Finding Time to Workout

After I wrote about my new exercize routine a pal of mine sent me an email, letting me in on her workout secrets.  Here is what she wrote:

I have leg weights that I wear all day. They’re 5 pounds each but after wearing them all day I can feel such a difference when I take them off at night.

I also have exercise bands. I lie on my back, grab the handle end and lay my hands above my head while the other end is wrapped around my feet. Then I slowly raise one leg at a time. Not only does it work my legs but also my abs. I do about 40 raises on each leg then 20 with them at the same time. It only takes about 5 minutes. (My legs weights are on when I do this so it adds a little weight.) That will help get your bottom half toned just as fast as your top half. ;-)

Bedtime Routine

This article is my submission to the blog challenge sponsored by Darlene Schacht , Author of The Mom Complex.

 I wrote this a few years ago for our homeschool support group's newsletter and this "Mom Moment" with my daughter has stuck with me as no other moment has because

1) it is the perfect testimony to my daughter's sweet character.  She's precious.

and

2) it is the perfect testimony to truly how God "gently leads those that have young" (Isaiah 40:11).

The other night as I was putting my daughter in bed, I was dawg-tired. You know what it feels to be dawg-tired, right? That’s how I felt…dawg-tired. I just wanted her to go to bed so I could go to bed. Guess what she did as I was walking out the door? She asked for a drink of water. Something so simple, but it seemed like the biggest request I had received all day. To get her a drink, I would have had to go all the way downstairs to the kitchen, then climb back up the stairs. And she never takes more than one tiny sip of any drink of water we give her at bedtime.  

Thinking of all the work this tiny sip would give me, I came up with a desperate plan. I walked into her bathroom, grabbed a spray bottle with water in it, unscrewed the lid, and offered her a drink. She didn’t think twice. She grabbed the water bottle, and guzzled half the water. No delicate sipping, but full-blown guzzling. Who would have guessed she was so thirsty? As she finished her drinking, she said with the sweetest smile ever, “Mom, that water doesn’t taste so good.” She was so sweet about it, and her sweetness, compared to my sour attitude about her drink hit me like a freight train. My reaction was to laugh uncontrollably. Since she is so sweet, she laughed with me, and we had such a great time together, laughing. We ended our laughing fit with a great big hug, loud smooches and wishes for Sweet Dreams. I came out of her room a new woman! 

I thank God for those moments when He reveals Himself to me through my children. He was so gentle in His correction of my poor attitude, using Lydia like He did. Isaiah 40:11 says, “He tends His flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in His arms and carries them close to His heart; He gently leads those that have young.” I walked out of Lydia’s room feeling totally loved and forgiven by her, and as the evening progressed, I realized that God had given me a lesson on attitude. I am not perfect; I am not always the only teacher in the house.   Thank God! 

 

Night Owl

I am definitely a night owl.  I love the quiet of night.  Having four kids, there is always someone talking to me about something, and of course then I have to respond.  I have no problems talking with my kids, but by the end of the day I'm ready to sit in the quiet and be quiet.  And I love to piddle around in the quiet.  There's always something fun to do here - knitting, a little housework, spending time with my husband, answering email, writing blog entries..... ;-)  Sometimes I don't get into bed until midnight.  eeeek!  Our 12-month old usually wakes up around seven, and if I sleep until then, I might as well kiss a morning quiet time goodbye.  So lately I've been wrestling with myself over my late night habits.  I've always wanted to be an early bird and ALMOST convinced myself that "I am what I yam"  until I got the latest "Dad's and Mom's Corners" from Steve and Terri Maxwell.  God bless them.  And especially God bless Terri for the article she wrote this month.  Guess what it was about????????? 

Here are a few paragraphs from her article that jumped out at me and hit me between the eyes:

"The mom who isn't disciplined to get up in the morning before the children is educating her children in her ways without purposing to do so. This mom will then face an ongoing, discouraging battle to try to get her children out of bed in the mornings to eat breakfast, do their chores, and start school because they are following her example." (oh my.  Has she been a fly on my wall???)

"How does one go from a night owl to a morning lark? I would expect that many more moms would consider themselves to be night owls than to be morning larks by nature. We have allowed ourselves to become those night owls by our personal habits. The starting place, I believe, is to admit that being a night owl is a choice and that we are only making excuses when we say it is the way we are naturally, especially if the implication is that we can't change. We might even go so far as to define it as sin if the Lord has been calling us to get up earlier in the morning, but we are still choosing to stay up at night."(It IS a choice!  I have done that myself.  It was easier to make the bad choice, and yet I've been stressing over a lack of time to do all I need to do in the morning - shooting myself in the foot!  What a goober! ;-)

So much to work on to become the mom I want to be.  Terri quoted 2 Corinthians 12:9.  "And He said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for My strength is made perfect in weakness."  God's grace and strength is really the only way that I can bend my will to His.  It's all so much bigger than me, and I almost feel overwhelmed at how big God is, yet at the same time, comforted.  I can give the issue to Him every day until He has changed my heart.

