It’s Easter morning—He is risen, He is risen indeed!—and I am at home blogging and partially watching episodes of My Little Pony on Netflix. The stomach flu not only knocked me out of attending Redeemer’s Good Friday service, it also left me as weak as a kitten Easter morning. So while our church family gathers this morning to worship our risen Savior, we are at home resting. The ingredients for our Easter feast sit quietly in the refrigerator awaiting a postponed meal with my folks. Fortunately Livia was still able to hunt eggs, an annual tradition with Grandma & Grandpa, yesterday afternoon. I’m pretty sure she would’ve burst into a million disappointed pieces if she had to wait longer to find all those fun Easter treats.

I leave you with shots from our egg-dyeing extravaganza Thursday afternoon. In the past I’ve run to the grocery store to buy more eggs to dye as one dozen is never enough. Lesson learned: three dozen eggs is just right to wear out my crafty kid. We had fun and she was ready to close up shop before the last three or four were complete—perfect. This year I baked the eggs in the oven per Renae’s suggestion, using this Alton Brown recipe. Though it felt incredibly odd to place the little eggs directly on the oven rack, I loved this method of hard-cooking eggs. They turned out perfectly and only a few cracked (with no drips at all). I should note that not only did I steal Renae’s idea of dying eggs in glass coffee mugs, I also requested those specify mugs for Christmas as I’ve long coveted Renae’s. See what living next door for eight years does for you? Identical kitchenware.

Happy Easter, friends. We worship a living Savior today, and every day of the year! Praise God.

It was warm yesterday! But we know what to do when it gets warm. Put on a cute swimsuit and a set of shades, grab the hose and fill up a bucket. Aaaaah. The good life.

We began the day with a few small chores, then cookie-making. Livia and I were ready to do some baking together, so we pulled out one of Jeremy’s favorite recipes and made a large batch of Oatmeal Scotchies. Sometime between measuring flour and doling out tablespoons of batter onto cookie sheets a realtor called and wanted to show our house to clients. I figured we’d set an appointment for Sunday or Monday. Uh no, how about in 30 minutes? Liv settled on the couch with earplugs and a video on my laptop (cleaning-wise, kids tend to undo whatever their parents are doing!) while Jeremy pulled out the vacuum and I ran around in crazy-fast-tidying mode. Five minutes later—seriously, five minutes later—the doorbell rings and the agent and her clients are on our front porch. I opened the door looking like, well, like I look on a relaxed Saturday morning after doing nine laps around the house. The vacuum was roaring loudly in the background, and I asked them to have a seat on the porch for a minute or two. Awe.some.

Long story short, the couple looked at our home and said nice things about it. We invited them to a small plate of cookies before leaving, and that was it. In retrospect I couldn’t believe how many small tidying tasks I had done that morning before getting the call—grace from a providential God!

At noon I joined a group of girlfriends for our 2nd Annual Reuben Lunch. Everyone walks into the chosen restaurant and order Reubens. Maybe Maralee can explain why Reubens are the sandwich of choice; all I know is that these particular sandwiches are delicious at Toast in Fallbrook. And the sides are great, too. But the truth is that I’d eat peanut butter and jellies with sides of sliced bananas if it meant I got to spend time with these awesome women. I left my camera at home but I’m hoping someone else captured a few moments from our lunch.

The evening was spent in my first 2013 senior shoot. The client happened to be someone I babysat a long time ago. (I have a memory of breaking his parents’ pan while popping popcorn–whoops. Dumb kid! Me, not him.) The session went wonderfully and I’ll post images from the shoot in a few weeks. After the photo shoot I drove home quickly and picked up my date for an evening of Hunger Games. We had both read the series and have been eager to see the movie version. Besides dealing with the caveats of watching in the theater (note to the general public: don’t chew ice all through a movie), we enjoyed the flick and thought it was really faithful to the book.

March 31 = good day.

Today was a fabulous Saturday of sunshine and fresh air and good old-fashioned family togetherness. It felt like everything was crying out with thankfulness that God created them—the brilliant and teeny yellow daffodils, the redbud and plum trees that are beginning to bloom, the grass that’s turning bright green, and of course, us, the humans who get to luxuriate in such grandeur.

Bunny Portrait by Livia. All others by her mama.

My friends Joie and Jake went north for the L’Abri conference in Rochester and came home with a rabbit. One of Honeysuckle’s offspring, to be more specific. Honeysuckle is well known in the Tredway household. Ever since I began reading of Honeysuckle’s adventures on Margie Haack’s blog—and then met the rabbit in person last spring—we have awaited any news of the bunny and hoped with bated breath that she’d get pregnant. After some time she did conceive and birthed the cutest baby Angoras you could possible imagine. And now those babies are small no longer! Apparently rabbits grow fast.

