Grape Hyanciths in a Baby Bottle

A centerpiece made by Esther ❤

1. When it comes to pictures of the kids I've realized I've slowly been switching from quantity to quality. With Esther I would take so many pictures, usually 10+ a day of her. A lot were low light and blurry because of our phones back then and living in a basement apartment. Now with Israel I take far less pictures, but I hope they are better quality. I'm not much a photographer but at least my phone is better and our house has more light. What do you even do with 5000 photos of your child anyways?

2. Going along with the last point, I have a good system of making photo books of all the pictures I take (whenever I muster up the time+energy to actually do it), but I have no idea what to do with all the small videos of the kids I take. When Esther was a baby I just downloaded them all onto a dvd. But now I just have so many from the past 3 years it seems overwhelming. Gathering all the videos from the camera plus all the phone clips and all the clips from instagram stories and Snapchat and editing them into something watchable just seems so daunting. We have a lot of home videos from my childhood and we all love seeing them, so I want that for my own kids too. It is just so much I don't know where to begin. This literally just gives me anxiety (and I'm not an anxious person by nature ha) so I don't know what to do. Part of it is because those videos are soooo precious to me, it feels like that is all I have to really capture my kids as babies and I want the videos to be perfect. So maybe I'm just putting this all out there so I actually do something about it. Also Maybe I'll get Leland to do something ha.

3. Did you know May is Foster Care awareness month? Leland and I have been to a few trainings lately to get our yearly hours. I love foster care and it breaks my heart at the same time. We are coming up on one year since we got our first placement, L. So I've been thinking about it a lot. I've been thinking about service in general too. Sometimes I feel like there is a lot a things I can't do because I have young children.
But recently I read a quote, I can't remember where, about how saying yes to one thing really narrows down the areas in which you can serve, but then you are able to more fully serve in that one capacity. Motherhood in general, takes so much time and dedication that there are very few things you can say yes to after that. But of course you're giving your children a lifetime of service and devotion, probably greater than any other service you could render to any other single individual. I feel the same way about foster care and sometimes I get caught up in feeling guilty about what I have to say no to when we have a placement. But then I remember that dedicating myself to these children ( mine and others) has more lasting effect than bringing a dish to a funeral or sewing sleeping bags for the homeless. Not that those things aren't helpful, but I have to keep reminding myself that what I'm doing now is important too.

4. Last week we went back to our old stomping grounds, Wheeler Farm to meet up with a homeschool group. The kids had a blast and it was fun to go back. The last time we were there I was in early labor with Israel.

5. And here is a picture of that big boy Israel now. Going to be 1 in a few days! It has gone by sooo fast!!!