a day of living the dream

we enjoyed a friday at the farm.

so thankful for our participation in the snowfest yesterday as today it literally melted away. we stayed in, feeling the warm sun streaming in the windows. at one point max exclaimed, "the sun is so shiny!" and that it was.

the day began with both boys snuggled in beside me in our bed. never would i recommend our sleeping habits to another fam, but i truly and mostly adore them. bear snuck down early in the morn to pee, then bundled himself up in our bed cute as can be. maxer must have heard brad leave, because he took over the daddy's spot and whispered it 556, does that mean morning? i said no, goodnight and dug deeper into the down.

a day without plans afforded us the opportunity to begin to tackle the toyroom bomb. my boys actually throw toys around up here, jump on an old mattress, and stir up every puzzle piece, lego and block into a concoction resembling a primary colored stew. mostly we let it go, but it had gotten to the point where they could not play with toys for lack of finding them in the midst of the chaos. so we began the process of sorting and discarding and playing in the middle of it all.

bear found two batman action figures from mcdonalds that were hidden in a drawer. he showed them to me and informed me that they were daddy's brothers. there are lots of similarities between all three heros; bear is a perceptive boy.

that is a smile, by the way.

we played a little tea party, with weston enjoying himself almost as much as ayla jo.

girls bring all kinds of new activities to the playtimes, including babies. and my baby blue loves her babies hard. her fave dolly has suffered a severe injury to her hand, causing three fingers to come off. i do not know the cause of this damage, but i did purchase a replacement tonight at target during a winter boot run for maxer.

aylaroo has adopted this newest addition with all her love, and it seriously melts my heart. so sweet.

our biggest accomplishment today was assembling cupcake's toy kitchen she received from us for christmas. wow. i will be the first to admit i am not mechanically minded. i would rather describe in detail my thoughts and feelings in regards to the kitchen than build it. maxer was especially helpful in locating the correct letters corresponding to the instructions, and losing screws left and right. here is what i know: it is still standing, though leaning somewhat, and has already provided much appreciated distraction.

upon brads arrival home, we took the fam out for some authentic mexican at that little place by crazy horse. i felt extremely out of my element as the only individual who could not speak spanish beyond si. even though brad works daily with spanish speakers, he lost all ability to comprehend and relied on me and my enthusiastic nods and thank yous to order. i liked his meal better than mine, but we left full. the bad news- there were four tvs playing some sort of final destination movie all around the dining room. totally inappropriate. for the 30 minutes we were there, there were boobs, naked, and 4 violent deaths. brad and i were working real hard to keep the boys' attention elsewhere as they are magnetically drawn to tvs. it was comical how we would make up things we saw out the window, frantically do letter/color scavenger hunts and close our eyes in prayer at the worst parts of the show. stressful!

regardless, the day was casual and beautiful and full of chillaxin enjoying the little things. love that kind of treasure at the end of the week!

peace

the snow beckons to my boys as soon as the awaken. i convince them to have breakfast so as to gain more energy for their outdoor play.

as soon as toast is finished, the quest begins for socks, dry mittens and hats, and any snow gear that you can squeeze into, providing protection from the cold.

with the boys tumbling over one another to get out the door, it is just me and ayla jo. i snuggle her in for a nap and quickly try to put my house back together from the tornado of snow preparations. i sneak a peek at baby blue still trying to settle down, then don a warm coat, hat and boots myself to check in on maxer and bear.

o the cute.

snow angels.

they are tracking "elk" tracks in the field. now i am not a wise woman in the ways of outdoors, but i am quite sure the boys found bunny tracks, not those of an elk. regardless of who was correct, me or max, our hunt ended when we were all distracted by a plowed snow hill.

we made some letters in the snow, and then i ran indoors to ensure cupcake was asleep only to find her doing gymnastics in bed. so i bundled her all up and we joined the brothers for more snow fun.

we focused around the park: bear serving up the finest snow spaghetti i have ever had. he asked to eat outside for a picnic. tempting... but wet.

max gave ayla jo the ride of her life on the swing. wow. that girl is tuff.

in the midst of all the fun and wild, i found peace. the beauty of the snow, the stillness of the day, the sparkle of the sun.

you do not need perfection to find peace.

it can be found in the middle of a field, outside, among children wearing mismatched snow pants and coats. while i am considering the need to quickly whip wet snow clothes into the dryer so as to have them ready for school, my heart is at peace in this moment.

while my house is full of piles of laundry and some bowls with yogurt still in them and half eaten poptarts laying on the table, i find peace with my babes.

in the midst of messes, there can be peace. our circumstances need not determine our peace, for it is found in relationship with the prince of peace. and he enters into our chaos with divine and transcendent peace.

thank you jesus for this blessing and this invitation. may our lives be lived filled with your peace.

happy new year

wow. the festivities are (almost, we have yet to do a siblings christmas party, but plans are in the works for tomorrow evening) over.

