365.108: Who Eats Like This?!

Every so often, Holden will totally shock me with a food request. This morning around 10am he marched in the kitchen and declared he was very hungry (apparently, scrambled eggs and toast don't keep a four-year-old full for more than an hour).
I gave him a choice of a peach or cottage cheese.
Instead, he chose raw spinach. What?! So i chopped the peaches on top of the spinach, and Holden grabbed a lime to squeeze on top of it all. Can I just say that it was actually delicious? Because it was! And you know a mama feels her best watching her boy eat his leafy greens!
Oh ps--the weird face and finger hook are apart of his new obsession with making funny faces for the camera.

365.107: Perfect Day Addendum

One thing I forgot to include in my perfect day synopsis yesterday was that I went to Holden's preschool orientation last night! It was at 7pm, so I got permission to sneak out of Elevate and come right back when it was done.
I met Holden's teacher, Mrs. Wirth, and her assistant, Mrs. Holmes, and really loved them both. Mrs. Wirth seemed like she loved the kids so much already (she even got teary-eyed talking about her love and passion for the children), but she also seemed like she's gonna be strict enough to, ahem "benefit," Holden. I got to sit in his little seat and see his room. I got to take home his preschool tote bag and field trip t-shirt. This morning I told him that I had met his teacher and that she sent some presents for him: the bag, shirt, and his preschool folder that will go to school and come home with him every day. After carefully hanging the shirt in his closet by himself (his idea), he has carried the bag with the folder in it around all day.
The school has a mom who does monogramming and offered to monogram each child's name onto their bag for just $8. But let's face the facts. We are just not the mongramming type. So I brought that bag home and used stencils to paint his name on. I love how it turned out, and most importantly, so does Holden!

So next week Holden and I go together on Tuesday morning so he can meet Mrs. Wirth, see his classroom, find his cubby, and just get acclimated. Then Wednesday the 1st is my baby's first day of school! Pray for me! I might just lose it when I have to leave him there!

365.106: The Perfect Day

OK, so I know that I've claimed to have the perfect day once or twice before, but this one really was in the running!

Ryan had the day off, so it was our faux-Saturday. The day started with a leisurely morning and a delicious breakfast.

Btw, I am totally on this kick of layering a tomato slice and havarti cheese on a piece of wheat bread and toasting it in the toaster oven for breakfast. If it's lunch-time, I add some turkey and spinach to the same. I seriously am having this twice a day, every day. This morning I got ambitious and the layers went like this:

• bread
• tomato
• havarti
• egg
• shredded colby jack

Did that just blow your mind? Yeah...sandwiches do that to me, too.

Anyways, on with the perfect day. A little before noon, the fam headed out and the boys dropped me off at a coffee shop called Common Grounds. This is maybe definitely the cutest coffee shop I've ever seen. Cuter than any in L.A. or Athens or Atlanta. It's eclectic and has the tastiest coffee, to boot! So the boys dropped me off and I got to spend an hour alone doing schoolwork while they went to walk around the mall.
Then they picked me back up and we went to Kim's which is a 1950s hamburger dive. We split two burgers a chocolate shake, then headed to the zoo. (Yeah, we're crazy ambitious and threw all napping-sensibility to the wind.)
After the zoo, the boys took really quick naps before Meghan got here and we headed out the door to Elevate!
Whew! I'm tired just writing about it!

365.105: Ode to the Museum

Oh how I love you, Children's Museum.
I love your open space where my children can run,
And the rooms with only one exit that I can easily guard.
I love the way you bring out my kids' senses of imagination and creativity
With the activities in the Lego exhibit, water room, and levers room.
But more than anything, I think that
I love the lengthy naps my boys take after spending a day with you!

365.104: Day at Home

Do you ever need a day to catch up and rest?
Today was that day for me.
Although I anticipated how busy I would be during Elevate, and how much work was required, the craziness has still caught me a bit off-guard.
So I took the day to get things done around the house, catch up on reading, and have down-time with the boys.
It's good for my soul.

365.103: God's Capacity to Think About You

So in class tonight, we watched a video of John Dawson (now International President of YWAM) speaking about the father heart of God.
It.
Was.
Amazing.
And it was filmed in nineteen eighty nothing, possibly even in the 70s. Amazing nonetheless.

For example, he was explaining God's capacity to have individual thoughts about every person in the world constantly. I tend to think that it is just mystical and mysterious and that I could never hope to fathom the capacity.

But consider the mineral quartz for a minute (and forgive my non-scientific, elementary brain).

Now, all matter is composed of molecules that are vibrating at an incredible rate. The faster the molecules pulse back and forth, the harder that matter is. The molecules in quartz vibrate NINE BILLION times a SECOND. (Note: quartz isn't even the hardest matter; consider diamonds!) So God, who created quartz, has a mind that is capable of creating that, therefore able to think at least that fast.
Today there are a little more than seven billion people on the earth.
So God is more than capable to think about every person on the entire planet more than once a second.

What?!
Does that blow your mind like it did mine?

365.102: More Retreat Pictures

Here are a some more shots from the retreat.