Life Lately {Goodbye 2014!}

I was talking with a friend the other day about how we go through experiences that are confusing and painful and we don't understand WHY. Time passes and things change and sometimes there's a big OH!! A lightbulb moment of clarity as to why the first things had to happen so you could deal with the now. We decided, as painful as it is at the time to wonder and be confused, it's great to not know some things ahead of time.

Washing windows for Grandma

Ok, that was really wordy and I'm not sure it makes sense.

Let me try again. 2014 was one of those years that I'm glad I didn't know about when it started.

Enjoying Trees & Trains in Salem, MO.

If you had sat me down last January and told me the two biggest things that would happen during the year, I wouldn't have believed you and I wouldn't have liked you very much.

So since I try to see God working in everything in my life, I am glad He doesn't tell us everything up front. Aren't you? We're just asked to trust. One day at a time. And when the days are overwhelming, break it down into hours or tasks. Or breaths.

It's the little things that make me cry. Like Grandpa teaching my son about constellations, chores that used to be his now being done by Grandma, seeing his shoes waiting by the door. Saying goodbye is hard.

I want to run through this year, just to get it all in one place. For me. For posterity.

Last January I expanded my day care to four fairly regular children. Plus my three. It was nuts! Let me just admit that now, and while we needed and appreciated the money, Mommy was crazy. I was lonely, frustrated, unhealthy and zero fun. There were time--I think they're on record here on the blog or at least on Instagram--when I had all seven children at once. At that time, my oldest was 6, so I had seven under 7.

Loving on Grandma

Spring came and a couple clients dropped out and the rest could be outside sometimes, but I was still crazy busy, just feeling like I was fighting all the time. With me, with my kids, with my perspective, with finding balance.

Our last communion with Grandpa.

Meanwhile we were still missionary candidates with no donations. My husband worked for hours on his presentations and we went nowhere. We know we were the slowest grossing missionary team, if you can call it that. We worked hard, called hard, talked hard, presented hard for a year and still had less than 10% of our budget! Most missionary couples are able to raise at least 70% in that amount of time.

The boys made a fort with their older cousins today. Tonight they're trying to sleep in it. Ha!

We really struggled with our decision but we finally withdrew as candidates in July. It made us cry. We felt so discouraged, so let down, so disappointed we wouldn't be going to live in the British Isles! We were so bummed out that we had had to quit! We wondered what we did wrong, what we could have done differently, why did it seem that God opened that door only to shut it a year later?

It's almost embarrassing. I mean, I don't know if that's how people see us, but I'm embarrassed by it. We're the couple who couldn't be missionaries. We're the failed missionaries. We're the people who wanted to go but no one had enough faith in us to back our mission...

I'm embarrassed about our kind supporters. The 9% who gave and now have nothing. They believed in us and we couldn't do it. We failed them.

Story time with Uncle Glenn

But the weight was off our shoulders! The stress was out of our lives. We have been doing much better as a family without that constant pressure of fundraising.

That's a good thing, because July was the month that the other shoe dropped: Gary's dad was diagnosed with cancer.

At my father-in-law's memorial. Sad sad day.

It was sudden and awful and terrible and if you've been around at all you know we said goodbye to him less than three weeks ago.

Cancer. It's so mean! Six months ago, Jon was a healthy, vibrant, active man, a pillar in his church and the patriarch of the family. He battled cancer with everything he had. Five rounds of chemo, plus juicing, essential oils, and other remedies. And lost.

Putting up the tree before unpacking our suitcases. #priorities

We know we'll see him again. But it doesn't make it better.

In the background, our little family has been doing really well, honestly. I feel that right now we're interacting and helping each other thrive better than we have done for years! We're friends, we like to hang out, our kids are fun, Gary and I have a really great relationship.

Our tree is a little bottom heavy!

In August, Gary started school to finish a degree he was working on about 15 years ago. We conveniently live less than half a mile from Union College. He's finished his first semester and should graduated in May with a degree in Theology. He will be able to pastor a church after that, and we're hopeful of getting hired in the next few months.

I feel that 2014 has a been a good year in some ways. It's taught us to be content with less. We don't need a bunch of money to go out and have fun. We much rather stay home and cook something, though eating out sometimes is nice. Homeschool is working for us, and our cut-back day care schedule make it much more feasible. We eat well, very healthful for the most part.

