Not giving up

A long while ago, I made the commitment to not cut my hair until I reached my goal weight.  That was about a year and a half ago.

I worked out.  I ate healthier.  I drank more water.  I drank a lot less pop.  I quit eating at night.  I had one helping of meals.  I had small snacks throughout the day.  I cut down on junk food.

Nothing worked.

I finally googled "how to lose weight with hypothyroidism."  There I discovered that it is nearly impossible.

So, I surrendered.  I realized that because of my thyroid, losing weight was probably not going to happen unless I had the money to eat EXTREMELY healthy and had hours of time for exercise.  Neither one of those are in abundance in my life.

My hair had grown very long.  I was sick of it and Seth has told me more than once he hates my hair long.  I knew my goal weight was unreachable so I decided it was time to cut my hair.

Don't get me wrong.  I am NOT giving up on being healthy.  I still want to workout, eat right, drink water, etc., but now I'm just focusing on being healthy, not losing weight.

I also thought that I could donate my hair.  I did some research on various companies that use donated hair to make wigs for those who have no hair of their own for whatever reason.  I settled on Pantene Beautiful Lengths.

Here is my hair the day I got it cut.  I think this is the longest I've ever had it.

 

She cut it in pig tails.

 

 

Right after the cut.

 

 

It was done!  No turning back now.

 

 

I was able to donate 10 inches, but I wasn't too thrilled with how it turned out.  Neither was Seth or the kids.

 

 

This is what it was supposed to look like.

 

 

But I got this instead.

 

 

This is my mom.  I looked so much like her that the kids called my "grandma" all day and Seth refused to look at me.  Hmmm, I had to do something!

 

 

I styled it differently.  Which I liked better, but still, too much like my mom.

 

 

So, tonight, I dyed it.  It's a little redder than what I was hoping for, but at least I don't look so much like my mom that Seth can't look at me.  Haha  He now says I look like my cousin, Amber.  Seth wants me to put in some highlights.  We'll see.

 

 

For now, this is my hair.  I'm glad I was able to donate it.  I never thought I would be able to grow out my hair long enough to do that.  It will take some getting used to, but I'm really ok with it.  Now to convince K...

 

Halloween

I love Halloween.  I just love dressing up and becoming a new person.  I don't like to spend a lot of money on costumes.  I tell the kids to figure out what we can use at home to create most of a costume and then we'll buy accessories as needed.

Well, this year, Halloween landed on Wednesday.  Wednesday is prayer meeting at church and since we want to encourage our children to attend all meetings of the church and to consider all of them an extremely important part of a Christian life, I couldn't say we could miss it for trick-or-treating.

The kids were a bit disappointed so I told them that we could dress up for the day while we do school but they couldn't be too crazy since we would be going to prayer meeting in the evening.

October came and suddenly, we had tons of things going on (which will be in a later blog).  I realized that dressing up probably was not going to happen.  We had no time to come up with costumes let alone get out and find those finishing touches.  I knew the kids would be disappointed so I came up with a fun idea to help ease the pain of not getting to dress up this year.

I created a scavenger hunt.  I bought colored index cards and wrote out 10 clues that eventually lead each one of them on a different path to their Halloween bucket full of candy.

Little A had the orange cards.  Since she can't read, yet, I helped her out.

 

J had the green cards.  He whipped through the scavenger hunt very quickly.  I guess I didn't make the clues hard enough.  Hahaha

 

 

K had the pink cards.  Here, she finds one hidden underneath one of the cushions of our porch swing.

 

 

They all found their buckets and said this was the best Halloween ever!  I'm so glad they enjoyed it.

 

 

I still bought candy for the trick-or-treaters who might have stopped by while we were still home, but no one came before we left for church.  After church, I thought maybe we could find something to dress up in for those late trick-or-treaters.  When we got home, we all dashed inside and found our costumes.

 

J is a ninja.  Little A is a fairy cat...I think?  And K is a princess, with a dog I guess.

 

 

Of course, I had to get in on the fun.  I am a nerd.

 

 

 

No one ever did come to our door begging for candy so I guess we got ourselves some extra.  :)

 

 

 

 

 

Being Me

I have always struggled with being neat.  My bedroom growing up was always a mess.  I didn't see the point in putting my clothes away if I was just going to get them out to wear again.  The same goes for making my bed.  But when I did clean, I really cleaned.  It was an all day job.  I take everything out of its place, dust, look through, reminisce, reorganize, and put things away - often in a new place.  On rare occasions, I might get rid of something, but I'm a huge pack rat so I hold on to almost anything.

