Technology

Technology is great but it is also the devil! Not really but I have very mixed feelings about it. Here are some of my latest thoughts.

Never thought I would be a blogger! It has almost been a year now that I started blogging. I started reading my friend's blog about her family, thoughts, and ongoings and it just made me want to write about my own family. It is kind of an online journal, diary, and scrapbook of our lives. I am SOO behind on scrapbooking our pictures and this at least gives me a timeline of what is going on in our family. My Uncle recently started reading my blog and he said some very kind words...he said that I should write for a Christian Family Magazine or something. He is very kind and it is funny because I really never thought that writing was my thing!

I never thought I would be on Facebook either. I thought it was for lonely, dramatic, silly people that didn't have anything else to do but to look into each others lives via the web ....oh wait maybe this is ME! YIKES!

Online scrapbooking...I just made my first digital scrapbook of our camping trip and I love it! I am totally hooked. It took me only an hour to do a whole album whereas doing it "by hand" would have taken me weeks. You cannot beat that!

Texting...all I have to say is that I love it! I am NOT a phone talker. Probably because I can't ever be sure that I am going to have 10 minutes of uninterrupted time to actually carry on a conversation but texting allows for you to put an idea, thought, question, or comment out into cyberspace and allows the other person to answer when they have a moment. It goes along with my obsession with email in that perspective. I dislike talking to people when I barely know them and I guess I am a little bit of a anti socialist when it comes down to it...I just find it more comfortable and easier to email or text. I cannot tell you how many times I have wanted Emily to have a cell phone over the past year. It would be easier sometimes to just be able to send one with her to send her a quick message, etc. She was at a birthday party a couple of months ago and I did not stay with her. John Daniel, Molly, and I ran some errands. Emily is my worrier. She will go and do anything but DON'T be late in picking her up...she will freak! So I drove up in the people's driveway and Molly of course was a sleep (a very much needed nap). So do I wake her up just to go in and tell Emily that I am in the driveway and she can come to the door when she is finished saying goodbye to her friends or do I leave the two kids in the car long enough to just run in. It would have been so nice to be able to text Emily a nice.."mom is in the driveway, come to the car when you are done" message. It all worked out though.

Now things that I do not like about technology....all the toys and gaming systems and such for kids. I seriously do not think that my 7 year old really needs a phone...and I do not think that she needs a TV in her room or a laptop or a fancy gaming system but that is just me. I would rather build her a treehouse to pretend play in! She wants an IPOD for Christmas and I am resisting! We still have leapsters! Some of this may be that John and I don't even have fancy new tech stuff. We still have our old TV from when we got married. John and I are VERY behind the technology curve. Part of it is money but part of it is us wanting to resist the urge to want to have the latest in everything. We seriously go back and forth about it but in shopping around for Emily and John Daniel over the weekend...I was just bummed by all the junk that is out there. I had this patient recently that was the epitome of what I DO NOT want my children to turn into. He was 17 years old. He had some hand held gaming system. Mom did all the talking for him. He could not even concentrate on talking to me as I was assessing him. He was in a fantasy world. He was a "gaming nerd" that didn't have any social skills and he was almost 18 years old. Mom bribed him with a "new game" for getting through the appointment. It was very strange! I came home and made everyone go play outside! We all raked leaves :)

Another thing I hate about technology and all the things I mentioned above is that we have less face to face time. I realized recently that because I email, text, blog, and facebook with all my friends that I feel like I know what is going on with them and if I don't, then I use one of the above ways to get "in touch" but never come face to face or actually really talk. I found myself lonely, feeling isolated, and in need of some face to face, real live, conversation and girl time. We went and ate dinner at the Connells house and I loved it and could have stayed longer just hanging out and then I had breakfast with my friend Debi and again I could have stayed longer just chatting! So all that to say is I am going to try harder to have actual communication and face to face time. I feel like I have become too dependent on the other ways of communicating and loss some of that personal contact that is very important!

