How do you...

...move a mountain?

You could stare at it a while in hopes that it will disappear...

 You could ignore the inevitable and just lay down...

You could grab a pair of these and get to workin'...

and try to be just like Daddy...

Or you could play "giant" and just call it a day!

Are You Getting in Your Own Way?

That curious contradiction of "dying to oneself"...

The person inside of you dying so that you can be reborn...

Getting in your own way, stopping yourself from overcoming, achieving, listening, bending, being humbled...

My selfish wants and needs are very often a loud, ugly voice, crowding my thoughts and blocking my ears to the truth

Over the past months, I've been slowly, very slowly dying inside. Rejoice with me over the things I've learned and the new person God is allowing me to become!

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My desire to have an easy to feed household has been snuffed in favor of having a healthy household. No longer do I take shortcuts in the kitchen, ignoring possible allergens or sensitivity triggers. We have now been largely grain-free for close to two months, following loosely to the GAPS diet parameters.

The Lord lead me to this place of sacrifice in the kitchen, and my reward is more peaceful children, not clamoring for food every five minutes, more calm, less apt to tantrum over tiny things. I feel amazing, I actually get a hungry feeling (haven't had proper digestion in YEARS) and nearly all my fibromyalgia-type symptoms have vanished. (I will share more on these health issues in our family later.)

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My desire to have a just for me work area has changed in favor of having a just for school work area. After struggling with the kids over disrespect and disregard for the seriousness of school, the Lord impressed on my heart the need to completely designate ONE room in the house as a classroom.

Taking apart my dedicated art/sewing table/workspace was like ripping my arm off. Tears flowed, but redemption came. Obedience that requires sacrifice bears delicious fruit!!! We now have a beautiful turquoise table and orange and white chairs in our new classroom and the children sit peacefully around it and do their work, largely without complaint.

{quick note on this: while having a dedicated classroom may improve your personal home educating experience, I'm by no means saying that this is a cure all or surefire way to get your kids to settle down and work! This is just the way obedience in that area looked for our particular family. I'll share more on this later, also}

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My desire to "look pretty" upon leaving the house has been replaced by a desire to "look practical" and be on time! I still don't leave the house in pj's or sweats with mismatched shoes but I've left with no or minimal makeup or with just a simple braid or ponytail in my hair in order to place more priority on getting my children out the door peacefully.

This is an area that is difficult for me, due to my extremely low self-esteem and self consciousness over my body size. Over the years I've grown in this area, but my voice inside still kept shouting loud enough that I couldn't really hear what the Lord was trying to gently whisper to my soul...

"You are precious in my sight, you are beautiful in my eyes, you are unique, no one has or will be created like you, so there is NO COMPARISON! Just be, and listen to me...my voice is truth!

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My desire to have obedient children so that I could feel gratified and in control has been replaced with a desire to see them turn their hearts toward Jesus at all costs. The cry of my heart to the Lord during discipline issues has changed from "Lord, help ME know what to do here!" to "Lord, help this child to listen to you! Open this child's ears to what you have to say through me!" I can now hear this truth, softly spoken in my heart...

"Discipling and disciplining your children has nothing whatsoever to do with you, you are merely a tool placed in their lives to enable them to learn of Me and hear my voice speaking to their hearts. It doesn't matter if you are being physically or emotionally assaulted by your child, your feelings are not the issue. Their hearts are infinitely more important!"

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These all big areas! Big enough to write at least a whole post on each...which I may do at some point.

For now, I'm humbly thankful to my patient Heavenly Father for lovingly and gently leading me on these paths.
This is only the beginning of my adventure in dying but it's a good start...

When I'm tempted to argue with myself, or trip over my own feet, my turquoise table is my ever-present reminder that...

Obedience that requires sacrifice bears good fruit!

I know, I know...

...I haven't been here in nearly two weeks. 

And the last thing I left was a picture of my trashed kitchen floor. 

Nice, right?

Well, my horse raced away with the cart and I needed to go catch the reins again...so to speak.

So here's what you've missed:

We started *ahem* working on another baby (clearly in the forefront of my mind right now!) Not sure if this is the kind of activity I should be talking about on my blog, but I"m really excited and thought you all might like to be excited with me!

