Today I’m working from home and, for the first time in a few weeks, I can’t wait to close my laptop and play with my girls. Turns out that when I’m feeling tired of my family, the remedy is more time with them – not less.

He is passionate and loves Jesus.  He’s a pastor of a very large and growing church and still (by God’s grace, I’m sure) is able to make emails sound personal, let us know we are loved often and misses us when he doesn’t preach.   Matt continues to tell us he’s not going anywhere, that he’ll be here for the next 40 years.  He makes a big effort to make a big church small.  He doesn’t want the Village to be about him or us but about Christ.  Nothing is sacred with him – nothing finite that is.

There’s a ton more but I’m (Kristin) is a procrastinator and it’s my bedtime.  I hope you win, Matt!  We Donovan’s are very thankful for you!

Today I’m stressed out by getting all of our home insurance squared away.  This is proving extremely hard with little girls who want to play all the time.  I’ve been sentimental also…this was the first place we’ve lived in that Jaimes will remember.  We have memories of four precious little boys here.  Gracie came home to this apartment.  We have packed this place out before – which has been fun and uncomfortable.  Then there is the massive amount of work that needs to happen before we move.  How do I pack with little girls who love to get into everything and un-do what I do?  I’ll let you know how that all works out.  If you have advice – bring it on!!

We found a house, put an offer, countered a couple times, agreed, had the home inspection yesterday, signed loan apps today, trembling a bit today, getting quotes on home owners insurance, switching over utilities, oh my gosh, is this really happening?

I’ll try to post pics later.  It is a house with potential which means work but we can see a park from the front yard, there is a large back yard, and a planning desk in the laundry room!!  I hope this can be my little room that I can plan away at.  Still pinching myself a bit.  Being in a home has been a desire for me for years.   I’m so excited to have an area to do projects, a place for the kids to run, a sidewalk to chalk it up on, more room to be hospitable, a spot to garden and grow herbs, tomatoes and vegetables.  A parking spot every night!  Yeah, it still feels like a dream.

Things have changed quite a bit over here.

Matt just got a new car, which means we are a two car family which is a necessity w/ two little girls who like to eat a big healthy breakfast in the morning.  Before you start thinking “hmm, new car, huh?”  The mechanic said it would be perfect to get a high schooler back and forth to school.  heh.

Jaimes got a major chop!  Just about six inches cut off her hair!!  I love the style and she does too.  Perfect for summer.

Yesterday we put our first offer on a house.  We got the call back today saying that it wasn’t as high as the other two offers.  Sad, relieved, waiting.  I think more that I don’t know where we will live after here.

Gracie is doing awesome.  I love when she calls for me.  I love when she wants to climb into my lap.  I love when she waddles over to me.

One more thing…if you have a little one who check out starfall.com.  I heard about it today.  Jaimes loves the site.

I’ve been waiting to blog about this because I wanted to see if it took root. Heres’ the deal:

I’m extremely undisciplined, especially when it comes to reading the Bible, and praying with a devoted mind, body and spirit. I’ve tried many times to change – to become a different kind of man. I’ve blocked out the time in my calendar, I’ve set the alarm for 6AM, I’ve asked for accountability, I’ve used a Bible reading plan. I’ve done all these things and more, but I always quit. I always fail. The new practice never takes root.

About 6 weeks ago I was discussing web design and how I think it’s smart to redesign websites in small increments. So instead of spending loads of time and money working on a complete overhaul, we should be looking for small problems and tackling them one at a time. Spend some time on the jacked-up navigation. Once that’s looking good, maybe work on displaying the search results in a more scannable format and so on. Then it dawned on me – why I never seem to change. The plan for change is always drastic. I’m not looking to just read by Bible more often. I’m planning on reading it every day without exception from 5:30-6:30AM. I’m planning on hand-writing my prayers in a journal and making sure I pray for myself, my family, my extended family, my friends, my co-workers, and whatever else a holy, disciplined man prays for in the wee ours of the morning. I’m trying to do a complete overhaul on my devotional life in a week.

So I asked myself – how can I just slip prayer and bible-reading into my life? Well – I’m going to need someone to remind me, because I’ll get busy and forget. It also cant require me to get up early, since that’s another new-behavior and hard one to make a habit of. Here’s what I did:

1. Accountability partners have totally failed me in the past because they typically suck just as bad as I do at being disciplined. And if they don’t, they’re not going to call me everyday to ask if I’ve read my bible. I know I wouldn’t.

I use backpack for personal organization and to-do lists and stuff. It has a nifty feature where it will email (and even text-message) reminders. I set an email reminder that gets sent to me everyday at 11AM. All it says is “Stop what you’re doing, read your bible for 5 minutes and pray for your family.” I typically don’t have anything going right at 11AM so it’s a great time to stop whatever it is I’m doing. If I am in a meeting or something, I have reminder in my inbox when I get back to my desk. This means that in order to get through my day without reading the Bible, I have to ignore the reminder. I have to make a conscious decision not to meet with God. I won’t pretend it never happens, but it’s rare.

2. Prayer seems like kind of tricky thing. I work in an open studio with several other people. Praying outloud isn’t an option and journaling – well, that’s another new behavior and therefore not a viable part of the plan.

I use gmail and I love it. I know – it’s weird to love an email program, just humor me a minute. I send lots of emails everyday. Why not just email my prayer as a form of journaling? Since I don’t have Jesus’ email address, I’ve been sending the prayers to my wife. At first, I just thought she’d find them encouraging. The blessing has been two-fold. Not only does it occasionally spark God-centered dialogue between us, but it acts as buit-in accountability. The first week I started emailing my prayers, I got lazy toward the end of the week. Because she’s encourage y the emails, and because she loves me, Kristin emailed me late in the afternoon asking if I’d spent time in the Word that day. She hadn’t received the email and was wondering how I was doing!

Since Gmail has such a great tagging feature, I just label all of those sent messages as “prayer.” All I have to do is click on that label and I’ve got my own personal online prayer journal. Huzzah!

3. As for the actual reading – I’d be lost without Margie Haack’s Read through the Bible Program for Shirkers and Slackers (p. 5-6 of the PDF). She goes into great detail about where it came from, but what’s important is that it’s broken up simply by days of the week and not my scheduled dates. There is no way to get behind. The benefit is that when I feel like skipping because I’m not sure what to read, it has some very specific recommendations.

Pretty excited to get Gracie in it.  Hopefully we’ll have pics of that very soon!

looking into the next one for Gracie.  Jaimes will probably need another one in a bit.  Why do these things need to be so confusing?  And expensive.  I’d love to hear what you use and if you like it.