So all that to say is technology and I have a love hate relationship and like MANY other things in this very hectic world...there is a balance!

The Cost of a Date Night

This post may seem a little "Un-thankful" considering my previous post about Thankfulness and it may seem that I am complaining and maybe I am but as my friend has said in the past on her own blog...this is my own personal podium so I am allowed to say what I want I guess! I think John and I have a really great relationship and marriage. We work at it REALLY hard. We try to put each other above the kids and we so try to have open communication and serve each other and it really works but it is so hard sometimes with how busy we are to find time for each other. I am not talking about the time that we sit in front of the TV together or the time we spend paying bills on the computer together, or the time we spend cooking for the family together, or the time we spend doing chores together...this is all good don't get me wrong but I am talking about time where we are totally focused on each other, what the other person is saying, time to laugh, time to talk without interruptions, time when we are both not completely exhausted, time when there aren't clothes on the couch to fold staring at me or dirty dishes in the sink calling my name, time to hold hands, time to do something fun, time to have a deep conversation. I personally, and this is my humble opinion, think that date nights with your spouse are extremely important. I think that especially when you have young children, they can be very important.......simply to have that time to talk about things....so many of my friends, coworkers have had really difficult times in their marriages because the family, kids, finances, and other stuff have become priority. So John and I really do try to make time for dates. Because we know our kids are our responsibility and we try to be responsible with our money, we have been creative and had "dates" here at the house when the kids have gone to bed....we will order sushi and eat it around the coffee table with some candles when it is quiet. This is fun but there is also a need to just get out of the house together! We went on a date on Thursday night. We were trying to be careful with money so we ate dinner at home. We left the house at 7:00 so that we could make sure the kids were fairly ready for bed. We stopped at Food Glorious Food and ordered dessert and coffee. It was $18. We then went to a movie which was $9 (cheaper because it was a week night). We never see a movie in the theater b/c of how expensive it is and truly not many movies are that good! We got home at 11 pm and paid the sitter $45!!!!! So our date night cost us $27 but the sitter cost us $45 putting the evening at a whopping......$72. It really isn't even worth it for that to tell you the truth although John was trying to make me feel better today about it and told me that it was worth it to get to dress up and go sit at a quiet restaurant and stare at me for a couple of hours! He is sweet but DANG!!! I know...it is my fault for having three kids.....!!! Our friends in Madison, Harriet and Jeff, started a babysitting co-op for this reason...they couldn't afford to go on a date and so four families switch off. One couple watches all the kids (which is like 13 kids sometimes) on a Friday night and the other three couples go on dates with their spouses. Then the next week another couple watches all the kids and it keeps switching. Every couple gets 3 dates a month with no childcare expense. They get three hours to go on their date. Well this would be awesome but John has such a weird schedule that we wouldn't be able to commit to a group such as this. We have to go on dates on "off days". The Connells and us had a deal at one time (before the newest little ones came along) where we would switch off months and because Paul has the same kind of weird schedule as John does, they understand....(Ann I will be calling you soon...we need to start this again!). My friend Amanda (what an awesome sweet spirit she has) use to out of the blue call us sometimes and just offer her services to us for us to have a date night(she has been out of town a lot lately and very busy) . Seriously, I think she is one of the few people that understand what a huge blessing that is! For someone to just say, "Hey, pick a night..I want to watch your kids for you to go on a date...no strings attached" is probably the greatest present anyone can give me!!! And she doesn't even have kids so that I can return the favor (We have dog sat though). Anyways, I guess you can tell how important I think it is and how it made me want to vomit when I realized how much our short 4 hours together cost. It makes me wonder what people do that pay for a sitter or childcare when they work. But again, I chose to have three totally beautiful wonderful kids and I guess paying $45 to make sure they are safe, happy, well cared for is worth it! But Ann, I will be contacting you :)

Thankfulness!

