So. I went to the salon that my benefactor chose for me on Saturday morning. It was beautiful! Much nicer than the chain salon I normally go to. The kind of place where they take your coat and hang it up for you, and offer to get you something to drink. The kind of place that also has a spa where you can receive manicures, pedicures, facials, and massages. Very, very nice. I was glad I had put on makeup that morning!
I got a very cute, very sweet stylist named Heather who turned out to also be a christian! We had a lovely talk about Jesus, churches, different ministries, family, etc. She asked me lots of questions about how I normally wear my hair and how I take care of it. She totally got it that I don't have much time to fuss with my hair in the mornings, but also encouraged me to get out of my rut a little bit. So I consented to getting a completely different hair cut. It would be too hard to try and explain here how the cut was different, but it was TOTALLY different than anything I have experienced before. The actual cutting was different. It was very interesting to watch. She taught me how to style it the way she did, and I think it will be easy to copy and won't take more time than I take now (which isn't much).
Knowing that I would have to sit for about 45 minutes letting the color "process", I was tempted to do school prep while waiting. But I was pretty sure my benefactor had wanted me to feel completely pampered, so instead I took a new fun book to read. I thoroughly enjoyed my two hours there, reading without interruption and getting fussed over.
And I left the salon with a sassy new 'do!
My hubby and I had a WONDERFUL day/night together. We were able to totally ignore our PIT of a house, with Christmas decorations still out, ornaments still sitting on a card table to be packed away, school books covering the table, and stacks of stuff on the kitchen counter, and instead really focus on each other and reconnecting. I am so thankful to our friends for watching the kids overnight. It was just what we needed! Re-entry into the real world has been a bit rough today, but that's a different post.....
My hair looks a little different today after sleeping on it one night, but hopefully later I will be able to post a pic.
Thank you again, my sweet anonymous friend!!
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Another Blessing
I am sitting here crying. I just got off the phone with the manager of a salon in my town ~ they called to say that someone donated a cut and color for me!!!! I am overwhelmed. And I am ashamed that I complained about my hair on my blog. Was it one of my few faithful readers who did this??? Or someone else who just noticed my roots and decided to take pity and bless me? I don't know who did it, but if you are reading this, thank you, thank you, thank you!!! I am so undeserving of this generosity, which makes it all the more wonderful. The manager of the salon thought it was pretty wonderful too. She said things like this "never happen nowadays!".
Hair is such a silly thing to complain about. But it is usually the little things that can totally make our day, and this just totally made my day! AND.....our wedding anniversary is this Sunday and a friend offered to keep our children overnight. So the timing is perfect! I will go get beautiful at the salon and my hubby and I will enjoy a quiet overnighter at our home hotel! :-)
Thank you, my anonymous friend. And thank you, Lord.
Now I've gotta wipe these tears out of the keyboard.......
Hair is such a silly thing to complain about. But it is usually the little things that can totally make our day, and this just totally made my day! AND.....our wedding anniversary is this Sunday and a friend offered to keep our children overnight. So the timing is perfect! I will go get beautiful at the salon and my hubby and I will enjoy a quiet overnighter at our home hotel! :-)
Thank you, my anonymous friend. And thank you, Lord.
Now I've gotta wipe these tears out of the keyboard.......
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
More on the New Schedule (part 15)
I have had a few questions about our new winter schedule posted below, so here is a bit of an explanation and an update on a change I've made already. (yes! already! after only one day...)
Where it says "Bible with Mom", this is our family devotional time and consists of me reading from the Bible outloud to all the children while they draw what I'm reading about in their Bible Journals. After reading, we have prayer time and pray for the persecuted church, missionaries, our relatives, our pastor, and our president. We have a prayer notebook with pictures of many of these people inside, and we hold the pictures as we pray and rotate through them. We finish up this time with hymn singing. We usually learn 1 or sometimes 2 new hymns each week. We don't sing hymns very much anymore at our church, and I LOVE hymns! They are so rich in theology and truth, and the language is often so much more expressive than the language we commonly use today.
After Bible time, our two older children have their own personal quiet time in their rooms. They set a timer for the same number of minutes as their age and are free to read wherever they desire in their own bibles.
IEW stands for Institute for Excellence in Writing, and is the writing curriculum that we use. It is wonderful, I love it, and I wish we had time for it every day, but right now that is just not working for me. So our older two do it together 3 times a week. On the other two days at that same time, our oldest and I study Latin together. We did it today as a matter of fact ~ I was very rusty!!
ETC stands for Explode the Code and is a phonics workbook series.
