The Dorminy Family has had a full week!  We’ve done a little traveling and have enjoyed all of our time away.  Mack turned 5 on Wednesday, and I am 35 today.  This morning Mack asked if it was really my birthday.  I said, “Yes, you just turned 5 and now I am  35!”  He went into this statement:  “And next you will be thirty-” and I had to stop him.  “Mack, I just turned 35, let’s not talk about what comes next.  I’ll be 35 for 364 more days!”

It reminded me of the rounding lesson I had with Ruby the other day.  The directions were for her to circle the number that the middle number would round to…it looked like this:

30    35    40

I just laughed and joked with Ruby that NORMALLY you’d round up, but where it concerns her mama’s age, always round DOWN.

Always.

We looked through Mack’s baby book of pictures, and I must confess that I am glad that I am not just now coming home with a newborn.  It was a sweet time and all, but we are enjoying this season of life so much!  Not to mention that the pictures of me in that book are horrible.  I had Mack at 3:54am after laboring for about 7 hours or so.  In one picture I am faking a smile and holding a vomit bucket.  Lovely.

I continue to pray that I will grow old gracefully and not fight it with all I have.  I mean, seriously, there’s nothing you can do about  getting older and aging.  I want to embrace it, enjoy it and schedule regular hair coloring appointments.

Happy Birthday to Mack and me.

I close with a few pics of Mack throughout his five years.   He’s much cuter to watch age than me!

I included the above picture in case anyone wanted to count all of my teeth.

He doesn’t sit in the sink and play anymore.

This was at his first birthday party.  I distinctly remember not paying quite enough attention to him during the cake eating and then waking up that next morning to chocolate throw up in his crib.  Yuck.

He does still do this from time to time.

You’d cry, too if you had two sisters that own all things pink and purple.

We’ve worked on getting more toys especially for boys over the past five years though.

He’s learned a little about working hard over his five years.  A little.

He’s gotten a ton of haircuts.  Just recently he wanted a mow hawk.  We worked on a faux hawk and then cut it a little to make it a “low hawk.”  It was really cute.  Then, Molly decided to cut Mack’s hair and her own, so he has a buzzed head again.

This was Christmas two years ago.  He is a mess.

And he is loved by all of us!

Let’s kill two birds with one stone and include Valentine’s Day morning pictures in with a little story about our family, shall we?

A lady who attends our church and has four very well-behaved children, offers etiquette classes for all the other hoodlums.  ha!  Seriously, she does offer classes…two hour tea parties for ages 7 and under and then four hour classes for 8 and up that includes a four course meal and how to behave well in social settings.  She even touches on how to have good conversation.  I am intrigued and will be sending Ruby right after she turns 8.  However, I need a few months to teach her a few things before she could handle such a class.

The other evening we were all at the dinner table, and I was trying to nicely point out some areas we could work on as a family.

Here are some basics:

1) Sit on your bottom during dinner and stay in your seat until excused.  Our boisterous 4 year old boy has a very hard time staying on his bottom.  And any one of the three is liable to jump up and do some sort of dance that their Daddy just HAS TO SEE RIGHT AT THAT MOMENT.

2) Eat with your mouth closed…no smacking.

3) Use your napkin to wipe your mouth instead of your clothes.

4) Do not make random noises all through dinner.

5) Dinner time is not a race.  Take your time, breathe, put your fork down between bites and enjoy being together.

As I am talking to Ruby and addressing her annoyance with the etiquette conversation, I look over and realize Molly has been sitting at the table enjoying her dinner in her jeans.  Only her jeans.

I guess I need a sign in my kitchen that says:

SHIRTS and SHOES REQUIRED

but then I am sure they would think that means that coming without pants is perfectly acceptable.

I then decided to just stop talking about it.  I was clearing the table and then I hear a loud belch from Mack.  Dear goodness!

I have a couple of months to tame the wild beasts before sending Ruby to an etiquette class.  Wish me luck!!

