Four Years Ago...

Four years ago I had no clue what I was doing when our unexpected blessing arrived and changed our lives forever. These days I don't have much more of a clue, but I sure am glad that Someone far smarter than us decided it was the perfect time to send us the most amazing gift of our little girl.

             July 31st, 2008                                                                          July 31st, 2012

And my, little girl of ours, how you've grown. Even when I don't have a clue, you seem to. You make your own bed, get your own meals, pour your own drinks, and clean up your messes. Sometimes you are utterly delighted with your independence, and other times it's a little much and you decide it's more fun to crawl around on the floor and pretend to be a baby instead. I understand. Some days I don't want to be grown up yet, either.

Niner! And Lots of Other Excitement...

My little buddy turned nine months old today! This means that Ethan has now officially spent more time outside of me than inside of me, and according to Peter, he's now lived half his life in New York and half in Colorado, which means that pretty soon he'll be a "real Coloradoan." It also means that in a mere three months he will be a one year old. As I'm not yet ready to process that crazy thought, so we'll just move on to the accomplishments this little guy has been up to in the past month!

The Contentment Project, Part II - If (Quality) Time is Money...

...My Investments Are Shot!

Well, I learned pretty quickly in Part I of The Contentment Project that when it comes to superficial stuff, it's fairly easy for me to ditch some of the habits that suck the joy out of life. This week, though, I'm diving into something a little more challenging: devoting some real quality time each day to the people in my life.

I know, tell me about it.

In our society today, time is money, and spending it in ways we don't want can be torture. How we spend our time is vital simply because there's so little of it. Though I get the heebie-jeebies when I think back to any of my college courses that involved numbers, I did seem to internalize two important principles from my economics classes: the more rare something is, higher its value, and the more valuable something is, the smarter our investment is in that valuable item. (Oversimplified, yes...but it works for my analogy. Econ geniuses please don't rip me apart).

More Tragedy...Still Hope

I don't normally like to jump on the social commentary bandwagon when it comes to my personal blog, but after hearing an extremely moving and honest reaction to our nation's most recent tragedy, which occurred less than 15 miles from our home, I think there are some things worth repeating.

We went to church as usual this weekend, but the service began quite differently when our pastor, a Deacon, asked us to stand and just join hands in solidarity for a moment of silent prayer. It was one of the most powerful moments of silence I've experienced, seeing arms outstretched, old and young grasping hands in intense sadness and prayer, but all the while forming an unbreakable circle of unity.

The Contentment Project, Part I: Want vs. Have

Let me start by saying that we live a very cushy life. It was already pretty cushy when we cut ties with the Army a few months ago. Since then we've embraced a lovely new life and the cush factor has reached an all-time high. We waved goodbye to our world of deployments and war and friends who've laid down their lives for us and stepped easily into the life we've been planning for years. I traded in my uniform for jeans and time at home with the kids; my husband traded in his for suits and ties and nine to five. We gained a house with nearly twice the square footage of our old one, and moved from an isolated community without a support network to a picture-perfect and kid-friendly suburb with grandparents right around the corner. It's priceless to know that we'll never again being separated due to Army missions; even on busy days we still get to see each other at the end of the day. We'd dreamed of this life for so long, and now, to be finally living it? Sheer perfection!
So why am I writing about contentment right now?

Well, it all started one day shortly after we arrived in our new little Utopia. I was happily driving home from story time with the kids in my well-loved soccer mom SUV. As we slowed for a traffic light, I suddenly noticed that I was literally surrounded by luxury: an Audi in front of me, a Lexus to my right, and a BMW behind me. As if to add insult to injury, a sleek Mercedes breezed by me on the left and turned swiftly into the gated community.

The Good Idea Fairy

Remind me again that I'm
buckled in. I dare you.

The Good Idea Fairy loves my children. So much, in fact, that she visits them almost daily. You'd think that with more than five times their life experience combined, I would be able to stay ahead of the crazy ideas that manifest themselves in their little brains. Apparently not. Thus I present to you The Ways in Which My Children Have Outsmarted Me--all true, with an overwhelming majority carried out in the two seconds I wasn't looking.

There are your standard good ideas, of course, like the pencil/crayon/marker that didn't make it back to into the Bin of Safekeeping and instead became a medium for the mural on the wall. I'm still erasing pencil marks which I continue to find throughout the main floor and stairwell. Thankfully the wall can be reclaimed; the hand-made embroidered white placemat from my mother-in-law which met its match with the orange crayon was not so lucky. The power of dirt is another common attraction. Regardless of how many times I issue the reminder that dirt is off-limits, I can count on Marie turning my flowerbeds into "ant homes" every time.  And shortly after outfitting our breakfast bar with some bar stools, the very same culprit who decorated the walls discovered he could reach my