And the Rains Came Down

It's a dark and stormy morning around these parts. Very dark and very stormy. So far, I've seen three tornado warnings expire for our county, but another one is issued until 10:45 a.m. You see that big white spot on the map that says "Greatest Risk?" We're right in the middle of it. Fun times.

The good thing about living in a small, one-story house is that no matter what room I'm in, I'm always on the ground level. The bad thing is that we really don't have any interior rooms. Our master closet is the closest thing to an interior room that we have, so, basically, if a tornado hits our house, we're doomed.

I have a long history of fear when it comes to tornadoes. It all started in the fifth grade when an F4 tornado ripped through my neighborhood. I was standing at the top of the stairs when it passed over our house, and I'll never forget what it felt like to have the house tremble around me. By the time I made it downstairs to the bathroom, it was all over. Four people died just down the street from us. My dad helped search for their bodies. It was one of the longest and scariest nights of my life.

That experience left me quite skittish of days like today. I don't want to live in fear, but I do have a healthy respect for such violent weather.

I hope you're all staying safe and dry today. I'll be huddling in a closet before too long, I'm sure.

Until next time, grace and peace.

Easter in the Jones Household

What a weekend we had! It was filled with egg dyeing, visiting with my parents, celebrating at church, egg hunting, and general fun. It's no secret that I'm striving to be more intentional this year, and that includes the way we celebrate holidays. More than anything, I want Micah to know that Easter is about more than a fictional bunny that delivers candy in the middle of the night. It's about more than new clothes and egg hunts and yummy food. It's about a risen Savior. That changes the way we approach a lot of things in our home. For one thing, the Easter bunny doesn't know our address. Micah still received a basket of small gifts, but it came from her daddy and me. We still dyed Easter eggs because we can use them as object lessons for the new life we have in Christ, and yesterday afternoon, Micah hunted plastic eggs in the yard because empty Easter eggs are a great way to convey the message of an empty tomb. We're trying to be thoughtful about the traditions we practice and honor in our home. For us, it's worth it to sacrifice the Easter bunny because it allows the cross and subsequent empty tomb to be the center of our Easter reflections.

At any rate, the way we celebrate Easter may be a little different than most American families, but it works for us. Here are some images from the weekend.

Egg dyeing with Micah was a lot of fun. She was patient and interested in the process, and she even "dyed" her own (plastic) egg while I took care of the real eggs.

Since my parents were here to visit, we had someone to take our picture yesterday afternoon after church. Yay for a family portrait!

Micah enjoyed hunting eggs for a little while, but she soon lost interest and preferred hanging out with her Nana and Grampa, who took her home with them yesterday afternoon. It's a quiet house around here without my little spitfire, but that also means that I have a little uninterrupted time to do a bit more writing and designing.

Hope you all had a wonderful Easter weekend! How did you celebrate??

Until next time, grace and peace.

Adventures in Toddlerhood: 18 Months

More and more lately, I find myself realizing that I'm the mother of a little girl, not a baby. Every time I blink, it seems, more of the baby falls off of Micah. At 18.9 months old, my little girl is in full-blown toddlerhood. She loves to talk on the phone (or any rectangular shaped object that she can make into a phone), and she babbles all day long. Her favorite word is bow, but she's also very fond of plo, which can mean plate or pillow, because obviously, they're the same thing. If I tried to list all the words she says, I'm sure that I'd miss some, but she's getting really good at matching animals with the sounds they make. "Micah, what's the dog say?" is sure to draw a dog sound from her, and just yesterday, she learned that sheep say baaa.

She's a mess, that one is, but I wouldn't trade her for the world. At her 18-month checkup, the doctor was amazed at how much she's grown in the past six months, and honestly, so am I. At 12 months, Micah still wore 9-month clothes, but she's grown so quickly that she now wears a 2T in some things. She went from being too tiny to even register on the growth chart to reaching {almost} the 75th percentile in height and the 60th percentile in weight. Now that's a growth spurt, people.

She sleeps for 12 hours at night and takes one nap a day, and on Sunday, she pooped in the potty for the first time. That same night, we ditched the paci and haven't looked back. Of course, after she used the potty Sunday, she pooped in her diaper four times on Monday, so we obviously have a long way to go, but still, babies don't use the potty. Big girls do. I'm telling you people, the baby is disappearing and being replaced by a sassy little lady. And she is definitely sassy. She loves shoes {pronounced shooos}, and she knows where to find them in her room. She demands a hairbow and likes to carry her "purse" around.

At the same time, she is her father's child. She was intrigued when Dennis changed the oil last week, and she's certainly not afraid to play in the dirt. If you know Dennis at all, you know that at his core, he's a hard worker. He can make or fix anything, and Micah's following in her daddy's footsteps. At least she knows how to swing a hammer.

Like Father, Like...Daughter from Leslie Ann Jones on Vimeo.

Hope you're all doing well. I'm sure there will be more tales of Micah's hijinks in the future.

Until next time, grace and peace.