I miss the warmer days of spring, summer and fall. Today I really want to go outside. I want to feel sunshine on my face and smell the air perfumed with the scents of grass, flowers, and sun. Alas, it is cloudy and dreary. There is snow on most of the ground, and those areas that are bare, are mud.
As I was switching my laundry from the washing machine to the dryer I had the thought that I really wish it was warmer so that I can use my laundry line to dry my blankets and sheets. I love how crisp they are and how they smell of sunshine. I miss the coolness of the clothes as I hang them up and the warmth as I take them down. I love how on a hot day it feels like air conditioning in between the lines of drying clothes.
I miss my garden. I love growing plants. I love tomatoes warm from the vine and carrots freshly pulled from the earth and brushed off with my hands. I love fresh peas. I love the purple flowers that produce eggplants. I don't love tomato horn worms, but my chickens do. I don't love getting my hands dirty, but I do love digging around with my gloves on. Most of the time I don't even mind mowing and raking. I really having dinner at night and knowing where my food came from. I love trying to grow new things and the figuring out what to do with them when they do grow. I love that my kids can snack on something from the garden and don't need to come in and ask me for something to eat every 30 minutes. In just a few weeks I am going to start some of my plants to transplant later in the summer. I can hardly wait.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Friday, February 11, 2011
Random
I have a cold. It's really the first one I've gotten this year. As soon as I would hear about something going around, or as soon as I saw my kids even start to sniffle, I got out the Airborn and started taking it. This cold snuck up on me, though. That is why I am relaxing and taking some time to update my blog.
The last two weeks have been a little bit crazy for me. Robert got a new job and it took him to Oklahoma City for some training. He left on a Sunday and got back on a Friday. So for 5 days and 5 nights I was alone with the kids. We did okay. We had a few struggles, the housework fell behind a little bit, but we also found some things we really liked.
One of those things happened in the evening. One evening I was doing the dinner dishes with Lindsey and Taylor was reading stories to the other two little kids. After we finished dishes, Lindsey joined them and all 4 kids were cuddled up on the recliner while Taylor read. They loved it so much that they didn't even want to talk to their dad when he called because they were in the middle of the story. I liked this so well that when a friend invited me and the kids to go play one of the nights Robert was gone, I chose to stay home and enjoy the peaceful evening with the kids reading stories. It also helped them to calm down and get ready for bed easier.
The other thing I really like was actually putting the kids to bed. Robert in the past has put them to bed, so I was really worried about doing this. The kids bedrooms are opposite each other and I took a chair and sat right in the middle of the hallway. The kids got in their beds and snuggled down while I read stories. I found a list of stories to read to young children, so I decided to work through some of the list. The first story I read them was Rip Van Winkle. They loved it! Then we read Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling, and now we are working our way through Pinocchio. My kids are loving these stories. I love that they have good morals and they are classics. I am seriously thinking of making a list of some of the books from this list to give when people want to know what my kids need for Christmas/birthdays.
In my need to simplify some things, I am leaning away from getting toys for my kids. I'm not against them having any toys to play with, but they have SO many already. They don't even play with half of them, and then they end up throwing a bunch on the floor looking for the one they want, but they don't want to put the ones they've throw out away. I need to do a great purge, but I need to maybe get the kids out first.
Also along this line, I want to share experiences with the kids for their birthdays instead of buying them "things". It's one thing if they need a pair of pants or something, but to just buy them something because it's their birthday, I'd rather give them an experience. Lindsey just had a birthday and wanted to go to Agri-Action for her birthday. It was great! It cost us just $2 to get the whole family in. She got to climb all over and inside of big tractors and little tractors, sit on really cool lawn mowers and eat peanuts and throw the shells on the floor. She got a cool bag, a magic pencil that changed colors with heat, some candy, and a key chain flashlight. I know there were a few other things she got, also, but I can't think of them right now. Now how could I beat that with a toy that she may or may not play with? And to think, Agri-Action is almost always right around her birthday, so we could make it a tradition if she wants. Now don't worry, she did get some toys and fun things for her birthday. That is what Grandparents and Aunts and Uncles are for.
This is all a little random, I guess. I'm going to blame it on the cold making my brain fuzzy. Anyway, that is what I've been up to.
