Calgon, take me away

I started a post about day 2 of homeschooling and never finished it. So I will recap that day here and then continue onto today's events. Day 2 was almost as bad as day 1. Again it ended up in tears (mine, not the kids) and left me feeling completely overwhelmed. The end of last week I held a garage sale and therefore, Wed- Fri of schooling was pretty light.

As a side note, the garage sale did very well. Thank you Lord! I prayed that the time and effort that went into setting up, cleaning out, and pricing would be well worth it. I was blessed with over $300 in sales, so I was thrilled. Again, praise the Lord!

This weekend held some fun activities as well. Friday night we had tickets to the Indians game from my prior employer. It was the only chance the kids had to go to the game this year. While I did spend 3-4 innings at Kidsland, a fun time was had by all.

Saturday, we had a picnic with a family from our church and it was really nice to get to know some other young families a little better and hang out with close friends as well. My two older sons got to ride a real 4-wheeler and that has been a topic of conversation for the two days since. My oldest has even been on the internet pricing them out for future purchase. (WAY future purchase if you ask me :) )

Sunday was a church service in the middle of town, and once again we had beautiful weather. The rest of the day was spent working around the house cleaning up after the garage sale. It's amazing how quickly things can get piled up again after being run through like a tornado for 3 days.

So onto today... the third full day of school. I'm sorry to say, once again, I ended up in tears. Luckily they didn't flow until after most of the kids had gone to bed and weren't all sparked from homeschooling. I'm one of those folks though that once the tears start falling, anything worth crying about is game, even the dog that died when I was a child. So of course, schooling got lumped in.

Right now, I feel like I did when the twins were just born. The first month I was completely overwhelmed and people kept trying to encourage me by saying "it gets better after the first year". All I could think at the time was 50 more weeks of this!!! I don't know what my kids will do if I cry every night for the next few months. I don't think I could handle it either.

The fact of the matter is that I'm currently feeling very lost. I came from a job that I was very good at and often received compliments on the outcome of my work. Now I'm doing stuff that I have no idea about, that I'm not very good at, and things that have little to no direction -- which results in I have no idea if I'm doing a good job or even improving.

On top of that two other pieces of information crossed my path, one that I took personally and probably shouldn't have and the other that requires more faith and trust in God.... faith that was so hard to come by when quitting my job that requiring more at this point seems insurmountable.

As lost as I feel, usually when the tears finally stop (somewhat from the relentless efforts of my husband to make me break a smile... thanks babe!), I come out with a clearer head. These are the times, I wish God would just give us a glimpse of what's ahead and say "It's going to be okay". I didn't get an "okay" from God, just a "My plans for you are to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you hope and a future".... I guess what else could I ask for.

Oy vey, I say!

Well I surely wouldn't classify today as a good day. However, I don't really think school was to blame. We got rolling this morning just a tad late and breakfast and chores took a little longer than I expected. We started school before 9 though so we didn't do too bad. I thought I would start the day doing read-alouds because I thought the twins could sit with us and feel included. That lasted all of about 10 minutes. I want the kids to learn how to sit though, so I did pester them a for a little while to sit down and be quiet and listen. When it started to interrupt the flow of what we were doing, I just gave up on them and let them play. Even then, I had to ask them to be quiet numerous times because even playing with their toys, we got the loud "vrooms" and "rawrs" from their play. About 1/2 hour in to reading, my oldest son said to me, "Mom, when are we going to start school?" I said, "this is it kiddo!" He said, "are we going to read for an hour every day?" LOL! Considering we are using Sonlight curriculum, I said "you betcha!" He was so looking forward to the worksheets, etc.

So even once we got into the worksheets, dealing with the twins was hard. I even tried to engage them with coloring sheets, reading books etc. All in all though, school time still went well.

Then this afternoon, I don't know what snapped. I think I was a little out of sorts because I didn't get to do any cleaning this morning, so the kitchen was a little bit of a disaster. Plus it was such a beautiful day and I knew the kids needed to get outside to play. We headed outside and I sat on the swing, book in hand, reading while they played. After an hour of reading, the wonderful breeze, perfect temperature, I was so sleepy! I just wanted a nap. I thought we'd come in and watch a movie and I could rest on the couch. I don't know if it was cause I was tired, or if it was the house being messy, or realizing I had to run to Sams Club to pick up dog food or what, but the kids just started hitting every last nerve. Oh I do have to add what some of my day entailed...

My youngest son, one of the twins, spilled water on the counter early this morning. At lunch he spilled mandarin orange juice on the floor and chair. He wet his pants in the bathroom all over the floor. Then on our way to Sams Club, he spilled Sprite from McDonalds in the back seat. Seriously, it is time to bring out the sippy cups again???

