I am so thankful they can fix my... trust in previous homeowners and the implied simplicity of a home improvement project.

We got to sleep until 7:47 this morning.

I am so thankful Maisie let us sleep in.  Even if it was only 17 minutes.  That's somethin'.  

Seth locked my mom out of the house when he came in from letting Maisie out at 7:50...she was walking her dogs.  

I am so thankful for a working doorbell.  I didn't hear her pound on the door from bed.

Mom and I made pies before breakfast.  

I am so thankful for a mom I can bake with...and that she made the pecan pie for me. :)  And that Daddy didn't waste away waiting for his french toast. 

We feasted on (many, many carbs and) a "ham" that Seth shot in Florida (which was basically a pork roast...and was super yummy).  And green beans.  (Turkey dinner on Sunday, don't worry) 

I am so thankful that we are blessed with a job that not only pays the bills, but allows us the privilege of taking vacations, filling our grocery cart an extra time this week, filling our bellies extra, extra-full today...and planning for another feast on Sunday.  We take so much for granted.

I live in a country which allows me freedom I don't even understand, I hae a home which much more than shelters my family, a refrigerator that's busting at the welds, 5 extra pounds around my middle, happy, healthy, perfect children, family and friends who love and support me, a puppy we didn't need but have anyway...a God who has blessed me beyond my expectations.

How could I not be thankful?

I don't think I'm going to blog tonight.

Please tell me you have these days too.

I think the same might just apply to puppies.  And this puppy we have...I'm not her birth mother.  So the second generalized comment above...doesn't apply.  Mostly.  But I think I had wiped out my memories of the housebreaking/chewing-everything-in-reach/have-to-have-her-in-sight-at-all-times-or-she-will-probably-pee-again/what-can-I-give-her-to-keep-her-occupied-enough-that-I-can-accomplish-something-for-15-minutes-without-crating-her/is-she-going-to-cry-all-night-again-tonight issues involved in new puppyhood.  I read all the articles, studied different philosophies on discipline and feeding and crate training, etc...again...so the biggest trick is picking one and being consistent.  I get that.  And really...I can get to a point where I'm consistent.  The problem comes in (well, one of them anyway) with the fact that 5 people live in this house who participate in her care and training.  I get to teach everyone how to do this...and then trust that they're implementing all of it...and continuing the consistency.

He he.  That's funny.  

I adore her.  She is truly wonderful.  But it's a good thing I forgot how tired I would be.  How short I would become with my children.  How much I would rely on them to work independently at new math concepts while I trudged around the back yard in the pouring rain waiting for her to do something.  Other than chase my feet.  Or dodge back and forth grabbing at sopping wet leaves.  

But I'll tell you...she is beautiful.  And she can make short work of a rawhide retriever roll.  And those eyes...they just melt you...even if you're really mad about having to lug out the carpet cleaner yet again.  And she is the best, best playmate for my Chani.  Almost makes me wish we didn't have such a connection with Goldens...she will outgrow her ability to wrestle Chani without...crushing her...pretty quickly here (though Chani has held her own through two Cairn puppies and a Yellow Lab...I think she'll do fine).

And in a couple of years, I'm sure I will have forgotten this stage yet again...and when we "need" another puppy...of course we'll have one.  But right now...

...I should go to bed.  Because she'll be crying by 5:15.  Remind me not to get a puppy from an Amish family ever again.  This makes two in a row.  They get up darn early.

This morning, I awoke at 3:20 and stumbled to the shower.  Laine's first meet of the season.  Two and a half hours away, and they scheduled warmups to begin at 8.  I woke her up at 4:10, we were out the door by 4:20.  We stopped for gas, gatorade and twizzlers, $20 from the ATM, and zoomed to her teammate, Maura's house.  I can't tell you how thankful I was that her Dad, Charlie, offered to drive the rest of the trip.  We sat for four and a half hours after the drive, waiting for lost judges, listening to the same level four USAG floor music until we wanted to pull out our hair, and shook our heads at some of the mistakes the girls made...and some of the parents we watched make idiots of themselves.  I always get so nervous for Lainie...but it's partially just habit.  It's what I did.  She doesn't do it at all.  I figure if I do it for her...I don't know.  It won't make any difference whatsoever (duh).  The gymnasts aren't allowed to have any contact with parents during the meet itself...

You can.

It's hard work.

I'm pretty tired.  It was a long weekend of not being able to hear myself think, despite being basically alone.  Thinking would have been nice.

Here's hoping getting some sleep takes the edge off.

