Daddy Date Part 2

Here is the professional photo from the dance!!

A River runs thru it...

Cam had to go to his office to get something today, and me and the kids decided to tag along! The Boise River runs right behind his office and it was calling to us to explore! It was so beautiful and peaceful I had to get a few pictures. These are with my cell phone so they are not the best but I will being taking my kids and camera back soon for some real shots.

Miracle of being a Mom...

I read this and had to post it. This is exactly how I feel about being a mom. It is so amazing and such a precious thing to be a mom. With the marks on my stomach I can tell where each pregnancy started and ended. Now that it has been four and half years since my last "stretch," my marks are slowly fading, and I am sad. I wear my
stretch marks with pride at the miracle my body helped create!


The following is an amazing right up from my very talented friend Teressa Welborne:
Have you ever added up your birth weights before? Of all your children? I have. My four children weighed:


My oldest: 8 pounds 12 ounces
Twin #1: 9 pounds, 1 ounce
Twin #2: 7 pounds, 14 ounces
My youngest: 9 pounds, 9 ounces.

That's 35 pounds, 4 ounces of babies all together. Hot dang. How do you wrap your mind around that, much less your tummy?


The black typed numbers read like text book math to me. But my tummy and heart know the truth: it was much more than that.

Yep, my tummy has been there. It's been stretched to next week, to China, the moon, and the galaxies beyond. And lived to tell it's story.

There's a brown freckle on my right thigh, near my knee, that my stomach grew to and kissed for a season while sheltering my twins, before shrinking back, empty, void. For forty weeks I rocked my twins like Noah and his ark out to sea, only longer.

Heavy,
full,
waiting,
searching for a sign of land.

On my tummy hangs an invisible sign: “Was home to full term twins and two other singletons.” The sign took years to build. It was rough and splintery at first. And it took lots of nails and sanding and time. Now, when I tell my pregnancy, birth, and post-postpartum stories, others see the sign, too. It is beautiful. And some days, still, I marvel that I made it.

My tummy housed my children time and again. It was a good house, a strong house, a house of bricks. One that I worried at first might be a house of straw. But full term after full term, baby after baby, I discovered it's magic.


Nothing, no wind, no wolf, no one person could blow it down. And I'm thankful. Like I'm thankful for these size nine feet that carry me in circles, this racing heart that pumps my blood, and these blue eyes that take in the black and white picture of all my children gathered as if petals of a flower, and the white gold wedding ring on my left ring finger that matches Ben's perfectly.


All parts of a greater whole. A whole that I am part of.

My body wrote it's own poetry in stretch marks across my tummy and hips. A testament, a tattoo, engraving the words:

motherhood,
selflessness,
love
...on my psyche like initials carved into a tree.

Part of me wanted to resist these words {motherhood, selflessness, love}, and still does from time to time. Part of me wants to shrink away and forget, become a dandelion puff on the wind and float away, alone and free. But I'm anchored by these words, these children, these truths, that ring through me like a bell. They are as part of me as my breath, my gentle snore Ben says he sometimes hears late at night, and my mama roar, “Come here now, child.”

I carry these engravings with me across this broad and rocky road we call life, shaking it with my story again and again like a giant, surging and cracking the earth, meeting strength and possibility with each step.

I am a mama giant with a tired, stretched out tummy to prove it. And I am thankful.

Decade One Down

Well we did it! June 11th was our big 10 anniversary! I can't believe how fast it went. We have so many great memories of our first 10 years! What a ride it has been. We have lived in 3 different towns, had 3 different kids, learned about each other, how to help each other and how to hinder each other. We have had many ups and downs, but at the end of the day, how lucky am I that I got to marry my best friend and enjoy the start of our eternal adventure together!
Thanks for all the memories hunny! I look forward to the next ten years! I love you!

My Rewards of Motherhood!

Last night I hadn't heard from any of my kids for a little while, which is usually never a good thing! I started searching the house for them when I walked by the front windows and spotted them playing baseball together! A quote came to my mind:

"Moments are the molecules of eternity"
~Neal A. Maxwell


Quietly watching them and hearing their laughter was definitely a moment I will remember for eternity. It is truly a great blessing to watch your children enjoy spending time toghether, I hope they will always know how lucky they are to have one another.

See.... They can get along

My kids are good kids who truly love each other... this is what I tell myself over and over when I hear them screaming at each other. It is moments like this when I actually believe it!!