Life Down the Rabbit Hole

I can't believe the time has come for the clocks to turn ahead, the flowers to bloom, the birds to sing and the Easter Bunny to hop on over to our house and leave eggs and candy ( whose idea was that anyway?). Spring is not usually my favorite season. I am a fall and winter girl. I love fall colors and cool days. I look forward to pumpkins and long sleeves and the Dixie Classic Fair. I love snow! and pray every year for enough of it for my children to play in. I love to be snowed in and drinking hot chocolate in front of the fire. This year I learned to be careful what you pray for because winter hit like a cinder block to the head and didn't let up until about 3 weeks ago. We had more snow than I can remember in a long time and I knew it was bad when Emma, who took great joy in the first, second, and third snowfall, began to complain about the snow and started to pray for God to let it go away. This year Spring is the season of joy for us. I have taken a new appreciation in the songs of birds, the blooming of daffodils, the planting of my garden. I am so happy that I live in a state that has four distinct seasons. The older I get the more I appreciate each one for what it is and enjoy all the changes with my family.
It is hard to believe that at this time last year we were preparing our house to go on the market. We were painting, remodeling, boxing- up and throwing out. I wasn't really looking forward to moving. I had a lot of mixed feelings about packing up the only home my girl's had known and, as an only child, I had a lot of reservations about leaving my family. The girl's were stressed and full of questions. Jason wasn't sure he wanted to take his family away from all of our family and friends. I prayed and prayed and prayed some more. God really began to lay on my heart that there are lost, hurting people everywhere and that maybe getting out of my comfort zone would open up some new opportunities to not just talk about serving him but actually do it! It was a very stressful time for our whole family and yet it is so hard to believe that it has been almost a year since Jason and I made the decision that we would never know what God may have planned for us if we never put our trust in him and let him work it out. I truly believe God has led us to this place. I believe he has a plan for us here although I don't know exactly what that plan is right now. I pray everyday that he will open up opportunities for serving him here in this place. I still miss a lot of things from home. Family, friends, shopping, church, picnics at Tanglewood, The Hero House, Hanes Mall, Ketchie Creek, did I mention shopping..... oh enough already! I also have a lot of new things that I love about here... the beauty of the mountains, gorgeous sunsets, a nice new house that doesn't need a ton of work, a wonderful neighborhood with a lot of nice people, a great church here that has welcomed us and made us feel at home, a great school for Emma, etc.
I know that there is a purpose God has for us. Pray that God will show us where we can be of service to him here in Lenoir. In this season of new beginnings I am looking forward to what God has planned for us as we seek to serve him.
"For I know the plans I have for you", declares the Lord, " plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."  Jeremiah 29:11   

Is it time already? I can't believe that my littlest child, the baby, is now 3 years old. The time when all good parents send their children off to preschool. The place where they will learn the lessons they need to survive in the world of Elementary school. Sharing toys, taking turns, how to line up, and with the way schools are these days, they also have to get a head start on numbers, letters, reading, writing, and the list goes on and on. At least this is what I believed two and a half years ago when Emma was turning 3. I didn't know a single person whose children weren't in some sort of preschool or daycare setting. Clemmons, Advance, Lewisville and Mocksville were full of preschools. Just about every church had one. There were at least 10 within a 15 minute drive of my house. I never remember even thinking about options with Emma. It was just assumed that when she turned three she would head off to preschool. I prepared her for it, we talked about it, and I even took her to spend the day at one when she was two so she would know what to expect. She loved it and anxiously looked forward to the day she would get a little backpack with her name stitched on it ( a promise from Nana) and head out the door and into the world of education and play. She is my school- loving, bookworm, artistic, old soul so we plunged in and never looked back. We were blessed to find Bethlehem Angels Preschool at Bethlehem Methodist Church in Advance. She had wonderful, loving teachers, made some adorable friendships, and loved every minute spent singing, writing, visiting farm animals, playing hand bells, and making every sort of craft you can imagine, which are all neatly stored in a bin, even though I always said I wouldn't be one of those sentimental mothers that kept every scribbled drawing. Oh well! we learn to eat a lot of words after we join the ranks of motherhood. That was three years ago and that was a different child and a different enviroment which brings me to the predicament.