I don't think much of them, frankly.  Oh, sure, there's the get-away-from-your-house-and-your-usual-routine-and-do-some-stuff-you-wouldn't-get-to-do-every-day part of it that is...interesting...but all of that, I believe, comes at a price.   This vacation, that price was...vacation.

Truthfully, we can look back on our time away and comment that we had fun.  We did so much...in the midst of all of that, we have to be able to extract some fun from the memory banks.  And please understand me here...I know that we were so blessed to be able to do what we did.  I think we could have done it better.  That's all.  We have never done vacation like this before.  We've almost never done vacation before, frankly.  It's all new.  There's an art to it.  We haven't learned it yet.

High Points:

: : The kids not figuring out that we were "doing Disney" until we had pulled the van into the resort where we stayed and Seth said to them, "Guys.  Do you understand that we're in Disney World?  That we're here for four days?  That you're going to Disney World?"  I have video of us going under the "Welcome to Walt Disney World" sign with absolutely no reaction from the children.  I guess we played that one a bit too well. 

: : The beach.  Gosh, I love the beach.  I need a beach.

: : Moments at Disney.  I so enjoy Disney.  Seth made the comment that he realized as we were walking through Epcot that much of this Disney vacation was really about me.  Hmm.  I don't know that I would go that far...I just expected that the kids would love it as much as I do.  

: : Spending time with my in-laws and nephews.  It's a tangled web there...but they love us so much.  We can't walk into that house without knowing how much they love us.  And we so love them.

: : The feeling that we were spoiling our kids.  Honestly, it is one of my favorite feelings. 

: : My nephew was born last night while I was driving through Virginia.  He's beautiful!  And perfect.

: : Driving from Zephyrhills, FL to Williamsport, PA with six stops for food, bathrooms, and gasoline in 19 hours flat.

: : Unexpectedly great hotel rooms on the ride down and back.  Love last minute travelocity finds!!  Especially with good continental breakfast plans.

: : Safe travel.  My van.  Which had adequate space for 5 and all their necessities for 11 days even with 140 pounds of wild boar in a cooler next to the back seat and hanging over the rear stow and go space.  I don't love my van yet...but I'm thankful for her.

: : Chelsea, still alive--and the fact that my parents brought the dogs to us today.

We are grateful to be home.  Grateful to have had my parents with us for the afternoon/evening today.  Grateful for the experience of Florida again after 7 years away.  Grateful for the blessing of vacation and a break...and glad to be back from it.  Soooo much more to say about the trip.  So not going to tonight.  If you're planning a trip to Disney soon, call me.  Our week was a pretty good example of what not to do.  We will do it better next time.

I

can't

wait.

I will have my camera ready for the moment they realize where we are going and what we're doing there...maybe I'll have to post it tonight.  And right now I am reminding myself that tonight...will come very quickly if I don't stop looking at all of the places we could eat and the things we could do over the next four days and go to bed.  My brain just won't seem to turn off.  I probably should have done this before the night before we started driving to Orlando...but that would just take some of the fun right out of the situation, wouldn't it??  Thank goodness for my dear friend and travel agent Rich and his trip planning expertise!!  If you need someone to hook you up with a great vacation package...I can definitely give you his number!! 

OK, OK, really.  I'm going to bed now.  I might not sleep, but I'm going to bed.

*giggle*

So.  I moved on.  After those moments of really, really angry, of course.  And after I cleaned up the red Faygo from every single surface of my in-law's beautiful, perfect, white-walled, glass-tabled, Halloween-decorated kitchen.  And fought to keep an internet connection in their house (after fighting to even have a connection at the hotel) for long enough to reserve a new hotel room (because, you see, I had to move the kids and myself out of the hotel we were in this morning.  It was simply the most repulsive, irritating room I had ever, ever stayed in.  Ever.  And that includes that interesting room we slept in for two nights in Myrtle Beach in 1993, Melissa.  And the cabins and dorms at all of those camps during my summer on Heirborne tour.  And the houses we stayed in through my 4 years of Believers.).   When those things were over...and Seth gave me directions (from the car on his way home from wild boar hunting with his Dad) to get to the beach...we headed out and spent a couple of wonderful hours at Indian Rock beach.  Came back and checked into our new hotel (I've decided we're just going to choose Best Western every time from now on), had dinner with my in-laws, spent an hour at their house while the kids played guitar hero, and then crashed at the hotel.

