Simplifying the Mother Load

This motherhood job is hard (good, glorious, and hard) and it helps me to call to mind the simplest, most essential aspects of this privileged responsibility.   Even if the periphery of our lives is sometimes dusty, sticky, piled-high, and undone, Lord help me to hit the heart of the matter in my job as mom.

If only I could set this tiny sermon to be like chimes on a clock that would ring every 15 minutes or so in my home...  somehow I need this truth awakening, refocusing my soul at least that often:  

My kids are my job.  Love them.  Serve them.  Lay down your life for them, Jill.  Don’t rush them along- through breakfast or through their little years- so that you can get to other things, “better” things that aren’t at all as important as these little now, but eternal lives.  Don’t fall for the lie, don’t be deceived!, that I’ll be more satisfied if I can finish my list, write more, give so many gifts, or host so many others....  

Let your kids be your main thing (til Daddy comes home in the evening).  They won’t always be, but they are right now.  Let them be.  Enjoy them as such.  Lay aside all the other junk.  Train your heart to take joy in your job to serve your children.  Strive hard to stir up their joy, enter into their joy, let their joy be yours, and serve them, serve them, with joy.  

For, in fact, all my service to them, is service to God.  I am not serving our kids so that they can repay me one day or so that I can please God (he’s already perfectly pleased with his Son who I am hidden in by faith!)  But I am serving them as an act of worship to God.

All this- the messes, tickles, quarrels, learning, growing, living- is grace from God.  

Praise, praise be...




Related Reading:  this post has stuck with me, challenging me, for years...
A Mother's Work:  A Model for True Work, from Ann Voskamp

Selections from The Companion

Karen Andreola’s book The Charlotte Mason Companion:  Personal Reflections on The Gentle Art of Learning has been a delight to me this spring.  I’m so grateful to have seen it on a friend’s bookshelf... a kind friend who was willing to let me enjoy it for a time.

From all that I’ve read of Charlotte Mason’s ideas, I am blown away by the goodness and excellence of providing this kind of education for our kids and shaping our home, our minds and our lives together with this kind of living.   And now I’m learning from Ms. Mason and Mrs. Andreola in this latest volume.   The descriptions, in my opinion, are sometimes not the very best, (the superlatives and “guarantee” sounding stuff is a bit unfortunate) but still these thoughts are immensely helpful and wise and good for me to consider.  

Here’s a few of the gems:

Andreola quotes from Henry Clay Trumbull’s book Hints on Child Training (Trumbull lived from 1830- 1903 and is the founder of the American Sunday School movement) 

“A parent looses his opportunity for good to his child, if he fails to have sympathy with this child in that child’s weakness and follies and misdoings.  It is in every child’s nature to long for sympathy at the point where he needs it most;  and when he has done wrong, or has indulged evil thoughts, or is feeling the force of temptation, he is glad to turn to some one stronger and better than himself, and make confession of his faults and failures.  If as he comes to his parents at such a time, he is met with manifest sympathy, he is drawn to his parents with new confidence and new trust.     (p 52)

Here Andreola writes her own paraphrase of Ms. Mason’s teachings:  

“The two main causes of family bickerings are selfishness and harsh judgement of others.  No punishment is of the smallest use to combat these.  In fact, punishment may awaken resentment and arouse greater spite against the person on whose account it is incurred.  It will never diminish the selfishness.  Penalties will suffice for the moment, but another kind of correction is needed. 

“Virtues, like flowers, grow in the sunshine.  You can cultivate them or draw them out with love and reason, but you can neither force nor whip them into existence.  Try to do so and the virtue you want will come forth in the guise of it’s corresponding vice.  Instead of truth-speaking courage, you will get a lying cowardice, instead of obedience, obstinacy....

“...Never be angry when the children are cross, and never add a harsh word of reproof when a child is still sore under what it feels to be an injustice.  This is often difficult to do because it is our natural response to control his temper with a stronger one of our own.  Yet I recommend you work against any tendency to overpower the child in this instance.  Gently draw the belligerent’s mind to the fact that he is feeling very unhappy, that this is merely the natural result of saying unkind things; and that as it would not be fair to make everyone else unhappy too, he must for other people’s sakes go away from the room, or leave the game till he can be pleasant.”  (p 58-59)

And this is my cherry-on-top favorite.  Andreola shares, (p 61-62)

“I once read about a large family in which bickering was unknown, though at one time there were signs of great friction among the members.  The mother weeded out the thorns of family upsets by working with each child’s imagination.  She set them up to fight giants.  Her lessons began with a parable, for there is no moral teacher better than the parable.  The mother, apropos of the Jack the Giant Killer, gave a sketch of the giants that beset the young people, and morally devour them, such as Self-Love, Vanity, Obstinacy, and Falsehood, and she excited their interest by telling them that these giants were so curiously huddled together that if one were conquered, the others would probably flee.

