Favorite Quote Friday

I was blessed with a brief, but lovely moment to sit down by myself the other afternoon, and I read from my favorite devotional, Streams in the Desert.

I know I've said it before, but I love that little blue book. I seemed particularly prone to underlining that day, but I found myself especially engaged by this:

Comfort is not given to us when we are lighthearted and

cheerful. We must travel the depths of emotion in order to experience

comfort - one of God's most precious gifts.

And then we must be prepared to become coworkers with Him.

I have certainly found this to be true in my life. 

I'm confident that I have even run from God's comfort at times b/c of this knowledge: once the fragments have settled, and the comfort has soaked in, there indeed, lies an invitation. Often, a challenging one. An "impossible" one.

Needless to say, but I will say it anyway, an excellent and timely reminder.

Have a great weekend. 

Breaking the Silence

Its been almost a month since my last post, eek!

I blame the children.

And also my weariness. For which I also blame the children.  :)

As usual, life has been crazy and sometimes there's just no time to blog. Or rather, I just don't make time to blog.

Priorities people. We all have them, what are yours?

I digress...

We've been working on a few house projects, pictures to come. Or the "unveiling" if you will. Do you like my new DIY blogger lingo?  :P  If you've learned anything about me from my blog, don't hold your breathe for the pics of anything. Our house has become one of "those" homes. You know the type, where every single room has a rather obvious half done project that was abandoned in the 11th hour b/c something else needed to be worked on. A few missing pieces of hardware here, a extra coat of paint missing here, a broken pane of glass all over the floor there.....I did actually clean that one up right away. Lucky for T-Bone, I had a spare in the laundry room or mama would have been quite sad about that one.

My littles were playing swords (or something else violent) with the brooms and mops in the hallway and knocked a picture off the wall with disastrous results. Guess T-Bone thought Beck outshined him in that one.

If you live in MN, then you share our joy of the beautiful, finally-arrived, spring-ish weather we are enjoying. I love being able to send the boys outside, even if it means the come back in with all the dirt they could find and spread it around my house in 3 seconds flat. Small price.

Well, that's about it, just a few of my thoughts for the day.

I'm feeling a small spurt of bloggy-ness this week so stay tuned for a new Favorite Quote Friday tomorrow as well!

Blessings on your Thursday.

A Day in the Life: Easter Sunday

“At least I didn’t swear this year so we’re off to a good start! Certainly better than last year.” Those may or may not have been the words spoken by my husband upon (finally) packing everyone into the car for church on Easter morning. Not everyone was happy, but at least everyone was cute.

Priorities.

It was only 9:40am but everyone was already bouncing off the walls more than usual since the “Sugar-Nazi,” ME, had allowed breakfast to come from the Easter basket. It was tasty, but there were consequences…

Church was awesome and we were off to Nana’s house! Lunch, chocolate, dinner, chocolate, more Easter baskets, chocolate, jelly beans, and more chocolate.

How is it possible that my children received more candy for Easter than for Halloween? Oh well. At this rate it will last until October when it gets restocked! And Easter is way better than Halloween so I guess it works.

I don’t know if any of you do this, but whenever we are at my mom’s house, we kinda stop watching our children. Well, that’s not entirely true, unless you ask my brother, but we do stop watching them with both eyes since there are lots more adults around. Tim falls asleep on mom’s couch (every time) and I try to squeeze in as many adult conversations as possible before we have to leave and once again be the only 2 adults responsible for our 3 preschoolers. Being outnumbered is so unfair.

After a second dinner (in the car) of more chocolate we got everyone home and in bed and then finished off the night reading Christmas updates. I know. What can I say? Finally got around to catching up on everyone’s 2012, better late than never. Reading Christmas cards at Easter seems a perfect way to give you a tiny glimpse into life with twins. Never boring and never seasonally appropriate.

Happy Easter everyone, He is RISEN!!!

Disclaimer: In case you think I threw my husband under the bus by telling the world he swore on Easter Sunday (gasp!), for every “incident” like that he has, I probably have 10. So there you go. 

Embracing the CHAOS

I like peace and quiet. I like things orderly and succinct. I don’t like too much unnecessary noise (or words for that matter). I love to just BE. I don’t like to be busy or to be rushed. I am a human being not a human doing after all. I know, I know, a corny one too.

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

I know that’s what you were thinking, so I went ahead and said it for you.

The other day I said to Tim, “I can’t keep up with my life. I can’t respond to everyone, let alone in a timely fashion. I can’t catch my breath, literally or figuratively.” Without missing a beat, he motioned to what was going on next to us. Three little boys, all crammed into T-Bone’s crib, jumping up and down, squealing and having the time of their life.

Oh wait…my life IS those 3 little boys jumping up and down (on one another) in that crib. I need to respond (in a timely fashion) to them. I need to be present with them. I need to embrace their chaos….not complain about it. Enjoy it. Enjoy the chaos. Enjoy the chaos. If I repeat it enough, maybe it will start to happen. 