It's vacation.  So, it's fine.  But it really has to get better tomorrow.  No more broken, too small showers, bathroom fans so loud they scare your afraid-of-the-dark children who then choose to use the bathroom in the dark instead of turning on the light, exploding soda bottles, stupid boar hunts, floors so dirty you won't let your children sit on them, unreachable sisters-in-law, in-law parents who feel terrible about all of the stuff going wrong, fighting over the condition of the van after spending the majority of three days in it...none of that.  Tomorrow, we head to the Tampa Aquarium.  Tomorrow we spend the whole day as a family.  Tomorrow...we start our vacation.  

The end.  

Our studies of ancient Egypt have come at a wonderful time for us...we always struggle at this time of year to find good costume ideas, and then I waste about two weeks thinking about how I should definitely get started on costumes and buy fabric and get organized, only to cram costume preparation into the last three days before Halloween.  This year...things become even more complicated as we leave for 11 days in Florida on the 20th of October...meaning that I don't even have the last two weeks before Halloween to lose my mind.  And, umm, unfortunately, I now have less than a week to pull it all together in order to have it done before we leave. 

We started looking at costume ideas yesterday.  Sigh.

One of the (many, many) things I love about My Father's World is that when you learn about a subject, especially in history, you read about it in three or four different places before you ever open a book from the book basket.  The book basket expands upon what you've read even further.  By the time you finish studying a topic, you've read it in so many different ways and from so many different perspectives, you literally have no choice but to remember it!  Don't you wish you had learned history in that way??  I hated history growing up.  I am nearly certain I hated it because I despised reading textbooks. Do you remember sitting at your desk in grade four, reading the information about...let's say, New York State...from your textbook, then answering 10 comprehension questions at the end of the section in proper question/answer form??   I truly don't remember rich literature experiences in elementary school regarding...well, much of anything...but certainly not history.  If you ask my kids what subject they love...they'll tell you history.  I am sure things have changed in the public schools in terms of how literature is used.  I can say that because I know what I did in the classroom after I started teaching.  But...I know that my kids will remember ancient Egypt from their Fifth Grade studies.  

Their Halloween costumes this year will remind them too. :)  During our research, Bryson decided that mummies are disgusting.  When you're a 7-year-old boy...that is so cool. He will be King Tut's mummy, of course.  Lainie?  An Egyptian Princess (which will look an awful lot like a Greek Goddess...but we'll get to Greek culture this year too...).  All that bling!!  And Reasa...she has been thinking Cleopatra.  Today, she saw a cowgirl costume...I'm trying to talk her out of it.  We'll see.

Can I just mention how glad I am that this year marks the first Halloween completely devoid of frilly princess or fairy costumes??!  Hooray for Creation to the Greeks!!

 

I delivered a wedding cake today.  This is not particularly newsworthy.  I do this on occasion.  I would like to do this on more frequent occasions.  If you need a cake, please call me.  I love making cakes.  Wedding cakes, birthday cakes, shower cakes, cakes for absolutely no reason whatsoever...I love making cakes.  

K.  So.  The cake.  And more importantly, the story of the cake.

First off...the process of making this cake was pretty great.  I have made cakes that, overall, stressed me out more than anything...and occasionally, cakes that have made me feel like, hey, I might actually kind of know what I'm doing.  I proved to myself that I could paint a King and Queen of hearts and a "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas Nevada" sign with a toothpick and gel paste colors.  Yes, it took me three hours to do those things, but I did it.  And I was relatively pleased with the outcome.  I also proved to myself that I could make semi-realistic looking poker chips out of fondant.  I kind of got my groove back with my marshmallow fondant--I'm pretty sure it had just been so long since I seriously made fondant that I forgot all the tricks I had learned before.  After all of this, I was pretty confident that something would go incredibly wrong with the cake before the day ended.  I had to deliver it to Horseheads, NY...so I had plenty of time for things to go wrong.  I stacked and decorated the cake minus the poker chips, cards and sign on Friday night, with plans to finish decorating once I arrived at the reception site. Other than an irritatingly flawed yellow frosting line above the red fondant-ribbon border...the cake itself made me pretty happy.  I headed out this morning...and even had time for a 15 minute stop to visit my mom on the way through town.

As I walked into the reception site...something suddenly looked very wrong.  My bride and groom got married in Las Vegas last month...and their reception was being held for friends and family who weren't there with them to celebrate.  The theme...you guessed it...Vegas!!  The cake reflected their theme.  The site I walked into...very elegant, very formal, very wedding, very purple.  As I walked with the bartender to the cake table, I knew something was wrong...and looked at the table to read "Amanda and Caleb Drake" on the centerpiece...yeah.  I explained to the girl that I definitely was not in the correct location...and rushed back to my car, where I attempted to reach someone who would know where I needed to deliver the cake.  Thank God my aunt knew where to go...I had written down Elk's Lodge.  Nope.  American Legion.  

