Jeremy has just come through an ordeal. Yesterday he checked into the outpatient surgery center of a local hospital in order to get rid of a few kidney stones, and he ended up being admitted due to the excruciating pain afterwards.

I don’t know why I’m posting… other than the fact that I want to say how much I love my husband—I can hardly think straight, much less write decent sentences. I stayed with Jeremy before, during, and after the procedure (which basically blasted the large stone to bits via ultrasound), and felt incredibly helpless as I witnessed his pain. Really, I wished that I could have taken some of that agony on me. You know when morphine doesn’t help you’re in a bad situation.

I’m grateful for the nursing staff—they did a great job of helping as they could. I’m grateful for the bevy of drugs available to us. I’m grateful for friends and family who watched for Liv and Shiloh, and who fed us and continually prayed for us. I’m grateful for Jeremy, that the Lord relieved him of the most dreadful kind of pain, and that he is on the path to recovery now. I love love love my husband.

I’m also grateful for my own bed. I’m off to find it now.

This is a posed shot. Posed by Livia who has been interested in microphones her entire life. No one who knows this child is surprised she has a microphone in her hand. I’m wondering what God has planned for this one.

On the drive home this evening as I encountered a serene Nebraska sunset and reflected on the hospitality I had just received, my grandma Iola’s words came to mind: All this and heaven, too.

Yep, all this and heaven, too.

Worship hit a reset button in me tonight. I was reset from faulty thinking. Reset from navel-gazing. Reset from myself. Reset to heaven. “Heaven, too” seems to be the focus of Grandma’s phrase and Tobey drove the point home from the pulpit tonight. From Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, the truth is clear: we can’t make it to heaven on our own. The standard of perfection, though we certainly attempt to attain it, can’t be reached, no way, no how. All of us, try as we may to avoid it, deal with anger, lust, lies, despising one another. But there is good news, there is Christ. He died for our sins, once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, God’s gift to us. Heaven, too? Yes, definitely, by the grace of the cross.

The “all this” swept over me on my short country drive. As a lullaby played from the CD player, my beautiful (hilarious, vivacious, sweet, fill-in-the-blank) daughter rested in the back seat. Liv can be such a handful at times, but goodness, my cup runneth over with her. Today I marveled at how and why God gave someone as wonderful and complex as Liv to two people like Jeremy and me. God only knows. Tonight my heart is full.

“All this” also includes Redeemer, our church. Week after week I am encouraged by Tobey’s preaching, by good friends, by opportunities to serve the body of Christ, and, I’ll be honest, by a good cup of coffee. “All this” for Redeemer includes a pretty amazing gift: a new church home. When we began meeting at Zion last June (we are, afterall, Zion’s daughter church), we anticipated moving out of that location within months. We prayed a lot for wisdom, continued to seek out new meeting places, and nothing worked out. Well, the hand of God moved, someone from Faith United Church of Christ contacted Tobey (I’m sure there’s another story here!), and we learned that they wanted to give this church away. The church, located in exactly in an area of town we want to serve, was dwindling in numbers and the leadership wanted it to be used—not as blacktop for game days, but as a house of God. (If we do end up with a few parking spots, I’m sure we’ll use them on game days. But that’s not the point of this paragraph.) In fact, when I toured the building initially, it was completely clear that the church wanted to give us everything—all the furnishings, all the fixtures, all the plates and spoons in the kitchen. A dollar was exchanged, to make things legal or something, and now we have a building. Unbelievable.

All this and heaven, too?

Absolutely.

God is good, all the time. All the time, God is good.

One day last week Livia wasn’t looking so hot, so I asked her how she felt. “Crumbly” was her response. (I told her I was crummy the other day. Ha!)

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Liv, explaining why she used the word “butt” in a conversation (when she knows I like the word “bottom” better):

I used “butt” because I like it. It starts with a B and has an S. And [shrug] it’s kinda funky.

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On when she’ll be allowed to light more dangerous fireworks. Short answer: when she’s an adult. Liv’s answer? A little more complex:

When I get big I’ll marry Seth, have a ball, and then light them on the Fourth of July.

Everyone who gets married has a ball, right? To which I say, thank you very much, Disney. To be honest, I don’t know which thought scares me more… the lighting of fiery explosions or my girl getting married.