“As the Advent season was upon them, she told them that it would be good to think of giving secret gifts of abstaining from personal faults that rubbed the other family members the wrong way-  and to do something good in place of displaying that fault.  She told her children that in order to do this, they would have to fight a battle with a personal giant- a spiritual enemy.  Each child was to keep his own secret, and whisper into Mother’s ear the particular giant he wanted to fight, and she would give him the right weapons for it.

“One by one the whispers came to her.  Cubby Susie said she thought she was “dreadfully greedy for sweets,”  and she would fight that ogre.  Mother would do her best not to have so many Christmas delicacies around the house, but keep to the traditional Christmas pudding only.  A more nervous member whispered that she did not want to “feel so cross at johnny,”  whose teasing jokes always seem to bother her.  A third confessed that their enemy was “Vanity.”  she did not “want anybody to do things as well as herself.”  And a fourth sighed that it was “very hard to keep one’s temper” when everybody seemed so aggravating.  That evening Mother came up with her weapons:  seven Bible texts, one for each child for each day.  

“If by Christmas the giants are not dead, at least they will certainly be wounded, and have less power, “  promised Mother. "

sixteen again... it's a whole new world

Matthew got his China driver's license!  Congratulations my love!

Friends gave us the 1500 test questions that we'd need to study to pass the test and Matt knew he needed to get 90 out of 100.  But the questions weren't looking like anything worth storing in long term memory so Matt decided to take a stab at the test after just one read through to see how it would go.... and he got a perfect 90!   JOY!!

This past Saturday afternoon we rented a car and made the best possible use of those 24 hours.... half hour drive Sat evening to these beautiful mountains!  It was the second time we've been to this area (in 2.5 years we've lived here) and it was indescribably good for our hearts to be outside, in green and dirt, to smell plants and see a wide sky unhemmed by rust-stained concrete.  This was wonderful...

Matt commented how often we try so hard to plan a fun outing or a sweet date and often we only end up with failed attempts to find taxis, delayed buses or babysitters or no access to any place to go...  but not this time.  We had barely thought of where we'd go... we just wanted to drive...  And we found this!!  Couldn't have been a sweeter evening- dinner for the fam $9 at tables under an apricot orchard, and then a walk along a path at the base of these small mountains.  Thank you Lord.

Next time I'll try to get a few more pics of something besides our kiddos....  there's a whole world out there Jill!  I'd love to share more pics of the beautiful place we live, the beautiful people that live here.... if only I can find a way to share the lens love a little.  Hopefully it will come!

it's wheat harvest time... the local farmers used the road as space for their harvest work so the road was one lane for stretches to share with oncoming traffic.  Traffic flows like water here... and it usually work.

Buddies

Last weekend we visited dear friends of ours from our Beijing days.  This family is so precious to us!  Being with them is like getting a jolt of soul nourishment and encouragement.... we are so blessed by their friendship and example to us of loving the Lord, His Word, His people..

And we absolutely delight in these kiddos.  What a joy for us that our kids can grow up close (enough) to these guys.  May they have life-long friendships, packed with fun memories, and grow zealous for the Lord's glory together.  

picnic near the Yellow River

couldn't be fun without getting in the mud!   Hudson, their big guy - Isaiah's best friend, is there on the right

Gracie Jo (GJ) and May

Vivi and Aber (Abraham)

We finally got to meet their littlest!  This guy at the river was almost as delighted with him as we are :)

the sweet daughter and wife of the man above

the kids table... missing Abraham

the girls

Tito (Titus) and John

the way there....  this wasn't her very best moment 

nine hours of villages

and more beautiful villages to see before we got home

Peacemaking Authority

The book of James has been getting deep under my skin lately, sweet hard challenges to my heart as a mom.  I yearn to be a mama who demonstrates good conduct in the meekness of wisdom (James 3:13), who leads our kids to repentance by kind (Rom 3:19) and patient (2 Peter 2:4) care, and who makes peace and reaps a harvest of righteousness (James 3:18).   Oh... and I'd like a heavy dose of laughter and joy for our home too, please :)

My main trouble is the whole first-time obedience deal.  I've been thinking over the issue for weeks and I've written way wayyy too much for the sake of helping myself process these concerns and questions and needs.  And in the midst of this writing process I’ve met a friend online through posts she’s written about parenting.  Her words are so sooo helpful and, what’s super important to me, is that Katherine’s writing has been lived out in experience.  She told me that she first wrote (her sheltering posts) when her oldest daughter was 12 and now she’s 18.  I asked her if she’d tweak her advice there, change anything?   She said no.  

