Our First Stitches Belong To...

Trenton! Mike was preaching in a church in a different town so his dad was willing to watch our kids for us. When we were about 30 minutes away from being home I get a call from Grandpa (Mike's dad) saying that Trenton cut his knee and probably needed stitches. Trenton was trying to move his bike and fell on Grandpa's dog's cage. I'm really bad about deciding if my kids should go to the ER or not (of course we always get hurt on the weekends, so the ER is our only choice!) so I called my friend Kahla, who is an RN, and she came over. After one look she said he definitely should go see the dr. so off we went.

T getting his vitals taken before seeing the dr.

Final result: five stitches and a smiley face scar soon to come.

Grandpa brought T a happy meal at the ER and he got a toy for being so good while getting the stitches. One thing is for sure, T is going to try and milk this for all it's worth! He is sure to tell everyone he comes in contact with all about his knee. I love this lil guy and am so glad he's doing better, though it's hard to limit a 5-year old boys activities! Now I'm just praying he doesn't fall and reopen the cut before it heals!!!

Week 3 - Possessions

Another great week, that has left me with tons to think about. This week was about possessions. The goal for this week was to give away seven things every day. So, basically over the course of the week I would come up with 49 things to give away.

One thing I love about this chapter is that Jen, the author, doesn't just take the stuff to Goodwill. She puts it aside and wants to be really intentional about who or what she gives her stuff too. It's easy to clean out a bunch of stuff and just go drop it off. But what if God has a specific person in mind who needs that exact thing, wouldn't that be amazing to watch and see how God could specifically bless someone with my "extra" stuff. (I'm still waiting on this one!)

Day 1 of this week started off with me buying a ton of clothes for Kara on craigslist. It was all stuff she will be needing but I couldn't help but wonder if I should feel guilty for bringing two huge trash bags and a box full of stuff into our house during the week that I'm supposed to be purging my shelves of all the unused and unnecessary items that build up.  But ultimately it was a great deal and at least I wasn't buying unnecessary items. ;)

To be honest with the kids being home, I have not had the time to go through everything that I've wanted to go through yet, but really do you even finish getting rid of stuff. It's like purge a closet of unwanted items, then move on to next closet...etc, then go to kitchen, garage, pantry...etc, then start over and repeat! This week the question I've been asking myself is: what does it mean to live simply? Then my mind does a spin trying to figure out the answer. It's not wrong to buy something for my myself or my house or my kids but at that the same time what can I live without. Or what do I have that I don't need that could be a blessing to someone else.

I did have the kids help me clean out the play room. I put our two big boxes and said let's fill these with toys we want to give away. The two boxes did end up pretty full but here's a picture of the what the process looked like: for the first five minutes everyone was excited about the idea, then the excitement dwindled as the boys just started playing with the toys, which led to me having to constantly reminding them what we're doing. Meanwhile, they kept trying to put toys in that we still played with or actually used and I was saying NO! Really, what was I thinking???? I said yes to a few but I should have let them give those things away because sometimes giving hurts or can cost us. So we did fill some boxes but it didn't quite look like I had pictured it.

Mike has been reading a book by Randy Alcorn called "Money, Possessions and Eternity." It has really been challenging him. He told me I had to read it. I'm not the best at getting through books and it's pretty darn thick so it's gonna take a lil motivation! Anyways, the other night Mike says, "I've been thinking maybe occassionally when we come across someone in need we should just let them come into our house and take one thing. Whatever they want." Immediately I was like, ANYTHING BUT MY KITCHENAID MIXER!!!! He said, "Becky, you think if someone is really in need that they're gonna take your kitchenaid mixer?" Good point...but you never know!!! I haven't agreed to that idea yet either! (Yep, I'm pretty sure I'm going to cross paths any day with someone who has been praying for a white kitchenaid mixer! And I hope if that's the case that I easily and freely give it to that person, knowing that it's just a thing. And maybe, just maybe that answered prayer for that person is how they realize God loves them. Even in the simple act of giving them the exact mixer they prayed for! I'll keep ya posted!!!)

KEEP READING, I'M PUMPED ABOUT WHAT'S NEXT!!! SOOOO our lil group that is reading this book together has felt challenged to take action in this area. We are hoping to do a FREE garage sale in our church parking lot for those who are in need. We are going to bring our stuff, announce it at church so others can bring their stuff and love on those in need by getting to hand them our extras. (Doesn't that sound so sad in a way. We have so much extra, well I do anyway, and there are many with nothing!)