My birthday is on Sunday. I will be 35. 

I always said (rather stubbornly) my womb was closed at that age.  

I guess God has other plans!

Ava will be turning 4 in a mere 3 weeks. 

Ouch! I did a cute photo shoot of her today all decked out ala "Fancy Nancy"

(for those of you with girls this age, you'll know exactly what I"m talking about!)

Alec is big...really big. He asked me the other day if I had shrunk!

We've pretty much finished that upstairs room, now no longer called the "junk room". 

I have one more wall I need to embellish and a couple details elsewhere to take care of, but I needed to take a break for a minute and let life resume normal routine first.

I know you're all dying to see pictures...soon...very soon!

I cleaned out the boy's closet and re-organized their whole room last weekend. 

Exhausting! 

Under Benji's bed I found 5 nearly full tissue boxes...and other remarkable items. 

They love their "new" room and are refusing to play in there because they don't want to mess it up! Ugh!

I got asked (again) to be the church photographer for an upcoming baby dedication. 

I love taking pictures. I do not love editing them. 

It's just so time consuming when there are a couple hundred to go through! 

If they keep asking me, I may start charging...is that wrong? It is church, after all...I should be donating my time, right? Hmmm...

I'm starting to get the urge to do a fun sewing project. I love making Ava summer dresses, but shy away from it in the winter because of the sleeve issue...sleeves are H.A.R.D. to finish on the edges unless you have a serger...I don't. I think I just really need to buckle down and finish the quilt I started last fall! Ha!

I love Christmas and Thanksgiving. 

I really, really, really hate being cold. I probably shouldn't be living in the midwest!

I really hope my best friend gets to come home soon.

It will be a long, sad winter if she doesn't.

Marvin and Alec are at a hockey game right now. 

The tickets were for Marvin's birthday from his family with the intent that we'd go on a date and they'd babysit. 

See how well the plan worked? 

I"m now the babysitter for two of my children while Marvin takes my other child out to dinner and the game! No, really, it's OK. Alec has been begging to go to one for quite some time and was the perfect opportunity.

I'm getting really sick of Sponge Bob. In French, it's Bob L'eponge.

Mr. Popper's Penguins is just as entertaining now as when I read it as a child.

We're getting ready to study a bit of ancient African history and I'm super excited. Africa has always fascinated me, and I hit the jackpot at the library. We'll be spending the whole week reading on the couch and making an African recipe.

I am, once again, in love with the FlyLady. She has given me wings to run and catch that fast horse that ran away with my cart and this week went so much better.

If you are at all struggling to balance housekeeping, meal planning, errands, etc. with the rest of your life, do yourself a favor and follow her advice! 

Your family and stress hormones will thank you for it!

almost!

I started at 8:30 this morning...one tree and several drapery panels later...we're nearly finished!

Stay tuned for the Big Reveal!!

some of us

are resting today...

the rest of us are 

painting, 

painting, painting

fingers stiff

caked with grey

eyes bleary from seeing the same color for hours

mind churning with ideas

can't wait to be finished

{time out}

after all the hurry hurry of the weekend, we desperately needed a whole family {time out}

we peeled ourselves away from the painting on Sunday night
and took a drive to one of our favorite local parks

dinner cost $16 for the 5 of us and was easy clean up off of the picnic table

the kids were happy

{really} happy!

we took a walk to the water's edge

saw tiny beauty on the way

and amused ourselves till the sunset came

this is the best sort of {time out} possible, right?

don't you forget to take a {time out} this week with your little ones...

Keeping them busy...

We used to do home improvement projects in shifts...one of us would mind the baby, one of us would paint, sand, etc.

This is the first time we've done a project that didn't have to be stealthily completed during naptime or worked on solo while the other parent pulled baby duty.

It's kind of nice!

We do, however, still need to make sure the kids are occupied with something CONSTRUCTIVE, otherwise we're liable to find missing kitchen utensils and an empty box of baking soda on the front porch.

Last week we tried to work on the room just an hour per night, and this was our activity of choice for the kids.

They didn't mind one bit. 

In fact, sadly, we have actually never had them experience the joys of shaving cream on a table at all! 

Not sure why, except...

when we went to clean them up, we realized exactly how messy it could be!  

