Great Valley Nature Preserve

We were all getting a little antsy last week and so I thought we needed a field trip.  I had purchased a group on for Great Valley Nature Preserve and I as so excited.  So we drove about 40 minutes and got there.  On top of a huge hill were about 10 birds in large natural habitats.  2 bald eagles, falcons, and a large variety of owls.  And that was it!!! The place was completely deserted and there weren't even any staff!  So we wandered around for a while and then headed to a playground!  I guess my money is going to help save those birds which isn't terrible, I suppose....

More Easter

More Easter pics!!! Noah's clothes were laid out the night before Easter and he was SO excited to wear his bowtie that he got dressed before he came into our room!!! So cute!!!

Table!!!

I have been searching since we moved in for a table for our Morning Room. Everything I liked was way too expensive. I wanted a farmhouse table and the ones from Pottery Barn were $2000 and the ones from Restoration Hardware were $3000!!!!

So I was looking around to see if I could find something similar. I stumbled accross this lady Anna White who makes plans for PB and RH furniture! So we headed to Home Depot, bought the wood and it was pretty much built in an afternoon. It took a week for the stain and sanding to be done.

I had a terrible time choosing a color!

But in the end we settled on a distressed Oak.  The table is about 10 feet long with extensions.  The boards you see on the end are the extensions and they come off and store elsewhere.  We still haven't found chairs, but I did find plans to make some....

I love it.

April Fools!

I love celebrating each holiday and I feel like I have time to do fun things!!

We had a wonderful April Fools Day.

I put a barricade of dines outside Noah's door and horses outside of Maeve's door.  When they woke up they were giggling!  Noah had a trick for Paul and he asked if we could put whipped cream on his toothbrush to make him think it was toothpaste.  We fooled him (not really!).

When the kids came downstairs I pulled out juice for breakfast which also never happens.  Of course it was a trick I found to put jello in a cup and put a straw in it to make it look like juice.  I had already taken a bite out of Noah's apple as well.  The kids loved it!

We played little silly tricks all day long.

Easter 2012

We had a wonderful Easter at home this year.  On Saturday we hosted my side of the family at our house.  We had a wonderful ham dinner, a little egg hunt and yummy homemade peanut butter eggs and chocolate covered pretzels.

The weather was perfect for MomMom's egg hunt outside.

On Easter morning the kids breakfast spots were ready with the grass that they grew in their own Easter box.  The box was graced with an egg that began the hunt for their baskets taking them all through the house up and down.  They were VERY excited about this egg hunt and it was fun to watch them!

Since Maeve couldn't read the clues, she got to hold them while Noah read them!

We got all dressed for church which was a long anticipated event.  I already had a dress for Maeve and Noah had a hand me down linen suit.  So, I bought him a $3 bow tie and Maeve a $1 hat and gloves from target!  They couldn't wait to put on their accessories!

We tried to pose for a family picture... this one wasn't too bad but we had another one that was perfect but the camera didn't focus it! Boo!!!

We had an amazing morning at church complete with full brass and a wonderful message.  The church was packed to standing room only (and it seats more than 500!).  It was beautiful to be surrounded by the company of saints!

We headed to Nina's for Easter lunch and the kids enjoyed a beautiful day playing outside.  

Money Money

Noah is learning about money in school right now.  He has cute rhymes for each coin. 

He asked about the one dollar coin and we told him all about it.  He was concerned that it wasn't a president like the others.  He even asked if he could get one when we went to the bank to keep in his room and of course we got one for him.

Days later we were driving around and he asked again what the name was of the person on the coin.  We told him it was Sacajawea and we asked him if he remembered who it was.  He said, "Of Course, it's someone from Star Wars."

The state of the Templin Ashford family union

I've had this blog post in my head for months and months.  By now you have likely figured out our life and family has had many changes.

I left my job at Oxford Presbyterian at the end of November 2011.  It was extremely bittersweet.  For the first time in my children's lives I would no longer have to juggle every second, miss bedtime, work through the night, be away all weekend, and leave them for long trips.  But, on the other hand, I believe that I was designed to do ministry.  I love teaching about the bible, I love helping people to grow in faith and find their path.  For years I had been preaching about simplifying your life and making time for spiritual growth and yet as my schedule was overfull I was not practicing my own rhetoric.  It was certainly a nerve-wracking decision and not an easy one for me.

We have been "settled" in our new home for a little over two months now and we are finding our new normal.  Everyone asks me how I like being home.  And really, it isn't that much different than before, except I get to be done for the day when the kids go to bed and we have our weekends together which is amazing.  Our pace has slowed considerably.  I have time for long runs, Paul has time to mountain bike.  The kids can play for hours without a house that has to stay ready to show and without living in someone else's house.

Paul was promoted to a new position at his company and now oversees several teams of developers and manages many projects.  He enjoys his job and has received many accolades from his bosses and his employees.  It is certainly a time for him to flourish in his career.  We feel very lucky that his company is hiring and growing in these unsteady economic times.

Our new home is beautiful, however it is also a mental stumbling block for me to live in a "cookie cutter" home in a development.  These are things we never saw in our future.  But as the repairs of an old home loomed, we always felt that our money was not our own... that it belonged to our house! We loved having a walkable community, but that also meant teens getting in trouble (i.e. fighting and drugs) right in front of our house.  We didn't have any children nearby for our kids to play with and we had concerns about the schools that Noah would enter.

Now we have a "model" that we will see replicated several times on our street and I am learning to be okay with that.  Because we have neighbors we can share a drink with....and almost everyone has children that play outside every day after school in the same way I did growing up.  There is almost no traffic at all on our street so the kids can ride bikes and run free.  We have the most AMAZING sunsets I have ever seen (almost as good as beach sunsets) that we can see perfectly as we eat dinner on our deck.  We can choose to do projects in the house or just leave it just like it is... there is nothing that NEEDS to be done for fear of a ceiling caving in!

Our development is very large which is another tough thought for me, but with that comes 10 miles of hiking and biking trails, lots of preserved forest and open space, a community playground down the street with basketball and volleyball courts and a sense that you are all knit together.  The other amazing dynamic that I am in love with is that there are families of other cultures and races in our neighborhood.  Noah will have Asian, Indian, and African American children in his classes and that will be part of his norm.  So, even though everyone has the same mailbox and one of four different homes, we have a wealth of new opportunities here.

And the big question we get all the time is what we are doing about church.  We went to a ton of churches and really didn't love any of them. We had our heart set on going back to the UCC but the local church just wasn't right.  So we ended up at a huge presbyterian church in West Chester.  5 services on Sundays.  4 clergy and countless staff.  But, for a little while I can be anonymous and just grow and pray and learn.  Nobody needs me at this church to fix anything or lead anything and for right now that is perfect.  The preaching is awesome, the choir is 200 people strong, there are choices and options and contemporary and traditional and tons of children's programs.  One of my goals when I left OPC was to take a year sabbath and I feel confidant that I can do that here.

So, there is our update.  Pray for our suburban journey into the wilderness!  Thanks for all of your love and support and well wishes during this very hectic time of transition! And.. .come over anytime!!!