#28 that baby's mama...

is my sister-in-law, dean.

and here is the thing about dean....

she HATES having her photo taken... she doesn’t see any need for that kind of thing.

and she married my brother. she got ME as a sister-in-law. 

and my sweet niece, victoria, will be growing up thinking that her aunt lealea has a HUGE black tumor growing over her face. she will also think that “canon” is how you spell aunt lealea’s name....

but that doesn’t bother me.

because look at these photos...

it is like photographing the very breath of God. and even though dean HATES to have her photo taken, she lets me take her photo every now and then. and whenever she visits us at the beach or in town (she and jeff live out of town) she will let me have multiple photo shoots with victoria. 

because she does like photos of that girl...

and because she loves me and knows that i love to take pictures of that girl.

ummm, and did i mention that this summer dean spent a week with me at the beach house (and my friend karen was down there too) and she made us a different chocolate dessert every day.

oh yes, she did.

and it was the best week of my life. it was an isthmus of perfect joy between scrapbooking all day and chocolate decadent desserts all night....

oh, i mean it was a distant second and paled when compared to my honeymoon (just in case adam ever reads this)...

but girls, you know what i really mean....

and i hope you know what i mean when i say that the GREAT thing about having truly wonderful brothers is that they choose EXCELLENT women to marry. women who have ADORABLE babies and women who let me take ALL the photos i want of those children. 

isn’t life grand?

my sister-in-laws make me so excited about seeing who my son chooses to marry. which isn’t going to happen for a long long time. but knowing how much i love these gals that my brothers brought into the family makes me realize that one day our little family of five may expand and you know how i always think that the more is much more merrier....

here is a little scrapbooky page that i made for dean this summer. and look i caught her in the photo too! because sometimes i am a bit sneaky... well, maybe all of the time. but i am sneaky with a purpose... i am a veritable isthmus between sneaky and purposeful... one might even say, if they had to work isthmus into their blog post.

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#27 a see through friend...

and i don’t mean see through as in the cool transparent cybernetic limb that the lady who is president of massive dynamics has on j.j. abrams new show “fringe” on fox. i am apparently the ONLY person in the world who thinks j.j. abrams is a ABSOLUTE GENIUS (the reviews haven’t been good). but i am in love with yet another abrams show and am now actively praying for his salvation so he can spend his eternity with me making television shows up in heaven. oh, and yes, he could be with the Lord too... but making television shows with me might really be a draw for him....

ok, on to my real transparent friend, deaver. who will not think it is inappropriate at all that her post starts with me talking about a tv show names “fringe”. in fact, “fringe” is a perfectly appropriate word to use when referring to deaver. yes, i know her name is a bit strange, but then again, if she had another name we couldn’t all say “leave it to deaver” and it be as funny. 

her name is different because deaver is different. in a world where women are always wearing masks, where we define ourselves by how good an image we portray to the world, deaver doesn’t compare herself to those around her. she doesn’t project an image of what she thinks she ought to be... she is always truly herself.

deaver is also one of those rare individuals that crazy things are always happening to (she should be featured in an upcoming episode of “fringe”). if something can go wrong, it will go wrong to deaver. and yet, she always has the funniest stories about these things and her own humanity. she is so honest, so real, and so transparent. she lets you in and walks you around the craziness...

i met her through my friend dina. she lived in the same town as dina (before dina up and moved to another state). i find it a bit ironic that my three best friends all live in different states. i mean i would find it a bit ironic if i didn’t watch “fringe” and recognize “the pattern”...

it is not an easy thing to laugh at yourself and to actually be willing to let others laugh at your humanity. but deaver does it with ease. i have learned so many lessons via life with the deav, i am so grateful that she lives out loud and lets us learn from her. she doesn’t twist a story in her favor (which is one of my many skills). she lays it all out there, she is free to look foolish. her value and worth doesn’t come from raising her self up, she doesn’t create a false self, she is not an image builder. she is real and sometimes her life gets messy. she shows me how to be a broken, flawed, and vulnerable and she clings to the only One who can heal our brokenness.

