Van Dancing & Focusing on *Me*

So, up front: my journal entries are often REALLY long, esp. when I haven't written in a while. I'm hoping that I'll pop in here more frequently than my last journal, though. I talk a lot about what God is doing in my life, b/c He is ALWAYS doing something & helping me grow, but I hope I never come across as preachy. That is certainly not my intent. I just want to share the good stuff & commiserate over the bad.

I just took the kids to school, and they cracked me up singing & dancing. Will's BFF has really gotten into music, and for his 5th bday, his mom asked me to make him a dance mix CD. (We're good friends & have always enjoyed sharing music ourselves, so I ended up really making a mix CD *for her* that just didn't have any bad words on it. ;-)) My current favorite song that makes me want to dance is Robert Randolph & The Family Band's "Ain't Nothing Wrong With That". My rear cannot sit still when I hear that beat! And the kids think it's fantastic! Will said he thinks it sounds like a football team stomping at the beginning. *love* The next song after that one is Quad City DJ's "C'mon Ride It (The Train)" - yes, the lyrics are a bit suggestive, but come on: it's a dance song with TRAIN NOISES!!! (Will is the most train-obsessed boy on the planet!) Again, the kids are in love. And I am hurdled instantly back to my freshman year at Davidson! So. Much. Fun. They were clapping, singing, and dancing as much as they could in their carseats. School van dance party - holla! ;-) (For what it's worth, our usual car radio fare is KLOVE.)

JB will be home from his latest business trip tonight or tomorrow, and it truly makes me realize how far I've come. I used to think part of a good marriage was this feeling of *needing* to spend as much time with your spouse as possible. I thought it was romantic when my friends said they couldn't sleep well when their husbands were gone. (For the record, I've never had that problem. :-P) I felt like being together was our reward for so much long distance our first 2+ years together. (We started dating the end of his senior year of undergrad. That August, he moved to grad school in Wisconsin, and I moved to Germany! After I came back the next July, I was still in NC while he was in WI until the following May. We both felt if we could make it through all that time long distance w/o finding anyone else "better" that we'd be set for life! :-)) After we were married, I used to flip at the thought of him doing any business travel. When we lived in Georgia, I went home to Charlotte the few times he was away. (Oh, being less than 4 hours from home was BLISS!!! I long for those 2-or-3-day trips!) Our nightmarish time in Michigan was the true test. 11 hours from home in the frigid north with a toddler, a newborn, and a husband who began working insane hours. Bitter & resentful don't even begin to scratch the surface... But I know that God put us there to work on me, and He finally coaxed two of the biggest lessons into my heart:

"God is more interested in changing you than your circumstances," and

"God wants you to depend on Him for your happiness - not people, places, or things."

I finally let go of feeling like I *needed* JB home to be happy; instead, now I just *WANT* him home. ;-) But I while I've missed our snuggle TV time for an hour or so after he gets home from work this week, I haven't been all mopey, and that's refreshing! [Disclaimer: it's WAY easier to not be mopey when I don't have any Girls' Nights or meetings that I'm missing when he's gone! :-P]

I've focused on *me*. I caught up with my digiscrapping, I made Annelise another hair bow - my first korker, I actually started this blog, and - hold onto your socks, people! - I started reading ANOTHER BOOK!!! :-O This is earth-shaking news, b/c everyone knows I do NOT read for fun. I've read 2 books in the last 4 years, and it's not b/c I don't have a pile on my bedside table; I'm just a slow reader who needs complete silence and who really enjoys TV & Facebook a zillion times more. ;-) But, after reading a hysterical book on vacay earlier this month, I softened a bit to the idea of another. Please don't start sending me lists of book suggestions, b/c they'll just stress me out & I will ignore them...but my current read is "special".

Rebecca Wells' Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood was the first book I'd read for pleasure in years. My mom sent it to me while I was in Germany, and it WAS divine. I actually read most of it on a train! I paid a ridiculous sum at a German bookstore (crazy: I remeber exactly which corner of the store that book was in & I can see it in one of these pics!) for the English version of the other Ya-Ya book, Little Altars Everywhere, b/c I just couldn't wait to know more about the characters. (Some things I found out in that one, I wished I didn't know, but...) I had no idea that a few years ago Wells had written a 3RD book in the series: Ya-Yas in Bloom. The reviews are blah, but I'm reading it, anyway. I love the first 50 pages!

Today: making food for my MOPS meeting tomorrow (pumpkin bread & prepping a hashbrown casserole to bake in the morning) and hopefully watching "Good Bye, Lenin!" from Netflix. Ever since we joined last year, I've been getting German language movies, b/c I feel so much of my German is slipping away. It makes me feel good that I can still understand the movies, and I get all proud of myself when I realize parts they've left out in the subtitles. ;-)