Tis the Thanksgiving season and I am in the mood to be a cheerful, positive, and very thankful person. Facebookers have this "post something your thankful for on your status" thing that I'm doing and I am trying to create the Thankful spirit in our home! I see that when I am thankful, I am content! I found so many verses on Thankfulness in the Bible.

Colossians 3:15 And let peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts. For as members of one body you are called to live in peace. And always be thankful.

Hebrews 12:28 Since we are receiving a Kingdom that is unshakable, let us be thankful and please God by worshiping Him with holy fear and awe.

So instead of the Thankful garland that I was going to do all over the ceiling, John had a better idea. He cut down a small tree (shrub tree) that was growing in the back yard. He put it in a pot, put sand all around it in the pot to make it stand up straight, stripped most of the leaves off and brought it in the house. It is our Thankful tree, sort of like a Christmas tree. Each night we are writing on paper leaves (cut out and colored by the kids) one thing that we are each thankful for and hanging it on our tree. I will take a picture of it when it has more "leaves" on it and post it. It looks really cool!

I also decided last night as I was writing what I as thankful for on facebook that I needed to share it with my husband. He is not a fellow facebooker so I thought of a quick sweet way to show him my thankfulness. I wrote in dry erase marker on our bathroom mirror last night.....John, I am thankful that you will come home after working a 12 hours shift and cook me breakfast, thank you and I love you! I am going to do it every night as I brush my teeth!

My friend Harriet and I were talking a few weeks ago about husbands and marriage. We were discussing the strengths and weaknesses of our husbands...I make it a habit to never talk down about my husband to anyone but this was a open discussion and very positive. One of her husband's strengths was that he is very romantic and is good about surprising her with a romantic evening...however, he is not as good at the everyday stuff like cooking dinner etc. My John is an everyday servant. He is very engaged in the everyday occurrences in the home and goes out of his way to serve me! However, my John isn't a big gift giver or big surprise, romantic night kind of a guy. Now John can be very romantic. And he has surprised me with some really cool things but you get what I mean....we discussed how if we (meaning women) can stop complaining and nagging them (husbands) about what they are NOT and start encouraging them and focusing on what they ARE, then life is so much better. Would I really want to give up the everyday help that he lends me for one surprise night out. I read this book called "Love and Respect" not to long ago and its premise was this. A man's greatest desire is to be respected and a woman's greatest desire is to be loved. If a man is not showing love to his wife, then she in return starts disrespecting him and if the woman shows disrespect to her husband then he isn't all that willing to show love. If we strive to watch out for each other and think highly of each other then the cycle should have great reward! So with this in mind, I desire to focus on the many things I have to be thankful for in my husband and all the many blessings we have as a family.

This and That

As I have said before, our dryer belt broke. John was out of town and he had to order the parts when he got home so I was without a dryer for almost two weeks....I ended up washing clothes in our washer and then I took clothes to both my Mom's house and John's Mom's house to dry. Every time I went back to pick them up, both Moms had them out of the dryer and folded for me and I promise I didn't leave them on purpose for them to do this......I certainly could have gotten use to that!

We are going to do a Thankful garland all over the house on the ceiling. I have photocopied the picture of a leaf and made many copies...everyday leading up until Thanksgiving we are each going to write on a leaf something we are thankful for and then hang them on a string on the ceiling.

The Homework stations that I made the kids were suppose to be fold away kind of boards but the kids loved them so much that they became permanent fixtures in my living room...Emily does her homework there but they also serve as art stores, schools, offices, and Sunday school rooms so they kept creeping more and more into my living space. Finally, I told them that was it....(I was starting to itch) and needed to move them to their room or fold them away. So last night and tonight we cleaned out drawers, closets, move clothes around, straightened and made room for their "offices." Now their room is neat, clean, and organized, and they have their offices ready to go....and they are playing in their room instead of always being up under me (I can only handle total chaos up under me for so long).....now if their room would only stay that way.....I guess I have to let them pull out their toys at some point!