They all smelled like an adolescent out to woo some ladies, their fingers were pruny...

I wondered if we should ever eat cookies baked on these trays again and...

some of the finish was completely worn off the table! 

Yikes!

Over all, a fun time was had, and our table is really none the worse for wear.  

The room is coming along nicely, but at a snail's pace...this is a very busy time of year for us and we normally do NOT take on a project in the fall. 

We're at the painting stage now, whew! so all should go smoothly from here on out...

more pictures of it this week {hopefully!}

!! progress !!

This beauty's getting a makeover, Shelly-style!

Awesome wooden "locker" cabinet that we found for only $45 at an antique shop last weekend

Being scraped...I love orange, but this was a bit much!

(I'll store my upstairs sheets and towels in it, this old house has absolutely NO storage)

Re-purposed porch railing from a flea market

as our new upstairs banister...

NOT looking forward to painting this one!

...sneak peek

it's late but...

I just wanted to talk...

We're still working on that room upstairs. Marvin gets home so late every night now, this project has been quite a bit different from our other remodels. I now know the true meaning of "weekend warrior"! It's so frustrating to walk up there every day and see NOTHING happening. And then in the few precious hours we have on Saturday and Sunday progress just c.r.a.w.l.s along because there's weekend life to attend to.

This morning Marvin had to work for a couple hours, so we did a bit of schooling, I did a lot of laundry, babysat a couple kids for a couple hours, made some food, made a whole lot of bread and did a whole lot of other Saturday-ish things. Once again, the day was two-thirds over and NOTHING happened upstairs.

(In his defense, I will say that Marvin was outside in the garage and at the hardware store working on the new banister that we need to install at the top of the stairs.)

Finally, I dragged myself away from life and headed outside to pick apart a vintage chair and get it ready for it's makeover. Alec and Ava assisted me with sandpaper and pliers and we made a nice bit of progress. By the time it was ready for paint, it was too cold and dark outside so we'll have to wait till tomorrow.

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I just finished watching Confessions of a Shopaholic on Netflix. Funny movie! Marvin was asleep. Otherwise I would have never watched it, it would have made him gag. Once in a while everyone needs a sugary girl movie, right?

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I loaned three maternity t shirts to a friend this afternoon and when I handed them over I cried. See, we had gotten pregnant at the same time and were all excited to have our babies together so we went shopping for maternity clothes together when we both started showing. (which was early for me since it was my fourth, and early for her since she's having twins!) But, since I don't need the shirts right now, and she really does, I loaned them. I thought I was over the miscarriage mostly, past the crying part, you know? But...as I handed her the bag, I blurted out, "I know this is unreasonable of me, but could you not wear those shirts when you're around me? It would just be too hard for me to see them on someone who is pregnant that is not me." and burst into tears. Awkward. For both of us.

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I had a really great time with the kids tonight at dinner. Hee-hee, yeah, I"m sure you're thinking what?  Marvin was sleeping off a headache in bed, and for some reason, I just sat at the table with them long after we had finished and we were all giggling clowns for about half an hour.  Singing songs, making faces, fake burping, pretending to spill stuff...it was hilarious. And silly. And fun. And we should do it more often. Usually they eat while I clean up and there is no hilarity. But tonight I sang them songs and they listened and laughed. It was much more fun than cleaning up.

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Right now, I have nine tabs open in my browser. Five of them are File Folder games that I want to print. One of them is the address and phone number of the place I need to take my sewing machine for repairs. One is my email. One is a photo blog that I stumbled across and I'm not quite ready to be finished soaking in their beautiful images and dreaming of expensive lenses while I drool. And the last one is Blogger.  I"m obsessed with tabs. For some reason, bookmarking isn't enough for me. I somehow feel that if I close a tab it's gone forever. Sometimes I really have to just take a deep breath and clear them because I have so many up that they're small and the funny scroll sideways arrow comes up and our computer starts freaking out.

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I haven't sewed in a while and I miss it. I screwed up my bobbin case doing all that shirring with elastic thread and now when I sew my tension is totally funky and every seam looks like a toddler did it by hand. Not good. I had to close my shop and I can't even work on my rag quilt or make my new curtains with my new fabulous fabric from IKEA. You'd think that getting it fixed would be a priority, yet there it sits forlornly with it's light off. Why do I always put off the important stuff? I'll call Monday. Maybe.

