Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

lilacs

First Friday Five {May}

The last month has had some wild ups and downs for us. Usually, I’m thinking about my list of favorite things off and on throughout the month, but this month is a little different. Many of my favorites this month are within the last week or so.

Still, I hope you enjoy!

  1. Birthdays! Mine was yesterday and even though this was a birthday ending in “9” for me, I’m excited for the year and decade ahead. I also love celebrating with treats and birthday freebies from restaurants and hearing from a variety of friends and family on Facebook. The celebration was nothing fancy, but it was just right.
  2. Boston. My husband and I just took an early anniversary trip to Boston, Mass. and although Chicago will always and forever be my favorite city, Boston is a close second. We experienced history, culture, food and drink, and baseball, among other things. We can’t wait to take the kids back and do the historical stuff with them as well as experience other things we just couldn’t fit in to this trip. (I’ll have a separate post wrapping up our Boston adventures in more detail.)
  3. Baseball. It’s back in full swing (ha-ha) and we are still riding the high of the Cubs winning the World Series. Our kids are more interested in listening to games with us, and while my husband and I were in Boston, we got to go to a game: Cubs vs. Boston. And it was so much fun, even though it was cold and the Cubs lost and we were, in our section, surrounded mostly by Boston fans.
  4. Spring flowers. Our lilacs bloomed already and the lilies of the valley are popping up on the side of our house. We’re getting ready to start planting some of our favorites to bring color to the earth, and everywhere I go I see these bursts of spring color. I love how everything turns green finally after a gray/brown/white winter, but the color that precedes the green is such a treat. (Pictured above is a lilac bush at the Adams house in Quincy, Mass. These are Abigail Adams’ lilacs!)
  5. Marriage. Later this month, my husband and I will celebrate 10 years of it, and believe me when I tell you that marriage has not always been my favorite thing. We have survived some tough stuff in those 10 years, and I finally feel like we’ve found solid footing, a good groove. I’ve heard that the 10-year mark often signals a shift. I’m looking forward to the next decade of marriage, also.

What have you been enjoying this month?

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Saturday smiles: back to our normal edition

Major theme of the week: We’re healthy! And by “we” I mostly mean “me.” I’m learning that the old adage, “If momma ain’t happy ain’t nobody happy” rings true and you can substitute other words for “happy” like “healthy,” “calm” and “peaceful.”

So, Momma’s healthy again, which is one reason to smile, and I can eat food again, which is another reason to smile because I like food to have more consistency than Jello and more flavor than crackers.

The hubby is in the midst of his final papers and projects for seminary, and he was home for supper on Thursday, so I said I’d make whatever he wanted for dinner. We had pork burgers, seasoned fries and a salad. I’ve never made a pork burger in my life, but it was good enough that Phil said we could make them again sometime. Hitting the spot for dinner is a big deal for me. I still feel like a novice in the kitchen sometimes.

Speaking of my husband, I love watching him react to the ridiculous awesome antics on Top Gear. He’s like a little kid, and I mean that in a good way.

A friend brought this pretty lilac bundle to our house for a playdate on Monday. Their springy fragrance permeated the house all week and reminded me of the lilac bushes that lined the property between the house where I grew up and the neighbor’s. My dream house would have at least one lilac bush in the yard.

And speaking of purple, a friend and I got pedicures this week. It’s one of our coping mechanisms while our husbands read, write papers and try to figure out life after seminary. A survey of the kids for what color I should get on my toes yielded these answers: “Red!” (from Izzy) and “Blue!” (from Corban). I wasn’t initially crazy about either color, so I went for purple, which I think is a combination of the two. At least, that’s what I told them. Maybe it’s vanity, but I always like looking at my feet after a pedicure.

Corban is taking good care of his monkey named Baby. These days, he wraps Baby’s arms around his waist and gallops through the house, or down the road, yelling “Piggyback, piggyback.” One day he did this all the way to the library and back, which is a 20- to 30-minute walk each way.

After cleaning the bookshelf and weeding the holiday related books, the kids have rediscovered the recordable stories their Nana and Aunt Charlotte and Uncle Zach have sent to them. One of my favorite things they do when they “read” these books is they talk back to the voices. “Can you hear me Nana?” “Are you there, Nana?” and “I LOVE YOU!” (in response to a “We love you!” in the story from their aunt and uncle). How I wish the family could hear them from here.

And Corban is offering to pray more often at mealtime. Mostly, he says, “Dear Jesus, goodbye.”

We’ve had some good outdoors time this week, too. The boy in his truck always cracks me up.

One of the biggest developments is training wheels for the little girl.

On subsequent rides she was wearing a helmet. Please don’t report us for child abuse.

I’m off to writers group this morning, which makes me smile before I even get there because I love being with other writers and learning more about the craft and encouraging each other in our ventures.

Happy Saturday!