Friends... here’s the gold to share with you.   If you have, like me, struggled with what kind of authority you want to demonstrate in your home with your kids, if you have been confused over the issues of protection, obedience and control, these posts might just hit the spot for you like they have for me.  

http://www.raisingfive.com/2007/06/shelter-is-not-place.html   {I was streaming tears when I read this one.  Oh... if I might have grace to raise our children like this....  most especially like her dad showed grace to her, when Katherine was 13.}

http://www.raisingfive.com/2006/08/sheltering.html

http://www.raisingfive.com/2007/12/discipline-and-preschoolers.html

http://www.raisingfive.com/2007/12/leading-our-children.html

I’ll post my thoughts soon too but all that I have to share is basically repentance and prayers, from lousy (legalistic) parenting toward more-of-Christ parenting.    So much of what I tried to say, doesn't need to be said now after reading these posts from Katherine.

UPDATE:  In case you're crazy enough to be interested....
here are my thoughts:  Peacemaking Authority - Thoughts on Kind Parenting from a Recovering Obedience Addict.  

My Mama

Ann Voskamp has invited her reader community to post their tributes to their moms and her family wants to respond with generous giving to a maternal child heath project in Haiti with Compassion.  I love it.  Love my mama and helping other mamas...

But in this season of motherhood for me, I just can't set aside a month to write a tribute that might just pass as barely worthy of posting in my mom's honor.  There will never really be adequate words from me....

I was born out of my mom's brokenness, neediness while she searched for love.... and found only a chincy knock-of of the real deal.  He was married and I don't think he ever looked at me (I met him when I was 22 but that's a different story.)  My mom raised me alone.... except that with all the weight of new mothering responsibilities she decided she needed some help and started visiting churches for a free hour of babysitting; she could sit still and think for an hour every Sunday morning.   By the time I was seven (yes, it took that long) she heard the Gospel on a Sunday morning:  that God has provided for our sin by giving Jesus.  And my mom and I trusted Christ together.

My childhood is best told in this picture:  my mom and I flying downhill on a bobsled, wind in our hair, smiles and eyes all alight with joy.  She was a flight attendant so we travelled (for free... snatching up any empty seats) to Mexico, Hawaii, London, Budapest, Bombay.

She was broken and I was broken and we grew in Christ together.   She shared with me all she was learning from radio Bible teachings during her commute to work, she shared and modeled how she was learning to give of herself in every way.  She sent me off to the ends of the earth and supported me in every way I could dream.

And there was conflict and continued giving (Such Generous Giving!), there was hospitality and hostility, and forgiveness.... There was great forgiveness  (Thanks be to God!)  and great joy (pure gift!).  There was always an adventure.  Soon after our wedding she hinted at her hope for a grandchild.  And then too soon there was the unexpected, sudden heart trouble and now there is the legacy and the longing....  me longing for her friendship, advice, encouragement, help, love.  She would have been here with us probably every month for those free tickets of hers and she would have eaten up these four grandkids of hers.

Oh I love, I love, I love and I miss my mama.

I'm glad she told me she loved how I called her mama.   And I praise God that she is LIVING now more than she ever has, with Him.   And I rejoice that we will be together when we see the Lord.

my mama in the middle with her two sisters, (L, R) Blythe and Gayle

a good fun old photo booth strip with her little brother Brian
(who I grew up thinking just might be the tallest man alive)

I am so happy Matt got to meet my mom.  So glad my best friend knew my first friend.  Oh how she shaped me!  How gracious the Lord was to draw us to Himself together!

Mama, I'm so very grateful for you, so grateful the Lord gave me to you.  I wish I had words to thank you and honor you more as you're due...  I love you and miss you so...

This is post is for the  The Thousand Moms Project.... 
in the community of blog friends who gather at  www.aholyexperience.com

Ian & Larissa

I watched this short documentary a few days ago and I’ve been sleepless long stretches of the nights since then.....  just thinking over this. incredible. beauty.  