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OK, I"m all talked out...callin' it a night...au revoir!

giddyap! {there's really no point to this post}

We love us some horses here in this town! 

Each year we all line the streets for an hour-long parade of the state's finest equestrian blood. 

This was the weekend for it.

Saturday we spent in front of the college football game and eating cake for my sister in law's birthday and Sunday we spent at church, up in our junk room, at this parade, 

and at the kitchen table for dinner with friends.

It was a great weekend, full of beautiful weather, good food, and extreme productivity! 

Yesss!!!

That room upstairs is nearly empty and I'm faced with the exciting? challenge of incorporating that deer head and two birds into my quirky, whimsical, IKEA-inspired playroom design...Yikes!

This week I hope to decide on paint, order fabric, and come up with a plan for those animals...I"m thinking painting the sky on a wall and hanging the birds on it? Hmmm...it can't be too serious...but not too funny or my dear husband that shot them will be quite dismayed.

I'm also faced this week with a decision to make about attending this semester of our homeschool choir~ we don't do well with an overload of structured activities, and our full day of classes at the homeschool co-op seems like it's enough. I"m torn, though, because choir is fantastic, and our teacher is even more fantastic and it's so good for the boys...

Oh, I did forget to mention that on Sunday we also hauled one of our area rugs out to the backyard, put it on a piece of plastic over a piece of plywood, and I cleaned it with our carpet shampooer.

That was some fantastic people-watching for our perpetually out-of-doors neighbors, I'm sure!

I struggled with that stupid, leaky behemoth for nearly two hours...leaves and bugs falling on the rug, dirty water puddling everywhere, wet carpet slipping on wet plastic...

The carpet was cleaner, but much wetter than it should have been and VERY heavy!

We clumsily dragged it to the back of the yard and heaved it over a couple sawhorses to dry only to have the sawhorses collapse...

After baking in the sun for about 5 hours, it's not as clean as I'd like it to be, but at least there's no question that the dog fur and fleas are totally gone!

And finally, I got my long-awaited steam mop a couple days ago! Yipee! Come and enjoy a meal on my kitchen floor sometime! This baby heats up to over 200 degrees, hot enough to sanitize even the dirtiest, pee-encrusted bathroom floor...AND you can clip on any dishtowel, etc. if the two included mop pads are in the wash...NICE!

Now I leave you with a quote from one of my favorite vintage children's stories, 

The Gingham Dog and The Calico Cat (Eugene Field)

The gingham dog and the calico cat
Side by side on the table sat;
'T was half-past twelve, and (what do you think!)
Nor one nor t' other had slept a wink!
The old Dutch clock and the Chinese plate
Appeared to know as sure as fate
There was going to be a terrible spat.
(I wasn't there; I simply state
What was told to me by the Chinese plate!)

 

{Something about this story reminds me of my children tattling on each other...}

today

dust~ boxes ~ donate ~ toys ~ sneeze ~ take out ~ put in ~ memories 
paper ~ kids ~ sad ~ tampons ~ chocolate ~ laughing ~ paint ~ animals
camera ~ attic ~ ugly ~ ladder ~toilet ~ new ~ old ~ dresser 
fix ~ wipe ~ chairs ~ bounce ~ sleep ~ fresh ~ chalk ~ music ~ history

Spring Break

Last week, the kids did this

and this

while Marvin did this

and this.
He spend the lion's share of his time this week removing some old fence and replacing it with a new privacy fence. He rented a post hole digger, dug 15 holes, sank 15 posts in fast-drying cement, and installed most of the sections. He has never put in a fence before, and you'd never know it. He worked like a pro and nothing went wrong! I can say with most certainty that that has never ever happened on an project we have attempted. I kept holding my breath waiting for him to come frustrated into the house and he never did.
As I'm writing this, all but two sections and the gate are up. The rest will get finished this week in the evenings.

At the end of the week, we took the kids to a museum center a couple hours south of here. We have been to the children's museum portion of the building, but were looking forward to seeing what else it had to offer. Since it was Alec's birthday weekend, we decided to sweeten the pot by splurging on a hotel room for a night with a pool.

