The Rest of The Story......

After my sweet friend L's comment on my last post and K's response this morning at M.OPS, I feel obligated to confess the rest of the story.

In order for me to accomplish a single craft, all other activities must stop. I have hardly cooked dinner for the last three weeks. A couple of times we ate with my parents, (Christmas and New Years). We ate out a few times (way more than normal) and I stretched what we already had for as long as possible. We ordered pizza for B's birthday and I think we ate it for about 4 days! I have touched a broom maybe once in the last three weeks. The bathrooms, let's not even go there! I have kept the laundry washed, but have been terrible about folding it and putting it away. In fact, a nice huge stack is waiting for me right now.

So please do not feel anything about yourself because of my last post. I am just so excited to have something accomplished along with feeding my children and brushing my teeth, that I had to share it with you.

I have had a terrible time adjusting to four little ones. Two felt hard, but was still manageable. O came in without a hitch. CJ has been a wonderful baby, but it just has taken me four months to feel like I can buy groceries when I need to without activating the entire fleet! I am still trying to figure out when to clean our house. (Don't look at my floors!!!!) And when to make important phone calls without sitting my big littles in front of the television. I just hate doing that. There is always something to be working on and I am thankful for these little tokens of accomplishment. It may be another six months before I have any other crafts to share! I hope not though since O's birthday is just around the corner!

Spare Time

Also known as: Time when I should do something productive, but choose to do something creative instead. After snapping pics of all the things I've made recently, I realized that I've squeezed in more craftiness than I realized. And I just remembered that I forgot one item. Maybe it will come later.

So, here's what I've been up to:

I made the hat on the left using the one on the right as a pattern. It's a little big, but it works and was a pretty quick sew!

B Turned 3 in December. Once I found the pattern for this cape, I could not resist making it for him! The boys play "Narnia" daily and he needed a King Edmond cape for his adventures.

All of my littles will have these pants by spring, but B received them for his birthday. They are really big and roomy. Perfect for wild boy play and another super easy sew!

^I saw the birthday banner, above, on Made by Rae and thought it would be a fun way to celebrate B and make our home a little birthdayish along with all of the Christmas decor. I sewed the felt together, but I think Rae hot glued hers. I am hoping this banner will last for several birthdays!

v I just thought this picture was really cute and had to share it with you!

^ I don't have a picture of the finished product, but these are crayons that I melted down, let harden and turned into heart shaped crayons. I first saw this here. They are going to be a gift for O for her second birthday.

O received her stick horse, Strawberry, for Christmas. She is the only one who was given a toy from us this year. I make each of them a horse for the Christmas they are closest to two years old. I had Albert make the stick shorter for her and she loves it! The littles were galloping around the house this afternoon. A very inexpensive and quick sew and so much fun!

My mom taught my how to knit and this is my first project. Please do not look too closely as I think there is an error on every row, but I did enjoy it and hope to get better with time and practice.

My second knit is a snowball. It is not as round as it looks in this picture, but it is very soft and perfect for throwing at each other. I think I will make a few more so we can have "real" snowball fights. This is as good as it gets in the south!

This is my latest project. I started and finished it today. That is amazing these days!

It's a floor quilt for CJ. This is half of it.

I saw the fabric on the back (the stripes) at JoAnn's and really wanted to use it on something. CJ loves to be with people, but he really likes to be on the floor these days. We have M.OPS tomorrow and I usually keep him with me. I thought a nice big, colorful blanket would be a great thing for him to hang out on. And here it is! This is the first quilt that I have been creative with and quilted entirely on my own. I am really excited about it and hope it holds up through it's first wash. That is the true test of it's usefulness!

Last, but not least, I've been growing these littles. They sure are getting big!

So, what have you been up to?

Shredded

At the encouragement of my four year old, I started Jillian Micheal's 30 Day Shred again today. I was already thinking about starting this up again. I actually have quite a list of things I'd like to do on a regular basis. But, my plan was to start things up after the first of the year. I have this personal rule about starting new things on Monday. If things start to fall apart during the week, we start fresh on Monday. If the house is a mess and our chores have gone to pot, we start again on Monday. All potty training endeavors, toddler bed transitions, pacifier weanings and get yourself to sleep trainings have begun on Monday. You get the idea.

