He is risen

We had a happy Easter and I hope you did too. One of my favorite parts was hearing Rosie and the other preschoolers in our little class learn to respond to "He is risen!" with "He is risen indeed!" in their sweet little voices.  

Jesse's birthday was yesterday, and we had a really lovely afternoon date browsing around antique stores in town and having a nice dinner out. Funny how our tastes are the same and different in new ways over the past several years. It seems like a long time since we had such a relaxing and fun time together - that is exactly the kind of date we used to go on early in our marriage. The girls spent the morning creating cards and other little gifts to present to him at lunch time and it was a precious treat to watch their faces as he opened their trinkets and notes.  Rosie kept trying to glue paper over some of our wooden toy food to give him as a gift.  She was so proud of these presents for him and gave him the longest, happiest hug afterward. This filled me with a bittersweet happiness as I realized anew how quickly these little years keep flying by and how I will so miss them when they are gone.  So soon her innocent joy over these beautiful childish moments will fade and she will become self-conscious and aware of our secret smiles over her innocence and carefree joy.  My heart aches to hold onto these exact moments of motherhood and remember them, but I also wish I could capture them and keep them alive somehow.

So now, I'm on to planning the next two birthdays that come up this week:  Millie will turn six on Monday and Rosie will be four the next Saturday.  I can hardly type that after writing the last paragraph without tearing up! 

April is a really busy month for this mama and I almost always feel completely inadequate for the task of making three people feel celebrated and special.  Fortunately it's not really about whether I'm up for it; it always does end up happening - the birthdays come and each person somehow feels amazingly happy even though I see all the ways I am dropping all the balls.  I am thankful that it doesn't really matter how imperfectly I manage it all; what matters is THEM and how wonderful they are.  So birthday gifts and wrapping paper and baking special treats will fill my spare time (of which homeschool moms have so much, right?) for the next few weeks.  Wish me luck in my continuing plunge into birthdayland...