joys.

I'm attempting to be proactive in looking at evidences of God's graces in my life. The first thing that came to mind was throwing in some pictures to show the joys in my life.

This is my little family doing what we do best...lounging on our terribly uncomfortable futon and making our kitten, Lander, love us when she would rather run away from us. I've finally learned contentment in our nightly routine of watching TV and getting in those sneaky kisses and getting Lander to attack things we throw across the room.

Here is Lander's debut as model kitten. Here is the skinny on our kitty. So I had this dream a few weeks back about our children. We had two boys, one about three and one about 6 months. They were ADORABLE....blond hair, blue eyes...pudgy little cheekies...but Phil and I didn't know what to do with them. I remember leaning over to him and whispering, "I know I'm supposed to have that maternal love thing, but I don't quite...love...them." The whole dream was us staring at them and them staring at us, no one being sure of what to do. We would take our kids to people's houses and set them down in the middle of the room and slowly back away.

Ok so the older boy's name in my dream was Lander, and I woke up saying, "What kind of name is Lander?! No wonder I didn't love him very much." We picked our cat out from the store and on the way home, we were going back and forth on what to name her. We really wanted a name from Arrested Development, but none of the girls' names fit so Phil suggested Lander.

"That way," he explained to me, "if we don't really love the cat, it'll be like our test child."

So thus, Lander.

I didn't know if I would be a pet person, but I knew a cat would be good company while Phil was gone. But holy toledo I'm in LOVE with this cat! I have 50 pictures in her own file on my computer, Phil and I refer to one another now as Mommy and Daddy, we talk constantly to it in a little Lander voice, and let her snuggle up with us in bed...on our pillow.

"Mother, there was a BIRD on my pillow."
(Sorry I couldn't help it.)

She's a huge joy and I'm loving my 2-pound wonder.

Next up!

Oh boy. Here's my issue with deployment. It's not that I'm afraid of doing things solo, or nervous about waking up to a cat, or scared of the idea of 12 months. No no no...I'm good with all of that. I'm actually excited about my list of things I'm going to do while he's gone and adventures I will take. But my issue is this picture. Who is going to make me laugh to the point of keeling over and almost piddling my pants? (okay it's happened, like once...or twice) He brings so much happiness to me with his voices, his dance routines before bed, his ability to quote any movie at any time.

We have our inside jokes, our rituals, our meals...and he brings joy to all of those things. I'm fully prepared to create my own patterns while he's away and those will be fun, in their own right (cereal for dinner while watching Gilmore Girls? heck yes). I will definitely miss him and high kicks.

So...here's to my joys. I've had the privilege to savor them for 7 months and I'm excited to see how God graces me in the next 12 months. He leaves on Thursday night...3 days!