Busy busy busy!!!

It feels so much better to DO STUFF.

The past months, I  mean year, I have been sort of living in survival mode ... doing laundry because I have to ... cleaning up but not really cleaning ... making meals, but not great ones... at the end of the day sitting with Dale playing games on my phone for hours. I have been blowing through the days just trying to get through them.  There are the occasional good days, of course.  Not that each day wasn't a good one, but my... performance as the manager of all things domestic was not good most days. 

Now the baby is sleeping hours and hours now.  The preschoolers are entertaining each other.  The girls are doing a lot more cooking.  I am finally getting all the balls in the air again!  Hahahaha.... don't judge me.  It was an analogy to juggling, and you knew it!

SO anyways... the very mention of not really reading my Bible was enough to compel me to get my Bible out.  I think about this all the time. Living life with a Biblical worldview colors everything.  The whole data-in, data-out is huge when you are raising a village.  Every detail of this life goes through the filter of what would please God.  I MUST be in the Word daily in order to rightly prove what is good and true and not some societal law that is really insignificant.  I MUST read the Bible to the children and in front of the children daily in order to establish it as our foundation!  It's absolutely critical.  I intend to do this very thing!!

On the side of all things lovely... here is the lampshade I bought at the thrift store for two dollars. Forgive my photography!  It's not on my agenda to become a photographer. You get the idea. :)

 What I did was rip off the decorative paper.  Underneath was a clean white slate.  With hot glue and some fabric that I found in my workroom,  I completely covered the shade with a single smooth piece of fabric.

 Next I cut out a million circles of fabric by hand with some dull scissors. Each circle was folded into quarters and glued onto the shade.  It was easy and turned out to be so lovely! 

My next project is to do something to this lamp to make it worthy of this lamp shade!

Just one more thing while I'm here! Check these happy girls out at Forever 21.

Now go and DO SOMETHING!  You'll feel so  much better.

lvb

Church

Today I took the kids to the Baptist church here in town for, potentially, our last Sunday. It made my heart sick.

I grew up in the church that raised me. By that I mean the people there visited my mom in the hospital after my birth. They attended my birthday parties growing up. The kids that were in the nursery with me were also in youth group with me. It felt like home.

To this day after attending churches for almost 20 years, I have yet to experience anything comparable. Fremont Calvary Temple was close, but that was a long time ago. It grieves me to think that my children won't have the same experience. They've not known a church family, not in the way that I did anyway. 

The mentor chaplain warned us that we would have a difficult time fitting in at a church because of Dale's work. His schedule doesn't accommodate typical church attendance, so we have to go on our own. The kind of work he does goes unseen, and therefore it goes unacknowledged. It's not that he needs accolades, but the camaraderie of fellow ministers is hard to come by.

I was playing air piano in church this morning along with the worship team and it nearly brought me to tears. I have these gifts that sit by the wayside. It perplexed me. I have this neeeed to play and sing with no outlet.

All that to say this. I have this amazing family. Everyone I need shares my blood or is kin by marriage. And yet sometimes I feel like I don't have a home. :(

Lvb

HEEEEEEEYYYY GIRLS!

I am starting to feel alive again.  Seriously.  I go so under after I have a baby.  Like, I cleaned my kitchen this week.  It was dirty.  It took hours and days, and I still haven't wiped out all the cabinets.  But I want to, see, that's the difference.  I scrubbed the floor on my hands and knees and cleaned the windows with last year's hand prints on them. It's so much better in there.  You should come over.

I am getting creative again.  The drive to create something is taking over.  I actually bought some stuff to redo at the thrift store today.  They are just lampshades, but I am doing something that is not baby or child related, which is like coming up for a breath after AAAALLLLL THEEEESSEE  MONTHS!

I miss writing.  I think about writing every day.  I bemoan the fact that I haven't written anything in months almost everyday, sometimes out loud, sometimes not. And hey, here I am!  Writing!!

I think about reading my Bible all day long.  I grab snippets from YOU VERSION most days, but it's like eating a cookie for breakfast and nothing else the rest of the day.  Boo... not enough.  Jesus knows.  He knows me too well.  His grace burns hotter in my soul when I'm honest about the wretched worm that I am. And I am.  Wretched.

You are on my mind. :)

The things that energize me are all coming to fruition.  Thank you Lord for a breath.

I may have found a narrow path out of debt.  It will be work, but not the crash-diet-for-five-years type of work that I usually lay out for myself.  It's doable; pray for me.  This money... strings me up by the throat.

For my first project, I am making the lampshades, and I am super excited to do it after watching Sista do it so successfully last week.  I will post pictures if I make it back to this chair before next year!

Thank you for always coming back.  Your loyalty is inspiring. 

xoxo

lvb

24

Something I read recently has given me hope. I can't get away from how important this tidbit of information has become to me in these past few weeks.

Babies of all ages, pre-solid food, need 24 ounces of milk a day, whether breast milk or formula. 24 ounces for 24 hours.

