Thoughts On God -- more scrappy than religious!

Good afternoon! I'd think of a more clever opening, but my three-year-old is also telling me (from ten feet away) that he's hammering in Mr. Potato Head's eyes with his toy hammer. Since we're trying to teach him (again)that it IS okay to play independently every now and then, I'm betting I'm going to be fairly well distracted while trying to put this blog together. Since I've been putting off this blog all week due to teaching him that he can play alone, I can't keep putting it off for another day. What I find most entertaining about the whole scenario is that he plays a large role in today's post. In order to write about him, I have to get him to do something else.

Am I the only one scratching their head over this?

I digress. I had a point today; and that was to share a short story, some thoughts and a scrappy page about my son and Higher Powers.

It all started with an early morning walk in the neighborhood. Since he's been able to walk well, we've taken many walks like this; even when temps have hit above 90. From birth until he could walk well, we would go for at least one stroll everyday that I wasn't called into work. When he cut teeth, we spent as much time outside of the house as possible. He finds some sort of comfort and peace outdoors as do I; and it's usually the best way to get us both happy when he gets crazy and I get tense. Last week, he and I had another one of "those" moments around 8:00 AM. I quickly chucked him out the door and strapped on his shoes to help us both calm down. It was a nice morning; full of blue skies and cool breezes. Out of nowhere, he started asking me about God.

Where is God?

Where does he live?

Is he really in that tree?

What about that acorn?

Why is he in the acorn?

Is he in the sidewalk?

Mom, my feet hurt. It's time to go home.

I think the big inspiration behind his questions came from the many conversations I had with my friend, Mel, in Georgia. She is Baptist (although, at one time I thought she was Methodist). I am Catholic. Despite the finite details that allowed for the sectioning off in Christianity, we both share many key beliefs. Though neither of us can claim frequent attendance to weekly services, we both still believe in God. We both believe that God is an entity with whom we can discuss our hopes, failings and means toward improvement. We both believe it's important to thank God early and often for all the blessings we have received. Because we share these details, we talked frequently and openly about them. It's an experience my son has rarely witnessed at home.

...........Only now does this strike me as odd and something new to reflect upon. Huh...

Well, since one string of conversations had led to another, between my son and I, I couldn't help but do two things. The first was to take a less-than-spectacular photo of our shadows with my camera phone.

The other was to immediately recall the song, Counting Blue Cars, by Dishwalla.




I also spent a few hours settling into the inspiration for a page to add to my son's three-year-old album:



Putting the page together was inspired by a few August Challenges at Pages In Time.

*First and foremost, the Pile It On Challenge, as posed by 2amscrapper. For this I needed to combine two other challenges and a special twist into my design.

*I needed to follow the rules for the Fantasy Challenge, as posed by Maggie White, in which I needed to:
The title of you LO should be a movie title or a song title -- Counting Blue Cars.

I would like to see some layers on the page and flowers and bling. To do this I used the July 30 Thursday Sketch, which allowed for plenty of layers (all Cosmo Cricket). I also chose to break back into my beloved Prima stash for two of the flowers, while making the large flower by hand. The stems on the three flowers were made with Prima E-Line bling.

*I also needed to follow the guidelines for Barbara Lochridge's Pretty Punch Challenge: use at least 2 punches. The photo corners and the top layer of the hand-made flower were created from two of the three punches that I own. I never got into collecting punches for all the space they take up, but I was happy I had at least enough for this.

*The twist was to create a flower from one of two tutorials in the Handmade embellishment group. I chose the pinwheel tutorial. It's pretty obvious that it's my first attempt at this kind of flower, but I had fun dolling it up with glimmer mist and a few drops of Glossy Accents. I read on a blog by Scraplicious that I could use the medium to create water-droplets.

It took me some time to get this posted, so.... If you were able to read, thank you!