Little A turns 6!

I was pregnant with Little A the longest.  She was my first baby to go past the due date.  But she was well worth the wait.  At 9:56 PM December 29, 2006, Little A entered the world at 6lbs 10oz and 17 inches long.

Big brother and big sister are thrilled with their new sister.

 

 

She was walking like a pro by the time she turned 1.

 

 

 

At age 2, she already knew how to pose for the camera.

 

 

She loved owls before owls were cool...age 3.

 

 

 

Every 4 year old girl loves to dress up.

 

 

 

By age 5, it was obvious she loved to draw, inheriting her artistic abilities from her dad.

 

 

 

By the time she turned 6, she had lost her first tooth.

 

 

 

The kids spent the day playing their new game they got for Christmas.  Little A chose what to eat for lunch and supper then we had cake and ice cream while we watched The Polar Express.  It was a nice relaxing day.

 

 

Here are a few A-isms:

 

 

Age 1 - After I closed the oven door she would come blow on the door to cool it down.

 

Age 2 - In order to get my attention, she would say, "Mommy!  Yoo-hoo! Yoo-hoo!"

 

Age 3 - When I was trying to get her to use her words instead of whining at me to get something she says to me, "Word."

 

Age 3 - Both of our faces were sunburned so I asked if her face hurt.  When she told me it didn't, I said mine was killing me.  She then says, "Nah, you're alive!"

 

Age 3 - As we were heading out the door to go somewhere, Little A informed me she wasn't quite ready to go..."I need underwear!"

 

Age 3 - While swimming, Little A is tracing the numbers on the side of the pool 6 - 3 and saying them as she traced, "6...mustache....3"

 

Age 3 - When she was having issues with the computer, I came to her rescue. "Mommy, you did it!  You're a hero!!  Thank you, Mother!"

 

Age 3 - One morning, I told her that her hair looked really cool because it was standing up all over.  She responds, "No, hair can't stand up.  They don't have legs!"

 

Almost 4 - While eating quesadillas, she gave me a kiss, then laughed and said, "I put cheese on your face!"

 

Almost 4 - Little A finds a recipe card I had thrown away.  She brings it to me and says, "Mommy, this isn't trash.  It has your writing!  It says, 'you have to make food forever.' "

 

Age 4 - She pointed to my hat in church and asked, "Where's my quiet hat?"  I gave her one of my lacey head coverings and she says, "This is my quiet hat."

 

Age 4 - When Seth asked her to say her "ABCs" she says, "A...C....phlegm." (Thanks to Achmed the dead terrorist and Jeff Dunham)

 

Age 4 - I had told Little A that I came downstairs for some peace and quiet.  As I headed back upstairs she says, "Are you going upstairs for some peace and loud?"

 

Age 4 - My cell phone was beeping because the battery was dying.  Little A was telling me it needed to be plugged in, but I wasn't in a rush to do so.  She says, "But it's saying 'please!' "

 

Age 4 - After praying with Little A because of bad dreams, she tells me that God took them away.  I said, "Isn't God awesome?"  She responds, "God is cool like a rock star!"

 

Age 5 - I made a comment about being so tired that my brain was melting.  Little A replies, "Your brain melts when you're too close to the TV. Duh!"

 

Age 5 - Little A follows me into the kitchen and says, "I'm hungry as a human!"

 

Age 5 - K asked how people make 3D paintings so Little A answered, "With 3D paint!"

 

Almost 6 - Little A was concerned that I was catching her cold so she asked if I was getting what she had.  I told her I probably was.  Very apologetically, she says, "I'm sorry for breathing."



 

 

Happy birthday, Little A!!  I love you!!!

 

 

 

 

10 years

You may recall a blog I wrote near the beginning of the year about the most difficult year of my life.  10 years ago, we lost 8 family members.  One of those was our baby.

Today was the due date 10 years ago.  I think about that baby often, especially in May, the month we lost it, and now, when it was due.  I miss that baby.  It's strange to me that I could miss someone whom I've never met, never held, never even felt in my womb.  But I do.

Of course, if we had not lost that baby, we would not have K.  I cannot imagine our life without her!  What a joy she brings to our family!  By the time we reached the due date of the baby, I was a couple months pregnant with K.

This flower was given to me in the hospital after they took the baby out.  There's a tiny ring tied onto the ribbon.  There's a shelf in our hallway where I keep this flower.  I think of our baby every time I pass by.  Although I miss it, wishing I could have had the chance to hold it in my arms, I am thankful that it didn't have to suffer in this world of sin and is enjoying the presence of Jesus.

I look forward to meeting that baby in heaven.

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!!!