One of Each, Please.

"I'm riding a skinny horse!" -Seamus

Boys on a Love Seat

Happy Valentine's Day!

(tomorrow)
We're going to have to get a bigger love seat with all these boys to love.

Falcon Lake with the Toews Family

Our morning coffee break view.

Last weekend we went camping with some very good friends of ours.  They have to be very good friends to go camping with us crazy people, don't they?  Because of course we couldn't just go camping.  We had to drive to the city first and rent a kayak!  And figure out how to tie a kayak to the top of the truck!  And figure out how to get the kayak to the water!  And figure out how to lose our glasses when the kayak tips over (okay that wasn't on the camping trip, that was just last night....but you see how troublesome we Thiessens are!?).  The Toews family puts up with us, and even seems to like us despite it all.  We like them too.  They're silly.  Like this:

Karen and Danika :)

The boys LOVED the boat.  They fought over who got to go out with Dad.

Who's captain of this boat anyway?!

Breakfast.  I just happened to capture that peaceful moment before all hell broke loose.

Another Thiessen adventure.  We packed up in a thunderstorm, which was good.  It was the boy's first shower in three days!

The whole get-up and proof that I was there.

Covenant

We have been attending Covenant Mennonite Church in Winkler for seven months now.  Our first impression of Covenant was a very good one, and so far nothing has happened to mar our impression, only to strengthen it.  Last July we visited Covenant to hear a particular person speak and ended up discovering the pastor, Kelvin Dyck, was someone Derek had been told to seek out to discuss his theological interests.  That first Sunday there was no childcare provided by the church, but when the pastor's wife saw us walk in with our kids she came down the aisle and asked if she could take our kids downstairs to play.  I got to sit through an entire sermon!

After the service Derek and Kelvin visited for an hour and we were invited to a potluck scheduled the next weekend.  Without talking about it much (which is unusual for us), we just ... went to the potluck with a group of people we knew hardly at all ... if at all!  Our children were played with, talked to, Seamus took seven steps in a row from the hands of Don Bergen to me, the food was delightfully healthy homemade, whole food type stuff, mostly from people's gardens, Derek sat by the BBQ with Kelvin and Dave, and I was told by several people that they were "So pleased!" to have us there and if we would continue coming to church we would be snatched up and put to work.  We left with warm fuzzies and once again, with little discussion, we decided to keep going to Covenant.  It just felt good and right.

We continued attending, and our children continued being loved on, and every summer Sunday we would eat lunch in the park or at the drive-in after church with whoever could make it.  People talked to us like we'd known them forever, people called us up when they were heading to the lake, "Want to come along?".  People carried our sleeping baby around the foyer while visiting, people asked us over to their homes for meals.  People asked for book recommendations and actually read the books, and loaned us books in return.  People found out I was a photographer and asked me to take their photos!  Good things are happening.  Different, and good.

A few weeks ago we were having dinner at the Drudge family's house.  I was talking to Rochelle and saying how Covenant just felt like a natural fit for us, and wondering what our lives would have been like if we had found it four years ago, when we first moved to Winkler...less frustrating for sure!  She responded with a phrase that has stuck in my mind and I feel speaks exactly how Derek and I feel at Covenant.  She said, "We came to Covenant and we just felt like we had finally found our people.  These are our people."

So we keep going and in very natural ways, by eating together and spending time together, each week we get to know these people a little better.  These people who are our people, and who feel like they've always been our people - we just didn't know where they were.  We keep eating and singing and praying with them, and they let our children run up and down the aisle and shout out questions during the sermon or children's story, and what's more: they answer the questions with straight faces.

Last week Derek read the scripture out of Luke for epiphany Sunday and Seamus wandered around up front before finally standing beside Derek and leaning his head against his leg.  After a few moments Derek leaned down, picked him up and continued reading.  Nobody blinked.  Nobody grimaced.  Afterwards someone said to me, "Seamus made that passage come alive!"  Thank goodness for community that includes and embraces our children, and values and honors our aged and debilitated.  This church has made these things real for me by loving my family, and sweetly and graciously expecting me to love them back.

For 3 Someone Elses and a Dog.

I guess you could say that mothering is a full-time job.  I guess you could, but it would be totally misleading.  Mothering is not even close to a full-time job.  It’s like two full-time jobs where you live at work, and eat at work, and never get to walk away from work like that woman I see walking home from Eden every night.  She jaunts out the door, swings her purse over her shoulder and lets her skirt sashay across the parking lot, across the street, down the sidewalk.  Sometimes she’s on the phone, making plans for the evening.  Sometimes she’s reading a book.  Sometimes she’s just walking, breathing in the outdoor seasons, filled with the knowledge that work is behind her and need not be acknowledged until tomorrow morning.  Sometimes I am positively green, watching her saunter along…how I wish I could saunter!  

