Ahhh... I love these!!

Give me some sparkly new shoes,

lots of family time, a great Easter holiday and I am one happy lady!!!

We had such a  wonderful holiday weekend together.  I woke up this morning feeling very blessed. 

Friday night, Patrick and I found ourselves out on a date!!  The dinner and company both delighted us and the got our weekend off to a wonderful start.  Saturday morning we ate donuts for breakfast, we decorated 27 eggs (9 eggs met their demise on my kitchen floor), talked about what the Easter bunny might bring,  perfected our flips on the trampoline (even mommy!), and enjoyed playing together on the Wii. 

Even our routine Saturday Sams shopping trip had more joy in it because all 6 of us were there.  The girls and I went across the street to a couple of new stores that opened up.  Stores with accessories and shoes and clothes - right up our alley!!! We rounded out our Saturday afternoon with a trip to the library, where we each got something delicious to read.  After a beauiful service at church on Easter Sunday morning, where we celebrated the baptism of Meredith's BFF, we had dinner at my in-laws house. 

The Easter bunny had visited Grandma's and Grandpops house, delighting the kids for the second time that day.  We hid eggs again and again, breaking the record for the most Easter egg hunts in one Easter celebration.  We finished our day with Easter greetings from Grandma and Poppop, and the celebration of Maddie's "special day".  The weekend was the perfect gift for each of us. 

We are supposed to get a lot of rain in the next few days, and when the sun comes back out, my garden is going to be in full spring bloom!!  The dafodills are finished, but the tulips are opening up and everyone else is just waiting their turn to shine. The end of April points to the last month of school and the chance to finish the academic year strong. We are all ready for the year to wrap up.  We have summer plans that are itching to be made and swimming suits that are anxious to be worn. 

May MAY bring us many great things!!

      

I’m sitting at the soccer complex watching my sweet son, who is all arms and legs, exercise self control during the mundane drills. These skills are necessary, but frankly they are a little boring for my adrenaline filled boy.. All he really wants to do is run fast, and kick that soccer ball as far as he can. But he isn’t. He is doing the toe tapping, the dribbling, the short kicks. Michael is a good soccer player. Really good! I can see many future hours spent at games and practices. Not only is he good at it, but he also really loves it. He has a continual smile on his face when he is playing. My mama instinct could be wrong, but I think that this just might be “his thing”. Before he took this soccer class, neither of us knew how much control was involved in the game. We didn’t understand that before you kick the ball really hard, you have to learn how to control your ball. I thought it was about running fast and kicking hard. And sometimes it is, but not always. The truth is, the game is a lot about small, short movements and keeping your ball close to you; once you have control over your ball then you can really play with your team mates to achieve the goal of a game well played. Since my mind works the crazy way that it does, I have made a lot of connections about real life as I have sat and watched Michael practice soccer over the past 4 months. Life is often so much more about the little things that I do, rather than the big scores. My game of life isn’t usually about really hard kicks or long runs. It’s more about using the skills that I have in the daily drills making short, quick movements in order to accomplish a greater task: Team work. These drills might not always be exciting, but they are necessary. It’s these small, self-controlled skills that make the difference in whether our day plays out as a win or a loss. Added together, all of the small things that we each do make up a winning score.  When we spend time playing as "team family", combining respect, love, serving and laughter, we all score points and the victory is sweet.