Bad Me

Have you ever said something to someone that you wish you could take back?  I did that recently.  I hurt someone’s feelings.  I realized that I had hurt their feelings.  Then I texted the person to ask if I hurt their feelings and the person confirmed that I had indeed hurt her feelings.  So, I apologized.  But, after I apologized, I received no response.  What does this mean?  Am I forgiven?  It kept me up all night.  And, it is still bothering me today.  So, do I apologize again?  Hmmm…

Makes me so thankful that with God, I don’t have to apologize a second or third time.  I can ask for forgiveness and it is given.  Aren’t you glad that is how He works?  So often in life, though, we go around beating ourselves up for things that are under the blood.  Excuse the church jargon, but it is what it is.  Jesus died on the cross to take our sins and so if we ask for forgiveness, then it is “under the blood”.

Hormones and Homeschool

I’m thinking this might actually be the name of a new blog, not just a single post.  It would be all about my experience as a pre-menopausal home school mom and my race to educate my children before I kill them.  Well, at least it would cover all the details of our daily trials and triumphs we have while homeschooling.  Today just may have been “the” day to prompt me to do this.

With hormones raging, I approached homeschooling today with a no nonsense attitude.  I had full expectations for my child to be focused and to to do his work diligently (especially since I have been teaching him about this godly characteristic for the past two weeks).  Instead, he whined for 20 minutes that his handwriting work was babyish, yet when I checked his work he had only completed one line and it was not worthy of even a check mark.  I then set a timer and told him that he had five minutes to complete the work and then it would become homework for him to complete after dinner.  Our phonics lesson was not that much more productive.  Lots of crying and whining.  Lots of wasted time.  And I was hosting bunco later this evening.  I did not need this to happen today.  I had a house to clean, tables to set up, and a meal to prepare for 12 women.  And have I mentioned that my hormones are raging?

Sometime during the middle of all of this, I sent him to his bedroom to cry and have a time out.  Time out for me, that is.  He finally stopped crying and came back out and said he was ready to work.  More complaining and just over all having a bad attitude.  I eventually broke down in tears as well and one of us crumpled up the handwriting paper and threw it away.  We need a do-over.  Tomorrow.  And, I promise that I won’t crumple up any more handwriting papers.

Hormones and Homeschool

I’m thinking this might actually be the name of a new blog, not just a single post.  It would be all about my experience as a pre-menopausal home school mom and my race to educate my children before I kill them.  Well, at least it would cover all the details of our daily trials and triumphs we have while homeschooling.  Today just may have been “the” day to prompt me to do this.

With hormones raging, I approached homeschooling today with a no nonsense attitude.  I had full expectations for my child to be focused and to to do his work diligently (especially since I have been teaching him about this godly characteristic for the past two weeks).  Instead, he whined for 20 minutes that his handwriting work was babyish, yet when I checked his work he had only completed one line and it was not worthy of even a check mark.  I then set a timer and told him that he had five minutes to complete the work and then it would become homework for him to complete after dinner.  Our phonics lesson was not that much more productive.  Lots of crying and whining.  Lots of wasted time.  And I was hosting bunco later this evening.  I did not need this to happen today.  I had a house to clean, tables to set up, and a meal to prepare for 12 women.  And have I mentioned that my hormones are raging?

Sometime during the middle of all of this, I sent him to his bedroom to cry and have a time out.  Time out for me, that is.  He finally stopped crying and came back out and said he was ready to work.  More complaining and just over all having a bad attitude.  I eventually broke down in tears as well and one of us crumpled up the handwriting paper and threw it away.  We need a do-over.  Tomorrow.  And, I promise that I won’t crumple up any more handwriting papers.

I Got a New Toy!

I unexpectedly received a new “toy” today!  By some standards it would not be considered a toy.  And, by other’s standards, it might not cause excitement.  But, I was excited when my husband when to the hardware store for supplies on our remodel and he returned with a Black & Decker electric weed eater/edger called the GrassHog XP just for me.  Maybe it’s because we are going to do yard work tomorrow on our massive backyard and I made the comment that I would like an electric weed eater as opposed to his gas-powered one that I can barely lift.  None the less, I was still surprised!

