wonderful Christmas time:

Jesus getting involved. this sermon. and this one. seriously.

grace upon grace (upon grace upon grace)(etc.) and telling joseph "hey, i feel silly, but i have to tell you something again this morning. can you guess what?" "i'm sorry?" "yep."

mailing a package of cheer by christmas eve for $19 when the first quoted price was $68

settling (gradualllly) into our new home (pictures.. someday)

peppermint americanos

mama time

cutting out strips of red paper and stapling them together in swirls and scrolls

19 degrees this morning

seeing sisters in 3 days

and brothers

and brother-in-laws

and baby to join us soon shryock

and a car to get us there to boot

flannel and cardigan (somebody please tell me if this is not allowed)

reflections on 2012 and so much so much the Lord has done

jude discovering on december 21 that wrapped presents under the tree can be unwrapped

a video for my secret santa to be made...umm..today?

a (free) rug big enough to perfectly make joseph's attic room cozy

a (free) train table hiding in our garage

chicken chili and beer bread and honey butter (oh my)

extra coffee

annnnd it's beginning to look a lot like christmas

see you in the new year, friends :)

home sweet new home

we're in the middle of moving week. which makes today grammie's in town let's gear up for the next five days and go on a date to nord's and sunergos while she hangs out with our boys who gladly wave bye-bye to us day. ahhhh :)

i've been doing lots of packing and thinking lots of moving thoughts.  like how somehow when it's time to start packing, things that have no value (hello, blender without a base) suddenly seem valuable and how it's challenging to pack up a room when i feel kind of guilty throwing away bobby pins and how it's awesome to fill our lego box to overflowing with all the lost legos i'm finding and how really instead of writing CLOTHES on a box, i'd rather specify: a. clothing i currently wear, b. clothing i think is cute and would probably wear if i could just get a sister to louisville to show me how to wear it, c. clothing with sentimental significance i never wear but would never part with (here's winking at you t-shirt with photo of jeremy and me on the front), or d. clothing i found on clearance at gap OR the j.crew jeans i bought for nine dollars at plato's closet. nine dollars!

after months of delay -- actually, jeremy told me it's been 100 days since we signed our contract -- we found out yesterday that we'll officially close on our house friday at 4. just shy of the end of the week -- thank you, Lord! after that we'll go from packing and cleaning the apartment we're moving out of (sigh. it's going to be tough to leave my newly sparkling fridge.) to cleaning and painting and unpacking in the house we're going to call home for quite a while. and probably put Christmas lights on in a few weeks. amazing.

shortly after setting the closing date, i had the um we're ACTUALLY moving moment, the moment i realized just exactly how excited i am for this house to be ours: when i filled a box with the boys' big LOUD trucks, the ones that make such delightfully realistic truck noises on our hard wood floors, the ones i'm sure sound like thunder to our neighbors below. so excited.

so. i guess i'll check in soon from massie avenue. :)

until then, here's judy-jude dancing. to this song. it's his favorite. much to his father's dismay and his mother's i'll play any song twelve times a day especially if it's from the wicked soundtrack delight.

got it :)

the (boys actually in their costumes) photo. :)

i know it seems like i'm not doing anything but making a cloud costume

i was happily immersed in creating these halloween costumes for my boys for the last few days.

a prop plane for joseph.

and a puffy cloud for jude.

you know, like they go together? guess how long they wore them at tonight's trunk or treat? joseph would not put the plane on at all. and jude was a sad cloud turned grumpy cloud turned so squirmy cloud that we stepped out of the hot dog line to take off the cloud and abandon it in a corner. it's okay that it had cloud elbow patches. and that the prop plane had horizontal stabilizers.

actually it's kind of awesome when i think about it because this afternoon i caught myself facebook photo daydreaming about these costumes and how cute the boys were going to look and how i was going to take a pretty cute picture of them together, probably in the grass, in their prop plane puffy cloud cuteness. anyone with me here? annnnd that didn't happen. which makes me laugh at my facebook daydreaming confession. i've noticed my mind thinking in these types of images often, and then i think about thinking in images and what i even think about images, but that's another post. :)

there's always actual halloween for that photo op, right? it was pretty fun to zone in so much on a cloud costume that i said to jeremy this afternoon, "i know it seems like i'm not doing anything but making a cloud costume.." because it was the third time he'd come home to me working on it, to which he replied, "nothing else matters." and i agreed.

in other news, we might be able to take a halloween picture on the front porch of our new home. i know, like this week! jeremy was told on friday that the form he had to initial and fax (and re-initial and re-fax) was the last bit of paperwork before closing, so we're hoping that we hear monday that a closing date is scheduled for tuesday and that would make us owners of our new home for wednesday when we're planning to trick-or-treat on our new street and hand out candy from the front porch of our otherwise empty home. oh, i hope.