 


This is rare, full of splendor and glory kind of love.  I cannot recommend it highly enough.  And I think John Piper’s words about this couple, this video are crucial:  

“Desiring God exists to help people everywhere understand and embrace the truth that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. And I would add, especially in suffering.

Being satisfied in God (or anything) always seems easier when all is going well. But when things you love are being stripped out of your hands, then the test is real. If God remains precious in those moments, then his supreme worth shines more brightly. He is most glorified...

I tremble with the glad responsibility of introducing you to Ian & Larissa Murphy in this video. Tremble, because it is their story and so personal. So delicate. So easily abused. So unfinished. Glad, because Christ is exalted over all things.”

At the wedding, their pastor, Mark Altrogge, read this quote from the book Momentary Marriage, by John Piper:

Marriage is not mainly about prospering economically; it is mainly about displaying the covenant-keeping love between Christ and his church. Knowing Christ is more important than making a living. Treasuring Christ is more important than bearing children. Being united to Christ by faith is a greater source of material success than perfect sex and double-income prosperity.

So it is with marriage. It is a momentary gift. It may last a lifetime, or it may be snatched away on the honeymoon. Either way, it is short. It may have many bright days, or it may be covered with clouds. If we make secondary things primary, we will be embittered at the sorrows we must face. But if we set our face to make of marriage mainly what God designed it to be, no sorrows and no calamities can stand in our way. Every one of them will be, not an obstacle to success, but a way to succeed. The beauty of the covenant-keeping love between Christ and his church shines brightest when nothing but Christ can sustain it.

Altrogge wrote about the beauty of this couple's love as a covenant keeping love.... but what is astonishing to me is that they demonstrate faithfulness to a covenant not yet made, a covenant intended.  That is what makes me weep and stare at the ceiling all night long.  And that this is only a glimer of all the faithfulness and ardour and undeservedness of the love of God for us?  I am Trembling In Awe.


And one note from me:  When we first watched, I got the idea that Ian has less abilities than he really does.  Since falling in love with this couple and being up too long thinking of them, I’ve found their blog (www.prayforian.com)  and wedding pictures (every cute magazine would be jealous, this was beyond pintrest’s best), and it seems to me that this wonderful Desiring God video perhaps doesn’t do justice to Ian’s progress and healing so far.  He wrote his own wedding vows.  He’s limited greatly from his accident, but he’s more able to express things than I understood from the video.   One of the latest prayer requests from Ian is that he would be able to walk again.  

Larissa has written a follow-up post “Why We Got Married” too, if your interested.    She wrote: 

Even though we chose marriage, we chose it sadly....   

We know that we have made a covenant to each other, just as Christ made to the church. The church that He made that covenant with is so imperfect, and sorrowful, and disabled. Just like our marriage. This church, and this marriage, are hemmed in by Jesus and eagerly long for heaven.

And more on this topic, from her post on Jan 18, 2010, as they counted down to their wedding day, 


... why get married? Well, as simple as it is, because we love each other. And we enjoy each other. And we believe that Ian was created to be my husband and me to be his helper. Our marriage will look way different than we imagined four years ago. But it must mean something that I can't look at Ian without smiling. And that he has struggled every day for three years to get better- for me.


I echo what their photographer wrote about this being one of the most beautiful testimonies of love the world has ever seen. 


Ian and Larissa, your love sparks me worship God.  

May the Lord be your great strength, Larissa, 

your continued Healer, Ian, 

and may your lives together be filled with the exceeding joy of no regrets and lavishly  beautiful love.  

May your joy be rooted solid in the living hope of what is yours only in part now... but will echo whole for all eternity in Christ.  

our littlest splasher

 our littlest splashy fun sweetheart goofball precious girl

 her "are you going to join me for some bath fun?" invitation face

"You're still taking pictures mama?"   

See... leaving toys strewn about makes way for some sweet photo opps!

Life of the Beloved

Somewhere along the line I came across the title Life of the Beloved, by Henri Nouwen, and thought it would be worth it’s wait in luggage to have it carried over the Pacific for us.   But despite it’s assumed preciousness, it lay unread until yesterday.  And when I finally read it, it broke my heart.  

Don’t most of you reading this love the book The Return of the Prodigal by Henri Nouwen?  Matt and I read it years ago and I’ve heard plenty of friends mention how sweet a book it is.  I was pretty sure Life of the Beloved, “Nouwen’s Greatest Legacy,” would be a gift to unwrap as well.  

