monday photopalooza

maggie's first zoo trip

feeding the babies 'apples' and 'juuuuu! (juice):

easter.  :) 

none of my flowers in this bed died out over the winter... a testament to how mild it was!  this was a couple of weeks ago - now everything is busting out like crazy:

I love love love this photo from my shower Saturday.

 

I'm determined to finish reading book one of a sci-fi trilogy this week (for work... it's an audiobook gig)...  wish me luck!  I've got to be strategic about work the next couple of months, to get everything wrapped up and accomplished both well and in the least-stressful manner possible.  did I mention how blessed we are?  because we are.

-m.y.

garage makeover... an update

just to refresh your memory, this was our garage:

SO.

one of the first things we did was purchase this outdoor storage unit to move a few outdoorsy things out of the garage.

our goal was to try to control the temperature in the garage without totally pulling out all of the sheetrock and insulating the walls and the whole shebang.  we opted to put about 14 inches of insulation up in the ceiling:

mr. micheletti was invaluable.  I cannot stress this enough.  there used to be a closet here beside the washer/dryer, fyi.

trying to position/tape/float new sheetrock after the insulation is in place.

another necessary reinforcement, mr. fuller.  heartfelt thanks also goes to ben and nicole (somehow I neglected to snag their photo but they both came over on Good Friday to help us out).

Reuben the electrician came and hooked us up with a few new outlets, a work light, a ceiling fan, and a dedicated circuit for the garage.  this is after the ceiling/walls have been painted, before the floor:

and this was at the end of the night.  eventually that raised area was painted, too, and mr. sandifer came over to help us saw out those metal things coming up out of the slab.  please note the water cooler in the corner - in the above photo, it looks super ugly.  we decided to pain the wooden stand the same color as the floor, and poof!  suddenly the whole thing sort of disappeared.  ahhh, the magic of paint.

to help with temperature control and lighten things up a bit, we decided to go with a new insulated garage door.  

this photo doesn't really do it justice... the decision to change this door has seriously changed the whole complexion of our house from the street.

magz, overseeing daddy positioning new Flor carpet tiles.

this was a dilapidated cabinet left behind by our renters.

I opened up some paint we already had, and voila (I'm still looking for some interesting hardware to jazz it up a little):

I'm still in the process of organizing.  Maggie approved of this purchase and was very affronted when I ultimately put a childproof lock on these doors.

this is probably the only time it will appear this uncluttered.  BUT, it's a really good start to a new, usable space, and it's made our 2 bedroom/1 bath abode even more rockin'.

when I get it all totally done, I'll take some decent photos in the daytime.

in other news, I'm very pregnant.

-m.y.

we're nothing if not trendy.

the title of this post came from something I read about how it's so trendy to be angsty about church life now.  cheers to feeling on the cutting edge and yet being incredibly common!  :)


To carry over a couple of slightly paraphrased thoughts from the last post about churches....


"I'm interested in dialoguing more about what we expect our churches to be, what we're allowed to expect from them, and where 'church' may not be required to meet us..."


and:


"How do churches of today navigate and plan for the mobile, fluid lives of today's people while simultaneously calling for community, help, and service?  How do the different sorts of lives church members lead today change what our churches do?  Or how they do them?"


One thing I took from the comments is the idea that maybe church isn't intended to revolve around a building, that church can focus on people and thus make itself more malleable for a membership who may be away from home 2-3 times a month for days at a time, or may have multiple communities they serve in and less time to devote primarily to their church (as traditional church volunteering may go).  I do think this idea appeals to many in our current generation, and is exemplified in the movement of many toward more house churches, church plants, internet faith communities and the like.  There's definitely a feeling sometimes that we focus too much on trying to get people to come to where we are - within our walls - than a push to get us to go out and just BE the church to the world wherever and however we interact with it.  


On the flipside, I think it's safe to say that the existence of our buildings, staff, etc. does introduce added elements of business and expectation... who runs the church?  How do we support it, and what do we want it to do?  If we have a building, shouldn't we be using it as much as possible and encouraging our people to come and gather as often as we can to, you know, worship and accomplish stuff together?  Since monies are corporately collected by the membership, shouldn't many great things for God spring out of and be mobilized by that central community?


I find myself somewhere in the middle, predictably.  I do feel that the local church affords us opportunities to organize ourselves and combine our talents and resources for good, and I'd like to be a part of doing a lot of good.  I believe that being involved in a local church - like any entity, really - offers tremendous room for personal growth, as working alongside others over the long haul is never an easy road, is it?  Beth Moore recently talked about our propensity to encounter conflict in our churches/communities and back off, tune out, disengage, go elsewhere... I love that she challenged us to consider that God has a call on the lives of people who rub us the wrong way, to bring out the parts of us He's trying to work on.  


