Friday, March 8, 2024

The Greatest Victory



Our team from Seven Marks wrote an original song for Easter this year.
We put our buddy Travis Motley on the project with his studio at Diamond Productions
to place his creative touch on it and it is sounding amazing. It should be up on Spotify soon!

Josh and I took Patience and Zeke and headed down to Kannapolis for a day in the studio.
I'm not sure which was more fun, the actual car ride with one of my best friends talking about everything from food and politics to parenting and unexpected life turns. 

Zeke came along too and experienced a day in the studio for the first time.
We needed him to capture some b-roll.
I think he was pretty impressed and came back creatively motivated! 
Travis was so sweet to take the time to pour into Zeke as he asked all sorts of questions about owning a business and even equipment and the ins and outs of having a studio.








We got the vocals and violin laid down as well as some great B-roll and headed back home.
As soon as we got home Josh put out a quick email to our team to invite them over for food and gang vocals. We had a great turnout, even with the last minute notice. 

We'll let you know when the song drops! 




Wednesday, March 6, 2024

February Milestones and Memories

 

Josh was supposed to run the Umstead Trail Marathon last year but had a knee injury and had to defer to this year. He said this was so much more difficult than the Richmond Marathon he did because of the trails. His goal was to make it in five hours. He crossed the finish line with 4 minutes to spare! I got to meet him at the finish line since it was local.

If you know Zeke at all you know that he always has to be working on some kind of project. His current project obsession is turning our basement into a workout room. He went to Home Depot and bought some supplies to finish walls and paint. He has spent hours down there cleaning it up and it really does look nice! Now, to save for some equipment!



The kids asked if they could invite some friends over for the Super Bowl. I absolutely LOVE when the house if full of teenagers and kids. And their friends have awesome moms who always come through with extra snacks and drinks to add to what we've got to feed the masses. I'm pretty sure Josh and I were the only ones that watched the first half, but by the half-time show came around the kids were into it. 


Cai got a haircut. Yup, you read that right. He hadn't had a haircut in probably seven (or more) years. I was shocked when he came and asked if he could cut it because it was starting to drive him crazy in his face, especially when he was playing sports. So I made an appointment (This one is kind of a big one. Mama ain't gonna be responsible for this cut!) and he went through with it. Smiles and all.
The final pictures were right after getting home after the haircut so the curls hadn't even taken form yet, but it is so curly and so cute! I love it. And he does too!





A Full February


 We had such a full February. 
Both Rainy (turned 19) and Jude (turned 12) had birthdays this month.

After Jude and Josh returned back from Guatemala several of the team members began getting sick. And sure enough both of my boys were down for the count within 48 hours. Josh's whatever-it-was lasted nearly the entire month. Poor Jude was so cold and chilled that he couldn't get enough layers to keep warm.


Alethia has thoroughly enjoyed her science class with my dad this year. Nearly every Wednesday evening I'll find her showing Josh what she learned that day:)

Zeke is so thoughtful sometimes! One morning he must have been in the mood to cook and made ALL of us breakfast. Even his older sister who hadn't even gotten out of bed yet. I love these little snapshots of sweetness.

Sports, sports, sports!

Cai finished up his indoor soccer season just as he and Jude's outdoor season kicked off. Jude's basketball season has been so strange. They began in November but their 8 games have been spread across 4 months. He actually has his last game tonight! Cai also wanted to try out for he school track team and made it! He is enjoying keeping in shape for soccer with running. And if that weren't enough, hockey keeps the boys active and happy in their spare time. And then there is the every present pull ups and dead hangs around the house.




Josh had gotten us tickets to see Nickel Creek for my birthday so we got to go enjoy phenomenal music together this month.


There were some other sweet moments I couldn't help but capture this month. Josh was dancing with Andi before a rehearsal one night, Josh and Cai watching the sunset together and Cai passed out on the couch after a long week of all the things.




Tuesday, March 5, 2024

SOAR Aerial Competition

A few months ago Rainy asked if I would go with her studio to an aerial competition. First of all, I was thrilled that my nearly 19 year old daughter still wants me around and engaged in her life, passions and friends. Second, I was excited to experience the competition and watch the performers. So we loaded up the van with performers and headed to Fort Mill, SC for the weekend. The competition was real. I told my friends that I felt like I was walking around in an episode of Dance Moms. The adrenaline and the intensity were think in the air. Our girls did AMAZING, especially with it being their first competition. Rainy was beautiful as always, but at the end of her performance she told me she was not built for competition and didn't want to do it again. Although, a couple days later she was talking about what she wanted to work on for next year;)

There were 66 acts. Rainy was entry #34 and was awarded Elite platinum. Just a few points short from the next tier. She was also part of a Lyra ensemble. She started an Aerial Instagram page. Make sure you go follow her to check out her professional competition pics and you can see some videos from the performance HERE.












