Borrowed & Blue

This week our church group finishes up a 40 day study called the Love Dare. As a fun (and cheesy) way to celebrate the study and our commitment to our marriages, we thought it'd be fun to have a little wedding party. At least us wives thought it'd be fun. I'm not too sure the husbands are exactly stoked, but they're playing along at least. There will be a cake, quess that "first dance" song game, wedding dresses (if they fit), and more. Fun, right?

As I've been prepping for the soiree in our home, I needed to find a few of my favorite photos from our wedding which led me to Borrowed & Blue, a wedding website that featured our June 1st, 2012 nuptials. I have to say, it's a cool way to experience the day all over again through the eyes of the website contributor. It's neat to see which images she thought were worth sharing and I think she nailed some of my fave highlights.

To take a quick walk down memory lane of our special day, you can visit:

http://www.borrowedandblue.com/charleston/weddings/brittany-tim


What a perfect day, surrounded by our dearest friends and family. I couldn't have asked for more. It was everything I dreamed it would be as I married my best friend on a gorgeous plantation in South Carolina!

Thanks, Borrowed and Blue, for the internet "time capsule"!

Happy Easter Weekend

Easter weekend is always a magical, special time for many, but if you're a believer, this weekend holds so much more than colored eggs, Peeps and bunnies. This weekend holds pain, loss, tragedy, and then it holds hope, redemption and amazing grace.

I hope this weekend is constant reminder that when we feel ALL is lost, nothing is lost with God. Nothing, not even death, is too great for our Lord to conquer. He HAS overcome the WORLD. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow our His and through Him, they are ours as well.

I wish you all the happiest and most hopeful weekends with your friends and family. If you're blessed to have someone to spend this weekend with, consider inviting someone who might want to go to church but not want to go alone. It's no fun to walk into a building alone when everyone else is celebrating with their loved ones. Who knows, someone we know just might be desperate for a little hope, redemption and amazing grace this very weekend.

God Bless, friends. Happy Easter!

A Fish Is Born

Y'all. Can I just say how much I love baby "toad bellies" sticking out from under a rash guard and swim trunks? Is there really anything cuter? I think not.

This past weekend we took a quick roadtrip to visit some family in central Illinois and had so much fun watching our little man experience a swimming pool for the first time. Our Munchie loves bath time. He'll kick and play and smile the entire time he's in the bath, so I had hoped his love of water would translate to the pool as well. And it did once the fear and uncertainty vanished when he realized we were going to keep him afloat.

Although the hotel's pool was less than desirable and a true testament to how misleading photos can be (think large, spacious indoor pool with ample room for lounging poolside on the website), we rolled with the punches and hopped right in to the small, cramped and eerily murky water. Let me tell you, that cholrine was working overtime, if it was working at all. The Hubs wanted to dunk the baby so many times, but I pulled the "no fun allowed" mom card out every single time he asked, unfortunately. We'll save that milestone for a pool that appears to have less "pool pee" in it. Can I get an amen fellow mommas.

All in all, I'll call his first swim a success. A ridiculously cute success, tiny swim trunks and all.

Thanks, Lovie, for the float!

The brave swimmers who escaped the crowded, loud, murky hotel water

without a single case of E. Coli.

 

Such a focused floater.

 

 

Look at that belly!

 

Late night cuddles with his cousin. And by late night, I mean 8pm.  We're crazy like that.

Three cheers for fun family time!

Unsolved Mysteries

When I was about 14, I traveled to Charleston, South Carolina for the first time with my skating coaches and about 12 other ice skaters/my best friends. That trip changed the course of my life and after just 14 days, I knew I'd one day pack up and head south. And I did for 16 years.

On that first trip, I had the pleasure of meeting two special people. They were a mother and daughter duo, Lee and Savanna, who were living in Charleston and were family friends of my skating coach and her family. Upon our arrival to Charleston, our very first stop was to a home where we'd meet the sweet and southern duo. We all took turns holding baby Savanna and she was as precious as she could be. Her mother, Lee, was so welcoming and excited to see all of us, which was a lovely feeling after 2 days of being crammed in the car as we traveled from Illinois to SC. On that first trip to Charleston, we were unaware of any issues brewing in the lives of Lee and Savanna, although behind the scenes, a storm was brewing. That knowledge came later. What I did know though was that Lee appeared to be a wonderful mother who loved her beautiful daughter oh so much. I still stand by that statement over 20 years later.

Fast forward a bit and we're now all back in Rockford. The Charleston tans have faded from our sun kissed cheeks and we're all back on the ice. I can still remember the afternoon skating session when my coach was paged for having a phone call. She left the ice briefly to take the call only to return with the knowledge that Lee had left. She had vanished and had taken Savanna with her. After a nasty custody case, which I will not go into as I'm no expert and have only about 1% of the details, Lee's ex had been granted full custody, so she did what she felt was her only option to protect her baby. She vanished without a trace. And she stayed gone for a LONG time. Twenty years long.

