Category: life

Wednesday’s Rambled Musings

Today was a productive day.

The Greg Ott Center for physical therapy and sports performance

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had the opportunity to chat with some really nice people while waiting on D during his long physical therapy rehab sessions.  The ladies, whom I chatted with, were an elderly mother and her daughters. The mom and a daughter were in for rehab also. We sat and chat about life, children, food, and television shows. I am always enthused to meet school teachers who are not the least bit offended that I homeschool. This sweet lady even commended me and offered encouragement that I am doing the right thing for my children. She even called my children blessings after finding out I had so many. She grew up as one of five. It was an encouraging couple of hours we sat and talked and made the time go by faster.

I was also able to go through a few of the little boy items and box up some give away items. I have them stacked in the hallway so there is visual clutter. DH and I will take the items to a donation site on a day when we have plans to pass that way in a few days.

We are really enjoying studying Georgia O’Keeffe! She was a great artist. I love her paintings. We are enjoying her paintings and working on our own mini replicas.

I am constantly hungry and constantly nauseous. The two are diametrically opposed!

I have 2 cameras. One is an old Canon Powershot S50 and the other is newer Nikon Coolpix S220. At any given time neither camera works. I think I have both working now. D has a basketball game tomorrow against CSCL in South Charlotte. I am praying one of the cameras will work for me. I like the Canon. It is older but the pictures are of better quality. The 10 megapixels on the Nikon doesn’t do much for us because the picture quality is poorer.

Busy Tuesdays

Tuesdays are our Classical Conversation meeting days. They are full and fun and exhausting!

We start the day with baths and breakfast. Today the boys ate beef sausage and blueberry DeWafflebaker’s pancakes. There was a buy one get one free sale at Bi-Lo and I printed a couple of coupons online making them less than a dollar per pack!

We drop sisters off at the local CC and off we go to our meeting day.

We meet together the entire group for announcements, Pledge of Allegiance, Pledge to the bible, prayer and dismissal to class.

Then we go to our separate classes. I sit in Foundations with my little boys. There or 8 children in each classroom for the tutors to work with.

The littles are thoroughly enjoying their renditions of Famous artist painting. Even Jesse is working really hard on painting.

Science experiments have been really fun too. Getting the children physically involved to understand concepts.

Learning is FUN!

We leave, pick up the girls and go home. Give dad the van to take D to basketball practice. I try to stay awake and get dinner started. Sometimes I fall asleep at the kitchen table waiting on the oven to pre-heat. So I frequently set the timer to wake me in 20 minutes.

Today was a good day. Good night!

New Years Resolutions

The Girl's Fun Henna Tats from RenFest 2011

I have not really been one to make resolutions. I usually have smaller monthly goals that seem more attainable.  This year as a BlogHer challenge I sat down and made some new years resolutions.

I have resolved to give myself a break. Not get lazy or anything but just not drive myself when I really need to sit and rest for a minute. I am saying no to more things and trying to focus on a few things and do them very well. I know that is hard to do being the mom of eight children. I must multitask but I will purpose not to get gratification from things.

I resolve to enjoy my family more in slowing down. Let some things go so I can sit and enjoy the board games and coloring or playing cars on the floor once in a while with the boys. I think I will regret more missing some quality time than the cleaning and scrubbing I can be obsessive about at times.

I have resolved to go to bed at a more decent hour most nights instead of missing precious sleep to catch up on cleaning and computer time.  Rest is so healing to a weary body and mind!

I resolved to insist on more frequent communication with DH and not letting tiredness, kids schedules, or whatever creeps in to come in between us.

I have resolved to not take personal anything people say about me good or bad. It is just their opinion and everyone is entitled to an opinion I guess? Right or wrong.

2012 Is my year for slowing down and listening for God’s direction and feeling HIS peace daily!

Back to Blogging:

In my absence a lot has transpired. I won’t go into details unless asked or requested. Long and short of it… I have been on strict bedrest, now I am on light duty off feet every two hours on left side. So I have spent most of my time trying to bring my home back to order. The laundry in the laundry room had taken over in mass proportions. I now can see the bottom of empty hampers. YEAH! I cleaned out my refrigerator and either fed dogs or compost with the few science experiments found. The Frugal Girl would be proud of me. There was only a couple of stray items in my refrigerator. (No Pictures, I failed to stop and capture the moment once I got started.)

I am currently in the process of rearranging my kitchen cabinets,with the assistance of Daniel of course! My goal is to focus on the small one step at a time and hopefully have this house back in order in a few weeks or so.

I am trying to organize the boys school work. I’d like to have a week ready at a time but I am not there yet. I have a few days ready. I am trying to regain strength after being sedentary for a little while. I moved their items to the kitchen where we tend to do our most productive work.  They can grab their stuff on their own. It is more accessible now.

I went grocery shopping and made my menu plan today.

MENU PLAN:

If the dinner plan contains gluten items, I usually make myself something different.

Saturday: leftovers galore to prevent food waste. Mostly hotdogs and whatever we had lurking that was less than 3 days old.

