Mothers

Happy Mother’s Day to my beautiful mother, who’s not only gorgeous on the outside, but ESPECIALLY on the inside! :-)

I am so, so proud to be your little girl. You and Daddy gave me such a happy childhood, and our home was always filled with the peace and love of Jesus.

My mom is a strong farm-girl from western Nebraska. She went to school in a one-room schoolhouse, and her family even had an outhouse on their farm! I love her stories of growing up. :-) She was the first one in her immediate family to go to a four-year college and one out-of-state at that. She’s a teacher, through and through, and she’s filled with so much wisdom and an amazing sense of humor! And now that I’m an adult, I’m also proud to call her one of my closest, closest friends. :-)

Ryley and her Mammaw:

Happy Mother’s Day to my grandma Honey as well! Here she is with her one-month-old great-granddaughter Ryley:

And here’s me and Ryley in Glacier National Park, Mother’s Day 2004. She was almost 10 months old. :-)

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers I know! You are all so amazing for the way you selflessly serve your husbands and children. Have a wonderful day!

The Still, Small Voice

This past Sunday, Ryley’s Brownie troop organized a pond clean-up day as part of their unit on water conservation.

I have to be completely honest here. I had been dreading it for weeks!  Pond clean-up’s just not my style.

Lucky Ryan had to work on Sunday and got to miss out on all the “fun”!

It was a pretty disgusting and smelly job! But it was good for the girls in many ways, and we ended up filling nine garbage bags with trash.

So anyway, as we were finishing up and preparing to leave after two hot, sweaty hours of combing the banks of the pond and canal area, one of the dads (an older gentleman who’s actually an adoptive father) said, “Come on, Alyssa, we need to retrace our steps. I’ve lost my cell phone.” 

Poor guy! For a split second, the thought occurred to me that I should help them look for it. He’s elderly, after all, and how sad is it that he spent his afternoon out here helping his little girl’s Girl Scout troop, and he loses his phone!?  But Ryley and Amirah had already run off to the playground, and another parent wanted to talk to me right then, so I got distracted. Then I forgot about it and went to wait in the air-conditioned van, within sight of the girls on the playground.

After a few minutes of relaxing, I remembered and wondered if Bob had ever found his phone. I kept feeling in my heart that I should have helped (and still could), but I tried to talk myself out of it. What are the chances of them finding it? It’s a lost cause. I couldn’t see them (the park is quite large), so I didn’t even know if they were still out there.  I even called his wife to see if she had heard from him, but I didn’t get an answer. Then I called their home number. I know! I was going to great lengths to make sure I didn’t have to go help! How horrible of me!

Then, I spotted them….two heads way in the distance, disappearing and reappearing as they searched in a marshy area about half a mile away. And a storm was rolling in.

Darn it.

I got out of the van. I would be going too far to leave the girls alone on the playground, so I rounded them up and together we headed toward Bob and Alyssa. They were on the other side of the pond from us, so when we were close enough I yelled to Bob and asked if he’d found his phone. Obviously, he hadn’t, but it only made sense to ask first. :-)

“How about if I call it for you?” I called out.

“Probably won’t do any good!” he yelled back.

“What’s your number?”

So he called out his number, and I dialed.

“I hear it!” he yelled, within a few seconds. It was probably only 10 feet from him, in a marshy area he had already searched through.

Bob held up the phone, and all three girls cheered, from different sides of the pond. It was one of those moments.

Wow, God, thank you.

I was utterly amazed that the Holy Spirit had spoken so strongly to me right at the moment that would lead me to Bob at the same moment they were near the phone. And what if I had ignored the prompting?? God cares about these small things in our lives, and in the lives of others around us. We just have to listen to that still, small voice...and obey it. Even if it’s not convenient. Even when we don’t want to. :-)

It was really impactful for me. I think I got more out of that situation than Bob did!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I’ve specifically been praying for wisdom at work….The things that go wrong for our company are so bizarre it’s almost comical! So I’ve been asking God for an extra measure of wisdom every day. It’s been interesting how I see it paying off…

Last Friday was supposed to be pretty cut and dry. My boss was having knee surgery that morning, so we didn’t have a lot going on. I had a clear-cut list of things that had to get done, but nothing I couldn’t handle. Plus, it’s Friday, and Fridays are always fun!