It's pretty surreal to sit on your couch and watch an episode of Unsolved Mysteries and actually know the person on the screen. There's two sides to every story and with Lee being the "abductor", the side of the episode was that of her ex-husband. The light in which Lee was portrayed left out many key elements that would make anyone watching want her to take that sweet girl away as well. Now as a mother myself, I know that I would do anything in the world to protect my son, even if it meant fleeing with him. I also know that for me to abandon EVERYTHING in my life, all of my family and friends, all of my accomplishments and hopes and dreams, I would have to feel as though I had ZERO other options available. Knowing that is how Lee felt kept me praying over the last two decades that she would remain hidden and unfound. Sadly, that changed in November of 2013. I can still remember the pit in my stomach when my skating shared the news with us in 2013 that they had been found. It felt about the same as when she had said they had vanished.

If you'd like to see a bit more into one of the longest, family man hunts out there, you can watch a few clips of the TV special on the case and their story here. "Sam" or Savanna as we met her, is an incredibly mature and well adjusted 20' something woman. It's abundantly clear to me that her mom, Lee, raised her well and gave Sam the life she had always dreamed her baby would have. Even if meant leaving behind all she knew to keep her little girl safe from a desperate situation. Lee is now serving jail time in Charleston, but I know quite a few people who will be anxiously awaiting her release. Especially Sam. The one whom she loved enough to potentially face jail time for.

Friday High Fives

It's Friday, my peeps. Tomorrow we embark on a little road trip to Bloomington, IL to see my my cousin, her husband and daughter, and my aunt all of whom we only see maybe two times a year if we're lucky. I'm excited for Nash to meet his cousins and great aunt, for a little space away from our norm, and for the Munch's first swimming experience at the hotel. All in all, it should be a great weekend!

Other highlights during this last full week of March are:

• Last Sunday's lunch at Moe's in Algonquin. Yes, I drive 45 minutes to eat two tacos and chips and salsa and I make no apologies for this. It was delicious and all that I hoped it would be.

• This video. Click here. It made me smile and even go back to watch it a second time so I thought it was worth sharing. I miss "Just Jack" in my life.
• Making homemade milkshakes for our church group on Wednesday night. We host group every week in our home and it was our turn to make the snacks. I wasn't jazzed about anything in my recipe arsenal until I remembered how my grandma used to make us thebomb.com milkshakes when we were little. Running with that memory, I offered the following flavors and guests placed their order as they arrived: vanilla, chocolate, cookies'N cream, and Butterfinger. Yumm-o and so easy.
• Not contracting the Hubs stomach bug this week. Seriously, friends, if there has been a cold, bug, virus, etc...we've pretty much had them all in our home this winter (outside of Measles and SARS). Needless to say, my surgical face mask from the doctor's office visit last month has come in way more handy than I had anticipated.
• Getting to parent this beautiful face. Our Munchie is seriously one of the happiest babies I know. We are so lucky to call him ours.

• Not getting stuck in the hot frigid mess that was the first Monday of spring in IL. It was cold, snowy and apparently icy because it took me almost an hour to get to work on my 15 minute route:/ Thankfully, the road that I take every single day had already been closed due to about 12 cars being stuck on the incline thanks to ice buried under the snow. Who knows how long they were stuck there. Isn't this a lovely sight for the first Monday of spring? Barf.

• Finding this kiddie plate for Munchie's Easter basket! My favorite book growing up was The Pokey Little Puppy, so finding this Pokey little plate made my day. I've already saved an original copy of the 1970's book to read to my little man as well. Another other Pokey Little Puppy fans out there?

• Having a babysitter tonight so we can celebrate a friend's Bday. I've already lined up some of her favorite snacks in the hopes that she'll feel appreciated and want to come back again. This momma wants some summer nights out, ya hear me?
• The opportunity to celebrate RVC's Women's Basketball team for securing their 3rd NJCCA National Championship! These ladies are amazing athletes and deserve so much more recognition than they receive. I'm so proud of them and proud that I get to play a small role in such a strong college.

Happy Friday, Y'all!

PSA

Consider this my good deed of the day, y'all. What I'm about to tell you will spare you from future snacking incidents that may involve gagging, dry heaving, or gnashing of teeth. You're welcome.

With the Hubs and I taking a road trip into the suburbs to hit up one of my favorite grocery stores, Trader Joe's (which we do not have in our city, sadly), I mapped out my grocery list "must haves" in advance thanks to Pinterest and foodie blogger recommendations. Well. Let me tell you. One of those bloggers is a dang liar. A bold-faced liar of maximum proportions.