Actually, I know it will. I can’t lie, that sounds literally impossible to me, but those 3 little words, embrace the chaos, were given to me as an assignment by One who knows far more than I, so I am confident I can do it. I’m up to the challenge.

So here’s to chaos, cheers!

 busy

busy

busy

Happy Birthday To Me!

Happy birthday to me!

Spent today with my sweet boys and lots (and lots) of free Caribou Coffee. I am St. Arbucks girl through and through, but FREE is free.

Mom stopped by and brought me a birthday scone (smile) and off to mom’s group we went. After that, I drove around with 3 napping boys and a lovely friend, chatting, snacking, and collecting free drinks. Yes, you read that right. More free drinks. Slurp.

Dinner of spicy enchiladas (boys had hotdogs) and homemade chocolate turtle cake! Life is good. Had to pace myself today…..my stomach may not thank me tomorrow, but today was sweet.

Change gears.

Life is good and grief is fickle.

Kind of like a fickle lover. Not like I have ever had one of those, but you get my point. He complicates things when he’s around, but you don’t want him to leave. You don’t long for his company, yet you can’t let go of his sting. You crave it even. Letting go of him feels like letting go of the loved one he may represent.

My birthday is a marker of grief. It marks 34 years of life as well as 18 months without Dad. Yes, time lessens the blow, but the ache remains. The hole can never be filled. Miss you dad. Always.

Happy birthday to me. I’ll celebrate for the both of us. Though you are at the better party.

xoxo

My babies are almost toddlers...

Oy vey.

The twins turn 2 tomorrow. TWO!

How is this possible?

I no longer have babies. I'm trying to get into the habit of calling them the twins instead of the babies. Hard habit to break.

I am strangely emotional about this milestone. While I am so overwhelmed by the three darlings I already have, the thought of not having a baby, or a couple babies, or a new baby coming soon seems so unusual to me. I don't know how to process it.

This past month has been INSANE and March is pretty much completely booked as well. Lots of birthdays coming up! Hooray for cake.

Reflections on this week:

1. We sold the duplex. Wow.

2. Both of our cell phones broke within hours of each other just 32 days short of getting new ones for free. We ended up at the store with all 3 kids for a very long time. It was great. As you maybe imagined. Certainly a surprise way to spend the evening.

3. Signed up for another 5k - eek!

4. See #1

5. My children refuse to eat anything I make. Even. Chicken. Nuggets. Unreal.

6. Splurged on a pound of Starbucks coffee (with 2 coupons) and it makes me SO happy in the morning. SO happy. Verona. Mmmmmm.

7. See #1

8. God is faithful. This should be #1.

9. I think I need a worry-free MLT vacation.

10. I like my new cell phone.

11. See #1

Selling the duplex has been a theme of our marriage for the past 5+ yrs, thus the repeat mention. We wish the transaction had gone differently, but we praise God that we no longer have to be forced into the role of property manager.

How are they 2 already?!

Dessert Make-over

I love to cook and I love how forgiving recipes can be. I'm not a very good rule follower when it comes to culinary design. I like to bake as well, just not as much as cooking. Better said, I like to eat baked good.

As you may know, rule recipe following is necessary when it comes to baking. Its literally an exact science. If you're anything like me, you sometimes throw caution to the wind regardless of this truth. Maybe you are more fortunate, but this usually doesn't work out so well for me. Slow learner.

I recently threw said caution to the wind and made some bars for an event at our home. I tasted one that afternoon purely for testing purposes. Quality control people!

They were not so good. Too dry and way too crumbly. I would have been cleaning up crumbs for the next month. No good. So......here's what I did:


So I have no idea where I got this idea from. I am fairly confident I am not stealing borrowing it from anyone, but you never know...

First, I crumbled up the whole pan into small pieces and pressed them down a bit.

And then I poured sweetened condensed milk over the top. Oh no she didn't! Oh yes, I did. Homemade sweetened condensed milk at that, thank you Pinterest. If that sounds weird to you, trust me, works like a charm every time. I am a professional and I have done this before. This little trick has never failed me and I have messed up quite a few pans of yumminess in my short life.

Then, of course, I added more chocolate chips. This also works like a charm every time. With anything :)

Then I re-baked it at about 350 for about 20-30 minutes, keeping an eye on it. This time around, you don't want it to be too gooey.

I only took a picture of it on a plate, not finished in the pan, but you get the idea. May not look like much, but it was a delicious medley of chocolate, peanut butter, and oatmeal. So good. Of course, it can't really be replicated b/c I didn't  follow a recipe and I messed it up before I fixed it...hard to duplicate. But, nonetheless, my dessert was rescued and I had a basement full of happy tummys!

So, my advice to you is if you mess up the dessert, don't fret, get out the sweetened condensed milk! Waste not, want not :)  Adding a can of that will also save you money from having the hubs run to the store to buy a ready made cake. 

Happy Tuesday. Go bake something.