I've also become a person who would like my church to meet needs I didn't consider before I had children, not just because I think it's a nice thing but because I want to feel that kind of support and consideration as a person who's chosen to commit time to our congregation, and that's the season I'm in.  I know a criticism of some churches is that they cater too much to families and kids, but we belong to a small congregation whose children's ministry has fluctuated a lot over the years and since I've had a little one (and one on the way) suddenly it's all quite personal.  I know many nearby churches offer all sorts of great programs for parents and their kids and I don't expect our church to be Super Church by any means, but I'd like the incentive for myself and my kids to be primarily woven into our own church community in whatever ways we can be.


A note of confession-- I sometimes emotionally struggle with creating the things I want for myself.  I am honestly happy to use my gifts to be able to help create space, services, events, etc that I think will help myself and other families to come together to worship and support each other and encounter the community around us, but in the past year I've sometimes felt resentful that it's not being done for me, or us, to an extent.  I know how selfish and ugly that sounds, but it's true.  I'm not an island by any means and there are other creator/initiator/servants around me that I'm constantly buoyed and inspired by, but I have (probably unrealistic) desires of having some of my needs intuited and met by my church without my having to expend my own energy to make them a reality around my job and my family.  This is but one area where I'm fuzzy with regard to what the church should and isn't required to do, and I waffle around trying to land on an answer.  And how would my answer and expectations change if we didn't meet in a big church building with dedicated ministries and staff and such??  Even as I write that, I also proclaim that it's not the staff of a church's job to do all the work of the church, and we members should all be prepared to take our positions as working parts in the body.  I will say this - the experience of having children has helped me understand why people with kids might choose to just stay home, though, or migrate to larger churches who have all sorts of opportunities and volunteers already in place.  I'd be interested to hear how these types of issues affect folks of varying life situations and seasons...


On the side of less church-centric church, I empathize with the plight of churches who're trying to operate traditional schedules and such with a membership that can't commit to being there every time.  I'm sure this is why many have streamlined by cutting Sunday evening services, emphasizing flexible small group involvement in lieu of extra corporate meetings outside of Sunday morning, adding services on Saturday nights, whatever might fit best into the lives of people.  I'm honestly not opposed to this - I'd rather a church choose it's offerings intentionally, pray for and expend energy on them, and strongly encourage participation at those times than have a lot of grandfathered-in activities that are sorta-kinda attended.  Of course, I'm sure a lot of these 'grandfathered-in' things are dearly loved by those who frequent them, so I'm not saying church leaders have an easy job... 


A parting thought strung together after a couple of conversations - we react against using guilt as a motivator for church service/involvement, and many might say this current generation has moved past guilt or obligation as previous generations might have known it.  Which is good, overall, right?  What happens if 'guilt' motivation isn't replaced with a compelling desire to participate (we might call this the Spirit in us, maybe?  or not?)?  What if we all take the opportunity to live in that freedom and minimize the priority of whatever our church is doing, thinking 'I'll be there when I can, if it works out around everything else'?  What's a church leader to do then?  I don't want to be emotionally manipulated, which I think guilt can tend toward, but I can also understand church leaders wanting to say something like, 'um, we need some more help.  could you show up a little more in some way, and not be mad at us for asking or think we're trying to put you out?'  Is this where members say, 'I get you, but this is all I can do right now... YOU need to change what YOU'RE doing'... do we meet somewhere in the middle?  I also wonder how these sorts of dynamics play out in less corporately 'organized' church life... what do house churches/church plants expect of 'church life'?  Is it less organized events during the week or month, and more community/daily/Bonhoeffer-esque living?


just a few more thoughts to continue the discussion... would love to hear your viewpoint.  also, when I touted that RHE blog post about leaving the church, there were only 300 or so comments... I think there might be over 800 now, and they rapidly fell into a bunch of reactive name-calling and the usual rude internet behavior.  which is too bad, but I think if you sort by first to last you might be able to see the sort of interesting dialogue and sharing of experience that I was referring to.


-m.y.

