So I sort of fell off the virtual map for a few days. 20 to be exact. I offer no apologies, but thanks to those who checked in to make sure I was alright. Everything is fine, I just needed a break. I needed to sleep more. I needed a little time to refocus. Time to dream. Time to savour some days down to the last drop without getting on my computer to share the last drop with anyone else.

There were also days that I wrestled with a head cold, days I battled migraine headaches. On those days, I was so happy to just go to bed.

I’m back, abbreviated. I don’t plan to be here every day, but I do plan to be here more regularly than I have been for the last 20.

So…hi!

My raised garden bed in the backyard has been replaced by something far better. I’m doing Square Foot Gardening. The basic premise is that you can grow more in less space. My pal, Mel Bartholomew, explains how you can throw out nearly everything you know about traditional row gardening because square foot gardening (hereby known as SFG) is far simpler. Eliminate rows. Eliminate walking paths. Eliminate soil testing and compensating for soil deficiencies. With SFG, you build a raised bed, fill it with “Mel’s Mix” soil (1/3 compost, 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 vermiculite), build a grid for the top, plant, and feast your eyes on your garden growing while all the row gardeners break their backs pulling weeds. It’s a bit of a time investment the first year, which I can attest to, but once the beds are built and soil is in, it’s nearly no work at all.

Clay and I built the boxes a few weeks ago. It was our first building project without any help from either of our dads, and are we ever proud of our accomplishment! They are first class garden boxes, if I do say so myself.

We picked up all the needed soil components last weekend. Big shout out to Peavey Mart – the only place I could track down big bags of vermiculite!

My father-in-law helped me mix the soil on Friday, he built the grid with Clay on Saturday, and today the boys helped me plant! We have one more box to plant tomorrow, and then we’ll finally be done the beginning of this venture!

I know a lot of people are curious to see how it’s going to take shape, so I hope everything goes according to plan and grows like crazy…so I don’t look crazy for doing this hair-brained idea. But it will work. Come on, look at the cover of the book. Mel wouldn’t lead me astray. Who wouldn’t want to garden like him? He looks so happy! And nice!

Big shout out to Wyatt too, who took these photos!

Sweet Sleep

Sleep. It is something I certainly do not get enough of. I feel like every part of my life needs to be reorganized, and I don’t know where to start. Perhaps I should start with getting more sleep.

Our sweet Bailey turned 3 today! From her wispy ponytail, to her dirty face, her love for pretty dresses, and her pudgy arms and hands, I love everything about this girl! I do wish she would scream less, but I do love that she is a determined little woman. I am so blessed to be her mama. In teaching and guiding her, I learn so much about myself. In loving her, I realize so much more about the love God has given me. It is such a high and noble calling to raise this little girl up to be a woman and I pray for grace overflowing as I teach my Bailey to be a fierce and tender lover of Jesus.

– – –

I was saying to Clay that in light of all our photography efforts in the last few years, we sure took some mediocre photos today. But I’m okay with that. I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t need perfect photos. I would rather simply enjoy the day with my kids than spend my time ensuring that I get everything captured perfectly. I want to enjoy the fact that my house is overflowing with loved ones, appreciate all the delightful moments with two eyes, and not spend my day behind a camera trying to remember it all in frame-worthy detail. The most important details are sometimes the ones you can’t capture in a photograph because they’re deep in your heart.

“Didn’t have a camera by my side this time. Hoping I would see the world through both my eyes…
Today I finally overcame trying to fit the world inside a picture frame…”
Thanks, John Mayer.

Decorate

A very special girl is turning 3 tomorrow!

I spent the afternoon baking cake, and cupcakes, and frosting said cake and cupcakes. After the kids went to bed, I got busy decorating. I’m really not a crazy creative mom, but I do like to delight my kids. They are so thrilled and feel so loved when there are surprises waiting for them in the morning, so the myriad of pink and white ribbons and balloons in the dining room should stir up some excitement.

Does anyone remember the scene from the old Batman movie, when all the world leaders are dehydrated and contained in test tubes, sitting around a boardroom table? Batman and Robin have an elaborate set-up to bring everyone back to life.

“Ready to rehydrate.”

No, hey? It’s just me? I guess I sound a little crazy then.
(Crickets chirp)

Anyway, coconut water is supposed to be incredibly good for you. It’s chock full of minerals and is supposed to be great for rehydrating naturally, like a gatorade without the sugar and weird colours. I tried a different brand and didn’t like it at all, but this stuff is actually really enjoyable!

One of my current open books is Jesus + Nothing = Everything by Tullian Tchividjian. I’m reading it on my phone, which has proved to be very handy since I can highlight with the touch of a finger. In all honesty, I should just highlight the entire book. It is awesome. Some reviews fault it for being repetitive. I believe that is the point.