Peppermint hot chocolate and a Christmas movie!

We like living in Lincoln. Well, winter stinks, but it is what it is. Lincoln is small enough to be friendly and seem safe and big enough to have all the stores you want within an easy drive. We have a Children's Museum and the zoo in Omaha is awesome! We have lots of friends at our church who have kids that are friends with our kids. We love the parks, bike paths, local lake, and our own backyard.

Christmas Eve

So there you go, 2014. You weren't the best year and I'm ready to move on. Thanks for the lessons, thanks for the moments of realization that this normal, messy, boring life is precious and special and beautiful, just the way it is!

About Dying

I mentioned yesterday that I had stayed with my in-laws after Thanksgiving. It's true! The boys stayed with me but Gary had to go home to finish up the semester and go to work.

I'm pretty sure I mentioned it a few months ago, but my father-in-law has cancer. At this point he is on hospice and is only expected to live another day or two.

Jon is 75, but still young--or was 6 months ago. As late as last spring there was very little he couldn't do. We all expected another 10-15 good years out of him and are so disappointed to lose him so soon and so quickly.

Our real heartache though, is for Helen. She is losing her husband, her rock, her best friend, her partner. She is the one who has to keep on living. I know she will be ok eventually, but my heart hurts for her in the next few weeks and months.

I also have to admit, the timing is awful! The holidays can be hard after a loss, but to have the loss occur right between Thanksgiving and Christmas... I'm sure the next few years will be difficult.

We have hope though, in the resurrection and second coming. We know we will see Grandpa again. Jon has seen Jesus a time or two in the last couple of weeks. He has been comforted, has been told that Jesus will take care of Helen and is looking forward to the pain and disease being over.

My mom said something that has helped my perspective a lot. She said, "There are worse ways to die than at home surrounded by family, made as comfortable as possible, and regularly affirmed by those around you that you are loved and will be missed." 

Jon and Helen have been a wonderful witness of leaning on Jesus even when terrible things happen. This is not God's plan. He does not cause pain or suffering or early death due to disease. An enemy has done this.

Thank you for your prayers as our family goes through this difficult time.

Breathe {Day 1}

I'm afraid this post is more ashes than beauty. And even though it's Day 1, it's still kind of a preface. Kind of setting the stage.

For with all of the coming up-to-date happenings, life-in-our-world updates, pretty signs and cute house stuff I plan to blog about during these 31 Days of Blogging posts, this is happening too.

This precious little sweetheart is my nephew, Malcolm. He's the second son of my brother and sister-in-law (who has been my best friend for 20 years).

Baby Malcolm was born at 36 weeks and isn't breathing on his own. The first few days of his life were very rocky and very scary.

In my worry and prayer over baby Malcolm, I've felt impressed to praise. Instead of feeling helpless, fearful and discouraged, praise helps us realize how much bigger and more powerful our God is when compared to our problems.

This verse has especially spoken to me.

Malcolm is struggling to breathe. It's been three days since his last crisis and he isn't out of the woods yet, but I know Who gives him breath. 

Please remember baby Malcolm and his family in your prayers.

Breathe, baby, breathe!

Life Lately {May}

The problem with using my cell phone pictures so frequently when blogging is that I don't have much new content left for InstaFridays. But maybe no one cares, and this is easier anyway, so here I go! What's left of May, for your viewing pleasure.

We're renting right now, but we got a garden planted anyway! There are some great raised beds as part of the landscaping around the house, and they were completely empty.

Jonathan really does a great job with a hoe, and was so excited about planting flowers! We gave him his own little plot. We planted tomatoes, zucchini, eggplant, spinach, lettuce, garlic, cucumbers, beets, carrots, basil, parsley, cilantro and marigolds. I'll show you more when they grow in.

These little guys actually did a great job spreading mulch and hauling away rocks, but I happened to catch them taking a break and accused them of being our supervisors! Little cuties.

On one Sunday I was told very firmly that I was supposed to leave the house. Yeah, I got kicked out! I had no idea where to go for my free time, so I grabbed my latest Country Living and happened to find a Scooter's Coffee shop in a cute little neighbor hood. New magazine + yummy beverage + free time = bliss!