Pacino Christian Bell

I'm working on another post expounding on that last one with the questions, but before I go to bed I want to write that sweet Chino passed away yesterday.  Since I found him at 6 months old, it seemed like he was always battling something... skin conditions, allergies, heartworms (twice!  even on preventative!), a tango with a car wherein he lost a toe, and then the grave prognosis of mouth cancer almost 3 years ago.  Despite all of that, he chugged along for a good 16 years and was one of the best-tempered animals I've ever known.  He passed away in the backyard near his food... our kind neighbors said they heard him bellowing, went over to pet him for a bit, and after they left they saw him lay his head down.  Michael found him when he came home from work.  I was in Dallas, which is incredibly sad, but I'm mostly relieved and thankful that he's not in any more pain.  It had gotten pretty difficult as his health deteriorated, and we had discussed taking him to the vet this weekend.  Deepest thanks to the friends who came over and helped Michael bury him.   Here are a couple of photos of Chi and Magz from last weekend:

I love you, buddy.

L

internet workings...

it's a quiet morning here.  the little one spent the night at grammy and opa's since M and I had plans last night - no toys have been strewn around the room yet, there have been no plaintive requests for 'Elmo!', and I'm drinking my coffee without fear of a 21-month old knocking it over.  I miss my morning cuddle, but appreciate the quiet moment.  before I head into the kitchen to make turkey chili for hot dog night at the church tonight and then gingerly pour myself into the tub before trekking to work, I wanted to share a couple of things.

one, that I read this blog from RHE yesterday, titled ' Fifteen Reasons I Left Church', and was riveted to the comments, which I've continued to peruse this morning and still haven't reached the end of them.  I don't think I've ever read such a gamut of opinion and experience, and one of my first reactions yesterday was 'this is how the internet should work... so many different flavors of people out there chiming in on an intensely personal topic, but very civil on the whole'... I'm interested in dialoguing more about what we expect our churches to be, what we're allowed to expect from them, and where 'church' may not be required to meet us...

another thought I've been mulling over as I've trolled around and read different pieces the last few weeks - that may dovetail a bit into the topic above - is the different sort of life structure my generation and those younger (and older?) than I have these days, and how it affects the traditional workings and expectations of 'church'. maybe this isn't 100% true, but my perception is that the life of church tends to model itself as the intended primary community of those who work within it.  I think many of us today have a number of communities we revolve in and out of that all vy for our limited time... church, work, family, friends outside our faith community, carving out time for ourselves... combine these with the ease and regularity of travel most of us engage in - which is generally waay more than people of past generations - and you get contemporary people of faith communities participating as they can, but maybe not in the steadfast, day in-day out fashion of congregants of the past.  How does this - or should this - change what our churches do?  Or how they do them?  How do churches of today navigate and plan for the mobile, fluid lives of people while simultaneously calling for community, help, and service?

-m.y.

monday morning

what do you do on a Monday morning, when you wake and feel a little jolt of 'I don't have much work booked this week and that's three light weeks in a row!"?  you tell yourself to relax.  you make a pot of coffee (and spike it with your daughter's lovely whole milk).  you remind yourself of the good months you and husband have had, of your savings, of the non-emergency-nature of this panic.  you throw open the doors to take advantage of the glorious morning.  you contemplate doing things but only do, like, one of them.  you take your coffee and computer outside and play with photo booth:

you resist the urge to read more about people using shamelessly uncivil language to describe a Georgetown law student, or any political something-something with which they don't agree.  you contemplate a quiet boycott of all media for personal sanity.  at least, political media - the continuing tornado coverage makes you cry, and you know it's the stories about suffering and humanity that you need to be exposed to, to be reminded to be helpful when possible and grateful all the time, all the time, that perspective is everything.  you finally come around to thanking your stars that you've been given time to slow down.  at some point every day you feel bone tired, and it's much easier to give in to such a feeling when you're not running in ten directions.

you prepare to run in and brush your teeth before heading out to your one session today.  and suddenly the last thing you want to do is leave this chair, on this deck, in this patch of sun.

-m.y.

the second of march

I've had a pretty light load the last two weeks work-wise, and have mostly thoroughly enjoyed it.  I don't have unending amounts of energy these days, and it's been really lovely to take things a bit easier.  We've still got our taxes to do, but as of this moment I'm caught up with my billing and whatnot and am feeling pretty accomplished (aside from the pile of filing still to address... Sesame Street is only an hr long, y'all).  I'm feeling our baby kick and move around pretty regularly now, which I love.  Here are a few photos from today... notice the meadow that is our back yard (we have a date with the lawn mower this weekend, and our front flower bed is a verdant sea of weedy weeds):

this one is a little obsessed with balls right now.  along with Elmo and apples, of course.

help, mama!

today - 21 weeks 1 day.  notice how comfortable I am with y'all - I got up this morning, threw on some clothes, and got with it.  aside from pinning my bangs back with a bobby pin, I did not fix my hair at all.  obviously.