As we were meeting, I asked women to throw out needs they already knew of that maybe we could begin to meet. Someone said they knew someone who needed kitchen supplies, another who needed home furnishings and here's the big one...a poor family that needed a house. Now who on earth is gonna donate a house??? But we serve a big God who can do whatever he wants. So we prayed and asked God for these things. Here's the CRAZY part...one of the ladies said that she has an extra house that's she hasn't been sure what she's going to do with it! I don't know what will happen, but can you believe it! God didn't start with the smallest one, he started with the greatest! I'll wrap this one up with my fav quote from this chapter:

"Until God asks for everything and we answer, "It's yours," we don't yet have ears to hear or eyes to see. We're still deaf to the truth, blind to freedom, deceived by the treasures of the world, imagining them to be the key when they are actually the lock."

Summer Fun!

Wow, these summer days are flying by! I am having a blast (most of the time, there are some moments where I might be caught impatiently, yelling at one of my kids!) having all four kids home. I sometimes just sit inside laughing at the sound of them cracking up outside at the silliest things. Time flies by too quickly and I can believe how fast my kiddos are all growing up!!!

Kara is growing up so quick! Here she is playing on her computer, with her book and occassionally watching baby einstein. Maybe I should insert a confession: Yes, I do let my kids watch tv. Sometimes it is needed for sanity. :)

Pancake Tuesdays are still going but now I'm letting the kids help me cook. Day 1 - I was a complete failure as a mom...Jason totally burned two of his fingers on the pan! That quickly shut down any enthusiasm he had to help me, for that day anyways.

Round 2 - MUCH more successful!!! Trenton is a lefty so some things can be hard to do with him but with two pot holders and an oven mitt, this pancake experience was much more successful!

Hmmm I wonder why Davis is laughing so hard?? That's easy, why does any 3-year old laugh that hard? He tooted of course!! Notice how fazed Kara was by Davis's toot and laughter? Yeah, she's pretty use to having three brothers. Actually, today Davis and Kara were standing by each other and I heard a toot and said, "Davis was that you?" He said, "No mom." But then I see Kara with both arms raised shaking her head yes! It was hilarious! Also, notice Kara's pile of "whoop cream." All the boys call it whoop cream and now that Grandpa started making their pancakes with whoop cream, I have a tough act to follow.

Trenton just learned how to ride a two wheeler! Jason (my not as coordinated twin) doesn't really care about riding a bike yet but we'll see if that changes when he sees T riding around.

Uncle Shawn brought some horny toads over for the boys to play with and to let go in the yard. He said hopefully they'll just stay in the yard. As long as they're in the yard and not the house I'm happy! Right now the boys think it's hilarious to name stuffed animals or any animal they see Steve. Then they repeatedly say "Steve" and just crack up.  My kids all love animals, one of these days I might actually let them have one...no promises! :)

Round 3 - Davis finally got his turn at helping me make breakfast...but this time we did waffles. He went into it saying "I'm not doing that flipping part!" He was sitting right there where Jason burned himself and Davis would NOT be as forgiving as Jason if he burned his hand on the stove.

I just thought this was a cute pic of Kara. She insisted on having those sunglasses on her head.

Kara is really NOT fun at the pool! She is fearless and runs down the ramp into the water and plops herself down and then does it again and again, getting deeper and deeper each time. So, I finally borrowed this floaty from my friend but I still had to pull her face out of the water a couple times (SCARY! even though it was quick I still hate that!) So we have been keeping busy at the pool, with friends and just hanging out. I know summer is going to fly by way too fast and the twins will be back in school before I know it. Though I might need the first week back to just sit on the couch and recover from the summer!!! :)

Week 2 - Clothes

Wow, it is super hard to keep up with this during the summer with all four kids home! I might have to start combining some weeks, so I can take time to start adding blogs about our summer fun! My goal is to keep this one short and sweet...not a gift of mine but I'm going to try. :)

Well, I picked my 7 clothes:
workout tights (is that what you call the spandex-y capri things??)
a pair of shorts
a pair of jeans
a gray t-shirt
a gray nice shirt
3/4 sleeve blue shirt
shoes (1 pair of flip flops and my running shoes)

First off let me begin by saying it was really hard this week to figure out what my focus should be. So since I didn't start with any sort of focus or way to be intentional through out the week, I really just spent a good part of the week bugged at my limited clothing options. I don't feel like I made good shirt choices so I was bugged about that. Then what did I decide to add to my to-do list this week??? Well, painting of course! But did I put paint clothes on my list? NO, because how can you when you're only choosing 7 things! I really did not want to get paint on my workout pants because they're a nice brand (but I DID get paint on them) so I turned them inside out. Seriously, if my neighbor had come to the door they would have thought I was some crazy woman and then I would have had to explain why on earth I had my workout pants on inside out.

