Evening snack

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In about 20 minutes, I’ll have a fresh-from-the-oven, low-carb buttermilk pie ready to eat! Yum! I just got in the mood for some buttermilk pie earlier and decided to make one, while I had a relatively free evening. (No evening is totally free from laundry, homework and whatnot, but it’s all relative.)

While I was waiting for the pie to finish, I enjoyed a glass of cabernet split 1:1 with diet tonic water. If you’ve never tried it, it might sound odd, but it’s really good. It turns an ordinary glass of wine into a spritzer. I like red wine, and I like to try new brands that are on sale. Sometimes I discover a new favorite; other times, it’s too tart/bitter for my preference, but I don’t want to waste it. Cutting it with diet tonic water transforms it into something completely new and very yummy! Red wine is normally low-carb, and the diet tonic water has zero calories/carbs, so it’s a nice treat.

I’d better go check the oven timer … catch ya later!

Mother’s Day weekend

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I had a delightful Mother’s Day Eve. Two of the boys spent the night at Nana & Granddad’s house, and the other three were relatively well behaved as they played video games and got to stay up a little late. I locked myself in the bathroom, ran a hot bath and enjoyed some red wine and a good book (I actually put my nook in a gallon zip bag so that I could read it in the tub). I felt very luxurious with my wine glass in the bathtub, and I only got interrupted three times by people knocking on the door. (At least they don’t know how to pick locks … yet.)

This morning, I was woken up by several blurry faces (I didn’t have my glasses on yet) appearing at my bedside and an iced skinny vanilla latte thrust beneath my nose. The guys had gone to a local Mexican food restaurant for breakfast burritos and made a stop at the coffee shop on the way home. I can’t remember the last time I had breakfast in bed; it was really nice. They even took my burrito out of the tortilla and served on a plate it the way I eat it: low-carb. 😉

The two who were at grandparents’ came home in time to join us for church, so we took up almost a whole pew with all seven of us seated together. It was nice, though, to have all of them with me on Mother’s Day.

After church, we met up with Nana & Granddad at the lake and enjoyed a picnic lunch, followed by a couple of hours of swimming in surprisingly frigid water. The boys had a blast, and I think everyone will sleep well tonight after all of the fun in the sun!

The planned activities were memorable, but what really struck me about this weekend were all of the unexpected things that popped up, as they always seem to do … things like:

  • helping one of the 6yos with a dreadful bloody nose … “I think ALL of my blood is going to come out!” he cried as his poor little nose gushed into the bathroom sink. I told him the story of how the school nurse knew me by name because of all of my bloody noses. I remembered the trick of putting a piece of a paper sack beneath the upper lip (across your top front teeth); apparently, it helps to dry out that nerve in your nasal cavity. I also had him hold ice on the bridge of his nose. It was a miserable 10 minutes or so, but I managed to convince him that he wasn’t going to lose all of the blood in his body, and it eventually stopped.
  • helping the other 6yo with what can only be described as diaper rash, accompanied by a speech about proper wiping. Oh, the things I thought I was finished doing after they outgrew diapers! Who knew I’d still have to wipe behinds at age 6?!
  • cheering on the 7-1/2yo for pulling out his own tooth … which reminds me, the tooth fairy needs to go scrounge up a dollar …
  • assembling and moving furniture. We’ve been needing to replace a few of the boys’ beds, and we found a great deal at a local consignment furniture store on two bunkbeds and a futon. So, went spent much of the weekend tearing down old beds, cleaning the scariness beneath them and assembling the new furniture. Someone made a comment about manual labor being difficult, and I mumbled under my breath: “It’s easier than the other kind of labor!”

On that note … Happy Mother’s Day!

The Ideal Woman (Prayer Devotional for the week of May 8, 2011)

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Every Mother’s Day, store shelves are crammed full with cards and trinkets for “The Best Mom in the World.” What is it, though, that makes a great mom? For that matter, what makes an honorable woman or a good person, in general?

When I think of what makes a great mom, a passage in Proverbs 31: 10-31 comes to mind. It describes “a wife of noble character” and seems to be the go-to chapter to find the ideal traits in a woman. However, when we read Proverbs 31, we often skip ahead to Verse 10 and ignore the first nine verses. The chapter is actually attributed to King Lemuel, and he gives credit to his mother for the sayings.

Get this … as soon as the chapter begins, the king’s mom begs him not to waste his time on women, for fear that they will bring him to ruin. Fast-forward to Verse 10, when she asks: “Who can find a virtuous and capable wife?” as if it’s an impossible feat. She goes on to describe the type of woman she thinks would be good enough for her son—a woman who not only brokers real estate (v. 16), makes homemade meals every day and apparently doesn’t sleep much (v. 15), and is also one of those Martha Stewart types who knows how to make anything from scratch (v. 13, 19, 22, 24). Not to mention, she’s married to a well-to-do man with well-behaved kids, all of whom dote on her publicly (v. 23, 28, 29).

That’s totally my life. Not. Am I the only one who feels a bit sub-par right about now?

Let’s break it down and see if we can make sense of this passage. Some of the verses don’t seem to mean much to us nowadays (I don’t know about you, but I haven’t the foggiest clue how to spin wool, nor do I know anything about merchant ships!), yet there are some timeless principles mingled in here that can apply to all of us: women and men; married and single; parents and childless. So, let’s dig in and focus our daily prayer time on these attributes.

Aunt-Mother’s Day

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Shortly after my brother died in 2009 (it seems so long ago, yet so recently), I went through what might be described as an identity crisis. It felt as though part of who I was, who I’d always believed myself to be, had also died. From my earliest memories, I have been a big sister. Other than an album full of baby & toddler pictures to prove otherwise, I have no recollection of ever being an only child.

As Mother’s Day approaches, I feel a different – yet similar – type of identity shift. My nephews have been in my care for two years, and this is the first Mother’s Day when everyone actually calls me “Mom.” I’ve never pressured my nephews to call me that; I told them from the get-go that they are welcome to continue calling me “Aunt Angela,” if they prefer. The older started calling me “Mom” pretty quickly; I think he just fell into step with what my other sons called me. The younger one, though, seldom called me “Mom.” Last year, he started using that name about half the time, and I tried not to pay attention to it; I just answered him the same, either way. The past few months, though, he has started to make the switch, and now, he very seldom calls me “Aunt Angela.”

I know that may seem like an inconsequential step in the grand scheme of life, but to me, it means a lot. This coming Sunday feels less like Aunt-Mother’s Day and more like a “normal” (whatever that is, ha!) Mother’s Day. It doesn’t mean that the life we each led two years ago and beyond has somehow been replaced; on the contrary, I try to be very open about sharing memories and stories of my brother … I want those stories to become their memories, as their own memories of him fade with time.

This time, I don’t feel like I’m going through an identity crisis. I feel like I’m going through an identity renewal.

Wedding flowers

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Now that the bride has given her approval, I thought I would post a picture of a little project that I’ve been working on this week. (I didn’t want to post any pics until she gave the thumbs-up, in case she didn’t like them.) My best friend is getting married later this month, and I have the genuine honor and joy of being her matron of honor. Her eldest son was my ring bearer … I can’t believe he’s so grown-up now!!

Anyway, I made flower arrangements for the wedding party. Their colors are black & white, so I tried to use a mix of various white flowers, greenery and patterned ribbon:

The pair of over-sized daisies are for the flower girl. The boutonnieres are for the guys (obviously!). The bouquet on the far left is mine, and the larger one in the center is the bride’s.

We’ve been through thick & thin together all these years, and I’m so honored to be a part of her wedding! Love you, B!