happily random

October Busyness

To say that this has been a busy month would be an understatement. From Convention, to doing my first Uppercase Living Open House, to my birthday & then teaching at our Fall MOPS Council Meeting. That with the daily activity of being a wife and mother to my four kidlets. I'm finally to a lull in activity and I'm enjoying the breather.

I must say that the cleanliness of our home has suffered this month. I often feel like I'm one of those people that twirl those plates on sticks. You know what I'm talking about. They have all these plates going and they have to keep them spinning or the plates will crash to the floor. This month the housework is the plate that went crashing down. But as I like to say about my home: If you came to see me-- Come on in! If you came to see my house-- make an appointment!

Despite things being a mess though, we've done a lot of work on the house. We finally moved our wood stove back in the house into the living room after removing it out of the kitchen last spring. Just in time too! It's gotten chilly. It's much better in the living room, heating the entire house now instead of just the kitchen like it used to. Moving the stove though included moving the stovepipe, which meant patching the hole in the roof where it was and cutting a new hole in the roof where we place it (that's Joel looking down through the new hole). Oh, and we moved the stove in front of where a door used to be, which meant removing the door and drywalling over it. Lots of work! It's not completely finished right now, but it's functional. We have other projects to finish before winter hits and we can finish the tile and painting during the winter.

I also celebrated my 35th birthday on the 18th. Not a lot of pomp and circumstance, but it was a nice day nonetheless. The kiddos spent the night with Grandma & Joel & I went out to dinner & to see the movie Fireproof. A good movie! Then later that week I had a night out with the girls at Red Robin to celebrate. One thing I can say about my life at 35, we maybe broke, but I am very richly blessed with a wonderful husband, beautiful children, friends I can count on and a God who loves me. It's hard to get much better than that!

Back from MOPS Convention

273 emails to go through now that I'm back from Convention. Not to mention all the books and flyers that I brought back with me from Dallas. I came home to a messy house, but my sweet husband cleaned it while I napped Sunday afternoon. He was busy with other things while I was gone and will talk about below.

I left Tuesday morning for Dallas for Field Leader training. I am a Council Coordinator for MOPS International, which means I oversee about 15 MOPS groups in my area. So the first couple of days we just had training for the 250 or so field leaders in the country. Lots of fun and lots of information. The theme was "Be Loved, Be Bold, Beyond." I got to hang out with Athena, my Area Coordinator for Zone 24 (that includes Idaho, Montana, Wyoming & Alaska) and Julie, the CC from Wyoming. They are great gals and we had a blast.

Thursday afternoon Convention began in full swing as the other 5,000 MOPS leaders arrived for Adventures in Mothering and we had our first General Session. The thing I remember most is GoFish, one of my kids' favorite groups (and admittedly one of mine!) gave a mini-concert. Lots of fun. I must admit, I acted the groupie and got them to sign their latest CD for me as well as getting my picture with them. Kim Hill lead music for the week, and we had a little concert from Jaci Velasquez and her husband Nic Gonzalez from the group Salvador, as well as Avalon. Fabulous music the whole week! I also got to hang out with Julie Barnhill, one of my favorite authors and speakers, for about 10 minutes while we escorted her to sound check (she was lost!). She is such a genuine, authentic person. She even remembered me from Convention last year (I was in her workshop), noting that my hair was shorter!

We all were given a mystery pin that said "SDWSC" that only the field leaders knew what it stood for. It was revealed to the rest of the Convention in the last General Session: She Did What She Could. Elisa Morgan, CEO of MOPS International, sited the story of Mary breaking the vial of perfume over Jesus shortly before he was crucified and how she did what she could for him. What would this world be like if we all did what we could for the kingdom of God? 

I can hardly begin to tell all the things I learned over those 5 days. Just a little information overload and I'm still processing it all. All I know is that God has bigger things planned for me in this great adventure of life and mothering that I need to pursue.

I flew home very early on Sunday morning. After completely full days, 4 hours of sleep each night (or less) and no sleep at all on Saturday night, I slept the entire flight home. I came home to a messy house and a big surprise, as I mentioned above, that made me not care at all about the messy house. Joel had spent the time while I was away completely redoing our pantry (the before picture is on the right). Since I do a lot of stockpiling with my couponing, our pantry really needed help holding all my purchases. He gutting the entire room, shelves and all, painted the room and then reshelved it all. It's hard to tell in the picture, but the shelved actually look like orange crates. It not only looks very cool, but I now have room for everything and then some! Nothing sitting on the floor. Needless to say, I couldn't care less about the messy house after that! And the sweet husband that he is, I went down for a nap all Sunday afternoon, and while I was sleeping he and the kids cleaned up. I am so blessed!!