My 97 year old Great Aunt (my grandfather's sister) died yesterday. Wow, 97 years! Today, I was talking to my Dad and we were talking about remembering things and writing things down and remembering names, etc. What do you think a 97 year old wished she had done in her 97 years??? Good question to ponder!

I love purses! I really do have an addiction. It really is any bag or any type...I love diaper bags, lunch bags, and travel bags....All I have to say about this is, I don't buy shoes like most women do and the bags I like are mostly under $40. My most recent one was $10! And funny enough, I always get nice comments about my cheap bags!

I'm excited about the holiday season....I want to celebrate thankfulness, our blessings, and the Birth of Christ and we are NOT getting caught up in the craziness! Last year was so nice and we did so many meaningful activities and fun ones too like bake cookies....we do not lack for anything and so I want the Season to be one that the kids will remember for what we do and how we act rather than what we all get!

Molly is now pulling herself up on everything, dances when she hears music, and SOOO busy! She has knocked her head way too many times because she is so into everything. I think I need a pen for her!

What he is going to be when he grows up

I love my time with John Daniel when we are by ourselves either at home when Emily is still at school, or driving in the car, etc. He is a very smart, perceptive little boy with lots to say! I do believe great things are in store for him as every one of my children but it will certainly be interesting to see what he becomes. I know he has a kind and gently heart. He is concerned about spiritual issues and asks lots of questions about God. He loves others. He has also become quite the jokster. He likes to "kid" and play jokes. When we were trick or treating the other night he said, "there is a snake hanging down from that tree!" as we passed a low hanging branch and scared his cousin Natalie to death....then he said, "I'm just kidding!" John thought it was hilarious. His teacher pulled me aside last week and told me that J.D. is very popular even with the girls. She said that there are fights to sit by him. I asked J.D. why all the kids liked him and he said, "cause I'm funny." His Sunday School teacher said he is the best clean up helper. He is a worker and a busy bee. Rarely does he sit still. If I am bringing groceries in, he wants to help...he knows where everything goes in the pantry. When John was out of town, we needed Halloween stuff out of the attic. J.D. was more than happy to volunteer. Well I got him up there with the ladder and then realized it probably was not the greatest idea b/c then I had to get him down! It all worked out but I won't do that again! But he did get all our Halloween stuff for me! He also volunteered to blow off my driveway when Daddy was away. He loves tools, machines, knowing how things work, fixing things, etc. He is really amazing. My five year old knew to turn the light on in the hallway so the plug in the garage would work. He knew which extension cord to get to use for the blower. He knew where to plug everything in. He knew how to turn it on. He knew how to use it (from watching his Daddy) and he blew off my entire driveway as an adult would . Then he decided the van needed to be shop vacuumed so he did that too! He had to change out the extension cords to fit the vacuum and put all the attachments on..which he knew how to do. John and I have noticed this motivation in him and John is great about teaching him. The other day they had to take apart the dryer to replace a belt. J.D. was eating breakfast. John says to him, "John Daniel, we need to go out and take the back off the dryer and then go up to ACE hardware" John Daniel says with all seriousness, "O.K. Daddy, let me just finish my breakfast!" He was sure that Daddy could not do it without him! So he talks a lot about what he wants to be when he grows up. He usually says a Paramedic, Policeman, and Builder Man. He says he is going to build me a BIG house one day! Today as we were driving to school he says, "Mommy, how did the baby get out of your belly?" Well lucky me, I had a c-section so that was easier to explain than the other. So I told him the doctor cut mommy's belly and pulled the baby out and then sewed me up. He said, "Cool, I'm going to be a doctor!" So we talked about what kinds of doctors that there were. I told him there were bone doctors, baby doctors, kid doctors, doctors that did operations, etc and he decided he wanted to be a doctor that operated on EVERYTHING...so I guess that would be a general surgeon. He is so sweet yet so boyish! I truly love having a boy and girls! It is so much fun to see the differences!