The last two weeks have been a little bit crazy for me. Robert got a new job and it took him to Oklahoma City for some training. He left on a Sunday and got back on a Friday. So for 5 days and 5 nights I was alone with the kids. We did okay. We had a few struggles, the housework fell behind a little bit, but we also found some things we really liked.
One of those things happened in the evening. One evening I was doing the dinner dishes with Lindsey and Taylor was reading stories to the other two little kids. After we finished dishes, Lindsey joined them and all 4 kids were cuddled up on the recliner while Taylor read. They loved it so much that they didn't even want to talk to their dad when he called because they were in the middle of the story. I liked this so well that when a friend invited me and the kids to go play one of the nights Robert was gone, I chose to stay home and enjoy the peaceful evening with the kids reading stories. It also helped them to calm down and get ready for bed easier.
The other thing I really like was actually putting the kids to bed. Robert in the past has put them to bed, so I was really worried about doing this. The kids bedrooms are opposite each other and I took a chair and sat right in the middle of the hallway. The kids got in their beds and snuggled down while I read stories. I found a list of stories to read to young children, so I decided to work through some of the list. The first story I read them was Rip Van Winkle. They loved it! Then we read Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling, and now we are working our way through Pinocchio. My kids are loving these stories. I love that they have good morals and they are classics. I am seriously thinking of making a list of some of the books from this list to give when people want to know what my kids need for Christmas/birthdays.
In my need to simplify some things, I am leaning away from getting toys for my kids. I'm not against them having any toys to play with, but they have SO many already. They don't even play with half of them, and then they end up throwing a bunch on the floor looking for the one they want, but they don't want to put the ones they've throw out away. I need to do a great purge, but I need to maybe get the kids out first.
Also along this line, I want to share experiences with the kids for their birthdays instead of buying them "things". It's one thing if they need a pair of pants or something, but to just buy them something because it's their birthday, I'd rather give them an experience. Lindsey just had a birthday and wanted to go to Agri-Action for her birthday. It was great! It cost us just $2 to get the whole family in. She got to climb all over and inside of big tractors and little tractors, sit on really cool lawn mowers and eat peanuts and throw the shells on the floor. She got a cool bag, a magic pencil that changed colors with heat, some candy, and a key chain flashlight. I know there were a few other things she got, also, but I can't think of them right now. Now how could I beat that with a toy that she may or may not play with? And to think, Agri-Action is almost always right around her birthday, so we could make it a tradition if she wants. Now don't worry, she did get some toys and fun things for her birthday. That is what Grandparents and Aunts and Uncles are for.
This is all a little random, I guess. I'm going to blame it on the cold making my brain fuzzy. Anyway, that is what I've been up to.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Learning Experiences
Have you ever had so many thoughts running through your head and they are so jumbled that you just know if you try to write them down they won't make any sense? The whole month of December and into the beginning of January was like that for me. Then, there is the fact that I think too many people are way too open on the internet and some things should be kept personal. In a way to sort through some of that and still keep personal those things that really didn't need to be shared to the whole world, I haven't blogged much lately. I think I'm a little better now. I'm coming down from my sugar high, my hormones seem to be leveling out a bit, and the stress of the holidays is over.
You know, Fall and Winter are full of all kinds of stress and stress inducers. It starts with Halloween. You know what I realized, I don't like Halloween. I don't like having to find the perfect costume, I don't like taking the kids around especially since it can be very cold here, and I REALLY don't like all the candy that comes with Halloween. I believe I have an addiction to sugar. I love it, but it really doesn't love me. Halloween comes, I eat a lot of candy because my kids don't need it, right? Then, my blood sugar crashes and I feel down, so I eat more candy, and thus begins the sugar roller coaster. I tried talking the family out of Halloween this last year, but it didn't go over too well, then the flu hit our house. We really didn't end up doing much celebrating as it was. I am going to try harder next year to think of some other way to get out of this sugar orgy that we call Halloween.
Shortly after Halloween comes Thanksgiving. Now, Thanksgiving is just about my favorite holiday. The family all comes together, we eat, we play games, and we enjoy being a family. The biggest stress comes from cooking, but no matter which side of the family we are celebrating with, it seems that everyone helps out and so it isn't that much stress. However, more sugar follows in the form of pies. If your pie didn't get all the way eaten then you have leftovers to take home, too.
