blogging

Why is it that the thing that gets me to blog is trying to comment on someone Else's blog and realizing that I don't even know my own password on here because it's been so long.

Soooooo, hello again all. Things are always bustling around here. sickness, co-op, stressful mammogram ordeal, mom's cataract surgery, debit card # stolen and sold to the world, garage door hit by new driver, chapel, conferences, (forgetting to go let the dog out during that 7 hours), did I mention sickness?, trying to do the everyday things like laundry, dishes (what would I do without the dishwasher my husband "forced" on me a couple of years ago), cleaning, nagging my children to do their chores, taking the dog outside, taking him to the vet, groceries, oh, and don't forget home school, and then feeling guilty because the night I told someone that I would come to a meeting, I wasn't feeling well (such cramps I was curled up in a ball on my bed) and now she is not speaking to me..... this is when that saying "stop the world, I wanna get off" comes to mind.

I keep telling my friend Lori that we need to purge. But what out of those things can you purge? Because I need something to keep me sane... so I add to the list, sewing. I actually have approximately 5 quilts in the works and a list of other ideas swimming around in my head. I have a whole years worth of scrapbooking to catch up on before the end of the year. And could I just tell you what a mess my craft room is...whoooey!! That is my project for today. Do you think I'll get to it? Maybe not, but I will......have breakfast with my mommy, because she won't be here forever, cuddle with my hubby and kids, sew a little, do some laundry, talk to my sisters, make some meals and hopefully close the pool....(because playing in that freezing water is not good for the joints....eeeks!). And to add to the whole day add the fact that I'm up at 3:00am on the computer, may not go back to bed....hm, sounding like maybe my to-do list is tooooo long.....

I love my life, really I do. It is stressful and hectic, but it is mine and the Lord is always gracious to supply just the right amount of patience and strength to help me endure. Sure, there are tears, but I think He lets those flow to release the pressure on the valve. :-)

"then they cried out to the LORD in their trouble and He saved them out of their distresses. He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death and broke their chains in pieces."

Psalm 107

"You number my wanderings; Put my tears into Your bottle, are they not in Your book?"

Psalm 56:8

"for He knows the secrets of the heart" Psalm 44:21

"Cast your burden on the LORD, and He shall sustain you;" Psalm 55:22

"In God I have put my trust, I will not be afraid, what can man do to me?"

"surely I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with his mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me" Psalm 131

And I know that He always give me the sleep I need..."for so He gives His beloved sleep"

Psalm 127

These are the truths that I try to focus on during the chaos of everyday life. I struggle with focusing on myself too much and am praying that the Lord would help me to focus on others more. I believe the more I do that, the sweeter it will be.

GRATEFUL

Before I start let me just say I'm having one of those...."is that spelled right" moments. You know where you write or type something and it looks extremely strange to you. So I'm hoping the title is spelled correctly.

There are times I feel totally overwhelmed with life and all it's complications. The littlest task of getting the kids up in the morning can be draining. The youngest isn't a problem, he seems to be a morning person like his mother. But the two girls are a challenge. I've yet to find anything besides yelling in there 4 or 5 times that gets them up....and yes I've even tried ice cubes, but that only provoked to anger (which is a no no). Then there is the housework and schoolwork and little extras like birthday parties and such and all of it seems to be never ending. So it is such a joy when in the middle of what seems chaotic you get a little surprise that you never saw coming.

I feel bad that summer went by and Amy talked of having a party of some kind. My husband said to let them plan their parties and I said, relieved "o.k.". But the problem was they aren't very good decision makers yet, so hemming and hawing (sp ?) took place and nothing was ever done, because of the cost of it mostly. So here we are almost 2 months after the fact and I finally am able to take a deep breath and do some thinking after months of illness after illness and say...."gee, I feel bad that she wanted a party and never got one". So here we are planning a spur of the moment tea party with all the trimmings. I even went as far as to take down all the items that usually decorate my dinning room walls, like cursive writing charts, the ten commandments, Language charts and maps and replace them with Victorian themed items like gold framed pictures and lace doilies and such. We even found a wire floral decoration at goodwill for $.99. Can't beat that. We went to the dollar store and bought fake cut glass vases (plastic) and silk flowers. We've put the lace table cloth on and got out all my antique serving dishes that never see a table on any occasion. We've purchased little tiny cakes and cookies and in the morning I will be making chicken salad and egg salad for the main food and running to the store to purchase grapes. While we were getting the table ready I asked Amy if she would make a list for me, for tomorrow. So she promptly got out the pen and paper and started writing (with her new colorful pens from the dollar store). Then she handed it to me with a gentle little smile on her face. At the top it said "Thank you so much Momma for everything! I love you!" My heart melted. I had been feeling like maybe I was going overboard with detail, but I knew that it was all worth it and she was happy with it just how it was and I didn't need to worry about trying to make it better. What a feeling these days to have a child be thankful for something and express it so lovingly. She is my middle child who sits quietly by and watches the other two play baseball, ride horses, take drivers ed. She hardly ever complains about sitting by and watching it all happen. What a joy to be able to do something special for her. I'm sure we will have a wonderful day. And an extra blessing, yesterday I was actually entertaining the idea of making an "old days" dress for her in the middle of everything and then the Lord provided one from the salvation army for only $6 and 5 minutes of shopping time....that is way better than $25 for material and who knows how many hours of sewing....and it looks way better too.. :-)

