An Update

Yes we are still around... just not much to say I guess.

Isaiah and Huston are beginning their school year - we are easing into it. My goal is to have a couple of solid hours to work on assignments each day - we'll see if we can make that goal. For instance here is a little snap shot of this morning... I'm reading the history chapter to the boys and Lillie is yelling at us, snuggling into Huston, making noises with her lips and throwing toys... not sure how much history the guys heard. But again, we will attempt to do better next time.

I'm still unpacking boxes. I'm sure it will be a never-ending process to some degree, but this phase is tackling the rightly labeled "school room" - it's the part of the house that will be devoted to all things that home schoolers need. (a fountain coke machine, please?? that's what a home school teacher needs...) Anyway, thanks to the thrift store I have two big cabinets to use as storage so I am in the middle of unpacking and organizing all that stuff.

I am also writing my own preschool curriculum for church. Yeah, I'm asking for trouble. But really I re-write almost every week no matter what publish curriculum I use so I figure that I might as well put together something that I think is workable and use it as a framework. I'm still figuring out the framework. It will be better once I get it in place, but a lot of work up until then for sure.

And in the middle of all this I have this question... just how many layers of dirt can my children acquire before I have to wash them? (so far my answer is 5 - I'll let you know if it changes.)

See ya! and next time I'll post pictures, I promise.

10 Years Ago Today....

This is what I was doing....

Marriage advice? I don't have much, I mean I won't kid ya, our marriage is not perfect... but here are a few things that I've learned over the years and that I continually need to review...

1. Serve one another - because in doing so you are actually back-handedly serving yourself.
2. Forgive quickly - everyone has bad days and bad moments, cut them some slack.
3. Ok, this one goes against the traditional viewpoint, but go to bed angry sometimes.... now, let me clarify - for me things seem so much bigger when I'm tired. I blow things out of proportion. We could end up arguing all. night. long. about something if I choose to deal with it at the wrong time. Sleep on it and see if your perspective has changed first.
4. Don't expect them to fulfill your every need - there is only One who can do that... your husband is not God.
5. Work, work, work and don't rely on your emotions... use your head to make decisions not your feelings.

I can truthfully tell you that's how Steven and I are still together today - the road has not been an easy one for either of us - we are two different people. But God put us together because we compliment each other, I believe. And after 10 years, we are still learning things together.

Stealing a Few Moments

Oh. my. goodness. This is one of those days that I seriously think to myself that I don't get paid enough to do this job. But I went to Sonic for happy hour and I have left over chocolate cake and scooted the three boys out the door to play - so I think I might survive. (great coping skills, huh?)

So just to let you know just how much I really am in need of a pick-me-up, I will relay this story...

Our house at this point has no mirrors. The main bathroom has no accessories... no toilet paper roller, no towel rack, no mirror. We do own one wall mirror, but it is still hanging on the wall at the other house (you know, the house that just won't sell??) and I keep forgetting to go get it. The only mirror we have is in the far corner of the house - in the master bathroom.

I do, of course, go in and use it on occasion - but in the morning hubbub of things and the fact that Steven needs to get in there to prepare for work, etc. there are mornings that I use the main bathroom and therefore never look at myself.

Today was one of those days.

So I went to Sonic this afternoon. The kids are just depressing me. I know that I shouldn't take their actions and disobedience personally, but durnnit they just neither listen or obey and it's getting pretty stinky. So I thought we just had better get out of dodge before I just spontaneously combusted. So headed to happy hour we did (and no those little munchkins didn't get a thing.... yes, I'm that mean of a mommy today).

So I placed my order and soon the young little car hop came out to present me my drug of choice (pusher.) I thanked her and paid and she seemed rather distracted.... hmmm... oh well, didn't give much more of a thought... until I got home.

As I was unloading the car of kids I slid the van door closed and caught the reflection of myself in the van's tinted window... my hair was sticking straight up. No wonder that poor gal was so distracted - I looked like I had just gotten out of bed (I wish!)

Oh well, I'm home now - the kids are away from me, I have Coke, I have chocolate and I don't care about my hair. I have a moment to myself. Oops, nix that last statement, the kids are back.

Dress Up Time

One Thing I Hate...

is duplicity. I cannot stand people who put on airs when their actions do not match their words. I don't like it when people talk to me in a condescending manner and treat me like whatever they say concerning life, love, parenting is *the answer* and *only way* to do things. It bugs me greatly.

In my heart of hearts I really hope and pray that I don't do that to other people. Let's look into today as a snapshot of what really happens around here...

I have 15 million things on my to-do list and I don't even know where to start. I am attention deficit when it comes to house cleaning - I hop from one job to another and at the end of the day I have lots of little unfinished projects instead of a clean house. And if the project is close to being done, I'm good about thinking, "oh that is close enough" and will leave it incomplete until one day I wake up and find it's driving me crazy.

