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10 years ago
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Victoria
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This is my "pick-me-up" song for this week. I sometimes need reminded that God always holds me close and no matter what life throws at me or what I am going through He will keep me safe and secure. I also need to let God know how much I love Him each and everyday.
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Victoria
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I groaned and grumped when the alarm went off this morning. I can't believe two months have passed since I have heard that sound echoing in my head. It helped a little that the sun was up. It helped a little that my daughter was so excited to be going back to school that she jumped up quickly to get ready. It did not help that my little one is like her Mother in the morning and doesn't like to get up before she is ready. I sat at the breakfast table and thought about how quickly this Summer has passed by and how quickly my little girls are growing. I watched as Emma packed her own bookbag and tied her own shoes and realized that time is so short. The Bible says we are like a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes and if you really want to see that principal in action just have a child. Time seems to speed up when you have something to compare it to. I don't feel myself aging that fast and I don't look that much different from one year to the next but one look at my children and I can see the rapid effects of time. I learn to cherish this time more and more everyday. I used to say things like " I just wish she was big enough to get out of the infant carrier.." or " If she was just a little bigger she would be able to..." Now I realize that those times come and go so fast I don't even see it happen. Clothes become small in just a few months. Shoes are outgrown in a season. Baby teeth are being replaced by grown-up ones. Freckles are breaking out and faces are thinning down. I am so thankful that God has allowed me to be here to see each new step and each new milestone. I am glad that even when I get frustrated and want them to do things quickly and act more grown-up God slows me down and helps me see all the great things about this stage at this time. I am thankful for my older one who is independent and who can walk into a new situation without hesitation and I am thankful for my little one who still wants to sit on my lap and suck her thumb. I love it when my girls are still too small to do something because it allows me to still be Mommy and be needed and help them, but I also love it when they are too big to do something they used to do because it reminds me that my job is to help them grow and learn and that time is precious and I need to enjoy every minute of it.
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Victoria
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I can't believe it is already the 1st of August. The summer has flown by and it is now time to think about fall wardrobes, church activities that will be starting again and most importantly the dreaded Back to School rush. I am not fan of going back to school. I love having the girls home with me and all the fun activities we get to do during the summer. I enjoy spending this time with them. Every year since Emma started Kindergarten I begin to think about her going back to school and I realize that she is already another year older. I can't believe how quickly this season of life is passing. Lydia is going to pre-school and Emma is heading into 2nd grade and for the first time in 7 years I will be home alone for 3 mornings a week. I have very mixed feelings about that. I think Lydia really needs the structure and socialization that only pre-school can give her right now, but I also think about the fact that this is my last year with her before she starts "real" school and part of me really wants to keep her here with me a little longer.
Every fall when the back to school commercials and the school supply sales begin I start thinking how much I would love to homeschool them. We have several church friends who are homeschooling and they love it. Emma begs to be homeschooled, but I worry about what her social life would be like if she was at home all the time. We are not a socializing family. We don't have get togethers, we don't play sports, we don't go on outings with friends much and I think about how isolated she will feel if she doesn't get to be around her school friends, however, I also see how much she is influenced by those friends during the school year. Her personality definitely changes when she is home during the summer. There is less sassiness, less arguing and more manners, and I definitely think about what she will be exposed to the older she gets. When I watch the news and see the problems that children face everyday at school it can be scary. I do love her school though, and we could not ask for a better place for her to be. Emma really does thrive on going to school. She looks forward to it even when she doesn't admit it. She loves the activity, the friendships and her teachers. I don't think I could challenge her at home the way she is challenged at school. I really believe God led us to this place and this school because she is surrounded by love and attention and good godly teachers who influence her with their examples and we are truly blessed. So the debate rages on between me, myself and I over which is the better decision and I continue to pray about what is best for them, but for now it looks like I better begin to get organized and take advantage of the tax free weekend because it is time to head Back to School.
Every fall when the back to school commercials and the school supply sales begin I start thinking how much I would love to homeschool them. We have several church friends who are homeschooling and they love it. Emma begs to be homeschooled, but I worry about what her social life would be like if she was at home all the time. We are not a socializing family. We don't have get togethers, we don't play sports, we don't go on outings with friends much and I think about how isolated she will feel if she doesn't get to be around her school friends, however, I also see how much she is influenced by those friends during the school year. Her personality definitely changes when she is home during the summer. There is less sassiness, less arguing and more manners, and I definitely think about what she will be exposed to the older she gets. When I watch the news and see the problems that children face everyday at school it can be scary. I do love her school though, and we could not ask for a better place for her to be. Emma really does thrive on going to school. She looks forward to it even when she doesn't admit it. She loves the activity, the friendships and her teachers. I don't think I could challenge her at home the way she is challenged at school. I really believe God led us to this place and this school because she is surrounded by love and attention and good godly teachers who influence her with their examples and we are truly blessed. So the debate rages on between me, myself and I over which is the better decision and I continue to pray about what is best for them, but for now it looks like I better begin to get organized and take advantage of the tax free weekend because it is time to head Back to School.