The basic idea of this book is that you need nothing but Jesus. The life of a Christian is forever defined by the gospel of Jesus Christ. So what is the gospel? Good news. What is the good news? The good news is that while we were still sinners, Jesus died to save us from our sins. Not because we’re great, but because we’re not. Not because we’re worthy, but because we’re not. Not because we are mostly good people who just need a little help, but because we’re horrible people who can do nothing good apart from Christ! Jesus, fully God and fully man, lived the perfect life we could not live. He died the death we should have died. He takes our sin, and gives us his righteousness. He transforms guilty, vile, and helpless sinners into children of God. That is Good News!! We are saved by grace. We did nothing to earn Jesus’ love. He loves us not because we’re lovely, but because he is lovely! And his love makes us lovely. The gospel is not just for our salvation, the gospel is for our sanctification as well. The gospel is not something we can ever move past. We don’t get saved and then work our way toward being better people. It is all of grace, all of Jesus. Plus nothing.

I’m about half done the book, and thought I would share a sampling of my favourite quotes thus far.

“When it comes to the Christian life and experience, many of us have understood the gospel as the thing that gets us in, while the thing that then keeps us in (we assume) is our own effort and performance. We recognize that the gospel ignites the Christian life, but we often fail to see that it’s also the fuel to keep us going and growing as Christians.
Unless we come to see and embrace the fact that the gospel never loses its importance in the practical outworking of the Christian life, we’ll continue to undercut and cheapen the gospel’s impact.”

“In our bones, we know that God hates unrighteous ‘bad’ works; we’re not nearly so convinced that he hates self-righteous ‘good’ works just as much, if not more.”

“The biggest lie about grace that Satan wants the church to buy is the idea that it’s dangerous and therefore needs to be kept in check. By believing the lie, we not only prove we don’t understand grace, but we violate the gospel advancement in our lives as the church by perpetuating our own slavery. The truth is, disobedience happens not when we think too much of grace, but when we think too little of it.”

“You and I will never know Christ to be a great Savior unless we first understand ourselves to be great sinners. We’ll never really feel deliverance if we don’t first feel desperation. We’ll never experience the glory of real freedom if we don’t first experience the grief of our own slavery.”

“In his law-fulfilling life, curse-bearing death, and death-defeating resurrection, Jesus has entirely accomplished for sinners what sinners could never in the least do for themselves. The banner under which the Christian lives reads, ‘It is finished.'”

“Because we’re so naturally prone to look to ourselves and our performance more than we look to Christ and his performance, we need constant reminders of the gospel.”

“The irony of real growth in godliness is that those who end up obeying more are those who increasingly realize that their standing with God isn’t based on their own obedience for Jesus but on Jesus’s obedience for them.”

“The only thing you contribute to your salvation and to your sanctification is the sin that makes them necessary.”

“The gospel is not just for non-Christians. It’s bigger than that; it’s for Christians, too. The gospel represents both the nature of Christian growth and the basis for it. Whatever progress we make in our Christian lives – whatever going onward, whatever pressing forward – the direction will always be deeper into the gospel, not apart from it, or aside from it. Growth in the Christian life is the process of receiving Christ’s ‘It is finished’ into new and deeper parts of our being every day, and it happens as the Holy Spirit daily carries God’s good word of justification into our regions of unbelief – what one writer calls our ‘unevangelized territories.'”

Helping Out

I enlisted the help of my big boys today, to make some posters for another garage sale this weekend. At the sale a few weeks ago, we sold two tons of stuff. We also had a ton of stuff left over. So we hauled it to our friends’ house, more people brought more stuff, and this weekend we’ll do one more garage sale to (hopefully) liquidate what’s left, and make a few more dollars for our friends’ adoption.

In an attempt to earn Favourite Granddaughter status, my niece declared her Grandpa must be 32 today. She was almost rewarded with the whole birthday cake. In reality, my dad is a tad older than that, but still has more energy than a lot of his kids. The grandkids took him to the playground for his birthday while the rest of us lazy bones sat around the house.

We love you, Dad! You are an immense blessing to all of us. We love your love for Jesus, your love for your family, your zest for life, and your servant heart. We hope your next spin around the sun is a great one!

MathMan

School has been pretty lax around here for the last few months. So when we finally sit down and get some actual bookwork done, you can bet I’m going to snap a picture of it. I’m not here to spin it and make it look like we are deep in the school trenches and are ready to wind up our school year before the public schoolers. On the contrary, we will probably be doing school through the summer because we pretty much took off the last few months.

Today was awesome though. The boys hammered through three days worth of math because they are so thrilled to move on to ADDING! They are already working on addition all the time in real life, but the fact that it’s coming up in their workbooks is incredibly exciting to them. Wyatt, who is typically quite distracted with this sit-down stuff, was a machine today. The secret? Stickers. Why didn’t I clue into this sooner? Thank you, Dollarama!