Our Blaise

"Kind words produce their own image in men's souls; and a beautiful image it is. 

They soothe and quiet and comfort the hearer. 

They shame him out of his sour, morose, unkind feelings. 

We have not yet begun to use kind words in such abundance as they ought to be used." 

-Blaise Pascal

My Dad sent me the quote above today.  I love it; spoken by our Blaise's namesake.  


The pictures are of our sweet boy's dedication on Mother's Day, a month ago now.  The pictures are actually ones I took of photographs given to us by our church.  So that's why there is a glare and they look slightly bent.  And yes, we did have all 4 children up there with us.  You can see Silas and Lieren in the top picture.  The last one was taken by my friend Trisha.  She had a baby boy just 9 days before I had Blaise so we have become nursing buddies in the baby room every Sunday morning.

Fun and Full Birthday Weekend

Our Simeon and Lieren turned two this weekend.  It is amazing to me that two years ago we were in a hospital in Louisville just meeting them for the first time.  They were so little.  Now they are running all through the house, talking in sentences, and really playing together.  There are more cute, sweet twin moments every day than I can count.  There are lots of two-year-old moments too, to be honest.  But that comes with the territory.  

We started the celebration on Friday morning, just our family.  We gave Sim and Lieren a train table that we found on Craigslist.  It was a fairly incredible deal and the boys have already played at it for hours.  Lieren, on the other hand, played for about ten minutes then went to get her babies.  She is such a girl!  Shane and I agreed that while their big gift on Friday wasn't her favorite, she would be redeemed with the kitchen they got from Grandma and Grandpa on Saturday.

I realized mid-morning on Friday that we weren't going to make it to the library for our weekly visit.  Blaise was running later in his routine (because he started sleeping through the night!) and the boys didn't want to leave the trains quite yet.  So I sent a message to my friend Natalie and asked if they wanted to go to McDonalds for lunch and a bit of play.  She had 3 of her nieces and nephews with her but asked her mom to join us and we made a party of it.  This was the best shot I got of the crew (Blaise was sleeping in his carseat beside Natalie)...

Friday night our church rented out our town pool so we spent the evening swimming with friends.  Silas went down the big slides and even jumped off the diving board.  He climbed up onto the high dive and was at the end to jump to a good friend of ours who is a life guard, but just couldn't make himself do it.  Another day, I suppose.  I was so proud of him for wanting to try.

Then on Saturday we had a little party here at home with some family...

Shane, Lee and Wes spent a majority of the day putting together a swingset.  Thanks to Papa and Nana, and Great Papa and Great Nana for this fun gift for all three!

We had such a fun, full day celebrating Simeon and Lieren.  That evening Judy and Lee offered to stay with the big three so Shane and I could go out for dinner for our anniversary.  If you'll remember, we were in the hospital for our 10th anniversary when the babes were born.  We had a nice, relaxing dinner out with Blaise in tow.  Then went home and some students came over to hang out.  Like I said, fun and full!

Daddy,

Because of you, I know the joy of generosity.

Because of you, I know the delight of a rumblebuffin.

Because of you, I know the peace of being silent.

Because of you, I know the warmth of a well-worn book.

Because of you, I know the balance of grace and holiness.

Because of you, I know the sacrifice of loving in sickness and in health.

Because of you, I know the risk and reward of obedience, even when His big picture is not clear.

I love you.

And your grandchildren want you to know they love you too...

Silas

Simeon

Lieren

Blaise

Even the Dust, He Knows

I started back to work on Friday.  It was a good day.  We had Shane's mom and one of our sweet high school students here to be with all four children.  But heading in to work wasn't without its stress.  Change is always hard, and especially for me when it means leaving the kids.

I don't work that much, just a day a week.  And I was only there about 5 hours on Friday.  So only missed one feeding with Blaise.  Sometimes when I think about my friends who work a lot more, I feel badly for even talking about work.  But it's the same thing when one of my friends who has, say, only 2 children tells me how overwhelmed she is then says, "I feel so bad venting to you cause you have 4!"  I always tell them not to feel bad.  It's all relative.  And what overwhelms one of us might not overwhelm the other.  Hopefully we're all trying to support one another and not compare.

This was also a big week for us because Shane preached on Sunday.  We are in the midst of a series on prayer and Shane taught through Psalm 139 on praying in response to the wisdom of God;  He knows all things and He knows us.  One of the examples Shane used was that God knows all things, even at a micro level.  You know when the sun shines through the window and you see all those dust particles? he said.  God knows and governs the path of each dust particle.  And not only those here on earth but throughout the universe.

So this week as I was dealing with the stress of going back to work, the Lord kept bringing that illustration to mind (Shane had talked me through the details of his message earlier in the week).  I couldn't shake the truth that our God knew and would govern the details of both home and work.  So grateful we can trust His wisdom.

It was sweet to hear Shane preach on Father's Day.  I left Blaise in the nursery for the first time (he was such a good boy to be happy the whole time and wait till the service was over to need to eat again) so I got to be in the entire service for the first time in 2 months!

Shane did a wonderful job and his message is up on the Harvest website.  We are blessed to have heard from several people that what he said deeply ministered to them.  And I am grateful that God redeemed several personal experiences we have had as Shane shared how God brought light to some of our darkest times.  There is such purpose in pain when it draws others to the Lord.

We are so proud to be wife and daughter and sons of this man!

Last night we were super tired from the long weekend.  We had done some random things on Friday night, including Silas getting to go on a mock backyard campout (see Natalie's blog for cute pics!).  Then Saturday, Shane and Blaise and I went to a wedding.  So by Sunday night we were ready to just rest and be together.  We went on a family walk after having dinner outside.

Today Shane was home so we pulled out our pool for the first time this summer.  The kids had a blast, especially when we put the slide into it!  They had such fun that we went out again after naps and had dinner poolside...

Carnival!