There's gonna be a party!

James and I went shopping this morning.  It was a very special trip, as we needed important ingredients to make delicious food for a certain bear’s first birthday party.  The party is this weekend and Mama Bear is trying to figure out how to balance rehearsals and performances and part-time jobs and full-time mamahood with prepping food and decorations and favors and all things PARTY!  (Sneak peeks below…)

Today I am thankful for the financial resources we are blessed with.  That we can pay our bills and even have some leftovers for things like…

Stealing the idea, but this is not James.

It’s pretty challenging to be able to survive as musicians in today’s economy, and we are blessed with a wide variety of jobs that fit together to meet our needs.  Praise God from whom all blessings flow!

Catching up!

I have been thankful.  I really have!  I just haven't been on my computer for any length of time because the weekend was insanely busy.  So here are my thanksgivings from the past few days...

Saturday I was thankful for wonderful grandparents (and Aunt Martha), who took such fabulous care of sweet James while VWH and I ran all over upstate New York at various conventions, rehearsals, and performances.  He told me all about it, and it's obvious he had a great time.  :)

Yesterday I was thankful for our GPS, which guided me safely around a bridge under repair and to an important church service on time.  I hadn't been to that church before, and the path to get there isn't exactly main roads, so having some satellite assistance was a blessing.

Today I'm thankful for my bestest friends from college, all of whom I miss very much.  (Those who aren't in the area, which is pretty much all of them.)  They've been a huge part of my life for the past almost-ten years (can you believe it?) and even though they may live in North Carolina or Florida or Canada or Pennsylvania or somewhere else, we've done a decent job of keeping in touch.  We became sisters in college and that bond isn't easily broken.  Here's hoping that the holidays will bring some of them up north for a good old-fashioned reunion!

Fluting it up

Today I am excited and thankful for the Rochester Flute Association and all that they do to enrich the fluting community of upstate New York.  This weekend is the RFA's annual convention and they're bringing in guest artist Marina Piccinini, professor of flute at the Peabody Institute.

Last year the convention was the weekend of my due date, so I didn't get to go.  This year I'm going, volunteering, and assembling the newsletter that will summarize the entire thing afterwards.  Just a few fingers in the pie...

I have two degrees in music and one specifically in flute, but am certainly not as immersed anymore since James has come along.  I play in a college-community orchestra, which is a great blessing, play in church, and do the occasional gig that comes along.  But I'm not playing as much as I would want to.  I can't.  Because if I did then I wouldn't get to spend as much time with James and VWH as I want to, and they're far more important.  

So when weekends like this come along I permit myself to take a break from the house and go be a musician for a few hours.  It will be grand! 

Cleanliness is next to godli...impossible

If I had a smart phone I would take a picture of my kitchen and post it.  Hurricane James is in bed and I have yet to mop up from the day's damage.  There are at least 30 books scattered around the floor, plus refrigerator magnets, sippy cups, and furniture askew.  And Tupperware.  All over the place.

In an attempt to placate James, we allow him to enter just one of our kitchen cabinets: the Tupperware cabinet.  (Actually, it's Rubbermaid or something even more generic, but we call it Tupperware so you'll just have to go with it.)  He greatly enjoys this cabinet, pulling out each lid and container and spreading them hither and yon.  Sometimes he gets extra-adventurous and enters the cabinet himself, exploring the deep recesses of the kitchen netherworld.

My Tupperware is very important to me.  I use it every day to pack lunches, put away leftovers, store baby food, and often eat out of (because what mom really wants to dirty another dish?).  I get a weird thrill out of stacking clean Tupperware together and seeing the nice, neat, organized piles when I'm finished.  (Square container pile, rectangular pile, circular pile, etc.)  I begrudgingly share it with James mostly because it's the safest of the kitchen cabinets.  I sometimes secretly wish I could block it off from him and avoid the mess on the floor each night (not to mention tripping over and stepping on it all day).

VWH also steals my Tupperware.  I am not the greatest wife when it comes to remembering to pack him a lunch.  So usually his lunch is leftovers, food he thankfully usually prefers to sandwiches and carrot sticks anyway.  It's quick for me to grab out of the fridge and it's quick for him to grab when I forget.  I freely admit that I could stand to improve in my lunch-preparing abilities.  But VWH could definitely stand to work on bringing the dirty Tupperwares back at the end of the workday.  I subbed for him yesterday and was reunited with a quarter of my dear plastic friends sitting on the floor next to his desk.  I know that at least another 25% is in his car.

So today I am thankful for the few precious plastic containers that remain unsmushed and unmoldy by the men in my life.  (Even though I wouldn't trade those men for a million Tupperwares...but that's for another day of thanksgiving.)  Here's to the homemaking queen and her wanna-be clean kitchen!

...and here's to reality.  This isn't my kitchen, but it's pretty darn close.

Transcribed from yesterday's notebook paper...

Yesterday I DID write down what I was thankful for—I just did it in study hall.  I was subbing for VWH yesterday and as I watched the mix of sophomores and seniors joke around with each other, play a game, do hair, and a little bit of studying, I couldn’t help but notice the awkwardness and insecurity.  You could see it on their faces.  “Do they really think I’m funny?”  “If I beat him in chess will I still have to wear this mask?”  “If I talk about how I’m pigging out at lunch maybe she’ll think I don’t usually eat this much.”  