Some of the items on my beloved, well thought out and researched list were:
Goddess Salad dressing
Authentica Salsa
Various wines
Creamy Toscana Cheese w/ Syrah
White Bean & Basil Hummus
Chocolate Croissants
Seaweed Snacks
Gorgonzola Crackers
Chicken Dumplings
Coconut Oil
Mushroom Ravioli
Etc...

Can you guess which item led me completely astray????

I'll give you a clue, which should've been a clue for me...it's a dehydrated snack from the sea.

Yep, I'm convinced that Trader Joe's Seaweed Snacks are straight from the devil. O.M.Goodness, they are nasTy, with a capital T! I should've known when I pulled them out of the package and they resembled green, paper thin squares of fishiness. It looked like straight up fish food, but in sheet form. Gag.

Being the food optimist that I am, I took a bite. I mean, the blogger said they were delicious and healthy. Nowhere in her review of the "Best 10 Items at Trader Joe's" did she say "oh yeah, and avoid the seaweed snacks. They'll make you spit them out in your office trash can in a moment of sheer panic." Liar. The only thing you must try in terms of these green snacks is avoidance. Stay far, far away. And don't be fooled by the $.99 price tag. I'd play $99.00 not to ever let one of those sheets of gnarl touch my tongue again.

And in the wise words of the great theologian, Forest Gump "And that's all I have to say about that."

Life

Life is meant to be lived …
not managed,
not controlled,
not screamed,
not stressed,
not hurried,
not guilt-ridden,
not regretted,
not scripted,
not consumed by distractions, big or small, obvious or subtle.
Life is meant to be lived … and sometimes we lose our way.

Those words, that I read over at Hands Free Mama, resonate so incredibly much with me in my current realm. And if I'm really honest, which I always try to be on here, the words that jump off the page and smack me in the kisser are "screamed, stressed, hurried and guilt-ridden." Why? Because there's always, ALWAYS more to do in these lives of ours. I say "ours" because I'm pretty confident that I'm not the only one who teeters between wishing we had more hours in the day and being thankful that the good Lord limits us to 24 hours a day to fill with the important, the beautiful, the ugly, the mandatory, the frivolous and the lazy. There's just so much "stuff" to do that one person cannot fit into one day, and even though I know this as a rational being, I still stumble into the hurried, stressed, yelling, frantic maniac that I can become if I don't keep one eye focused inward.

Just recently on a ride to a funeral home for a visitation with the Hubs and the Munch, I shared an inner struggle of mine as a new mom. And not realizing how fitting my timing was, I said "I've been struggling lately with weekends. Part of me just wants to rest and stay home and get everything done around the house that we need too, while the other part of me wants to be out as a family, exploring and making memories." We chatted a bit more about it on the 40 minute drive and by the end of the conversation, I asked if he'd want to take a quick road trip the following Sunday to get away for a bit. Just the three of us. And so we did.

You see, there's a million and one projects on our plate at home. We have things to fix, things to paint, ALWAYS things to clean, etc... I clean our house, whether surface or deep, all the time and it never seems to allow me to catch up. There's always new dust. New clutter. Shoes by the front door. Salt ALL over the counter because the Hubs views salt dispersion as a full-contact sport, apparently (love you;). Bathrooms to clean. Baby toys to pick up. And so on. BUT I don't want that to be my existence on our coveted weekends. I want to load the baby up and explore. Even if it means something as simple as hitting up Trader Joe's.

Thanks to the Hubs giving up a Sunday during March Madness (which I didn't even realize until we ate a place with TVs for lunch, sorry!), the 3 amigos piled into the car and headed into the suburbs to shop. Yep, the Hubs gave up a basketball watching marathon to hit up Trader Joe's, World Market, etc... He took one for the team big time and I'm grateful. Was it the best memories we've ever made? Not by a long shot. What it WAS though was a chance to shut the door at home on the commitments, the dust bunnies, the laundry and the schedules. We got away and we made ourselves a priority over the home and the stress and hurriedness and it was everything I hoped it be.

You see, when it's all said and done and someone's driving to a funeral home for my visitation, the last thing I want them to chat about is that I was always on the go, a dust and clutter free mom who got so much stuff done. Sure, those moms are nice, but that's not what I want to be about. I want to be about road trips and adventures and memories and car dancing. And if I can find a good balance, hopefully the clutter of happy memories will outnumber the number of cluttered shoes at our front door. And if not? I'm okay with that too.

The Big Feelings

I cannot be creative today. I'm tapped out. I'm done.

It's been one of those days when you have so much to do and yet you don't know where to start so you "start" a million things and finish zero of them. If it's any indicator on how my day has gone, my left eye will not stop twitching thanks to stress. Good times.

