sunday morning, updated with bonus thoughts and the best picture of a boy in a tu-tu you've ever seen.

Asher's smoke alarm went off in his room at 5 a.m. There was no smoke, of course, but the threat of bodily harm to my child at 5 a.m. is enough adrenaline to prevent me from going back to sleep. So I'm going to put my quiet house to good use and try to write some of the things I've been meaning to for a while.

Tomorrow we're getting a new air conditioner. Ours works, but not well, and is never going to work well, because it's the wrong system for this house (what I'd really like to know is why oh WHY would someone put the wrong system in the house to begin with? Knowing that, at the time they were deciding, it was only a few hundred dollars difference between one and the other, versus several thousand to replace it?), and "former owners were not very conscientious" isn't covered under the home warranty (which we have kept ONLY BECAUSE we've known the air conditioner was iffy for a long time), so in addition to however much we have spent on our home warranty we've kept up for nearly two years and has proven to be USELESS, we will now be purchasing a whole new system. Do I sound a little bitter? Just a bit, because we had other things we were going to do with that money, that included me driving a car built in this century ... but alas. It's like that scene in Up where they have a little jar marked for South America, and over the years they keep having to break it to pay for tires and medical bills. Welcome to life.

And I would like to gripe a little more, but then it occurs to me how much God has given us. How, having three bedrooms and fresh fruit and meat on our table at every meal is more than most of the world could ever hope to dream ... how I get to spend my days with our babies, not making coffee or sitting at a desk looking at files on other people's children and wondering what mine are doing and if they took their nap on time ... and when I start to remember all of that, I can't remember what I was griping about in the first place. Spending money to be more COMFORTABLE? In my three bedroom home? If this is my big complaint in life, I really have an easy life.

Time's up. Take a Sabbath, friends. Enjoy your day of rest.

part 2-

So here's the thing. The new church? Very sweet, but very quiet. Full of lovely quiet people who worship quietly and walk quietly and speak in quiet voices. My children? Well, quiet is not the word I would use to describe them. NOTHING about them is quiet - not their curls or their little stompity feet nor the way they dance when their dad plays guitar. And it occurred to me this morning, on the way to church, that they will spend their entire childhoods attending the church their dad is serving, so it is more important than ever for them that we are confident in who we are as a family. I don't really WANT quiet children - more accurately, I do not want any of us to live with that kind of expectation over our heads - so rather than being embarrassed by their LIVELINESS, I need to teach them how to function in a group and still be comfortable in their own skin. Ha, when I say it like that, they'll probably be 30 before they learn such a lesson, but at least we can TRY now. At least I can help them understand that love and diversity are not mutually exclusive.

That's what I thought about on the way to church.

And just to illustrate my point, this picture was in my inbox when I came home:


I mean, really.