly just there to have fun (and make sure that all hands stay above the waistline and there’s daylight between couples dancing).
We also have perspective we didn’t have back in the day — the girls who come in a group with no dates? They really DO have the most fun! The guys who come stag, just to come and hang out and feel totally awkward when they walk in? They have a blast and are by far the most popular guys there. The kids who think the prom itself is stupid so they go to dinner for a million hours, come to have pictures made, and then leave ten minutes after that? Not only do they miss out on the fun, they wind up feeling dumb and left out because everybody’s talking about an event they went to but cheated themselves out of enjoying. Every year I learn a little bit more about our human hearts — how fragile we are, how strong we’re made, how complete we are, how many complements we need. (not compliments, though those are nice, too)
It was a fun, fun night. It’s so cool to see all these amazing students all dressed up and smiling, there really isn’t anything they can’t do! So that’s my coverage of prom ‘08.
We had family worship and I did math with each little one – individually.
And it wasn’t just ordinary math, oh no! Who needs Abeka or Bob Jones when you can have…
That’s right — Spider Man! “Spidey Math! Spidey Math! Count on abacus, not your hands!”
Yeah, well, that’s why I blog; I like to write but generally have nothing more than cheezwiz to say.
Then they played and watched Miss Charity’s Diner.
And it’s only…
Do you see that? In fact, it was 11:01 when I started snapping pictures, but I had trouble with the flash fighting with the glorious radiance of green digital numbers. However, the flash *did* work well enough to reveal this:
Martha I am not, Biblical or Stewart. You can see why it took me a full two minutes to recover from the embarrassing horror and snap a better — less greasy — pic.
But in my defense, we’re doing our best to provide for the environment. Please meet our only pet (ONLY pet, ONLY. Darren, our ONLY pet. But I’m not begging… much), let me introduce you to Critter:
Technically, Critter is less pet and more thieving rodent attempting to scare our birds away from our high-class-feeder on top of the grill. But since he’s our ONLY pet, I try to focus less on the thieving and rodent parts and more on the ONLY and pet parts. I love nature, what can I say….
So since it’s so early and I have plenty of time to do some really wonderful, Proverbs 31 nurturing for my family, let me get started.
Ladies and gentleman, macaroni and cheese. Out of a box.
“She brings her food from afar.” McDonalds is 7 miles from the house, but today I think I’ll just stay at home and enjoy all the boiled-noodle-powdered-cheese goodness.
And by the time I stir it together and put it on really fine, hand crafted by underpaid workers in a developing nation plastic plates, it will probably be 11:30.
YAY!
Darren’s birthday isn’t until May, but since he has such amazing friends on tour (and because trying to pull anything over on someone as smart as he is is *hard stuff*), we celebrated yesterday.
After much plotting and planning, we loaded up at dark-thirty yesterday, picked up our drummer’s sister, and headed to Columbia, SC. As we pulled into downtown, I got a text that setup was complete and they were heading to lunch. Once in the parking lot, we tossed out fifty plates, forty forks, thirteen letter candles, two kids, and one cake; it only took us 10mins — that’s a record, I’m pretty sure.
Once in, our friends made sure Darren was still in catering, then we sent LittleBit and LittleMan in first. They dashed around the table and giggled behind Daddy (who was cutting his chicken). LittleBit tapped him on the back, Carter saw them and looked at Darren (who was still cutting his chicken). Finally, LittleMan started shouting “DADDY!” as loud as possible and Darren whipped his head up and looked frantically from one giggling angel to the other and then straight up at me (and stopped cutting his chicken). In all these years of marriage, I have never seen D’s face so red! It was GREAT!
This was our Very Happy Birthday table You can see that D’s head is spinning – literally – and we’re all enjoying a laugh. No one could deserve a great surprise more than Darren; the man is stinkin’ amazing! It was *such* a fun day and I’m really grateful to everyone who helped us plan this. It went so well, maybe we’ll surprise him again sometime!
It was really important to me that my children grow up learning Scripture from an early age; over the past few years, we’ve learned quite a few verses together. As a naturally random-not-planned personality, I’ve struggled to find a solid way to review the verses we’ve learned so we learn new ones but don’t forget the ones we know.
Then I found Sony Shafer’s Scripture Memory System at simplycharlottemason.com — OH WOW!!!! What a gift!
The system is so easy to setup: using one index card filing box with tabbed dividers and cards with your verses on them, label one set of dividers 1-31, one set Sunday through Saturday (days of the week), one divider Odd, one divider Even, and one last one Daily. (The divider labeling proved to be the most complicated step because I have ADDDDDddog! dog! that’s what we’re talking about, right???)
Now, slip verses you’ve already learned behind each divider. We don’t actually have enough for all 40 review dividers (we’re Cubbies and Sparks dropouts… don’t ask). We use the daily divider for the verses we’re currently learning. The cool thing is that by the time we get it all filled up, we’ll be consistently reviewing all the Scripture we’ve learned on the one month cycle — HOW COOL IS THAT???
Totally works for me! Head over to Shannon’s for more great ideas.
My husband is living the dream.
We are frequently asked, “What’s it like???” The answer varies depending on which aspect of the dream you’re asking about. If it’s life on a tour bus, the answer is “pack light” and “no toilet paper.” If it’s nights of concerts, the answer is “why?” If it’s how does the family handle it, it’s “she writes.”
But if the question is, what’s it like coming home, this picture sums it up. The ubiquitous 1000 words.
So, I’m barely blogging-literate as it is, and now WordPress has done some genius updating that WON’T LET ME DO WHAT I WANT TO DO. (And yes, it’s all about me, I’m so sure).
Found a stinkin’ hilarious Brian Regan video clip on YouTube, but I can’t get it to embed or link or [insert proper blogging jargon] here. So you can just click there on his name and I’ll write about it later.
So I thought I’d just complain a little. Thank you for reading!
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