You better get take advantage of some rest on Thanksgiving because Christmas starts the next day. For us that means going and getting our tree, which is fun. After the fun, though, there is the stress of presents and putting up the decorations and making neighbor gifts and somewhere in there teaching your kids that Christmas isn't about Santa and presents and trees, it is about Jesus Christ. Behind all of that is again, sugar. We dip pretzels and oreo cookies into chocolate and caramel. We make almond bark and peanut butter balls. The stores are full of Santa and bell shaped chocolates and the ever present candy cane. Knowing that I don't handle sugar well, I resisted most of this, but it is so easy to have just a little more than normal since it's the holidays.
Any normal year I'd be just a little stressed, but okay, but this wasn't any normal year. The Monday after Thanksgiving Robert unexpectedly, and unfairly, lost his job. Due to some dishonesty from his employer, he was unable to collect unemployment. He began immediately looking for another job, but the fields of Landscaping and Agriculture, where he is most familiar, are not really hiring people when there is snow on the ground. I became very angry and bitter, two of the most negative emotions a person can have. Robert was angry, too, but he seemed to overcome it sooner than I did. I really had to pray a lot to let go of those bad feelings. Following that I felt empty and the word that best describes my emotional state was despair. I had never felt despair like that before. In the past I've relied a lot on the hope that the future would be better. I've had time after time where that has proven to be the case and even though I believed that things would get better, I lost hope that it would actually happen. I didn't know how we were going to pay our bills. I hated having people help us out because I didn't know what to do for them and I didn't know when things would get better. I knew even once Robert found a job, (if he found a job) we would be playing catch-up financially and I wondered how we would ever get back on top. I felt so very helpless. We didn't feel like I should get a job, and I just didn't know what to do. I knew what I really needed was a little more faith. Faith in Jesus Christ and His promised blessings. Faith that even though we made some mistakes that we were still doing what we could to follow Him and that He would not leave us comfortless. Faith that even though we didn't know why we were having this struggle, that it was really for our good. Faith to learn whatever lesson it was that we were supposed to learn from this.
I have learned a few things. I learned that just because a pair of pants get a hole in the knee does not mean they are immediately destined to become cut-offs. They can be patched, especially if you catch the hole quickly before it gets too big. With a little creativity you can even make the patches look super cute and then the pants are even more desirable than they were before you patched them. I have learned that I have a lot of resources available to me and that if I combine those with the talents I've been blessed with, I can still do good. I have a lot of yarn and it doesn't take much to make a pair of mittens which I can then pass on to school teachers who can share with those children who either don't have something to keep their hands warm, or forget. I am learning to create meals from foods that are inexpensive and have long storage lives. I WILL find a squash recipe my family likes, either that, or they will finally get used to eating it. I am learning that being the best wife and mother I can be is the most important thing I can do. That means doing the laundry, washing the dishes and sweeping the floor are not just household chores, but means of bringing me and my family closer to Christ.
Now, Robert has accepted a job offer. I really do hope I learned what I needed to because with this job I am sure that I will have many more lessons to learn.
You know, Fall and Winter are full of all kinds of stress and stress inducers. It starts with Halloween. You know what I realized, I don't like Halloween. I don't like having to find the perfect costume, I don't like taking the kids around especially since it can be very cold here, and I REALLY don't like all the candy that comes with Halloween. I believe I have an addiction to sugar. I love it, but it really doesn't love me. Halloween comes, I eat a lot of candy because my kids don't need it, right? Then, my blood sugar crashes and I feel down, so I eat more candy, and thus begins the sugar roller coaster. I tried talking the family out of Halloween this last year, but it didn't go over too well, then the flu hit our house. We really didn't end up doing much celebrating as it was. I am going to try harder next year to think of some other way to get out of this sugar orgy that we call Halloween.
Shortly after Halloween comes Thanksgiving. Now, Thanksgiving is just about my favorite holiday. The family all comes together, we eat, we play games, and we enjoy being a family. The biggest stress comes from cooking, but no matter which side of the family we are celebrating with, it seems that everyone helps out and so it isn't that much stress. However, more sugar follows in the form of pies. If your pie didn't get all the way eaten then you have leftovers to take home, too.