Lydia, my little ball of energy and curiosity and fiery red-headed temperment, is now three and she is everything her sister is not. Lydia isn't really interested in school. She hates to sit still and she is about as artistic as her father (which would be zero artistry skills). We now live in a different town, which from what I can tell, isn't really as big on the preschool concept. I can only find about three different ones when I google preschool. Only one shows up in the phone book and although there is a church on every corner only a couple of them advertise any kind of preschool or mother's morning out. The people I have met at the library or the local park all look at me strangely when I mention preschool and most of them think it isn't really neccessary. They tend to use the school run preschools, if any at all, such as Head Start or More at Four. I don't need full day preschool so those aren't really options for us. I also feel differently with Lydia being the youngest. I am a stay at home mother and if both my children are in school then what exactly am I home doing? I am never going to have another little baby to take care of so part of me is in no hurry to push Lydia out into the world. Lydia is also very smart, and like her sister she picks up on learning very quickly. She has not only had a mommy and daddy teaching her, singing to her and reading to her, but she also has the benefit of an older sister doing those things too. I worry about how bored she will be in "real" school if she spends two years in preschool. Emma has struggled with boredom all year. She had already learned most of things that she is now being taught in Kindergarten and while she can sit and read a book or color while the others are finishing work, Lydia will more than likely be spending her free time in the principal's office if boredom sets in. I keep going back and forth and back and forth but I know whatever descision is made, I am still going to dread the day when my littlest one puts on her backpack and heads out into the world. A bridge in time will be crossed and there will be no turning back. I thank God for each moment He has blessed me with to love on them and watch them grow and I pray that He continues to guide us through the next phase of life with or without a preschool diploma.
" Behold, children are a gift of the Lord, the fruit of the womb is a reward."  Psalm 127:3

I heard someone say that we are born with only two inate fears. The fear of falling and the fear of loud noises. All other fears are learned behavior. I personally don't have very many fears. I have never liked the dark, snakes and spiders. That is about it. My parents aren't fearful people and they never fed into fears so my learned fears came mostly from experiences. I stepped on a spider when I was young and it was carrying babys on it's back ( who knew that they do that?) and when I squished her all the babies ran in all directions and up my pant legs and my shoes and scared me to death and that was it, no more spiders for me. My fear of the dark came with neighbors who were older and mostly of the male variety who loved to scare me and my friend with tales of ax men that lived in the woods behind our houses and snatched little kids... seems silly, but at the time I used to run as fast as I could to get home from my friends house at night and since my bed was under a window I always slept with my back to the window so I couldn't see him coming. I think my fear of snakes needs no explanation. It is a snake, enough said.
 My husband is afraid of heights and snakes ( I think snakes should be listed with those inate fears your born with). When he was young he had a bad experience on a carnival ride or something and he blames it on that but who knows.
We have both tried really hard to not pass these fears onto our children. I don't want them to be fearful and miss out on great opportunities out of fear, but amazingly enough fear has even found it's way into their experiences and some of it does seem to pass down although Jason and I can't think of a single time we have showed fear in front of them. Emma is afraid of heights and the dark. One from each parent. I have never taught her to be afraid of the dark. We laugh and make jokes when there is a monster in her room and she always laughs it off, but she sleeps with her door cracked to see the light from the den and always sleeps with a night light.She has always been fearful of high places and even the tall balance beam at gymnastics makes her very nervous. She has never had a bad experience with either one of her fears so where do they come from?
Lydia is afraid of spiders and wind. I know it is strange and she is slightly strange anyway so it fits...haha! Spiders she did not get from me. She had a dream when she was two that there were spiders in her bed and she woke up screaming. This is the only dream she has ever had that she could tell us exactly what she dreamed and the only dream she has had that she never forgot and still talks about it although no one ever mentions it and it has been a year. It must have been a very vivid, scary dream for her. I hate it, but unfortunately I can't take that image away. The wind comes from something only she must know. She has never blown away so who knows, but from the time she could hold her head up she has cryed in the wind. She holds her hood up on her coat so it can't blow her hair and yesterday in the wind storm ( 50 mph wind gusts) she sat in the den looking out the window crying for most of the day and saying she was scared. She took no nap because she could hear it coming and she yelled at it to STOP! She is funny. I tried to comfort her and show her it wasn't going to hurt her, but she was unmoved.