I have tons of ideas as to what I should do with the boys and what routines we are going to get into and I will often declare, "from now on, we are going to..." fill in the blank... and yeah, it never gets off the ground. Or it does for about 2 weeks and then I get sidetracked (can I please blame attention deficit???) and then the routine is all but forgotten. A great character trait to teach my kids...

I'm supposed to be keeping up with everything here at the house, all the stuff involving the kids, and all the work that is piling up at the church and instead I just am so tired that I sit around and often can't even put two thoughts together in a logical sequence. I can make to-do lists but they are so long and the tasks build upon each other so often that I can't do this until that is done and I can't do that because I have a 16 mo. old totally determined (ok, I just sat here for 3 minutes trying to remember the word determined) anyway, totally determined to pull things out of cabinets, climb onto table tops and eat things she finds in the trash can. Needless to say that I get distracted then... and the tasks do not get accomplished... instead they sit around half finished like everything else.

So never, ever sit here reading this blog and think that I am so put together and organized. Never, ever think that I always know how to handle every situation that my children dish out. Often times I am found yelling, "Don't yell at your brother that way, you shouldn't talk to people so rudely!!!" Yeah, that's just great parenting right there.

I hope to get to so many thoughts and happenings that have gone on around here lately, but there are just not enough hours in the day nor is there enough energy in this body to keep up with everything. Any spare time I get really just ends up going into sleeping... oh nap time, if only you took up the majority of the day - so many of my problems would be solved and I could be the organized, wonderfully peaceful mom that I should be.

Ugh.

To dispel any myths that I have become a super organized ultra homemaking mom since moving out here to the "country"....

Today, I am taking my grandma on a trip to see her cousins for lunch. I will be taking Lillie with me but the boys will stay here at the house with their grandma while I make the trek. I bought a chicken at the grocery store last night and decided that I would put it in the crockpot and let it cook overnight while I slept and then wake up to cooked chicken and broth to use in a casserole for their lunch today... so that they wouldn't have to worry about lunch... because it would already be cooked and prepared for them... and it was a great idea, so very on top of things, so very organized and I smiled to myself the whole time that I prepared the crockpot last night.

I stopped smiling this morning when I discovered that I never turned the durn thing on!! Yes I woke up to raw chicken sitting in water. Not so good for the casserole. But maybe a trip to Sonic down the way would be a good afternoon activity for them.... or there is always peanut butter sandwiches - the staple meal of the unorganized.

Golly Goodness...

where does the time go??? I just don't have many moments to sit here and put two thoughts together to expound upon what we are doing....

I have to take my boys to ballgames...


Go to the zoo to pet stingrays...



Take fish off of hooks for Isaiah...


Not to mention go to the county fair, clean the house over and over again and also feed these children every. time. I. turn. around.

I promise, I will try to get back to a routine at some point.... like anybody is really reading this anyway! Surely my kids will appreciate this running log of nothingness... :0)

Ummm, Yeah...

I'm still here. Still trying to figure stuff out - still don't seem to have the time, and more like the thought-process or energy to sit here and bust out a great post (like there were very many of those in the beginning).

But we are getting settled into our house - here are a few things I've learned so far....

*I move more slowly out here - it's like the country is rubbing off on me a little bit. When I walk out the door, it's so quiet and peaceful and slow that I find myself moving slower as well.
*I'm getting braver with the creepy crawlies. I don't jump every time something buzzes past my ear. I look for creatures hiding in the grass at my feet. I have no problems (ok, a little bit of a problem, but not as bad as it was...) in pulling ticks of my children.
*The kids have not had another case of poison ivy since we have moved in (knock on wood). Steven hasn't fared as well, but the last case was so bad that he went to the doc and received magic cream that clears the stuff up super fast - needless to say we stocked up.
* I enjoy putting the laundry on the line - go figure - guess it has to do with the slow-paced mood.
*We have lots of bluegill in the pond, we haven't caught anything else yet (except a turtle).
*I still worry about Avery being outside by himself (the wanderer of the family).
*I am slowly becoming more organized. I don't leave the house everyday - I did when we lived in town, just felt I had to get out and get going. Now I plan the trips and I plan the week's menu so that I know what I need to do. Cooking a lot more from scratch too - means more dishes and more time in the kitchen, but really it hasn't been too bad.
*I'm scared of the winter to come - the mice especially - please, please, please, dear Lord, don't let us have an infestation. I think I can handle one or two rogue mice, but not a whole family. I am also kinda scared of getting major cabin fever.
*We discovered blackberry bushes in our backyard - just in time to harvest their fruit!
*A house in town that's not selling can be rather stressful and savings account depleting.... I have to turn this matter back over to God just about 327 times a day.
*Especially when I walk into our school room - it's an unorganized mess because I have no funds to buy anything to organize it. It's not a huge problem and I want to wait until I can afford to buy exactly what I want anyway - just causes a bit of frustration when I think, "Oh I should start Huston on his reading... and where is that book??"

