Sisterly Advice

I called my sis a couple of weeks ago to get a bit of advice on how to handle life as a mother/wife that works and yet still tries to be "superwoman"!

She gave me three "must do's":
1. Get off of caffeine and white sugar
2. Exercise regularly
3. Give up some things around the house

So, Jean...I'm exercising three-four times a week and I'm officially "caffeine free"!!

After years of excessive caffeine addiction, I am three weeks clean. I am sipping a bit of caffeine right now but I feel I've earned some trust for moderation. It wasn't as hard to come off of it as I expected. The key..."wean" yourself.

Frankly, I've never felt better. My mind is much clearer and I have way more energy. The splitting headaches that I thought were from NOT having caffeine are actually gone. I guess it's a vicious cycle of believing the caffeine helps but realizing that the drug is the culprit!

I'm still obsessive about the house but I am communicating honestly about my need for help from my boys.

The white sugar...well...one thing at a time!

Thanks for the sisterly help!

Diane

Life was so crazy this past month that I failed to post a "Happy Birthday!" for my friend Di. So, I'm taking this opportunity to post one of my favorite pics from the last few weeks...."Scarey Movie Night".

Di, we really are officially full-fledged dorks! Love you, girl!

 

Family

I got a great call this past week from my mom-in-law letting me know that she and my dad-in-law were heading down for a week for a visit.

We were all thrilled around our house as the grind of the school year has set in and visitors seem to be that shot in the arm to perk up and have something to look forward to!

They got in later Thursday night and we got to show them around the school on Friday and then everyone got together today after church for pizza.

Visits like this are bittersweet. "Sweet" because it is such quality time that you may not get if we lived near them and "bitter" because it reminds me how much we miss them and wish we had them around for more events in life.

Regardless, this distance is what God has ordained and it keeps us from taking for granted the gift that is your parents in you life as you get older.

We were talking around the table last night and I lamented that while it is great to meet your future husband when you're 13...the disadvantage is that his parents know you when you're 13! They have about as many awkward, embarrassing stories involving me as my own family! AH! They really were apart of watching me grow up and I appreciate that they allowed Matt to marry me anyway!

All the Fun Without The Work

Today I got to pretend I was a second grade teacher!

I suppose being a high school substitute might be more difficult but I found the elementary level to be a total blast. The kids were good (minus a few minor "breakdowns" of sorts over hurt feelings and tiredness) and we all laughed alot together.

I breezed out of the classroom with no pending papers to grade or parents to talk to!

Subbing. All the fun without the work!

Poor JoJo

This week, Josiah has a fever and a chesty, barking-like cough.

That's right...just seven days from when he had the stomach flu.

Poor JoJo.

I'm figuring after the chickenpox, a skin-breaking bite and a good case of head lice, he should be set for excellent health! Oh, and several rounds of ear infections!

(eww...head lice. God save us from such a day!)

Kindergarten class...apparently a highly successful germ breeding environment!

An Official Announcement

I feel it has come to this....

I know this will apparently be painful to some but please, don't feel rejected!

Just for the record- I AM NOT JOINING FACE BOOK!

Good grief.

I signed up for what I thought was the ability to see other people's pages and found that I inadvertently created a page for myself! AH!

I immediately have a gazillion "friends" and people were commenting on my "wall", congratulating me in finally joining.

Listen people (otherwise known as "friends"), There is NO WAY I have the time to deal with another personal web page! I barely blog as it is! I don't understand Face Book and frankly, I think it lacks the personal charm of an old-fashioned blog.

Plus...it puts me too much in mind of My Space-which I utterly detest!

I will say, it answers the questions as to where all my buddies are when they are NOT reading my blog!

It is hard to say no. I have been warmly welcomed. Many folks have left kind words and put pictures of me up...I am weak for that kind of attention! Also, I have been invited in to a "I wanna be like Seth" group and that is amusing.

Only Tanya would continue to flatter a man whose ego is already the size of Texas! She's too nice!

I don't know. I'll have to investigate more but for now I'm long time loyal to blogger.com.

It's been good to me.

Which would I choose?

Tomorrow is my best friend's birthday.

She will be 33...I know it's probably killing her!

I was looking through years of pictures and frankly I discovered that if I had to pick my favorite moment with her-Which one would I choose?

Impossible.