I was seriously (prepare to start saying ewwww) wearing my workout clothes to workout, then wearing them for a good part (or all) of the day, and then putting my, not washed, workout shirt back on to sleep in! But at least the sweat was dried by now, right?!? I went a good 5 days before I washed my workout clothes. You know it's bad when you go to the club and decide what exercise machine you're going to use based on not wanting to be near people in case you smell! Obviously none of my choices were good pajama options but I was trying to just stick to my seven choices. However, since it's getting warm, Mike likes to sleep with the window open and the shades up so you get more air flow. So, Davis wakes up crying and Mike goes to see what's wrong and of course turns the hallway light on, which lights up our room. Normally, I would leap out of bed to go help but laid there with a major dilemma on my hands...I was in my underwear and a t-shirt and if I leap out of bed since it's dark outside and light inside my neighbors might think I was a crazy woman running around in my underwear! So I stayed put! :) It was in that moment that I decided pj's did NOT count!

So I was re-reading the chapter on clothes on Wed. (the last day) to prepare some questions for the discussion that night. I was reading a part where the author is talking about Isaiah 58 and fasting and I realized I totally missed the boat the week! I spent the week annoyed about my clothing options, instead of intentionally asking God what he wanted me to learn this week as I fasted from the rest of my closet! To be honest I love clothes! I love looking nice and dressing up and those things aren't wrong!!! BUT I do need to check my heart and see where my heart and motivations are to make sure those are right. I'm still processing this week. A week is hard to experiment with these things because you so quickly move to the next thing and it doesn't quite allow enough time to process each week. But it is good and in the end maybe ( I said maybe, no guarantees!) I will re-do some of these weeks!

I did LOVE this quote from the chapter: "I hope one day clothes and appearance and everyone else's assessment of me doesn't even occur to me."

I would love for that quote to be true of me some day. Looking back I did save A LOT of time not having to decide what to wear. Yeah, lots to process about last week but I'm already half way through the possessions week, more to come on that...

Week 1 - A New Perspective on Food

Wow, what a week it's been! In less then 24 hours I am going to try not to go wild on the foods I've passed on this past week! Actually, condiments are one of the things I'm most excited about, they just take something really plain and make it taste so much better. :)

This past week has been really good for Mike and I. Oh it had it's hard moments since we had like 5 big events in the past week that all included food!! We're talking wedding cake, fruit salads, chips and salsa, cookies, lemon cake, shredded beef, doritos,...that list could go on! (my mouth was hating me, but my waistline is thanking me!!) I had to make a dessert for one of these events and boy did I want to lick that bowl! It was a dessert I haven't made before so I almost talked myself into eating one bite just to make sure it was good. I mean you can't bring a bad dessert to share! BUT I did manage to show restraint and didn't even lick my fingers after making the cookies. Here's the cool part: at every one of these events they had chicken of some sort and bread! Though there were better looking options I was so thankful that there were things on my list!

So what did we learn this week??? I feel like the picture God gave me was that we needed to gain new perspective. I was running and listening to a song about God lifting us up and I just had this pic in my mind of trying to see something but not being able to, so God had to lift me up so I could see what I was missing. Then I was in the grocery story and I told Davis that he could pick a donut (it was sheer torture not taking a bite of that thing!) and he couldn't see them all and he said, "Mom, can you lift me up so I can see all the donuts?" He realized he couldn't see everything and needed help getting a better picture of what was really there.

I feel like for Mike and I, we needed a new perspective in the area of food. God has really, for the last month, been challenging us in this area. One night this week Mike and I just had a great conversation about food, that sounds kinda silly but we did. To be completely honest we have made food an idol in our lives. It's often the first thing I turn to when I'm frustrated with myself or circumstances around me. For Mike overindulging has been a struggle (he said I could write this! :) We were just chatting about how selfish and wasteful it has been of us to over eat. Mike's comment was "why has no one but you told me that I needed to stop eating so much and that food was an issue for me?" My response was probably because people feel like it's too touchy of a subject. On Sunday I was super frustrated and normally would have felt justified to eat whatever but since chicken and rice doesn't quite seem to satisfy that craving to indulge, I instead shared with Mike my frustrations and just prayed about them. We are not there yet but God is giving us a new perspective on food! We are working to find the balance between the times God gives for us to really just enjoy his creation of food and being careful to not constantly be over indulging.  Ultimately in both areas we just want to be so thankful that we have the option to eat every day and realize the blessing that this truly is!

Ok, so during this week we got creative with our 7 options! One night I made chicken fried rice!  I used a little bit of sesame oil and though it was a little dry it was pretty yummy. We started mixing applesauce, rice and a touch a cinnamon at night for a snack...you should try it! Then yesterday I was getting desparate for there to be more to my chicken and bread sandwich. Don't judge what I'm about to say before you try it...I decided to have a chicken and peanut butter sandwich! I know it sounds weird but I have a recipe for thai chicken wraps and the peanut butter sauce/chicken combo is really good. And you know what? The sandwich was pretty good too!

Ok, maybe that looks gross but it really was pretty tasty. I don't know if I'll continue on with that one, but it was a nice change!