Saturday, February 24, 2024

Minimalism With Hospitality In Mind


I was listening to a podcast about minimalism. I am a loose minimalist at heart and something about organizing and purging and living on only what is immediately used and needed makes me all giddy inside. Frequently going through drawers, bins, and baskets and getting rid of unwanted or unnecessary items in my house is both necessary in a home with so many people (for order's sake) but also brings me joy. I like being able to look my home and know the exact articles contained in that area. Maybe it's me. I can be a bit weird in this way. It's my toxic trait, ha!

Back to the podcast. I'm listening and nodding my head in agreement and giving all the "amen's" when it hit me. I love the IDEA of minimalism, but practically, in my own home, it doesn't quite look the same as the newest minimalist documentary on Netflix. It's more of a foundation where I build off of as I layer on our family purpose and lifestyle.

I live in a house with six other people. Each with their own opinion and perspective on what is unwanted or unnecessary. Some tend to be more sentimental than others and some could care less about the "heart" behind an object. And since this house is not entirely mine I have to balance my desire to keep our belongings to a minimum.  I have to respect the rest of the people who live with me, while still trying to teach our kids the art of releasing "things" that no longer serve a purpose in this home. This alone could be a whole other blog post! But today I wanted to touch on another area that makes living minimally a little bit tricky.

We have an open door policy at our home. Our revolving door brings in friends, family, and kids of all ages. I never know how many people I will be feeding at dinner or who will be spending the night. Not only that, but we bring in kids from all walks of life through fostering (as infrequent as it may be). I hate hanging onto articles of clothing or random items just because "I might need it one day", but if you hang onto it because there might be a child that enters your home needing that jacket or pair of rain boots, or when that gathering of 30 extra people from the worship and tech team come for dinner and you need extra seating or cookware it changes things.

So I have a few things I try to keep in mind as I walk around my home for the 8th time in the month seeing if there is anything that needs to be re-homed.

1 - SPACE: I would like to have the rule of one jacket and one bag hanging on the hooks for each kid in our mudroom, but sometimes I allow an extra jacket (or four) to hang around because not only do my own kids tend to lose things, but we may have a visitor who comes to play (or live) who doesn't have one and if my kid only has one, then I am stuck secretly hoping it makes its way back to us or I'll have to go out and buy a new one. And ain't nobody got the resources to keep doing that. 

In fact, an extra pair of too small rain boots is located in our shed with the rest of our rain boots that actually fit us. They will stay there until I no longer feel the need to hang onto them.

If the item is out of the way, fits into the flow of the rest of the house and doesn't add to a sense of clutter, it stays.

2 - PRIORITY: I keep plastic utensils (mostly because my kids have accidentally thrown almost all of our real ones away over the years. We have about 5 forks left, ya'll. Three real plates and million knieves...) and paper plates and even plastic cups on hand when the masses arrive, like 20 teenagers for a Friendsgiving or Super Bowl Party or 30+ adults for a worship team gathering. But when we just have a friend or three over for a few hours or sleepover I hate creating that waste so we tend to need cups. LOTS of cups. I can't tell you how nice it would be if I could open the cabinet in the kitchen and see seven cups. Just seven cups in the cabinet?! The space. The freedom. I can take a nice deep breathe just thinking about it! But that just isn't going to work with what we have created our home to be. So extra cups we have. 

Towels (and pillows, blankets, toothbrushes...) are another thing. Keeping up with just seven towels would be so much easier that having to find space for, lets say, 10-15. But people need showers you know?! And so that is something I will rearrange my closets and make space for in order for it to work for people to come visit or live with us.

If I find myself needing something over and over again when people are here, it stays.