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Victoria
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Riding through the woods on the back of a four-wheeler at 30 mph is not what I consider to be a productive use of my time. My husband is of the opposite opinion, however, and in an effort to balance out the endless shopping trips and tea parties he has to endure in a house full of girls, I put a smile on my face and climb on. It isn't the riding I have a problem with, it is the crashing I worry about. I am pretty sure I have cut off his ability to breathe with the death grip I have on him as we head down the first hill. I know he is going much slower than he would normally go but it feels like we are flying. I visualize us plummeting through the air as we smack into a tree or maybe sliding sideways off the path and sinking in the pond. Who will take care of the girls if we drown? Jason finally says to me " Will you relax? don't you trust me?" My spoken answer was "yes, of course I do." but my actions were speaking so loudly I don't think he heard the words. We made it back safely to the house and he asked Emma if she wanted a turn. She looked carefully for my reaction to see if I would think it was a good idea so I plastered a smile on my face and said cheerfully "go ahead, Daddy will take care of you." She smiled and jumped on. She was completely relaxed and enjoyed the ride. She had no problem trusting although she had only ridden a couple of times before.Why could I not have that blind trust that my children seem to have endless supplies of. They never question whether to trust us or not. If I say it is o.k., then they think it is o.k. If Jason says don't be scared, they aren't scared.
The dictionary definition of trust is 1. reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety, etc., of a person or thing; confidence. 2. confident expectation of something; hope.
When we are children we have no problem relying on someone or something. Children have to rely on others to survive and learn. Children have condfidence in those they love, but somewhere along the path of life we start to learn that we shouldn't rely on others so much. Our culture teaches us to rely on ourselves and have confidence only in our abilities and what we can control. People break our trust and we lose the confidence. As an adult I even find myself struggling to trust in God. I easily say the words I am going to trust God with a descision or a need, but just like with my husband my actions sometimes drown out the words. I start to take my reliance off of God and put it on myself. My confidence starts to falter when God dosen't work the way I want Him to. Has God ever given me a reason not to trust him? NO, it is just that the broken world I live in leads me to believe that nothing is to be completely trusted and I begin to forget that the world's standard does not apply to God. I need to take a lesson from my children and freely trust. I need to put my confidence on the One who has never let me down, who is full of integrity and strength. The One who has the ability to meet all my needs.
a good life lesson taught to me by a 6yr. old on the back of a four-wheeler.
" Trust in the LORD forever, for the LORD, the LORD, is the Rock eternal" Isaiah 26:4
The dictionary definition of trust is 1. reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety, etc., of a person or thing; confidence. 2. confident expectation of something; hope.
When we are children we have no problem relying on someone or something. Children have to rely on others to survive and learn. Children have condfidence in those they love, but somewhere along the path of life we start to learn that we shouldn't rely on others so much. Our culture teaches us to rely on ourselves and have confidence only in our abilities and what we can control. People break our trust and we lose the confidence. As an adult I even find myself struggling to trust in God. I easily say the words I am going to trust God with a descision or a need, but just like with my husband my actions sometimes drown out the words. I start to take my reliance off of God and put it on myself. My confidence starts to falter when God dosen't work the way I want Him to. Has God ever given me a reason not to trust him? NO, it is just that the broken world I live in leads me to believe that nothing is to be completely trusted and I begin to forget that the world's standard does not apply to God. I need to take a lesson from my children and freely trust. I need to put my confidence on the One who has never let me down, who is full of integrity and strength. The One who has the ability to meet all my needs.
a good life lesson taught to me by a 6yr. old on the back of a four-wheeler.
" Trust in the LORD forever, for the LORD, the LORD, is the Rock eternal" Isaiah 26:4
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Victoria
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I am not a coupon girl. I never use coupons. I never sign up for rebates. I never browse the internet looking for deals. I just tell myself that the extra money I pay is a convenience fee for not having to go through all that trouble to clip and organize slips of paper for products I don't use. I really don't get it when I watch Extreme Couponing and see all those people with huge stockpiles of food packed around their garages and closets. Why? The only way they would convince me it was worth it is if they just quit buying groceries for a year or so and lived off their stockpile. A year free of shopping would maybe intice me to get motivated or maybe they could use it to help the less fortunate. Some of those people have enough to feed a small 3rd world country and what do they really need with 50 bottles of deodorant anyway? I could see the point if it was being used to help others.
