Life Lately

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Some of the outdoors,

a little bit of Mexican food,

and a whole lot of baby.

I may have added too many pictures, but who doesn't love pictures?

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Here is my Mother's Day basket. It was filled with two movies, new shoes, new socks, double spice chai tea  (because regular spicy just wasn't enough!) and other fun little things.

PS. I now ❤ Sesame Snaps! (Also in my basket in front of the Altoids tin)

Can you spot the vulture?

Mom meals these days...

Jared tried to tell me Onyx covered himself in stickers. Surrrrre.

Why do I always end up getting the bigger plate when we go out to eat?

That is one cute cousin combo!

New shoes. Oo lah lah!

Pardon the messy room, but this is real life you know? ;P

I think I've seen Ponyo (from my Mom's Day basket) 17 times now. Onyx and I watch it every morning as I make tea and breakfast while he plays with his toys on the floor. I think we both appreciate background noise. Life has been good but challenging and reminding me to trust in Yahweh ever'day. 

'Til Next Time...
You can enjoy this guest post I wrote on the very talented Melissa K. Norris's blog about modern pioneer living and all sorts of other good, wholesome stuff. She's great, I have one of her books! (Click it! Click it! you know you want too! :P)

Psalm 55:22 Turn your burdens over to the Jehovah, and he will take care of you. 

The Dart Date

Last week we went on our first date without our chubby Moonboy. Honestly, it would have taken me years and years to let him go if he didn't have such good grandparents. They let us borrow their Dodge Dart for a little bit (even though we decided not to drive it to the diner) and get some fancy photos.

My mother in law insisted I get a picture of the back of my hair. Okay. okay, okay. For that sweet lady I'd do most anything. (We haven't always felt this way about each other. Once upon a time I think she thought I was a gremlin! We have come a long way. ;) )

↑ On the left here, is my picture perfect "I'm just going to let you think that" face. I couldn't tell you why I was making it, I just thought it was funny that it was captured. Sometimes I can be a total turd, but then look at Jared, he's like "I got this." We balance each other out. Thank goodness. 

After the pictures we headed to Cascasde Burgers. Mmmmm. Just sayin'.

This one's for you Golden Gram . ↑ She was so into the king. 

Right about this moment down here, I turned around and wanted to ask Jared "Do you think he's okay? Do you think your mom will only give him half  the jar of peas and carrots? Do you think she will know when he is hungry? What if he starts to cry?" ... but I refrained. We only mentioned him once (or twice) and talked about all sorts of stuff. After we ate, we checked the time and it had only been fifteen minutes. I am not even kidding. (What did we used to do with all that time???) So we drove around looking at houses for sale, imagining how we would change them if we bought them. (I'd get rid of that paint job,! I'd make their deck into a sun room! Ooooh look at their garden space!  ) We drove along the river and down some creepy trailer cul de sac (My entire life I thought that was one word!) and got out of there quickly to find some new back roads we had never been down together. Jared told me about some of the things he did as a kid on the trail parallel to the road. Crazy boy.

In conclusion, I love Jared and I love food. We should go on dates more often.

Temporary Home

If you'd let me, I'd like to type a little frustrated/sad/impatient anxiety post into the busy world of the inter-web. After all, I don't have a blog to impress anybody. I have a blog so I can create a timeline, a dairy if you will, of my thoughts and feelings as I have them. I try to keep my posts positive and upbeat, but sometimes life isn't upbeat dang it!  So here it is; last month as our landlord decided it was a "good thing" to rip up more and more trees on our property, I was sadly reminded it's not really ours. It's an uncomfortable feeling knowing that I am not permanently grounded here and we have no real authority to say anything about the home we live in. As I heard the roots to our fruit trees snap and I felt violated. They never asked or  told us they were coming. Why don't we get a say? I guess it was a not-so-gentle reminder- this is our home, but not our house.

The upside to renting is that any time something expensive needs to be fixed, we don't have to pay for it. Our water heater went out last year and it was fixed within a week (thank goodness!) but as time goes by, I find not being a permanent resident more and more unsettling. I guess this is just temporary and it can be hard to see the positive in what looks like negative changes. When I can't repaint my horrible camo green - pine cone themed bathroom; when I can't put a garden where I think it would do best and when they rip the trees that give our house privacy straight from the ground, I just want to leave. The good doesn't seem to outweigh the bad. 

My apologies for the random filters and what not on the pictures, some go way, way back and apparently I liked to edit the bejeepers outta things.

I love it here, don't get me wrong. We have the most beautiful view of a mountain right out our kitchen window and in the morning we can see our neighbors horses galloping peacefully through the dewey grass. We have more yard than anyone else I know and we have been blessed with so much space... A place for a garden, a yard, fruit trees, I mean, fruit trees. Well, this is home for now and we will go where we are called to be. Patience has never come naturally to me, but I am trying.

This is where we planted our first garden. This was our first yard. This was our first home together. So much has changed. (Nice black, straightened hair and nose ring old selfie!) ;)

This yard is where Jared made a bow and I lost our only arrow.

This was the first house we fully decorated for Christmas. We went on such a fun thrift store shopping spree to find everything.

This house is where baby Maps grew up under a dresser, that would someday become filled with Onyx's  clothes. It is the place we get to decorate in our own, weird little way.

Goodbye fruit trees. 
Someday when Jared and I have a place of our own, we will plant more just like you.

I suppose all I can do for now is pray about it. Funny how life is; I never wanted to own a house. I never wanted to live in the country, get married or have babies. I wanted to do it by myself. Now I can't imagine my life without Jared or Onyx, and without fully trusting in God. I'd probably be bored out of my mind in the city, spending much too long getting dressed and taking vain pictures of myself. Haha, oh past self...

I suppose it's the people in your house that make it a home. And so for that, I love our first home, just not the ugly pine cone bathroom. ;)

Someday we will have our own house... someday.  
Maybe only in paradise, but I can wait.

Matthew 7:7 Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.