Sigh.

7 minutes later, I arrived at the correct reception location...where my bride waited impatiently for me to arrive (about 20 minutes late)...and she definitely liked the cake.  That might be an understatement.  She couldn't believe it looked so much like the picture she sent me, which made me...hmm...ecstatic would be a good word.  I threw in some things that made her cake a little different from the one in the picture she found...but it was definitely "inspired" by someone else's creativity. :)  All of the girls from the kitchen had to come check out the cake (and I have to tell you...having people stand there and go on and on...it's flattering, don't get me wrong...but dang...how embarrassing!  I definitely prefer the drop-off/set-ups where I'm the only one there other than waiters setting up tables.).  One of the women went into the kitchen just raving about the cake.  In the kitchen stood a woman attending her aunt's funeral dinner...held in the room next to the reception room.  She asked if she could come in and see the cake, and they wandered in.  She introduced herself as Lisa, I think, and it came up that she worked for Ace of Cakes.  I kind of brushed it off (as I stuck on poker chips, gold coins, and all the paint-work), figuring more than just Duff Goldman's show on TLC probably went by that name, and she asked me about details--what kind of fondant, how I made the cards and sign, etc.  We talked tips of the trade for the next 5 or 6 minutes...and it suddenly became apparent (as she told me about the Cricut machine for cutting gumpaste, and a machine for rolling fondant evenly, and the $16,000, 8-tier cake for which she and 8 other people spent the past six months making sugar flowers...) that she worked for Ace of Cakes, behind the scenes, not on the show.  Her specialty is calligraphy.  I think it was that moment that I started feeling...completely inadequate.  She pulled out her camera phone and took a picture of my cake, telling me repeatedly how great she thought it was.  Then she took a picture of me with my cake, and took my webpage address, and told me she was going to get my cake and picture put on the website. 

Nothing may come of this.  I realize that.  She may not have that kind of pull.  

But wow.  Was I flattered.

Today might be the best day ever with my cake business.  And even if nothing comes of it ever...it was still pretty great.  And if the worst thing that happens with a cake I'm thrilled with is that I almost deliver it to the wrong location...I think I'll take it.

Hey.  Need a cake?  Call me.  I make 'em.

 

 

Help me out here.

We use Spelling Power for our spelling program.  We love Spelling Power.  I absolutely hated spelling lists at the beginning of the week as a kid...and the concept of having 20 words handed to a child on Monday, with a test scheduled on Friday and then they write the words 10 times, write them in a sentence, and study them at home Thursday night...to be tested on Friday...and after that, more than likely never dealing with that word again even if they got it wrong on the test...just seems pointless to me.  As the kid who generally got the spelling words right on the pre-test on Monday...half the time, I didn't even learn new spellings in a week.  How silly!!  Spelling power introduces new words each day...if the child knows how to spell the word, you move on to the next.  If the child spells the word incorrectly, they cross it out, spell it correctly in the next column, and that becomes a study word.  For Reasa and Lainie, we'll go until we get to as many as 4 or 5 study words for that day, and then you stop giving new words, and they go through a 10-step study process (where they spell it, say it, write it, close their eyes and spell it and say it, and so on), then they write each word in a sentence.  Sometimes we follow this up with other practice techniques--making the words out of play doh, writing them in rice trays, making pancakes with the letter shapes...etc.  Basically, the kids get 15-20 new words a week.  This is wonderful!  Here's the rub:  my children turn into whimpering puddles of ridiculousness when they spell a word wrong.  The first missed word, it's a mild pout. The second word, they start fussing. The third word?  Oh, my gosh...it's like their little worlds came tumbling down and they feel like hopeless idiots who have been sentenced to a life of stupidity.  And I've made the girls go to 4 or 5 a day.  Just imagine the result.  This may sound strong to you.  Let me assure you...it's worse than that.  And it's every day.  Every day that they get words wrong (and the lists are getting harder, which is good!!  But it means more words wrong than they're used to).  Every single day, I assure their precious little heads that they have to get words wrong occasionally, otherwise there is absolutely no point in doing a spelling lesson.  They have to get words wrong in order to learn new spellings. If they already knew how to spell every word in the English language, as their teacher, I would not be a necessary part of their lives.  Now...if they want to learn the spellings of every single word in the English language on their own time and impress me with their knowledge when we do Spelling lessons...hey, have at it.  But I can guarantee you, this is not going to happen.

