Links

Here are some links that I have found in the last week or so.

These encouraged me as a stay at home mom:
Staying-balanced-while-life-is-full

7-ways-to-find-motivation-at-home


Fun places to waste time:
Awkward family photos (Mike and I laughed nonstop at these)

do u haiku? Flikr group

Recipes:
27 Pasta Salad Recipes

A year of Slow Cooking (I was excited about summer meals and variety in these recipes- it's not just roasted chickens)

Enjoy!

Last week at seven weeks.

And last night at eight weeks old!

Thankful for Maggie Sue

My friend Terri posts her daughter Ellory's prayers. So when Dorothy said her first unprompted prayer tonight I was inspired to post: "Jesus, Maggie Sue, Maggie, Thank you. AMEN!"

Dorothy's love has grown quite a bit since Maggie came into her world 8 weeks ago. Our prayer has been that they would be loyal to one another throughout life. I, a true nerd, looked up loyal: unswerving and faithful in allegiance. I feel like that sums up what I want for them.

The above picture was snapped with Mike's camera phone as we left from the hospital to bring Maggie home.

Just peeking in

Oh my. It has been a while hasn't it? Well you see I had a baby and all. However thanks to some dear friends Terri and Mickie who both recently joined the blogging community, I have been inspired to put blogging back in my life a bit again.

There have been times where I wonder what the point of blogging is, do people really need to know all this about me and do I really want people to know this much about me? What is the reason I have this online journal of sorts?

Mike and I had a really good talk about our life yesterday. We realized that I always say I want to have more structure in our life and he always wants to have more vision for our life. Then we realized that we basically mean the same thing. We both want to have a bit of a plan about how and why we do things.

He encouraged me that I am coming out of a really hard season: a taxing pregnancy (that was completely worth every second!) that also included some of the worst arthritis flair ups I've had, a long recovery from delivering Maggie, and the fact that we have two girls under two. But because we have been in some sort of survival mode since September, I am itching to put organization and structure in my life, our lives.

I am tempted to plan every detail of our life out on paper. Make charts of what needs to be done around our house, a checklist for what fun things to do this summer, and little lesson plans for Dorothy as she learns her colors, shapes, and numbers. That however is setting me up for failure. Sure I can make some lists, but every time I try to map our whole life on paper I just fail. So for the Cospers, we decided that casting simple visions of what our life could look like is the best way for us. Maybe not for everyone, but for us.

My vision casting is this...How can I live my life and glorify Christ in what I do. That means if I am a stay at home, which is my favorite job to date, then how can I do that and show Christ's love to my girls and those around me while we live our life? And as I blog about it how can I show Christ to those who read here?

So welcome again readers near and far. Faithful readers like Janie, Johanna, Alison, Emilee, Rose, and of course Ceece... oh and all you lurkers I may not know about. Leave me a note here or elsewhere and let me know if you are still reading. May I show you why Jesus Chirst is the most important thing in my life, whether I blog about changing diapers, sewing projects, or canning jam, I pray that I would not forget Romans 8: 1-4

¹Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, ²because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. ³For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, ⁴in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.