B-I-N-G-O

A friend sent me a really funny e-card for my birthday last week.  Click on the link and listen to it.  It is based on the BINGO song.  The kids and I listened to it over and over before I realized that they had no idea what the BINGO song even is!  A hole in their education!!!!!  So since last week, we have sung the BINGO song about a million times and had a blast with it.  Do your kids know the BINGO song, or are mine the only ones who were living in a bubble?  ;-)

They're Back

Well, the kids and my husband returned from their weekend camping trip.  They were tired, sunburned and grouchy.  And the best thing was finding out that my husband didn't have any of the kids brush their teeth ALL WEEKEND.  No shower, I can handle.  That's almost to be expected, but no teeth brushing????  Oh, man.  My husband is usually pretty good at getting stuff like that done, but just totally slacked it this weekend.  For shame!  ;-)  I've been busy this afternoon getting the car unpacked and have washed many, many loads of smoke-smelling clothes and blankets. 

Note to self: Don't ever send an afghan on camping trips.  I'm not sure if I will ever get the dead leaves and bugs off of them again.

After naps and church this evening, everyone was just about back to normal and started sharing the "your feet were in my face the whole night" stories which are the hallmark of any successful camping trip, so I think I can say with confidence that a good time was had by all.  :-)

I had a great weekend as well.  There is always so much going on around here that I don't always get enough time to plan for school as I would like.  When I wasn't hanging out with our baby boy, that's what I did.  I didn't turn on the t.v. or listen to music, or do anything but think, plan and read.  It felt GREAT! 

Other note to self: Start talking to hubby about "the next" camping trip......

Do You Love Your Job?

Love this quote that Picket Fence Mom put on her blog.  Check it out.  :-)

Fashion Experts

I was browsing around Target today, looking for a few shirts for my daughter.  I've just about given up on trying to find her skirts and shorts there - or anywhere - clothes today are definitely not modest.  When I buy her shirts, I buy her a size too big so that it will fit her like a "real" shirt rather than the skin-tight imitation of a shirt that is being sold these days.  Up on one of the walls, they had a display of shirts that had pithy little sayings such as,

"But DAD said it was okay!"

"1. I want it.

2. You buy it.

3. Any questions?"

"#1 Heartbreaker"

"I tried to fool Mom once....it didn't work"

"Fashion Expert"

It breaks my heart to see stuff like that, and I hope I never am around to see a mother allowing her daughter to choose a shirt like that.  There were a lot of other shirts like these, but I can't remember what they all said. 

A couple of weeks ago, L and I went to the mall.  She wanted to eat at the Rainforest Cafe for our special time together.  It was packed, so we walked over to the food court to eat.  We sat in a restaurant that looked out over the rest of the food court.  It was a Saturday night, so all the young teens without driver's licenses were there doing their thing.  I looked at all those girls and boys that were sitting all together, filling up a big table and my heart broke for them.  The girls all had on extremely tight clothes with lots of make-up.  They didn't realize what they were doing when they freely gave out hugs to their "boy" friends and then continued to stand there with their arms around the boys.  They probably thought they were behaving as "just friends" but those boys were loving every minute of the attention the girls gave.  I'm sure the girls thought that it was so KEWL to have all these boys who were "just friends" with them.  I used to think the same thing when I was their age, but now I know better. 

I looked at those kids and felt so sad for them.  To me, they were a deserted bunch.  Their parents dropped them off at the mall and left them alone to fend for, and figure out for themselves the intricacies of the big, wide world.  And what were they going to learn from each other???  Their eyes told me everything.  None of them looked content.  None of them could sit still.  None of them could sit and hold a conversation that took longer than a minute.  They spent their time trying to impress each other with their clothes and hair.  

So what does all this mean for my daughter?  I am going through a period of calling out to the Lord on this one.  We certainly aren't raising her to behave as the girls at the mall.  We are raising her to be a young lady who seeks after God, and to be a wife, mother, and faithful daughter.  Our biggest problem is that we don't really know anyone that is following the same path we are.  We feel as if we are the only ones in the world who has listened and taken to heart the great things that Doug Phillips of Vision Forum discusses on his CD's.  We have also read So Much More, Home-Making, and many other books on raising daughters.  We feel God has led us to these books and to this life we have chosen, but man, is there anyone else out there who feels this way besides the people who write these books?  :-)

I've noticed while surfing blogs that there ARE others out there who are taking the same path that we are with our family, and I have especially noticed some of the young ladies from these families who are blogging about this stuff.  Do they even realize their influence?  I am making plans to cruise some of these blogs with my daughter to give her some long-distance role models.  At this point, I'm not sure what else to do.  I am trying to be available for her in every way I can and to be a godly role model for her as her mother, but I don't want her to feel we are raising her in a vaccuum.