I am a mother of two boys, a dog, and wife to one husband.  That’s a lot of needs waiting to be filled.  And they expect me to fill them.  Most days I am honored to be that servant.  I love the old hymn that asks, “Will you let me be your servant, let me be as Christ to you? Pray that I may have the grace to let you be my servant too.”  Then there are those other days; those days when that special moment I had carved out of the day just for me gets snatched out from under me and I fall into the my-life-stinks sinkhole of self pity.  My shower is interrupted by a boy emptying out the cabinets looking for band-aids and muttering, “I’m bleeding I think, so I need a band-aid but I don’t see them, and they’re usually here but where are they!? MOM!  Where’d you put the band-aids!?” My reading time is interrupted by a teething baby who won’t sleep, or a four-year old insisting there are crocodiles under the bed chewing on his books.  My phone call with my best friend is hijacked with, “MO-oom!! I need sumpin’!”  That precious mocha I saved my pennies for gets spilled when somebody climbs over the backseat of the car in the grocery store parking lot.  I am interrupted from an exciting editing job by a little one wandering into the room covered in a mysterious viscous substance.  I come upstairs with a sigh after putting the boys to bed to find the dog on the dining room table chowing down on the leftovers I had planned on feeding the family for lunch tomorrow, and yet again, there’s a need.  I am the only one to fill it.  Clean up the mess, bandage the hurt, reassure the fearful, discipline the naughty, find the lost, and so on and on and on.

I had it.  Tonight at the dinner table my husband noted my unhappiness (it would take a seriously self-interested introvert to not notice my dramatic sighs and slouching shoulders).  He asked if I was going to be okay.  With a pout to prove I am my son’s mother I responded, “I just want to take my journal, and a pen, and hike out into the wilderness and stay there forever!”  Luke promptly responded, “Oh no, Mom.  You’d get eaten by a bear or sumping.”  And I laughed, and the laughter turned into crying, and the sinkhole turned out to be a pothole.  I knew he was right.  I would get eaten by a bear!   I would miss little boys who in all seriousness suggest with concern that I would get eaten by a bear. I would miss their incessant yammering and the inappropriate shouting.  I would miss my husband’s distracted fathering, and even his inability to put his pants away properly.  I would miss letting the dog out the back door and shushing him while he tears around barking at birds on the fence.  I would miss filling a need for someone else; for three someone elses, and a dog.   

   

 

 

One Crowded Couch

Date Night Splurge

This date night was particularly special, thanks to the generosity of Derek's folks.  They loaned us their gorgeous, and very 'cush (the backseat is a couch!!) Harley Davidson for the evening.  And to frost our delightful two-wheeled cake, they baby-sat our boys.  What a date!  What parents!
 

I got to enjoy the wind in my hair (under my helmet, of course) all the way to Altona and back.  Derek got to enjoy his first drive in five years!  We ate at a new-to-us restaurant, loved everything on our plates, and still had everything to look forward to in the open road, gorgeous sunset, and roaring engine all the way home.

 

As I listened to the motorcycle, watched the harvest going on just across the field, smelled the dead skunk up close and personal, appreciated the connectedness I felt with the passing landscape while driving with no walls or windows, I concluded that I married precisely the perfect kind of man.  He grew up riding motorcycles and dirt bikes, and made what I consider to be a very deliberate and wise sacrifice, selling his motorcycle to help pay for college.  He knows how to ride motorcycles safely (from experience and a saturation of wisdom from his father riding motorcycle before him), has a deep love for the activity, looks super cool in black leather, and also values education and enjoys a quiet evening at home reading theology or murder mysteries.  This is the most complimentary set of qualities I can imagine in a man, particularly in my man.  My husband can take me on a ride on motorcycle, or in our imagination, through the pages of a book or sermon.

These are exactly the musings date night is supposed to inspire.

An evening at the park

Lost and Found Luke Says

I found this list of Luke says, looked back on the blog and was astounded I hadn't published them!  What's wrong with me?  These are adorable!

Derek: You're putting words in God's mouth.
Luke: God telled me when I was in Mom's tummy that babies can't have wooden toys.

What is that in the world!?

Vests are tummy jackets.

Go to your Mom now, Seamus.

Dad, maybe we could give Seamus away at a garage sale so he doesn't do a lot of damage and make me share my toys.

I only want to share my toys with people who can say a lot of words like "please" and not cry.

Dad's New Shades: one size fits all

So I'd like you to dance

BIRTHDAY!!!

Take a ch-ch-ch-chance!

BIRTHDAY!!!

So I'd like you to dance!

BIRTHDAY!!!

Awwwwwww!

Yes we're goin' to a party party.

Yes we're goin' to a party party.

Happy 34th Derek!

It's a beautiful day to have been born.

We will celebrate with warenika and sausage, a new movie, running in the sprinklers, and breakfast with your folks!

We are going to party party, in your honor!!