Thankful for some encouragement

Today I worked at the CCS book fair. It wasn't that busy when I was there so I got to talk to an acquaintance (another mom) for about 45 minutes and wow was I blessed! This mom, Nicole Myhre, has four kids. She homeschooled all of them pretty much full time for 16 years. She has a sophomore in public high school now, an 8th grader at CCS, a 6th grader at CCS, and a child in Kindergarten. She is a photographer by trade and I met her 5 years ago at camp Charis when I worked as the nurse at camp. She is a wonderful believer whom is the "real" kind of Christian that is honest about the ups and downs and struggles and triumphs. I have run into her here and there since the time that I met her 5 years ago, mostly at my children's schools when she was there taking pictures. I needed to talk to her today but didn't even know it. She encouraged me on so many levels. We also have a connection in that her step mom is a nurse with me at Urgent Care. Nicole shared with me her struggles over schooling, we talked about faith, we talked about praying for your kids, we talked about time management, we talked about a child's heart, we talked about money and finances, we talked about college for kids and scary middle school, and creative outlets....all in about 45 minutes to an hour! She told me to pray hard and pray very specifically for my children. She told me to not only take one year at a time (as far as schooling my kids goes) but take each day at a time. She shared with me that each of her children have very different needs, wants, desires, gifts, struggles, traits that require different attention. She also said to me, "when I get to Heaven, God is not going to ask me if I got my kids into an Ivy league school, if anything he is going to ask me, what did you teach your children about My Son!" So I walked away from the CCS book fair encouraged, convicted, and blessed. I love that God sends someone your way when you don't even know it to just chat and relate to you when you need it most! Another reason why I really wish that we all weren't so dang busy and had the time to mentor and encourage one another. We so need friends in faith surrounding us and blessing us and helping us to remember to take it day by day!

The perfect church

I really don't think there is one....John and I said yesterday that we were going to start our own little research project....looking at what God says in the Bible specifically about what the church should be. I love our church and I love the people there...I think I have said that before but it seems that no matter where you go, there is something that is less than attractive about a church. From people complaining, from the way they do the service, to the music, to the way the pastor preaches, to the type of dress, to the financial situation, to the small groups, to the Sunday school, to the children's ministry....I really don't think any church gets it just right, it is no wonder why so many are over organized religion. I don't think it is a pastor's fault either....how can you possibly please everyone. A couple of things that I have learned or strive for....(this post could be a very detailed and lengthy one but these are just some very surface thoughts I have had)....I have learned that people who complain are in my opinion thinking about themselves.....I believe it is up to ME and JOHN to decide what our children partake in and what we teach them and how they learn......The worship experience should be about God and not ourselves.....The Bible is our source for all direction.....and sitting and soaking it all up and not using what you know is no good. Now speaking about the church in general and not just the one we attend.....I could care less if there is a children's church or not....ultimately it is my job to raise my kids. I could care less if the pastor wears a suit or jeans. My preference is contemporary type of service but I have found that if I put my needs and wants aside...I can worship God in any setting. And I will be honest..I struggle with how to reach the world....I know that it is not ME that saves people. I also know that Jesus wants us to be salt and light and Jesus hung with sinners and I know there is a responsibility in there for me....now whether you change your service/church/worship experience to be more inviting for those sinners to walk through the door...I do not know. Do you thump the Bible the old fashioned way and believe that it is the truth so no matter what sinners will be saved...I don't know. The world has changed. People have changed. People have so many more distractions. Do we have to make Christianity more attractive to these very distracted people. Or do we just trust that they will walk in the door b/c we are teaching the Word of God and it is powerful. I do not know! I do believe in the Great Commission and He has commanded us to go out into the world....I just don't know the perfect way....but my heart is wanting to know His will and I pray for our church and our leaders as they make decisions. God knows that there is no perfect church....perfect people....or perfect solution even....But He is perfect and I am excited to see His way revealed!!! I pray that I can be a part of a great story!!!!