details.

 sure, i've known about it for months, but of course, here it is july 1, and i'm just now getting around to switching over to bloglovin'. 

in true shannon fashion, naturally. 

so, if you haven't done so already, my faithful followers, you can find me if you just click on this link right here:

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

 and because who wants a blog post with just silly information like, 

"hey, go follow me in a new place"??

some pictures to catch you up on life lately and some thoughts on how God shows himself in the details of every day life.

we finally got our pool opened.

we were really holding our breath on this one because that pool has some type of curse on it or something. 

we gave up last year after it collapsed twice & i just prayed that this year would be the year that we wouldn't have issues so that eli would be able to enjoy it. 

God cares even about small details like being able to be refreshed after a hard workout & seeing a smile like the one above light up our little boy's face.

another project that has been looming over our heads for several months now.

these bookshelves.

friends, today they are finished!

i put the last coat of paint on this morning & they are now ready to be styled.

which honestly, it's kind of an intimidating task to me.

there's a lot of shelves & i really want them to look cool.

i might need some help in this department.....

i'll keep you posted!

i wanted to share another blessing that has happened recently that shows how God shows up in the details. 

if you remember, mike & i have been on a journey to a healthier lifestyle which includes participating in crossfit 3 times a week.
{it's been AWESOME, by the way!}
recently mike aggravated an old injury which was impeding on his ability to do crossfit.
so, our coach called up a chiropractor who used to work out there to see if he would be able to see mike.
not only did he say yes, but he's been seeing him every day after working out for the past 2 weeks FOR FREE!
{we don't have health insurance right now, so HUGE BLESSING!}

 we are about to enter into month 3 of our journey & just within the last probably month or so, i've really tried to change some of my eating habits.
i am a sugar fiend.
there, i've said it.
i absolutely cannot keep sweets in the house, or i will devour them.
and this is one of the major changes that i have made.
i have cut out sweets, save for one cheat day throughout the week.
even on my cheat days, i've done pretty good & haven't gone buckwild with the desserts.
but saturday i was craving a donut &, i can't believe i'm going to say this, but (insert shamed face here), i totally ate two of them!
oh my gosh, they were so good!
{and i definitely took the opportunity to do the extra credit workout today at the box!}

 mostly, though, i really do try to keep things healthy!
see, grilled chicken!
{and if you have a trader joe's near you, you definitely should try this soyaki out! yum!}

 what i'd most like to say about life lately is that i am truly amazed by how much this little boy is growing & changing day by day.
the other day i made a list of all the words he is saying & it was somewhere near 75.
how is it even possible that almost 2 years ago i was heading into the hospital wondering what life was going to be like as the mom of this little boy?

we have been beyond blessed with this little one & with how God has ordained our time in this season of life.
 just the other day mike & i were thinking about how decisions we've made to trust God when it just didn't make much sense have led us to where we are now.

not long before he took the job with the paper, he was actually offered another job with another paper.
most people suggested he take this because it was a job offer & at the time, after over a hundred  applications, it would be stupid not to.
but deep down, i just didn't have a peace about it.
i felt like he wouldn't be happy in this position & i felt like, if we held out for just a little longer, God was going to lead him to the perfect job.
{you can read more here.}
because of this job, he gets to spend his days with us.
we get to spend family time doing things during the week when places are not crowded like they are on the weekends.
 we like this. a lot.
 he & i have been able to embark on a life changing adventure doing cross fit, together.
this is huge to us because we are each other's biggest fans which makes toughing it out during a grueling workout so much more enjoyable!

and maybe they seem like such inconsequential things, but to us, they speak volumes of the way our Lord loves us & takes care of us.
it reminds us to not take these things for granted.
they are gentle reminders of His hand at work in our lives, weaving the pattern of His plan & His purpose for our lives.

when i became a mom {part 2}

if you're just now tuning in, i'm sharing my journey to becoming a mom.  {you can check out part 1 here.} and if you've been sitting on the edge your seat waiting for the next installment, please forgive me for making you wait. sometimes i get a little distracted by life and get a little bit of blogging ADD. 

 here it is, the rest of the story:

now you have to understand that coming to the realization that i would have to accept God's plan over my whole plan was much easier said than done.  i knew in my heart this was what needed to be done, but convincing my head to let go of my plans.....let's just say, it didn't happen overnight.

in november of 2010, our pastor asked if i would be interested in preaching the message the day after christmas.  while extremely nervous about such a task, i felt as though God was preparing me for such a task as this.  He led me to a passage found in Mark 14 about a woman who annoints Jesus with perfume from her alabaster jar.  in studying this passage, i learned just how costly a sacrifice this was and began to feel the Holy Spirit stirring in my heart.  one night as i was working on my sermon, i began weeping knowing that God was asking me to make a very costly sacrifice. He was asking me to lay down my plans at His feet.  He was asking me to trust Him with my dreams.

He was asking me to trust him no matter what.

so that meant if His plan was that it would take us 2 more years to get pregnant, i would have to trust Him.  it meant that if i was not able to get pregnant & He led us to adoption, i should trust Him.  and in that moment, with tears streaming down my face, i relented. 

i was terrified of letting go, but ultimately i knew that it was what i had to do.  not because He was forcing me, of course.  i could have chosen to keep holding on, but i knew that the best place for me to be was in the center of His will.  

sunday came & i gave my message with both my family and mike's family there to support me & cheer me on.  during the sermon i shared with the congregation my testimony of our struggle to get pregnant and what had happened while writing the sermon.  it was very difficult, but again, i knew this was exactly what i was supposed to do.