At lunch time we practice poetry memorization, and at dinner time we dazzle daddy with it! We use another product from IEW called "Linguistic Development Through Poetry Memorization." The kids love doing this, and even our Little Man has learned several poems!
Our daughter, whose color is red, has "History Reading, AQ's and TQ's" after lunch. AQ's stand for accountability questions and TQ's stand for thinking questions. This is part of our history curriculum, Tapestry of Grace, and are questions that can either be answered from her reading or that require a little thought and input from her own mind. She is learning to answer them as she reads as opposed to answering them all in one day after she has done all the reading and forgotton what she read 3 days earlier.
Before we started back to school yesterday, I told the children about the new schedule, and that chores would now have to be done BEFORE having breakfast. The children gave me shocked looks, but when my hubby told them that if we lived on a farm they would probably do chores for about an hour before eating, they were quite content to do their one little 10 minute cleaning job. Problem was, not everyone finished at the same time. So two of the children were still eating breakfast at 9:00 when it was time to begin our Bible time. Since this is something that we all do together, the rest of us had to wait for them.
So last night at dinner, we told the children that not only would they have to do their chore before being allowed to eat breakfast, the kitchen and dining room would be closing at 9:00, and all food and dishes would need to be cleared at that time. We heard gasps, and "how come you are being so mean?". Wellllllll, what a pleasant surprise this morning to see ALL of the children getting dressed as quickly as possible, making their beds, and hi-tailing it downstairs to do their chore before I had even finished putting in my contacts!! They wanted to be sure they had plenty of time to EAT! :-)
I have found the secret. Food is a powerful motivator!!!
I am thankful for two days of accomplishing much, and pray that this new schedule will continue to help keep us on track.
Where it says "Bible with Mom", this is our family devotional time and consists of me reading from the Bible outloud to all the children while they draw what I'm reading about in their Bible Journals. After reading, we have prayer time and pray for the persecuted church, missionaries, our relatives, our pastor, and our president. We have a prayer notebook with pictures of many of these people inside, and we hold the pictures as we pray and rotate through them. We finish up this time with hymn singing. We usually learn 1 or sometimes 2 new hymns each week. We don't sing hymns very much anymore at our church, and I LOVE hymns! They are so rich in theology and truth, and the language is often so much more expressive than the language we commonly use today.
After Bible time, our two older children have their own personal quiet time in their rooms. They set a timer for the same number of minutes as their age and are free to read wherever they desire in their own bibles.
IEW stands for Institute for Excellence in Writing, and is the writing curriculum that we use. It is wonderful, I love it, and I wish we had time for it every day, but right now that is just not working for me. So our older two do it together 3 times a week. On the other two days at that same time, our oldest and I study Latin together. We did it today as a matter of fact ~ I was very rusty!!
ETC stands for Explode the Code and is a phonics workbook series.
At lunch time we practice poetry memorization, and at dinner time we dazzle daddy with it! We use another product from IEW called "Linguistic Development Through Poetry Memorization." The kids love doing this, and even our Little Man has learned several poems!
Our daughter, whose color is red, has "History Reading, AQ's and TQ's" after lunch. AQ's stand for accountability questions and TQ's stand for thinking questions. This is part of our history curriculum, Tapestry of Grace, and are questions that can either be answered from her reading or that require a little thought and input from her own mind. She is learning to answer them as she reads as opposed to answering them all in one day after she has done all the reading and forgotton what she read 3 days earlier.
Before we started back to school yesterday, I told the children about the new schedule, and that chores would now have to be done BEFORE having breakfast. The children gave me shocked looks, but when my hubby told them that if we lived on a farm they would probably do chores for about an hour before eating, they were quite content to do their one little 10 minute cleaning job. Problem was, not everyone finished at the same time. So two of the children were still eating breakfast at 9:00 when it was time to begin our Bible time. Since this is something that we all do together, the rest of us had to wait for them.
So last night at dinner, we told the children that not only would they have to do their chore before being allowed to eat breakfast, the kitchen and dining room would be closing at 9:00, and all food and dishes would need to be cleared at that time. We heard gasps, and "how come you are being so mean?". Wellllllll, what a pleasant surprise this morning to see ALL of the children getting dressed as quickly as possible, making their beds, and hi-tailing it downstairs to do their chore before I had even finished putting in my contacts!! They wanted to be sure they had plenty of time to EAT! :-)
I have found the secret. Food is a powerful motivator!!!
I am thankful for two days of accomplishing much, and pray that this new schedule will continue to help keep us on track.
