The rocking chair that rocked

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I spent my nap time furiously cleaning our living room. It never gets cleaned very well and it is our main hub, besides the kitchen table, and that is just a whole nother' nightmere.

I got to the rocking chair and really looked at it for the first time in a couple years and thought, "gross”. That is it. Just plain nasty.

 I think my mom cleaned it once after I had a baby.

 I woke up from a nap and she casually mentioned she cleaned the chair like she hadn't been vomiting in her mouth the whole time. I mean... this thing had spit-up cakes and milk drips on every square inch of it. I took a steak knife to the crap that was built up around the spindles. As I scraped away I started thinking about people with beautiful homes and beautiful things and how their houses were always pristine on TV and in the magazines.

What was wrong with me? Wait. No. What is wrong with these KIDS?
This rocking chair was a gift. Brand new when we had our first little one. A beautiful chair, delivered from the NICE furniture store in town. It felt so luxurious as I rocked my first baby in that chair. Now the oatmeal cushions are stained (what was I thinking when I picked that color, so naive) the walnut stain is half-there, half running for its life. Where did my beautiful chair go and who left me with this burp rag?

Then I thought about all the babies rocked here. All the forts that have been tucked under the foot stool. All of the songs sung, all of the prayers said, and stinky blankets snuggles. The houses in my mind don't get the kind of traffic we do. We have to use our things and hang on to them for life because we live on one income and we want dad to actually be able to sit in the house he bought.

Kids don't care about what kind of stuff we have in our house. A used bunk bed and a $1000 bunk bed with matching comforters sleeps the same to them. A beat up rocking chair and a new, made-to-order, rocking chair, rocks the same. I have to remind myself of that a lot. I hope my daughters will enjoy the gift of this hand-me-down rocker some day when their little ones come, with all the memories imbedded in it. Maybe we will re-purpose the cushions before that happens... the memories might smell sweeter!

Reminding myself of the beauty in the filth, the joy in the busyness, the sweetness in the chaos.

Camping

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It is so fresh in my mind I just have to write it down.

Cousins.

We camped next door to a family that had two boys ages 6 and 4. What are the chances? It was like a bike park, secret hideout, baseball game all rolled into one spot. Our boys were having so much fun they called those two neighbor boys their cousins the whole time. They must only equate that level of fun to their cousins.

Up at 6:00 a.m.: "Can we go over to our cousins"

Jack to Spence: "Do you want to bring some juice boxes over to our cousins"

In front of the boys' parents: "Can our cousins check out the inside of our cabin?"

Weird, awkward smile. "They play with their cousins a lot." 

"Oh, and yes our kids don't go to school we are going to homeschool. What was that? You are a teacher? Oh...both of you are teachers? How interesting."

No. The parents were awesome. They came over for a campfire every night and we let our boys (and ragamuffin daughter who was always close behind) run wild until they dropped into bed at night dirty and sticking to each other by the smore leftovers on their cheeks.

We biked, swam, built fires, played games, check out cool bridges and boats, skipped rocks, sat in lawn chairs (my personal favorite). 

We didn't give anyone a bath, but to my credit I did go through a whole pack of baby wipes. Sorry pool cleaner man. I really am. That has to be the hardest job in the world keeping that pool clean.

We ate three meals together every day. One of my dreams coming true.

I read three chapters of Naya Nuki to my boys. A book my mom read to us. I am becoming my mom. Another one of my dreams coming true.

No one got sick.

No one got hurt... too bad. Okay, well, we didn't go to the hospital. Some of those bike falls had the drama of a hospital visit.

We camped in a cabin. It had a bathroom and mini fridge. Not really what we thought of ourselves as. In our minds Justin and I see ourselves on the front of a REI magazine with a tent in the background while we cook up a big "campers breakfast" in our highly fashionable matching North Face clothes. With four kids, five and under, we barely survived 3 nights in a cabin. We ate a lot of cereal and had a hard time getting a fire started. I wore the same black yoga pants for three days. Just the thought of a staying in a tent makes me nauseous. 

Items worth remembering:

1.     Our "noticer", Jack, had a very hard time noticing the people in front of him while biking. Note: To pray fervently for drivers training and a focused mind for that boy. 

2.     Hannah really started walking in our beautiful cabin.

3.     All four kids slept in the same room. I came home and promptly moved the girls into the same room.

4.     Justin and I fought. When we loaded, when we unloaded. We got annoyed at each other and had expectations that the other one didn't meet. It wasn't always perfect, but the Lord continues to work on us both. Thank goodness for Christ and his grace.

Yes, Jack has his shirt on backwards. Why not?

  

 It wouldn't be a proper family photo without a weird face and someone crying.

Why I can't blog

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Lets see... my last post was in April. Yup, that’s about right. I think we have been going non-stop since then, without a minute to spare. I guess I just thought I better wipe up the child who was screaming from the potty and then set that one down to break up a fight and then purposely leave those two in their room for extra long so I could stop the baby from re-eating her lunch off the floor. By the time night came I had no brain cells left to type anything that made any sense. I think the only thing I could eek out was to tell my sisters on our weight loss Facebook page that I was, indeed, still... fat.

The last four months have been filled with so many great memories that I had to force myself to make the time to write them down so I can remember them. Just a few of the highlights:

• Summer and being outside
• New baby nieces 
• Spencer excepting Jesus into his heart
• Getting chickens and kittens (starting our farm as the boys told their dad)
• Planting our garden, buying a rototiller and putting the smack down on that baby
• Hannah receiving "mucho" (a word gift to my children from my bilingual hubby) lovin' from her siblings
• Camping
• The bed jumping heard round' the world (Abigail knocking her teeth into her nasal cavity). This is really true and it happens to tons of kids OKAY!
• Kids learning to swim underwater and ride without training wheels (basically equivalent to a diploma in the eyes of a five year old)
• Book club summer start up because we can't stand waiting a whole year to get together
• School (two kindergartners) our schedule and chores
• God reteaching me and teaching me to be more like him (1,000 post possibilities here)

I want to hold on to every second of those precious moments and remember just a few of those really hard times. Hopefully, there will be more posts in the future...but there might not. There is just no telling, around here, what is going to get accomplished in a day.