Coolness!

Okay, before I tell you what it is that has me making up a word like "coolness" I just have to show you this layout. I've been wanting to try computer journaling with my scrapbooking for some time now and I finally gave it a whirl. I even copied a good portion of that text right from a blog entry with this same photo of my youngest scrumptious one! Ohhhh, somebody stop me, I can see this becoming a bit of an obsession.

The next thing is that I am super-duper excited to be having coffee with a friend I haven't seen in a while tomorrow night! Gary said at one point today that I probably wouldn't be gone all that long. I just looked at him. Hello? I haven't seen this gal in months and he thinks it's going to be a short little visit?? Hate to break it to you, honey...

Now for the cool thing...we paid off the balance of my student loans on Friday! I am so thankful to be finished with this monthly payment. I'm starting to think it might be fun to have, like, no debt. Ahem. Sorry about that. Momentary glitch. Debt that allows for a roof over your head and/or acquisition of stamping, scrapbooking, and stitching supplies shall hereby be referred to as "good debt." It's the bad kind of debt I'm talking about. Like a summer home on the Riviera or 20 pairs of designer jeans kind of debt.

Okay, I gotta get these little ones to bed. I need a yogurt to bring me back to my senses.

More later.

Wii are busy

Wii would love to talk but wii are busy. Since Saturday morning, when Noah and I left the house at 6:30 to line up at Toys R Us, the Wii has become a new member of our household. What the packaging doesn't specify is that the term Wii translates to mean, roughly, "you, your immediate family, and any neighbourhood children within a 2 mile video-gaming sniffable detection range." Honestly, I think kids have a built in GPS for these kinds of machines.

So, it remains to be seen whether this was our smartest purchase. I've been the lone holdout in our home on these gaming systems. I caved on this one only because I've been assured that this system does not lead to couch potato-itis. I'll let you know. Wii have a bowling/badminton/baseball/golf/tennis tournament going on in the living room that might need some help for the high scores. Ahem, I mean, I'm going to go cheer. Of course.

Spring??

Y'all probably think I passed out and have yet to recover after my weekend alone ended in the return of my family. Nope, I live to tell the tales of domestic life but we travelled this past weekend for Easter (Happy Easter, He is Risen!) and I was pretty intensely busy getting ready for that. We're home from visiting my parents and it feels good to be back after enjoying a weekend with my family. It is so cold here though that it feels like spring is a long way off.

I'm not sure when it happened but this place, this life, has definitely become what I call home. In my early years of college and university, even the first few years we were married, I delighted in going back to my childhood home. The smells, the familiarity of the house I grew up in, the taste of my mother's cooking. Gradually it all changed and the familiar grew to be where WE live, where I cook, where my children are growing. In some ways that makes me sad as I realize that I just don't belong in my childhood anymore and that the responsibility for those memories now rests with me. I struggle "going home" now and there is a tension of how they do things vs. how our house now runs. It's all part of that "leave and cleave" stuff of marriage but it makes me feel just...so adult or something. At any rate, going away convinces me that I am a homebody and that this, for better or for worse, is most definitely where I belong.

In thinking of all of this, I want to share a layout that I finished up during my weekend "retreat" while my dh and children were away. This lovely couple is my grandparents. They live far away, in Illinois, and I don't see them very often now. My grandfather is such a strong personality and I'm more like him than I'd like to admit at times. Interaction with him has shaped me, mostly for good. He has a passion for the Word of God that he's passed on to me. He feels intensely and gives the most amazing hugs. He also experiences some lows that are lower than what some experience. I share all of these things.

More later.