Tuesday, April 13, 2010

The half price Easter Bunny

Whitney came and sat with me and Nate in church Sunday morning. She had spent the night with a friend and then came to church with her. Whitney had a giant Easter Basket with her. That was when I realized I hadn’t done anything for Easter for my kids. No new Easter clothes. No Easter basket. No chocolate bunny. No pastel M&M’s. No hard boiled eggs. No dye stains under my finger nails, in my porcelain sink and on my counter. No rotten eggs left undiscovered in the backyard for squirrels, opposums, raccoons and skunks to find later. We went home from church and had tacos for lunch. No special Easter lunch, Steve just wanted tacos. Nate then went to his girlfriend’s for dinner. They eat fancy. It’s like the difference in Yia Yia’s (them) and Cracker Barrel (us). Works well for the Nate and his girlfriend, best of both worlds. Nate came home with an Easter Basket. Am I the only mom who did not recognize Easter with a basket of candy? I felt pretty lame until I ate Nate’s peeps and somehow those little yellow blobs of marshmallows covered with sugar made me feel almost deliriously good. So later in the week, several days after Easter, I handed my kids a box of Krackel chicks and Dove eggs (not in a basket, in the packaging from the store) and Nate asked why he was getting Easter candy so late. I told him he had been visited by the “clearance Easter Bunny”. He laughed and said, it’s all half price now isn’t it. I confirmed that was true. Nate says he loves the half price Easter Bunny.
All the Peeps were gone which is quite fortuitous for me.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Steve 50



























Steve is running a 50 mile race May 22, 2010. We are calling it the Steve 50. Clever, since he's the only one running it. He has contacted the Multiple Sclerosis Society and is running to raise money for this cause. You can go here //support.msassociation.org/site/TR/Events/General?pg=fund&fr_id=1030&pxfid=3570 to donate.


You can go here


http://www.shortarmsean.blogspot.com/


to read a blog post from our friend Sean about his wife who suffers with MS, one of the people Steve is running in honor of.

Friday, April 9, 2010

Conversations with Whitney

A picture is worth a thousand words...


Thursday, April 8, 2010

I'm heeled

Not a typo, just a bad pun. My heel is better. It took a while, lots of hours of alternate training, gained a few pounds, fortunately just a few, but I am able to run again. Ran a 10K on Saturday. I ran the same race last year, and this year's time was slower by a couple of minutes. But a friend from church was running her first 10K and she started out strong, and was ahead of Sheila and I until about 7K mark. When we caught up to her I didn't have the heart to run ahead and leave her, so I lost a few minutes of time. My race strategy is start off at a certain (slow) pace, regardless of how I feel, and then finish strong. I struggled with pain in both calves for the first 4K and then everything fell into the groove and I was good. We were on a pace to finish faster than we did last year, which was a good feeling. But since I never run for time, I run to finish, it's no big thing. I am now training for another 10K in May, a half marathon in June and a marathon in October, all right here in nice flat Wichita!

As I sat in Good Friday service I didn't verbally participate in the worship songs. Since I love music and I love to sing, this is out of character. We were singing "what can wash away our sins, what can make us whole again" and I just had this overwhelming feeling of sadness that I may never feel whole in this life. I have shared pieces of my struggles, and I know that God is working big in my life. We were going to celebrate communion, and whenever I see the communion plates at the front of the sanctuary I immediately begin examining myself. And I saw a few things that I didn't like. Along with that, I couldn't help but feel sadness for some people in my life, people that I love. This is where the concept of wholeness started working on me. Even as healthy, functioning people are we whole? I felt like something was missing. But move forward to Easter and I was reminded me that someday I will be whole. Jesus paid much to high a price for me, and because of this it is worth the constant scrutiny of my life to see what I I continue to need to change as I strive to live a Christ honoring life. I think the brokenness and need in my life keeps me humble before him.