Seriously, I wonder if I could make money selling a book about what I learned from 7! Sorry almost done with this blog but I have to share what we did with our kids to get them thinking about how blessed we are to have food whenever we want and how there are many people who don't have food! One night we all had chicken and rice for dinner and then I took the boys to Wal-Mart so we could get stuff to make homeless bags. These are bags filled with things that will last awhile, to keep in the car so when you see someone in need of food you can give them this bag. So off we went to Wally World.

This is what we came up with for our bags...Doritos, nuts (I picked these & the water!), water, gum, caramels, cinnamon rolls, and peanut butter crackers. I went to the store thinking I would pick out everything but then I realized if I really wanted the kids to own this idea that they needed to choose what we picked.

Putting bags together!

Then after each boy made a bag we would stop and he would pray for whoever might receive that bag. Their prayers were so sweet!

Kara's contribution...eating the extras! :)

The finished bags! Now I can't wait to see who God brings along for us to give these bags too! What a week! This week hasn't been as bad as I thought but I will be excited to add some variety back in to the diet tomorrow!!! Oh and FYI looking at pinterest this week was self-induced torture but it was nice to at least look at something that I knew tasted really yummy!

 Next week is clothes...now to try and pick 7 clothes (not including under garments!) for next week. This should be fun! 

Pancake Tuesdays!

One day Jason declared that we needed to do pancakes one morning a week! I thought that's a great idea let's do it. So it started off as Monday mornings but I realized that was not a good idea, so I politely asked Jason if I could switch mornings. Thankfully, he agreed! So we started Pancake Tuesdays!

On Mother's Day Mike asked Jason what he loved so much about his mom, and he said, "Pancake Tuesdays, except she forgot last week!" Oops!!! Nothing like being informed that you are NOT the perfect mom on Mother's Day. :)

So here are some pics from today, our last pancake Tuesday of the school year.

The inventor of Pancake Tuesdays! I told him he was gonna learn how to make pancakes this summer so he can start helping me on Tuesdays. He was pretty pumped!

Davis enjoying his pancake, and very little dollop of cool whip...there was barely any left so I did what I could. Thankfully, they all thought I was a cool mom for adding cool whip and Davis thought he was the man cause he ate it all in one bite!

Mike had to wake Trenton up and I'm lucky I got this half smile out him!  And Kara was still sleeping so she missed out.  I don't know whose child she is because once she got up she didn't even want to eat pancakes drenched in syrup! She loves all things sugar so I'm sure she'll come around. :)

Summer Reading and Challenge!

For our women's study, at church, this summer we are reading a book called "7" by Jen Hatmaker. I've read the book already because I was in charge of picking the book for the summer study and it's a great read! The author, Jen, feels challenged to do an experiment to see what happens when she simplifies life and takes out some of the excess. Basically, she picks 7 areas in life that she feels like there is a need to simplify and reduce, with the goal being "to create space for God's kingdom to break through." The seven areas she picked were food, clothes, possessions, media, waste, spending, and stress. Then she decided to commit one month to each of these areas and reduce or simplify. So the first month she picked seven foods and only eats 7 foods for one month, then only 7 articles of clothing...you get the point. There is something different for each month and she always relates how she narrows it down to the number 7.

SOOOO we are doing this book for our summer study and we are challenging women, if possible, to participate with each week. The first week is food and so Mike and I decided to do it together so we are only eating seven foods for this whole week!!! The foods we picked are bread, eggs, spinach, apples, nuts, chicken, and rice. I'm only two days in and I'm already wishing I had put chocolate instead of spinach! :) My goal each week is also to find a way to incorporate my kids. There are so many lessons in this book that I need to learn but that I also want to begin to teach my kids. I will be blogging weekly updates on how each week is going, what Mike and I are learning and how we are incorporating our kids. I love what Jen says in her introduction,

 "I approach this project in the spirit of a fast: an intentional reduction, a deliberate abstinence to summon God's movement in my life. A fast creates margin for God to move. Temporarily changing our routine of comfort jars us off high center. A fast in not necessarily something we offer God, but it assists us in offering ourselves."

This is our goal! We want to create margin for God to move in our little family and ask Him how we can better live for him. I want to learn to be more thankful and help my kids to be more thankful too. (I've created a thankful board that I want to start doing daily with my kids, I'll show pics soon!) Even in just two days of limited food, I've realized how thankful I need to be with the tons of options of food that I have at my finger tips but instead I want to complain that I'm eating pretty bland food for a week. Can't wait to see what the next five days has in store...I might not ever eat spinach again after this! :)

If any of you pick up the book and read it or even want to jump in and start doing this challenge with me I would LOVE to hear about it! Or if you have kiddos and read it and have any ideas on how to incorporate some of these things with kids, I would love to hear that too! I always love a good challenge and I look forward to what God is going to teach our family in the next seven weeks!!!