I am tired. Really, really tired. Moses has never slept thru the night. I have tried cluster feeding, a bottle at bedtime, and cereal.

So my plan was to bulk up his total caloric intake during the day to see if he would sleep longer at night. Which I did. And he did. I did not anticipate the weeks of diarrhea that would follow the formula intake.

We have finally recovered from that and I am ready to try again. We'll see how my theory plays out. I will let you know!

Lvb

SIMPLIFYING

I am constantly considering the way that I do things and the reason I do things the way I do. Most commonly, I rethink the way that I am parenting this small village of people under my roof. After spending a long weekend with our good friends, away from the kids and the constant motion, I learned a lot.

1. Teaching our children to respond appropriately to injustice is more important than catching the instigator.

They will continue to be antagonized throughout their lives in various circumstances. This is the perfect time to catch and correct their impulsive tendencies.

2. Modeling produces the best results.

Monkey see, monkey do.

3. We are training our children to become responsible adults by establishing good habits.

I have been toiling over the ever-growing list of rules that exist in this house. I fear that I am burdening my poor children with yoke of the law. I decided to limit video games to 2 days a week several months ago. It was a good change, but now I find some of my niños spending the entire remainder of the day, post schoolwork, buried in the mines of Minecraft. I have made casual mention of my growing disapproval of this behavior, but not wanting to place further restrictions on them without good cause, I have not established a time limit on game days. Any advice concerning this matter is most welcome!!

Tonight it occurred to me that I am not restricting these activities to be cruel or harsh, but because it is an unprofitable habit to spend countless hours mining!

The same is true for staying awake into the wee hours of morning.  (ironically, I am writing this at 1:38AM!) Haaaaahahaha! I really thought about this one though, before announcing the new "lights out" policy. I had a few children that were coming down late in the morning, crabby during the day, and displaying a bad attitude when asked to do chores not assigned to them. Come to find out, these very children were up until 2:00AM the night before. Hmph! It gave me great confidence to announce the new policy when I realized that it is an investment into their future patterns of behavior. When my daughter cried at the prospect of having to sleep at night, it shook me a little, but I stood my ground, knowing that she would see improvements right away after correcting her former habit.

I am applying this new found insight to most of the house rules. Some, of course, are for safety. Others are preventive measures to keep the peace in a house full of people. But most of them are training for life. It has helped to weed out some of the unnecessary restrictions.

In recent news, my sweet dreams of baby chicks coming home to lay have been bashed in by the ding-dang zoning laws. Because of this I have felt feverishly compelled to ready our house for sale, and I have been in search for an acreage. Please pray that the Lord will give us His favor in both of these endeavors! He is good and continues to bless us in the coolest ways. I want to please Him. On the farm. Where my destiny and the destiny of my precious country crew lie!

One more thing! I would really like to be out of one and into the next by the end of July, before Dale starts the PhD program. I'm afraid I will be on my own past that date, and frankly, I might not want to do it so badly if I have to do it without his hulking muscles!

Happy days to you, my sweet friends!

Lvb

Me

Wonder

I find myself not writing because what I have to say is maybe not worth reading. Or maybe I'm afraid you won't find it interesting. I write with you in mind and find myself not posting because most of my readership has talked or tested me recently about the very thing I am posting. Then this morning I had this thought. I find myself not reading my Bible somedays because its not enough. Either I don't have time or the attention span to finish a chapter and so I read nothing. It occurred to me that a little is certainly better than nothing! And the same principle applies here. I need to write, for me! It's a lifeline that I deny myself on account of my concern for your interest. Time for a new chapter!

One of my biggest pet peeves on Facebook, my social life, is when people list all their accomplishments in a day. But then I sit down to write an email or text or even a post on Facebook, and I am doing the same thing. It's so bizarre! What is it about that? Am I trying to impress you? Am I looking for validation? I don't really know. I want someone to care how many times I got up in the night with a sick baby. I want someone to notice that I got up early to bake break for breakfast and that I have dinner in the crockpot so that later I can sit and talk to Dale when he gets home. I want someone to say, "Hey, you are makings your own chicken stock? That's so economical and convenient!" But instead I strive in vain for that very thing by overmentioning it and the people I talk to get used to hearing me say it.

I have this great son that wakes up with a life threatening ailment every morning. I never pay attention because it's always the worst thing that's ever happened. I'll never know when he's really hurting. Same deal with me. Every day is so full of my accomplishments that no one really notices. So maybe that's what I want. I just want someone to notice that my life is a minute by minute race to help and do and prepare and clean up and organize and wipe and hold... That's why ungrateful responses send me into a tirade. I know your life is the same way. Maybe you handle it with more grace than I do.

Having said all of that, I will say this. There is nothing else in this world that I would rather do than to be the matriarch of this house to this guy and these kids. I dreamed about it til the day I joined ranks with Dale Sutton and started this journey. I am grateful, and I really do love it.

Lvb