The garage makeover is slooowly coming along.  More photos will come as we progress.  The clean-out has proven to be a more time-consuming job than I anticipated.  So far we've purchased an outdoor plastic storage unit for the back of the house to store the mower/leaf-blower/charcoal/wood chips for grilling & smoking/etc, and a metal shelf unit to live in the garage.  We've made trips to Goodwill and Recycling.  We've been collating things to keep from the attic with things to keep from the garage, and getting rid of trash.  M has gone through most of our boxed-up cd collection and is taking a large pile to Cactus Music to sell. Truthfully, it still looks like a train wreck out there but we're super-close to the next step:  blowing insulation into the ceiling and doing some repairs to the ceiling/walls before we can paint everything.  Other things we're eyeing for the space:  this cabinet to go by the washer/dryer for laundry and whatnot, and this ceiling fan to keep us all from melting away in the summer. 

Of course, the ultimate goal is to make our 2 bedroom/1 bath house work as well as it possibly can for us as we add a new member to our family.  here are other things I'm plotting:

Girls' room 'Before'.  The plan is for all of the things I've been storing in the closet to the right (as well as a few things in the one to the left) to go somewhere else to make way for a real closet organization system doohickie for these little people (we're likely going with one from Home Depot).  That white shelf unit to the far left will likely get moved across the room and turned on it's side to become the changing table (while still giving me good shelf storage).

I'm thinking we'll move the crib to the other side of the window and put a toddler bed for Magz under the tree branch, where her crib currently is (except positioned lengthwise down the other wall off to the right).  The red bookshelf, playmat, etc will get rerouted back over to the other side of the room where it used to live, in place of the white shelf unit by the closet.

The little hideabed craigslist couch is finding a new home somewhere else in the house... the while shelf unit will hopefully be here on this wall as storage/changing table. That tall lamp is being moved to another room, too, I think.

This shelving unit (sister to the one in Magz' room)  will likely be replaced by the little hideabed couch.  Tentative plans are to turn this unit back up on it's end and put it on the wall off-camera to the left.  I have a smallish old sewing table from YaYa (currently in the garage) that I'm plotting to put by the sofa with a lamp on it.  The short wall under the airplane art would be a space to put a toy basket to hold things currently hanging out in corners in the living room, Maggie's purple chair, etc.  I'm not sure where the coral chair would end up.

So see, that white shelf unit can go on it's end where the pretty brown cabinet is and still hold records and stuff.  Maybe.  Oh, and that closet back there in the dark hallway needs a do-over, too...

and the pretty brown cabinet can go in the dining room where the tree painting is.  Maybe.

Our house isn't huge, but the good-sized rooms give us lots of options for configuring our space.  This process of pulling dusty, hidden things out and holding them to the light is good - it's making us sift through things and determine what's worth keeping and what's not, and I truly think half of the battle is simply not having as much 'stuff' to worry about/keep up with.  

In closing, I'd like to mention the bible study I've been part of.  Though I've been far from perfect with regard to keeping up with the homework, overall it's been such a blessing.  I want to offer a word of encouragement to other mothers that I sincerely hope isn't translated into a guilt-thing - I know there are so many things vying for our time, but I encourage you to prioritize being a part of a bible study as you're able.  Sunday mornings haven't really been optimal learning times for me since I had Magz and I'm lousy at self-discipline in my day-to-day, so this Beth Moore series has provided me with a weekly opportunity to hear good teaching and delve as much as I'm able into the Word, with a little positive accountability built in just by being part of a group.  It's not always convenient, but the net effect on my spirit helps fuel me to be a better wife, mom, and church volunteer.  I loved a moment early in the series when Beth was speaking of her early days in teaching... she confessed something like, "Do you know how hard it is to teach a bible class when you're never in the Word?"  I DO know what that's like - in all of the volunteer capacities I serve in at SWC, I can easily feel run down, given to resentment, and covetous of 'my time' if I'm not being driven by love for God and His people... and that's just at church.  Can you imagine my attitude at home?!  So, maybe a class like the one I'm doing right now isn't for you... if anyone has other ways you obtain nourishment for your soul, I'd love to hear it.  If, however, you're our of practice like me and just need an encouraging voice to remind you that it's vital for us to be looking for spiritual sustenance somewhere, consider this that.

happy weekend,

-m.y.

* a quick addendum - the above thing I wrote about bible study isn't a sentiment reserved just for other moms, and I suddenly realize that's how it sounded.  that's just where I'm at - I wasn't good at self-discipline/practicing regular spiritual pursuit before I had a child, and having one just highlighted the fact in neon.  if you don't have offspring I want to encourage you to be a part of a study, too.  :) xo.