morning...

I had some half and half in the fridge. So I thought I'd make some coffee to go with it. =) Which led to sitting in front of the computer with coffee. Which led to the thought that I could type up a blog post. If you give a mom some coffee, she's going to want a blog post to go with it.... =)

Ben is pushing an old Fisher Price walker around the circle that is the first floor of our house. He bangs into chairs, pulls it back, redirects his path, and he keeps going. Occasionally there is an indignant shriek when he gets stuck, but its going well. That walker has seen a lot of miles.

Seth is playing with pop beads. I found some non girly ones to give him that have different creature heads. At first, he thought he had to just make the ones in the pictures of the book that came with the beads. So we had a talk about creativity and about how I almost didn't give him the book because I was afraid he'd limit himself to those. And now he's making all kinds of dog/octopus/caterpillar monsters. Win. =)

Back to the half and half. I bought it because I decided to host a women's fellowship for my Sunday School class (Life class) lo, these many moons ago. We joined this class when I was about 7 months pregnant with Ben. Sooo for all this time, I sat back and listened to others plan the social events and thought, "I am pregnant/have a new baby/am totally exhausted with my 3 young children, etc. so I'll let somebody else take this one." But it was time. He's 17 months old now, and I just decided that things weren't ever going to get any easier anytime soon.

I've done this kind of event once before for my MOPs group. I call it "Snowflakes and S'mores." Basically, I put out a bunch of paper and scissors and pull up some paper snowflake tutorials on the computer. David builds me a nice, big fire in the fireplace, and I pull out the marshmallow coat hangers and put s'mores fixins on a platter. And then I make a giant bowl of popcorn on the stovetop... with plenty of oil. The coffeepot gets pulled out, washed, and filled with decaf.

My clean laundry was sitting in piles in the hallway off the kitchen. Ben had been fussing and clingy all day, so the sink was full of dirty dishes. There are little piles of stuff everywhere- on top of the computer printer, on the edge of the counter. I put a few random things on top of the washer and dryer to hide them. =)

But God just asks us to show hospitality. This is a hard one for me sometimes. I think I have to show hospitality perfectly to show hospitality, or that I have to show it exactly how my friends who are really good at it show hospitality. It's especially hard for me to show hospitality to others that I'm afraid might judge me and my house because they don't have children yet or their children are much older and make far less mess.

But I don't think anyone was thinking about all my insecurities last night. They sat on my living room floor and laughed and ate popcorn and made some really bad snowflakes and some really good snowflakes. And when everyone left, I think that they felt like I wanted to know them and love them and try harder to relate to them than they did before I opened my faded and scratched front door to them.

Ok. Gotta go. School time soon....