Let Us Eat Cake! {CELEBRATE This Week: 180}

I'm glad you are here to celebrate! 

Share a link to your blog post below and/or use #celebratelu to share celebrations on Twitter. Check out the details here. Celebrate This Week goes live on Friday night around 10(ish). Consider it as a weekend celebration. Whenever it fits in your life, add your link. 

Please leave a little comment love for the person who links before you.

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I made cake on an ordinary Thursday. It was an old recipe, handed down through generations on Andy's side of the family. I sifted flour. I baked the Old-Fashioned Red Velvet Cake in heart shaped pans, just like my mom used to do. 

I put it on a fancy cake stand, the one with a pedestal and dome lid. It was waiting on the counter when everyone came home. They smelled it before they saw it.

Martha said, "I am so excited! Please tell me that's for us!" I didn't know cake is her favorite. 

This is how I fight the lie of busy. I sift flour and bake cakes in heart shaped pans. I make a two-step frosting, the kind with boiled milk, and I spread it pretty. I let them sneak-swipe their fingers in the icing and cherry pick the chocolate savings. I act surprised when I hear the glass dome clink and tattle on the culprits.

And just like that, there is much right in the world as we eat cake.

Family Life {CELEBRATE This Week: 148}

I'm glad you are here to celebrate! 

Share a link to your blog post below and/or use #celebratelu to share celebrations on Twitter. Check out the details here. Celebrate This Week goes live on Friday night around 10(ish). Consider it as a weekend celebration. Whenever it fits in your life, add your link. 

Please leave a little comment love for the person who links before you.

*****

We've been cooking this week.

1 bushel tomatoes
30 green peppers
20 lbs of onions
30 lbs of ground beef
12 lbs of roast
22 lbs of whole chicken
28 chicken breasts

We made 22 quarts of spaghetti sauce and over 50 meals for the freezer.

It's been a family ordeal.

Usually when I cook like this, I clear the schedule and call in the big guns (my mom). I shop one day and we cook the next...and Sauce Days never overlaps. We stay focused, let the kids help a little and then shoo them out of the kitchen.

I never knew allowing them to help a little would turn into big kids that help a lot.

It's not easy letting little kids help in the kitchen. The messes are inevitable and the efficiency plummets. It's worth it, though.

Today, each of our big kids has specialties.

Sam makes killer lasagnas.

Jay and Steph brown and chop hamburger like nobody's business.

Hannah plows through assemblies.

All of them are willing to help me with the work. This is not a slight thing. 

And they've taught me to be willing to take a break. We went to lunch and the library and swimming. We played board games, jumped on the trampoline, and ran. (We've made it to two miles now!) The girls scraped wallpaper in their bedroom, Sam put together more train tracks, Steph played softball, Hannah read 7 books and Jay conquered a video game. I was there, alongside of them, learning to take a break. This is not a slight thing.

So I celebrate the rhythm of our family life this week. Work and play and play and work all wrapped together each day, making a week that at first didn't seem efficient, but upon reflection, was full of much more than work. 

"I'm really glad we make the meals," one of the kids said. The others agreed.

Hannah said, "This way we get to eat good stuff without being stuck in the kitchen when Marching Band starts." (She giggles, like she always does, at the thought of Marching Band.)

"And football," Jay adds.

"And soccer," Steph says.

"And Boy Scouts and bowling," Sam says.

"And when Martha arrives," I say.

"And homework!" Andy adds.

There is a collective groan. Sam yells, "That's blasphemy, Dad! No talking about school in the middle of summer. You should be more careful!"

We laugh, and suddenly my dirty kitchen doesn't seem so terrible. This is the family life I never knew I wanted, but am so thankful to have.

April Snow Brings...{CELEBRATE This Week: 134}

 

I'm glad you are here to celebrate! Share a link to your blog post below and/or use #celebratelu to share celebrations on Twitter. Check out the details here. Celebrate This Week goes live on Friday night around 10(ish). Consider it as a weekend celebration. Whenever it fits in your life, add your link. Please leave a little comment love for the person who links before you.

***** 

It was a fuzzy sweater and butterfly rain boots kind of day.

I posted this shot on Instagram on the last day of March. The caption read, "It was a fuzzy sweater and butterfly rain boots kind of day. This might be my favorite kind of day."

And it is true, I do love a good grey day. 

We've had a Spring Break filled with grey days and now that the calendar has turned to April, I wonder if it is still truth that I love a good grey day. It is snowing as I write this. The same childhood rhyme that has played in my mind for a lifetime repeats, with a slight twist.

April snow brings...

I pause and consider how to end the line.

April snow brings dinner with friends. I laughed so much with Becca and Lee, and they reminded me how much fun Andy and I have with friends.

April snow brings shopping with the girls. I tried on a pair of shoes that prompted Stephanie to say, "Mom, I think you should ask yourself how often you will really wear those shoes before you buy them."

They are completely adorable and totally frivolous. The black and white gingham next to a butterfly pattern made them perfectly eclectic and the heel was the height I quit wearing once I started teaching.

Hannah said, "What would you wear them with?"

I laughed and said to both of the girls, "The truth is, girls, there are many reasons to buy a pair of shoes."

I decided it was time for the lesson my Grandma Myers taught me and my mom reinforced. "Sometimes, girls, you build an outfit around a perfect pair of shoes. You start at the toe and build up."

Stephanie lifted her eyebrows. "You mean you only wear them with one outfit?"

"To start, and then you get creative. There are lots of things in my closet these will match," I walked to a different mirror and admired the shoes again.

"Seriously, Mom, you really need to ask yourself how often you will wear them."

Instead, I asked myself how much I will enjoy wearing them. The answer landed me a new pair of shoes.