 happy halloween, friends. :)

a good morning & a steady hope

the boys and i headed to cherokee park this morning -- jude was up with a fever last night and we didn't want anyone else repeating the week we've had from our germs, so sojourn it wasn't and hiking it was. it has been a hard week {insert sounds of jude's new shrieking and jeremy coughing and toys crashing and joseph's angry "i'm gonna run away"}, and i've been (a tiny bit) weary. this morning was such a quiet gift -- just a good morning with little reminders of the Lord's grace and how near He is even/especially in this season.

there was alleluia playing from the car next to us and the changing leaves and the wide sky and psalm 56. there was a content babe in the carrier and instead of mama and son at odds, we were exploring the woods together and climbing/crawling up the giant hill and playing at two playgrounds. there was running into a mom i met weeks ago describing a week almost exactly like ours and her encouragement to me when i thought i'd be encouraging her. there was a picnic table lunch and driving through the park to thy mercy my God and stopping by the little airport on our way home. there was the successful conversation with my neighbor about our noise (yikes) and the excited anticipation and relief of moving into a house (so soon!) and flowers from jeremy and worn-out joseph napping.

i'm learning a lot through these kinds of weeks, and one thing i'm seeing is God growing us/me in a steady hope in Him that is different from the hope i have in a perfect day of little difficulty. it's a thought that stretches my heart and mind -- this can be hard AND God is good. our son can be spontaneously furious and our baby can be sick and i can't meal plan for anything AND my hope is in Him. and He's with me! He reminded me this morning.

"You have kept count of my tossings;
put my tears in your bottle.
are they not in your book?

then my enemies will turn back
in the day when i call.
this i know, that God is for me.

in God, whose word i praise,
in the LORD, whose word i praise,
in God i trust; i shall not be afraid.
what can man do to me?" psalm 56:8-11

amazing things joseph has said this week -- jet plane edition

to state that joseph has been obsessed with jet planes since our trip to colorado would be ... an understatement.

some of what we have heard around these parts this week:

"wow, look at all those other jet planes taking off down the runway." (in the car, sorry, jet plane, on the way to target)

"i hope that i dream about jet planes all night long."

"let's talk about things that are cool about jet planes." (opening up the conversation at our second breakfast)

"you like prop planes, jude?"

"how about your name can be pilot-in-training instead of mama?" (after i suggested jet plane for his new name)

"jophes. maybe like prop-plane-jophes." (telling his new friend, miss abby, his name)

"what's that place where the planes go up and down? take off and land? oh, the cell phone lot. maybe we should go to the cell phone lot." (jeremy took the boys to both louisville airports. amazing.)

"hey, mama, i have a secret for you. let's watch jet plane videooooooss.." (whispered in my ear at approximately 7:12 am)

"it roars down the runway. faster and faster, then up in the air. they are on their way..."(direct quote from airport)(also around 7:12 am)

"i love you to the end of the flight." (sigh. thank you, prop-plane-joseph.)

"it's a good day in the country, pilot." (my favorite. joseph's expression of joy and contentment and good feelings all around is "it's a good day in the country.")


my next post is going to be entitled "objects around our home that are not jet planes that have been made into jet planes that i cannot get a non-blurry photo of as jet planes because the pilot is always moving and narrating the jet plane taking off and flying and landing." although, after this incident, we made three jet planes out of a shoebox and have since visited once upon a child to find the jet plane puzzle we went looking for and a toy prop plane.

"mama, can you believe this garbage truck is also a jet plane?" yes. yes, i can. :)

fall, wonderful fall

when i hung out with my friends emma and jamie (in an airport) (after not seeing emma for 2 and jamie for 3 years), jamie said i should update my blog. she also said "oh my gosh, you have kids!" which was amazing. :) so, here's a little update..

the end of the summer brought unexpected travel -- we were saddened to lose my dad's mother and jeremy's uncle in august. indeed the Lord showed us a silver lining in experiencing these sad deaths in getting to have time with our families that we wouldn't have had otherwise, and so we are thankful for that! here are some pictures from our flight home from steamboat springs, where jeremy's uncle lived. joseph was so excited for the airplane, sorry, "JETplane, mama" trip. he fell asleep on the last flight home, but on the other three flights we took, he shared his (extensive) knowledge of airplane travel the entire flight. in between checking to make sure i had my seatbelt fastened.

