Mother's Day

While thinking about motherhood today, I had an interesting thought. It is written,

“Motherhood is near to divinity. It is the highest, holiest service to be assumed by mankind. It places her who honors its holy calling and service next to the angels.”

While thinking about that quote this scripture came to mind:

“But whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant.”

And I realized that is why mothers are so wonderful. Mothers give up so many of their ambitions and wants to spend years serving little creatures that are completely dependent upon them, not to mention putting up with knuckle-headed husbands. Really, the job of a mom is rough. Years of changing diapers, cleaning up disaster areas, folding infinite loads of laundry, cooking, and ear-splitting screams. Years of worrying over your children's development, and late night vigils by a sick child's bead side. And during all of this, mothers often have little time to devote to their own personal wants and hobbies. And what have they received for all of this? They have been demeaned and scorned by men for a long time. They were denied privileges and mistreated and viewed as having a “lesser” role. It is interesting to see the statistics now of how girls out-perform boys in school at all levels. It makes you appreciate even more the sacrifice they make by subjecting themselves to dependence upon their husband for support, when they could be the one to provide a better living for the family. Thinking about all this one realizes why “Motherhood is near to divinity”; it is because it is modeled after the life of Jesus Christ. It is a life of condescension into the humble service of God's children. A woman with so many freedoms and aspirations who could achieve so much in this world, sacrifices all to willingly subject herself to the quiet and often unrecognized task of bearing and rearing children. I just want to let Ashley know that I love and appreciate her. I also love and appreciate all the trouble my mom went through on my behalf, and actually I appreciate all of you moms. May God bless you all.
- Jude

Funny Comments From Ninja Girl #1

I have been trying to record some of the funny things that Evie says. Here are a few that I find cute.

Her phrase for pancakes:
"Panny Cakes"

This one is just nice:
"Your welcome to you"

On our way to Panoply a firetruck raced by with the sirens screaming. Evie recounts the experience:

"Fire truck scare you.
It hurt my ears.
That just too loud.
Fire truck sorry."

Walking around the lake at bridge street with Evie and Lisi in the stroller:

"Need down.
Need to see the water.
Need to put my toes in it."
Repeated 38,751 times.

Evie had dressed up in a red Santa Clause (Mrs. Clause) dress and then put a green fairy tinker-bell dress on over the top of it. She explained her thoughts about it:

"Santa Clause and Tinker bell, thats creepy."

Whenever Lisi and Evie are done with there baths I call them "ninja girls" because of the hooded towels they wear. The following is a little conversation that we had with Evie just after her bath:

Ashley: "Is Lisi a ninja girl?"
Evie: "yesssss"
Ashley: "Is Evie a ninja girl?"
Evie: "yesssss"
Jude: "Is Mommy a ninja girl?"
Evie: "nooooo"
Evie: "Is Jesus a ninja girl?"
Evie: "nooooo"

Evie is just adorable. I am thinking that it will be very interesting when Lisi and her begin to have little conversations. Lisi doesn't show any inclination to talk anytime soon. She seems very satisfied with the word "spa" (spoon) and feels no need to expand her vocabulary any further. Anyway, why would she? After all, "uh" means everything.

- Jude

Update

Jude only has two more classes and a lab to take before he graduates in August. Yay! His summer semester starts at the end of the month. He started a summer internship at a company called Dynetics here in Huntsville. So far it sounds like Jude will have a permanent job with them after he graduates. He still plans on applying for other jobs just in case.

Some of you may not know that I was hoping to have the opportunity to move away. I love Huntsville and it is my home, but I thought it would be fun if Jude and I could have a little adventure. There are so many engineering jobs in Huntsville that if we ever wanted to move back we'd probably be able to. So if anyone is reading this and knows of any job openings for an Electrical Engineer please feel free to let me know (you stragglers are included, too!). No matter where we live though this next year will be exciting.

Last Friday I went to Nashville with my good friend Kansas. We went to the Opry Mills mall and did some major shopping. At least it was major for myself. Normally I HATE shopping. I never know what to get because I have very little fashion sense. Kansas is all about that stuff so she helped me find some good purchases. It was so nice to get away for a day!

The girls are doing great! Evie is getting so big. She loves to dress and undress herself about 40 times everyday. She is all about the makeup, jewelry, purses, and sunglasses. Lisi is walking around like crazy. In the past couple of weeks she has gotten more "boo boos" than I think Evie has ever gotten. She got a great big goose egg on her head from tripping into the corner of the furniture. A picture frame fell off of our bookshelf and sliced the top of her nose pretty good. She fell off of the swing and got a great big fat lip (luckily that one happened when I was in Nashville...apparently she was bleeding quite a bit and I think I would have been freaking out had I been there). Sometimes I think I was crazy having them just 14 months apart, but the older they get the happier I am that it happened that way. They have become such good buddies. I just hope that it will always be that way!