 

April snow brings slogging through the middle.  I've been writing thousands of words each day this week. In addition, I'm moving computers...and platforms. I finally bought a MacBook Pro. I am in awe by how fast and friendly it is.

I'm remembering the middle doesn't have to shackle me. I think the middle is the hardest part. I win when I open my computer. I win when I write a sentence. I win when I say the words out loud, "I am a writer." It is this sequence that then releases me and I'm able to move through the muck of the middle.

April snow brings hope. I know there is sunshine waiting to break through. April snow reminds me the grey days are still some of my favorite.

I'm glad you are here to celebrate! Share your link below.

An InLinkz Link-up

CELEBRATE This Week: XCII (92)

I'm glad you are here to celebrate! Share a link to your blog post below and/or use #celebratelu to share celebrations on Twitter. Check out the details here. Celebrate This Week goes live on Friday night around 10(ish). Consider it as a weekend celebration. Whenever it fits in your life, add your link. Please leave a little comment love for the person who links before you.

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September 19 will mark our 100th celebration! I'm cooking up some ideas for this milestone. Won't you please invite your friends to join us?

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Have you signed up for the {Discover. Play. Build.} Newsletter? The first issue went out yesterday (woo-hoo!). They'll come around the end of each month. Register in the sidebar ----->.

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Teachers, I hope you have time to check out the {Discover. Play. Build.} website. It's designed to be my offering to writing teachers. You'll find video minilessons and a link to the {Discover. Play. Build.} YouTube channel where they are all housed.

( For more information on these resources (and others), check out this post.)

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My cup overflows with celebration this week. As I think about my celebrations I thought it might be fun to pair them as opposites. I'm coming to believe when our celebrations are diverse we are mastering the art of living joy.

1. The kids were at sleep away camp last week. I celebrate the quiet that crackles in an alone house. And now, I celebrated the hustle and bustle of an active home.
2. I celebrated everything in its place and a tidy home that stayed that way all day and all night and the next day too. And now, I celebrate the shoes by the steps and the bowling pins at my feet and the pile of Legos and the trains on the dining room table and the sketch pad and pencils at the end of the couch and the books sprinkled all over. I celebrate the stuff that comes from happy, active kids...each finding their own niche.
3. I celebrate eating out. Andy and I zipped into town and avoided dishes at home. One night we stopped at the farmer's market and brought home a bounty of fresh tomatoes and corn on the cob and purple potatoes to make a summer meal with grilled chicken. Another night we ate out with friends. And now, there's 28 pounds of beef and 21 pounds of chicken ready to be made into 30+ freezer meals today. I celebrating cooking at home.
4. I celebrate dictating my own schedule, deciding how I spend my time, and allowing the day to lead me. And now, I celebrate getting to invest in four lives, learning to empower and encourage and support them. 

Mostly, though, I celebrate learning to find the joy in the moments of the day. This is what sustains me. Thanks for celebrating along with me!

CELEBRATE This Week: LIX

I'm glad you are here to celebrate! Share a link to your blog post below and/or use #celebratelu to share celebrations on Twitter. Check out the details here. Celebrate This Week goes live on Friday night around 10(ish). Consider it as a weekend celebration. Whenever it fits, add your link. Please leave a little comment love for the person who links before you.

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We've been working on celebrating small around my house. I like seeing the details in the world -- the tiny that somehow when collected add up to the major moments that make a life.

One.
Butterhorns -- I made these because they are a must-have at my friend Deb's Thanksgiving table. I thought of Deb all day as I followed her handwritten recipe, going through the same steps that I knew she follows.

Rainbow Ribbon Jello -- A 12 layer Jello dish that someone (I don't know who) brought to the Mother-Daughter Banquet at the church I grew-up in. I used to love it! Then a pastor and his wife made it when Andy and I were first married and they had us over for dinner.  I told my mom all about it and Mom pulled out the recipe from her card file and gave it to me over the phone. I scribbled it on a strawberry note sheet. Every time I make it people gush about the time it takes. It's not exactly time-consuming, it just needs time. (It's proof that I'm learning to plan ahead.) I carry the glass dish of Rainbow Jello to its spot on the counter and I smile, remembering the Mother-Daughter Banquets and Glenn and Sue and our very first home with the strawberry note sheets.

Mamaw Hancock's Cornbread Stuffing -- I remembered this stuffing at the first Thanksgiving Andy invited me to with his mom's side of the family. We flew to Arkansas and I met his grandparents. In the South you eat Cornbread Stuffing (whether you think you like stuffing or not). I was shocked to find out I liked it. This year I texted Carolyn for the recipe and wrote it in thick black indelible marker on a recipe card. Generations of Andy's family have been making Cornbread Stuffing and I'm happy to be among them.

Mom's Pies -- My mom took care of the pies this year. (Yum!) I can roll her pie dough, too. This is significant because it one of my oldest memories of my mom -- watching her roll pie dough at the end of the kitchen table. My mom also made the turkey, the date pudding, the gravy, and the three pies (dutch apple, pecan, and pumpkin). She took the pressure off of me and made hosting a joy. I relished the sweet fact that my parents live close and are enjoyable to be around, both on holidays and ordinary days.

Ham -- Carolyn sent a Honey Baked Ham and my kids broke into a Dance Party when they came home from school and saw the box waiting. "It feels like Christmas," they said as it warmed on Thanksgiving Day. I love this. I love that there are traditions that are becoming part of the their cores. Ham and Rainbow Ribbon  Jello -- they feel like Christmas.

And Christmas is coming. Sunday marks the start of Advent. Collecting stories and nourishing souls -- this is my daily celebration offering throughout Advent season. Think of it as opening the door on an Advent calendar and stop over each day as I mark the days with gritty, genuine, and radical stories until Christmas.