End of Summer Resolutions

The winds of change are blowing; I can feel it in my bones. It's my 10th wedding anniversary today, the start of a new decade of my life, back to school time. I'm ready to make some changes, do things a bit differently and get some new and improved results, take on the world! Why make resolutions in the bleak winter? Why not at the end of the oppressively hot summer, when the promise of cooler, invigorating autumn teases and beckons (ok, I live in South Georgia where we won't actually feel any autumn coolness until late October or so)? I hereby resolve - ever so resolutely - to eat only when hungry (or just a little bit for the sake of social courtesy). I resolve to try to go to bed earlier (does it count as a resolution if you only try?). I resolve to work on my career path again. I resolve to savor every moment, to live deeply, to love richly, to be more thankful, to give more freely. I resolve to be a bit nicer - to myself and to others. I resolve to blog more often and to work on my photo albums with renewed fervor. I resolve to train my dogs - with the help of my daughter (whose hero is Victoria Stillwell, dog trainer). Resolutions or wishlist? I don't know. But for the moment I'm feeling inspired, invincible, capable, empowered! Tomorrow, we'll see...

Rambling About Time

Wow - it's August already and I only managed to write one post in all of July! Sure I have reasons and excuses like anyone else... kids, part time job, my other blog on coastalmommies.com, kids, etc. Well today I don't have a topic in mind, but just wanted to write something so here goes...

It's my hubby's birthday today - happy birthday, Jon!!! The big 40! And soon we will celebrate 10 years of wedded bliss. Can't believe how time flies. I was flipping through an old photo album earlier - from 1995 to 1997 maybe. Old friends, old memories, old pets, movie stubs (remember $3.50 matinees?). Parts of it seem so long ago, but other parts are like yesterday. Still I can't help but look at the old photos of Jon and me and wonder who were those kids?!?! It's funny to look at the past, knowing their future is now the present. Ok, weird. Of course, today is tomorrow's past, too, so let's live it to the fullest so we can later look back with fond sentimentality.

Gluttons For Our Doom

Today I drove past a woman who was waiting at the bus stop. She was obese and smoking a cigarette, and my thought was, why are we so bent on our own destruction? Surely she knew that smoking - as well as the extra weight - can kill her. Surely she realizes that she should probably eat healthier and exercise more. It's easy to know things, even easy to desire to do things, but getting the right things done is the hard part.

As the Indigo Girls sang, "No one can convince me we aren't gluttons for our doom." It applies to every aspect of life - physical, emotional, spiritual. We have bad habits, hang-ups, attitudes, etc that we know are harmful to us and yet we persist. We all have issues. We all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, to take it up a notch. To paraphrase the apostle Paul, the good that I want to do, I do not do....but the very thing I do not want to do is exactly what I do! Who can help us out of this predicament? By grace, through faith alone (not by what we do so no one can take credit for it), God has saved us through Jesus' life and death and resurrection.

Jesus makes us right with God in the big picture. In the day to day smaller picture we still get our heads befuddled because we still wrestle with our own sin nature. But we can live in the sure hope that He has set us free, He is setting us free, and ultimately He will set us free. Thanks be to God! Amen!

Pottery Comes Home

Anna and Will went to pottery summer camp a couple weeks ago, and today we finally got to bring home all their lovely creations. Two big bags of beautiful, treasured, individually wrapped, breakable pottery made its way into our home. The breakable part concerns me because we have Toddling Evan (with his ever-growing Reach) to keep things away from. Plus, I don't know what exactly I'm going to do with all these priceless works of art - I still haven't found places to put all the things Anna made at last year's pottery camp! I need plate hangers, hooks, shelves! And fast! I'm not so sure we'll be doing pottery camp again next summer...

All in a Summer's Day

Well, today was a good day for me. I can't always say that, but today I felt like a pretty good mommy! Took Anna and Will to VBS at their Grandma's church, got Evan to take his morning nap, did a bit of work for which I am paid. Picked up the kiddos from VBS, and we had a picnic in the front room - we discovered that Evan is not yet big enough to understand the idea of a picnic, although he did really enjoy the plum he devoured. Put Evan down for his afternoon nap, read stories about kindness and compassion to Anna and Will (as part of my mission to focus on moral instruction this summer without them knowing it - hoping they will be nicer to each other more consistently), played two board games with kids. Evan woke up and we headed to the pool for a bit, then back home to make dinner (yes, actually cook dinner!)... and it was good! Yea me!

Too Hot

It is so incredibly hot - except that this is South Georgia in June so it is to be somewhat expected, though not readily embraced. We went out to Uncle Bubba's Oyster House for dinner tonight to celebrate our nephew's 16th birthday (where has the time gone?). We ate outside, which was tolerable with the pleasant breeze coming off the water. But by the time we left - around 8:30 or 8:45 pm it was still hot and humid enough to make one sweat between breezes. At 10:00 tonight the heat index was 105. Ridiculous. We arrived home and promptly found two spiders and two palmetto bugs in our house (eek!)... my only guess is that they, too, were trying to escape the heat outside!

The Moon Outside My Window

Jon trimmed the bushes outside our computer room window recently, and I've just tonight noticed that I can see the moon now. Cool. It reminds me of my more reflective pre-children days when I had time to bask in the moonlight, pondering the universe and my place in it. Ha! Those days are gone (for now at least), but I think it is still important to steal some time to relish the stillness. I'll put that on my to-do list and try to work it in. :)