My Son

Oh, my son is so much different from my daughter. Little Paul William will be two this June, but I think he's added five years to my age in the short time he's been living.
Paul is all boy, and a tough one at that. When we get together with Claire's friends from church, he's in the midst of the wrestling boys, holding his own with four year olds.
One of his favorite activities is climbing onto our love seat, pulling off the cushion, and diving headfirst into the ground. He never misses the cushion. I used to hold my breath every time did that, but now I carry on, knowing he'll be fine.
I was on a tall ladder, trimming bushes this week. I kept feeling the ladder shake and looked down to find Paul right under me.
Adam is teaching Claire to ride her bicycle, so she'll pedal down the street, focusing hard. Paul gets on his little motorcycle and scoots until he's flying down the hill with no control.
He has no fear. He will climb any ladder or slide down any slide, no matter how high. He will jump off any ledge, no matter how far down the ground is. Luckily, I have taught him to say, "No, no pool!" which just might save his life. Our pool in the backyard is deep and unfenced, so Claire has grown up constantly being trained to stay away from it. Paul is a curious little booger, so I often catch him right next to it and hold my breath. Usually, though, he's standing next to the pool to point to it and say, "No, no pool!"
We are blessed to have one girl and one boy. Adam and I haven't decided yet whether we will add another, but we're sure that the two we have keep us busy enough right now.

Small Miracles and Grace

Long ago, before I joined the Methodist church, I understood grace to be poise and put-togetherness. Audrey Hepburn, but not Sarah....No, I've never had that kind of grace.

Now I have a different understanding of the word. Getting something you don't deserve; that's grace. I am constantly the recipient of that kind of grace. Just this last week has been full of grace. Here are three small miracles that have happened here at our house:

1. We have a vinyl-lined pool that desparately needed a new liner. We've been worried about replacing it since the original quote we got on it was almost $4,000. We just had a guy do it for half of that. We're budgeting every dollar since I quit working last year, so that was a small miracle the money we'd been saving for that was more than enough.

2. Our computer died. Adam can get it to work for 10 or 15 minutes at a time by doing something to a battery inside, but that's about all. It's about to be dead forever. After replacing the pool liner, we really don't have money for a new computer. I was telling my friend Alli this and she said that her husband was about to sell a good laptop for $100. I jumped at the opportunity. The laptop works great and is actually an upgrade from the dead computer!

3. Every year, since we've been married, we've owed money on our taxes. We feared this year would be our biggest year yet because we received gas lease money in the fall and would have to pay taxes on that. Adam did our taxes yesterday and we actually get $200 back! Now that's a miracle!

Audrey Hepburn be damned. My life is full of grace! (and gratitude)