Mornings with Stuart

I love my mornings with my babies.  While the girls usually opt for something technology filled, Stuart and I end up on the floor with some toys that need the imagination to move them.  This morning we were on the floor playing with a bag of tools he got from his best friend.  Of course I had to break out the camera.  Let me not fail to mention he had cheeto's with his lunch, thus the orange mouth.  I thought it was cute.

I do love this face! 

 

 MMM  Cheetos!

This beautiful creature is my middle child.  

She entertained my idea this morning of trying an early morning shoot instead of sunset.  I am trying to learn more about my camera and it's abilities.  It's something I am really enjoy, however, my children are not always so eager to be my models.  They have grown up with my camera always with us and know there is never a moment I'm not figuring out in my head how that moment will translate into photos.  I live in photos one could say.  I see something and most times I will think of how that would look through my view finder.  

Photography is something I am going to take the summer and get better at, and really enjoy it.  I mean honestly, it can't be all that hard to enjoy when I get to see beautiful faces like this in the process!

A Weber I Am!

So, it was a great and wonderful Thanksgiving.  We took our new van on it's first road trip.  I can't even describe the difference it made in the attitudes of the kids.  We went home to Nebraska to see family and some friends.  I was super excited to be able to meet my new nephew Lincoln and to see my sister Jessie and her family since we don't get to all be together often.  The week went great with the usual family activities.  Grandma and Gracie in the kitchen cooking, Sera and Ben playing Minecraft,  and Stuart playing dress-up (Because Memaw is cool like that and has dress-up clothes for boys).  We were lucky enough to have not just one Thanksgiving meal, but TWO!  Thursday we spent with my parents and my brother Josh.  Enjoying my mom and Gracie's labor of love.  That night was spent playing Bananagrams (I had never played before, we use them for spelling with Gracie).  Friday was spent watching Husker football, visiting friends, and then the main event....Jessie and her family arrived.  I was earlier for-warned that I was second in line behind my mom when it came to dibs on the baby.  I was completely prepared to trip her and take her down, but I know my place and waited my turn.  It was completely worth it, the baby boy is just beautiful, and cute, and cuddly, and I do believe on more than one occasion I had a plan completely hatched on how I was going to smuggle him out of there and bring him back with us.  It was a relaxing night filled with pizza, cupcakes, and cousins.  The number one thing I LOVE about my family is that it does not matter how long we have been apart, the kids resume like no time has passed.  Saturday was our second Thanksgiving.  The kids played, boys talked technology, and the ladies worked our magic to get dinner on the table.  It was yet another Betty Weber masterpiece!  After dinner we got the christmas tree out and the grandkids decorated it.  This was special to my children because they have never decorated Grandma Betty's tree before.  We haven't even celebrated Thanksgiving in Nebraska since having children.  The tree turned out beautiful.  Every child had a job assigned by Aunt Jessie and it turned out really really pretty.  That night my dad summoned us all to the table....this is where this blog for me gets emotional, and hard to put into words.  He passed around a paper, it was a page from my parents will.  Under a section it listed the biological children: Josh, Joe, and Jessie....then it listed another person to be considered the fourth child in all manners pertaining to the estate....it was me.  I can't explain the feeling.  I cannot put into words what that was like.  I was a little in shock.  All I could really do was grab Sean's hand and pray I could keep it together.  As my dad explained, the point of this was to show and make official that I, Pattie Huetson, am a Weber kid.  I never really realized that even until that day, I had this kind of feeling of being different.  Not being "officially" a Weber kid....always having that word "technically" hanging around. But this was like..DONE...official.  Apparently about five years back my dad asked my mom if they could still adopt me.  Being that I was an adult, married, with kids it was something not workable.  So, this was the next best thing.  This was their way of saying "Hey, you belong to us".  I did manage to keep it together.  In true Weber fashion we all sat and laughed and joked, I do believe Jessie called for a vote before it was official.  But in that moment it was like I belonged.  That is my family, and I am theirs.  I thought of my biological mother through all of this.  I know she would be happy for me.  I know she would understand that for over half my life, Betty and Stan Weber have been my parents.  She'd love this, she would love seeing me happy.  So....I am proud to say...I am a Weber, my kids are Weber kids, and their kids will be Weber kids.  I have so much to be so thankful for!

four months

Today it's been four months since she's been gone.  I still feel the guilt.  I could have done more, should have.  I feel guilty because I held onto my own pride and didn't think of things from her side of the relationship.  Or lack of one.  I couldn't imagine my children ever cutting me off.   But I can't imagine cutting them out of my life either.  I guess God blessed me with a life of mundane choices.  Nothing that would spiral someone else into a world beyond their control.  My biggest decisions are what to feed my children and how are we going to spend our afternoon.  Nothing close to the things she had to struggle with, never a question of having to hand my babies over.

