It's Been a Busy Month

I realize I haven't blogged in a long time. Some times I just don't feel very creative in what I have to say. Life with four children tends to hold a lot of the mundane, and who really wants to read about how many loads of laundry I've washed and folded but not quite managed to get put away, or what we're having for dinner, or how the cat used the bin of train track pieces for a litter box and I discovered it the smelly way?

In the midst of the mundane, there are treasures such as watching Josh drum along to songs on tv, the radio, or sung by himself; or watching Ben "get" reading and start reading and writing everything; or watching Abby practice her "How To" speech and realizing how totally natural she is at it despite severe stage fright just a couple years ago; or making a folder on the computer for all Jessa's stories and realizing she has written over 20 fiction short stories!

There are other not-so-mundane things as well. As of the first of the year my 1/4 time job as Pastor of Children and Family Ministries at our church has become a half time job. That has required some adjustments, but they have been good ones.

We decided to put Josh in daycare two mornings each week so he doesn't have to spend as much time tooling around the church with me. That also gives me more time to get things done the efficient way. It has been good for Josh to rehearse the notion that mommy's job is to come back and his job is to stay and play. He has always been "mommy's boy," even from day one, so giving him a little space to see how trustworthy I am about returning has been a growing experience for him. I thought it would be a total relief for me, but to be honest I spent the whole first day worrying about him and still wonder a lot. This is good preparation for him to start at our favorite preschool in the fall--the Audubon Nature Center preschool on 180 acres of woods along Lake Michigan. Ben attended there a couple years and it is amazing.

The first day I was at work without kids in tow, I learned our spancrete had just been installed on our new church building so the other staff and I got to go out and tour. This building project has been a long haul as bureaucratic delays have abounded, so it was good to see that progress. The children's ministry area in our new building will be almost as large as the entire building we are currently working in. Considering how many kids we have (65+ and 7 babies due between now and August!), the increased space can't come soon enough.

See...there is just a lot of day to day happening these days!