You better get take advantage of some rest on Thanksgiving because Christmas starts the next day. For us that means going and getting our tree, which is fun. After the fun, though, there is the stress of presents and putting up the decorations and making neighbor gifts and somewhere in there teaching your kids that Christmas isn't about Santa and presents and trees, it is about Jesus Christ. Behind all of that is again, sugar. We dip pretzels and oreo cookies into chocolate and caramel. We make almond bark and peanut butter balls. The stores are full of Santa and bell shaped chocolates and the ever present candy cane. Knowing that I don't handle sugar well, I resisted most of this, but it is so easy to have just a little more than normal since it's the holidays.
Any normal year I'd be just a little stressed, but okay, but this wasn't any normal year. The Monday after Thanksgiving Robert unexpectedly, and unfairly, lost his job. Due to some dishonesty from his employer, he was unable to collect unemployment. He began immediately looking for another job, but the fields of Landscaping and Agriculture, where he is most familiar, are not really hiring people when there is snow on the ground. I became very angry and bitter, two of the most negative emotions a person can have. Robert was angry, too, but he seemed to overcome it sooner than I did. I really had to pray a lot to let go of those bad feelings. Following that I felt empty and the word that best describes my emotional state was despair. I had never felt despair like that before. In the past I've relied a lot on the hope that the future would be better. I've had time after time where that has proven to be the case and even though I believed that things would get better, I lost hope that it would actually happen. I didn't know how we were going to pay our bills. I hated having people help us out because I didn't know what to do for them and I didn't know when things would get better. I knew even once Robert found a job, (if he found a job) we would be playing catch-up financially and I wondered how we would ever get back on top. I felt so very helpless. We didn't feel like I should get a job, and I just didn't know what to do. I knew what I really needed was a little more faith. Faith in Jesus Christ and His promised blessings. Faith that even though we made some mistakes that we were still doing what we could to follow Him and that He would not leave us comfortless. Faith that even though we didn't know why we were having this struggle, that it was really for our good. Faith to learn whatever lesson it was that we were supposed to learn from this.
I have learned a few things. I learned that just because a pair of pants get a hole in the knee does not mean they are immediately destined to become cut-offs. They can be patched, especially if you catch the hole quickly before it gets too big. With a little creativity you can even make the patches look super cute and then the pants are even more desirable than they were before you patched them. I have learned that I have a lot of resources available to me and that if I combine those with the talents I've been blessed with, I can still do good. I have a lot of yarn and it doesn't take much to make a pair of mittens which I can then pass on to school teachers who can share with those children who either don't have something to keep their hands warm, or forget. I am learning to create meals from foods that are inexpensive and have long storage lives. I WILL find a squash recipe my family likes, either that, or they will finally get used to eating it. I am learning that being the best wife and mother I can be is the most important thing I can do. That means doing the laundry, washing the dishes and sweeping the floor are not just household chores, but means of bringing me and my family closer to Christ.
Now, Robert has accepted a job offer. I really do hope I learned what I needed to because with this job I am sure that I will have many more lessons to learn.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
101
Somehow over the course of time I reached 100 posts, and this is #101! What a crazy ride this life is. I know if I had posted all of the times I thought about posting I would be way past 101 by now, I'd be at like 500, but then kids wake up, or I'm in bed (I do my best thinking with my head on the pillow). So, here is to the New Year!!!!
Re-cap of my goals for the past year.
Goal #1- Take piano lessons:
Didn't happen. Mainly because our money went different places. That being said, I was called to be the pianist in Primary and so now I will be teaching myself and getting a lot of piano practice in.
Goal #2- Paint my room:
Again, didn't happen. Reason- no money for paint, at least the paint I want. I have some paint from my mom and from other projects, so I could use that, but they aren't the colors I want. In fact, no room in the house was painted this year.
Goal #3- Establish a strawberry bed:
Ummm, yeah. The bed is there, all laid out, but planting the strawberries didn't turn out so good this year. Robert and I have different ideas on gardening, both good, but both don't always match up. Somehow the location we picked for a strawberry bed gets dried out really fast. I tried to keep up with watering it, but alas, the plants shriveled up and died.
