It’s Five Minute Friday over at Lisa-Jo’s!  Come on in and join the party.  Write for five minutes flat and don’t cheat like me and edit!

Home

Someone once said, “Home is the place, where, when you go there, they have to let you in.”

Sometimes, though, for me, home is the place where no matter what I do, they have to let me stay.  Home is where I lose it, where it’s messy, where it’s all sticky floors and wet towels and crushed cheerios.  Home is where I sometimes slam doors and throw clothes and pull my hair.  Home is where I creep back into the living room after the storm is over and gather little ones into my lap and sob out pathetic excuses and beg forgiveness.

Home is where I get put back together.

Home is here, where the days that are so seemingly ordinary become my greatest treasures, where the moments that are so wrought with frustration pass quickly in the wake of toddlers, where I’m allowed to have a tantrum once in a while, as long as I finish it up with a good dose of humility cloaked in grace.

In case you missed it, I’m hosting my first ever giveaway! Hop on over and Get Dolled Up!

Update: This giveaway is now closed!  Thanks to all who entered. Our winner was Laura Day!  She’s getting a sweet Easter shirt from Get Dolled Up for her little girl.

My kids have a problem.  We realized it right after Christmas when this came out of my daughter’s mouth, “It’s okay I didn’t get a horse, Mama.  I’ll just ask the Easter Bunny for one.”

What?!?

Somewhere, somehow, they’ve gotten the idea that the point of the Easter Bunny must be to function like Santa Claus (except better because Santa didn’t bring a horse).  I truly don’t know why they think this, because in the first place, we don’t talk about the EB much.  Secondly, our Easter baskets consist of about $5 worth of candy and junk toys from the Dollar Tree and that’s it.  Finally, we always talk about Christ being at the center of our Easter celebration.

Don’t we?  After that comment, I’ve had to do some hard thinking about whether or not I use this season to teach my children about the sacred, glorious, incomprehensible power of the Cross.

You know what?  I don’t.  We attend the sunrise service, we pray, we thank God, we have devotions, we’ve learned with Resurrection Eggs, but I think I keep it all a little bit too bright and shiny.  You know, it’s a fine line with children: I don’t want to show them the ugliness of the crucifixion so I can scare them into submission, but neither do I want to gloss it over with pastel colors and chevron painted eggs.  Somehow, Easter has to be brought to their level of comprehension.  I think that’s why Christmas gets more attention; it’s undoubtably easier to talk about a sweet baby being born who loves us all, than it is to talk about that same sweet baby becoming a man who died for us all.

I have a friend here in my small town who blogged recently about the same struggle.  She’s a mother, and she’s built a business on the idea that it’s fun to doll life up.  Katie will embroider your monogram on anything you can think of, and her daughter is (according to one of our mutual friends) the best dressed little girl at the church Pre-K.  But when it came time to doll up for spring, Katie didn’t just want to make a cutsie Easter shirt and leave it there.  She wanted to make a statement about faith, a gentle reminder that this season is more.

So using a little ItchtoStitch inspiration, she’s going to be offering these sweet appliques with a monogram of your choice for Easter.  I’ll be ordering baby Gus that darling wagon and talking to my girls about how we carry the cross with us wherever we go, even egg hunts.

Don’t you want to doll up your little ones with these for Easter?  Today, Katie and I have teamed up to offer my very first giveaway!  I’ve been wanting to jump on that bandwagon for awhile now, and we had even discussed a giveaway for this, but when I saw these yesterday I knew I wanted to start here.  So, pretty please, enter my giveaway, follow this randomness, shop at Get Dolled Up, and leave some comment love! a Rafflecopter giveaway//d12vno17mo87cx.cloudfront.net/embed/rafl/cptr.js

I started thinking the other day when I was up to my elbows in dirty dishwater and sticky plates, that life’s a stage.  All too often we put forth just what we want our audience to see, the perfect Pinterest house or craft or dish, the coordinating outfits for all the kids, the happy family Christmas card.  But back there behind the scenes, that’s where the real action is happening.  That’s where real life is, where it’s all a little messy and chaotic and pulsing.

Backstage is the heart of a theatre company.  It’s where you can really see how well a group jives, how connected they are by the spirit of the show, how quickly they can rescue one another from missed entrances and early exits and dropped lines.  Backstage is where we’re all in the same mess and we’re all working together to make what comes out beautiful.

So what’s happening backstage at our home these days?  Are you like me, knee deep in laundry and legos and cheerio crumbs?

This is Gus.  His big sister recently discovered that he will happily eat Ritz crackers all day long if she smears them with baby food.  He’s dis-GUS-ting, I know.  But cute, too, huh?  I posted a better version of this picture on Instagram a couple days ago.  That’s right, I’ve joined the 21st century and officially have a smartphone.

I have no idea what I’m doing with it.  So somebody want to leave me some comment love on how to link my Instagram account to this blog and let you all follow the randomness over there too?  And as long as we’re talking pictures, what’s up with Picasa?  Is it morphing into Google or what?  I just now got to the point where I feel like I had one program figured out, why in the world, does it need to change to something else?  Tell me about that, too, please, if you have any idea what I’m talking about.

Backstage at this house is usually mess.  Mainly because I would prefer to bake and eat rather than clean.  I’m working on our menu for the week and since I had a really long conversation with my friend who’s a super healthy CrossFit owner about this yesterday, I’m very aware of how heavily laden with carbs some of my days are.  Didn’t stop me from making orange marmalade muffins for Sunday School, though.  (I know it’s Monday; I’m trying to be proactive and embrace the freezer that takes up so much space in my laundry room.)  So what’s on the menu this week?

this

and this and maybe chicken tacos.  Definitely homemade pizza on Friday.  Weekend Pork tenderloin like this

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