A few weeks ago I went to a MOPS meeting and the topic of the week was saving money. There was a coupon lady that was our special guest speaker and she began to tell us all of the ways she saves. I have to admit she made it sound good. she wasn't all crazy and extreme, she was just a mom trying to save some money for her family. I listened to her ideas and I found myself thinking it could work. Things always seem better when you are in a group and everyone is building each other up and telling each other how great this sounds. Peer pressure is a powerful thing. I found myself coming home and telling Jason that I was going to give it a go. I was going to buy the Sunday paper and start clipping and saving coupons. Jason wasn't quite as enthusiastic as the MOPS moms had been. He just sort of laughed it off, but I was determined. That first week I went to the gas station on my way home from church to get the paper only to find that it cost 1.75...wow! 2 dollars in quarters? I didn't have that many quarters so we went home paperless. The rest of the week I searched for places in our town that sold the Sun. paper all week, but evidently the people in my town are not so interested because no one had it. The second week I finally got my first paper and I sat on the bed and clipped for almost an hour... My goodness that was a long time, but I took my stack and put them in my folder. I was excited. Four more weeks have now passed and that first stack of coupons are still sitting in my folder. No more have been added. I never have quarters, I never remember to stop at the store, I don't have any interest. I looked at the websites and they may as well be written in Chinese.
My children still pick out all the coupons in the grocery aisles and Jason still just laughs as though to say I told you so. I still watch Extreme Couponing and can't help but think how ridiculous it is and how having a stockpile that is worth 20 grand isn't really worth anything if you don't really need or use it and you're still getting more every week.
If you are one of those coupon people that can save, clip and organize then that is great. I just don't think I am. I did the math and found that I feed our family of four, three meals a day, clean our house and do our laundry on about 100 dollars a week without any coupons. If I shop at Aldi, use my VIP card at Food Lion, and shop smartly. I can cut about 20 dollars off of that which would be 80 dollars for the week or about 12.00 a day. That works out to about 3 per person per day. that includes cleaning supplies and toiletries. I can't feed the dog for that ( there is no coupon for her special RX food) so I consider that money well spent. I think that I will just trust God to supply the need and right now He doesn't think I need 25 jars of spaghetti sauce. I am doing my part by saving trees, saving gas, growing a garden to provide. I am letting those with more time and knowledge handle the coupons and I can use the time I am saving to blog about my lack of couponing skills :)
A few weeks ago I went to a MOPS meeting and the topic of the week was saving money. There was a coupon lady that was our special guest speaker and she began to tell us all of the ways she saves. I have to admit she made it sound good. she wasn't all crazy and extreme, she was just a mom trying to save some money for her family. I listened to her ideas and I found myself thinking it could work. Things always seem better when you are in a group and everyone is building each other up and telling each other how great this sounds. Peer pressure is a powerful thing. I found myself coming home and telling Jason that I was going to give it a go. I was going to buy the Sunday paper and start clipping and saving coupons. Jason wasn't quite as enthusiastic as the MOPS moms had been. He just sort of laughed it off, but I was determined. That first week I went to the gas station on my way home from church to get the paper only to find that it cost 1.75...wow! 2 dollars in quarters? I didn't have that many quarters so we went home paperless. The rest of the week I searched for places in our town that sold the Sun. paper all week, but evidently the people in my town are not so interested because no one had it. The second week I finally got my first paper and I sat on the bed and clipped for almost an hour... My goodness that was a long time, but I took my stack and put them in my folder. I was excited. Four more weeks have now passed and that first stack of coupons are still sitting in my folder. No more have been added. I never have quarters, I never remember to stop at the store, I don't have any interest. I looked at the websites and they may as well be written in Chinese.
My children still pick out all the coupons in the grocery aisles and Jason still just laughs as though to say I told you so. I still watch Extreme Couponing and can't help but think how ridiculous it is and how having a stockpile that is worth 20 grand isn't really worth anything if you don't really need or use it and you're still getting more every week.