Goal #4- Finish curtains for the sliding glass door:
Nope, this didn't happen either. It wasn't that I didn't spend time at my sewing machine, it just was that I had other things I was working on, like patching the knees in pants, or turning pants into skirts. Things that kept the family clothed.
Goal #5- Refinish coffee table:
Well, this one got about half way done, so that's progress. I got it painted and a layer or resin poured in. I thought I had enough resin, but it didn't go as far as I wanted it to, so I bought a big thing on the internet and it had gelled somehow and wouldn't work, so that was a bust. I would still like to make the resin layer thicker, but it works for right now.
So yeah, not much of what I intended to do got done this year, and honestly, I don't feel too bad about it. While each of the above goals were good ones, I spent my time on things that I felt were more important, and my money also. I know that I did a lot of things that were less important, too though. This year I would like to work on that a little bit.
I don't really know what my goals for this coming year will be. A lot of things happened this past year that have made me reflect on what is important and what I really want out of my life and who I want to become. One thing that I know I want to do, though, is to simplify. I want to simplify my house and my life in a major way. I'll let you know how that goes.
Re-cap of my goals for the past year.
Goal #1- Take piano lessons:
Didn't happen. Mainly because our money went different places. That being said, I was called to be the pianist in Primary and so now I will be teaching myself and getting a lot of piano practice in.
Goal #2- Paint my room:
Again, didn't happen. Reason- no money for paint, at least the paint I want. I have some paint from my mom and from other projects, so I could use that, but they aren't the colors I want. In fact, no room in the house was painted this year.
Goal #3- Establish a strawberry bed:
Ummm, yeah. The bed is there, all laid out, but planting the strawberries didn't turn out so good this year. Robert and I have different ideas on gardening, both good, but both don't always match up. Somehow the location we picked for a strawberry bed gets dried out really fast. I tried to keep up with watering it, but alas, the plants shriveled up and died.
Goal #4- Finish curtains for the sliding glass door:
Nope, this didn't happen either. It wasn't that I didn't spend time at my sewing machine, it just was that I had other things I was working on, like patching the knees in pants, or turning pants into skirts. Things that kept the family clothed.
Goal #5- Refinish coffee table:
Well, this one got about half way done, so that's progress. I got it painted and a layer or resin poured in. I thought I had enough resin, but it didn't go as far as I wanted it to, so I bought a big thing on the internet and it had gelled somehow and wouldn't work, so that was a bust. I would still like to make the resin layer thicker, but it works for right now.
So yeah, not much of what I intended to do got done this year, and honestly, I don't feel too bad about it. While each of the above goals were good ones, I spent my time on things that I felt were more important, and my money also. I know that I did a lot of things that were less important, too though. This year I would like to work on that a little bit.
I don't really know what my goals for this coming year will be. A lot of things happened this past year that have made me reflect on what is important and what I really want out of my life and who I want to become. One thing that I know I want to do, though, is to simplify. I want to simplify my house and my life in a major way. I'll let you know how that goes.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
My Cup Runneth Over
A week ago, today, I was set apart as the Primary Pianist. Good thing I have a piano again, huh? To say I felt inadequate is an understatement. I have always been surrounded by music. My mom played piano the whole time I was growing up and I took lessons for a little while when I was younger, but then life got busy and playing the piano went into the background. After we moved here I got my own piano, but I didn't really play it all that often. Oh, I made token efforts to play and the kids would plink out a tune here and there, but that was all. I am not that good and I'll be the first to tell you that I really should have payed better attention to my piano teacher all those years ago. Still, I believe the the Lord qualifies those whom he calls. As I was struggling to learn one of the songs that I was asked to play I just felt very overwhelmed, so I went into my room and poured out my heart in prayer. As I was doing this, I began to realize that while I will struggle with this, and I will make mistakes, that this is for my good and benefit and also for the benefit of my family. That because I was given this calling, I will improve my talent of playing the piano. My children will have wholesome music in our home and it will be a blessing to us to gather around the piano and sing, much as it was a blessing for me to sing while my mom played in our home growing up. I hope that as I play that my children will come to love and appreciate music. Taylor already wants to learn the piano, but I don't know how to teach her, but maybe that will come, too. I am already seeing an improvement in the songs I've been practicing, which is good since we will be performing them in a couple of weeks. I'm still not sure how I will get all my practicing in since Rachel likes to climb on my lap and play once she hears me playing, but somehow it will come, this I believe. I am truly grateful for this opportunity and even though I do feel overwhelmed at times, I am also at peace.
