Inspired...

... to explain our long lost absence. For some reason our lives went nuts, and I don't think we have taken a picture for almost two weeks. We did get some cute video footage of Phoenix and Kira being little crazy kids. Well, in the past two weeks we have been trying to get done all that miscellaneous stuff that was just hanging out there unfinished. Some of it was simple, like writing a note to the elders about the Ladies Activity planning committee. Others have been more complicated, like putting together an awesome co-ed softball team. So here is the story of our few weeks missing.

In all of our recovering from the Holidays, planning for Hawaii, and trying to get through normal weekly activities, our blog has lapsed. It all started with a prayer asking God to improve the wife and mother that I am; asking for the motivation, energy, and focus to work on all those little things hanging out there. Serving and ministering to my husband and children is my primary mission field. In looking at the things that I had been working on, it seemed like there were so many things I didn't know where to begin, so I started with something middle weight. I made some soups for camping this summer. Trying to be more prepared for upcoming times, I made a huge pot of barley with vegetables soups and a huge pot of meat lovers pizza soup. We ate half of it for dinners and I froze half of it in Ziploc bags to make it great for camping expeditions. Then I started to work on our Hawaii album. Yes, the album that is from the pictures we took from our trip 4 years ago. I still only have 5 of the 15 spreads done, but I enjoy looking at all of the pictures every time I get into the box of Hawaii photos. We input into excel all of the receipts and income proof gathering for taxes (a task in and of itself with two children and a home based business.) Phoenix ended up sick for most of Spring Break, but we still got all of the wall paper scraper off of the dining room walls. Patrick had the kids for a few evenings while I went to the church building to work on crafts (OK worked on hand binding the queen sized quilt that has been sitting in our garage for a while). With 12-15 stitches per inch and my highly particular mannerisms in my quilting, I only have most of one of the sides finished.

Then there was the addressing and mailing of all our Christmas cards. Yes, you read that right. Christmas cards. We had Christmas cards printed in the first week of December. This card was a fun card with our kids picture on there. Of course, when we opened up the envelope the cards have been printed extremely dark. Our kids look totally washed out and the background is black beyond compare. So we took them back to have them reprinted. It was only 3 days after we had picked them up that we made it back to the store. We learned that the printing machine just picks what it thinks looks best and prints it that way. The lady told us that since ours are reprints and it was a very busy time of year that our pictures would be done in a week. A week?!? That put us right up to the time that we were leaving for Missouri. Well, not having a choice in the matter, we figured that we could take the cards with us and address them during quiet moments of the trip. Not only did we have no quiet moments on the trip, but we also had no cards and no addresses. We left the cards on our kitchen counter along with our address list. When we arrived back in Alaska at 11:00 p.m. with no luggage and no car seats (and therefore no way to transport our children home). The cards were not a high priority when we finally made it home by 1:30 (Thank you Raychel and Kayla for bringing our truck and thank you Paul and Devon for going home and getting a car seat since the airline didn't have ANY loaners for Phoenix). By the time that my parents had finished their trip up here, the cards had been set aside, and we were preparing for Kira to return to school. Mid-February we picked up the cards and I had great intentions of cutting off the seasons greetings and mailing out the picture of our kids. Beginning of March came and went with still no hint of cutting off the text. So I thought I would at least address the envelopes. My thoughts were screaming..."how could you send that out like that with no explanation as to why they are so late? Normal people would just trash the cards and write it off as a goof up." But being the proud mom that I am, I rationalized that even though it may be a Christmas card, it is also a picture of my kids... who would want a picture of my kids? So I sent out the cards with a reference to our blog site on the back of cards going to people that don't know about the blog already. That way my crazy thought process could be known to all our dearest friends and family through the use of way too late Christmas cards.

All of this wonderful stuff has been accomplished in the process of the everyday events of grocery trips, guard duty weekends, cleaning out the kids closet and toy bin of too small, broken, or unused items. We have been busy, but I know that I still have time during the day that could be used better. I actually signed on a couple of times during these two weeks with the intention of posting something, but then I became distracted with little hands and voices making requests of me. When I return to the computer to see an empty post waiting to be written, sometimes it felt as though I was writing to hear my own thoughts, but I got an email from Helena and Mat talking about how they have read the blog. I logged in and received a comment requesting that we continue to post the goings-on in our life. I know that family and friends read the blog, but getting feed back that people are actually still reading the blog is encouraging and inspiring. Thank you for the email and comment. I will try to post more often than every few weeks.