With the exception of a small tisk last fall (eek!) and one night on a bus holding a certain guy's hand, I've never really even argued with her. Every time I'm with her, I'm very aware that I'm with my bestest girl pal. We ALWAYS have a blast together!

But more than that, when I think of the last few years, I remember that she's a sister to me. She loves God and so do I and so many of our conversations are about the Lord and our struggles. She's often time "gone to bat for me" to see that right is done and while she isn't perfect, she's good enough for me!

I was walking early this morning and I heard an older song that really says what I want to in this mushy, scrambled post that's the best I can do with little sleep and no money to send her a present. I wish I could some how magically have it playing but the lyrics will have to do.

Steph...My BFF...Happy Birthday and I love Ya'! You truly have blessed my life. More than you'll ever now!


Something brought you to my mind today
I thought about the funny ways
you make me laugh
And yet I feel like it's ok to cry with you
Something about just being with you
When I leave I feel like I've been with God
and that's the way it ought to be, yeah

Cause you've been more than a friend to me
you fight off my enemies
cause you have spoken the truth over my life
And you'll never know what it means to me
just to know you've been on your knees for me
Oh, you have blessed my life
more than you'll ever know
Yeah, yeah, yeah, more than you'll ever know
Yeah, yeah, yeah

You had faith
when I had none
You prayed God would bring me a brand new song
When I didn't think I could find the strength to sing
and all the while I've been hoping that I'll
do the kind of praying for you that you've done for me
and that's the way it ought to be, yeah

You have carried me
You have taken upon a burden
that wasn't your own, yeah
may that blessing return to you
A hundredfold
oh oh yeah, a hundredfold

Cause you've been more than a friend to me
you fight off my enemies
cause you have spoken the truth over my life
And you'll never know what it means to me
just to know you've been on your knees for me
Oh, you have blessed my life
more than you'll ever know
Yeah, yeah, yeah, more than you'll ever know
Yeah, yeah, yeah
More than you'll ever know, yeah, yeah, yeah
More than you'll ever know, yeah, yeah, yeah
More than you'll ever know.

-Watermark

And So It Begins...

That's right....It only ten days of school for one of my boys to get the flu.

*sigh*

The whole this is a rather funny story (except for JoJo, who at present doesn't think it's funny AT ALL) but I will refrain for one of my favorite readers who I want to come back!

Motherhood-It's never without its excitement!

"Service" Kindergarten Style

So...as I've said before, I have left my stay-at-home mom position for the life of librarian/afternoon kindergarten lady.

Wouldn't you know it...I don't have ONE girl in my afternoon class!

Am I cursed?

I DO have 7 little stinky, jumpy, sweaty, giggly, minature men and I have to say that while little boys are my specialty-these guys can wear you out!

Every day after lunch they have "rest time". Thank goodness! But, they all hate me for it. Nearly every afternoon, one of the boys will threaten me that he is "Not Coming Back!" because I made him lay down.

I told one of them the other day that he wasn't to speak to me disrespectfully..that I was an adult!

He told me quite clearly that I was NOT an adult.

(He must have gotten my family's latest memo!)

I do break the kindergarten nap rule and let them slip off their sneakers for rest time. I used to hate it when the teacher would not let us "air our feet" for nap in aftercare! Although, like most childhood perspectives..I understand it now! Fifteen minutes. That's what it takes for me to squeeze their smelly, dirty, sweaty feet into shoes that are CLEARLY not big enough for their feet!

I was tempted to gripe in my head today but I remembered the verses about serving each other and washing each other's feet.

I figure this is my version of the basin and towel.

Moms that have boys at school right now-take heart. Some of you are being supported!...

I looked around me today at a room full of boys and thought, "This is our future." These will be our men in a few years and it convicted me to pray for their little souls.

We've got to stick together as moms..praying for our children. I do love my little afternoon guys and they are growing on me. I'm breaking them in to getting hugs and kisses from me but for now I'm mostly met with "BLAH!".

Oh well...teacher revenge!

A Week In Rewind

Well, believe it or not, this is actually the first free minute that I've had to blog all week. I will warn you...it will lack all the details.

Being back to work full-time is very challenging. I love the people that I work with and know that God has put me there for this time for a reason. I'm dedicated to doing my best and being thankful for the chance to be with my boys during the day and be able to help out a bit with the finances.

Having said that....I'm so tired.

I fell asleep almost every night at 8pm and feel like I have to take every moment to do "something" so that I am staying on top of everything...housework, bills, children time, homework, work preparations, laundry, healthy hot meal....AHHH!

