Let's play a game.

   A game called "let's whine and moan about how busy we are like everyone does every year around the holidays even though it is their own fault for being so busy and it happens every single year and somehow each year they don't do anything to change it."  That game.

   I haven't been able to blog much because we have been. Just. So. Busy.  The main thing I guess has been moving, and all that entails.  The packing, cleaning, moving, painting, buying, arranging, organizing....if you've moved before you know the drill.  And for the life of me I CANNOT understand how people move multiple times!  I'm pretty sure I only want to move once in my entire life.  Maybe even minus-1 times. How do you people do it?! Or maybe it's kind of like the pain/agony of childbirth that you forget after a little while and so that's the only reason that families have more than one child.  I don't know.  Let's just say I'm still in the throes of post-moving-partum and have no desire to repeat the process anytime soon.

  I never DREAMED of some of the agonies of homeowners.  How I could nearly shed tears and lose sleep over a broken washing machine or a dishwasher making strange sounds. How the dilemma of an ill-fitting appliance could loom dark rainclouds over every other area of my life.  How panicky and out-of-sorts it makes me feel when everything around me is in a quiet, unnerving state of upheaval.

   And besides the moving, which has drained more of me than I thought possible, there has been Thanksgiving with the family, practicing for the upcoming Christmas pageant (11th, 13th, and 15th at Fairview Mennonite for all of you locals!), preparing for a Christmas banquet that we are helping with for the youth, and other things like grocery shopping, taking care of littles, washing dishes and prying open my eyelids every morning.  Needless to say I feel BUSY.  But I'm sure no busier than anyone else, and I really can't complain when we are the ones that say yes to things that make us busy in the first place.

  That is a whole new blog post for another time, by the way.  This thing of "being busy".  I think it is WAY to over-glorified in our culture, and maybe even specifically the Mennonite/Christian sub-culture.    I think this is because so much of our worth is defined by what we do.  Whether it should be or not, that is just the way it is.

   Women, especially, hardly have a place at all unless they are good at doing certain things, and unfortunately, I am not very great at most of those "expected things".  Cooking, cleaning, sewing and housekeeping in general are not my strong points.  Not even close.  I'd rather be painting, writing, photographing, acting, singing, dancing....well, I guess just about anything than cooking or cleaning.  Because of this, I have often felt like I am not "good enough".  That even if God has blessed me with many giftings, that they are somehow not valuable because they are not the RIGHT giftings.  Especially because of the culture I have grown up in.

   For example, I am quite sure many, MANY people I know probably think blogging is completely ridiculous.  And art is a waste of time.  And fashion is vain.  And countless other things that fascinate me, are shallow and meaningless.  Well, I guess that's o.k. Because what holds meaning to one doesn't necessarily have to captivate another.  I suppose I am glad the world is that way because I would shudder to think of what the world might look like if I tried to become the Pioneer Woman, or Rachel Ray, or Mr. Clean or Mrs. Meyers, and they tried to become me.  So maybe we're all a little bit better off with varied interests after all.  But why doesn't it FEEL that way??

   My what a tangent I strayed off on.  I don't even know how to bring that all back around to any sort of main point, so let's just plunge on.

Here's a little glimpse of what we've been up to via Instagram.....

    We're slowly getting our office put together and opened the box to this little beauty. I think I may be falling in love.  Haven't even gathered up the courage to take off the plastic protective cover yet.  I'm writing on her right now, actually and the keyboard keys are like....butter.  They actually make me want to write.  It's almost like they are writing FOR me.  I feel like I could sit down to one of these keyboards half-asleep and crank out a series of novels rivaling the length of Jeanette Oak's.  Do her series ever end??

   Anyway, it's getting late so that is all for now.  Happy day-of-rest-eve to you all!