I had a stressful day after dealing with her whining and crying all day but it never occured to me to use the opportunity to pray with her or talk to her about God taking away our fears. Emma came home from school and saw Lydia crying so she went over and told her it was o.k. In a few minutes the wind died down and they were playing quietly. I said to them " yay! the wind seems to be dying down." and Emma said "well of course mommy! I prayed God would make it stop and He always does." Lydia was happy for the first time all day and I realized that I had gotten a lesson from my five year old. Even though the wind would pick back up and blow, they seemed unconcerned with it. Why did I not think of that?A lesson in faith taught to my three year old by my five year old. Lydia may still be afraid of the wind, but at least she found comfort in knowing God is bigger than any wind storm. All I can say is Thank you to God for my children, showing me what faith like a child really means and letting me have the real lesson of the day!
" For I am the LORD, your God, who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you." Isaiah 41:13

Where did last year go? For that matter, where did the last decade go? I can't believe that we already have one foot in the door of a new year and a new decade. It made me start to think about what I have accomplished so far in my life and where I would like to be heading in this new season of life.
I decided long ago that making resolutions was a waste of my time mainly because I put very little thought into making them and very little effort into keeping them so a couple of years ago I resolved to not make resolutions anymore and then I could save myself the humiliation of breaking them all before spring even arrived, but then I read this quote from Benjamin Mays that says "the great tradgedy in life does not lie in not reaching your goal, the tradgedy lies in having no goals to reach."  I knew that I needed to set goals in order to keep focused and to have something to strive for and maybe if I spent time in prayer and thinking about what I really want to accomplish I would find that I might achieve better results. This past decade has been spent planning, having and starting to raise a family. I have tied up almost this entire decade planning preganacy, being pregnant, changing diapers, potty training and generally taking care of children and finding a new identity as a saty-at-home mother of preschoolers. I am thankful to God for this season of life but now I am ready to take on a new challenge.
 I have spent a lot of time this week thinking and praying about what my goals for this coming year should be and need to be. I figure if I write them out and post them then it will help me to stay accountable and hopefully achieve the best results.
1. Get healthy-Stay healthy! I am not vowing to lose weight although if I strive to be healthy then that should come naturally. Jason and I have had a wake-up call after he went for a routine exam and found that his blood pressure and choleserol were high and that he needed to get on a healthy diet immediately. I am commiting to eat healthy, cook healthy and exersize regularly this year so that both of us can be around to see our children grow. How can I teach them good health when they don't see it modeled?
2. Discover me again. Before I was Emma and Lydia's mommy, I was Victoria. I liked to scrapbook, trace my family history, and work jigsaw puzzles. I was an avid reader, antique collector, and although I am not particularly good at them I like to draw and play the piano. I was a hairdresser, with a job, and a decent wardrobe that consisted of more than sweatpants and tee shirts. One of my biggest goals this year is to get back to being me. I have spent the last 6 years being pregnant, changing diapers, playing with dolls, singing ABC's, reading Dr. Suess and watching Dora. Now that Emma is in school and Lydia is getting bigger I am looking forward to finding my identity again. I am ready to enjoy grown-up hobbies. I still look forward to play time, picnics at the park, tea parties, cuddles and cartoons but they also need to see who their mommy is and what she likes to do as a grown-up.
3. Travel! Jason and I love to travel and before we had children we took one big trip a year. We went to big places like Cancun, Las Vegas, and  Disney World. We went to small places like Jonesborough, TN, Williamsburg, VA, and Chatanooga. We miss traveling and now that the girl's are big enough we want them to see that there is more to the world than the mountains and the beach. 
