We Always Said We Would Like an Even Number of Children

Do you know that feeling you get when you have a new baby, and you are sitting in the hospital with them, just staring at their perfect little face and then it hits you that THE WORLD IS STILL GOING ON OUTSIDE OF THIS ROOM?

I can remember that feeling after each one of my baby's births.  Like this totally amazing, life-changing, wonderful event just happened...and yet people are just acting absolutely normal outside of this window?  Getting their coffees and going to work?  Don't they realize that there's a whole new person living their first moments up here?  Can't time just stand still for a minute?

On a much smaller scale, I am having the same feeling about the opening of our ice cream shop.  

It's not as awesome as a new baby, but there was a lot of dreaming, planning, praying, patiently and impatiently waiting, suffering, learning, and blood sweat and tears poured into this shop.  And it feels like a really, really big deal to us and yet, like the coffee-buyers and work-goers outside of that hospital window, I know that life goes on.  Time does not stand still.  I wish it would!  We still have other jobs to go to, school and church events to attend, prom and graduation coming up, dinners to cook each night, groceries to buy, laundry to do, a dog to walk and I find myself questioning why we thought this was a good idea in the first place?

But is there ever a perfect time to have a baby open a shop? 

Nope, and we all know what God does to the best laid plans:

So it feels apropos, after months of hard labor, to deliver open The Ice Cream Cottage on this Mother's Day weekend.  Our eighth baby.  We even had the shop baptized enthroned last night.  I think that's what you call hedging your bets ;)

The Cottage Crew is as ready as we can be:

Please pray for our sanity and success.  And a very Happy Mother's Day to all of you!!