And that's just one of the 5 kids.

Last Friday was the first time in the month or so that I actually thought about going back to work. It also was during my Aunt Flo's monthly visit, and so, I attributed the bad attitude to that. However, Aunt Flo has left and today, the thought was there again. Am I in over my head? Maybe Christian School isn't all that bad? I had a good cry and hopefully got rid of all the negativity.

I do admit though that I have never felt so incompetent in my life. I am usually pretty good at things and very confident. I don't know if the Lord is working on my humility or what, but I'm feeling it! I'm trusting the verse that says He will not put me in a situation that is above what I can handle. I am reminded of a Facebook status that one of my friends posted. It said something about being thankful for all the spills, cries, screams, fights, etc that come from kids, cause otherwise, I could be like some who are crying tears of not being able to bear children. And on that note, I thank God tremendously for the blessing of my five children. I just hope we can all make it emotionally unscathed :-)

Summer is over

Well, at least for us it is. This week marks the first week of school and therefore, all of our unscheduled free-wheeling days of summer are over.

The past few weeks have been busy with last minute summer fun activities. Our family had the pleasure of going to a local water park this weekend for a friend's birthday party. We've been to parks and to a local kids fest. It has been so great spending quality time with the kids.

This week I also spent a lot of time cleaning out boxes of packed up stuff and getting our house more organized. I decided recently to hold a garage sale, so I've also been trying to get ready for that. In preparation for the garage sale, I knew it was finally time to sort through the many many toys we've had and sell some and garbage others. Thankfully, my friend, Jen, offered to help sort through stuff. We had a wonderful night of "toy cleansing"! I seriously think we reduced our toy stash by about 2/3's. Probably resulting in 1/3 in the trash and 1/3 in the garage sale. My husband and I even hauled all the trash out that same night and moved the garage sales toys into the garage to avoid the barrage of questions from our children as to "why we were selling this?" or "why are you throwing away that?" The end result is that I feel great about the toys we have left and the ease of maintaining/organizing our toy shelves.

We spent today playing Monopoly with our two older sons and then hanging out with friends from church for dinner and bowling. We had a great time. My mom watched the kids so we were blessed to an adults only evening.

The past few hours have been spent getting ready for school tomorrow. With the garage sale coming up this week and other projects in midstream, a friend suggested that I wait to start school. As soon as I discussed that with the boys, they were so bummed. They have been looking forward to this day for a few weeks now. I figured I couldn't disappoint them this time... especially when it comes to school work (who can complain?), so on we go. Tomorrow, oops, today will be day 1 of school. I've reviewed the lessons and work for the day and feel pretty comfortable with it all. I guess we'll see how it goes. If you happen to read this today.... throw up a prayer for us!

Never more than enough

Ah, so many things to post about. I realize it's been a little while since posting, even though I have thought about posting various things many times over the past few weeks. God has been blessing my husband with lots of side jobs the past few weeks. It's been great because we're paying bills ahead of schedule to make sure this recent jump to one income can be maintained. However, wouldn't you know it, our oven broke today. I preheated the oven to stick some brownies in and as I was passing by, noticed a little fire brewing in there. I opened the door and noticed that the heating element broke in two places, so there was a piece of the heating element completely detached. Oy! Hence the title of this post. Seems like God always gives you just enough. Luckily, my husband and father should be able to fix it themselves. So blessed to have handymen in the house.

Things around the house have been going okay. Had our main living area pretty spic and span and then my sister came to visit. Let's just say 10 kids under the age of 12 in a house, makes it very hard to keep up on housework. I'm not sure how families like the Duggars do it. I'm guessing the mom's are much more disciplined than I. But I'm working on it. I'm just not one of those people (yet) that makes sure the house is clean before I go to bed.

I'm trying to get garage sale stuff together to get some of this "stuff" out of my house. Man, what a headache. Today was the day that if there had been a dumpster in my driveway, it would have ALL gotten pitched! I'm trying to keep some of it out of the sights of my kids because as soon as they find out I'm selling something the tears start falling. My daughter told me today that this Princess drawing book she has is "her favorite", but it's been buried under a bunch of stuff in a closet for months unnoticed. Is a garage sale really worth it anyway? I'm still not sold on that one. Ugh!