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On another note, Ruby wrote me a little note on her math paper the other day.

“Dear Mom, Mack is NOT a baby.  He is almost 5 years old.  Love, Ruby”

I read it and laughed to myself and then at lunch she asked me if I had found it.  I told her I did and wondered what she meant by it.  She then proceeded to tell me that I baby Mack and that it isn’t fair that he doesn’t have to do as much school as she and Molly have to do.  I listened to the freckled-face cutie-pie and then told her that if she had issues with birth placement in our family, then she needed to talk to God about it.  He is the one who just knew she’d be the best at introducing her mom and dad to parenthood and that she was, indeed, the most well-equipped to be the leader of these three kids…you know, take care of them and boss them around keep things in order when Mom isn’t around.  I then told Molly that she was picked to be right in the middle JUST LIKE her dear Mom, to be second born like her dad, too!  And to be able to handle NOT being the oldest and NOT being the youngest.  And to Mack I told him he was picked because he would do the best at being rotten.  No, really, I just told him he was who God wanted to end our family with…a cute little funny boy that  we can all squeeze and hug.

They all added their own good things about their position in the family and it ended in a fun conversation.  I just love my three little kiddos.  They are sometimes a lot of fun to be around!  Imagine that.

Amazingly, it’s time to remember…to really recall what the Lord has done for our family.  One year ago today, March 12th, we were moving back into this house.  Not just moving IN here, but moving OUT of our “dream home.”

You can read the whole post from March 30th 2011.  What started as a “dream” turned into restless days and nights as we knew we were off course and needed God’s major help.  We prayed Daniel 9:18 often, “…we are not presenting our supplications before You on account of any merits of our own, but on account of Your great compassion.”

We had set our sights on the temporal.

We worked hard for what we wanted.

I wanted a place we would call HOME forever…a place my kids would come home to for years and years and years….

Josh did a great job with details.  He spent many, many hours at the house during construction.  He spent lots of money to make it what we wanted.

At the time we didn’t have a clue at what kind of adventure we were in for…the route we had chosen, what God had allowed in our life, the lessons we would learn…the hard way.  There were many seasons we experienced during our stay on Gantt Road.  Spring, summer, fall, and winter—-physically and spiritually.

I can truly say that I am thankful for the journey we took to this house, even though we didn’t stay there.  What happened there is nothing short of a miracle and opened up amazing ways for God to show Himself to be extremely personal, overwhelmingly gracious, unquestionably holy, and able to redeem any situation for His great glory.

Just this morning….and just like God…I was reading in Nehemiah where the people were gathered listening to Ezra read the law, which they had wandered from as a people for many years.  They were all gathering back into HOME and realigning themselves with God’s Word.  They read “how the Lord had commanded through Moses that the sons of Israel should live in booths during the feast of the seventh month.”  In Leviticus 23:43 you can read that this feast is called The Feast of Booths where the sons of Israel live in booths (tents) to remind them of how the Lord had delivered His people from their wanderings and out of Egypt.  Here’s what Kelly Minter says about it:  “Though Israelites had regularly celebrated the Feast of Tabernacles, which was a time of harvest and celebration, they had not been observing the part about living in booths.  But this was vital to their experience because it was a tangible reminder of how the Israelites had once lived when they wandered through the wilderness.”

I just loved reading about this this morning because here in our home we are doing this same thing—Remembering the faithfulness of our God that led us out to lead us in and to remember the amazing work He did withIN our hearts.  He has continued to be extremely personal, overwhelmingly gracious, unquestionably holy and able to redeem.  And just like in the days of Nehemiah, “There was great rejoicing.”  We are rejoicing around here these days.  So thankful the Lord doesn’t give up on his stubborn people.

Psalm 130:7  “O, Israel/Kristy, hope in the Lord; for with the Lord there is lovingkindness, And with Him is abundant redemption.”