we returned to louisville to discover that it's september, which means fall, wonderful fall. in the linneman family, we fancy fall. we are welcoming fall with corduroys, pumpkin cornbread, and second cups of hot coffee. and flannel shirts. like on this handsome :

we celebrate jude's first birthday in a week and a half. i know. one year. how did that happen? i'm not sure. these days jude is saying "oh, cool..," stacking blocks, pointing at his friends in brown bear brown bear, what do you see, and (almost) walking! we're convinced if he could forget he was walking, he would. for now, he drops to his knees immediately upon seeing our excited faces. we're planning a "things that growl" birthday party for him, as one of his favorite things is telling us how a dinosaur, lion, dog, (cat, cow, horse, etc.) growls. :)

jude's birthday party may be slightly delayed due to another major development -- moving! yep. :) the Lord gave us the house we've been looking for at a price lower than we've been hoping for with the down payment assistance we've been praying for. and then in what our realtor described as a one in a million turn of events, the man selling us his house committed suicide. it is a horrible tragedy. it's been so weird and so heavy on our hearts that we don't actually know this man but we feel this loss. it's had some time to settle and now it seems that strangely, we can see the Lord's hand in even that part of this buying a house story. we want to love our neighbors and i can't help but think about how knowing about this tragedy will help us to do that. there are huge trees in the front and back yard and a front porch to watch cars drive by and an attic bedroom for joseph until jude's big enough to share it with him. i think it will be good. we're really excited about our new home, and it's heavy at the same time.

more pictures to come after we are moved in, but for now, here's one of our beautiful trees.

i've read this over and over the past couple of weeks, so i wanted to share it:

"every new duty calls for more grace than i now possess,
but not more than is found in thee,
the divine Treasury in whom all fullness dwells.
to thee i repair for grace upon grace,
until every void made by sin be replenished
and i am filled with all thy fullness.
may my desires be enlarged and my hopes emboldened,
that i may honour thee by my entire dependency
and the greatness of my expectation." (grace active, valley of vision)

i just love it because at first it feels discouraging, like wait, the duties call for more grace than i have, but then not more than is in the Lord. and i want my desires to be enlarged and my hopes emboldened. lately i've been seeing how small my desires can be, like spending a whole day desiring a clean home and folded laundry and not even venturing into imagining a life bursting with friendships and shared life.

i'm off to pretend i understand football with my sweet, who just said, "the highlight of my day.. was my socks. because they're fall socks." see? we love fall. :)

amazing things joseph said today

"what in the world?? we have to make the bed!"

"hey, mama, i have a surprise for you...B the Beeeeee.." (short for bob the builder. yep, my kid spells.)

"when my mama goes to minnesota, i say 'yes, mama. okay, mama' then i pinch and hit!" (joseph's remix of the kind and respectful joseph bourne linneman song.)

"i'm going to sing a song about don't step on judy."

"when we went to the broken ice cream store, the ice cream went woop! and it was broken. but now it's fixed. i call it the working ice cream store." (regarding mcdonalds.)

"working ice cream store. sha-boom." (later as i relayed our conversation to jeremy)

and my favorite oh my goodness can't stop laughing for some reason:

"my friend peter, he has a fan in his garage! his dad's name is ang. like anger. but ang." (the first completely fabricated story he's attempted to make us believe. serious cre-a-tivity.)

meanwhile, from the jude-meister, we had laughing dog barking new sounds i've never heard come out of him while he was awake sign language for friends-ing in the middle of the night last night. okay, it was 11, but it felt like the middle of the night. either way, i could not bring myself to attempt to get him back to sleep until he stopped making himself laugh.

amazing.

a sweet gift

joseph bourne linneman just filled up my love tank. for reals.

that boy and i spent seriously almost an hour sitting on the couch. talking. mostly him to me. with wide eyes and songs scattered throughout the string of thoughts of what we were reading making him think of something and what that made him think of and sigh.

good sigh.

i know for a fact that my currently-in-minnesota husband has to be triple-quadruple praying for our time here at home, because it has been good. so good.

thank you, Lord. for real.

this one's alright, too. i guess. :)

the boys :)

just keep going

hmmm..i actually just sighed while this page was loading. because i have wanted to write but i haven't known what to write.

and that drives me crazy! and makes me eat ice cream. which isn't so bad.

joseph called his brother "judy" for most of this morning. it was kind of amazing.

and i've had to help jude (sorry -- judy) back to sleep about twelve times since putting him to sleep two hours ago. (twelve being my go-to number for exaggeration and the actual amount of times i've had to help him)

and that has been june. and may. we've had some rough weeks/month/month and a half/or so. but we've had some good in there too.

i'm not just trying to go all look on the bright side on you. although there is a bright side.

unless that sound i hear is joseph getting out of bed; then, there is no bright side. and i will quit.

not really.

but yeah, we've had some hard days around the linneman home. we've had sickness. and sickness. a babe who can't sleep. a toddler learning to be angry in new ways. a mama who likes to escape into wedding decoration world while her children are wanting her eye contact. five extra dogs in the apartment that already housed two dogs. dogs that bark. whiiiile babes are trying to sleep.

