I’m a rookie sketchy mom. It’s a real disease and I suffer from it. School days away from me and losing teeth and new neighborhood friends is making me feel like I can’t breathe. I’m having a really hard time letting them go. My oldest baby started kindergarten and I feel like it’s the beginning of all of them getting older and needing me less. I feel stuck. Stuck between this place of complaining about how absolutely crazy it is to chase them around all day and then completely freaking out about them getting bigger and more independent. This parenting business is hard. I asked Abram if we could just bag him going to kindergarten and instead I’d ask God if he could shrink him back down into a baby. He just gave me his 6-year-old heart melting smile and said. “mommy, that won’t work. I want to get big like Daddy.”

And so now I’m a mom of a kindergartner. I’m at the beginning of this weird transition in life where I really need to press in and lean on my faith in God to take care of my babies. Because this sketchy mom thing is exhausting.  

Close friends of ours have a brother that just came home from Iraq after being deployed for nearly a year. He had to leave his wife and 5-month-old baby girl to serve in October of last year, but you would have never known it. When my friend Emily told me that Jesse was coming home, I hoped to be able to take pictures of their family. What Jesse and my Dad does means the world to me. My Dad leaves for Afghanistan in 20 days, and it was just what my aching heart needed. Seeing Jesse with his beautiful wife and daughter and getting to look through the pictures of him with his family made me so grateful for his safe return as my Dad prepares to leave.

Thank you Jesse and Alyssa and the rest of your family and friends for letting me spend the day with you. Welcome home Jesse. Your family is wonderful. Can’t wait to see you in December!

I bought a table and chairs set off of craigslist with the intention of refinishing the top and selling the chairs. The top wasn’t what I thought it was, but it was too late and I did really love the legs. 

So I ripped off the top and made it my new garage work table. I think it will do just fine set on top of two sawhorses and slopped with paint. And here is how you can turn your current table or a craigslist find into something you’ll love for years:

1. Rip off the top down to the legs and aprons

2. Install cross braces

3. Determine how long and wide you’d like your tabletop and purchase your planks. I used 4 2X10s. There were $7.72 a piece and Jason helped me cut them down to 79″.  

4. Pickle

5. Yep, pickle. I wanted the planks to have an aged look to them so I googled and found an old time method of pickling wood with steel wool and vinegar. You put a piece of steel wool in a jar and cover it with vinegar and let it sit for a few days. Then you just brush it on. So that’s what I did. And the results are AMAZING! Try it. You’ll be hooked.

6. Poly with water-based acrylic. 4 coats.

7. Attach planks to the cross braces from underneath

8. ENJOY!!

There isn’t a drop of wood stain on the wood. It’s just the vinegar and steel wool recipe applied with a brush. At first when you brush it on it’s as if you’re painting on water. Within an hour, there’s a chemical reaction that causes the wood to look beautifully aged. I’d like to pickle the entire house.

Jason and I saw Step Up 3D last night and we’ve decided that we are going to start a dance crew and have underground street battles. We just need to find childcare. Who’s in?

It hurts. I can feel the actual pain inside my heart and it hurts. My dad leaves for Afghanistan in 33 days. His assignment is set for 6 months once his boots hit the sand in Afghanistan after his training in the states. And it just plain hurts. This is his second deployment and this one is harder for some reason. Yes, I know to pray. I know the “he’ll be okays” and the “6 months will go by fast” and honestly hearing that just makes me frustrated because it doesn’t take away the pain in my heart.

This is someones Dad. And husband. And grandpa. And son. And father-in-law. And golfing pal. And he’ll be so far away and we won’t be able to hug him. As the days pass by and it gets closer to September 18th, the moments when I’m alone and I think about it keep turning into tears. I think about my younger sister and my step-mom and my 4 children and my husband and how important my Dad is to all of us.

My usual building or painting furniture or decorating a room to perk up my spirits just isn’t working right now.   

I just really can’t even comprehend what it’s like for my stepmom or any other wife to prepare for their husband to leave and serve our country.

The next several weeks are going to be difficult for me. Jason is taking my Dad to the airport because he’s probably the only person that would be able to drive home afterwards. I am going to push on and pray and have faith and be strong and paint and play with the kids and thrift shop and go out on date nights but I already feel like a little piece of my heart is missing. I just want a time machine.