3 - ZONES: As my kids have gotten older I'm not gonna lie, I have enjoyed clearing our home of all the previous stages of life to make room for the current ones. We cannot simultaneously have space in the girls room for Polly Pockets AND Hoola Hoops and various other circus apparatuses. Or Superhero costumes AND street hockey gear with a side of filming equipment. Our home has had to transition with the seasons. That being said, we still frequent littles and need to have things for them on hand. So up in the attic I have a pack-n-play, a highchair that attaches to a kitchen chair and a johnny-jump-up. Small, compatible items that give us a big bang for our buck. I also have a little bin that we use as a coffee table in our spare bedroom that houses sippy cups, baby blankets, a few pull-ups, toddler utensils and board books. Then under our stairs, in an area we call the "secret hideout", is our "playroom" with some drawers full of superhero figures and houses, nerf guns, cars, trains, tracks and magnet tiles.

If these things can stay out of the way and I don't have to keep moving them around to do life with our growing teenagers, but they are easily accessible and ready for sticky little hands to enjoy if the need arises, it stays.

These are the three things I try to weigh my purging urges through. If I lived in a home all by myself I would own one towel, a single set of dishes and utensils, and not much else. But I don't live by myself and I am so grateful for the atmosphere God has created in our home to be a safe place for so many. So I'm gonna keep hanging on to some extra just so you know there is a place for you here. You were thought of before you even arrived.

Monday, February 12, 2024

A Search For Happiness

 

I found it a bit ironic that these two books are the ones I grabbed from my stash to read next. I usually have two going at a time. One I read after my morning quiet time that is typically more heady or soul-sifting and then one leisure read while I settle down for the night.

I'm going to be completely honest. I HATE giving bad reviews, but this book by Gretchen Rubin called The Happiness Project was not my favorite at all. In fact, the last 1/3 of the book became a skim-read as I just needed to get through it. I'm not sure if it is because of the fact that it was coupled with this other book I was reading or not, but I found it hard to reconcile a focus of finding this self-gratifying illusion of happiness. The whole preface of the book was to break the year into month-long resolutions to hopefully find more overall happiness. It was an interesting experiment and you can see the things that filled the author and the things that drained her. But with each new month's goals she would say the things that would "boost" happiness or not. But that is the whole thing about happiness. It is fleeting and circumstantial and often doesn't last from one moment to the next. Or from one experience too the next. It isn't rooted in anything else but feelings and self. And that is literally what our lives naturally gravitate toward anyway. BUT, the books purpose was satisfied through the documentation of her experiment so it did what the author set out to do. After it was all said and done she said she did feel happier after that year and I feel like her biggest contribution to her own happiness was learning self-control. The one take-away I had was the reminder to live a present life and try to settle into those little things that do bring happiness and joy.

On the other hand,  Jen Othman's, Enough About Me was a cry for us to wake up to the selfish culture we find ourselves currently settling into and building homes in. A call for us to see the lies that we are enough and that we can write our own destinies. We are training our emotional pallets to "eat a steady diet of the praise of others." But the truth is, "The truth of the gospel is meant to transform us. And if it does not, then we do not really believe. The gospel has something to say about how we spend our time, where we spend our money, the goals we pursue, the careers we seek, the hobbies we enjoy the food we eat-everything. The gospel says we are not our own."

"We must be intentional about where our hearts wander, because a wandering heart has disordered loves.  It naturally gravitates toward what is seen, what is instant what is gratifying right now." And "it seems that one area of self-control in my life leads to further self-control in the other areas. And when I go out-of-bounds in one place, I go out-of-bounds elsewhere."

Bonhoeffer said: "Discipleship therefore means a...funeral of our own independence." And this is not a popular message. But man is it something worth fighting for!

One more quote from the book, but actually a quote from D.A.Carson says:

"People do not drift toward Holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated."       Ouch!

This was an excellent book to recalibrate us and help us look up. 

Tuesday, February 6, 2024

Guatemala 2024


With Josh being over missions at our church he takes many trips to visit and serve with our global partners all over the world. This most recent trip to Guatemala was supposed to happen in the fall, but with the political unrest they had to reschedule. Jude was able to go with him. It was his first time out of the country and even on an airplane (outside of my belly or his infant carseat at least). Josh said he did AMAZING! Josh's brother Jared, and his daughter, Hannah (Jude's age), got to go with the team too so that was really special. 

They held some women's conferences, had some fun things for the kids in the villages, traveled hours into the mountains to remote areas that the Bader's ministry works with. The church had baptisms in the river that Josh and the team got to witness, they went on house visits and did some building.

The last day was a fun day. They got to hike an active volcano!

Jude had ALL the words when he got home and said it was nice to be home, but he was sad to not be in Guatemala anymore. Josh kept up with the trip so you can jump over to his Instagram for more pictures and first hand updates.