Sunday: Cabbage, Beef Kielbasa and rice

Monday: chili beans, homemade sweet corn muffins and asparagus

Tuesday: homemade vegetable and beef soup and corn muffins

Wednesday: baked chicken, baked potatoes, and peas

Thursday: Leftovers

Friday: Lasagna, garlic bread, dessert, and spinach

I need to make this week: pumpkin chocolate chip muffins, gluten-free chocolate chip pumpkin muffins, homemade yogurt, and french bread

I am going to try the crockpot method for making the yogurt. Also I only make 1/2 gallon at a time since I have been on bedrest and weight lifting restrictions.

December 13, 2011 Thankful List

Daniel cleaned the living room! I can see my floor again. It is December 13th and we have no decorations up yet. I usually am excited, bake cookies with the kids, plan fun stuff to do, we love crafts and such. This year I believe the gloomies have taken residence in me and have not the faintest clue of how to evict them.

I have been praying a lot. I decided that maybe I should list as many things that I can think of that I am thankful for.

December 13, 2011 Thankful List

1. God loves me unconditionally

2. He sent His Son to save me

3. He has much grace for me

4.  My husband loves me

5.  My husband has a job

6.  Most of my children are caring people and hard workers.

7.  A lawyer may be able to help us keep our home. We have lived here for 15 years.

8.  We have a decent sized wood stove, so we can keep our house warm.

9.  I have had some great nurses caring for me, who actually seem to care and are not just doing their job.

10. My teeth aren’t hurting.

11. I still have morning sickness but I am able to keep down food now.

12. I can feel baby moving around.

13. My children are fed well.

14. We have relatively fresh filtered water to drink.

15. I have a great group of friends with my local Classical Conversations. They are definitely a God inspired group. I literally would not know what to do without them.

16. I have some great internet friends, some whom I have met and some who I have not met , but would love to meet one day!

17. We own our minivan, no payments and it runs.

18. My husband makes more than minimum wage.

19. My husband works so close to home that he rides his bike and I get to keep the van. I don’t have to get up early to take him to work or wake up early to pick him up from work or all of the crazy schedule stuff I have done this year for his temp jobs.

20. I  love planning meals, cleaning house and taking care of my family in general.

21. Daniel cleaned my living room without me asking or offering bribes or rewards.

22. I have the best mother-in-law and father-in-law. They are hard working, down to earth, just really good people.

23. My regular internal medicine doctor really listens. He heard my stomach pains and is the only doctor who felt I should be tested for celiacs. My other doctors said I just had to live forever with my IBS symptoms. This year is the first year when I have actually felt “Alive” physically.

24. Glasses. Without them my vision is poor. I am very thankful for my glasses.

25. My old Canon camera. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. It takes excellent pictures to be so old.

October 28,2011 Ramblings

Working on returning to blogging and other things that I find relaxing and comforting. I don’t know how to adjust to this new schedule yet. It is taking me awhile to catch up on housework. Seems like I barely maintain, let alone catch up. I am learning to let go of my perfectionism these days. Listening more to God and my body and resting. I did get up at 330am to do dishes that one of my children did not do last night. I noticed all the lights on last night and got up to turn the off. I am trying to lower all

of our bills but it seems to be a lone venture. Our power bill has been crazy expensive and I feel we are wasting resources that we currently do not have.

Our water bill has also become exorbitantly expensive so I feel we must have our utility company check for water leaks as soon as possible.

Classical Conversations has been wonderful for my boys and I. Last year this time I was quite stressed and feeling a failure as a homeschooling parent. I met a wonderful group of ladies. It was such a God match. I could not have planned it better myself. We all have a love for God and an overwhelming desire to please HIM and do HIS will, regardless of what is happening around us. I feel so blessed that God has sent me to them and them to me. Most of my self doubt in the homeschooling department has left. We give one another accountability and fellowship of common minds.

I would like to start a Challenge group for my boys. I am not sure if that is too much for me yet or not. I have gotten better at saying no, when, at one time, I used to take on too much. I need to find out what the title of Director of Challenge group entails and also figure out which or if I am interested in being a Challenge tutor. I am trying to work “catch up” with my older boys. I want to teach their level stuff but also give them Foundations learning too. All of it make so much sense and is so important. My eldest son is not interested at all in Latin. People fail to realize the roots can teach us the meanings of so many English words and helps you learn any other foreign language much much easier.

Very Short Update:

We are still around. Slowly trying to adjust to R’s new work schedule. He started a new job about a month ago. It is close to home. He rides his bike to work. He makes a dollar more per hour. He even got paid to work over time when they needed to catch up on something. He works seconds shift so it has been really awkward for me.

My girls do not have a car and live at home,  so I must get up early every morning to take them to college. Which should be fine because I am a morning person. R likes to come home and eat dinner and talk and watch television for a few hours. So I have been extremely tired. Also I am a few months expectant so I am additionally tired. I am finding it impossible to keep the littles asleep once he arrives home so noisily. He says it is okay, they can sleep in I can sleep in. But I can not sleep in.

Once a week we attend Classical Conversations and I must awaken even earlier to get wet children bathed and dressed and out the door, drop off the girls and get to Co-op.