thoughts from the deep recesses

Tomorrow is Kyler's 16th birthday... My first surprise party was for my sweet sixteen, so last week I got a wild hair and decided we should throw a party for him... With a Christmas Eve birthday, I assumed most people would have plans on his actual birthday... so we planned it for tonight... the night before... Thank goodness for Facebook, which makes it really easy to invite people to a semi-last-minute event... and thank goodness for all the people who showed up... we had 39 people here celebrating Kyler. He was COMPLETELY surprised. It was a great party.

I recent years I've been big into setting goals... pushing myself in each new year in some way... So as I've been looking ahead to the new year, here are a few things I've been thinking. I'm reading a book called New Monasticism: What it Has to Say to Today's Church . There's a chapter in it that's totally challenged me in regards to giving... basically taking the story of the feeding of the 5000 and encouraging us as Christians to see giving the way Jesus did... that with God there is always enough - and my giving should reflect that. I'm pondering what that might look like for 2011. Of course, I always go to the radical extreme and had the thought the other night "What if I said yes to everyone who asked me to give next year?" Creativity Mondays: I've gotten SO out of the habit of nurturing my creativity. I've decided to push myself to do something creative every Monday and post it here. This is a huge part of what makes me tick...

Oh, how I sometimes feel like life has taken such crazy turns... I really dislike the notion that the word busy equals valid in today's American culture. In my world, busy equals crazy... and I don't do crazy well. Everyone suffers. I am such an introverted soul that without my down time, I struggle to maintain balance. And down time just hasn't been on the agenda. I hate to whine, but the older I get, the more I realize that solitude and silence and sabbath are VERY important to me. None of those three things have been maintained in the past two or three months. So yeah. I'm feeling a little crazy. And yeah... I haven't been blogging. I blog best when I've have solitude. And silence. And sabbath. Moving on... we get to go to a wedding this weekend. Can you imagine? A wedding one week before Christmas! Asia is actually in the wedding - a groomsman for a young man he's been mentoring for several years. So glad it's him and not me. I can't imagine...

Ethan turned eleven yesterday. How is it possible that it's been eleven years since I had my last baby? (And what a happy baby he was...) Unfortunately, he had to stay home from school because he'd had a fever Sunday night... but it worked out well for him because Asia was home from work and got to take him to a movie (Megamind 3D) midday... E. is the only one of our kids who normally has to attend school on his birthday... so it was fun for him (and he was feeling so much better) to have the 'day off.' We had a sweet little family party after I got home from work... I asked him if he wanted to invite a friend over to share the cake and he said "I just want it to be our family..." He scored a new Kendama from his brother and sister, a new Wii game, a new nutcracker for his collection, and a couple of movies. The big daddy of all his presents was a treasure hunt that sent him all over, finding 12 different Lego sets I'd bought last summer at a garage ...