Parties, Furniture, and Date Night

My mom's birthday was Friday ( here's me and the kiddos at her house), and she had us all over for a delicious meal that she insisted on preparing herself! I couldn't get her to see that it was just not right for her to cook her own birthday dinner, but gave in when I realized that it would mean a meal that I didn't have to make but got to eat. She's an excellent cook; we always had dinner parties when I was a kid and everyone raved about her food. Thanks mom, for your scrumptious birthday dinner!

Ava and Nana (my mom) doing one of Ava's favorite things- covering her appendages with stickers. She proudly wore them the rest of the night

For her birthday, I made my mom a photo book from Shutterfly. It was the first time I had made one and it turned out really nicely. You can put in text, choose your own page layouts, cover style, basically like you were a publisher. I'll definitely do it again.

This is the other thing we did this weekend. It's an old pie safe, which had it's original milk paint finish until a now- deceased family member of Marvin's decided to give it a surprise makeover. It was in Marvin's house when he was a kid, and his parents were not thrilled when they came home and found it with it's newly painted and newly de-valued exterior. Since it's virtually ruined as a collector's piece, I"m giving it a makeover of my own so it will fit in with our new office. This is the "before" shot, hopefully by the end of the week I"ll have an "after" shot...

Marvin also surprised me with a night out on Saturday. He had his mom come up and sit with the kids (she actually took them to the park for a picnic, which they loved) and we went out to dinner and a movie. I can't remember the last time we did that and it was really nice. We went to a new restaurant that had just opened and had some nice carrot cake for dessert, and then went and saw Will Smith's new movie, Hancock. It's about a super hero with a bad attitude and a drinking problem.

I can definitely relate to the super hero with a bad attitude thing- sometimes I feel like I'm supposed to be a super hero as a mom, and it overwhelms me and I do have a bad attitude! I don't go throwing cars into buildings, though!

Weekend Woes

Woweee! What a weekend we had! Marvin was off starting Thursday, because of the 4th of July. Since my lovely friend Beth came over two nights in a row and helped me finish up the paint in our new office, we intended to spend the weekend moving into the room.

Our plans were derailed by a strange stomach virus that assailed me on Thursday around noon. I kind of felt like I had bad indigestion, so I took something for it before my friend Sarah and I went out for a long overdue night on the town. By the time we got home at 10:00, my stomach hurt so badly that all I could do was lay down.

Until yesterday evening, my stomach felt like someone had lit a match and dropped it in. That's it. No nausea, headache, stuffy nose, nothing. I was a bit tired and achy, and Alec and Benji started to complain about the same thing on Friday. Today, Ava has come down with it, but she has a fever so I'm hoping her body will just burn it off quickly and she won't be whining around with an upset stomach for half the week.

We did get some stuff moved into the room, including our mammoth desk and computer. It's starting to look nice, but I'm feeling overwhelmed by all the junk that needs a home now. I"m planning on a big trunkful to donate sometime this week.

Revisiting a Journey

I've recently had a request for information about a remodeling project, and it inspired me to post these year-overdue pictures of our kitchen remodel.
We've been working on this house little by little over the past 8 years; why we waited till we had three kids to do the kitchen is beyond me!
Anyways, it was an absolutely horrific thing to go through, but I have absolutely no regrets. We all learned a lot about each other, our marriage stretched and grew as we learned new ways to communicate, and I got over my paranoia of having to feed everyone healthy food all the time. We ate fast food at least once a day all summer, and everyone survived! As a friend of mine put it, "Do your best and let God do the rest."
I learned some valuable lessons that summer. Our new kitchen is such a blessing, we now have room to all sit down together and eat, and I'm able to host an impromptu meal for guests at a moment's notice.
I will never recommend to anyone to live in your house while remodeling a kitchen, but I will tell anyone that it can be done, and it will either make you or break you.
Enjoy the pictures!

This is not the "before" kitchen in it's entirety, I had started to take it apart before I remembered to take a picture.

Hubby had to use a saw to remove the old, built in cabinets

Alec pitched in and was very excited to be using a power tool

Bye-bye, old nasty stained porcelain sink!!