THOUGHTS.

It's a little after 7pm and my Friday is officially coming to a close. PW is at the OG, Josiah is up in his bed "roaring" (literally), and I'm just about to make myself some nachos and watch a little Gilmore Girls. I thought before I truely kick-back, I should send out an update on our happenings.

SPRING BREAK
This week Patrick and I learned that we need to change our idea of family vacation from "really restful, refreshing time" to "really fun, super great memory creating time". :) Our dear friend, Stephanie, (blog of her own to come - and you should read it) has a couple awesome parents that have adopted us as their own. They invited us to spend a couple days with them in Sunriver, OR -- and of course we said "YES". We had never been to that part of OR - it was really gorgeous. We stayed in a house with the rest of the fam and spent some time swimming, hot tubbing, biking, "boppin' around" (Steph's term), and playing games. It was really great and Josiah thought so, too. He decided he didn't really need as much sleep as he normally does - which was his first mistake. And then the child we brought home was not the one we had known previously. Ah! I think ANY parent can relate to the process of detoxing a child from a trip where they are loved on A LOT.... it was our refining fire. Thankfully, we've all evened out a bit and the remained of Spring Break has been pretty great, as well.

LENT
I think that many of the inner-workings in my heart over the season of Lent are meant to be between me and the LORD, but I will say this. This year Lent has been more meaningful to me than any previous year. I started observing it with my friend who is Catholic when we were 13 or so (thanks Kate!) and I'm really grateful that 1. it became a part of my life even though my church back home didn't observe it, and 2. that our church now takes delight in opening our eyes to the history of the Church and its calendar.
Previous to Lent 2009 I read a book titled Girl Meets God, by Lauren Winner. I REALLY recommend her stuff. Her experience of anticipating the rising of Christ and truely rejoicing in it made me want to have a similar experience. This year my own weaknesses have been revealed to me in great ways... I have sought so much comfort in other things besides my Saviour. Silly, passing things - and I don't want to do that anymore.
We are hosting Easter at our home this year for the first time ever and I'm really, really excited. I love to celebrate and I'm blessed to have friends who share the same passion - so we are going to rejoice hard core. He is alive and we are saved. Amen.

BABIES
We will be welcoming a couple new little ones into our home come summer-time. When I quit my job at Starbucks, I made a commitment to the LORD to not look for another job. It was really hard for me to drag myself away from job postings and I realized that I was trying really hard to find my value in my ability to make money - not a good idea. So He and I decided that if He wanted me to work, He would bring it to me and I could just hang out and be faithful where he placed me for now (with Josiah). Okay - so I'm going to start watching a couple new babies! We're hoping to have it be just two days a week so we can still hang out with PW a lot - but we're all being really flexible with one another to see how it all goes for everyone. Both babies are first born: one is Hudson who is now 3 months old, and one is yet to be named and born - but she belongs to our good friends, Jim and Dara Gossett. I'm really excited for this opportunity to be a blessing to these families and to be blessed by caring for precious little ones again.

OTHER STUFF
We just have six more weeks left of school and Patrick will have officially survived his first year of seminary. Whoo-hoo!!! We are STOKED for the summer and think it might be kind of weird to actually hang out with each other again. :) He's doing a super-awesome job all around and Josiah and I are really blessed by his on-going efforts.

We had our family pictures taken yesterday by our good friend Jelani Memory. I'm sooo excited to see them. Josiah is officially 18 months this month, so it was good timing. He's like a little kid now, getting a lot better at communicationg and a hoot most of the time. Stop by and see us... because he's really entertaining. :)