 {the rubins & aleos december 26, 2010}

 the next morning we slept in and planned on just lounging around in our pj's watching movies all day.  for some reason though that morning, mike wanted me to take a pregnancy test.  i had plenty on hand because for the past 11 months i had planned on using quite a few!  so, just to appease him, i said, "sure why not?"  

three minutes later, we walked into the bathroom holding hands.  

never in a million years would we have expected to see this sight. 

yes, there were tears. yes, there was hugging. yes, there might have even been some jumping up and down.  and most certainly, most definitely there were "THANK YOU, GOD"'s!!!!!  i mean, can you even imagine our shock?  this definitely goes down in my book as one of the greatest God moments of my life thus far!  {the picture shows 2 tests because we were in so much shock we needed another verification and as soon as we got the results on that one, we called the doctor to go in to get verification from them too.}  

i'm sure you can imagine the shock of others as we began spilling the beans on our little secret.  like when we told mike's parents and they said, "but a few days ago you just told everyone at church that you weren't pregnant."  and we said, "we know, we had no idea!"  or when we told our connect group.  that night was great.  we were going around sharing prayer requests and mike and i said we had a praise.  someone blurted out, "are you pregnant?"  we just laughed, and everyone just started screaming and hugging us, also having all been there that sunday morning to hear my testimony.

it was, and still is, such a joy to share this story because the only explanation is God.  we continue to give Him glory for giving us this testimony because it just astounds us every time we think about it.  so many times i think about God looking down on us during that year with a very fatherly grin on his face, just sitting back saying, "you just wait.  oh my child, just wait to see what i have in store for you!"

it's such a great reminder that God's timing is perfect.  i'm currently doing a study of nehemiah through she reads truth. {we're only 3 days in & i highly recommend it! it's not too late to join in!} the other day the topic was waiting & most importantly, waiting on God. 

i loved this quote:

“Beloved, our great and pressing need today is to give ourselves to waiting upon God, 

because waiting time is never wasted time.”

~Ian Hamilton 

isn't it so true? maybe we don't see it while we are in the midst of that waiting time, but looking back, it's always so clear where God's hand was moving & how He was working.  and what it really boils down to is a radical trust in God that says, "ok, Lord, no matter what.  NO MATTER WHAT."  

i'm learning day by day, each time i glimpse at my son, my constant reminder of His faithfulness, that the waiting time is so worth it.  

a day for the history books

yes, it is election day & it is a very important day, but i will get to that in a bit.

 

today is a very monumental day because today was the first mini-emergency in the rubin household regarding our little one.

now, please note, i use the term "emergency" for lack of a better term.

i fully realized at the time that it was not emergency room material.

however, it was much past the stages of "let-me-kiss-it-and-make-it-better".

 

you see, my son had blood gushing {and i don't use that term dramatically} from his finger.

i had let charlie out so we were playing in the den until charlie was done his business.

all of a sudden eli starts crying, but i have no idea why because he was still in the same spot he had been 30 seconds before.

he put his hands down on a box that was sitting in front of the chair in the room, and when he moved his hand, there was a puddle of blood.

naturally, i was quite surprised because i had no idea where this blood would be coming from. 

i then realized he must have cut it on one of these bottles:

i have 2 of these big decorative bottles from my grandmother's house, and

one of them got broken somehow several weeks ago.

the top part where the cork is broke off, but it was a clean break so i really didn't think it was a hazard.

i had even run my fingers over it to make sure the edges weren't sharp.

guess i was wrong!

 

so eli's crying, blood is gushing & i'm trying to retrieve any info that i learned in first aid. 

apply pressure and raise the wound!

ok, but they didn't teach me what to do when the 14 month old patient doesn't want to cooperate.

 

i had no way of telling how deep the cut was so i figured a trip to the doctor's wouldn't hurt.

i called mike, who had just arrived at his staff meeting, to tell him he needed to come home so we could take eli to the doctor.

thankfully the doctor is only 2 blocks from our house & they had no patients at the time. 

poor baby cried harder when he saw the nurse come in than when it happened.

they got it cleaned up & showed us the nice little slice mark on his thumb. 

the funny thing is, i had planned on taking him in today to get the second part of his flu shot. 

so we figured as long as we were there, and he was upset anyway, might as well go ahead and do that too.

 to make up for it, we let eli "ride dirty" in the car.

don't judge, but that's what we call it when we let him ride in the car without sitting in his car seat.

i know what you're thinking, if they have a name for it, they must do that a lot.

not really, only a few times.

mostly when we went yard sale-ing in this one huge neighborhood.

he thinks it's the coolest.

we like to make him smile.

and after all that, he needed a smile.

don't worry, i made sure to snap a pic of the aftermath:

{it was also all over his face, pants and socks.}

 

i wanted to get a picture while the blood was gushing, but i didn't think subjecting my crying, bleeding child to a photo shoot was really "mother of the year" material. 

probably thinking of taking a picture at that time wasn't really 

"mother of the year" material.

hmmmm

i couldn't get a good picture of the boo boo after the blood {surprise}, but here is his little boo boo hand clutching kitty, who makes everything better.

               ============================================================

and now for my thoughts on the election.

i tried to get into politics about 8 years ago, but got pretty fed up with it because the reality is that there's no honesty.

i've voted 3 times in my life because i have the right to do it & because it's a special freedom.

i've never backed any particular candidate with strong conviction.

i've pretty much taken the "lesser of two evils" approach.

right or wrong, it's just the way i've done it because i don't believe that any politician will ever share my beliefs or be strong enough to live out the type of convictions that i hold to be most valuable.

but here's what i do know. 

no matter who wins, no matter what party has control over this country, there is still One who has ultimate control over the universe.

no matter whose faces appears in the little oval as the next president in the back of our history books, 

God is still sovereign & will reign victoriously.

 

He has already written the outcome.

He's already planned our future.

 

And it's in Him that i place my hope.

it's in Him that i place my trust.