Life is difficult right now, but the Lord is mindful of me and my family. He knows our needs before we do, like me getting a piano before I knew I would need it. He will strengthen us and support us if we put our trust in Him and let Him lead us. I don't know what the future will bring, but I know it will be wonderful. There is a song from The Forgotten Carols where the singer tells us that she didn't get the things she wanted, but she was given what she needed. What we think we want and what we think we need may not be what we really need, but what we get from the Lord is always for our good, even if it is something that causes us to struggle, like me stumbling through these Christmas songs.
Life is difficult right now, but the Lord is mindful of me and my family. He knows our needs before we do, like me getting a piano before I knew I would need it. He will strengthen us and support us if we put our trust in Him and let Him lead us. I don't know what the future will bring, but I know it will be wonderful. There is a song from The Forgotten Carols where the singer tells us that she didn't get the things she wanted, but she was given what she needed. What we think we want and what we think we need may not be what we really need, but what we get from the Lord is always for our good, even if it is something that causes us to struggle, like me stumbling through these Christmas songs.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Changes
Change is hard, even when it is good, or maybe especially when it is good. I had a few days a while ago when I really loved cleaning my house. I found joy in vacuuming and washing dishes, happiness in sweeping and folding laundry. For about 2 weeks I regularly got up early and took the dogs out for a walk/jog. I was feeling more energetic, happier and stronger, then life happens. Kids get sick, I get sick, we go out of town for the weekend and schedules get messed up. Daylight Savings time ends! Once again, I am back to my old ways. See, the thing is, the changes I was making really weren't harder to do, and they actually made me feel a whole lot better, but the hard part was mental. It was fixing my thinking and just doing. I think that 90% of the battle is just getting started, to just move! Why is it so hard to change course, though. Why is it so hard to head to the kitchen sink instead of the bookshelf, or to load the laundry instead of just shoving it into a basket? Does 20 minutes of laying in bed awake, not getting up and making me more tired really better than just getting up and walking the dog? No, but it's the getting started. So, here is to getting started!
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Unexpected Blessings
Our Heavenly Father is generous and good. A few weeks ago we had a large bill come due and needed some money quickly. There was no truly easy way to come up with that amount, so we sold our piano. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done, I loved my piano. I loved how pretty it was, I loved sitting at it and hearing the notes come to life under my fingers, I love having the kids plunk out notes and discovering the wonderful world of music. I love how pretty it was mostly, though. I was a little bit prideful about my piano. I felt like it had almost become an idol in my house and I needed to prove my Heavenly Father and myself that the piano was not more important to me than my family or anything else. Now, we sold it to my brother, so it is still in the family and I can go visit it anytime I want, but it is his now, not mine.
I knew we would get another piano someday. I figured it would be a couple of years down the road, but we would get another piano. Well, I went to pick Taylor up from a friend's birthday party and the mom, out of nowhere, asked me if I wanted her piano. She had heard from another friend about my other piano and how sad I was and she had a piano that she was just using for decoration and didn't want in her house anymore, so would I like it? The piano is out of tune, missing a wheel and has a broken hammer, but other than that, it is great. It has all the same keys and will play all the same songs. Robert and one of his friends moved it in last night. It is so nice to hear the sounds of music in our house again.
I knew we would get another piano someday. I figured it would be a couple of years down the road, but we would get another piano. Well, I went to pick Taylor up from a friend's birthday party and the mom, out of nowhere, asked me if I wanted her piano. She had heard from another friend about my other piano and how sad I was and she had a piano that she was just using for decoration and didn't want in her house anymore, so would I like it? The piano is out of tune, missing a wheel and has a broken hammer, but other than that, it is great. It has all the same keys and will play all the same songs. Robert and one of his friends moved it in last night. It is so nice to hear the sounds of music in our house again.
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