When Sera turned two I hated my mother.  How could she look in my face and willingly give me to someone else at that age?  How could she stand to have someone else get the words of "mommy" spoken to them?  I don't understand it.  I never will, that is my blessing.  I never asked her that question.  I don't know why, maybe because I didn't want to hear the answer, maybe because I didn't care to hear it.  My anger was way louder than any words she could have given.  On two occasions she had sent my children things, the first time I just threw them away.  I wanted my children to know nothing about her. I wanted her to have no ties to them.  The second time I wrote "refused" on the box and made the mail man take it with him.  I felt violated and angry.  They way to my children was not the mail...it was with me.  I felt like she had to make things right with me.  We'd had talks about her coming to visit and how we did not have to tell my children that she was my mom.  Just say she was a family friend. I couldn't do it.  The fear of letting her around my children choked me.  I got panicked just thinking about it.  I wanted to protect them.  Keep them from ever knowing that world.  Not keep them from knowing my past, but what good does it do to my children to see or know what I lived through?  It would only bring them sadness.  I had enough of that between us, they didn't need any.  I then got to the point where it no longer mattered.  I could think  of her and my sisters and not be sad, happy, angry.  I was indifferent.  It was as if it was someone else's family.  Not mine.  I had my own.  I had a mother and father who showed me the shining example of marriage, love, trust, and happiness.  I had a sister and two brothers who I knew I could go to whenever I needed.  They loved me, I loved them, and our children were completely content having the family they had always known.

I got a friends request on FB from my mother and I struggled with it.  Told her no, that I was not interested in her knowing anything about my life.  That she gave that privilege up.  With a change of heart I let her in.  But it became too much.  I felt like I couldn't be myself, I found i was being more guarded of myself and my children.  So I had to let it go.  I had to just say no, this is my life and I can't deal with this.  I thanked her for her gift of letting me go, because without that I would not have the parents and family I have.

When I was told by my aunt that my mother was gravely ill, it came at a complete surprise that I was emotionally and physically torn apart.  This woman may not have been in the most recent part of life, but she was very much a center of my childhood.  She was my everything.  She was always a part of me.  No matter my fight or distance, we were forever connected in a way that no one else in the world was connected to me.  She was my mother.  She was the one I looked like, sounded like, and loved like.   When I was younger she was the mother who taught me how to blow bubbles with my hands and catch them, the mother who I followed around with my hands in her back pockets.  I have many great memories that now outweigh any of the sadness.

I got to speak to her  a few times before she died.  I don't talk about it much because it's the one thing that brings me to tears.  Because in those conversations it was me, talking to my mommy.  Just the two of us.  The last time I spoke to her I was told to not expect anything in return.  That she could not speak.  I was told that I needed to let her know that it was okay to go, because it was believed she was holding on for some reason.    It was a conversation that I will forever and ever cherish.    At the end she was trying so hard to talk to me and it broke my heart.  I said "I love you okay" and to me, her baby, she said "Okay".  That was the last time I ever heard her voice.  The next day she was gone.  But what she gave to me was that the power of being a mom is some pretty amazing stuff.  I know that the only thing that gave her the strength to speak was the fact that she knew her daughter needed this just as much as she did.

Now, I am left with my reality.  I have two moms.  I now have this place of balance.  I am trying to figure out how to handle it all while being sensitive to the mother who raised me and to the mother who gave me life.  And also to both families.  I have come to learn from my children that the heart is big enough for both.    They loved being with their family that looked like them, and sounded like them.  But they also know that Grandma and Grandpa's house is home, and their cousins they've grown up with will always and forever be their family, nothing can change that.