I'm also wondering how it can seem like I have so much time to do stuff and it just flies by! There are days that I feel so incredibly productive and then others that I wonder, what in the world did I do all day? Today I sat in front of the computer all day working on videos for various people. So the house feels untouched and I feel overwhelmed, and that usually makes for a not so good day. I asked my husband around noon today to pray for me to have an extra dose of patience today cause I was already starting to take it out on the kids. Well my oldest son must have heard because he reiterated the statement at our dinner prayer this evening. I shot him a look of you better watch it kid! Ah, I think I'll make sure every one is in bed at 8 today and reading quietly while I veg out in front of a movie. That'll help get the housework done :)

Well I think that's all I'm going to rant on for today. Hopefully tomorrow goes better!

"Pork chops and applesauce"

That's an old quote from the Brady Bunch. We had the pork chops for dinner today, but not the applesauce. Whenever we have pork chops though, I think of this quote. So the whole point though is that dinner was delicious today. I made the pork chops in the crock pot all day with barbecue sauce so that they were not dry. We also had mashed potatoes and salad. I also steamed some cauliflower.

Funny thing about cauliflower... we told our kids for a while that they weren't allowed to eat cauliflower until they were 18. Then they all really wanted it, so when we would let them have some, it was a special treat. Now they all love it!! We can steam an entire head of it for dinner and it will all be gone. Reverse psychology, gotta love it!!!


Two days ago, my hubby gave me a special treat too. He used a gift card for Giant Eagle that he had earned from work (since we are short on cash these days) to buy me a card and some ice cream drumsticks (who needs flowers when ice cream is the alternative!). The card was so special and talks about how blessed he was from the day he met me. I love when my hubby does stuff like this. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Thanks babe, you're the best!!!!


Lastly, my boys are taking swimming lessons at the pool and the cutest thing happened yesterday. My oldest son's instructor was out for the day, so they had a substitute, Matt. Matt decided to take his team in the deep end. Now mind you, my son does NOT know how to swim, so even I was thinking "what is he doing?" The point was that kids are so afraid of the deep end, but floating in shallow water is the same as floating in deep water. The few things that his group does know how to do, he had them do in the deep end, just to show them that they don't need to be afraid. So he was trying to get each of the 4 kids to do things like front float, back float, put their head under water, etc when one of the little boys said "There's no way you're gonna get me to do that without a life jacket". It was so funny at the moment. My husband and I were cracking up. Kids are so cute!

Eat more chikin

I don't know about you, but as parents, we try to plan events and family times that are fun and will be memorable for our kids. Well yesterday was one of those days. Chick-Fil-A has a Dress like a cow day every year where they give away free food for dressing like a cow. I was talking with our au pair about it and she said WE SHOULD DO IT! I called my husband at work to see if he was game and he said sure. So we spent about an hour cutting out spots, finding white or beige clothes, making tails, blowing up latex gloves for utters, etc. Once we got into it we had a blast.





When my husband got home, he jumped in the fun too. The more dressed up like a cow you were the more free food you got. So if you were just partially dressed up like a cow you got a free entree. Completely dressed up, you got a free combo meal. We went all out and headed to Chick-Fil-A, hoping we were dressed enough for the free meal.





And we got it! All of us got free meals. About $40 of free food for an hour of preparation and the willingness to make complete fools of ourselves in public. Nothing like it!!!





Here's a memory that will last!

Lightning Fast Fireworks

Today we went to our local fireworks which are set off at the local high school. As we were arriving we heard an announcement that due to cloud cover and an approaching storm they were going to set off the display a half hour early at 9:30 PM. We did our normal visiting activities and Grandma had brought glow in the dark necklaces and bracelets for all the kids. Then they announced 5 minutes to begin.

We all got settled and the National Anthem played. We are so blessed to be citizens of this country. Then the fireworks started. They seemed to be setting them off pretty fast. Then we noticed why....

Off to our left (north side) we noticed these dark dark clouds moving in. And man, were they coming quickly. We kept watching the fireworks, which were definitely in fast forward speed compared to normal, but also kept an eye on the approaching storm. Then the wind started to pick up. My husband said, we better be prepared to make a run for it. The storm got closer and closer. Papers and stuff started flying around. This was a let's not wait to see what's in it storm. We knew once it started raining it was going to downpour! People started packing up their stuff and we decided to as well. We grabbed our stuff and started heading towards the car, still trying to enjoy the even quickening fireworks as we walked. We got to the edge of the field at the high school and still no rain. I decided to hang out there and watch the fireworks a little more calmly... still standing of course.

The fireworks ended without rain and we headed to the car. What an exciting evening! That was a new twist on the city fireworks. So now I sit here at home about 10:15 and it is pouring rain. Sounds like it was a smart idea to start them early. My son decided he likes them set off faster. He says "it looks cooler"!