Books.

I love to read.  Always have.  My tastes have changed and I've picked up more classics and challenging reads as I've gotten older.  The Kindle has given me unspeakable joy, since the airline weight limits keep us from bringing almost any books back.  Still, we have quite a library and an ever growing pile of books that I haven't gotten to yet on our shelves.  I suppose having two little ones and usually feeling fried at the end of the day, I'm not tearing through stuff as quickly as I might like.  I feel like reading is one of those things that keeps my mind fresh, challenges me to think harder than I naturally would in my somewhat lazy natural self and gives me fodder for conversation with my husband and other booky friends.  And in some cases, it gives me a few moments to escape to another world or another time and completely forget, if even for 20 minutes, the weariness of my day or my concerns.  So, as others before me have done, I decided to share what I am reading right now.  I never thought it a good habit to have more than one book going at a time, but with so much to read, I've started getting into more than one.  Also, if it's a particularly weighty non-fiction, sometimes I also want the chance to jump between that and something fiction that I don't have to try so hard to apply to my life while I'm reading it.  Without further ado:

1.  Lord of the Rings- Book one.  I've been wanting (or feeling a duty) to read this series for a long time now.  I just read The Hobbit for the first time a month or so ago and loved it...so I knew I would enjoy these, too.

2.  Instruments in the Redeemers Hands by Paul David Tripp.  This one is incredibly in depth and at some points reads a bit like a counselling text book.  I have enjoyed the half that I've read but found that there's so much info that I can't keep it all in my head.  However, I believe it's pretty invaluable in helping each one of us to be a better listener and point those in crisis (including ourselves) back to Christ.

3.  The Grand Weaver by Ravi Zacharias.  This is my first Zacharias book.  I've heard so many good things about him and have wanted to read something by him for a long time.  I've barely started but already love the way he tells stories and shares important truths in a practical and interesting way.  I think I'm going to really like and be challenged this one.

4.  Created to Connect: A Christian's Guide to The Connected Child by Karyn Purvis.  This one is a handbook that you can download free online.  It goes along with the author's book, The Connected Child, which I found incredibly helpful (in theory, for now) and practical in helping parents to understand the varied challenges a child adopted from a "hard place" deals with.  I'm looking forward to going through the end of chapter questions with Scotty as we continue to pray for our little guy and the wisdom and grace we need to be his parents.

So, there you have it.  I'm kinda crawling through most of these since time doesn't allow each day for a lot of reading.  Except for children's books, of course...

This is my life.

I just found this blog that I had written before Christmas and never posted:

Last night Natty called to us because she had a bad dream.  5 minutes later she called again because she was still scared.  She eventually ended up in our bed because she had a tummy ache that led to a good part of the night in and out of the bathroom.  The girls are magnetically drawn to me when they're in bed with us and so I got a decent amount of kicks and "my tummy hurts" and "Mommy, I need water."  This is my life.  Today, the girls were a bit sensitive (or cranky) because of lack of sleep.  Jubilee found out she could spit...and then spit on everything and everyone around her.  It was pretty exciting.  Natty got mad because Jubilee ripped up her home-made ornament and put bits of it in her hair like hair clips.  Natty begged me all day to read to her, so I did, but then she cried when I had to do something else.  This is my life.  I had a long-overdue conversation today with a good friend and we mostly talked about our kids.  I had another conversation with a friend who just had a baby and we talked about our kids as babies.  When I pray, it's often about my kids.  I can't help but recount to Scotty when he comes home all the funny, silly, annoying, terrifying things the girls did that day.  This is my life.  And I love it.  I love knowing that despite my imperfections, my lack of patience, my absolute quandary at times about how to deal with things, I am the person God chose to love, protect, guide, play with, and discipline my children.  I love knowing that no matter how exhausted I am at the end of the day and how much I desire to work out more or have more time to myself, I couldn't be doing anything more important with my life right now.  I don't forget that it's a gift to be home with my children and enjoy these years that pass by quicker than I could have imagined, even though some days I wish it was bedtime already.  This is the life God has given me and it is sweet.

The devil's molar.

The molar.

On the other side of town there stands a mountain, capped with an interesting configuration of rock, that from many angles looks like a molar.  Why someone decided it should be named after the devil is beyond me.  But, we can see this impressive mountain from our house and Natty often asks if we can go climb it.  Scotty and I have done the hike before and it does have pretty spectacular views of the city from the top.  Today, after waffles, I was looking out the window and the molar was peeking out from between two cloud layers and calling to me.  I said, "Let's go climb devil's molar!" and just like that, we were out the door.  You can start from the bottom of the mountain and walk your way up, but that takes several hours.  We chose to drive most of the way up, got stuck in a bit of mud, and then decided to stop there and walk the rest.  It was a bit hairy on the narrow, winding road up with the car wanting to fish tail back and forth.  Lucky for me, I'm married to an expert muddy road driver and he had us safely up in no time.  Natty loved the hunt for mushrooms while Jubilee declared the mud to be "eeew!" a few hundred times before getting distracted by other things.  Both girls did amazingly well and when we managed to get up to the rock part, which actually is a bit of a tricky climb, Natty was quite the trooper.  She gripped the rocky walls and kept moving forward, even when she was afraid of slipping and falling.  With a light drizzle and lots of slippery stones, rainy season might not have been the best choice, but the mist covering the fields and the clouds hovering above the city made a dramatic sight.

Looks pretty dangerous, right? :)

We didn't expect to get to the top, but we did!  I was so proud of Natty (Scotty carried Jubilee all the way up) and we made sure to heap on the affirmations and share plenty of high-fives.  Natty tends to be a bit afraid of even the slightest challenges, so when she puts her all into something and doesn't wuss out- I'm pretty happy about that.  We felt like an adventurous family today and loved having something so fun and beautiful so close by!

Conquered!