I was so excited that I could not wait to use it.  As soon as I finished the painting that I was working on, I took it out of the box and got busy.  The wonderful thing about this is that tomorrow when we do our yard work, we will have a head start.  I got the back yard completely edged.  The cons to my adventure are that my pointer finger and thumb on my left hand are completely numb and have been this way for several hours.  I guess this is from the vibration of the edger.  I also endured an injury.  Something, I am guessing a stick, rock, or pecan shell, flew up and struck me on the forehead above my left eye.  It stung so badly and felt wet.  I don’t really like blood, so I was a bit scared.  Of course head wounds bleed worse than what the actual cut is sometimes.  I have a small cut, tiny really, but it gave me a scare.  I sure am glad my two year-old was there to be my nurse.  I was at least offered some sympathy and a princess band-aid.

Despite the numb fingers and the blood, I am still excited about my new toy!

An Eater or a Wiper, but a Picker, None the Less

Have you heard the phrase, “lesser of two evils”?  I’m sure that this will completely gross some people out, but it is one of the crazy random things that has crossed my mind today while staying at home with my beautiful children.  Even beautiful children can be gross.  I’m talking about boogers here.  I have been blessed with the opportunity to rear both a boy and a girl and there truly is a difference in genders besides you know what.  The booger thing is probably not gender specific, but I have noticed that while my beautiful, yet unmistakably boyish boy likes to eat boogers; my equally beautiful, self-proclaimed “girly girl” tends to be more of a wiper.  Which, I am quick to say that I am so glad that she chooses not to digest her boogers; however, I am none too happy to find the little crusty things everywhere from her bed sheets to the trim panel of the door which is located next to her car seat.  And, there was the time that I was walking her to her room one evening for bed and she very kindly wiped a long stringy one on the hallway wall.  I really hope they both outgrow this picking stage real soon.  The End.

Perfectionism is NOT Perfect

As indicated on personality tests and consulting with a licensed counselor, my husband and I are pretty much perfectionists.  Where some people might view this as a positive and other perfectionists might even give a fist-pump and a “Aw, yeah!”; I am here to tell you that perfectionism is absolutely NOT perfect.  As a matter of fact, perfectionism comes with a cost and this negative side of perfectionism can be destructive to one’s self and others.

My theory on perfectionism is based solely on experience.  One can read this and agree or disagree whole heartedly.  It doesn’t matter to me.  These are just my thoughts.  (Whew! For a perfectionist, that is hard to write.  Why would anyone not agree with me?)  Well, here we go.  I am going to start by sharing an example of a perfectionist in the making-my 6 year-old son.  I home school my son and it is usually without fail that we have some type of breakdown during the process of our school day.  One evening while reflecting on the past few weeks of schooling and the inevitable mid-lesson crisis, it somehow became clear to me that my son is a perfectionist in the making.  An unfortunate characteristic trait that has begun to manifest in him is that he feels that if he is not “good” at something, then he is not even going to try.  He simply goes into shut-down mode.  He begins complaining and whining and making every excuse as to why he should not be doing the lesson.  Or, his newest tactic is to try to be silly and make me laugh in hopes that I will become the unfocused teacher and not complete the task at hand.

Now, this is not the only thing that leads me to believe that he is a perfectionist and that this a trait of a perfectionist.  What I did though, is I began to do some self reflections and discovered that I have done this same thing in a different way.  If there is something that I am interested in doing (i.e. blogging), yet I don’t feel like I am “good” at it or that it is “perfect” so to speak, then I simply avoid ever really getting started.  And, maybe this isn’t even a trait of a perfectionist.  I guess I would need to take some surveys of some people who are considered perfectionists.  My husband does agree and I do consider him an extreme perfectionist.  I have commonly called him a procrastinator in some situations, but when taking a closer look it is easy to realize that it has been due more to the fact that he is afraid of failure.  Afraid of screwing something up.  So based on these simple family character traits, I am led to believe that perfectionism is NOT perfect!

Dreams

Dreams have been pouring out all around me lately.  I have been having them and people around me have been having them.  I don’t think these are the “ate Taco Bell at 2a.m” variety of dreams, but rather spiritual dreams that are spoken of in the Bible.  Joel 2:28 says, “And it shall come to pass afterward, [that] I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions”.  These are the types of dreams of which I am speaking.  I do not have a personal account of the dreams of others.  However, I can account for mine.  I have had two dreams in the last two weeks and I will retell them here:

Dream #1

I was driving my Lincoln Navigator and I had two passengers(two women from my church) with me.  We were following a caravan of other vehicles.  It was raining very hard and the roads were wet and slippery.  We were approaching a sharp curve around the edge of a cliff.  I got a little nervous and clinched the wheel tighter.  As we approached the curve, an 18-wheeler came past us and showered the windshield with all kinds of water and debris.  This obstructed my vision and my worst fears were realized-we missed the curve and we were sailing through the sky to utter destruction.  I felt a sense of panic and guilt.  Feeling that even though I could not have prevented the obstruction, that I was still responsible for my passengers.  I could vividly see the inside of the vehicle as we were free-falling.  What lay beneath us was a dry river bed that was full of large craggy rocks and boulders.  I was bracing myself for what was imminent.  Then we landed.  There was no explosion; no crunching of metal upon the desolate ground.  I looked out of my window and saw that we had landed on a large succulent pile of green grass.  I was so thankful that we were safe.  I knew that it was a miracle.  The last thing I remember before awaking was thinking that I still needed to check on my friends.

