7 Quick Takes vol. 15

Make sure to head to the lovely Jen's for the real thing!

{one}

Yesterday was one of my favourite days of spring; buying flowers day!

Seriously, its the last weekend of May, and we can barely put plants outside, but it feels so good to go out and pick lots of fun pretty flowers. Luckily for my husband we only have some pots and containers for the deck. Once we have our own house and I can go crazy on making some flower beds he'll really regret the old greenhouse bill.

{two}

It makes me laugh every year at just how ridiculous we Canadians are. At least up here in Alberta, we have about a three month window where we can keep flowers alive outdoors. 3 Months!! But greenhouses are consistently swamped come the first of May. We will not spare any expense in finding just a little bit of flowering plant life to brighten a quarter of our year! It seems both sad and hilarious.

{three}

So although the three amigos had fun at the greenhouse, and remained pretty well behaved through all the errands I had to run, I can't help but feel when I'm out in public as if I'm constantly telling the kids what to do. I feel that way, well, because that's pretty much what I'm doing when we go into a store. I probably say, "Don't touch that please!" about 30 times per minute. But then when I think about their ages, and the fact there is three of them, I'm probably only telling each child to not touch things a couple times, which is probably totally normal right?? I have this fear of becoming a giant nag.

{four}

In the category of going out with your offspring, please go read Brianna's beautiful post of moms witnessing to others when out with their children. This is a great post that, as usual with Brianna, I wish I could have written. I love how she writes that sometimes she doesn't want to tell everyone that she's living a total counter-cultural life. I have to admit that yesterday I didn't tell several people who commented on the closeness of age between my kids that I had a 4 month old baby at Grandma's. 

{five}

I've been ruminating a little this week on kids stages again. This time in regards to my little Dominic who is 3 and a half, an undisputed age of rebellion and general crotchetiness. I'm scared that this may be his personality! And although I know his personality definitely has leanings towards control, determination, and keeping ones toys to oneselfness, I also know that these child stages influence their crazy behaviour a lot. So I feel like I'm beginning to get the hang of understanding how a kid's personality comes out in good and bad ways during their different stages. 

Then of course I thought, gee whiz-is that how God sees us as we're (hopefully) growing in holiness? Do we go through stages where our personalities tend to drag us towards particular sins? Do we outgrow things spiritually as we mature in prayer and grace? I'm sure God the Father is much more merciful in understanding than I am towards my kids even when I try really hard. But I find it a nice picture to think of God seeing us in different stages and knowing our personalties inside out and trying to help us grow. Maybe one day I'll actually write up a decent post about this.

{six}

So I'm going to be gleefully planting my flowers this weekend and upholstering some toddler beds the hubby built. He doubts very much my ability to even upholster a rectangular box, but I countered with the  clever retort of "Hey, I've read loads of blogs where they upholster s***!!"

{seven}

And watch out for some instagrams of rhubarb! We've got tons and I've gotta start baking! Rhubarb. You kinda have to love it because its so strange, no?

Happy Weekend!