I am planning to begin the book "31 Days of Praise" in January. I have read everything up to the actual day to day breakdown, so that I will be able to get to the meat on the first day, which will probably be January 3rd. I am planning on reading a chapter a day from my stack of books. "Don't Make Me Count to 3" is top on the stack. It is hilarious so far and full of biblical truth and real life mothering situations. I can't wait to read the next chapter! I have great plans to order all of the appropriate pictures for C, B, O and CJ's baby books and get them caught up. One per month. I should be able to manage that, right? (insert eye roll here) And I was planning to do the "30 day shred" starting the beginning of January. Something about 30 days of working out and 31 days of praise seemed like a good structure for January.

But I did not discuss the plan with the 4 year old and I couldn't resist Ginger Plowman's book for another day. So, yesterday I started reading a chapter a day and read two chapters. Maybe I actually will finish a book this year! (2011 that is) This morning C asked repeatedly if he could watch the work out girl with me. I changed clothes and put the DVD in. I even brought out some weights for both of us to use. It was really fun to see C trying to do the moves. He got tired right about the same time I did, but he sat down and I grunted through to the end. I must admit that I do not use the weights every time I'm supposed to. And with a one year old crawling onto my back while I am doing cheater push-ups, well, I don't think I did all that I was supposed to do. Then there was that cardio block where I was supposed to be doing jump rope and said one year old stood in front of my holding on to my quads. That's tricky. So, I may not have gotten the full workout that Jillian and The.Biggest Loser hope people will receive, but my arms and legs are burning already and I am really hoping I'll be able to move tomorrow.

On a more cheerful note, I did feel a bit stronger today then I did the last time I started the 30 day shred. I was able to use the weights more and I did every move for at least 3/4 of the time. :) Hopefully I'll be able to stick with it long enough to try out the 2nd and 3rd level workouts and notice more strength in myself.

Some other things to come in the new year, well, I guess they are really things that are going to go in the new year. At least for a month or so. We are going to attempt to fast from movies and dessert. I feel like we have over indulged in both of these over the last month. Movies have been the attention holder while I have worked on gifts for B's birthday and any other thing I wanted to work on without littles underfoot. Desserts have been excessive for probably the last year. In OKC, we just didn't have dessert much. Since moving south, we have dessert ever Thursday after Navigators. Then we've started going to the Chapel on Sunday evenings and we have dessert. Then there's dessert for Albert and me after our Leader's study on Friday night. Never mind the extra Christmas goodies that we should have given away more of, B's birthday cake and the tasty cake that our neighbor gave us for Christmas. Yes, you could go into a sugar coma at our house! My plan is to eat everything, then cut off all desserts at once. Maybe I will at least try to stay dessert free until the next birthday rolls around. That would probably work for my waistline!

All of the plans are really fun and fairly easy for me to come up with. It's the self discipline and perseverance that I really struggle with. I feel like my energy and will power are both strong for about a week, then I'm just tired and and hungry for sugar. I guess the real question with all of this is "What does the Lord want me to do? Not to do?" Hopefully those will be the things I really pursue and stick with!

...

I am still here. Our internet has not been working this week, but life has still been happening. More to come!

At A Glance

Our week at a glance:

Sunday: O wears red tennis shoes with Christmas outfit because black shoes can't be found. CJ wears booties to keep his socks on, Albert asks if they are girl's.

Monday: Container of glitter spilled on the wood floor while I am seeking a little rest time.

Tuesday: MOPS and Above Rubies

Wednesday: Broken glass in the office. O gets a piece of glass stuck in her toe.

Thursday: No mozzarella cheese for homemade pizza. OCF/Navigator's Christmas party. My white elephant gift- a reindeer that poops jelly beans. Thank the Lord someone had mercy on me and took it!

Friday: Bean bags thrown at the window. Two broken ornaments. C singes hair (smoke coming up from head) and nearly sets his head on fire.

I am taking a deep breath and trusting that the Lord is shaping me to be more like HIM through this roller coaster of a week.

So, what does your week look like at a glance?

Celebrate!

Imagine that. I've already missed a day. I know, you are completely disappointed. Our Internet completely died after I posted Tuesday night and was gone until this morning. Old house wiring is so fun! :)

Tuesday night I had the privilege of hosting my second Above Rubies get together. It was so encouraging and rejuvenating. The title comes from Proverbs 31:10. The KJV reads

"Who can find a virtuous woman?

For her price is far above rubies."

Other versions read:

NIV: "A wife of noble character who can find?

She is worth far more than rubies."

NLT: "Who can find a virtuous and capable wife?

She is worth more than precious rubies."

