Right Now

I wanted to take part in the demolition of our 'new' Church building, the old YFC Fire Hall. Fun fact, the first Church Sean and I went to together in Winnipeg first met at this Fire Hall. Now it is part of our Church again :)

Here's my small part, prepping the walls for mudding.

And the rest of the scrapping team, who I just met.

Three Things Thursday

Three things I can't get enough of lately:


1.Collage painting. I have at least 3 more in my head and one almost done for another birthday next week.

 

2. Home re-organizing.  I want to switch up....well, most everything :)


3. The book, 'The Me I Want To Be'.  Awesome book! I feel like giving a copy to all my loved ones!! It was a book from the Summit Sean picked and it's also a small group study, which Sean ordered after he read the book and loved it. Can't wait to check that out too.

good vs. bad

good.
a non-Christian friend who I've been reaching out to lately invited me out to a movie with her and her friends.
bad.
it was the stripper movie, had to pass but suggested we do another movie some time.

good.
my nephew is due today!!!
bad.
he wasn't born today :(

good.
the long weekend is just 3 days away :)
bad.
hubby has to work Monday.

good.
progress on my priorities of being in the flow of the spirit, and health.
good.
being blessed by more responsibility as a result. it's an honor and humbling at the same time. it can feel like I'm a little out of my league sometimes (and I can be tempted to see it as 'bad' occasionally) but I trust God knows what he's doing with me. and that's a good thing.

Three Things Thursday

Three things that make me strangely giddy.

1. Pretty budgeting spreadsheets.

2.Sparkles.

3.Rainbows - as you can see from my dedicated Pinterest board

Truth-Full Tuesday

This is actually an insight I was blessed with 2 weeks ago and forgot I was going to blog, but alas I was luckily reminded and now I can share :)

It was after I had spent the day at my nephew's 2nd birthday party, I was driving back to Winnipeg from Altona, thanking God for the wonderful day he had gifted me.

I was reflecting on the moments I was able to spend with each niece and nephew, reveling in the fun we had, each smile I was able to get, the moments they didn't want me to let go of them, the silliness, the love.

They weren't perfectly behaved the whole time but at the end of the day I didn't think about those moments, in fact I could hardly recall them. No, I was completely and totally blessed and more in love with those kids at the end of the day.

And then God whispered to me, 'that's how I feel after I get to spend time with you.'

We get so hung up on ways to be more spiritual rather than just spending time with God. Would the kidlings rather read letters from me or be with me?  Would they rather be hearing their moms talk about what I'm like or hang out with me themselves?  Do they try to first be perfect, or when with me just worry about behaving? Nope. Definitely not. They just want to get the most from being with me they can.  Do I get consumed about bad behaviors, either anticipating it, or let it end our time together? No, I speak into those moments truthfully as they happen and move on. And then barely remember them because I'm basking in the awesome time we just shared.

How awesome is it to know God feels that way about me.

Monthly Miscellany Monday

Here's my monthly collection of ordinary happenings and moments I don't want to forget.

~ life doesn't seem to be slowing down at all, I won't be surprised if this has to become an 'every other month' feature! and my memory isn't really cooperating with that kind of schedule because I don't write anything down as it happens, no, I try to stretch this memory of mine and recall it 6 weeks later!

~ well, the summer social life has officially kicked off, had my first of the season walk n' talks with Pam, in mid-May. Had another great one with my neighbor-bestie last week, the weather decided to co-operate in a week of rain and so the heat was conducive to my desire for a chocolate extreme blizzard reward.  I love summer for this fact alone, walk n' talks are the most fantastic use of time :) exercise, social interaction, fresh air, and often a visit that long is great for catching up, venting, and/or sharing life's joys and struggles.

~Wedding showers and birthday celebrations (with REALLY good food)

have filled up quite a bit of time and the birthdays are only starting to gear up, June and July are the really busy months! In fact, the collages I mentioned last time are birthday gifts, I've already given one, a second I just gave on my walk n' talk last week (below), and the other two you will just have to wait and see ;)

 that says soar, not sear :)

~ all the wedding creations are done as of last Monday, burlap sign, burlap pendant banner, coffee filter flowers, coffee filter flower pens. The wedding was on Saturday and it was absolutely beautiful!

I love my new dress, going to need another excuse to wear it again soon.:)

~ small group has been awesome, we even have a private FB page now to share through the week, because Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays are not enough time together :)  summer is making it hard for all of us to always be there but it's great having a place to chat almost as good as in person.

~ I already talked about the awesome May Long Weekend we had! Here are the gifts we gave mom....forgive the blurriness, I collaged them into one picture for the rest of us.