Of course, this all carried over into adulthood.  My dorm room at college was always a mess - except for the days they were inspected.  :)  I can do a quick clean if necessary, but to me, it's not satisfactory unless it's perfect and since prefection takes a lot of time, I don't bother starting.  I got married when I was 20, and you guessed it, always a messy house.  Seth and I would clean together when preparing for company but in college, company could drop by unannounced.  Friends would often do my dishes for me.  But I didn't mind too much.  I was a busy college student, Seth was student teaching or working full-time.  Neither of us put in much effort in keeping the place clean.

A couple years ago, someone came to me as sort of an "intervention" on my lack of homemaking skills.  By this point, I had been working harder at keeping a nice home, the kids had their chores to do and I was homeschooling.  I have always known my house wasn't perfectlly clean, especially with short-notice guests or weekly guests.  But when family came to town, Seth and I worked like crazy to get the house nice, especially if someone was staying in our house over night.  That wasn't even good enough.  It hurt.  I wanted to quit trying.  I didn't want anyone to come to my house ever again.  If my best still wasn't good enough, why bother?

This past weekend my parents, Seth's parents, and my brother-in-law came to town to help us reshingle our roof.  It was the first time someone has stayed in our house since that intervention.  Once I realized how many people would be around (not everyone stayed in our house over night) and that someone was actually going to sleep here, I freaked out.  This was about a month before anyone was going to come and I had an extremely emotional panic attack.  What was I going to do?

Someone from my church realized that I was really struggling and she sat me down and talked with me.  She pointed out that this is my personality.  I am the creative one, the peace-maker, driven to make everyone happy.  Having so many people coming to my home at once was stressing me out to the point that I was completely useless and not focused on God at all.  The woman just told me to be myself.  To not try to impress everyone, not try to please everyone, but to accept who I am, who God made me to be.

So, for the first time ever, I wasn't in a sweaty, cleaning mess when people started to arrive.  In fact, I had been sick and unable to do much anyway.  But I didn't stress out about it.  Seth ended up having to work late so he couldn't help much either.  I made a point to clean the kitchen counters, clean the bathroom, and made sure the kids' rooms were clean, especially the room that my brother-in-law would be staying in.  I made the beds with clean sheets and collapsed on the couch.

Before my parents arrived, I clean more in the kitchen and made more room in the living room to sit.  By the time my in-laws arrived, more areas were cleaned.  But, I still had dirty dishes sitting on the counter next to the sink.  I still had bins sitting in the living room full of papers I had just gone through and sorted.  I had a box of miscellaneous items I still needed to sort through sitting next to the couch.  My end tables weren't cleaned off or organized.  But this was my house.  I did put in a little extra effort for the guests, but I also felt free to be myself.  I didn't stress about getting it spotless and perfectly clean, I didn't feel guilty about not getting it prefectly clean, and I didn't worry too much about what everyone thought.  My kids were doing their chores, I was doing mine.  I kept in routine as much as I could - you know with company how routine just goes out the window!

My mom and mother-in-law helped clean up after supper one evening and helped finish washing all the dishes that had been left there from previous meals.  I wasn't embarrassed at all, but was thankful we could work together and I actually enjoyed working with them.  My parents and Seth's parents haven't seen each other since our wedding so it was fun to see them together again after so many years!

My in-laws are still here.  The kids and I are still keeping up with our routine the best we can.  Although, I'm still fighting a cold so I haven't been putting too much pressure on doing school this week and the kids have helped with cleaning up old shingles too.  The kids continue their chores, I continue mine, and my mother-in-law cleans up what we miss.  :)  I honestly don't mind at all.  This is our life.  This is what we do day to day.

With homeschooling, a hard-working husband who comes home exhausted and sometimes works late, and me with the extra tiredness of hypothyroidism, we certainly do our best.  It's not perfect, it may not be clean according to other people's standards, and we may not get everything on our list done everyday, but we do it.  I am working on doing it with joy and doing it for the Lord.  I often have to remind the kids of doing the same.  Some days go well, some days are hard.  I make no excuses.

I am trying my best to simply be me and not trying to be anyone else, or clean like anyone else.  This is my home.  This is how we make it work.  I have more joy when I am just being me.

Am I Grateful?

Last night, as I was going to sleep, I started praying as I often do.  Seth and I had a conversation about how cold it would be in Idaho and if the kids and I could handle it if we lived there.  We have planned on making our permanent home in Idaho or close to it; however, God has not yet opened that door.

I am pretty happy being in Wichita, though.  Our church really helps with that.  And I honestly wouldn't mind staying here the rest of our lives.  It's this house that I really hate living in.

So, as I prayed, I pointed out to God, again, that we are in desperate need of getting out of this house.  And I began to tell Him why when my mind started to wander.  Of course God knows our needs better than we do and I struggle sometimes trusting Him when He says to stay in this house for now.

Then, I suddenly became aware of something.  I was humming a song in my head and my fingers were dancing along.  I didn't realize I was "humming" anything at all.  Last I remembered, I was just simply talking to God about moving, anywhere, out of this house.  The song I was "humming" was a song I haven't heard since I was a kid.  I had sung it randomly or to my children at times, but it wasn't a song that was brought up very often.  However, God decided to bring it to my mind.