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Final note. We’ve been talking about the birds and the bees quite a bit recently. Milo and Otis shows puppies and kitties being born (after which Liv asked for clarification, “Did she just poop kitties?”). So we picked up National Geographic’s Dogs & Cats in the Womb and, boy oh boy, did Liv get an education. Since then she and I have discussed eggs and “swimmers” (her term, not mine), menstrual cycles, miscarriage and locations of female body parts. My favorite Livia quote was when she referred to her “tiny womb” on a grocery store outing.

I love exploring life with this kid!

Sidenote: I used the fast-forward button at the start of that National Geographic program. I am so not ready to discuss the entirety of procreation with my five year old.

I think I’ll post a few Fourth of July pics before the month is out.

This shot of Dawson entertains me to no end. I love his posturing, his clear excitement at lighting fireworks.

Yesterday turned out to be a really great day.

It involved working out at the YMCA for the first time ever, shocking even (or especially) myself; mowing the yard on what had to be the most gorgeous July day in Nebraska history. And cooking a dinner that reminded me why cooking can be worthwhile: hello, Chicken Tikka Masala.

My mom made the cheery hot pads pictured above. Cooking is a lot more fun when you have handmade gifts to help keep your hands from burning. Thanks, Mom—I love them!

We finished reading The Hobbit Sunday night. It marked the ending of the first read-aloud book we did as a family and I’ll always be grateful that Jeremy picked it out for us. We worked our way through the book, reading several pages at a time while lounging on the living room couch or sprawled across Livia’s bed. More than one evening witnessed a very tired and squirrelly child—those two traits go hand-in-hand in the Tredway household—alongside one reading parent and one cuddling parent. Oftentimes the reading parent (usually me) also needed to tickle Squirrel Girl’s backside to keep her calm while detailed passages of barreling down the Forest River River or climbing up Lonely Mountain were being read. I have this to say for The Hobbit: the first half was more entertaining for a child than the second. It seems similar to The Lord of the Rings series in that way. The first halves are more lighthearted and full of humorous stories; the latter halves are darker, more serious in nature, and thus more dramatic.

Jeremy ordered the animated version of The Hobbit, which arrived in our mailbox sometime last week. It was driving force in Liv’s resolve to sit still for the final pages of the book as we refused to watch the film before the last page of the book had been read. So Monday night saw us prepare the first ever themed meal at the old homestead… Italian meat sandwiches became Roasted Dragon Meat on Hobbit Bread. Carrot sticks magically turned into Elvish carrots that sat neatly by piles of Dwarvish (Potato) Chips. The final touch, Wizard’s Brew Liv liked to call it, was a glowing blue combination of blue lemonade and Diet Squirt. We sat down for a feast in front of the John Huston-narrated version of The Hobbit, and there we stayed until Smaug was slayed and Bilbo returned safely to his hobbit hole in the Shire.

It was then Livia told us, for the first time, that she was “falling in love…”. With the movie. With that she walked upstairs by herself to go to bed. Another first.

I hope that Jeremy and I still take shots like this when he’s 77 and I’m 70.

Happy Friday everyone!

I finally printed this shot and placed it above my desk. In a nutshell, I want to celebrate lovely things as well as motivate myself as an artist. Most of my photos (99.9% I’d imagine) remain in digital format and never see life outside of my computer. This week I’ve worked to change that and now I’m enjoying the fruits of my labor, in many senses.

I’m off to oversee two little girls among a mass of Playdoh, train a small white dog not to jump on the little girls or eat the Playdoh, and perhaps, if I play my cards right, I’ll get to read the newspaper as well. Happy day to you!

Five years ago we drove home to Lincoln, Nebraska, with the most precious cargo in our backseat: Livia Raine Melissa Tredway. She was eight weeks old. We had adopted her the week before and spent several days in Kansas waiting for interstate paperwork to be filed and approved. We received a green light to leave the state and drove north to the best 4th of July weekend on record. It was an amazing time, and we continue to be amazed by our little girl.

Many, many adoptions happen by word-of-mouth, and that’s why we’re telling you that we’re very interested in adopting again! Our friends are our eyes and ears around the country. In fact, we heard about Livia through a friend and fellow church secretary in town (who heard from her pastor, who heard from another pastor, who was trying to find a good home for his church secretary’s granddaughter!). We believe in an almighty God who orchestrates wonderful things—wonderful things like the creation of new families.

If you hear of a potential adoption situation, we would love to know about it. We can send you more information about our family as well as put you in touch with our adoption attorney. You can reach me at . Thank you!