butterfly. babies. love.

tomorrow my oldest girls start kindergarten. they will venture off into the world of formal education and begin a very special journey. along with learning about letters and numbers and other incredibly important basic concepts, they will begin to learn about the resilience of their character and the strength of their work ethic. i attempted to share small pieces of advice as they picked out their dresses and started filling their backpacks. as they grabbed their snacks and helped make their signs, i continued to talk about the important things. my advice fell into 4 main categories. for my girls, as they start kindergarten.... 1. be kind. personally, i feel that being nice is not that hard. it does not take too much commitment. it can last a few seconds and it is sometimes, simply, a sweet gesture at face value. you should be nice, of course, and you should always aim to be polite and make a good impression. but kindness requires a deep heartfelt choice. kindness demands act

as the school year comes to a close, i think about what i would like to teach my girls... On Education: girls, i hope that the wide-eyed wonder with which you seem to approach every book these days, stays with you as you navigate through the educational institutions you attend on your journey. i pray that your curiosity grows with each course and each subject matter, that you investigate and explore and research and discover. i hope that you construct knowledge in your own unique ways and that you realize that knowledge is not absolute. i hope you always love literature and that you embrace the power of the written word. i hope that you find yourself through your own writings and awaken passions to travel and to study culture and to explore the world through great stories and poetry and treasured rhetoric. i hope that you acknowledge the beauty and complexity of science and math and history and other fields of study also. please respect your teachers. know that they have

as i begin to write this entry, i look down on my lap to see a 15 week old beauty, nestled so sweetly and perfectly in a blanket, sleeping ever so peacefully on my lap. i am moved constantly by her delightful sounds and giggles, her undeniable cuteness, and the way her little mouth purses to attempt to speak, and then to pout, and then to smile and attempt to speak again. she has moved me by her pure innocence and her helplessness and her resilience, by her need to be near me and to hold me and to feel my skin and to hear my heartbeat. i think of her sisters and how often they have made me shed tears of joy and of wonder also. how they have moved me simply with one word, often said at just the right time or the awfully wrong time, and how their complex personalities and intense love often make my heart feel like bursting. i am moved by their passion for all that is good, and their intrigue about why things are wrong, their prayers and their screaming arguments, their logical banter

2015 will be a year of penning suggestions, prayers, advice for my girls. on love: love is not something simple. love is complex and it is most definitely worth waiting for. waiting is difficult, but it is necessary because you gain much knowledge and learn many lessons, all the while holding onto your own sense of independence and understanding of your unique place in this world. your daddy says that although it seems incredibly hard to wait for love, once you have it, you will see why it was so important. but, yes, it is hard when you are on the other side. i can tell you, with all honesty and sincerity, that love from a man is not something that you should be rushing towards; you should not move in that direction until you know your own value and your own worth, not until you understand that you are not defined by this world's standards of beauty or success or belonging. love can be once in a lifetime and it should be something that you pray about and fight for and wo