“there is a crack in everything... that’s how the Light gets in”

deaver isn’t afraid to show her crack (metaphorically and physically). i was on a really serious roll and then i had to write those words and now i am laughing like crazy... because truer words have never been written on my blog... sometimes the glorious is so mundane. and the most profound becomes a bit profane...

ok, back to the serious, glorious, profound part.

deaver is always walking through the col...

as they say, “you can be a shining example OR a horrible warning”. and deaver is both. not because she does horrible things but because horrible things keep happening to her. just when you think she has had her dance card filled with surgeries, hospital visits, trips to the school, parenting woes... something else comes up. like i said, always walking in the col... but that is where the Light is shining in...

she is not afraid to hurt, not afraid to question, not afraid to skip right through the religious platitudes and she is not afraid of the answers. and not afraid to let us all walk the road with her so we can see beauty in the midst of the ugliness. the mountains may be large but God is always larger...

2 corinthians 4:7-9 But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.

she reminds me with her life that God is always good, and we are always loved. even when what He gives does not appear good or loving. (a quote from a post found here)....

this is the reality that is lived out in front of me by these women.... aren’t they so beautiful?

#26 the spice girl...

when i was expecting my third child (who was born in 1999) someone asked me if this was my first pregnancy. i told her it was my third and she smiled and said, “the third child adds the spice.” which i found to be true... 

how fortuitous that i like some spice in my food....

now to clear things up, if you look at my last post i erroneously claimed millie was born in 2004 when in actuality she was born in 1994. sorry about that, math and i have broken up and i am not speaking to him right now. grammar and i are also on the outs. i leave a string of broken hearts wherever i go...

back to my spice girl...

she is almost 10 and that hurts me somewhere, mostly in the wallet now that she and millie both have braces. but every night she asks me to “check on her” after she has gone to bed. i tuck her in, read a bed story and then as i walk out comes this little voice saying, “will you check on me?”. and so sometime later before i go to bed, i check on her. usually she is asleep, her cars cd still playing. 

last night adam and i were at the village square dinner (where i gave a rousing “this i believe” speech that you can read here) and when we arrived home, she was in bed and there was a huge note on the door saying “check on me” (the word “check” is represented by a check sign.). also on my computer are two sticky notes from other evenings saying “will you check on me?” 

i hope she will always want me to check on her...

and just because our village square topic last night was “faith and the founding fathers”, i have included this quote that has my word of the day AND it was said by a founding father.... i have not broken up with thematic. he and i are dating seriously...

I've found the art of living is avoiding the shoals and the rocks. 

But the truth of the matter is none of us can avoid the shoals and the rocks.

{thomas jefferson}

#25 my first born...

i was unsure whether to include my daughters in my 40 women countdown, but as a mother they are events as monolithic as monadnocks in my life. which may not be the correct usage of monadnock, but that is a heck of a hard word to work into a post about your daughter....

my daughters help define for me what it means to be a woman, they are the 2 of the 3 reason i want to be a good woman. i want to do for them what these 38 other women have done for me... given me a great example of womanhood and all it’s responsibilities and blessings. 

and i did a nice post for maxx for his birthday, so he can’t complain too much about missing out... so here goes my post about my first born...

in march of 1994, i became a mother. 

i brought home this little baby girl and i named her millie (in honor of my dad, millard)...

she is incredible. 

and i am not just saying that because she is exactly like me.

that is the part i like the least about her because two me’s in one house... well, you do the math.

after growing up and having NO one with the same genes in my family, it is really strange to have someone who is so much like you that it is scary...

and the scariest part is that she is better at being me than i am... 

she is wittier, she is more sure of who she is, and she is very comfortable with being just like me. she seems to enjoy being like me and some days i don’t enjoy being like me...

i know that one day someone will say, “you are just like your mother” and she will roll her eyes. but for now she laughs and says sarcastically, “i have never heard that before. really, you think i am like my mother?”

oh, she is a witty little thing.

one time when she said something really funny to me, i told her that she couldn’t be funnier than me.

because we all know how that turns out...mirror mirror on the wall, who is the funniest one of all?

and if the mirror says that millie is funnier, then i am fairy tale bound to send her into the woods and demand that someone brings her heart back to me in a little box.

or i could just accept it graciously...

but i am not sure which i will choose....

be afraid funny girl.. be very afraid...

