Two Years Later...

My family and I finally made it to church. Two years. I've been saved for about eight years now and I feel guilty and shameful for getting lost. Allowing myself to become weak in all aspects and allowing myself to sink back into old habits, old ways, and of course, mistakes that I had already made and assumed I'd stay away from. So we went to church today and it was not what I expected. I expected our church family to not talk to us, to look at us shamefully, to make it awkward all in all. And as I walked into the building guiltily, it was a complete shock from the moment we got in the doors. We were greeted with smiles, hugs and love. Not a single person criticized us for being gone for so long, no one spoke to us harshly, and no one even asked what happened. They welcomed us back with love, told us how they had been praying for us and were so happy to have us back, and how big the kidlets had gotten. It was wonderful. Our church has grown which was quite nice and a definite surprise. And the sermon was a total God thing. My cousin has been keeping an "eye" on me and sending links and prayers. I'd been lost between what I have known and what I am. And today's sermon answered every question that I have ever had. God had planned it perfectly I'd say. I'll post a link at the end of this, it leads to my church's website and our pastor's sermon should be up there either tonight or tomorrow. It was wonderful and I feel like I may be on the path of peace again :) It's hard to lead my life towards peace and not being able to actually control what is around it completely. It seems as if I am finally ready to be at peace and others have other ideas. Family drama is hanging around lately. And a huge test of myself hangs around as well. It usually is easy for me to forgive. Trust no, but forgive yes. Except when I have people who are extremely close to me hurt me. Or do things that just aren't right in anyway. Family to me means un-breakable. I have close friends who continually love me no matter what happens, no matter the distance, no matter what I say or tell them, and no matter how lost I become. I have had people in the past two years stick by me and show me love in every way. That is family to me. I have had my sister-in-law, love me like her blood and become one of my best friends. We have gotten into a fight or two and a few arguments and even some silent treatments but always to quickly forgive each other and get past it. That is family. But it's hard to have someone close to you, disown you over something silly. Especially only days after losing your father. People wonder why I am so closed off. Let me tell you how after being hurt by people closest to you, I just don't want to risk opening myself up to get hurt again. It's not that I can't, it's that I choose not to. And now, after two years, I have the opportunity to forgive someone, but again, I won't. And yet I walk with the guilt. It's difficult to do something that I know is right, that protects me and my family, and yet feel like the bad guy. It's something I get to work on. And pray on more. It has been an exciting week so far. Bug finished her last year of Cubbies in Awana. She is now officially a Spark in the fall. And she didn't just finish it out but she blew away the entire program. She completed both books, STILL has both books worth of verses memorized. She also did not miss a single Awana meeting in the two years. We had help from other Cubby classes, when we went to Montana, she was allowed to attend their meetings which was awesome. So I finished sewing the last of her patches on and now get to look for a shadow box to put it in. We have taught her that if she is going to do something, she has to do it to the full extent of her ability, to do her very best, and to always finish it no matter if she doesn't like it or not. I don't want her like me, starting things and never finishing them, lol. Now she has two weeks left of Head Start, a few weeks of summer school to prep her for kindergarten, and then in a few short months, I will have a big girl on my hands. I know that as time goes on, I will always miss my father, but it will ease up. But times like these, I haven't ever wished he was here as hard as I do now. I think he'd get a kick out of how my girl is turning out. We have a full year planned ahead, she gets to pick one sport to do, and she has chosen hockey, which will be interesting. Luckily she can skate okay lol. And she will be starting up Daisy's in Girl Scouts and I get to start a wonderful thing by being one of her leaders :) To say I am excited is a HUGE understatement.

Onto Bean. My boy. HA! Shooting, running, jumping, climbing everything, kind of boy. Keeping him inside or out of dirt is pretty much impossible. He likes to fish, hunt, dig up worms, run, climb, hike, splash in mud puddles and ride his bike. And he prefers a bow and arrow to anything else. He gets to start Early Head Start in the fall which means once a week for an hour, we will have a teacher visit us and work with him. We will have activities to do during the week just us and then every two weeks, on Fridays he will get to go to the center to have a playdate with the other kids in the program. I am pretty excited but ever so sad. It's really hard to watch him grow up since he is after all, my baby.