the presents have been opened

and adored

and explored.

the memories made.

the beauty has happened, and continues each day as we celebrate our saviour in the living of our lives for his glory.

so here we are, 2012. being in this place of another new beginning provides considerable opportunity. i know myself well enough to know despite all my best intentions, resolutions just do not happen. instead i feel overwhelmed and badly failing that my house still looks a mess, my body still does not have delightfully toned muscles, and my kids have not been lovingly taught scripture each morning by their incredibley capable and organized mama.

therefore, i am committed to enthusiastically exploring the blessings god has in store for us this year. i am feeling a calling to live more simply, in a place of contentment marveling at the abundance in my life. i am not sure what this exactly looks like, but i sense it has something to do with not being frustrated about our literally two cabinets that we deem a pantry and the lack of room for storing food it provides but rather purchasing only the food we need for that week or so instead of cramming bag after bag of chips in a space that can only hold one. i am sensing it has something to do with less thoughts of needing to email a friend back/needing to get the taxes in order/needing to find maxer's homework and more to do with scheduling time to get those things completed. something to do with less time spent grieving over the mom i do not have and rejoicing in the extremely redeeming relationships god has placed in my life.

(especially with this handsome stud i get to call my husband)

my heart is readied to receive these gifts of instruction and change.

the things he uses to teach me are what fill my days. so it begins.

this new year has brought with it snow and my children are reveling in its freezing cold existence. already this morning the boys have been outside sledding down a hill created by brad's plowing prowess. bear came in 3 times to change mittens before he finally called it quits. thankfully, as i was out of fresh mittens and the last switch was to ayla jo's pair of pink ones.

last night baby blue had her first experience outside in snow as a walker. so. fabulously. cute. bradley took us all out on the mule and we rammed around the yard and did donuts on the street. the boys would yell "ay ay ay ay ay. Live Action" as proclaimed by the turtle man on the discovery channel. cupcake would scream right along with them; kicking her legs and waving her little bundled arms the whole time.

one more quick aylaroo story: she peed on the potty last night. i know. she is 16 months old and she told me poop and walked into the bathroom so i obliged in putting her on the little potty. after settling in, she peed. i nearly peed as well at that discovery. i screamed for brad and he fell in love with his little dolly more than ever as he vividly recalled the $60 we spent on diapers and wipes during our last trip to costco and was already planning how to not use that money on diapers.

talk about making up for lost time on the blog. now to get my preschooler prepared for back to school...

the reason for the season

on saturday, we went christmas shopping. perhaps that sounds more involved than the actual activity. we literally loaded the veen and headed to target to buy each and every present save for a couple randoms i ordered online. we were armed with some giftcards earned via brads credit card, a teermans christmas bonus, and my teermans paycheck.

yes all three adorables were along.

the experience was intense. it was festive. it was expensive. it was successful. and it was anxiety inducing.

i seriously adore my babes and husband with everything i have. i desire the very best for them in every aspect of life. somehow, at christmas, this desire morphs into buying into the concept that more is better. maxer likes remote controls, i want to give him every one they make. bear is fascinated with cheetahs, i want to buy a real one and keep him out back. ayla jo is a girl, so i want a wardrobe for her complete with lace and pink and frills.

there is always more and better things.

this feeling of desperation to fulfill my children's every want and blow them away with even more THINGS is in direct juxtaposition to what christmas really celebrates.

the birth of our saviour.

to a virgin. in a manger. ultimate humility. ultimate sacrifice.

and the ultimate gift. redemption.

that is more than enough. my heart pounds with gratefulness and shame. i am so thankful for all baby jesus' birth represents. and so so sorry that i so easily slip into our society's distracting and commercialized version of an act of love so incredible it is beyond my comprehension.

other kids will get more toys this christmas. but mine will get enough. so i put back a pink princess chair for baby blue, a garbage truck reminiscent of toy story 3 for bear, and a set of lincoln logs for maxer. and i read my cuties luke 2 this morning and hid a baby jesus in a manger for them to seek like wisemen. and i prayed that the lord help me with my unbelief, that he overwhelms my heart with knowledge that He. is. enough.

let it snow

right now, as i type, i do not see any snow. the only white is the cloudy sky. otherwise, the grass is greenish still, the driveways soaked with puddles, and the trees bare and brown. however, this was not the scene on friday. on friday, we woke up to snow!

a beautiful sight awaited us, all bright and white. i am so grateful i was up before the boys this day, for i got to witness their adorable reactions. bear caught a glimpse outside the upstairs window on his way down the steps and said, "max, the snow came back!" both boys kept exclaiming that they must have been asleep for a very long time. and then came the request to venture outdoors and play.

after 35 minutes of layering, searching for lost mittens, zipping, shoving mittened hands through arm holes and overall bundling, the boys were ready for the first snowy adventure of the year.