And I wrote down on my paper: 

Today I am thankful that I am no longer a teenager!

Thankful for YOU

This week has been insanely busy.  I feel like a mom who works outside the house ("working mother" is such an inaccurately-used statement).  James has been dropped off here, there, and everywhere, visiting friends and family.  I can't wait for things to calm down and reclaim our happy times together at home, but know he is in excellent hands.

Today I am thankful for those people, who give of their time so freely to watch our son, and joyfully invest in his young life.  (And who don't accept payment, no matter how hard I try!)  We are abundantly blessed to know you, and James is blessed to have lots and LOTS of aunties and uncles to spoil him.  :)

We voted today!  Did you?

Today...

There’s a story to be told.  A complicated tale with thorns and knots and rises and falls.  It hides for weeks and months at a time, only to return stronger and more intensely than before.  I don’t know how it will end or where it will take us.  I only wait and trust.

The story is not mine to tell.  I’m only along for the journey, listening and waiting for the next chapter.  I often feel like it holds my emotions and expectations in bondage.  Never one to live in the moment, waiting for the unexpected, yet long-expected, is maddening to me.

Today another chapter closed.  Another door unopened.  The wait goes on. 

Today, November 5, I am thankful for the sovereignty of God.  If I didn’t have it to trust in and rest my hope upon, I might go mad.

In Christ alone, my hope is found

He is my light, my strength, my song

This Cornerstone, this Solid Ground

Firm through the fiercest drought and storm

What heights of love, what depths of peace

Where fears are stilled, where strivings cease

My Comforter, my All-in-All

Here in the power of Christ I stand

Yesterday...

Whoops.  Forgot to post yesterday.  I was extremely thankful yesterday for a husband who played with James so I could watch my football game.  Not only did he watch James, but the two of them cleaned during the game too.  Wow.  It was like Christmas and Easter and my birthday all rolled into one.

So, for the record...

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Today I'm especially thankful for...

A month of thanksgiving...

I thought November was primarily known as the no-shave month.  This is a tradition that I follow dutifully and even expand to most of the winter months.  When you live in upstate New York you need all the extra warmth nature can afford you.  

OK.  I'm exaggerating.  Mostly.  But yesterday I noticed that a lot of people were posting things they were thankful for on Facebook, calling it the month of thankfulness.  I thought this was a great idea, but decided to steal the idea for a blog series instead.  That way you can choose to come find out what I'm thankful for instead of it being decided for you on your newsfeed.  I've already failed miserably in starting precisely on November 1...I also failed miserably in calling my brother yesterday to wish him a happy birthday.  My month is not off to a great start.  But November 2 is another day with no mistakes in it...yet.

My first post of thankfulness could easily be for all those cliches that you see everybody sharing: husband, child, good health.  Blah, blah, blah.  ;)  I'm bucking Bronco Bama here and going straight for the heart of the matter.  Today, the first day of my thanksgiving month, I'm starting off with a bang.  Today, I am thankful for...

 

This bad boy.   

That's right.  After 5 years of driving around what was affectionately referred to as "the Sexy Beast"...

I have no idea who the enthusiasts might be for this type of vehicle...the Brady Bunch?

I finally have my new-to-me car.  Sexy Beast was grandfathered into our marriage by VWH, which by some cruel twist of fate I ended up using while he drove my sa-weet sporty Dodge Neon.  Something about gas mileage or some such excuse...  I know he liked my car better.

Sexy Beast and I have had a love-hate relationship minus the love.  There have been blown tires and squeaky belts and no AC for as long as we've been together.  But mostly rust.  Lots of it.  Random parts have fallen out from the undercarriage during various journeys.  When we lived in North Carolina the entire muffler fell off and dragged on the road until I pulled off and temporarily fixed it with a hair elastic.  I revenged Sexy Beast by running over a spray paint can in the middle of the road (unsurprisingly, this was also in North Carolina) and splattering bright yellow paint along the back side.

After James came along a new level of disdain for SB was born as I bonked my head every time I packed him in his car seat.  I'm sure if you ever needed a DNA sample from me you could just go the rear driver's-side door and find ample hair, flesh, and blood material.

Bringing the new PT Baby home from Pennsylvania was a delight.  There was heating and air conditioning.  The radio worked.  The turn signal blinked at a consistent tempo.  And James slept the entire way home--no small feat for an 11 month old stuck in a car for 6 hours.  Yes.  This car will be different.

I certainly did not have a PT Cruiser pegged for my next vehicle.  In fact, a small part of me can find a lot of comparisons to the Sexy Beast.  My mom wanted to drive a PT Cruiser.  I bet your mom wanted to drive a PT Cruiser too, didn't she?  I know I'm a mom now, but I'm not MY mom quite yet.  I suspect that the vast majority of PT Cruisers are driven by people who receive AARP magazines

BUT.  I am not complaining, despite the niggling suspicions in the back of my head.  I am thankful for this bright red blessing that graces our driveway and makes James bounce up and down with excitement each time we leave to go somewhere.  My forehead is too.

Oh, and...happy birthday Daniel.