Flourish + Fun

Love my little angel, but this week she was a funny little trouble maker! She snuck frosting in during her "quiet time" under the covers of her bed. She ate a bunch, fed her dolls and animals, smothered it on the bed, and managed to get it on everything else in between. After an unusually long quiet time, she came in to see me, with her guilty, tear filled look. She didn't need to say anything because she was completely covered in frosting!! She looked at me and handed me the jar. I couldn't help but  start laughing and she started crying! ;) Poor Em!

I am loving my new Summer  devotional !! We are coming out of a season of hectic, over scheduled, over committed activities. We love to help friends, we love to be active and involved, but it was taking it's toll on us. Having Ava be so sick (so much) this past year, and dealing with quite a few financial stresses, new jobs, etc. We decided we needed to shift our focus and cut out a lot of commitments. This devotion couldn't come at a better time! I found it online, written by a pastors wife who is coming out of a similar hectic season of life, just like we are. She is deep, funny, kind-hearted and challenging. It is challenging me in some pretty great ways. It's such a fresh, new take on John 15. It is really written with questions and content to shift focus and draw out the things that might not be obvious to me. It is really helping me to rest, focus and ask some deeper questions of myself! It's all about resting and abiding in God, before you head out to focus on ...

We love our sweet little boo boo baby!

We had a Mommy + Daughter date this past week. It was so fun that we finally had a chance to do this. We have talked about it several times, but have been so busy the past 6 months that we didn't do it. When we finally did it, it was hysterical to me to just be able to sit and watch Em, to see what intrigues her and what she wanted to talk about or do. She was such fun to hang out with! We stopped about 10 times on our way to the restaurant in downtown. And mind you, we only parked about a block and a half away! We twirled, we sat on a bench {because she requested a rest from all the walking} and we picked up trash {her request} to keep the neighborhood clean, and we held hands. Twirling, twirling, and more twirling!     We got a big cheese pizza, and well I got a salad as well. We played lots of silly games: like I spy, we colored the kids menu, we connected the dots, we talked to our booth neighbors, we even made up a game of soccer with the cray...

Hello, weekend getaway! Hiking time! Gorgeous spot! Tent cousins! Daddy swinging! Em swinging! Brothers high-5! Rock climbing daddy & uncle Chris!

I saw this and it really resonated with me. I need this reminder... I think this is absolutely beautiful! Take a look... ***** There's a whole chapter on perfectionism in  Bird by Bird , because it is the great enemy of the writer, and of life, our sweet messy beautiful screwed up human lives. It is the voice of the oppressor. It will keep you very scared and restless your entire life if you do not awaken, and fight back, and if you're an artist, it will destroy you.... ...Oh my God, what if you wake up some day, and you're 65, or 75, and you never got your memoir or novel written; or you didn't go swimming in warm pools and oceans all those years because your thighs were jiggly and you had a nice big comfortable tummy; or you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life, of imagination and radical silliness and staring off into space like when you were a kid? It's going to break your heart. Don...