I am planning on finishing and working on a lot of crafts and I will be sharing them with you over time. Get some photos on this boring blog. I want to test myself out and see if I can actually be crafty. Thanks to pinterest, I doubt it will be too difficult LoL. Wait until you see the next cake I have planned. I don't take photos and share the of my cakes often but it's really neat to make my cakes. I don't like the taste of fondant but using it can be a blast! Although i found some artificial strawberry flavoring and I am going to attempt that with this cake, lol. You'll see....

So my blog prompts, which I have forgotten about, I found today as I was sorting through my e-mail messages. One of them stuck in my mind. Promises. That's all. Just promises. At first I was wondering ok what about them? But to me I think it just means to write what we think about them. Do we make the often? Do we break them often? What kind do we make? Husband and I both feel the same way about promises. If you can't trust our yes's to be yes and our no's to be no, then it doesn't matter what we do, promise, swear or whatever, it doesn't matter. So we demonstrate that people can trust our yes's and no's to be just that. I don't need to walk up and say 'I promise', I just say, yes I will do that, and then I do. I try hard to not lie and not to be known as a liar and I don't lie. There are no degrees of sins, a lie is just the same as murder so I try not to do either. Except for one time. My wedding day. I made a vow to my husband, to God and our family and friends. And that is one promise, one vow, I will never break <3

My anniversary is coming up in about a month and a half. It will be seven years of marriage. And I am excited to celebrate that day. Which will include dinner at our favorite restaurant which we only visit on our anniversary or when his parents come to town. We will more than likely visit the movies and of course buy each other goodies. SImple, fun and yet what I look forward to for months at a time. I always tell Husband, "God makes our life bumpy but when it comes to our marriage and our children, we are incredibly blessed, why do you think that is?" There is no other answer other than God. We can get lost along the way, we can turn our backs from Him, we can pretend not to know the truth, but in the end, we always come back because we know better. And the best part is? He will never leave us. He stands by and watches and waits. And still blesses our road. What a wonderful God we have.

With that I think I will end it here. I have a few minutes free to check pinterest, answer a few messages on facebook and then get to dinner. I hope everyone has had a wonderful weekend. I am actually looking forward to the oncoming week. I was dealing with the passing of a kidney stone but I think it's done now and thankfully it wasn't so bad. I have a pretty high pain tolerance thankfully so I hope either it was small or I just dealt well with it. Either way, it's done and I'm happy :)) So until next time! *Beckie*

