Our Easter (and Anniversary)

We spent a beautiful weekend at my parents' house for Easter.  The weather was beautiful and the Wingers joined us on Sunday for a feast and an egg hunt and good family time.

Our schedules have been so busy with school and sports and dance and sickness and work and church that we haven't had much time to spend together.  Lori and I live 15 minutes from each other and have barely spent any time together all school year.  Another reason that I'll be happy when summer comes!  I miss my sister!

Here's the lowdown on our holiday weekend.

Dying eggs, a time honored tradition.

The Easter bunny showed up!

Posing with Papa, who was busy at church preparing and serving pancakes and sausage to the masses.  Yum.

The brood pre-hunt (including Dylan's sweet little girlfriend).

Lilly girl!

 

Cuddled up with Dad.

 

Someone else has been missing Aunt Lori too. 

Easter Sunday was also Rich and my wedding anniversary!  Twelve of the happiest years of my life have been spent as this man's wife.

Truth be told, we both forgot about it.  Lol.  Between me getting a new car and both of us preparing for Easter and everything in between, it totally slipped our minds.  No worries, though.  There is no love lost on the two of us.  As I am reminded by our friends, it's kind of disgusting how crazy Rich and I still are about each other.

We view our marriage as the foundation upon which everything else in our lives is built.  And we have learned to give it the priority it deserves.  We have our highs and lows just like every couple and have worked hard to maintain our passion through the years.  We have both made mistakes along the way (me more than him, I am certain) and will again, I have no doubt.  But we have come to realize that a marriage is a living, breathing, changing thing and, as such, is vulnerable.  So we both committed ourselves to protecting and feeding and honoring it.  It's as tough as it is rewarding.  And is not for everyone by any means.

But it works for us.  And it works very well.

The work is so important.  But I also strongly believe in love's magic and divinity and destiny.  If you know me, you know that love is pretty much my #1 thing.  A favorite pastor of mine once told me that when your marriage is going through rough times, when you're feeling far from your spouse - you both need to remember your "first works".  Which means remember what about that person made you fall for them in the first place and what about yourself made them fall for you.  (I believe that comes from Revelations in the context of straying from your faith, but it works in this context beautifully.)  I think one of the things that makes our marriage so special is that we're never very far away from those first works.  We keep them close at hand and reinvent them often, which deepens what we have.  It's easy for me because Rich is a gift and I'm reminded of that daily just by him being who he is.

Plus he's very cute.  :)

As for him...I have no idea how he does it.  I'm kind of a pain in the ass. :)

So happy Easter (and Anniversary) from this blessed pain in the rump.  I hope yours was a special as ours!

God's Mobile Bowling Alley

The kids are on spring break this week, which I have to admit is nice.  I'm over all this homework, struggling to provide proper motivation for said homework, grumpy moods from forcing said homework to be completed, running from school to school to accommodate schedules...bring on summer!

My kids are early risers.  Like 6:00 am early risers.  So it's not uncommon for them to be playing downstairs while we are still in bed.  It's also not uncommon for them to sneak candy from the candy cupboard, which they have both pinkie promised me they wouldn't do again and which they both lie through their little teeth about having done until I wave the poorly hidden candy bar wrapper in their suspicious angel faces.  Sigh.  Now I have to come up with another candy cache consequence.  Blarg.

Anyway, since there was nowhere to go this morning, I was attempting to sleep in a bit.

That's when the storm hit.

I was awake but trying hard not to be when I heard a very distant rumble of thunder.  Before the thunder had rumbled itself out, a mere seven seconds or so, my kids had raced upstairs, burst through the bedroom door and pounced on me.  Their chocolate-speckled faces (clue #1 that another candy sneaking caper had ensued) stared up at me in horror, their giant blue eyes bugged out in fear of our imminent and certain doom.  

They both snuggled tight against me under the covers and we listened to the rain fall.  We counted seconds between lightening flashes and thunder rolls.  I tried for the 2,937th time to explain how most storms aren't anything to be frightened of, especially when we're safe inside our home. How they're actually pretty cool.

They weren't buying it.

While we were huddled together under the covers, they came up with an interesting spin on the God bowling theory.  Sam thinks that God moves his bowling alley around a lot, which is why storms move around so much.  When the sky gets darker as the storm approaches, it's actually the shadow of God's bowling ball rolling down his heavenly mobile bowling alley and that giant celestial ball, of course, is what makes the thunder boom.  Lena added that the rain gets harder when the thunder gets louder because there are too many angels bowling with God and God gets sad that it's not his turn yet, so he cries harder.

I adore how their little minds see things. I adore snuggling in bed during a storm with them tight against me.  I adore hearing their wandering thoughts.  I adore that they feel safe with me and that, when I put my arms around them, everything is all right.    

Being a mom can be tough and terrifying and insane and grisly.

But most of the time, being a mom rocks.