Sweet Things

1.  Listening to Lukas read our evening family devotional out loud to the family is one of the most precious parts of the day for me.  The book we're using right now is called Tiny Talks, and it is perfect for our little ones.  My favorite part is at the end when Lukas reads the short prayer that is part of the devotional.  He always reads it slowly, three or four words at a time, so that Ava can repeat after him, and she does it!  It is so, so sweet to watch and listen to the two of them during this most special part of our day.  I'm tearing up just thinking about how sweet it is to hear this exchange each evening.

2.  Dirty feet don't really sound like a sweet thing, but when you put things into God's perspective, even dirty feet can be a blessing.  My kids have been outdoors daily for a while now since the weather is warm, and the past few days, I they have been in sandals or, better yet, shoeless.  So, of course, their feet are dirty.  Do I like scrubbing dirty feet every night or the fact that the bath water is gray by the time they are clean?  Of course not, but I love that they are happy, active, playing, discovering, and learning new things each and every day that they spend in our rather large back yard, which is another blessing in itself.  So while the dirt may not look or sound sweet, what that dirt symbolizes is very sweet.

3.  May 1st. is going to be a sweet day for us from now on.  Why?  My husband has just completed his first "tax season."  While he did his best to protect our family time over the past four months, there were still many extra hours to work.  Yesterday marked the end of this busy season for us, and Eric was home at his normal time and able to spend the entire evening with us tonight.  May 1st might just become one of the sweetest days of our year!

4.  Girlfriends are so important to many women, and I must confess, they are some of the most important people in my life.  I have some of the best friends a girl could have, and I can seriously go to them with any question or problem that you could possibly come up with.  I love that they are there for me no matter what, and I love that they know they can always come to me with whatever is on their plate as well.  I can only hope to be as sweet a blessing to them as they are to me.

5.  Fried car stereo speakers are definitely not something that anyone would consider to be a sweet blessing, but today, that is exactly what our van's speaker was to us.  I had asked Eric to have the speakers checked out before an upcoming trip because one of them hasn't been working forever (I'm not exaggerating at all).  Without laying out every single detail for you, I'll just tell you that the cheapest most effective way to get the speaker replaced ended up being at a Ford dealership downtown.  When they drove the van into the shop to work on the speaker situation, they noticed a trail following them.  That is never a good thing.  It looked like an oil leak, but it wasn't.  It was a transmission leak, and it was a major leak.  All said and done, it is going to cost a fortune to fix this problem, but, we aren't going to lose our transmission somewhere between here and FL during our upcoming vacation.  We knew that the van had a slow oil leak, so seeing the completely burnt transmission fluid wouldn't have caused us concern.  We wouldn't have known anything was wrong until we were stranded on a mountain top somewhere in Virginia (I'll bet that sentence brings back memories for any IWU Wind Ensemble alums who are reading this).  I am so, so, so thankful that this is being fixed!

If you made it this far, I commend you.  I know that this is long and that many people don't like to read entries like this.  I love reading blogs that help me to refocus and look for the little blessings in everything.  I hope that at least one person has been challenged or encouraged by reading this entry.  May God show you each something new and beautiful today!