This cuteness? Said Scooter's from above. This is their drive-thru. Totally love it. Totally need a friend to go hang out with me there once a week or something. #mommytherapy

One day a couple of weeks ago, we were invited to join another family at Pioneers Park. The day was perfect; a little cool in the morning but sunny and enjoyable. We saw elk and baby geese, ok, fine, goslings, learned about the prairie and beavers and turtles and all sorts of stuff.

The boys liked this tee-pee and would have stayed much longer but it was lunch time.

We also got to see this turtle eat her lunch--a piece of banana!

One of my kids takes fingerpainting quite literally.

Another emulates his big brother.

And the third is three, what more do you expect?

Ok, there are moments when they take it seriously and have so much fun creating!

Then they go back to doing this...

... and this happens and they wonder why we don't paint more often. #rocketscience

I love love love this jar board! It's for sale at my Etsy store, if you love love love it too!

Nothing beats time at a lake throwing rocks!

I let a mess overwhelm me and procrastinated cleaning it up.

It took less than an hour. Next time I'm not putting it off so long. Duh.

This was the first time we broke out the sprinkler to beat the heat! The boys were in heaven!

But then they found mud and painted on some war paint while Gary was grilling and I was inside making the rest of supper. We've been eating outside on my new picnic table a lot! But this night, a certain trio got hosed off before enjoying their dinner al fresco!

We had our first camping trip of the season this weekend! We went to a little lake near Lincoln, and I think the boys had fun. I'll tell you more about it in an up-coming post. #spoileralert #wehatedit

So how did May treat you? I feel I had a better balance of babysitting and other Mom responsibilities. We got all the birthdays celebrated and I survived seeing all my babies turn a year older. #iwantanotherone #kidding #notkidding

I also want to state for the record that this was the shortest spring ever! The first of the month was still a little cold and rainy and by the end it was officially too hot/muggy/buggy to stay outside all day. I want spring back!

Dear Diary

You know how sometimes things change slowly and almost imperceptibly? Like last night our youngest slept on the top bunk, our middle son spelled out "napkin" and our oldest read us a story--after asking about molecules at supper and proclaiming he wants to be a rocket scientist when he grows up. (Thanks Uncle Luke!) How did they grow up so fast? Where did our little kids go?

Sometimes I do that around the house. Last week I erased my dry-erase calendar in my kitchen. I don't really use it--I check the scribbled up paper calendar in the cupboard for schedules and birthdays and obligations. Now I use the dry-erase board for small goals for the day. Love it!

Then there's the big things, like on Friday when I was tired of an ugly bedroom so I took a couple hours to move it around. We're not planning on living here long, so I didn't hang anything, and if we were going to stay here we'd have some projects to do and maybe some furniture to move down there. But it's prettier!

It's the third week of the year and I haven't blogged for a month. I do that sometimes. I get overwhelmed by too much to do so I start cutting back. Blogging is just a fun hobby; it doesn't pay the bills or help homeschool my kids. It can inspire projects and give me motivation for keeping the house clean, but when my schedule is too full, it has to go.

I'm also struggling with direction, to be honest. My blog doesn't really have a niche. It's part DIY, part mommy blog, part makeover, part... I don't even know. I'd really like it to be a home blog, you know, about renovations and projects and DIY and stuff, but we're renting and have no need or budget for that. I'm also homeschooling and babysitting and the boys don't nap as long, and I'm just not into google analytics and trying to keep every picture/project pin-worthy and original just saps all the fun out of blogging!

We're looking ahead in 2014 with lots of changes on the horizon. We're missionaries in training and have summer school to look forward to, and hopefully a move to the British Isles to plan for (tentatively next fall/winter). That means not only will we be relocating (again), but my focus this summer will be on my classes and squeezing out any extra time for my boys. We're super excited about our move, but we don't know when it will happen for sure. We're fine with that, but it makes it hard to blog about projects. In the meanwhile, there's homeschool and babysitting and meal planning and laundry and not much of me left over for projects and blogging!