~ Riverwood did their yearly Love Winnipeg - Trash the neighborhood, blowing away their record of 40 tonnes of garbage taken off the streets, back lanes, yards of Elmwood.  We weren't able to start off at 10 am so at noon we bought a bunch of water bottles and handed them out to those we could find in the neighborhood working. Here's a video Riverwood put together of the event.
Trash the Neighbourhood 2012 from Riverwood Church on Vimeo.

~ Teigon turned TWO at the beginning of June and we went out to Altona to celebrate. It was so much fun; playing outside (until they sky opened up on us), playing inside with all the balloons, a train cake made by Grandma looked a little too real for Teigon to eat :) The birthday boy loved the baseball and bat we gave him. Also gave him a mini golf club set. He's such a mini-Kellin I figured he should get toys like daddy's.

gifts from Aunty Jodi, include a microphone he loved train cake by Grandma

he takes his baseball very seriously :)

~ on the eighth we got a break from our typical Friday night at CR and had a 5 Year Anniversary celebration at my boss' house for 4 staff at Golder who have reached this 5 year mark in the last 4 months, me being one of them.  we haven't had a big get-together where just about every person has shown up (including some former employees :) since Christmas, so it was fun to all hang out together, enjoying the company, food, outdoors.  especially since there were babies to hold :) our first gathering with babies!  our former co-worker who moved to the Golder Ottawa office came out because they just so happened to be in Winnipeg visiting, and she showed up 6 mo. pregnant, which was neat because once I heard she was I got this sense she was going to announce a pregnancy. I've been getting better at intuition like this, it's kinda freaky!

~ our one free weekend in June was last weekend and I spent it re-organizing my bathroom :) I don't have pictures yet because it's not quite done, but here are the pics from Pinterest that inspired the changes.

I think I need better hanging devices, but it's kinda working so far the way I have it. 

 just need hubby to mount the rods and the baskets are ready to hang

 moved the towels from bedroom closet to under sink....for those times when you only realize you need a new towel after you are out of the shower :) I also would like to find those mountable shelves.





 super way to hide toilet paper, and I can matchy-matchy paper with my bathroom :)





~ last but not least, another day with the family at Kildonan Park for a Father's Day picnic. Wasn't exactly sunny but the rain held out most of the afternoon and we still had lots of fun! I forgot to take a picture of dad's gift, but it was a painted tree with all of our thumb prints as leaves for a family tree. gotta love Pinterest, Jodi and I saw this idea and immediately thought of our dad who loves all things geneology. Since it's a 2012 family tree we have one tiny little finger print that will have to wait a little while to be added.....can't wait for my newest nephew's appearance any time now :)

Right Now

Guess who's back for a few days!

Three Things Thursday

Three firsts I have tried or intend to try this year:

1. Sewing my own clothes (home-ec doesn't really count :).
Done, I re-purposed this sweater into a cardigan. I loved the colour and fabric of this sweater but the fit wasn't so great, and I've really been needing a cardigan for the cold office and haven't been able to find one I liked, so I made my own. The cute gold buttons we just happened to have, used my MIL sewing machine, which did super simple button holes. I can't wait to try out more sewing projects!

2. Give blood. Done!

3. Making bread from scratch. Potato bread no less. Haven't tried yet, maybe July long.

Heal ~ Change ~ Grow - Part Two

Well it's been quite awhile, but the second part of this book 'Changes That Heal' was much harder to summarize, it's messages so important I wanted to write down everything! But that's not really a 'Cole's notes' simple summary then is it :) If you can't read the book at least you have this summary of critical truths that may start a path to some answers for you. 

As I mentioned in the last post, there is a third ingredient needed for us to grow, in addition to Grace & Truth, and that is Time.

"There is a season for everything under the sun."


Time
God's time - rarely does he snap his fingers and change us once we 'get it', there is still a lot to be learned by making us work at it as well.

Our time - old habits die hard, even once we get it, integrating what we know with what we do takes time. Even Paul said, I know what I should do yet I keep doing what I know I shouldn't do.

Relational time - we may need the time to learn things in relationships we were never taught in our formative years, or we may need to unlearn things we shouldn't have learned as children when it comes to relationships.

There are 3 foundational truths we need to learn through childhood/adolescence that are critical to having healthy relationships as an adult:
Bonding with others - we need to have others to relate to at the deepest, emotional, level. God created us to hunger for relationships, with him and others. It's a Biblical and natural principle, nothing grows apart from another source of strength and nutrition, nothing grows completely self-sustaining.  The most foundationally important bond is with our parents, most security instincts develop from the confidence/trust in these 2 relationships, not to mention psychological development. It also lays the foundation for how we proceed to bond with others, how we relate to God and how we relate to ourselves. If you can't bond properly with people (issues with trust, fear, anxiety, isolation in relationships) begin by trying to examine your formative relationships.