Are you grumbly hateful or humbly grateful?

What's your attitude?

Do you grumble and groan or let it be known

You're grateful for all God's done for you?

Yeah, I realized my fault immediately and asked for God's forgiveness.  Then I lied there in bed thinking about how to be grateful for this house.  There are plenty of things I could tell you without hesitation that I hate about living in this house.  But, I discovered last night, there are some pretty great things about living in this house, too.

1.  We have a shower.  I am grateful that in the one bathroom, there IS a shower!  Why is that so significant?  In the house I grew up in, the only shower in the house was a cold make-shift shower in the unfinished basement.  My dad was pretty much the only person to use it regularly.  The shower was small blocks of wood surrounding a drain with a curtain that was a bit too short to go all the way around the drain area.  The faucet handles were actually about 3 or 4 feet outside of the shower so if you wanted to adjust the temperature, you had to get out, turn the knobs, then wait for the shower to respond hoping you adjusted correctly.  We did finally get a shower in our upstairs bathroom shortly after my older sister graduated from high school.  That would mean I had just finished my sophomore year.  A shower is something I now take for granted, but I was reminded last night that it is truly a blessing.

2.  We have a mostly finished basement.  This house didn't start out that way.  We have put in a lot of work to add to our living space.  As I said earlier, the house I grew up in did not have a finished basement.

3.  Our backyard is amazing.  It's big and perfect.  It has a large tree that I absolutely love - although Seth hates it because it leaves a mess of helicopter leaves.  I personally think that every house should have a large tree in the yard.  I grew up with a huge pine tree in the front yard.  I climbed it often and once, almost made it to the top.  The tree is no longer there so I truly enjoy the large tree we have now.

4.  And of course the fact that we have a house is a blessing and something that I, too often, take for granted.  We don't have to worry about neighbors on the other side of a wall as you would in an apartment or condo.  We don't have to worry about a landlord because this house is ours.  And, we're not living on the street or in a car or in a shelter.  We own our own home.  That is huge!!

So, shame on me for begging God to get us out of this house.  I still have some work to do on not hating this house, but forcing myself to find things about it to be grateful for is going to make it easier to accept that God still wants us here for a reason.  And I trust Him.

From summer to school

When I look back at our summer, I am just stunned with all that we squeezed in between the first of June to the end of August.

My 2 older kiddos spent a week at camp.  K celebrated her birthday there.  Then the day after we came home, we took off on a long drive to Idaho to visit the in-laws.  After spending a little over a week there, we drove the 20 + hours home.  J had his birthday shortly after.  We enjoyed a good time of fellowship with our church for the 4th of July and then we took off again, this time for Iowa.  My sister got married and 4 out of the 5 of us were IN the wedding.  We came home and I got ready for our VBS.  A week later, we had our VBS training day and then the week of our VBS.  The day after VBS ended, we headed to family camp in Missouri.  Upon returning home after a week at camp, I had to get back into VBS mode because our cast performed the skits for our church the very next Sunday - as in 2 days after coming home from family camp!

Then, I had to begin preparations for our schoolyear.

I was working on it right up until we started school the day after Labor Day.

This is my very first Pinterest project.  It worked for about a week.

 

 

We moved all of the books out of J's room and into our schoolroom.

 

 

 

I bought these crates for our school books and other school supplies.  This is also where Little A and K have their desks.

 

 

 

And then there's J's desk and mine.

 

 

 

I let the kids have some end-of-summer fun.  On their last "free" night, they slept in the living room.  We had popcorn and watched Agent Cody Banks, then I went to sleep in my own comfortable bed.  The kids had been wanting to wash our van so I told them to get into their swimsuits and have some fun.

 

 

 

 

Then the dreaded day arrived....well, I was excited and Little A was too.  The older 2, not so much.

 

 

 

And this is how Rambo spent the first day of school.  He didn't like being upstairs all by himself, so he found a comfy spot on the futon.

 

 

 

Happy schoolyear everyone!!!

 



 

 

 

The Miracle Ring

Seth and I were married in 1998.  When we picked out his wedding ring, it was perfect.  It wasn't too over-the-top and it wasn't just a simple gold band.  We loved it.

Seth was one of those who liked to play with his ring.  He'd take it off, roll it around, put it on other fingers, then put it back on the correct finger.  He would do this over and over while watching TV or other things.  He also took it off for work.  He did lawn care and there are dangers involved so he didn't wear his ring when he was working.

He graduated from Emmaus Bible College in 1999 and I was in my senior year that fall.  He continued doing lawn care while I finished my degree in Biblical Studies and Youth Ministries.  At some point, we went to a basketball near Des Moines to watch our Emmaus Eagles play against Faith Baptist.