what's weird is that nothing has actually been that bad. it's just been a lot all at the same time. which also happened to be the time we had thought life was going to coast into summer (easy) mode.

we've been broken. lots. which has been really hard. and when it's been hard, my thoughts have been "this is dumb." "i just want to look at mason jar pictures on pinterest." "this is stupid." "i quit." and "my life is a joke." (that one happened when the double feature toy story AND toy story 2 were dropped out of the window of our moving vehicle at precisely the spot on the road my husband would kill me for trying to rescue it. i didn't try. okay, i almost did.)

and, at the same time as all of the above, i know that i've been sustained. God has sustained us. this hard season has been hopeful in that way -- in the way that a horrible (horrible) morning transforms into naptime and afternoon and after a breakdown, i'm washing dishes. and not crying. because i've been sustained.

it's been a season thick with this low-level sometimes makes me feel wimpy but sometimes makes me want to realllly over-dramatize it suffering. and when i look at my journal, my prayers, parts of the bible that have jumped out at me, it's thick with His work. which is amazing.

so, while i don't think this hard season is over, and i don't have the looking back now that it's easy conclusion that i'm sure would be pretty revolutionary, i can see that this is a season of abundance at the same time as being hard. i am seeing God revealing my heart and my need for Him and for friends and for help and for His word.

bright side.

oh, also, i don't have any pictures. (don't worry, things haven't been so bad that i wouldn't take pictures -- our camera went to france with our friends, and i have just been slow getting it back) sorrry :) if i did have any though, they'd for sure be of jude's two front teeth. so cute. and i'd probably show you the massive amount of mason jars on our piano excitedly anticipating their transformation into wedding centerpieces.

oh, and also, something that's been really amazing in our lives is this new way joseph takes something we tell him is going to happen and turns it into a surprise for us. he's still working on the surprise concept. case in point: me -- "joseph, we're going to have oatmeal for breakfast." joseph -- "mama, there's a surprise in the cabinet....it's something we eat for breakfast! it's..... (opens cabinet) OATMEAL!"

see? bright side. another one!

"for you, o God, have tested us;
you have tried us as silver is tried.
you brought us into the net;
you laid a crushing burden on our backs;
you let men ride over our heads;
we went through fire and through water;
yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance." -- psalm 66:10-12

buzz

"i'm buzz lightyear."

it's what sweet boy says when he wakes up in the morning. sometimes the very first thing he says. same thing with naps.

it's occasionally what he says when i tell him that he isn't supposed to be doing something.

as in, "hey joseph, it's too early to play the piano."
"i'm buzz lightyear."
"hey buzz, it's too early to play the piano."

also, the rest of buzz's family has been assigned our respective characters. jeremy is mr. potato head. jude is rex the dinosaur. i'm woody. (i'm kind of glad i'm not jessie)

sometimes, joseph will tell a story, and i'll have to decipher what part of toy story he's telling me about in first person as buzz. he will seriously stay in character the entire day.

sometimes, i'll say "that wasn't flying; that was falling. with style."

and he'll say "that actually was flying."

i love buzz lightyear. :)

these days

such a good needed wonderful i can breathe day. i feel like i'm literally (lit'rally) breathing more deeply after this day. it wasn't anything revolutionary, just staying home. because we've been going. a lot. and we've been tired. our weeks have been full -- full of good things really -- but we've been tired.

yesterday, we spent the whole post-nap until dinner time playing basketball in the front yard and with the sand and water table in the backyard. today, we played in the pool and sat on a blanket with our friends next door and another dear friend who lives (for now) just down the street, friends i cannot believe God put this close to us -- just like that -- here you go, heart-friends. oh, and boys the same age as yours. next door! down the street!

i'm thankful. because days at home don't necessarily or even usually feel this refreshing, but the Lord decided to bless us with it. ditto with the friends.

from the past couple of weeks:

muffin date with this handsome

our new (craiglist find!) backyard favorite

sigh.

oh, jude.

the (joseph dramatic voice) rhinocerooooos!

the babes. big babes, really.

p.s. if you don't watch parks and rec, please do. we just finished our netflix cue until another season is released. jeremy's response to this (horrible & shocking) news: "well, did they have another suggestion? for sustaining a marriage?" :)

life lately [in pictures]

[joseph swoon]

[what my son did while an easter egg hunt was happening]

[one..two..THREEEEEEE]

[jude swoon]

[i do]

[mrs. gabel and future mrs. gabel]

[even their baby pictures were blue and red. good job coordinating with the shower, history]

[jude swoon 2 -- he's very swoonworthy. i've never even used that word prior to this photo]