What does that mean for you? You get to "listen" to someone else for a change, which is most likely a treat for you;) And because I love this woman/author/blogger/speaker directly into my soul, I think her words are golden and say so many things that are too good and too profound not to share.

If you're a mom or you love or are married to a mom or have ever had a mom, take 3 minutes to read her thoughts. They are true and necessary and speak validation. Even on down to the tiny detail of how Subaru commercials slay me and make me irrationally happy or an ooey, gooey mess. Side note, who are those brilliant writers at Subaru and why are they not eligible for an Oscar?!

Thanks for your words, Jen Hatmaker, and for uniting us around the BIG FEELINGS in the small moments that make up our lives now. You're simply the best.

http://community.today.com/parentingteam/post/i-wish-someone-wouldve-warned-me-about-these-big-feelings

Friday High Fives

It's Friday. It's the first day of spring. Need I say more?

Three cheers for:

• These melt in your mouth, not in your hand little gems that I am currently popping like Pez.

• Open windows in my car and especially my office. Hearing the wind and cars whirling by just makes you feel a bit more free.
• This audio book. It is sooooo good. I'm doing the whole sitting in my car in the driveway thing. Anyone have an errands I can run for you? I'm all about more car time right now.  

• March Madness. I'm never any good at it, but I love filing out my bracket every year. My selection process is super scientific:
• Schools I have cheered at in college
• Schools where I would've liked to have cheered
• Uniform colors that look better on cheerleading uniforms
• My Final Four picks: Kentucky, Wisconsin, Duke, UVA
• Partaking in a little corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick's Day. Oh, and my 2nd and final Shamrock Shake of 2015. Sigh.

• PS...We actually ate roast beef and proclaimed it to be corned beef. Don't tell Irish peeps that I faked it, but what two people can finish off a 4lb corned beef by their lonesome? Yuck.
• The beauty and awkwardness of Dancing With The Stars return.
• I'm a huge supporter of Noah Galloway! I stumbled across his story about a year ago thanks to his connection with a local pre-teen here who is an amputee with aspirations of being Olympian. Noah has been so supportive of this kid, which in turn, made me a huge supporter of Noah. He's a class act, I promise.
• Soapbox tangent- I was really disappointed in the judge's scores for Michael Sam. I thought he nailed it. What do those judges know anyway?
• Dinner plans with friends tomorrow night. Yippie.
• Taking a walk with this cutie booty. He is the bee's knees and I shall walk with him anywhere.

• Waking up to the sun shining and a calm river view. I love when the water is so still and glassy in the morning. It's like having a constant reminder to stop and be still every morning before the chaos begins.

Happy first day of spring AND happiest of weekends, Y'all!

Mommy Lie Detector Test

As I drove home from work yesterday, A few thoughts popped into my head into in regards to things I swore pre-baby that I'd never do post-baby. It's funny how you can be SO justified in your thinking on all the things "mom" related as someone with ZERO experience in child rearing and what life really looks like when you add a 7lb miracle into the mix. Hello, reality check. Hey there, culture shock. Adios, super confidant thirty something with no littles thinking.

And as I had an internal conversation with myself on said car ride, I had to laugh as the thought of a parental lie detector test came to mind. In which I whole heartedly blame my long standing love affair with Law & Order: SVU, by the way. Can I get a what-what from my fellow Benson lovers out there? Anywho...

Should I be given a mommy lie detector test, here are a few questions that I MAY or MAY NOT fail:

• I have never stopped in Target to consider purchasing the dreaded Elf on the Shelf that I've made fun of for the last four years. Like, seriously made fun of.
• I have never picked up my favorite blanket from the laundry pile after the Munch spit up all over one side of it (which would just be gross not to wash it right away), so that I could take a much needed nap with it while the cute, little puker slept. What? It has ANOTHER side, ya know. And again, I may or may not be lying. You'll never know, will you?
• I've never carefully and strategically removed the world's biggest booger from my little's nose with my favorite eyebrow tweezers so he could breathe.
• I've never implemented the 5 second rule in regards to pacifier droppage. On my first child.
• I've never rewarded myself with chocolate when I have to pump.
• I've never taken a "shower" with baby wipes and called it clean enough.  
• I've never gone without washing my hair for days until the roots of my head actually hurt within the first few weeks of bringing home this little miracle.
• I've never peed a little when I sneezed post baby. Seriously, what is that??!!
• I've never put breastmilk in the Hub's coffee when I've been too lazy to run to the store. Not really. I just wanted to make the Hubs silently panic for a second!
• I've never left the house with the diaper sitting by the front door leaving us with zero diapers at the restaurant. I've never also questioned if I could boy-scout style rig up a diaper out of the restaurant's cloth napkins should we have a blow out.

Thank the Lord I've never done any of those parenting faux pauxs. OR at least been asked to test my honesty on their occurrence and frequency. Lying moms unite!