Restoration...
SUCH a fun weekend our family had together! Jeff took a couple of vacation days and we took advantage of that time. Couldn't have asked for better weather!
Ben had soccer all week at Lake Tye, so we had fun watching him play on Thursday and Friday.
Saturday morning was spent playing in our backyard blow up pool. Ever since we set up the swing set, I have talked about making the slide into a water slide. So, we did! Even Jeff and I took a turn sliding into the blow up kiddie pool! I don't think we have laughed harder. Hopefully, our next door neighbors weren't spying on us, because I am sure we looked like a bunch of hicks!
Saturday afternoon, my mom came to babysit the kids, while Jeff and I ventured out for some much needed alone time together {to celebrate our 10th anniversary}! We hit up the Burke-Gillman bike trail and rode into Redmond. It was fun to walk around the Redmond Farmer's Market and of course, enjoy some Cold Stone together! After our ride, we made a quick pit stop at home, to shower and help feed the kids, and then took off to a sushi picnic dinner together in Bellevue and to watch a movie! {sidenote: if any of you has seen the movie, "Inception", we have to talk! Such a good flick, but I still have SO many questions!}.
Sunday was spent sleeping in a bit, Jeff made his famous breakfast for all of us, and we just hung out at home. Later in the afternoon, we both played softball with Thrive's softball team. Jeff took a pretty bad tumble while running after a fly ball. He jammed his thumb and the gravel he fell in, took a pretty good bunch of his skin off, so he is nursing those wounds today. Poor guy! That was about the only negatory thing that happened all weekend!
On Friday night, we decided to make a spontaneous trip up to Alki beach with the kids. Perfect evening for it. We stuck the kids in the stroller and walked the boardwalk. Got some ice cream and made our way down to the water. Ben had THE best time running in and out of the small waves! Such innocence!!! Jeff and I played with him too and it was just so fun to watch him enjoy his frollicking so much! I can't get over hearing his belly laugh, which we heard a lot of this whole weekend!
Jeff and I both have been hearing a lot about taking a Sabbath, both from our reading and from our church. We read something from one of our favorite authors this weekend about just that. John Eldredge quotes Dan Allender:
We love to tell others how much we work, how much we still have to get done, and how overwhelmed we are with the exhaustion of our labor...Boasting about work is a national pastime.
Delight doesn’t require a journey thousands of miles away to taste the presence of God, but it does require a separation from the mundane, an intentional choice to enter joy and follow God as he celebrates the glory of his creation.
Eldredge goes onto say, "You see, there is relief, and there is restoration, and they are not the same thing. Relief is falling on the couch at the end of the day with a bag of chips and zoning out in front of the TV. Restoration – Sabbath – is meant to be a time of rich delight, of ceasing labor so that we may enter into those things that bring us immense joy. And in so doing we find deep restoration for our souls."
Restoration. That was what we delighted in together as a family this weekend. Much needed for us.
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