In the prologue Nouwen wrote about his friendship with a secular Jew named Fred who implored him to speak into his life and the lives of his secular group of friends, to share something that they could understand, to teach them about the spiritual life.  This book was Nouwen’s reply to Fred’s question.  

Nouwen opens the first chapter with the scene of Jesus being baptized and hearing the God’s voice proclaim, “You are my Son, the Beloved; my favor rests on you.”   Then he dives straight into his application: “Fred, all I want to say to you is “You are the Beloved (p. 30).”  

The rest of the book Nouwen teaches how to live out this belovedness with four words that have become very precious to him as a priest, words that he lives and speaks daily in every Mass he performs as a Catholic priest.  The words are Taken, Blessed, Broken, and Given.  Nouwen suggests these words as characteristics of the journey of becoming the beloved. (We already are the beloved and yet we also still need to become the beloved, says Nouwen.)  

“You are the beloved”.  It’s like taking a check that’s been written out for $50 to the bank and asking them to cash it for the amount that’s printed at the bottom of the check... the bank routing number:  186675490317.  Those words that God spoke over Jesus don’t get to be applied wherever, however we choose.  Would anyone say that these words that God spoke to Jesus could be applied to Hitler?  No.  It couldn’t count for Hitler not because WE decide that the words don’t apply to him, but because that was not the context of those words God spoke.  I’m sure we can agree that this is a common courtesy to give to anyone’s words:  apply them according to context.  God said them to Jesus. Yes there is some truth to be extrapolated from it for us, but let us be careful to honor the meaning of the words as they were spoken.   Doesn’t God’s Word deserve at least this common courtesy?

I will still say though, that there were some sweet spots in this book for me.  Several, actually.  I love the idea that we can pursue knowing, embracing our blessedness in these two ways (p 78-80):  active attention to, or meditating on Scripture (which I would define as the Bible, but Nouwen leaves open) and practicing the presence, which is “attentiveness to the blessings that come to you day after day, year after year” (p79).

But reading Life of the Beloved really grieved me.  Did this priest, this beloved writer-teacher, just tell a man, “you are the Beloved” with no thought of this man's unity with Christ, the One to Whom those words were said?  And in the whole book does he ever dare to write “You are God’s beloved”?  No .... just “the beloved.”  I’m guessing that if the statement was more directly connected to God, then it would have to be followed up with “and what kind of God is he?... Who is it that calls me this, that loves me so?"  

But we’d better not ask that because we would too quickly find other words of Jesus, other truths in His Word, like “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him.”  John 3:36.  

I don’t want to loose any reader-friends for the misunderstanding that I am suggesting or that the Bible says we are not loved by God.   Untrue!  We are most radically, wildly loved....But God is not a partially blind, semi-holy Grandpa in the sky who we can fool on the issue of our guilt and sin.  He most assuredly loves.  But in all rightness and holiness, he does not accept as his beloved children, sinners in their sin.  Please read on, friends. 

In the epilogue, Nouwen humbly includes Fred’s response when he read the manuscript of  this small book.  Fred said to him “Long before you start speaking about being the Beloved and becoming the Beloved, you have to respond to some very fundamental questions such as:  Who is God? Who am I? Why am I here?  How can I give my life meaning?  How do I get faith?  When you do not help us answer these questions, your beautiful meditations on being and becoming the Beloved remain dreamlike for us(p 144-145).”  

How bizarrely, heart-breakingly sad.  Does this priest of God really need to be begged by an unbeliever to be told the answers to those questions?  Did this priest really think that “good thoughts about yourself” heard from deep within (p 76) would satisfy a thinking man more than answers from God’s eternal, authoritative word to these real and honorable questions from his friend?  

At the very end Nouwen concludes that this friendship, Fred’s question, and his own unsatisfactory answer to Fred are “the mystery of God using his secular friends to instruct his disciples.”  He says this because while the book wasn’t helpful to Fred, it was found to be a great help to many believers in his community of faith.  

But I have to ask, how is this helpful?  How is this really helpful beyond feel-good, rootless (truthless) happy thoughts?    If Jesus gave up his divine privileges  and lived in our filthy world, a finite life in the flesh, healing and loving and serving, and ultimately dying for us....  was this all some tragic, unnecessary loss for God?  Poor God, he didn't have to do that.... kind of thing?  God turned away from the Son with whom he enjoyed eternal fellowship and darkness covered the earth at the death of Christ... and for what?  Was it not needed?  Was the cross a wasted sacrifice on God’s part?  Can we be the beloved of God apart from trusting in and being united with God’s Eternally Beloved Son?

