sweet decisions

So I just got Colsen & Keane's proofs back today from some pictures they had taken this week. My mom runs a preschool in town and gets me a "family" discount with the school photographer. I have an amazing camera, but I really don't know what I'm doing with it. I need to go to the photography (oh! snap) bloc @ watershed (my sis lauren leads it!), take a class, do more...but in the meantime I'll just let other people take them while I stand on my head behind the photographer to try to get keane to smile. I'll post all the proofs in a facebook album if you'd like to see. Here's some of my faves. I'd love your thoughts on which ones you like best. I have to pick one of Colsen, one of Keane , and one of them together. If you've ever been in our house you'll see that we're running out of wall space due to our affection for gigantic b & w pics of our kids/fam/friends. It's hilarious. Can't afford art? Overdue the whole picture thing. Every time I take a new picture of the boys and decide to put it up in the house, I fret over making the decision which picture should come down so that I can reuse the frame. I can't bear to take down the 4 month old Colsen to put up the 4 year old Colsen and at this rate, we'll look like crazy people if we keep buying and hanging this many frames. I'll keep Ikea in Charlotte in business for years to come. And Scott, my minimalist husband, surprisingly, is worse than I am in the whole picture dept. Each time a school picture comes home or we take a nice shot, he wants to order 10 in every size and have them blown up and hang them everywhere. We're crazy. But I guess it's a good crazy. 

Colsen is just becoming such a little independent smart guy. His constantly churning mind keeps me on my toes.

..the questions are incessant and adorable. Tonight

 we read the Last Supper story out of his Kids StoryBook Bible (thanks to my buddy Sarah Caton for telling us about it! (btw if you have or know a kid, you have to get them this bible...it makes me cry..the

 illustrations are awesome, not cheesy, and they theologically GET IT when tying the OT & NT together)- it's called "THE JESUS STORYBOOK BIBLE: EVERY STORY WHISPERS HIS NAME" 

It's just amazing watching him take it all in...ask the questions

 he asks. Then there's Keane, my little jolly Bean & chunk. He's

 really starting to talk more...he laughs at everything and 

makes a lot of faces involving a scrunchy nose. His vocab is limited to pretty much "ma

ma, dada, chocolate (that's my boy), col-col, grandpa, papa, cookie, uhoh,etc. " - but the other night when I was rocking him to sleep, I was singing "Silent Night" (I run out of tunes and go for the carols) and every time 

I said "NIGHT" he said "Night-Night" - I could bite him. I do bite him.  He belly laughs all day. Here's a sample. It's awesome. Here's some of his pics w/ Colsen 

and his on his own. He's not as big on smiling for 

the camera yet..  The other day on twitter, one of my friends from Watershed, Maybelline, listed 

a bunch of people she follows on "follow friday". Not sure if you're

 familiar with how that works, but people will list a bunch of people who they follow on "follow friday" and then list a one or two word description of them. I met Maybelline through our book club @ Watershed and she is just an amazing woman. She's inspired me to one day make the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage and her depth of thought and writing floors me. ANYWAY, I am so new 

to Twitter and still wet behind the ears as to how it all works, but somehow I made it on her "Follow Friday" list. And next to "@TarynHofert" there was my 2 word description ..."cool mom". I chuckled as I read it in my Red Sox hat and food stained shirt. I haven't felt cool since the 80's..and why I did

 back then is still foggy when I look at pictures. But I told Scott

 that "Follow Friday" night, I've had a lot of titles in my life...but I think that one was one of the sweetest. So, thanks, Maybelline

. I'm far from cool, but even you saying that my kids give you "infanticipation" makes me smile ear to ear. 

I feel like moving to Charlotte has allowed me to take on some new roles, new opportunities...

 and in all the chaos of starting Watershed, figuring out how to help/serve and balance a "home life" I can't get over how much t motherhood fits more than any role I've had before. Who knew. I sure didn't. So, help me pic a picture (I have to narrow it down to three!). 

Earth Day's the new New Year's Day

NOTE: I’m a procrastinating perfectionist. Or at least that’s how I make myself feel better about not finishing things but strategizing in my mind how the task should be done “well”. I wrote this first blog entry New Year’s Eve as I watched the ball drop (exciting household, eh?). But I didn’t finish it, and only 4 months later I am trying to hop on board the Blog Train.

So, for years I’ve toyed with blogging. The closest I’ve ever gotten is a note or two on facebook and several attempts at picking out layouts on blogger.com then forgetting my sign in info and passwords. I was more concerned with the color scheme and picking from the various array of spiffy layouts (polka-dots or formal, modern or torn edge looking stuff) than what I’d actually blog about. ha. That’s so me. 