Monday, January 5, 2009
New School Schedule (part 14)
One of my big projects over the Christmas break was making a new schedule for our school routine. I have had a MOTH schedule for many years. MOTH stands for Manager Of Their Homes, and is a scheduling tool originally made for larger families by Teri Maxwell of the Titus2 website. The book itself was extremely helpful for me to read and think through BEFORE attempting to make my first schedule. It helped me think through all of the things that needed to get done in a given day or even during the year (like those once a year cleaning jobs), and how to organize the children, myself, and my home so that all of the needed things could be accomplished. If you struggle with "getting it all done" I highly recommend this book!
Something else the book helped me with was figuring out what every member of the family would be doing at any given time. If I wanted to have a reading lesson when our oldest was in kindergarten, what would I do with the baby during this time? Where would the 2 year old and 3 year old be, and how could I best ensure that the reading lesson would not be interrupted?
Even though this book and scheduling tool were extremely helpful to me, I used (and still use) my schedule as more of a "routine" than a strict schedule. I did not want to overschedule every single minute. So for a few years my nicely color coded MOTH schedule taped to the fridge just said "school" for the 9-12 time slot for the school aged children. This worked well for quite a while, but this past fall we all struggled alot with our routine, me probably more than anyone. We started late. We didn't get our chores finished in a timely manner. Having 4 working at the same table meant that me and the student I was working with at the time were often interrupted. Our 6th grader and I were seldom doing Latin. Once we made it to lunch, I would often give the children an extra long recess, wanting to give our youngest as much outside play time as possible before his nap. That meant that we weren't finishing school until dinner time. This was a bummer for all of us. I knew in my heart that we could do better, and I had it in mind to make a new schedule that for a while was very tight - every subject scheduled out - so we could see how long things were actually taking and whether or not our allotted times were realistic. But I never had the time to do it.
Re-thinking the schedule and creating it in large poster form that all the children could read and follow throughout the day was one of my major goals during our break from school, and I am thankful to say that I got it done! We have had "family colors" for years, with everything color coded from notebooks to toothbrushes, so everyone is very used to looking for their color (I am "plum for mum"!). Today was our first day following the new schedule, and so far it is working GREAT! The children are enjoying recess as I type this. :-)
Here is our new schedule on a poster hanging prominently in our school room (the kitchen eating area). I am sure we will have a few kinks to work out, like when piano lessons alter our afternoon schedule, but I'm thankful to have a little poster to be accountable to. Just knowing it is there, and that the children are checking it frequently, is helping me to stay focused. If we can all stay focused enough throughout the day, we can finish by 2:30 or 3:00!!
You can click on the poster to see it larger. I don't know how long we will use it as is, so strictly scheduled, but probably as long as it takes us to build better habits. I have tried to work it so that when I am working on something brain-intensive with one child (like a reading lesson with 6 year old C, whose color is yellow) the others are doing things that they can do independently. We'll see how it all pans out. Okay now, off to do booktime with the younger two!
Something else the book helped me with was figuring out what every member of the family would be doing at any given time. If I wanted to have a reading lesson when our oldest was in kindergarten, what would I do with the baby during this time? Where would the 2 year old and 3 year old be, and how could I best ensure that the reading lesson would not be interrupted?
Even though this book and scheduling tool were extremely helpful to me, I used (and still use) my schedule as more of a "routine" than a strict schedule. I did not want to overschedule every single minute. So for a few years my nicely color coded MOTH schedule taped to the fridge just said "school" for the 9-12 time slot for the school aged children. This worked well for quite a while, but this past fall we all struggled alot with our routine, me probably more than anyone. We started late. We didn't get our chores finished in a timely manner. Having 4 working at the same table meant that me and the student I was working with at the time were often interrupted. Our 6th grader and I were seldom doing Latin. Once we made it to lunch, I would often give the children an extra long recess, wanting to give our youngest as much outside play time as possible before his nap. That meant that we weren't finishing school until dinner time. This was a bummer for all of us. I knew in my heart that we could do better, and I had it in mind to make a new schedule that for a while was very tight - every subject scheduled out - so we could see how long things were actually taking and whether or not our allotted times were realistic. But I never had the time to do it.