Separating from others - we need healthy boundaries so we realize our independence from others. Boundaries help us define who we are and who we are not, what we are responsible for and what we are not, what we own and what we don't own.  Without these boundaries we can find ourselves trying to control others or letting ourselves be controlled by others. Boundaries are our emotional 'skin', our skin knows how to protect us by keeping unhealthy things out but letting nourishing things in. When our skin is severely wounded it can't protect us as well and needs to be repaired to be functional again. Same with our boundaries, if we are letting ourselves be wounded or not letting in nourishment, we need to fix our boundary problems to stay healthy.  If you can't separate yourself from people (issues with co-dependence, control, anxiety, self-worth) begin by trying to discover what healthy boundaries are.

Becoming an adult - the process of moving into authority over your own life. 
It is hard to take that authority and own your life if you have a distorted view of yourself and others.
Part of becoming an adult is realizing that not only within others, but within ourselves, is both a good and bad nature, and we have to understand and accept that to get a realistic view of ourselves, others, and our relationships.  We need to see the good and bad truthfully in order to get a balanced view, we can not summarize a person, even ourselves, as wholly good or wholly bad.  When we are intolerant of 'bad' we blame and withdraw from others, when we are intolerant of 'good' we are self-destructive.  Learning to balance the good nature vs. bad nature in others and ourselves is developed in childhood, but over time. As we are exposed to 'good' parents who make 'bad' mistakes and we progress in reconciling they can exist as both.  If you didn't learn this as a child you can be stuck in the 'child-like' thinking of 'all-good' or 'all-bad'.
Another way you can tell if you haven't moved fully into an adult role is you will either a) still have the 'one down' mentality where you feel under the authority of other adults (inferior, need permission/approval, powerless, etc.), or b) develop a 'one up' mentality where you are focused on being 'higher' than others (parenting, judgemental, superiority, power hungry, etc.).  When we become adults we become equals with other adults, age is not a factor, we all have one higher authority, God.  We no longer need parenting, God is our only Father.  No adult (who is now your peer, brother/sister, contemporary) is above you (or below you), God's is the only approval we should seek. This isn't license to disrespect authorities God has placed in your life, but respect doesn't take away your freedom to choose.
If you feel like you don't have authority over your life, begin by maturing your freedom to think, decide, and act for yourself.

I want to reiterate again that these points are very summarized, so if you feel like you can relate but need more information to flesh this out, I encourage you to read the book - a lot of what I haven't said here is examples to show you what it looks like in real lives. Or I can relate more specific information to you over coffee : ) But I highly recommend evaluating the health of your relationships in respect to these points.
 It definitely takes time, with equal portions of grace and truth, to grow healthy relationships with yourself and other, but the fruit is worth it.  Just remember there is a season for everything under the sun. Even in relationships, there is.....
a time to be born and a time to die,
    a time to plant and a time to uproot,
   a time to kill and a time to heal,
    a time to tear down and a time to build,
      a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, 
 a time to search and a time to give up,
    a time to keep and a time to throw away, 
 a time to tear and a time to mend,
    a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
    a time for war and a time for peace.

Three Things Thursday

Three things that I find surprisingly hard to do:

1. Even one chin up. Can.not.do.it.


2. Wink and whistle. Can't do either properly.

3. Say no, and sorry.

Small Blessings

Sometimes it's the smallest things that make me feel the most blessed. Here's a few recent 'small' blessings.

~ learning about myself through my small group, discovering we share strange hang-ups and having that 'me-to' aha moment!

~ 3 hrs on the road, just me, the highway, good tunes and God.

~ a chance to play with each niece and nephew individually, and collectively....and have them beg to play more!

~ still being able to jump on the trampoline and have fun at the age of (almost) 35 :)

~ staying out later than planned but a conversation about God and ministry and how the Spirit works and awesome books just was too good to end.

~ feeling my newest nephew move around in the womb...can't wait until you join us in a few weeks lil guy!

~ a visiting co-worker from another office who empties out the dishwasher and puts the dishes away, because I've been far too busy this week to do it yet.

~ Reading a book that seems to speak directly to what I need to hear, and did the same thing for hubby. I wonder if it will work that way for everyone?!

Forgotten Foto Friday

 These gems are from back in 1996, exactly 16 years tomorrow! Happy Anniversary Pam & Con!

I think you look exactly the same Pam....me on the other hand ;)