MISTY'S MORNINGS

As  Murphy's Law would have it, I had a cell phone crisis while reading Chapter One of The Hands Free Mama by Rachel Mary Stafford . I reached my cell data limit a full week prior to the turnover to a blank data page. A full week early.  This has never happened before. Not even close. At first I thought it was my kids.  Surely they had been streaming Netflix on my phone at basketball games all month. "Those little guys are racking up all my data!" I thought. "They really have a problem with screen time and it must be stopped. Time to tighten the reigns!" I checked the data usage. Nope. It was me. All me. Does it make it any better that I was live streaming lots of Joyce Meyer podcasts while driving alone  to and from millions of appointments and errands over the past few weeks? They're Christian and uplifting, right? Oh, and I must admit to watching a fair amount of The Blaze TV while preparing several freezer meals for my family. I must stay on...

Unlike last Wednesday when we awoke to a snow day glistening in the sun , today's snow day is the very image of winter, smokey gray sky and everything else draped in starkly white snowdrifts.  I can tell the boys had enough of the snow last week because they went out once and came back in quickly.  Their teachers sent them home with homework this time in anticipation of missing several days and it looks like they'll have plenty of time to get it all done. Our dear neighbor had to make it in to work and promptly wound up stuck in front of our house.  With a little shove from my husband he managed to make it out of the neighborhood. Hopefully he is safe and sound on his ship by now. Our beach town is ill equipped for snow this deep.  They declared a state of emergency last night and have brought in snowplows from elsewhere to help clear the roads. In the rush of excitement for this snow storm I stocked up on goodies. I plan to make a M...

It must seem like overkill to our relatives up north that we make such a big deal of a few inches of snow falling in one night. Having grown up in snow country and raised my boys in Chicago during their younger years, we are more than comfortable with a little snow. I think that's why we notice its absence all winter long here by the sea. We have been praying (literally) for at least one snow day this year and now we are on day two of no school!  What a treat! We pulled out the snow pants, boots and mittens and had a good laugh at how much the older two have grown.  RW's pants are at least three inches too short but they still fit around his slim waist so they worked just fine. They first headed outside at 7:00am yesterday.  Then again at 10:00, 1:00, and 4:00.  By that time I found myself silently grateful that we only do this once a year.  What a pain it is helping these boys out of muddy bo...

“A balanced life has a rhythm. But we live in a time, and in a culture, that encourages everyone to just move faster. I'm learning that if I don't take the time to tune in to my own more deliberate pace, I end up moving to someone else's , the speed of events around me setting a tempo that leaves me feeling scattered and out of touch with myself. I know now that I can't write fast; that words, my own thoughts and ideas, come to the surface slowly and in silence. A close relationship with myself requires slowness. Intimacy with my husband and guarded teenage sons requires slowness. A good conversation can't be hurried, it needs time in which to meander its way to revelation and insight. Even cooking dinner with care and attention is slow work. A thoughtful life is not rushed.”  Katrina Kenison   The Gift of an Ordinary Day: A Mother's Memoir I used to really dislike January. It was such a let down following the glittering...

Images of life before Christmas: Kindergarten Christmas party KC singing Away In A Manger in the school Christmas Program Blurry picture of ZJ singing in a 5th grade trio RW and fellow 6th graders posing while scripture is being read Gift buying completed on Christmas Eve ~ time to wrap like a fiend. Images of life after Christmas: Peaceful pink sunrise Christmas quiches Lots of X-Box gaming Christmas cake Time for playing by the fire Can you feel the difference in the before and after Christmas energy?  Maybe it was the result of the later Thanksgiving holiday this year but Advent came so quickly and flew by faster than usual.   Many of my friends expressed a sense of pressure and urgency this year and we agreed that it was a year to let a lot go . On the first day of vacation one of my friends lamented that she hadn't accomplished any of the fun Christmasy plans tucked into each box of her homemade Advent ca...

Are you ready for Christmas baking season?  This year I am going to be in the kitchen more because we are staying home for the entire vacation and have no company coming to visit.  This is bittersweet as we may be a little lonely after skyping with our families who will be together far away in North Dakota. Still, I have a deep sense of relaxation heading into this busy time of year.  One major sense of peace has been the result of my decision to forgo sending out Christmas cards this year.  My cousin and I were texting about how neither of us had a family photo or the time (or desire) to get this task completed in a rush.  Then I remembered the first page of my art journal from t he e-course with Brené Brow n . It was a page of permission slips. (see photo above ~ I added the Christmas hats to bring these permissions with me into the holidays) We were to draw slips and write down things we gave ourselves permission to feel, do, or not to do.   ...

As you know from my last post ~ 40 Things I Learned While 40 ~ I am now 41 and as of Monday, so is my husband.  (I love that I can say I married a younger man.) I wonder what he would list as his 40 things he learned while 40? Sounds like a good question for our next date night. Hopefully that will happen before we are both 42! Back on my birthday, while the hint of summer was still heavy in the air, we took our coffee and two chairs to the beach just down the road.  There we sat, ignoring the to-do lists and pressing demands of his work, and remembered what we are really celebrating with each passing year  ~  our personal relationships.  Without relationships our work would be meaningless, our to-do lists pointless drudgery. We held hands and watched the birds sailing high then streaking downward in search of their own breakfast.  The sun climbed before us and the still calm water gleamed in pink and silver tones. We talked about...