4. Volunteer/ mission trip- I have felt God calling me to do something in missions for a long time but I have always had an excuse why I couldn't volunteer or go on a missions trip. Who would watch the girls? Where do I start? I don't know what to do, etc. I have discovered lately that Emma has a heart for missions. She loves collecting money for charity, taking clothes and toys to children in need. She loved doing the Operation Christmas Child shoebox and she is still praying for the children who received them in Rwanda ( we tracked them online this year) She always prays for people with no homes and during Advent she reminded us every night to put our money in the jar for the Shelter Home. I teach her as much as I can about making a difference but she has not seen really seen me model it for her. The Bible says to train up a child in the way they should go. I have to train her not only with my words but with my actions. God has been leading me to do more for His kingdom so no more excuses it is time for action!
Jason and I also have some goals we have set together so we are ready to start a new year focused on God and family. I am thankful to God for a new year and a new start and I am hopeful that this will be the year that I achieve my goals!
  

A new house, a new church, a new tradition...Advent. Prior to coming to Lenoir and visiting Mt. Vernon my only knowledge of what Advent was consisted of a wreath in the middle of the kitchen table with candles that you lit each Sunday before Christmas and a calendar with windows that the girls would open each night in December to discover a small piece of chocolate which they would usually fight over before breaking it in half and heading to bed. I never knew the real meaning behind Advent or the purpose of celebrating it, but that has changed this year thanks to Mt. Vernon and MOPS ( a mothers of preschoolers group that I now belong to at the church). This church encourages the celebration of Advent and it has brought a new level of joy in our home. After taking a class at the church on what Advent was and how to celebrate it I decided that this would be a great way to keep the girls focused on the true meaning of Christmas and it would be a wonderful time of family togetherness.
The class began by helping me to understand that Advent meant "coming", and just like the people of the Bible waited eagerly for God to reveal His promise in the coming of a Savior, we also can spend this Christmas season waiting with joy and anticipation on the birthday of Christ. I then set out to make an Advent log which is different than the wreath because you light it every night of Advent instead of just on Sunday. I decided this would help our family stay focused. I wanted the girls to know what it was like to anticipate Christ being born just like the people in the Bible so we start each morning with a "reason for the Season" box. This is a small box that contains a "heart reminder", a scripture to go with the reminder, and a little paper ornament with the heart reminder symbol on it which the children hang on a small tree called a Jesse Tree. This is based on the proverb which says "Put something where you can see it so your eye will remind your heart" ( you can Google Jesse tree or heart reminders to get the verses and the list of items) this starts the day already with a sense of anticipation. Then in the evening after dinner and pajamas we begin our time of Advent. The girls get a little cushion to sit on ( we made one out of a white pillowcase that they drew on with Sharpie markers and stuffed with cotton) and I give them a little snack in a cup to hold while we are doing the devotions ( this helps keep them still mostly...haha!) each night of advent the snack gets a little better starting with something like Goldfish and then as it gets closer to Christmas we may do ice cream or sugar cookies ( in keeping with the building of anticipation) then we light the candles and we begin the devotion time with Jason reading the nightly scripture. I was given a notebook at the church class that contains the scripture for each night  but you can look up Advent scripture readings online and find some listed. The ones that I have are grouped into a theme for each week of Advent starting with week one "Reflecting on the Promise" which contains short readings from the Old Testament about why we needed a Savior, the second week is "Waiting on the Promise" which contains readings from prophets in the Old Testament, the third week is "preparing for the Promise" which are readings from Isaiah and the New Testament, and then the fourth week until Christmas day is "Celebrating the Promise" readings from the Christmas story ending on Christmas day with the birth of Christ. After Jason reads the scripture I usually explain what it means and then we say a short prayer. We then go over a Christmas memory verse that was chosen by me to teach the children- kind of like a theme verse for all of the Advent season. We then end this devotion time with a prayer for a missionary, lost family members or church staff members. Then I let one of the girls (we rotate who it is) pick out a Christmas book to read. ( I mix Christian story books and secular story books but some people only do Christian based Christmas books). After we read the book we blow out the candles. Total time for all of this is about 20 minutes. We then have an Advent paper chain that counts down to Christmas and we rip off one about 10 minutes before bedtime. Each link has an activity written on it that we do before bed. Some of them are as simple as talking about Mary and Joseph and giving your mommy and daddy a hug, some are crafty things to do like draw a christmas picture for your room and some of them are family time activities like pop popcorn and watch a Christmas movie. I made most of them up on my own but I had an idea sheet that they gave me at our class. Another thing we do each day, which we normally do in the afternoon when Jason gets home from work, is that we have a mason jar on the counter and I have a calendar that says things such as " put a dime in the jar for every birthday you have had" or "thank God for giving you shelter put a nickel in the jar for each room in your home" We then collect that days money from each person and put it in the jar. Once Advent is over we will donate it to a local charity. This was an idea that one of my Sunday School couples gave us and we have had a lot of fun doing it.