I also need to confess that competition was taking all of the fun out of blogging. I was nursing a spirit of discontent. There, I said it. I used to read blogs any chance I could. I had my reader chalk full of inspiring reads. And they are! I love blogs! But I was starting to feel that my home was never enough, that my projects didn't amount to anything, that they were just copies of what I'd seen on Pinterest, that I wasn't real or dedicated enough, and I started to resent it. I'd look at numbers on my blog and get jealous of your blog and your success and your projects. I'd read testimonies of moms making tons of money from blogging and wonder when my big break would come.

And then we moved.
And moved again.
And again.

Then Google Friend Connect turned into Google + and my reader with a million blogs shut down and I don't really like Bloglovin' or Feedly or Google +. So I stopped reading a million blogs. And stopped checking my stats. And stopped comparing myself to the blogs I was no longer reading.

And I started to feel better about me.

I have a long way to go. I have a lot to figure out. I'm still not sure where Beauty4Ashes will land when all of this is said and done. Or maybe it's never done. Maybe it's just evolving. Like my kids suddenly not being babies.

I still like to decorate. I have an innate NEED to make spaces around me feel pretty and inviting. Some say it's a talent. Well, I'm trying to figure out how to help people with it. You know? Other than them looking at my house with my staged pictures and free photo-editing and thinking that I have it all together when you can't hear my boys fighting because they're hungry and neglected because mommy's taking pictures or reading blogs. Or blogging instead of taking a walk or reading my Bible, or developing a post instead of chatting with my husband.

So with that said (and so much more still stuck in my head), welcome to Beauty4Ashes, version 4.0. I'm going to make a conscious effort in 2014 to blog about real life, to keep it simple. To keep a record for my kids to read or family 1000 miles away to keep a finger on our life. I'm going to blog less for you than for me. Wow, that sounds selfish, but if blogging is something I do with my spare time about subjects that interest me or real things in my life, I think I owe it to me to be authentic about it.

Now, before you give up on me, can I share something else? Oh yeah, this blog is now officially for me and not my "target audience". My personal goal for 2014 is this:

Do you dare to join me?

What I'm Loving Lately

I've missed doing Instagram recaps on Fridays. We didn't have internet for, like, ever, then I was just too busy. Now, in between posting for my 31 Days series, I'd love to share a few of my fondest memories for the month of September. But for some reason, my power cord that connects my phone to my computer won't download anything! I don't know why, and I'm sure there are other ways, but I haven't figured anything out yet. Bummer.

I thought though, for the sake of random blog posts to look back on and remember this time in our lives, I'd share a few things with you that I'm loving lately. So, in no particular order, here they are!

1. These guys.

Seriously, have you ever seen more complete joy? It rained a lot one night this week, so I had the boys wear their rain boots on our walk. Puddle splashing led to this. I meant extra laundry and a muddy back patio, but they were so happy!

2. This recipe.

More correctly, the recipe is for the alfredo sauce. It's cauliflower alfredo. As in there's no cheese or milk in it, making it not only almost no calories, it's also vegan and so so yummy! I mean, it's not the real thing, but our tastebuds are completely happy with it. I'm sure there are lots of recipes out there, but I've been using this one by Veggie On a Penny. Try it!

3. This video.



Oh man, I've gotten so many laughs from this. All I can say is #guilty! #everyoneelseisdoingit #inowusethehandmotiontoannoymyhusband #idontevenhaveatwitteraccount

4. This stuff.

I know, it's not good for me, and honestly I only get one or two a week, but an iced coffee with vanilla and half 'n half is my crack. I instantly go to my happy place. I love vanilla lattes too, but the iced coffee is a little cheaper. It does have to be Starbucks though, for the full effect. #guiltypleasure

5. Doing this.

 Yes, I joined a church choir! We're singing this weekend. I didn't realize how much I was missing it!

6. This place.

That's our homeschool classroom! We're still not officially registered, nor do we have any real curriculum, but it feels good to be creative and structured and have lessons and see them learning! They won't let me skip a day either. I'm so glad to be able to be my boys' teacher!

7. This show.

It's a BBC Scotland production called "Monarch of the Glen" which ended in 2008 or so. I think there are 7 seasons and I just finished Season 6. It's set in Scotland, of course, and tells the story of a laird and his estate. It's funny, touching, and just so real! I feel like several of the characters are my personal friends. #sadiknow

Ok, that's all I have time for now. Hopefully I'll figure out how to download my pictures from my phone again soon. What are some of your favorite things lately?