I think because I’m not one to read others’ blogs that much I sort of can’t imagine how/why people would want to read what I would blog. But it’s a new world and when I look into my boys’ eyes I think that they’ll grow up in a world that blogged before they were born-- and me? Well, ancient mom grew up in a world where I remember getting a Commodore 64 in elementary school and that was THE STUFF. I printed pictures of snoopy out on a dot matrix printer with the kind of paper that you rip off those perforated dot-edge things - i remember popping Eddie Rabbit 8-tracks in our oldsmobile toronado and singing “i love a rainy night” with my mom in the car. Yes, i had a turntable in my room and sang “you light up my life” every time i set the needle down. I’ll tell them these things and they’ll roll their eyes and think i’m from another planet. Resisting blogging is like our grandparents referring to the rock music as “that noisy trash” - it’s tim

e for me to get with it I guess. (And Grandpa Wally, I wish you could have listened to Coldplay, I think you would have liked them alot.)

And so, I can already say that I know that I won’t be a consistent blogger...I’m a mom to 2 boys, a husband to a self-proclaimed “requires-much-attention” husband, a church planter, volunteer church staff member, musician, amateur humanitarian, house fixer-upper, PTO member, sometimes-helpful neighbor, bargain hunter, friend-who-doesn’t-answer-the-phone-much, yada yada. I’m not sitting in coffee shops quietly reflecting on deep thoughts on a daily basis...in fact, I’m not sure if there’s a time I AM alone in my week...and if I was, I think my eyes would be closed! Sometimes I type right here on the kitchen table while food is being flung at me for just a moment of sanity...a respite from the madness...a little outlet. I am sitting at such place this moment.

I do know one thing...had I sent out a Christmas letter (like so many of our good friends do!)...it would have been a book, not a page. So much is happening in our lives...so much has taken place in just this one year, so much is simmering in my heart...that sometimes I just don’t know where to start. Ah, WHERE TO START.... how ‘bout I just think about it ‘til April. ha.

That was the other problem for me with blogging. What to call the blog? I mean, once I remembered my password and found a layout, etc. - the name means more to me than anything. (You see nomenclature is my wanna-be hobby. I love it. I could have more children just to name them...but alas my husband is not on board with that idea.) If you want my list of baby names I’ll never get to use, call me. (unless, of course, God answers my prayers that someone will leave a baby on my doorstep, but that’s a whole other story)

Back to the blog-naming... In the middle of feeding my 1 year old lunch and my 4 year old bombarding me

 with questions about Batman that I had no business answering, I became overwhelmed at how full (& crazy) my life is. It also hit me how there was nothing at that moment I’d rather be doing. Which, when I think back on all the “dreams” I have had at various times in my life, just kinds of tickles me. Then the perfect name, as well as a variation of a lyric from one of my favorite songs (not to mention one of my favorite musicians on the planet), just kind of came to mind...

“UNDER JEALOUS SKY”

The whole idea of life here on earth being so rich, full & meaningful that even the sun shining above is looking down in envy from “his jealous sky”. Well written, Mr. Sumner-- can I be your backup singer in the next life?

You see, I love the idea of quiet reflection and journaling...but I also don’t want the food-flinging or Batman litany of questions or Watershed craziness to stop. I love it. It’s my life. I don’t want to change it and most of all I don’t want to miss one minute of it by not being completely present & whole-hearted. Passionately, intentionally, completely living - and in what little blog-following I do, I just can’t seem to find many women blogging on anything to which I can truly relate. Then, a few years ago when I first moved to Charlotte, I stumbled upon Dooce.com. And, I was hooked. I don’t think I’ll touch her level of bloggy nirvana, but in 2009 I hope to maybe provoke a little thought in the realm of being a woman who loves God & life & people (no matter how small) ALOT. Also...an ordinary person who loses stuff (often), cusses (more than I should), sings a little too loud, loves Charles Shaw like a brother, has to limit my Target visits, is an informercial-addict, and loves to laugh hard. 

I have no idea what i’ll blog about. A friend, Nikki Hogsed, told me that she mostly blogs about family and then prints out the blog each year as a scrapbook. As I’ve never scrapbooked one thing nor do I have one photo in a photo album of my children, I love this idea. I take the pictures, but I’m still strategizing on what to do with them. STRATEGERY I say.

 Maybe this blog will be more about my kids and informing my fam about them...or maybe not. Maybe I’ll have a quarterly blog at the rate I’m going. Whatever the year holds, I think I’ve just broken the record for the longest blog entry ever written.

HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone- or should I say HAPPY EARTH DAY.

(To all my fellow-procrastinators. April’s not too late to get crack-a-lackin on your resolutions!)