Haha. Fun indeed.

I arrived at the office at 8:15, and by 8:20, I had an office full of angry Mexican men, wondering how they were going to get paid now that “Jaime” is in jail.

“Wait…Jaime’s in jail?”

Now you have to understand that while “going to jail” is nothing out of the ordinary for the vast majority of my co-workers , whenever it happens, it is a pain. A huge pain.

I know. You’re thinking, wow, she’s really lackadaisical about the fact that her co-workers end up in jail a lot. Well, it is what it is. This is my life right now. If a co-worker is suddenly hard to reach, my go-to assumption is that they’re in jail. And sometimes I’m right. It doesn’t change how I feel about them. Jaime is my friend.

So, I called Jaime’s phone. And this stranger answered. This stranger who spoke perfect American English and who said he was on the way to the office to meet with me.

Ok….?

This tall, good-looking, Hispanic guy waltzes in (think Enrique Iglesias), says he’s Jaime’s brother Joaquin, he’s second in command, and he’s here to talk about the future of Jaime’s crews, their payroll in Jaime’s absence, and what jobs they can do for us.

Wait. I know all three of Jaime’s brothers. We’ve been close co-workers for six years, and I’ve never heard of a Joaquin. Why haven’t I met you before?

But to this guy’s credit, he seemed to know what he was talking about. And he could translate  for us, since the angry Mexican crew members were still standing there with their arms crossed, refusing to work until we figured out their pay. Plus, he was very charming.

At some point, as we were coming up with a plan for payroll, job scheduling, etc., I thought, wow, we sure are entrusting a lot into the hands of this guy we met 20 minutes ago. And I began to feel sick to my stomach.

So when he said he was going to go visit Jaime in jail and he suggested Leahh go with him, I insisted that they drive separately. Leahh needed to go on my behalf to get some questions answered for me (I didn’t have time), but I did not think it was wise that she ride with a stranger. I think everyone thought I was crazy! But I had seen the way he looked at her, and I didn’t trust it.

I also didn’t like the way he was watching me as I sorted through my safe, looking for a credit card we could use to fill the crew’s truck with gas. He was just paying very close attention to the locale of important documents.

I started turning a bit colder to the idea of jumping on board the Joaquin train in Jaime’s sudden absence. There was shadiness all over the place, and in retrospect, I know that it was the Holy Spirit speaking to me! I warned my co-workers that I wasn’t completely sold on trusting him, and I think they thought I was really overreacting. But it doesn’t matter; in my boss’s absence, I’m the one that gets to make that call, and I chose to move cautiously.

To make a long story short, Jaime miraculously got out of jail in time to come down to the office and figure out payroll for his crews, and everything ended well. But it turns out Joaquin isn’t Jaime’s brother after all AND he has a key to the office, which I told my boss yesterday. I also changed my hiding spots for all important documents, not to mention the safe. And? He asked Leahh out, then texted her over the weekend, asking her to send him a picture of herself. Exactly what I thought. Creepy, creepy.  In fact, when he called the office today, Leahh asked if I would answer the phone since she prefers to avoid him now.

I had prayed for wisdom, and in that situation, I felt like God really gave it to me. Nothing really happened per se, but I just felt that check in my spirit that we shouldn’t automatically trust everything this guys has to say.

Again, it was that still, small voice that would have been incredibly easy to miss if I hadn’t been listening for it at the right time. Another interesting opportunity for my spiritual growth.

Thank You, Holy Spirit.

He always keeps it interesting; that’s for sure. ;-)

Ryley’s Room Makeover

We’ve lived in our house for five years, and Ryley’s room has always, always, always been an issue and point of contention. It’s constantly messy, and no matter how many “Come to Jesus” talks we have about how “everything has a place” and “please put things back when you’re done playing,” Ryley has struggled with keeping her room in any other state besides a pigpen.

In fact, she had this horrible “theory” that having a messy room is actually helpful, because if all your stuff is out on the floor, you can find it more easily.

She comes by it honestly. I mean, when I was little, my room was always a mess, too, and my parents finally gave up and started shutting my door when they walked past it. Yep. ;-) Sorry, Daddy.

