Blessed Easter! And Loving Dailiness

Thank you for the cross, the mighty cross
That God himself should die for such as us
And everyday we're changed
Into Your image more and more
Yes, by the cross we've truly been transformed

And we're so amazed and we give you praise
That you would save us at such a cost
And we're so amazed and we give you praise
For the power of the cross
For the power of the cross
Copyright: 1990 Integrity's Praise! Music


Blessed Easter to everyone! Trust you had a wonderful time with your family too. We celebrated in church together the gift of God that was given through Christ. The lyrics above is one of the songs my family sang together on Good Friday in our own little worship time together at home. It was just too wonderful to worship as a family, hearing Ryan's tenorish voice with Jared's childish one blend with dh's base voice and my piano notes singing to the Lord. The boys were for once both quiet and attentive as dh shared of the Lord's amazing Love, and then he led us all in prayer. A truly wonderful morning! We must do this more often.

Of all the everyday things we do as a family sometimes a moment like this will stand out and mark a special place in our memory and I want to have many such ones with my family, especially as the boys are growing up in light speed ! (in their speak)

In my last post, Jenny shared a beautiful video of author Katrina Kenison, reading a chapter from her book, The Gift of an Ordinary Day: A Mother's Memoir. It's so beautiful I wanted to share it here with you but do not know how to fit it in the post. So I'm gonna send you to the video here instead. If you have not seen it or read the book please go over, you won't regret it!

My mission now : To make sure the special and meaningful happen but also to capture and savour the daily ones that seem mundane but will pass us only too quickly!

Amazingly, when I went over to order a copy of the book, I found that Katrina had written an earlier book, Mitten Strings for God - Reflections for Mothers in a Hurry, also about discovering the sacred in the ordinary, written when her children when younger. And that I have read and loved it! When I fished out my copy I was very excited to find that I had scribbled a few precious daily moments (in 2002) in the margins of the first chapter - Dailiness. And I immediately made this layout :)  That's the boys aged two and four ...

Getting to template 200 means I'm closing in on completing my 2008 Japan Album - only one or two more layouts to go!! Here are the latest creations from the days and nights we spent in our favorite city of Kyoto. It is the loveliest, quaintest, city with a wonderful old city air, we really loved wondering around. We also skipped the largest, most famous temples and sights for smaller, less crowded ones where it sometimes felt we were the only ones there. Totally loved it. Hopefully one day we get to go back :)
                                 
                                          (click on images to enlarge)

Here is one more layout from Himeiji - it is so lovely and picture perfect I had to make one more layout!

And one more layout is needed for these cute pics of what we and Jared were constantly doing on the trip - perhaps only we know what I am talking about, lol, but that's why it's precious to us!

And a final two pager to capture all the quirky single photos of the magnificent experience of Japan.

The templates below are for downloading! Will love it if you leave a comment! Thank you  ;P

                                          Download template 198 here
                                          Template 199  is now available as a set in the store HERE
                                          Template 200 is now available as a set in the store HERE