thankfully, there was a little snow left on sunday, when daddy was home to play. my three boys took to the hill in our backyard. leave it to bradley to come up with a sledding game in which he shot the boys down the hill and aimed for objects at the bottom such as the tractor frozen to the ground or one another trying to make it up the hill.

those couple wild outings practically wore away all the snow, so scant the accumulation and so hearty the play.

the amount of fun they packed into their sledding extravaganza's was immense. enough to last through these incredibly mild temps.

snow is cold, requires much more preparations, creates hazardous road conditions and severely limits activities. however, it sure provides some good times in the backyard.

love these nights

with the opportunity to work at teermans and the stow co, many of our nights are spent apart for a bit. we always end up together, and that is my fave. however, the busyness makes nights home even more beautiful.

last evening brad had pig school. the boys were incredibly disappointed that they could not accompany him to get pqa certified as i imagine they were picturing pigs at school. sadly, that was not the case. i was feeling a bit burnt out after a really intense crafting session yesterday resulting in some christmas presents and baths for all three. so the thought of being alone for the night with the little was daunting.

the crafting is happening in the pic above. can you find where our ginger haired princess stashed her lollipop? yeppers, its stuck to her cute tights. that makes me laugh out loud.

thankfully my husband the hero rolled into the driveway at 6 instead of his 10:30 prediction. we were all thrilled. brad probably the least of all as i was not really planning on him for dinner and therefore made us all some gourmet grilled cheese. by gourmet i mean regular grilled cheese. and chips. wow. lucky, lucky man.

so the night was spent enjoying one another's company. one of our fave fam activities occurs on the stairs. bradley and bear are on one end, and maxer is on the other. they whip a ball up and down. i am petrified of this game as i cannot catch to save my life. and it really seems like they are trying to hit one another more than toss it gently. either way, i am out.

these two crazies were looking especially handsome all night long sporting some john deere hats courtesy of great grandpa and grandma. they are both beyond proud because they think they can read the john deere on them. max does point out all the letters correctly and is now somewhat convinced that john deere and john zoet (brad's boss) are one in the same...

please note maxers shiny face. he had chapped lips. apparently brad had/has this problem as well. so maxwell likes to put his own vaseline on. this results in lots of vaseline all over his nose, cheeks, foreheads and a little even on his lips.

this little lovely has a fever. i know. the only benefit of illness is that it forces us to slow down and just be. here is ayla jo being a princess. playing dress up with her pretty.

ayla jo is saying cheese. look at those lips!! i just want to plant kisses right smack on them!

thank you lord for these fabulous family nights together where not a lot happens other than togetherness. what a blessing to live in this love!

blood draw

i took ayla jo and weston to zeeland community hospital yesterday to get baby blue's blood drawn for a routine lead level check that is required of all babes her age. i know what you are thinking, what an amazing mom. the first day no one is puking and you make her go get poked?! but here is the thing, with this fam you just do not know when the next round of throw up is going to happen, so you have to live life with a seize the day attitude. so we seized.





maxer had school and we were out and about anyway. of course i had lost the work order given me by dr lund three weeks ago so i called in the am to request that the office fax the work order downstairs to the waiting registration nurse. nurse ruth assured me that would be no prob.





prepared as i was going to get, i dropped max smiling and wearing red for red day off to school and proceeded to zch. there we registered and bear beelined it for the drinking fountain. have we really been there enough to remember locations of drinking fountains and toys and whatnot? apparently yes. so wes got a large cup of water while i wandered around with the dolly until two two year old twins and their parents bombarded the waiting area and entertained themselves with my daughter. aylaroo was real tolerant though they were all up in her business chasing her back and forth down the hall. bear joined in the fun and i kept trying to drop large batches of purel on the twins because i no longer see other kids, just other germs.

finally, we were brought back to another registration area where this sweet grandma tried to overlook the fact that bear kept falling off his chair and ayla jo kept pouring wes' cup of water all over herself. i gathered she has 1 grandson named jack who lives in the area, has a photographer as a mom, has many sleepovers with her, and who was really hungry during their last shopping trip thus becoming a monster child. i think that last tidbit was her way of suggesting i try feeding my kids once in a while in hopes they would become less monsterish. thanks.

we were then whisked to the blood drawing area where two girls, at least 20 years my jr, had all four of their hands full with my fam. weston made himself at home on a bed in the room while i squeezed sister between my legs and bear hugged her while they took several attempts at locating her sweet little vein. i prayed out loud constantly "jesus be near! guide her to the vein lord, protect baby ayla" etc. seriously, painful to watch. at last the blood was drawn and i look over to weston, very concerned that he will be scarred for life after watching his sister traumatized by this bloodwork. he speaks into the chaos " hey, do you have any stickers?"

they had stickers.

we left with several bambi stickers, a little less blood, and with the knowledge that we made quite an impression.