My Father's Daughter

"Isn't it all Grace, and if it is shouldn't I always have hands lifted in praise?" 430. a deep breath after a really hard day 431. time with family on a beautiful afternoon 432. perfect cannolis 433. cousins playing on the slip and slide 434. swimming with my brother (I really did miss him!) 435. using bad to remind us of the good we've been ignoring 436. remembering priorities 437. cowboy hats and boots~how much fun the boys are having with them 438. kids all dressed up and singing 439. another TEACH year! 440. lots of baseball. 441. dinner and milkshakes 442. a crazy weekend all held together 443. my husband taking care of dead car batteries, surprise baseball games and dinner 444. a movie on the couch 445. tag on the playground 446. hockey in the ally 447. bikes, scooters and tree climbing 448. boys proud of learning to sew 449. the incomplete to-do list, left that way and me smiling about it 450. daddy and his 8 year old with heads under the hood 451. dinner a...

"The best love letters are the ones simply breathed and lived and laid down with a life." ( Ann Voskamp ) Isn't this the way our men say they love us? It's the words said by the lives they live. The walking beside. Hands working. Hearts loving, even if they don't say it like we do. To all the daddies who know what it means to love the mama of their babes and just be there, to the fathers who give up self to play and read and love, the men who help little hands fold in prayer and towel dry wet heads, the men who work tirelessly for their family at home: you are heroes. Thank you. Thank you for building, investing and raising up our tomorrows. Thank you just for being you. ~Happy Father's Day

Five Minute Friday (even though I almost never get to it until Saturday). It's writing with a prompt for 5 minutes without edits and revisions. GO Home... When I first saw this prompt I thought I'd write about all the things that make home a good place to be but that's not what's coming now. Home...it is not this place. Not here. I was not created for this world. Neither were you. Sometimes it is so painfully obvious. Other times we forget and get so lost in trying to create that place we long for. We try so hard to create a place of peace but that is because we are made in the image of the peace-maker. We search for beauty everywhere. We try to bring it in, surround ourselves, because the beauty for which we were created is etched into our hearts. We won't ever really find it though, this perfect peace and beauty that sustains, not this side of heaven. So I'll remember this each time the children are at each other's throats, when the house is dirty and...