Today, I put my foot down.  I told them (Lainie specifically) that I would never again have this conversation with them.  They would get words wrong daily, that was the point, and I would never listen to them whine or fuss about it again.  If they did whine or fuss again, I would assign them the ominous task of writing 25 times, "I will not whine or fuss or pout about spelling words ever again. I need to learn to spell new words."  If it happened after that, I would increase that number by 10 each time it happened.  Or maybe more.  For Lainie, this would be a punishment pretty much worse than death.  And I told her it would happen during free time...that she would not hold the rest of us up while she pouted and whined about having to write sentences.  Plus, if she did that I would give her more.

It was not a good mommy moment.  That Homeschooling Mommy of the Year Award?  Yeah, I wasn't in the running for that anyway.

I want to believe that the reason they get so upset is because they just can't stand getting things wrong.  They want so desperately to do everything with excellence that the thought of missing a spelling word rocks their worlds.  I'm pretty sure this is not the reason most of the time.  With each misspelled word, the work load becomes greater.  Another word with which they must work through those 10 steps.  Another sentence to write.  More school to do.  For Lainie, this is definitely the case.  For Reasa...however...I think it's pride.  She hates the thought of being wrong.  I know this is true for her because it transfers to other areas of her life.  This is just another area where we need to deal with this.  These are the parts of parenting nobody tells you about.  And absolutely nobody tells you how to actually deal with them.

Time to bust out Making Children Mind Without Losing Yours again.  Maybe Kevin Leman mentioned something in there about this issue...I didn't read through to these ages...

So, tell me...how do you deal with pride issues or laziness in your child's schoolwork?  Other areas?  I wish I could tell you that I handle these things beautifully.  My reaction above would indicate...otherwise.  

Now, it's quarter-time.  And it's more like fun than work.  And I can mostly do it from home...

...but it's a job.  

I'm the Worship Arts Assistant/Director/Copy Maker/Organizer/Crazy Person Who Almost Sort Of Knows What She's Doing.  I had my first staff meeting tonight...more of a training session than anything, it was truly an opportunity to get to know the three other new staff people who came on with me this month, and our Lead Pastor.  

Life is good.  Life is a little nuts, but it's good.  

So, now that I've got the next three weeks' worship lineups planned, if you happen to know how to insert a video clip from wingclips.com into a powerpoint presentation...hey...I'm all ears.  

...but it was close.

The redeeming factors?  Spending an hour helping a friend plan for her daughter's Tinkerbell 9th birthday party (seriously, some day, I'm going to run a party-planning business and I'm going to throw birthday parties for children.  no joke.  and i get to make the cakes.  i think i'll do this when my kids are in college and i need a kid fix before i have grandies.).  Talking to my pastor about what he expects of me for this weekend's services.  Watching Bryson wear his glasses and read like he's never read before.  I'm sure the novelty will wear off really, really soon...but for today, he read like a little maniac.  Did this mommy's heart good.

Yep.  That was it.

No, having my husband show up with a Contractor and his foreman without any notice and take a tour through my house was not a high point.  

No, having Reasa's trainer approach me about the possibility of leasing the horse she is currently riding as part of her general lesson fee was not a high point.

No, the discussion Seth and I had regarding this option was not a high point.

Nor was the conversation regarding another opportunity...

Having to tell a friend I just couldn't help her with her statistics of sociology homework because I didn't understand it any more than she did...nope.  Not a high point.

Fearing I had stepped on another friend's toes...heck no.

Tomorrow?  It wouldn't take much to make it a better day.  I don't want to tempt Murphy, though.  So, I'm going to say...it's going to be better.

Please, God.

...I get to teach my kids the science of pyramids.  How fun is that?

...I get to jump in headfirst into our next Singapore math curriculum with the girls.  If only they loved math as much as I do...

...I get to experience two of my littlies adjusting to everyday life with reading glasses.  So thankful that's all they need.

...I get to step into a role in my church I never expected I would have anywhere...but feel pretty stinking blessed to be trusted to tackle.

...I get to watch as the monkeys put together Greek root words and make sense of them...and watch lightbulbs pop over their heads.

...I get to listen as my kids learn the discipline of repenting...and accepting Grace and Forgiveness.

...I get to pray more.  And focus more.  And concentrate more directly.  

...I get to intensify my karate workout as my instructor prepares me for a tournament.  And I get to feel those competitive butterflies kick around in my stomach again.

...I get to design two cakes...one for my sweet niece's birthday, and one for her great aunt's wedding reception.

I love this week.  And it's only Tuesday.