Harmless

Popcorn.  It's a harmless Sunday night tradition.  Popping corn, butter, salt.  Easy, delicious, simple. Well, at least that's how I envision things in my mind.  This is how they worked out one July evening:

It was time to make popcorn, as our Sunday night tradition dictates.  I threw a bag of microwave popcorn (this was my first mistake, we usually air pop) in the microwave to cook.   When the timer beeped, I removed the bag from the microwave.  Unfortunately, it had melted the top of the microwave food cover while it was popping.  Not a huge deal.  I could replace the cover easily.

When I put the next bag in, I set it right on the glass tray, making sure that the now melted plastic microwave cover was not in the microwave.  After a few minutes there was a loud noise.  When we opened the microwave door, we saw this:

My bag of popcorn had not only melted the microwave cover, but now it had cracked the microwave tray.  Not exactly something I was excited to explain to my in-laws when they came home.

At this point, I refused to pop anymore popcorn.  I told Joe that if there was more popcorn to be popped it would not be at my hand.  My husband, thinking this was crazy insisted that I pop another bag just to prove that I was not jinxed and that the thought that I could be jinxed was ludicrous.  So, after some persuasion, and against my better judgment, I placed the last bag of popcorn in the microwave, warning him that it wasn't a good idea.  A few minutes later, I looked in the microwave to see the bag of popcorn on FIRE!  

And I haven't popped a bag of popcorn since.

Enjoyed

One Saturday morning in late July, the kids and I ventured to a neighboring town with gramps.

We enjoyed another small town candy parade on a beautiful morning.

Isaiah enjoyed sleeping and eating.

I enjoyed watching the festivities.

The kids enjoyed scooping up as much candy as humanly possible.

Then gramps enjoyed putting the kids in these barrels used in the parade

and getting a picture or two.

A good time was enjoyed by all.

In Return

Since his bed was overtaken, 

I offered him a spot in my bed.

Then she crawled in beside him, 

took his pacifier,

but offered him a kiss in return.

When Cousins Are Involved

There's something special about summer lunch on the porch

Lucy, Aliyah, Tikvah, Joey

and reading books in swimsuits

Cora, Xandra, Aliyah, Theia

at Grandma's house

when cousins are involved.

We Still Do

It had been almost two months since we'd seen her.

We missed her.

Isaiah was happy to finally meet the famous Aunt Evie.

We also got to say hi to Joe's cousin, Kristi, and her two girls Nora and Eva.  

We had a great few hours tromping around Auntie Beth's house, even though Auntie Beth and her crew weren't there (they were camping), and catching up on hugs, snuggles and lost teeth.

We missed Aunt Evie in July.  And in December, we still do.

A Fresh Perspective

This happened in July.  I took pictures because I wanted to remember this moment.  When I looked at the mess you are about to see, I thought:  this is a pictorial representation of our life.  It's a big disastrous mess.  

This is our storage unit, partially unpacked.  All our worldly goods, minus the junk at grandma and grandpa's house, scattered about the parking lot and storage unit.

We needed to find my high school diploma (high school diploma!!) so I could legally register our homeschool with the state of North Dakota.  That meant an afternoon dig through the storage unit.  Digging through the storage unit meant we would find mold on the lower 6 inches of any furniture resting on the floor of the unit.  Couches, tables, chairs, bookcases, etc.

The mold sent our friend Sheila to Walmart for paper towels and bleach cleaner.  Then we scrubbed as much mold as we could from the furniture, let it sit in the sun, put it back in storage and crossed our fingers for what we would find when we would someday move everything out of storage.

The kids played in the car

read books

and ran around  adding to the mayhem.

The guys hauled furniture and helped me dig through boxes.  And thanks to Nate's genius digging, we found the diploma. Then Isaiah was hurriedly fed as I sat atop a rubbermaid bin and then the kids and I zoomed off to meet Aunt Evie and her daughter Kristi while the guys loaded our junk back into the storage unit.  

That was a hard day.  Hot, frustrating, discouraging, overwhelming.  All I could see was disaster and mess everywhere I looked.  

I cried.  

A lot.

Today when I pulled those pictures up on the screen to blog I saw something I didn't see in July.  The sky.

It's perfect.   Beautiful.  Crisp.  

 How could I have missed that?  It seems so obvious now.  

His beauty.  The beauty He's created. His goodness on display.

Even in our messiest, most despairing, faithless places, He shows up brilliant, beautiful, wrapping the mess in His grace and glory and goodness.

Sometimes it's just hard to see in the moment.  

I'm grateful for a second chance to frame a hard day with His kind goodness.

I'm also happy to report that our bleach scrubbing efforts on that sunny afternoon did away with almost all of the mold.  When the furniture came out of the unit two months later, there was almost no mold to be found.

Blockade

Xandra built a simple blockade

to keep Isaiah

and his monkey

safe

and happy

from dangers that lurk about the house

and sneak through even the most well-devised blockades.

Pretty Big

After Isaiah was born, we got a big box of goodies in the mail from some special friends in Maryland.  Nestled in the box was a Bubble Kit for Joey and Joe.  In the bubble kit was a special wand and a secret formula for making bubble juice.  The book stated, that under the perfect conditions, you could create bubbles as big as a school bus.

The bubble juice made many appearances this summer.

Usually on cool, humid, not too windy, Saturday mornings.

We got some decent bubbles at first.

With some practice, 

and patience

they got bigger and bigger.

They were never as big as a school bus, 

but definitely the biggest bubbles I've ever seen,

and probably some as big as our van,

which Joe regularly calls a sail barge.

Bubbles as big as a sail barge.

That's pretty big.