I hope You Read This

 First and foremost, I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday weekend. We are celebrating Passover as well as Easter since we are a bi-religious family and it's just as crazy busy as it is fun.
 Part of our plan for the weekend started off with an Easter egg hunt this morning. As it is every year, the weather was windy and cold and not really answering our prayers of sunshine, warmth and zero winds. But since snow was predicted, it was better than the forecast at least :) It was nice to enjoy the hunt as a participant rather than the person who put it on as well. For the past two years I have been the one to put the city Easter egg hunt on. And every year it has been quite the stress and quite the anxiety for me. I couldn't do it another year it was just not something I was looking forward to. You see, Easter egg hunts from a parent's point of view isn't about how awesome it is for their kids to be able to participate in seeking out eggs with free candy in them, or being able to share the excitement with their kids as they run around giggling and seeking eggs with their friends and it is certainly not about thinking about the efforts of those who put it on. No, instead as I have learned over the past three years now, it is about standing around with other parents and complaining about any aspect possible from the weather which no one has any control over (and in my opinion is sort of fair game because I also hate coldness and wind), it's also about complaining about how many eggs are NOT there to hunt for even though they don't seem to get how the people putting on the egg hunt paid for the eggs themselves, and it isn't about thinking about what the people go through putting this one. So I'd like to enlighten people a little bit. I haven't spoken my opinion in three years. I have sat back quietly, taken the criticism from everyone and kept my mouth shut. I'm tired of doing that.
 So let's begin. The past two years I have spent more than $600 dollars of my own money on plastic eggs, candy to go inside of them, and the prizes to be given to the children who found special eggs. I had a friend at the time who helped me last year and put in quite a bit of money herself. She also spent a month writing letters and e-mails begging companies and people for donations. Last year's count of plastic eggs totaled 1200. And we had about 75 children show up for last year's hunt. I still received complaints about how there were not enough eggs. Really?!? We put quarters in some eggs. To a child, that is still quite a bit of money. I heard people gripe about how we should have put in more than just one quarter. Really!?!? I put in ads and flyers about the egg hunt starting at a certain time. I had people show up after that specified time and complain that their children didn't get to participate and how horrible of a person I was. If something starts at 10:00am, show up ten minutes early. Don't complain because you can't show up to en event on time. I am not holding 75+ children just because a few can't get their parents out the door faster. I enjoyed hearing feedback, it gave me ideas. The first egg hunt I put on, I had a few parents hold back until everyone left and gave me ideas and things to work with. That helped. What didn't help was parents telling me how dumb I was for doing something or hearing how useless I was because I didn't do the egg hunt the way they wanted it. If there is a FREE event put on in your city evaluate the fact that if you think you may have an idea or could help out in ANY way, why not speak up and volunteer to help out instead of sitting in your house and complaining about what could have been one way or done differently or how you could have done it better. When I started the egg hunt, I had ZERO help. ZERO. No one volunteered to help me until the day AFTER. The city wouldn't even help me. And the last time it had been done was about ten years previous I heard.
 This year was a different story. I took the hunt to my local chapter of the Eagle's Auxiliary and asked them to help me with it. I couldn't take the stress, the financial aspect was too much and in all honesty I was tired of people going behind my back and complaining about what I did or didn't do or how badly ran it was. So I humbled myself and took down my pride a notch and asked for help. And I got it. A friend of mine and her friend (who is now a new friend of mine :) ) took over this year. They got our local movie theater to donate a free movie for everyone, they got hot dogs, chips, cookies and punch and gave the kids a free lunch as well as got awesome raffle prizes and the obvious Easter egg hunt. The Easter bunny was also present and that was a pretty good hit to. But, instead of parents saying thank you or telling these ladies how awesome of a job they did, all I heard was complaints and it made me sick to my stomach. Parents were upset that there was no food for them. Umm hello!?!? Really1? THIS IS FOR THE CHILDREN!!!! You want free food, go to a homeless shelter or your own parents. THIS WAS FOR THE CHILDREN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There weren't enough eggs. I can see that but how many eggs for a child is really "enough"? There was no way to predict the amount of children showing up. And in big cities children are only allowed to walk away with 6 or 7 eggs each. So when your child walks out shouting yay I have 15 eggs, you really need to hush. Every family puts on their own egg hunt on Easter anyways, it isn't like your child won't get anything at all so don't get greedy. Let's see, what was the other complaint I heard...Oh yeah, parents showed up after the specified time. I read awesome and I know I read that the egg hunt began at ten but to please show up earlier. That's pretty self explanatory. If something starts at ten, be there at nine forty-five or nine fifty. Don't show up at five minutes past ten and wonder why the egg hunt is done with. A mass of children will consume twelve hundred eggs in literally four and a half minutes. I timed it last year.
 It makes me upset that all I heard was negative comments about the egg hunt, once again. What is so hard about a smile and a thank you? I know my father raised me right, did everyone else's parents not care enough to teach the most simplest rules of respect and politeness? And yet these people are the same ones who will be sitting in a church tomorrow praising God for saving them and pretending to be awesome religious people. Just because you go to church does not make you a Christian. Your behavior outside of church is what people notice better than how you sit in a church.
 I thanked these ladies. My kids got free candy, I got a free three hours of entertainment for them as well as myself, my kids got a free lunch, they got to watch a free movie in the actual theatre, and my son even won a free kite. I don't see any negatives about this. We as a family spent three awesome hours together. How was that a bad thing?
 I'm just in a mood now because of that. I was so disgusted by grown adults that it actually baffles me. Every year I see grown ups who act more greedy, more selfish and just plain out more immature than the five and six years old who are actually in the hunt. Grow up "adults"!
 Ugh.
 There's the end of my rant. Hopefully people read it and got something out of it. Hopefully next year when I put on the next egg hunt, I am met with people who want to help and not bitch and whine. Hopefully I am met with more help than road blocks. Hopefully people are grateful and not ridiculous. Because honestly, people do these things for complete strangers. People are doing this for children who aren't theirs. People do this sort of thing to help the community, to teach children kindness and good deeds. I do this sort of thing to teach my children that if there is a change to be made in the world, to be the ones to do it instead of talking about doing it.
 So happy Easter to all of you out there. I honestly hope everyone has a wonderful time with their families and friends, and that even though it's not Thanksgiving, we all remember to be thankful. I hate that people only act right during times such as 9/11 or Christmas or Thanksgiving. People should act decent and good ALL year, EVERY year. Instead of trying so hard to be skinny, people need to try to be nice. TO EVERYONE.