I have enjoyed learning about Advent and in the midst of presents, parties, programs, and Santa I am looking forward to taking this time each evening to direct our family to the true meaning of Christmas and help our children to focus with joy and anticipation the birth of our Savior. May you have a blessed Advent season and a very Merry Christmas!
"but when the time had fully come, God sent His son."  Galations 4:4a 

A couple of days ago Emma's teacher asked her to share with the class one Thanksgiving tradition that her family had, so she came home and asked me what she should share and that is when I realized we were in trouble. You see, we don't really have any Thanksgiving traditions other than eating lunch with my family and eating dinner with my husbands family (not the most exciting thing to share with your class). It was kind of sad as I began to think about what we did year after year and couldn't really think of a single thing. Finally Emma said she thought of one and I breathed a sigh of relief. "What are you going to say?" I asked. "I am going to tell them that we eat ham" she said. Great! The only thing the poor child could say with confidence that we did every year was eat ham....pitiful! I began to think about the legacy of tradition that we were passing down to our children and realized we have very little in the way of tradition that we do for any holiday. We get so wrapped up in just getting done what we have to do to prepare. Then the actual days are spent in a whirlwind of travel between families, lots of eating and chaos and then the final drop into bed late at night, a quick sigh of relief that we made it another year, and the next day it is time to prepare for the next thing. No family traditions that belong to just our family for our kids to look back and say "we did that every year and it was great" and nothing for the next generation to pass on. I decided at that moment that we were going to have a tradition for each holiday that we celebrate. Something just for our own household to do that our children can look back later and say it was our tradition to do this...
This Thanksgiving we are making a Thanksgiving tree, just a small branch, and everyone gets to write on their paper leaf what they are thankful for and hang it on the tree. Emma wanted to help bake a pumpkin pie, which I have never done before, and Lydia wants to watch a movie with nana and papaw after we eat our Thanksgiving lunch. I will be watching the Macy's parade, which is my own little tradition, while I cook the tradtional lunch meal with the main course already set- ham! 
I also have been thinking about what I am thankful for this week. I decided to focus on the little things that I normally take for granted but that I need to remember that God wants us to be thankful for ALL things no matter how small. Here are some of the things I have thought of:
1. The love of my husband! I feel blessed to not only have a good husband but to have a husband who shows me love daily. I love that I still get excited when I know he is coming home and I still look forward to having him here. I am Thankful that he still hugs me, holds my hand while we walk, tells me he loves me everyday, kisses me in front of our children, tells me I look nice, tickles me while I am trying to cook, rubs my shoulders after a long day and always helps take care of the girls. I am also thankful that he spends quality time with us and always puts family time first!
2. My children! I am blessed to have to healthy children who are sweet and thoughtful (most of the time) and who love God and still think that their parents are heros...ha!
3. My parents and extended family.
4. My new home.
5. The ability for me to stay home with my children for another year. God has blessed my time with them and I am so thankful I have not had to miss a single minute! I love being a stay-at-home mother, it is the best job in the whole world. I prayed and prayed for God to let me have children and I am thrilled that He not only gave me two of them but gave them to us at a time when I could spend this time with them. God's timing is truly perfect.
6. Jason's job. Although this year has been stressful and we have had to move away from all we have known God has blessed us tremendously when so many others are struggling- Thank you God!
The list could go on and on but I have to go pick up Lydia from her nana's house so I will stop for now, but please take the time to be Thankful to God this week for all He has blessed you with and don't make your legacy to the future generations be what you eat. Start a new tradition!
" Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good. His love endures forever."  Psalm 107:1