It’s official. I made the mistake I suppose all parents are destined to make. I blinked. I blinked and the tiny newborns cradled in my arms were suddenly crawling towards me with silly grins on their faces. I blinked and the babies crawling towards me suddenly walked and talked and asked me a thousand questions a day. I blinked again and the chubby toddlers grew long arms and long legs and big opinions. I must have blinked a few more times because this morning I found myself sobbing in a carpool line as I watched Charlie, our third grader, and Libby, our kindergartner, walk into school together. As they walked away from me, I realized one of the most important and special stages of my life has ended. Now, they are as much the world’s as they are mine. And I’ve decided I simply have to stop this whole blinking thing. It’s much too hard on my heart.

Fun, faith, and . . . ummm . . . fruit loops? I'm sorry. I must have read that wrong.

Nope. You read it right. Fun, faith, and fruit loops. It's the perfect title for this blog. Let me tell you why.

The fun part is easy. I like to have it. As often as possible. I'm sure you feel the same way. Fun is just so much . . . FUN! And it's incredibly interesting to think about the many ways people go about creating their fun. For me? Baking chocolate chip banana bread is fun. So is a night out with my husband, coloring with my kids, and having a good chat with a close friend. Lying under an umbrella on the beach is fun. Taking a long walk with an Ipod full of Chris Tomlin and Rhianna songs is fun.

Yes, I have both Chris Tomlin AND Rhianna on my Ipod. I'm full of contradictions. Or maybe I should call them conflictions. They certainly aren't convictions . . . yet.

My ideas of fun could fill up pages and I'm sure you have your own lengthy lists of people, activities, games, and hobbies that can make you smile when it's the last thing in the world you feel like doing. Fun is one of the great gifts of life. We should all try to have more of it, if you ask me.

Now what about the faith?

Wow.

How do I cover this one in a paragraph or two?

The dictionary defines faith as belief not resting on logical proof or material evidence. Hmmm. I get it, but I think it sounds a little boring and a lot tough to swallow. In the Bible, faith is defined as the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. That's from Hebrews 11:1, if you're interested, and that's the definition I'm going with. It just makes sense to me.

I realize not everyone claims to have a specific kind of faith or even to be particularly faithful. Still, I bet most people will admit to having hopes. Most humans look for the hope in all situations, especially us women. We hope it doesn't rain for the picnic we planned. We hope our husbands remember to pick up the milk we asked for. We hope to lose five pounds before bathing suit season.

We have hopes for our marriages, our families, or friends, our careers, our lives. And most of the time, we believe the things we hope for are going to happen. Well, maybe not losing five pounds, but the other stuff. We wouldn't plan a picnic if we didn't think the sun was going to rise. We wouldn't ask our husbands for help if we didn't expect them to come through for us, even if only to pick up the one item on the grocery list we forgot. We wouldn't accept new jobs or fall in love or bring children into the world if we didn't truly believe such enormous decisions would have positive consequences.

So you see, you might not consider faith to be a part of your life, but I'm guessing it is. In some form.

When I think about faith in my own life, I think about God. For me, He is the creator of my faith and He is all that is good and faithful. I believe God is at work in my world. I believe He will lead me down the paths He wants me to travel. I know some of those paths will be filled with mistakes and sorrow and pain, but I believe God is using every experience in my life to make me a better wife, mother, and friend, and most importantly, to draw me closer to Him. I have faith that my life will have meaning because it belonged to God.

Finally, the fruit loops!

Can't you just picture of big bowl of fruit loops in all their sugar coated glory? Truthfully, I can't eat fruit loops anymore. They're too sweet for me. I used to love 'em though. Craved those suckers. My mom only allowed me to eat them when we visited my grandparents' house and boy did I look forward to those trips with mouthwatering anticipation.

I still desire fruit loops today. Only now, my fruit loops have specific names and, on bad days, they aren't nearly as sweet as the fruit loops of my past. Today, my fruit loops go by the titles of Adam, Charlie, Libby, and a host of other family and friends who serve to make my head spin with every emotion in the book on a regular basis.

Yes. I call my people fruit loops. As in, "Husband, did you really take our children out of the house in those outfits? You are such a fruit loop." And "Son, are you seriously trying to tell me you want another box of legos when you already have ten-thousand in your collection? You are a total fruit loop." Or, "Daughter, do you honestly think I'm going to answer 'yes' to that question because it's the fifth time you've asked me in the last three minutes? What a fruit loop."

Fruit loops are the perfect way to describe the people I know best, love most, and need more than I'm often willing to admit. Fruit loops are SO like the people who inhabit our lives. They come in all kinds of colors and flavors, yet, when you put them all together, they create this magnificent collection of wonderful goodness.

Sometimes, I wake up and think I don't want fruit loops today. I'd like to try something different. Something new and exciting and completely unlike the life I chose for myself when I got married, had children, and put my career in a self-induced holding pattern.

But most of the time, when I look around and see the fruit loops in my life, they make me smile. They fill my heart with a pleasure I can't possibly describe. They ARE my pleasure. They ARE my heart.

I couldn't live without my fruit loops. I also couldn't live without my fun and my faith.

So there you have it folks. Fun, faith, and fruit loops. The perfect title for a blog about life . . . from my vantage point, at least.

Okay folks, here goes nothing. Or everything. Hey, it's gotta be at least something, right? Something new. Something exciting. Something I'm sure to have plenty of second thoughts about because that's what people with type 'A' personalities and a healthy touch of OCD do. We think about things. A lot. Then we think about them again. And just to be sure our minds never have a moment to stop racing, reevaluating, recalculating, and replaying, we think about them one more time.

Yes, I've been thinking about this whole blogging thing for a while now. It seems pretty interesting. I can make the random and enormously messy jumble of chaotic thoughts that enter my brain on a daily basis available to the whole wide world. At no cost, other than the cost of my own vanity, of course. Wow. I'm not sure it's really necessary, but it sure sounds like a good way to get some free therapy, doesn't it? And who doesn't need a bit of that these days?

So, like I said, here goes.