Re-thinking the schedule and creating it in large poster form that all the children could read and follow throughout the day was one of my major goals during our break from school, and I am thankful to say that I got it done! We have had "family colors" for years, with everything color coded from notebooks to toothbrushes, so everyone is very used to looking for their color (I am "plum for mum"!). Today was our first day following the new schedule, and so far it is working GREAT! The children are enjoying recess as I type this. :-)
Here is our new schedule on a poster hanging prominently in our school room (the kitchen eating area). I am sure we will have a few kinks to work out, like when piano lessons alter our afternoon schedule, but I'm thankful to have a little poster to be accountable to. Just knowing it is there, and that the children are checking it frequently, is helping me to stay focused. If we can all stay focused enough throughout the day, we can finish by 2:30 or 3:00!!
You can click on the poster to see it larger. I don't know how long we will use it as is, so strictly scheduled, but probably as long as it takes us to build better habits. I have tried to work it so that when I am working on something brain-intensive with one child (like a reading lesson with 6 year old C, whose color is yellow) the others are doing things that they can do independently. We'll see how it all pans out. Okay now, off to do booktime with the younger two!
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Update to the Update
Well, God is so good. Immediately after posting the previous entry I locked myself in our bedroom and had my prayer time with the Lord. It was very cleansing. :-) I literally cried into my pillow until I couldn't cry anymore and told God everything. I laid there for a long time, reciting scripture outloud and just letting God speak to me. Being still (that is hard for me to do and I definitely don't do it enough!).
I considered deleting the previous entry and just posting this one, but then you would think I was amazing and I am not. GOD is amazing. Truly! He took me from selfish and fearful to submissive and at peace in about an hour. :-)
Here is what I know:
The Lord is good and His love endures forever. (Ps. 100:5)
He gives good gifts to those who ask Him. (Matthew 7:11)
There will be trouble in this world, but He has overcome the world. (John 16:33)
The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love. (Ps. 103:8)
He satisfies my desires with good things. (Ps. 103:5)
Nothing is impossible with God. (Luke 1:37)
I can do all things through Him who gives me strength. (Phil. 4:13)
His grace is sufficient. (2 Cor. 12:9)
He is enough! He. Is. Enough. Isn't that wonderful and amazing and powerful and humbling and satisfying???? How I love Him. And how I praise Him! I am amazed that He loves me in spite of myself, but His Word makes it very clear that He does. His death on the cross to take away the penalty of my sin makes it clear that He does. Each of us matter so very much to Him. I am filled with gratitude at the tremendous gift of His love. And at least for today, I am resting in that.
I considered deleting the previous entry and just posting this one, but then you would think I was amazing and I am not. GOD is amazing. Truly! He took me from selfish and fearful to submissive and at peace in about an hour. :-)
Here is what I know:
The Lord is good and His love endures forever. (Ps. 100:5)
He gives good gifts to those who ask Him. (Matthew 7:11)
There will be trouble in this world, but He has overcome the world. (John 16:33)
The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love. (Ps. 103:8)
He satisfies my desires with good things. (Ps. 103:5)
Nothing is impossible with God. (Luke 1:37)
I can do all things through Him who gives me strength. (Phil. 4:13)
His grace is sufficient. (2 Cor. 12:9)
He is enough! He. Is. Enough. Isn't that wonderful and amazing and powerful and humbling and satisfying???? How I love Him. And how I praise Him! I am amazed that He loves me in spite of myself, but His Word makes it very clear that He does. His death on the cross to take away the penalty of my sin makes it clear that He does. Each of us matter so very much to Him. I am filled with gratitude at the tremendous gift of His love. And at least for today, I am resting in that.
Update
Our tree is OUT of the house. Needles are vacuumed up. Yippee!!! The ornaments are all on a card table in the family room waiting to be packed away, but already that room looks so much bigger without the tree. I do love a beautiful Christmas tree, but there comes a time when it just needs to come down.
We start school tomorrow. I finished a big scheduling project this afternoon (more on that in another post) that I think will help to keep ME on track throughout the day. I am excited to get back into our routine. Everything starts back up this week: piano, MOPS, Awana, youth group, virtual co-op, real life co-op, tutoring. Everything except Tae Kwon Do. It will be busy.