I came home from work last night and had a message from a friend here that she saw a lady running with her dog and it made her think of me-she wished we could still do lunch sometimes!

I put my head on the desk and cried a bit.

How do women do all of this and still maintain relationships? I've talked to my best friend ONCE (?) this week and we usually talk every other day! My other friendships here are...I don't know where they are?...I haven't talk to them all week! I feel so out of the loop. (Thanks for calling Di and Lori...that really helped!)

I will say that in a couple of weeks, I have every Tuesday and Thursday off. I thought I would dread this but I had last Thursday morning at home by myself and it was...well...FABULOUS! I ran/walked four miles, read my Bible and prayed in total quiet, had breakfast, a leisure shower and wandered into work at noon! YES..things will get much better in a couple of weeks.

I do miss homeschooling the boys very much. All three of us grew to love schooling at home and maybe we'll get to do that again one day. Meanwhile, I know it's what is best for them.

Sam loves school and can't wait to go every day. He completely enjoys some of the subjects that I didn't really highlight in homeschooling so that's great.

Jo says "it isn't terrible". He's very shy at school and his teacher says that 50% of the time, he just plays alone. I don't know what to think about that. I guess that is the way some children are...I just can't relate to it! :) The second day of school, Jo asked me if he could just stay home and homeschool! Poor baby!

Matt loves the school and is in all of his glory. The parents think he's fabulous and even my kindergartner's are asking if he's coming at the end of the day to tell them a story! Figures...I stand on my head all afternoon to get them to like me and he tells one "Bob Story" and becomes a guest speaker! It's good to see Matt loving his job again. It's been a long time...

So, I said there wouldn't be details and it seems I lied! I guess it wasn't as bad to re-live as I thought it was going to be.

Here are some pics from the week! Enjoy!




The boys on the first day of school.


Jo being very scared and shy in his class.


Sam on the phone with Grammy before going to his first class.


Jo after we arrived home on the first day. Poor boy!

Our Gleanings

Alright...There will be NO WAY to adequately describe for you what I did this morning without actual pictures of the event but I will give it my best shot as these are the types of occurrences that need blogged about!!

My friend, Lori, called me a few weeks ago to tell me about a "yard sale" of sorts that happens at a local grocery store in our town. Sav-Mor is a business that sells discount groceries, much like an Aldis, but inventories quite a bit more name brand items. If I understand correctly, they collect the overstock and close to expired items from a grocer called "Ingles" and then re-sells them discounted.

The owner of the store told me today that he noticed that once a month the stock was too much or the items were within the month of expiration and so Ingles was throwing it all away. His idea was to take the time to collect the abundance...put it out on the parking lot in random boxes and sell it to people for $6.00 a box.

So, if you can imagine...There are hundreds of banana boxes full of various foods all over a large parking lot and surrounding it are hundreds of more empty banana boxes for people to get and collect food in and then hundreds (or close to that) of people waiting around the outskirts for the owner to yell "GO!"

It was madness.

You are allowed to get a shopping cart and keep it along the side for when your box gets full but I have to say that this is only recommended for people who have someone to stay with the food. It is notoriously known that there are lurkers that will snatch carts of food when you're not looking.

I'm serious...I've never seen anything like it.

We bought and filled three boxes and we were shocked at what we came home with. For $18.00 we got well over $200.00 worth of food. I know...I totaled it! We made our money back in the 6 bags of coffee (most of them Starbucks) that we got! Tropicana juice...name-brand cereal...Most of it Organic items...so on and so on.

So, of course, I took pictures of all of it and while they don't do it justice, you can get an idea of our wonderful Saturday morning gleanings!

I cracked up when I downloaded these pictures because in all my excitement to look upon my reward, I didn't notice Jo in the background celebrating himself!

I must say that I really appreciate the owner of this store and his compassion for our community to think of ways to assist the needy. You know a good business man because he is always looking for the practical way in his work to leave gleanings for those in need. It's not absolutely free so it aids in helping those who partake to have to work a bit to contribute for the cost. It reminds me very much of the story of Ruth and Boaz in Lev. 23:22:

"'When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the LORD your God.' "

I wonder what it looked like back then when it came time for Ruth and Naomi to glean! I imagine they may have been like my friend Lori and I today as we stood on the outskirts creating our plan!