NASB: "An excellent wife, who can find?

For her worth is far above jewels."

ESV: "An excellent wife who can find?

She is far more precious than jewels."

I suppose we could have called ourselves precious jewels, above jewels, precious rubies or more than rubies. There is a magazine entitled "Above Rubies" which a lady in town started a group based on. Her daughter has been sick for several months, so we have not met. Thus, my group was born. All of that to say, Above Rubies is a group of homemakers pursuing godliness, coming together to encourage one another, answer each other's questions and remind each other of our Biblical roles as women. We did just that Tuesday night. One of main topics was Christmas tradition. This gave me a whole slew of things to think about. A summary would be, why do we do what we do? I pulled out Noel Piper's Treasuring God in our Traditions and quickly read through her chapter on Christmas. She speaks largely about Advent and how we are celebrating God being faithful to His promise by sending Christ and that we are celebrating Christ coming again. What a joyful reminder! Just the thought of taking a month to celebrate Jesus coming again makes me really excited. I can't help but talk about this over and over again with my littles. Yes, I am excited to celebrate that God was born on earth as a baby, but that is not where the celebration ends. God came to die. Christmas is directly linked to Easter. And He has promised that He will come again and take us to where He is. Now that's something to celebrate!

Try again

Many times since I've started this blog, I've thought it would be fun to write a post every day. Obviously I have not had much success since it has been nearly a month since my last post and about a month since my post before that. So here I am again, no reminders please!

The days have been full, as they always are. Today we had MOPS. I have several back post that I hope to write about on days that are less than exciting, but today was exciting enough. Have you ever had a day when your first thoughts are, "We just need to get this one thing done." Then, as time goes on you might think, "well, maybe I can squeeze in this errand since we'll be out anyway." "Oh and I need some things for that dish I'm supposed to bring Thursday night, maybe we'll stop by the grocery store too." That was me this morning. My minimum requirement (set by myself) was to leave for MOPS at 8:40. This gave me a 10 minute buffer for leaving on time and should allow me to leave early. CJ nursed around 6:30, so I just went ahead and got him dressed rather than laying him down again. The boys were up at 7:00, so I dressed them right away. At one point every one's teeth were brushed and shoes were on, so I checked the time, 8:20. Wow, we had plenty of time until we needed to leave. I packed some snacks and started moving everyone to the mini. I ran back inside to change CJ's diaper, then buckled him into the mini. I ran in again to grab O's mini bag of diapers and such. I remembered that I did have my wallet, so we left the driveway, 8:49, still in my time window for being on time. About 5 minutes down the road I realized that I did not have our checkbook. I needed to pay for Christmas shirts today. Time hack: 9:00. I turned around as quickly as I could, made it back to the house by 9:04 and back to the spot we turned around at by 9:10. Not bad, but there was no way we'd be on time. I had to couch myself through, "it is better to be late than get a speeding ticket or kill yourself in a car accident. Forget about the drawing and drive the speed limit and relax." My self talk worked pretty well, so I did a time hack when I reached the single lane construction; 9:20. If I only had to get myself there on time, I might be able to make it for the drawing, but there was no way I was going to be able to drive 6 miles and check 3 children into their classes and be on time. And I wasn't, but we had a good morning (except for that part where CJ pooped all over himself and had to wear the ugly diaper bag outfit and totally squash any image I was trying to portray) and I was able to stay calm and refrain from treating my children like cattle. Move, hurry up, this way guys.

Our speaker spoke perfectly about my life. Her title was Live, Laugh, Love. The Lord whispered to me, back in OKC to live life with my children rather than just survive. This pops into my mind almost daily. Laugh. This is something that I don't do nearly enough and I am often challenged with. It isn't that there isn't a lot happening that I can laugh over, it is simply that I don't. Usually I become frustrated at the childish act rather than laughing. Love. This is a journey that I feel like always has room for improvement. One of the things she pointed out was that even terribly abused children love their parents and will fight to stay with them. I am still chewing on this. I feel like my responsibility as a parent to show my children how the Father loves them is crucial. Maybe my asking their forgiveness, talk and physical affection is what is really penetrating them. I don't think their faithful love for me gives me the leeway to act in a way that is unloving to them though. To be honest, I wish she linked love directly to how God loves us. To how Christ is the example that I am to follow as a parent. He was sacrificial, steadfast, faithful, forgiving, discipler. I am to love my children in this same way. Now that is something that I can work towards.