So finally, after four months I can finally put some of this at rest, with my mom.  She was a woman with many many demons in her life.  She love us in the best and only way she knew how.  In the end she reunited her family, her three babies all under one roof.  I know it would have broken her heart to see the pain and anger between them.  But I can't help but think that she would have been happy seeing us all there, sitting together as sisters.  Something time, space, nor anger can ever change.  We will always be connected because of her.  We have something no one else in the world has,  Marie is our mother.  So, it's been four months.  I am still sad,  I miss her, I wish I could go back and do so many things over again.  But, I am left with the blessings I have.  The parents, brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews that God gave me.  I just know my life is pretty amazing.  Pretty darn AMAZING!

As for me and my house we will celebrate Passover.

Here we are.  Another major "christian" holiday.  Another time for me to get frustrated and want to scream from the hills "Do you even know what Easter is?".  However, I am slowly being reminded by God to not have a spirit of judgment.  This is hard....REALLY hard.  I have the nature that I want to share with people what I believe to be true.  Even if doing so hardens them to me.  I am learning though, this is not the best approach.  So, as my family enjoys/celebrates Passover, I must resist the urge to comment on every "Resurrection Sunday" face book post with the phrase "You must be doing fuzzy math".  I must put my mind and heart into what me and my house are celebrating.  Making sure that we are honoring Yahweh and Yeshua the best we can.  Passover for us is about two things, remembering how Yahweh delivered Israel, and how Yeshua delivers us!  And yes, we do discuss his death and then his victory over the grave!

Last night we had our Seder.  We started the day by preparing the food and our home.  Then we went through the kitchen and made sure there was no leavening products.  I explain to our girls that just like we search our kitchen for leaven, we need to search our hearts and lives for sin, and remove it.  I even intentionally left a few yeast packets for the girls to find.  Showing that no matter how good we think we have looked, there are always places that we can do a better job in removing the sin in our lives.  The Seder was a very awesome experience for me.  Widely because it was led by Sean.  I love seeing him take a leadership role in the spiritual raising of our family.  My favorite part was watching Stuart wash his hands and Sean drying them.  It was a peaceful dinner, with lots of questions and answers.  The whole night was very peaceful.

Our Seder table

I will leave with this trying to not sound judgmental:

Why do you celebrate Easter?
How did Easter start?
Did Yeshua or Yahweh command we celebrate Easter?
How did the name "Easter" come about?
What do eggs, baskets, and gifts have anything to do with the death and resurrection of Yeshua?

If you celebrate, do so because YOU have done your research, not because someone has told you this is what "christians" do, or because this is what you have done your whole life.

Whether you celebrate Passover or Easter, it doesn't change the fact that Yeshua HAS risen!  HALLELUJAH!

Day...oh who cares we are so close to him coming home!

Holidays.....which ones to celebrate and which ones to not.  Well, I gave into my inner child and decided we would do christmas this year, even after telling the children we would not.  It's hard to cast aside traditions of our youth, even if our minds know it's the right thing.  So we put the tree up, and at first I was all in the christmas "spirit", making cookies, doing crafts.  Then it came time to celebrate Hanukkah.  Our family does celebrate this holiday.  It's a beautiful holiday.  The more I sat and really evaluated the two...I just kept coming back to a few things I know.  I know the same God that kept the lamp burning and delivered the Israelites is also my God.  I know that of all the years on the planet, Jesus never once told us to celebrate his birth.  Yes, he didn't tell us to celebrate Hanukkah either, but it is clear in scripture that he celebrated it, and took it's fundamentals of light and taught about how HE is the light.  That light outshines darkness, it runs from light.  That we should share that light with others so they too can have it.  Hanukkah envelops all of these things.

What I know about christmas is this....Jesus was not born on December 25th...not even in winter.  A shepherd watching his flock by night would not be doing this in the winter.  Christmas was founded by the catholic church to be the last day of Saturnalia, the pagan holiday that ends on December 25th.  Christmas trees and greenery were actually a thing that would be brought into the home to be reminded that spring is coming.  They would also be worshipped in hopes that spring would come.  I could go on but my point is this...there is NOTHING biblical about christmas.  Christ was not born on christmas.  Every custom of christmas has it's roots in something VERY unbiblical.  So, as for me and my family, I think our christmas celebrations are over.  I have lost my christmas spirit...it is gone.   Every night that we light the menorah my joy for Hanukkah and the lights and MY LIGHT grows!  I see the transformation in my children.  


Am I any less of a christian because I don't celebrate christmas...well answer this, is christmas even a christian, Jesus approved, holiday?

So to you I say

Happy Hanukkah!!