End of May Blessings {Beauty in the Mess ~ Edition 5.31.13}

Pardon me for a moment while I make two posts in one day.

And pardon me while I say a big PHEW!!! and exhale on this last day of May.

Sheesh, May was a LONG month! Did anyone else feel this way? I felt like it just kept going and going and going. And my family packed a LOT into the month of May!

We said goodbye to the Army, forever. We got unpacked and passed our one-month mark here in North Carolina. I worked on blogging about our moving story. We took a trip to the beach, where I did some resting and thinking. I got back to the gym. We’ve made some new friends. We’ve had some miraculous things happen, and there’s been a lot of beautiful things to celebrate.

It’s been exhausting, but the best kind of exhaustion.

This post is just a little more of the same. A flourish of beautiful activity and small stolen moments of God’s goodness.

We received this truck as an unexpected, undeserved gift from someone who shall remain nameless:

We finally found some furniture for our porch that didn’t take up too much play-space:

When Russ gets home from work and hijacks my computer, dinner is cooking, and I’m on edge from a long day with Ezra, I slip out here to have a peaceful moment and catch up on Instagram. Ezra inevitably ends up joining me:

This stolen moment brought a smile to our face. We put Ezra to bed with a cup of water as usual (especially on hot nights), and it leaked all over him and his bed. So he fell asleep in the chair instead, where we discovered him at 11PM when we went to check on him before we went to bed!

We had a big family cookout on the Saturday before Mother’s Day, where we took this rare family picture:

We have had a cool blast playing in the pool at our apartment complex. Ezra is a fan!

We found this lovely park by a lake in between my husband’s work and our new chiropractor’s office! We are definitely going to come back here at some point!

We took a little trip to Zootastic, where we met some hat-stealing birds.

Ezra said, “Dey not sharing at ALL!!”

We had a lot of special, restful moments at the beach, like this one which was taken around 8AM our first morning there – Ezra and I took a little walk by ourselves while Daddy stayed home to rest:

I took Ezra to his first Memorial Day Parade.

He LOVED the train tracks running through this small town:

Proof of parade success:

And later on that afternoon we made some American flag pictures.

(You can tell it’s an American flag, right?)

While Ezra may be phasing out of taking naps, Mommy has firmly instituted rest time! …during which shows like Revenge and Criminal Minds get watched–and stuff like THIS happens on “the other side of the door.”

Or, like yesterday, sometimes Ezra needs more time with mommy. While naps are for the birds, sleepies and TV time with Mommy are not!

Yesterday, Russ brought these home for me, just because. If that’s not a blessing, I don’t know what is.

And, to end, I just had to share this…after a relative made an apropos comment on this picture on Facebook:

Now, I’m going to go eat more chocolate covered strawberries and watch TV while Ezra is taking his non-sleeping nap!!