okay okay

so i've been a blog eavesdropper for far too long now and just have to put in a few cents' worth.
i will start with the basics: graduated UVA 2001 (but all of 5th year spent in loudoun, doing student teaching and finishing up the MT program...remind me later and i'll post about how i spent my first day of student teaching directing traffic around a pile of vomit in the middle of the hallway at Loudoun Valley High School). never went into teaching...i guess i just decided back then that there was no amount of money that you could pay me to be someone else's parent. again, another blog thread for another time, as i'm sure that you teachers out there will have some insight to share on that one as well. got maried september 2002, after matt graduated, when we moved to warrenton and went on young life staff. intern program in warrenton was amazing, it was such a blessing to be in a tight-knit community like that during our first years of marriage and ministry. i still fight being bitter about not being there anymore (we moved to Winchester in august 05 when matt was given an area director job), especially after chris dove's death...i wanted to minister with and be ministered to those folks with whom i shared so much of my life. so now we're in winchester, ella is 2 1/2 (g0ing on 13, i feel sometimes), and we're pregnant with baby girl #2, due in december.
hmm...what else? i quit my job (doing marketing/admin stuff with a commercial real estate firm in DC--really good money-before ella was born, and then took a part time job as a bank teller when she was 18 months old. that said, i would agree wiht the other ladies that it is important to pour yourself into your kids--their well-being, spiritual and otherwise--but it came to a point with me that i needed to find something where i could pour into other folks as well. to be honest, i don't have the emotional energy i used to have to be able to deal wiht high school girls (so i have very little part with matt's "up front" ministry, just support in the background and admin help), so i felt that i needed to get out and try to do the work thing again. it probably sounds lame that i chose to go back to work in order to "take care of myself" and regain some sense of my adult identity, but circumstances, financial and otherwise, made that an easier decision.
so anyway...as far as what the lord has taught me through 4 years of marriage and 3 of motherhood is that i am too selfish to be a young life staff wife and way too selfish to be a mom. thankfully, though, his grace is new every day (as are matt's and ella's, for the most part).
okay sorry that was such a long post...p.s. sorry for the nudie of my daughthter, but that's pretty much par for the course in our house...