Refreshed

It's Tuesday night, and I'm sitting in the living room with my hubby, watching American Idol (no, I'm not a regular watcher) and enjoying a Deschutes Brewery Inversion IPA. Mmmm. The boy-o's are sound asleep in their cribs after a trip to Grandma's up in Hillsboro, and I had the house all tidied up and the bathroom cleaned by the time they all got home. It feels good.

This last weekend, I spent three days at our church's Women's Retreat at Twin Rocks Camp on the coast. I was so nervous about going. You see, I have a very hard time connecting with other women. Having been brought up as 'one of the guys', I've always been more comfortable around guys and I feel so awkward around women, especially in large groups. I think a lot of that had to do with being overweight, but that's a whole other can of worms that I just won't go into. So I wasn't sure about going on a retreat with a bunch of ladies...I'll admit it, I was pretty skeptical about whether I'd enjoy myself.

But oh my, it was wonderful! Every single one of the 60 or so women were just amazing and beautiful. We laughed, we cried, we built relationships. While I was ready to go home by the end of the weekend (I missed my boys!), I was sad to see it end. The theme was "Loving Well", and we watched a conference by a Christian speaker named Beth Moore. I had heard of her before, but had never heard her speak...OH...MY...GOSH! She's amazing! One part HILARIOUS, one part spiritual wisdom. If you haven't heard her speak, look her up!

This particular conference basically explored the idea that in order to love other people (and ourselves) well, we first must be well loved; however, we need to not look for that love from other people, but rather from God. Only then can we free other people up to love us 'pretty well', and spill God's love for us out into other people. There was a lot more to it, and it made me take a real deep look at myself and my relationship with God, but that was the general gist of it. As I said, it was an amazing weekend, and I hope I can hold on to and apply the things I learned to my life.

The other bright spot in my life is that work is going better. I have to admit, I felt like I was constantly beating my head against the wall for the past couple of months, and I wanted nothing more than to toss in the towel...(un?)fortunately, I didn't have much of a choice in the matter since I am the only income for our family, and I had to just suck it up. In the past week, something seems to have clicked, and I'm not making as many mistakes. I'm also not butting heads with one of my coworkers anymore...the coworker who helped me lose almost 5 lbs in a week because I wasn't eating or sleeping. No bueno. But again, things are better, and I have hope.

As for the boys, they both have two of their upper molars. Not fun. They're now working two bottom molars, and they're pretty miserable. The good news is that spring is coming! Which means more outings to the park, where the boys LOOOOOVE to run...in opposite directions! Pretty funny. They've also adjusted their sleep schedules forward a couple of hours; they're now going to sleep around 8:30 and waking up around 8:00 am, which means their night-owl Daddy is also having to adjust. Thankfully, they still take a 2 hour nap each day, which means Daddy gets to take a nap. Still no true words yet, but that's pretty normal for twins; generally, twins start talking later than singleton kids, because they develop their own method of communicating with each other.

And now, the random cuteness of the day!



We went for a walk on Linfield's campus a couple of weeks ago, and then put the boys in the bed of the truck while we put away the diaper bag and stroller. They weren't sure what to do with it, which was pretty funny. Levi on the left, Asher on the right.

Enjoying some time in the park with Daddy during one of the first warm sunny days of spring. They like bouncing on this 4-seat teeter totter thingy. Levi left, Asher right.