Virtuous and Capable

A Wife of Noble Character

 ^{10 [a]}Who can find a virtuous and capable wife?
      She is more precious than rubies.
 ¹¹ Her husband can trust her,
      and she will greatly enrich his life.
 ¹² She brings him good, not harm,
      all the days of her life.
 ¹³ She finds wool and flax
      and busily spins it.
 ¹⁴ She is like a merchant’s ship,
      bringing her food from afar.
 ¹⁵ She gets up before dawn to prepare breakfast for her household
      and plan the day’s work for her servant girls.
 ¹⁶ She goes to inspect a field and buys it;
      with her earnings she plants a vineyard.
 ¹⁷ She is energetic and strong,
      a hard worker.
 ¹⁸ She makes sure her dealings are profitable;
      her lamp burns late into the night.
 ¹⁹ Her hands are busy spinning thread,
      her fingers twisting fiber.
 ²⁰ She extends a helping hand to the poor
      and opens her arms to the needy.
 ²¹ She has no fear of winter for her household,
      for everyone has warm^[b] clothes.
 ²² She makes her own bedspreads.
      She dresses in fine linen and purple gowns.
 ²³ Her husband is well known at the city gates,
      where he sits with the other civic leaders.
 ²⁴ She makes belted linen garments
      and sashes to sell to the merchants.
 ²⁵ She is clothed with strength and dignity,
      and she laughs without fear of the future.
 ²⁶ When she speaks, her words are wise,
      and she gives instructions with kindness.
 ²⁷ She carefully watches everything in her household
      and suffers nothing from laziness.
 ²⁸ Her children stand and bless her.
      Her husband praises her:
 ²⁹ “There are many virtuous and capable women in the world,
      but you surpass them all!”
 ³⁰ Charm is deceptive, and beauty does not last;
      but a woman who fears the LORD will be greatly praised.
 ³¹ Reward her for all she has done.
      Let her deeds publicly declare her praise.

Proverbs 31:10-31

Right now you should go check out this blog post by a certain virtuous and capable brunette that I know. You can find the post HERE, and not only will you find this post inspirational, but you will also want to read the rest of this family's story. This particular post is great because it features a giveaway to a very cute Thirty-One thermal tote that I am hoping beyond hope to win for myself. Go check it out!

Lead of Hettuce

Everybody needs good friends in their life. Friends that just hear you out, let you interrupt, don't get mad when you announce "We're staying for lunch and I brought the food!" and friends that pretend not to know that you are pregnant when you yourself don't even officially know yet.

And when you happen to be describing a beautiful arrangement of fruit ka-bobs in a head of lettuce, but instead it comes out of your mouth as a "lead of hettuce," the only thing better than one friend not even hearing your mistake and completely understanding what you just said is another friend looking at you like you're both cross-eyed and calling you out for talking like an idiot.

Friends like that are a blessing.

Friends who meet you in the hospital parking lot to dismantle a free and rather large double-sided rotating chalkboard on wheels and cram the parts into your vehicle.  They just go with the flow when you struggle to loosen a stubborn wing-nut and repeatedly whisper to yourself "righty-tighty, lefty-loosy." And they don't drop their end of the chalk board when your comment of "It's always about the positioning, isn't it?" is just a bit ill-timed.

Friends you meet you for a supper date and know that you are pregnant before you are even ready to face that music yourself.  They know you so well that it wasn't the skipping of the glass of wine with the Italian meal that tipped them off but rather that you were not able to polish off the Italian enchiladas and look for more as you usually would.

And in the 21st century, you can't forget the other kind of friends. The friends you may never meet in person. The friends that send a message to say they miss reading your words when your blogging absence is over-extended. The friends that say they appreciate your honest words in the return post you were afraid to publish for fear of sounding like you needed to be committed. Friends that comment "I'm giving you empathy anyway" when you specifically stated that you didn't want it but will take it anyway.

When a month of feeling sick and dealing with your mom's cancer and making a pregnancy discovery take you away from all these friends, the reunion is that much sweeter.

Thanks guys. It feels good to be back.

Adventure #3 {Mis-Adventures}

There's a whole list of things for this particular week that just didn't seem to work out. Let's see if I can recall them all....

A broken food dehydrator (it had only been used once). This was particularly fun to discover after carefully loading all seven trays with sliced peppers.

A girls tubing trip thwarted by the weather that was still redeemed and ended up being a great time.

A hair cut for the little girl given to her by her brother. It was only down to the scalp in one spot. Another childhood rite of passage checked off the list.

The first of many "one last trips" to the beach that ended up in us low crawling across the sand to avoid being hit by lightning in the storm that just sprang up out of nowhere. My multiple trips to the beach and back to the car in the rain to collect all of our belongings were especially funny. But no worries, I got everything loaded up in time for the sun to come back out.

It's really all quite laughable.