By Honor

My finished quilt top. Although I think it’s too skinny and need to figure out a way to make it wider.

A couple weeks ago we had a band from Ft. Collins, You, Me & Apollo, come into town, play an awesome show and then camp out in our living room. The next day we all peeled ourselves out of bed (after a very, very late night) and went out to breakfast. Seth and Carrie were in their matching outfits again, so I had to capture the moment.

Me in my finished sweater.

not sure what I was thinking when I purchased this iphone cover…

There’s nothing quite like starting a new molskine.

I suddenly, and surprisingly, decided that I wanted to understand and watch football. Carrie, being the good sport that she is, went right along with it. So Saturday, before the big Bronco game, we brushed up on our football knowledge with a marathon of YouTube football videos. Luckily we had a couple football experts stop by to really set us straight. Turns out, when you know what’s going on in the game, it’s actually interesting!

And because when I decide to do something, I DO it, we made sure we were model fans.

Today I helped a friend bottle his beer, which I love to do! We have big plans to keep everyone stocked in beer now. If only I was eating (and drinking) wheat…

I thought this was really interesting:

Destructive to marriage is the self-fulfillment ethic that assumes marriage and the family are primarily institutions of personal fulfillment, necessary for us to become “whole” and happy. The assumption is that there is someone just right for us to marry and that if we look closely enough we will find the right person. This moral assumption overlooks a crucial aspect to marriage. It fails to appreciate the fact that we always marry the wrong person.

We never know whom we marry; we just think we do. Or even if we first marry the right person, just give it a while and he or she will change. For marriage, [being the enormous thing it is] means we are not the same person after we have entered it. The primary challenge of marriage is learning how to love and care for the stranger to whom you find yourself married.

-Stanley Hauerwas, Stanford University Ethics Professor

Now I always worry about people’s marriages. I think because I know how fragile marriage is and how much work it takes to make one work (and how the reverse is also true). Someday I hope to have the chance to do it right with someone who is as dedicated to making it work as I am. But in the meantime I pray for the marriages around me. That the spouses surrounding me will be dedicated to doing what it takes to make their marriages work and that they will know that feelings don’t usually dictate reality. And that they will always choose love.

I sewed this picnic quilt quite awhile ago and just finally finished the “hand-quilting” on it. I use the term hand-quilting loosely because these giant stitches with embroidery floss don’t really count (but are as close to hand quilting as I’m gonna get).

It’s a really simple blanket of quilting cotton and laminated cotton with batting sandwiched in the middle. It’s just like this one I made awhile back. I think I’ll keep this one in the car for all of those impromptu picnics I plan to go on.

I’ve noticed this theme in my life lately, in so many different areas of my life I’ve been asking the same questions:
What is our plan?
Who are we?
Where are we going?
What are we doing?
What is our message?
What is our mission?

I’m realizing that in these different areas of my life (the different organizations I’m involved in, Tangle, my family) I can’t move forward without these questions answered.

A few months ago a friend of mine told me about some advice she was given for her family. She and her husband were told to write a mission statement for their family: a governing set of rules and values and goals that determined the direction of their family. I was completely blown away by this concept and walked away from my conversation with her feeling like my world was rocked, my life was totally changed.

Since then I’ve been thinking about what the master plan for my little family will be. I’ve been thinking about what I want to define us: plans, goals, directions and values like grace and bravery and love and compassion. I’ve been telling my kids this – what defines our family. When they are afraid of something, I say things like, “Our family is a brave family. Even if we are afraid, we still do what needs to be done, even if it scares us.” It’s amazing how when I tell them these statements about our family they just accept them as fact.

“What? Our family is brave? Ok, then I guess I will be brave.”

Laying out our master family plan gives us something to refer to when things come up – decisions that need to be made or conflicts that need to be settled. And it gives each person a defining role – this is who we are and this is how and where I belong. I’m starting to see just how valuable this is to a family, a business, an organization. And I’ve started to wonder how anyone/thing functions without a master plan? It’s amazing that so many people/entities can operate without a vision. They are going somewhere, they just don’t know where. (How much of my life has been lived like this?)

So in all the areas of my life I’m starting to look for the big picture. I find myself asking these questions of the organizations I’m involved in because I don’t know how to move forward without knowing where we’re going. And in doing so, I get to be part of the process of defining their master plans. I get to dream and help mold where we’re going and it is SO fun.

In my family I’m still writing our master plan. It’s hard doing this by myself – I am such a collaborator – but I feel this is the single most important thing I can do for us. My kids need to know exactly how they fit into our family; knowing where they belong will give them so much security. And I need to know what defines us so when decisions get big or things get blurry, I know where I’m going, how I’m going to get there and what kind of values are going to get me there.

Proverbs says: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” And I’m starting to see just how true that is. I am so abundantly thankful for these lessons I’m learning.

Last week, we took all the Christmas decor down at Tangle and I did new windows including new curtains. If you look in my room or closet right now you’ll notice that mustard and grey are my favorite colors, especially together. It’s only fitting that the windows at Tangle should match.

The wall at the Steve Madden store at Cherry Creek Mall in Denver.

My sister, her husband, the twinzies and the kiddos on our way into Ikea.

The twinzies in the PJ pants I made them for Christmas. It’s nearly impossible to take a non-blurry pic of the two of them together – they never stop moving!

The cousins watching movies and eating copious amounts of popcorn.

Battleship, ipad style

When Seth is your roommate, this happens in your living room. They were filming a commercial for a custom bible cover website.

baby Gunnison being adorable as ever (Did you know that I’m his favorite?)

In August, Eden and Carrie started writing a novel together, they would take turns writing a page each, building on the story as they went. They finished it up early December and had Honor illustrate it. We self-published the book through lulu.com and ordered copies of it as Christmas presents for our family and the kids’ teachers.

Eden wrote at least half of the nearly 10,000 words of the book and it is such a riot! I’m one proud mama.

You can order the book here.

Eden always sings this sandwich song (over and over and over), so last night when she was at Jim’s, he recorded this: