Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day!

First of all, let me tell you: This was my first Mother's Day (as a mother!) and I have never appreciated all the hard work my mother(s) have put in over the years as much as I do this year!

That being said, I never understood the depth of joy to be found in motherhood, either! :)

On this Mother's Day, my husband outdid himself. My request was not to cook any food on Sunday, and since we usually have frozen pizza for Sunday lunch I was thinking..."How 'bout you stick it in the oven and wash the pan for me?" But Jonathan and I were thinking on very different levels.

Sunday morning we woke up to the fantastic aroma of barbecued beef in the crock pot! He still won't tell me his recipe, but it was amazing. He also cooked up some homemade french fries to go along with it. YUM.

At church, all the kids gathered around their mother and passed a mic around, telling us what they appreciated about their moms. I think the general consensus was that we're all glad our mothers never poisoned us with their food. ;) I'm pretty sure Ethan cooed a 'Happy Mother's Day' to me too. :D

After church and lunch, we hopped on our four-wheeler (yippee!) and made a quick drive down to Tanalian River to enjoy the lovely weather.

Of course we also called home later to wish our own fantastic mothers a very happy day as well. :)

To end the day, Jonathan submitted himself to a (rather cheesy) chick flick of my choice. :)

I'm pretty sure he can't top this day for my birthday...but since it will be a workday anyway, this fantabulous day counts toward that too. *wink*

We had a marvelous weekend last...well, weekend and boy, was it well-timed. Summertime busy-ness has been gearing up for a while now and this week it definitely seems to be in full swing. 

While Jonathan is working such long days, and I am home waiting for the baby to wake up (he sleeps a lot!) it can be easy to focus on all the time we don't get to spend together, but we've already learned that that is not a good option. Instead, God has been teaching us to value every little moment we do get to spend together. 

Jonathan gets an hour lunch break and we do a lot of talking business (finances and plans) during that time so that when he gets off of work, we can just relax together. I often go and visit him at the hangar, so he can see Ethan while he's awake and smiley. Those five or ten minutes we snag together help me especially when I'm feeling stir-crazy or stressed. 

God is really using life in Port Alsworth to teach us how to value relationships and small blessings, instead of the availability of things.

Back to our marvelous weekend! Sunshine has been abundant in Port Alsworth these past few weeks and oh - how we have enjoyed it! On Saturday Jonathan helped me clean out the flower bed and fixed the four-wheeler we bought from a friend a few weeks ago. We now have transportation around town, which is a ginormous blessing! Walking everywhere is only a novelty for so long. ;)

We are doubly grateful for all the sunshine lately since our dryer decided to go psycho on us and start shredding our clothes. I am immensely grateful that it didn't decide to do this in the dead of winter and that God has provided a clothesline and sunlight to dry our clothes for us. There isn't anything much better than the smell of line-dried clothes. :) We should also have a working dryer pretty soon, things just take longer by default out here.

Ethan is growing like a weed and I can't believe he is already 12 weeks old!

Two days old and ten weeks old. :)

He's just starting to be big enough to try out his jumper....and he hasn't decided what he thinks about it quite yet. :)

He knows what he thinks of his daddy though...he's the greatest!