No.  God demonstrates his love for us in this:  While we were still sinners, Christ died for us!  God's Savior has come for us!  (We Rejoice!)  He took the record of our sinfulness- all the sin of all those who trust him- and nailed it to the cross and we get the perfect, sinless record of Christ.  He has pursued us,pursued us to his own death and then beyond death to defeat it, that he might give us his love and forever life with him!  We Are Loved!  We are loved by This God!  All who abandon their self-defined notions of finding meaning in vague, non-relational belovedness, all who flee from deceptive lures to a satisfaction or completion from any other Source can discover LOVE beyond everything in this world.  The Eternal Love of God.  

How sad to hear this priest of God who I admired and esteemed lead people towards a spirituality that is not of God, but instead brings them straight into condemnation from God.  “Whoever believes in him [Jesus] is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”  (John 3:18).  

This book by Nouwen has many parallels to Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts, where she also writes about the greek word "eucharisteo" .  Voskamp writes for word appreciators (her style is something of alphabet art) but she also demonstrates committment to bringing her words into submission with the hard and radical truths of the Bible.   The theme of Eucharist, which Nouwen enjoyed or expressed, with very slack attention to honoring the whole of the Word, Voskamp unpacks with greater diligence and adherence to the actual meaning of the text, the Word.  

And perhaps Ann Voskamp has learned about writing and rewriting things with greater clarity.   Even she has improved her own words lately.  Where she used to sign off “All's grace,” she now writes “All’s grace, because of Christ alone.”  

Amen.  All’s grace:  our taken/ chosenness, our blessedness, our brokenness, our givenness.  All is grace, because of Christ alone.  

We have the Savior from God, Jesus the Christ!  He has been given for us!  We have life in Him!  All who trust in Christ are the beloved of God!   (I John 3:1-3, Ephesians 3:14-19)

Faith in Christ or faith in self or possibly no faith at all.... these things matter.   And apart from the Word of God, we have no standard by which to judge any piece of life at all.    May we endeavor to be a people who strain hard after What is True? and live radically the implications of the Truth and Love of God toward us and toward the world.  

Book Ends

Not long ago we were introduced to a tremendous new blessing in our lives.  Jeanne spent her childhood far from her home culture and now she has a great big heart to bless kiddos in those same shoes today.  She's started up a small company (non profit?) that sends books to the ends of the earth and she has Blessed. Us. So. Much.

Perhaps not all of America is so crazy about second-hand clothes, books, toys, furniture, everything but I can tell you this:  we are big fans.  It works great for our family!  But that leaves us in a bit of a pinch, because China doesn't do second-hand.  Things are mostly either worn thread bare or given to family members or just plain trashed when they're done.  One friend told me a second-hand clothes store would never work here because Chinese would all wonder about every single item "has anyone died in this?"

Regardless of "previously owned" taboos and superstitions, English books are just hard to come by.

Enter "Book Ends".



I am so grateful for this friend and mentor in my life!  Jeanne loves to bless folks like us who work overseas by sending books for kids.  She has packed 2.5 boxes for us now and I'm sure the box had to inhale when she cinched down the last rounds of packing tape.  Chocked full, those boxes:  Well over 100 books, and then bubble gum, math manipulatives, and stickers filling every crevice.   She's as good as my mother-in-law.  (Honest, these ladies could win millions if only there was a reality show at the post office!)

Here's how Book Ends works:  Email me (or leave a comment with your email address- I won't publish it!) for Jeanne's contact info and she'll let you know how to search for books or author's she's got on hand.  And check our her generosity here:  you pick the books (or let her), she packs the boxes and ships them to you, and you pay only half the cost of shipping.

Write to her dear international friends!

And if anyone of you stateside stumbles across an amazing library sale, maybe you could contact Jeanne to donate some books to Book Ends too?  I think she's up for receiving donations, just like she's always so delighted to give!

late April pics

big bro/ baby sis

together

when do the bath time/ towels shots have to end?  (I hope no time soon!)

Vivi's first ride in the back seat

lunch on the street

little big brother love

a little hot for April (riding home from church)

so big already? (she snoozed on that hot ride home from church)

John likes chicks

silly slider (in the fishy shorts of course) 

I'm unbalanced here.  Bummer.  I guess that means I'll have to do some more photo shoots with the big two and the little love to make up for this all this John-ness (that is still so precious to me!)  

More photos coming soon :)