I am more than a month overdue in getting my gray roots colored. I cannot justify the expense right now, but I am sorta depressed about the prospect of having to go back to gray. I have been coloring for a year and a half now and I'm sure in that time my "natural" color has become even more gray than before. Fortunately I am tall and I have curly hair, both of which help to hide the gray. If you know me in real life please pretend you don't see it, or better yet, tell me my hair looks fabulous!! :-)
Still no job for my hubby. I'm going to be really transparent here and say that I am depressed about that too. I want to have the faith of a spiritual giant, but right now I feel like a spiritual wimp. I have so much to be thankful for that I hate to whine about it, but I am really afraid of losing the house. I don't want to be one of the statistics that we hear about on the evening news. I don't want to have to live with my mother in law (though I love her very much) or stop homeschooling to go to work, or any number of awful scenarios I have imagined. I am so tired of weighing every single purchase. I'm tired of not being able to afford something one of the children needs. I'm sad that we probably won't be able to go "home" and visit my parents this summer. It has been 3 years since we've been back to my ancestral and I was so looking forward to it. And worst of all I feel terribly guilty for having these feelings. So. Please pray for me. My attitude sets the tone for the whole family, and I simply must live out the faith that I profess to have, now more than ever. I am painfully aware of my own weakness and inadequacy, so any peace or trust or faith that is evidenced in my life is COMPLETELY the Lord. I need to have another good long prayer time, but part of me is afraid of voicing everything I fear, even to the Lord. Isn't that weird?
Our son who lives with SPD got very frustrated with one of his brothers this afternoon and you know what he did? He stormed upstairs, banged his door shut, and sat on his bed for awhile. I was so proud of him!!!!! This time last year he would have hauled off and hit the offending brother. He is slowly learning to remove himself from the frustrating situation and find a place to cool off. I told him that I noticed he was growing in self control. That made him feel very good. Thank you Lord.
We start school tomorrow. I finished a big scheduling project this afternoon (more on that in another post) that I think will help to keep ME on track throughout the day. I am excited to get back into our routine. Everything starts back up this week: piano, MOPS, Awana, youth group, virtual co-op, real life co-op, tutoring. Everything except Tae Kwon Do. It will be busy.
I am more than a month overdue in getting my gray roots colored. I cannot justify the expense right now, but I am sorta depressed about the prospect of having to go back to gray. I have been coloring for a year and a half now and I'm sure in that time my "natural" color has become even more gray than before. Fortunately I am tall and I have curly hair, both of which help to hide the gray. If you know me in real life please pretend you don't see it, or better yet, tell me my hair looks fabulous!! :-)
Still no job for my hubby. I'm going to be really transparent here and say that I am depressed about that too. I want to have the faith of a spiritual giant, but right now I feel like a spiritual wimp. I have so much to be thankful for that I hate to whine about it, but I am really afraid of losing the house. I don't want to be one of the statistics that we hear about on the evening news. I don't want to have to live with my mother in law (though I love her very much) or stop homeschooling to go to work, or any number of awful scenarios I have imagined. I am so tired of weighing every single purchase. I'm tired of not being able to afford something one of the children needs. I'm sad that we probably won't be able to go "home" and visit my parents this summer. It has been 3 years since we've been back to my ancestral and I was so looking forward to it. And worst of all I feel terribly guilty for having these feelings. So. Please pray for me. My attitude sets the tone for the whole family, and I simply must live out the faith that I profess to have, now more than ever. I am painfully aware of my own weakness and inadequacy, so any peace or trust or faith that is evidenced in my life is COMPLETELY the Lord. I need to have another good long prayer time, but part of me is afraid of voicing everything I fear, even to the Lord. Isn't that weird?
Our son who lives with SPD got very frustrated with one of his brothers this afternoon and you know what he did? He stormed upstairs, banged his door shut, and sat on his bed for awhile. I was so proud of him!!!!! This time last year he would have hauled off and hit the offending brother. He is slowly learning to remove himself from the frustrating situation and find a place to cool off. I told him that I noticed he was growing in self control. That made him feel very good. Thank you Lord.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Happy New Year!!!
Good-bye 2008, hello 2009!For the first time ever, we let the older 4 children stay up until midnight to welcome in the new year. We shared sparkling raspberry juice and cheered and hugged and kissed each other. And then went to bed. :-)
Today we are working on setting goals for the new year. We do this every year and it is really fun to go back and look at some of their goals from years past and see whether or not they were met. We have each of the children choose ONE thing they want to learn, or learn to do, or do differently during the new year. It can be a physical thing, like learning to tie their shoes, or a relational thing, like being more kind to a certain sibling. We write them down in a little notebook and periodically the children like to check the notebook and see how they are doing. Some goals from past years include being potty trained, learning to ride a bike without training wheels, and not yelling.
If I have their permission I will share later what goals they chose for this new year!
As for me, I am a very goal oriented person (surprise, surprise) and I love the "fresh start" aspect of January. Especially since it comes in the middle of winter when it's cold and dark and harder at times to be motivated. I have set 3 goals for the new year, and they are all health related. They are small and measurable, so I will have the greatest chance for long term success. I will share them at a later time too. Right now I am off to exercise! :-)
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