I really hope to get some more alone time in the near future to organize many areas of my life - specifically work stuff and the home schooling stuff.

But we have been busy doing other things that I need to post on - church camp, a ball game and then this week we have a trip to the zoo planned. So hopefully I will get to it sometime!

Cue Daunting Music...

It's again time to tackle the potty training of the world's most stubborn little boy. If they had potty training schools that I could send him to for a week and the boy be trained without any effort on my part I would find a way to dish out whatever price they were asking... no matter the financial sacrifice.

That being said I must now tell you that before, when other moms would talk about potty training in the dread-filled, exaggerated moans and groans I didn't get it. That is until Avery came along. Now I'm not saying that Isaiah and Huston were a walk in the park - we definitely had rough patches. But the key was I had waited until they had decided that it was time to learn. They initiated the process, I jumped on it, and it was oh so much easier. But they were a little older than 3 when they broached the subject....

Avery will be 4 on November 1st. For the other boys I had never before been so anxious to get them trained as I have with this one. I think it's the thought of having only one of my 4 children in diapers - you know the light alerting me that the end of the diaper stage is in fact near. But if you would ask me today, I would swear to you that Lillie will end up being the one trained before Avery.

It is also the age - the thought of having an almost 4 year old still in diapers sickens me. Really he could do it... but here's the problem, can I be blunt with you, I mean we are adults. Come closer if you want to and I'll whisper... he's scared to poop. Not only is he scared to poop, but he was born with a stubborn head and great muscular control if you know what I mean. (wink, wink, nudge, nudge)

That child can withhold for days!! I feed him whole grains, vegetables, fruits and juices. I even pulled out the prune juice this round. I let him wander the house nudie and he will sit on the pot and not poop for hours... I'm not exaggerating. See...


That, my dear friends, is my Avery sitting on his potty chair in our living room in front of a movie. That is a glimpse of the lengths I have gone to accommodate this child and his refusal to do what God had intended. On Monday he sat like this almost all day (now, I gave the boy some breaks people - trust me he doesn't have a permanent toilet ring on his bum...). He has the easy part of potty training down - he could pee all day long in the potty, but toward the afternoon, when the food waste is building up, he becomes more and more resistant to sitting on that seat.

Now you need to know a bit of background on this kid's bodily functions - this kid poops after almost every meal. He could have up to 3 or 4 dirty diapers a day some days (not everyday, but some). So when it gets to be day 2 and 3 of no action I begin to worry.

So I am really ready for advice here. If you have a child like my Avery, please reassure me that 1.) these type of kids do eventually want to get out of diapers... and/or 2.) he's not going to blow something inside if I go head to head with his day upon day of withholding.

I gave in this morning after over 48 hours of no poo. I just didn't have the mental fortitude to deal with it anymore. Where's that potty school??

The 2nd Grader and the Kindergartener

Well, officially the school year is upon us homeschooler of Missouri. The go date is July 1st around here. And no we haven't started. Last year I started very soon after the 1st and plugged along at it little by little all year long.

This year I would have chosen to do the same, but right now our school stuff is still all boxed up or it's en route to our house because I finally got around to ordering everything last week.

Here's the line up for this year...

Huston - the Kindergartener - He will be focusing on basic stuff of course. Reading and numbers primarily. Isaiah will be building upon what he started last year as well as trying a few things differently.

I ordered from Math U See this year for both of the boys. I've heard great reviews from a number of moms (ha, that's punny) that it's a good program. Hands down, Isaiah and I went head-to-head in math the most often of any subject. Our brains think differently with it I guess, I really don't know what caused the strife. With this program they will watch their lesson on dvd and then apply it through manipulatives and worksheets. I'm hopeful.

We will use Teach Your Child to Read with Huston for the obvious. I think I am going to experiment with adding Avery into these lessons - just to see how he does. He gives signs that he could really be open to instruction at this time, but I'm not going to push him. One of the major reasons we are home schooling is so that our kids are able to be simply kids without the pressures of academics so early or so often.

We will continue with Story of the World, Vol. 2 - the fall of Rome to the Renaissance. Isaiah is very excited about this. I will also introduce him to American history through learning about each state using Highlights Which Way USA. I've been collecting them for the past year and I am hoping that the kids will have a lot of fun with all of the puzzles and maps provided in these kits.

Science will come through exploring our backyard I think. We have a pond and started gardening and have a lot of critters that pass through - so I think we will just let the findings lead us where they may. I will also throw in a couple of units involving electricity, weather and magnets.

I also ordered a unit of curriculum from YWAM following the biography of a famous missionary - I believe I settled on Eric Liddell, but to tell you the truth I can't remember! It will be a surprise to all of us when we receive it in the mail, I guess. Anyway it looked like a unique way of building faith within the boys.

So I guess that's it (and that's plenty for me thank you!) We'll see how it all ends up - I'm praying that they love it all and beg to do their lessons and we're done by March... hey, it's worth hopin'.