​millie and her bling...

a ring that her dad and i gave her this year... it is three aquamarines (her birthstones). two small ones and a larger one in the middle. she immediately said, “oh, the small ones are you and dad protecting me”. which was exactly what i had thought when i first saw it.

then she said, “or it could be the three kids and i am the large stone because you love me best”....

really, she is so like me that someone should investigate us for cloning...

#24 another relative by CHOICE, when will these girls learn?

today is all about my sister-in-law, meredith. or as i nicknamed her meme (it is pronounced may-may). as you will see, a lot of my relatives go by nicknames (meme, toots, bud, uncle fred)... mostly to avoid the long arm of the law...

my older brother max (older by a year only) had the ONLY moment of clarity and wisdom in his ENTIRE life when he chose meredith to marry. though i will say that my mom had a LOT to do with that whole event transpiring....

see, max had broken up with that GORGEOUS and sweet and perfect girl (i know WHAT WAS HE THINKING?!?!?!??!?!?!?!) and meredith was broken hearted (WHAT WAS SHE THINKING?!?!?!?!?!? THAT WAS HER CHANCE SHE SHOULD HAVE RUN LIKE THE WIND FAR FAR AWAY FROM US perhaps settling somewhere in the vicinity of an archipelago!!!!!!!) instead of heading to the nearest archipelago (word of the day, you are KILLING me) meredith went to my parent’s house to pick up something that she had left there and ended up breaking down in tears in front of my mother, so great was her sadness over perhaps losing the best thing in her life... 

a chance to be related to me....

anyway, my mother in all her wisdom, gave meredith a little advice. she told her to go out on a date with someone else and let max see her out on said date and all would be restored. and meredith, smart girl that she is, followed my mom’s advice to the letter. she went to a wedding with some guy, max was at the wedding and saw her. and i believe the rest of the story involved max on meredith’s doorstep THAT VERY NIGHT telling her that she is the only woman in the world for him....

the best part of that whole story is that max NEVER knew the story until a year ago when mom and meredith and i were talking about it at the beach house. max said that he felt tricked by the whole thing and we agreed that YES he had been outsmarted by a couple of women and what did he want to do about it...

and he had nothing to say.

because meredith is the best thing he has going for him....

besides me as a sister.

really, meredith is a gem. she is so funny (i love it when she busts out with a “my baby’s daddy” to refer to max) and so laid back and so loving and so skinny (i am trying to make sure that she never leaves our family with all these compliments coming her way). really she is skinny and after having those four children... it is unnatural. and i call on the power of the Lord to not hate her. 

and He has answered my prayers because i love her very much.

she also has a great sister, myra, who reads my blog. so she has that going for her also... hey myra!

one thing that i really like about meme is when she says, “everyday is a school day”. and she doesn’t mean that she wishes she could send her 4 kids off to school everyday... 

but she might...

what she means that there is something to be learned every day.

today she has some new lessons to learn. she and max are making some changes with selling their house, trying to decide where God wants them to be, where the kids need to be in school, etc...

big decisions, big time chance to worry, wonder, second guess. and meredith does worry, but not as much as i would. yesterday she cried in sonny’s while we were all together eating lunch. it broke my heart to see her crying. 

one thing i have always admired about her is how she seems to take things in stride, give things a chance to work out on their own. she give control to the One who has it all anyway. she is working on that today. 

and if everyday is a school day, then hopefully i can learn that lesson too.

i am praying for her today, for new beginnings, for God to show her a little peek of His hope and His future for their family. for Him to make new things good things for them all. i ask that in your prayers today that you mention my sweet meme. and ask for peace that passes all understanding to be with her today...

i hope that my maxx learns this lesson from my brother, max... marry above you. i hope that he marries a girl just like meredith....

...willing to take advice from his mama.

a perfect picture of meredith...

notice that NO one else looks good in this phots. my brother, max, is correcting one of the kids, the kids are all not posing well for aunt lealea, but meredith looks STUNNING and happy and adorable... she really should have sent this one out as their family christmas card.