proof that love does get better with time.

 Tomorrow Mark and I celebrate eleven years of marriage. While looking through some pictures I came across our engagement photos. I  hesitated to even post any of them. They are awkward and embarrassing and seriously lacking. But it is part of our journey and proof that love really does get better (and more attractive and stylish and passionate and sweeter) with time... So go ahead and have a good laugh. I did.

Happy Anniversary Mark. It really has been a sweet journey. I look at that guy in those pictures and don't even know him anymore really. I love who we have become together. It really does keep getting better and I know there is more ahead.... i love you!

tired. and refreshed.

I came off the summer feeling tired. I cried like a baby when the kids climbed aboard the school bus but a week into the school year and  I am realizing just how tired I really was. I was exhausted and I am finally now catching my breath. I felt guilty at first for enjoying the break from the mayhem. Like I was somehow a bad mom for sending them away for a whole day. And I still feel a tad bit guilty for being very excited for quiet afternoons like this one where two girls are sleeping and it is just me and absolute utterly blissful silence except for the birds chirping outside and the hum of the dishwasher. But I am realizing that it is okay to enjoy this part of motherhood too. I have this martyrdom mentality sometimes that is so far from God's heart.
 And today I feel His pleasure in this... the quiet.
And He is saying "Heather take a deep breath. This is my gift to you." 

Drink deep girl because 3:45 is coming and then the craziness will return and this will not be your reality.

Thank you God for quiet and time to think. 

"What will I do? I will think my thoughts, which I haven’t heard since June 5th. I miss my thoughts and I look forward to seeing what they’ve been doing. For all I know they could’ve been curing cancer, but they’ve been stamped out by missives like He won’t quit touching my game/remote control/Afro and Could you make me a sandwich/pizza/taco and I am bored/hot/hungry and When are we going to leave/eat/bathe again? "

-Jen Hatmaker on sending kids back to schoool , jenhatmaker.com