If you are one of those coupon people that can save, clip and organize then that is great. I just don't think I am. I did the math and found that I feed our family of four, three meals a day, clean our house and do our laundry on about 100 dollars a week without any coupons. If I shop at Aldi, use my VIP card at Food Lion, and shop smartly. I can cut about 20 dollars off of that which would be 80 dollars for the week or about 12.00 a day. That works out to about 3 per person per day. that includes cleaning supplies and toiletries. I can't feed the dog for that ( there is no coupon for her special RX food) so I consider that money well spent. I think that I will just trust God to supply the need and right now He doesn't think I need 25 jars of spaghetti sauce. I am doing my part by saving trees, saving gas, growing a garden to provide. I am letting those with more time and knowledge handle the coupons and I can use the time I am saving to blog about my lack of couponing skills :)
Posted by
Victoria
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I have heard the saying "opposites attract" all my life and in most cases it apears to be true. Most people would say that Jason and I are complete opposites. I prefer to think of us as balanced. We balance each other out. I am a worrier and Jason is laid back and stress free most of the time. I am always running late Jason is always on time. Jason is a spender and I am the saver. Jason is quiet and reserved while I am more outgoing and chatty. We balance each other, however there are quite a few things that we have in common, and unfortunately one of those things is the ability to procrastinate. We both tend to put things off until the last minute. Our philosophy tends to be " it will get done sometime." Why do today what you can put off til tomorrow? This was not so much of a problem for us until we had children. Emma is the stereotypical first born child. Very determined, very motivated, and very much a type A, get it done now, kind of a girl. The complete opposite of her parents much to her dismay. If she has a project for school or something she has to get finished, she expects us to work on it right NOW! She doesn't understand the " we can do it tomorrow" attitude and this has caused a stressful enviroment lately. The past few weeks I have noticed that I spend a lot of my day fussing at the girls about things that aren't getting done. Rooms that are messy from yesterday, homework that should have been done before bed time, toys that are not getting cleaned up, laundry that is still on the floor in bedrooms instead of the hamper. Emma gets frustrated because I put things off to the last minute and then fuss at her when she can't get it done quickly. I put them to bed at night and feel guilty that time we could have been enjoying each other was ruined by me having to fuss and complain to them about getting things done.
In an effort to make things run more smoothly I decided to come up with an afternoon schedule. I sat down with Jason and we came up with time slots for each thing to get done. Homework first thing, then chores, then playtime, clean-up before dinner, family time after dinner, I even scheduled in the snack times, and bedtime routine. I posted it on the fridge and explained it to the girls. Emma seemed excited, she was even giving me ideas about what we could put on the schedule. It has now been two weeks and there has not been a single argument. Emma is thriving on this new idea. It fits her personality perfectly. She has not argued about doing homework, we have not fussed with Lydia about clean-up, and we have had more time to enjoy each other and have family time. Emma told me the other morning that she thought the schedule was magic, because we have been getting everything done on time. I had to admit to her that the schedule was not magic it was just making Mommy and Daddy be more responsible with our time. She thought that was funny...maybe God has found a way to balance Jason and I out through our children. We definitely need all the help we can get :)
All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty. Proverbs 14:23
In an effort to make things run more smoothly I decided to come up with an afternoon schedule. I sat down with Jason and we came up with time slots for each thing to get done. Homework first thing, then chores, then playtime, clean-up before dinner, family time after dinner, I even scheduled in the snack times, and bedtime routine. I posted it on the fridge and explained it to the girls. Emma seemed excited, she was even giving me ideas about what we could put on the schedule. It has now been two weeks and there has not been a single argument. Emma is thriving on this new idea. It fits her personality perfectly. She has not argued about doing homework, we have not fussed with Lydia about clean-up, and we have had more time to enjoy each other and have family time. Emma told me the other morning that she thought the schedule was magic, because we have been getting everything done on time. I had to admit to her that the schedule was not magic it was just making Mommy and Daddy be more responsible with our time. She thought that was funny...maybe God has found a way to balance Jason and I out through our children. We definitely need all the help we can get :)
All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty. Proverbs 14:23
Posted by
Victoria
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Loving God,
Help us remember the birth of Jesus,
that we may share in the song of the angels,
the gladness of the shepherds,
and worship of the wise men.
Close the door of hate
and open the door of love all over the world.
Let kindness come with every gift and good desires with every greeting.
Deliver us from evil by the blessing which Christ brings,
and teach us to be merry with clear hearts.
May the Christmas morning make us happy to be thy children,
and Christmas evening bring us to our beds with grateful thoughts,
forgiving and forgiven, for Jesus' sake.
Amen.
-- Robert Louis Stevens
I read this the other day in a magazine that I get and it has stuck with me ever since. This is the prayer of my heart this Christmas. May God bless you and yours with a very Merry Christmas that I pray will be focused on Him!
Help us remember the birth of Jesus,
that we may share in the song of the angels,
the gladness of the shepherds,
and worship of the wise men.
Close the door of hate
and open the door of love all over the world.
Let kindness come with every gift and good desires with every greeting.
Deliver us from evil by the blessing which Christ brings,
and teach us to be merry with clear hearts.
May the Christmas morning make us happy to be thy children,
and Christmas evening bring us to our beds with grateful thoughts,
forgiving and forgiven, for Jesus' sake.
Amen.
-- Robert Louis Stevens
I read this the other day in a magazine that I get and it has stuck with me ever since. This is the prayer of my heart this Christmas. May God bless you and yours with a very Merry Christmas that I pray will be focused on Him!