Dream #2

I was an employee at a bank.  A person who used to go to my church was my supervisor.  It was our department’s responsibility to count the money at the end of the day and deposit it in the bank.  Our boss was a woman whom we liked and worked well with, but we did not really trust her 100%.  We felt like she was more for the corporation than she was for us, her employees.  I remember that my supervisor was putting a large pile of money in the safe and I was standing looking over his shoulder into the safe.  But, he wasn’t actually putting it in.  He was taking it out.  I realized that we were going to take this money.  It was at this time that the boss came in and they exchanged cordial words about the money and then she left.  Then the supervisor took the money somewhere.  In the next scene, there were about four of us sitting around a kitchen table (including myself and my supervisor) and we were discussing the heist and how we got away with it.  I remember thinking to God, “I know this is wrong and it is a sin, but I’m going to be o.k., right?  I’m just doing what my supervisor said and he said its o.k.”  Then I awoke.

In light of my current situation, I have some ideas what these might mean, but if anyone would like to offer an explanation, feel free.

15 Years and Counting

Today marks our 15th wedding anniversary.  What does this mean to me?  It means that for 15 years I have been blessed with a man who

• opens every door for me (and I do mean EVERY DOOR!!!)
• brings me a cup of coffee in bed every morning
• cleans the kitchen for me most nights
• puts fuel in my vehicle
• will come home from work to start the lawn mower because I want to mow the lawn for him
• takes the baby to the sitter for me
• loves to watch HGTV with me
• loves my family as much as his own
• diligent in his work and is blessed for that
• loves the Lord with all of his heart, mind, soul, and strength
• is not lazy
• has not lost interest in his passion (Motorcycles, in case you were wondering)
• is a handyman extraordinaire
• has good taste in furniture (because he listens to me) 😉
• went through ALOT in order for us to have our own children
• does not compromise his faith
• and is willing to make sacrifices for those whom he loves

Thank you, John, for a wonderful first 15!  I look forward to every day with you!

Cousin Jerry

The Fishing Coach

Everyone needs a title.  At least, when we took a Growing Kids God’s Way class they taught us that the adults in your children’s lives should have a title.  Don’t allow them to just call adults by their first name.  This is not showing respect.  Therefore, my cousin Jerry who we are blessed to get to spend time with about once or twice a year has a title with our children.  I did not want them calling him “Mr. Jerry”-this seemed too impersonal.  Mr. McBride-too formal.  Uncle Jerry-too confusing (my little dude just asks too many questions and this would lead to confusion for him).  Since Jerry is my cousin, we decided that our kiddos would call him “Cousin Jerry”.  It works for us. 

Cousin Jerry has a lake house that he so graciously allows us to use for one week out of the summer.  He is my honey’s favorite cousin.  They connect on many levels.  Both are business owners, both are hard workers, both love the Lord, both love the lake, they are outdoorsmen and both love me (ha!).  Last summer, Jerry took my honey and the little dude out on his fishing boat.  This was the little dude’s first time to go fishing.  He was super excited! And also a little unsure of that big fish!

First Time Fishing with Cousin Jerry

 

The little dude started t-ball about a month ago.  We were driving home from his first practice and he said, “Mommy, you know who my fishing coach is, don’t you?” I said, “No. Who?” He said, “Cousin Jerry, silly!”  So, thank you, Cousin Jerry.  Thank you for being a part of my life and the life of my son.  Every boy needs good men in his life.  You are a good man.  Happy Birthday to you!

What Happens When Mama is Out of Town

I was looking for a picture on my husband’s iPhone.  I found a bunch of pictures!  Including these pictures that were taken when I was on a “girl” trip last fall.  This is what the man does with the two small children when I am not around to be their safety net.  They made some great memories and I’m sure there will be many more because I NEED my “girl” trips! 

The five year-old. He loves this stuff!

Took the 17 month-old out shooting. He remembered to protect her ears. Good Daddy!

Riding in the Mule