And that's the last place we remembered seeing Seth's wedding ring.

He was playing with it at the game, as he always did, and at some point it disappeared.  We searched all over.  Not even sure if we had lost it at the game or somewhere else, so we looked in our apartment and the car and, well, just everywhere!  It was gone.

So, we tried to look for a replacement.  Of course, we couldn't spend that kind of money again and eventually we did settle on a cheaper ring, but it just wasn't the same.  I don't even remember him wearing it that much.

After I graduated in 2000, we moved to Lansing, Iowa, where we would work at Village Creek Bible Camp for a year.  Most of our things were stored in a garage at the camp.  But we still had a few of our own things with us.  First, we were in one of the camper cabins.  Then, in a trailer.  That's where we spent the summer.  When the busy summer camp season ended, we moved to another cabin.  It was basically a small house with our own kichen, bedroom, bathroom, and living room.  We worked the retreat season while I was pregnant with our first child.  2 other women at camp were also pregnant.

Before the next summer camp season began, we moved into the town of Waukon, not far from camp.  The camp rented out a small house for us until we needed to move in July after the baby was born.  J was born in June, then we packed up our things and moved to Wichita.

First, we rented an apartment.  We got settled into our new life with me as the new stay-at-home-mom and Seth as a teacher at Sunrise Christian Academy.  In Feb. of 2002, we moved into our house that we live in now.

The following summer, we were put in charge of the youth group and high school Sunday School class at our church.  They came to our home for activities.

Now, here is the miracle.

One evening, while the youth group was hanging out at our house, I noticed a shiny object on the floor.  I walked over to it.  And there, next to the entertainment center was Seth's wedding ring!!  After multiple moves and shifting around our possessions, the ring survived and was just randomly sitting on the floor.

I was speechless.  I squealed, picked it up, and ran downstairs to tell Seth while the group of teens watched me in confusion wondering what was wrong with me.

Seth was just as shocked as I was.  How, after losing it while living in Dubuque and moving to camp and moving to town and moving to an apartment and then moving to this house, did the ring make it through all of that?

Well, nothing short of a miracle.

Dreams

Dreams can be such a funny thing.  They say that everyone dreams several dreams every night and they don't last nearly as long as we think they do.  I don't know how accurate that is.  I do know that if I dream, I usually don't remember dreaming.

Some dreams have me boggled.  I wake up wondering, "why on earth did I dream about THAT?"  Others, I can tie in together what may have been going through my head.  Then there's those dreams that you aren't sure really are a dream until you've been awake for a few hours or more.  I find myself questioning the dream all day, "Did that happen or was that a dream?"  The ones I hate the most are the ones I realize that I'm dreaming while still dreaming and I can't wake up.

Last night I had one of those dreams that just boggled me.  I have no idea where it came from.  Seth and I were driving somewhere with Little A.  I don't know where the other 2 kids were.  We were going somewhere to find a place to land a small plane....I think.  It had something to do with landing a plane anyway.  But, on the way there, we had to drive up this very steep mountainous road.  It was too steep for our minivan.  After making a few attempts, Seth realized that we couldn't go any further and we were about to lose our van.

"Get out!!!"  Get out of the van, now!!"

I sat there, thinking, "What about Little A?  She's buckeled in the back seat!  How are we going to get her out in time?"

Next thing I know, I'm standing on the road with Seth, watching our van tumble down the side of the mountain with Little A inside.  It was terrifying.  Seth and I followed the van down the mountain as it fell apart before our eyes.  Next we see Little A flying, bouncing, rolling in her seat as the van had completely broke apart into a thousand pieces around her.  Finally, her seat slowed down and came to rest right side up with Little A safely inside.

I just knew that she would be hurt, scared, crying.  Seth and I got to her and she looks up at us with her beautiful smile and says in her typical wonderment, "I didn't know my seat could do that!"  We were thrilled to see that she was unharmed.

(On a side note: in reality she sits in a booster seat so when the van crumbled around her, she would not have been still buckeled to her seat but loosed with it and falling freely.  In the dream, it seems she was still somehow buckeled in.)

We suddenling find ourselves in a small town with no transportation, money, or anything that was left in the van.  We have barely enough cash on us to buy ourselves a meal before we walk to the next town....which happened to be my hometown in Iowa.

I kept asking Seth why we couldn't call 9-1-1 or the insurance company or anything to help us out.  Since no one was hurt, we didn't call 9-1-1.  And since it was technically Seth's fault we lost the van, he didn't think insurance could do anything.

And that was it.  The end.  No more dream.

I woke up confused, wondering why I would dream such a thing.  But at the same time very thankful that it was just a dream!  And thankful that we have our van, although it is old and more things are breaking down on it.  And thankful that we have Little A.