Spring!

Spring has finally arrived! We may have a lot of rain all of the time in the winter but our summers are spectacular and, when it peeks through, so is Spring. We have three trees in our front yard that, in aggregate, form a large canopy of branches covering the better part of the yard. Since we moved in January, we had no idea what the tree would look like fully dressed. Imagine our surprise when we received this unexpected gift last week:


It turns out the gnarled branches are a cherry blossom tree! I was so excited! I know it is fleeting but I am soaking up every minute of waking up and seeing those beautiful flowers filling my window.

The boys took a later nap today so we took advantage of the late afternoon and played outside. They had such a good time playing in the grass. A hard part of Oregon with small kids is the lack of ability to spend a lot of time outdoors in the winter.

Charlie has had little to no experience in the grass and he just LOVED it.


Jack has been on strike from the camera lately. Today, he was so drunk with the experience of being outside that he let me take his picture. :-)


It was one of those perfect days. Even this evening, when we were making dinner and chaos reigned...Charlie was squealing, Jack was pestering...Jared was disciplining...I had this acute moment of feeling like this is it, this is what I've always wanted, this is exactlywhere I am meant to be.

Spring!

Easter is coming! I love Easter--I love everything it is about. It is such a time of hope, of re-birth, of redemption. I've never loved Easter as much as I did after last year. After one of the rainier weeks since we've been here in Oregon, we had a beautiful day today. It started out cold, with frost on the ground when Jack and I left this morning, but turned into a just beautiful spring day. There are a lot of flowering trees in full blossom here; we don't really have trees like that in San Diego and it is just spectacular. After I picked Jack up, we went to Target to get him diapers and I wound up buying stuff for his Easter basket. What do you get for a 1 yr-old's basket??? They had some cute stuff and I finally settled on a Mr. Potato Head in a bunny costume, some eggs filled with Little People Easter characters, a little flip board book, and a little book about the story of Easter. I will post pictures of his basket after Easter.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, baby Stellan has been on my mind. As I read the updates and as I bought all of Jack's Easter basket fillings, I was reminded of where we were last year. We were traveling daily between home and the hospital, alternately hoping Jack would be cleared to come home and being absolutely terrified of bringing a baby home that would regularly "forget" to breathe. We were struggling with the ups and downs of being told he would come home, then told he wouldn't...changing care plans, etc., etc. And then, two days before Easter, we came to the hospital and they told us Jack would be going home with us...THAT DAY!!!! We were so excited--but cautious (we had gotten halfway through the paperwork once before and Jack had had a bradycardic episode during the process and wound up staying three more weeks). Looking back on that time, it's hard to imagine we were the same parents and Jack was the same baby he is today. We spent that Easter weekend, which was full of everything Easter promises--renewed beginnings, renewed life, reveling in the blessings that had been heaped on us and exploring our new, tiny son. He was, and still is, the best gift God ever gave me and it was so fitting that he came home at Easter. I am grateful for the lessons Jack has taught me over the last year and for the privilege of being his mommy.

Here's a picture from his first Easter, I'm looking forward to many more to come! I'm praying that the people whose blogs I read who are struggling with illness in their families or with their children know the peace and renewal of Easter this season, as we did.