But Ryley’s room is so small, and over the past few months, I have been brainstorming ways we could make it seem bigger. We also have had trouble with her big, bulky closet doors staying on the tracks, so when I came across some interesting ideas on Pinterest, I showed Ryley my idea, enlisted the help of my aunt Coleen, and started making plans.

First, Ryan removed the closet doors for us.

Then, Ryley and I had to clean the room. Because we could not walk in it:

I’m not even sure how I managed to get back into this corner to take this picture. I did end up needing a band-aid on my foot though, at some point during the process.

 

After it was clean, we rearranged the furniture yet again, moving the dresser into the closet, to maximize square footage in her room.

But we weren’t done yet! We left the room alone for a few weeks while we formulated the rest of our plan and did multiple online searches for 84” tension rods and 96” curtains….Finding nothing, we decided we would have to make our own curtains, from sheets.

So this morning, my aunt Coleen and uncle Paul arrived at our house with her sewing machine, scraps, and supplies. We took a little field trip to the fabric store, and soon the girls were up and running on the project:

They worked and they worked and they worked:

Notice Ryley’s new glasses? She got them this morning and is so excited! We think they’re pretty cute on her.

Coleen let Ryley do a good portion of the sewing herself!

Then, after hours and hours of work (during which Mommy and Daddy went to see The Avengers), the closet curtains were finally hung:

 

And then the window curtains too….

We also added some other organizational finishing touches to the room:

 

Voila!

We are so excited with how this turned out!!!!! Thank you, Coleen, for all of your help! You are so amazingly creative, talented, and patient. It turned out better than I had even dared to hope.

I might just have to post my own picture on Pinterest now!

                                                                  ***

And one more bonus pic of Ryley reading….this time with glasses. :-)

Land of the Mighty Cornhuskers

This past weekend, we took a little trip up to Scottsbluff, Nebraska, to visit my grandma, “Honey.” We had such a wonderful time, though the trip did go extremely quickly! I wish we could have stayed much longer.

Honey certainly kept us busy!

Ryan had never been to the Riverside Zoo, though Ryley and I have been twice before. So that was our first stop:

I would just like to go on record as saying that Honey and I stayed true to form and did NOT touch or feed any animals while we were there.

 

It was slightly chilly, so we pretty much had the whole zoo to ourselves!

Then we ate lunch at my favorite Scottsbluff restaurant, Taco Town. They’re the “tac-0 the town.” Seriously. My family has eaten there every time we’ve visited Scottsbluff since before I was born, I think. Yum!

http://www.roadfood.com/Restaurant/Overview/5172/taco-town

Then, after lunch, Honey took us to the North Platte Valley Museum. Scottsbluff/Gering is right on the Oregon Trail, so there are a lot of interesting pioneer artifacts:

We had fun seeing all the weaving looms and ice boxes, etc., from the past. Honey shared lots of stories from her childhood.

 

The museum had a big display of Girl Scout history, so we browsed through that. Very interesting! Here, Ryley tries out Morse Code:

Any Brownies out there from 1985? This is a replica of my Brownie uniform:

And my Brownie book:

Funny how the brain works….I haven’t seen this book in 26 years, yet the moment I saw it, it all came rushing back to me. :-)

The museum was a great experience! Thanks for taking us there, Honey!!!

Then, because Ryan had never been to the top of Scottsbluff Monument (an Oregon Trail landmark), we drove up there, too:

Playing with fire:

You can’t really see it very well, but 30 miles behind my head is Chimney Rock and the town of Bayard, where Grandpa and Honey farmed and ranched for more than 50 years. Honey still owns the land. We used to spend our summer vacations there, picking sweet corn with Grandpa and helping him shuck it, helping Honey in her garden, learning to sew, riding 4-wheelers around the hills, and swimming in ditch banks alongside the cows. Lots of good memories. :-)

Then, crazy kids that we are, we hiked down the monument, while Honey drove to the bottom to pick us up. It took us about 45 minutes.

I fell behind a lot. :-)

Amber waves of beautiful Nebraska:

We had dinner with my aunt and uncle and attended church with Honey on Sunday morning before heading back to Denver. It was just a really nice , peaceful, fun couple of days.

Thank you, Honey, for letting us come up and crash your weekend! You wore us out in the very best way! We love you! :-)