Livia began asking me daily to visit Joie’s apartment to see Jack. Or Zach. Or sometimes Honeysuckle, which we both called Jack when we weren’t thinking straight. Livia even volunteered to spin Jack’s wool when the time came for shearing. This is how dedicated we are to Angoras now: we watch YouTube videos on spinning. I’m saving up all these thoughts and hopes and dreams for Livia’s future. I have visions of her marrying a Nebraska farmer and then running a menagerie of animals on their farm. Liv will come and go as a rural veterinarian and she’ll take every lost and broken thing under her wing until they are mended. In the meantime, she is learning to add and subtract and read and write. Back to the present. We finally made it over to visit Jack in person and Liv lovingly fed him carrot bits and brussel sprouts. Joie believes Jack is an introvert, so we’ll give him some time to get used to the rapt attentions of a seven-year-old vet-in-training.

Dear Livia,

You sit beside me at the dining room this Sunday morning. Adele is blaring on the stereo and you want to know what rumor it is she sings of. I manage to evade this question as I’m not prepared to explain the intricacies of love lost and found to my first grader quite yet. You are pouring acrylic paints onto plastic lids, mixing colors to paint onto t-shirts. The dining room table is littered with paint bottles, colored pencils and, alarmingly, electronics. Perhaps this isn’t a wise configuration of projects, but it serves its purpose in keeping us close to one another as we express ourselves creatively. The dog is perched nearby in his bed, sending indignant small barks at the people who dare walk by a nearby sidewalk. I stop between nearly every sentence I type to prevent you from painting the dining room table, your wrists, the floor and your jammies. Your enthusiasm for crafts is matched only by your remarkable knack for knocking things over. Yes, you are now painting with your fingers. I tell people that you’d roll your entire body in paint if I let you and I’m not always sure they believe me. I want to encourage this need to physically create, your desire to touch and smear, to feel the paint between your fingers. It requires deep breathing for me to let you get messy and you probably haven’t noticed, but a lot of our projects wrap up quickly when the deep breathing no longer helps. Then again, you are now a big kid and can clean up fairly well on your own. How much fun this growing older thing is. I delight in you, growing girl of mine.

Love,
Mom

I like Valentine’s Day. I like the sentiment behind it, the gifts and special occasions it gives rise to, and the unabashedly cheesy nature of it. You don’t have to use the finest ingredients or finest materials in order to express your affection. And that suits me just fine.

That being said, I received a phenomenal bouquet of roses last Friday. They are amazing and I’ve enjoyed them every day. My Valentine further melted my heart by sending our daughter a bouquet, too. (Note to Livia’s future husband: you have your work cut out for you!)

Livia’s class will exchange Valentine cards at the end of the school day. Around 90% of our elementary school comes from impoverished families, so I admire how teachers handle V-Day celebrations. They send out a class list and encourage all children to make their own valentines with teacher-provided construction paper if needed. The kids will exchange cards and then take them home to open them. It’s a win-win and fun for everyone regardless of family income.

I really enjoy making cards with Livia each year. I like including a non-sugary treat, which then allows me to feel a bit better when I send along sweets like the cupcakes below. It’s fun to see Livia grow in ability from year-to-year. This year she was super-focused on writing the recipients’ names and checking off the class list. I even left the house for a Walgreens run and returned to my child studiously working! Those of you who know Liv know what a feat that was for her.

Our special Valentine cupcakes were simple to prepare: box mix with sprinkles, Wilton’s easy buttercream frosting, and a strawberry heart marshmallow for the top. The time that Livia and I spent together, making memories right alongside cupcakes, was extra sweet.

We are not guaranteed easy lives, friends. In fact, the older we get, the tougher life is going to be. We will see friends and family become ill, get divorced, deal with death and suffer through all kinds of other trials. But God in his grace lavishes us with great love—the joys I see and hear and taste and smell today are from him. I can open my eyes to see this beauty and I can be thankful for it.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Liv and her bear Ornament who regularly gets dressed up as a giraffe.

I’m having a moment of This is My Life. This life of mothering a funny, passionate and observant seven year old. This life of attempting to know where a million different stuffed animals are so a classroom of 1st graders can have the appropriate visuals for their presentations next week. (Apparently Livia volunteered to bring the animals other kids didn’t own. Because yes, we own them all. Or we did at one moment in time.) This life of checking the school lunch menu each morning to see if their offerings beat out a turkey sandwich and Clementine. This life of spraying a little girl’s hair with smoothing spray to keep the frizzies at bay, then using just the right elastic so that her hair stays put all day. This life of putting little tennis shoes in the pink Hello Kitty backpack in case her snow boots—and socks as the case may be—get too wet while she’s playing at recess. This life of Special Breakfasts and rewarding Good Learning days and finding drawing after drawing of Mommy and Livia holding hands with hearts above their stick-figure heads. This is My Life. Praise be to God.

I prayed for this child and the LORD has granted me what I asked of him. – 1 Samuel 1:27

Me: What are you doing?
Livia: I’m sunbathing. I’m a vampire and I need to stay in the shade. Because you’re the mommy and you don’t want your little girl to turn into dust.

Just another Saturday morning in the Tredway household.