Another thing to be grateful about. My son was blessed with receiving a lot of little things from his siblings and quite a few (about 20) hotwheels cars from his parents and money from grandma and an aunt. When he was counting up all the cash his dad asked if there was something that he didn't get that maybe he wanted to buy to which he replied "nothing". He thanked us many times afterwards for all his presents and loved the rice krispie treats shaped as baseball paraphernalia. In fact yesterday he asked me about 3 times "mom, did you get me this car?, cuz I really like it! Praise the Lord for these little things that cut right through my overwhelmed feelings and let me know that I may be doing a few things right. :-)

And on that note I'd better try to go back to bed, it's going to be a busy day. Errands to run, school books to order, party to have, girls to entertain and then drive 30 minutes to take them home, then home to make supper....hm, wonder what that is going to be? Gortons fish fillets sound like just the thing. ♥

feeling the rain

I made a list a few years ago....at the request of my husband. The list he wanted me to make was a list of my needs. Seems kind of funny, but he wanted to know how to keep me happy...

I don't remember a lot of what I wrote on there, but the first thing, I think, was being warm and dry. I hate being wet and cold. Last week at Jeremy's baseball game it was a fine mist coming down constantly for about the first 45 minutes. At first I was thinking, "yuck!!, I hate being wet". But then something hit me. How do I know that I'm alive? Life starts getting into the same rut, you start to feel like a robotic gerbil on the proverbial wheel. And it hit me that sometimes the uncomfortable things in life are just the thing you need to make you remember that you are not a robotic rodent on the wheel, you are a living, breathing human being created by God. He doesn't want us to live in bondage to the busyness of life. He wants us to take a moment to breathe, feel the rain and remember that He created us for His glory. We are not meant to run on the "world's" wheel. So I took my rain coat off and felt that misty wetness settling on my skin and you know what?, I didn't melt. It kind of woke me up. Now I'm not saying I want to stand in a soaking cold rain and then stand in the cold until I eventually dry off. Been there and done that and I'm pretty sure it wasn't my favorite thing. But, I will take more opportunities to do these things more. So go out there and experience the humidity, the rain, the snow, the cold, the creek, the rocks, the mud. I'm going to be doing a bit more of that.

Life

Life seems so complicated at times. There is always something that needs to be done and somewhere we are suppose to be going and sometimes I just want to go to my room and stay there in the quiet and not come out until I'm good and ready. But, I suppose that would get quite boring after a few days and I'm more than positive I wouldn't recognize my house when I came out of my room.

Why is it that children need to be told over and over again when they spill something, clean it up, if you drop it, pick it up and the imfamous "everything has a place" so put it there....aaahhhhh!!! I remember saying years ago that I was going to record myself saying these things so that I could just push a button instead of saying it over and over again.....but I believe even pushing the button would get annoying. But as my mother told me....it is an age old problem. Apparently my father use to say to her "when are we going to be able to stop telling them these things" and she informed him that it would be until they left the house for good. :-) I'm thinking that is how it will be. When they finally have a house of their own and they don't want wet, earwig infested pool towels on their floors or toys and notebooks on the floor. And they don't want to step on toy racecars in their bare feet in the dark and they possibly care if their clothes are covered with dog hair.... I'm thinking then it will finally register. But until then I guess it is my job to be a "broken record".....and wow is that an old phrase.

I remember having to explain that one....that is when you know you are old. Record? what's that? Time flies and technology is flying faster....look out!! All the devices from my childhood have gone by the wayside....the 8 track, record player and cassette player, wow!!...polaroid camera, instamatic camera, super 8 movies......even camcorders are on their way out.....wee ha!! hang on folks, I have no idea what is coming next. Actually I have a little idea ;-)

Well that's enough topic jumping, mind shifting for one morning.....have a great day!!!

What's up with that?

Does anyone sense a theme here? I just looked back at some of my other blogs and saw that the majority of them happen in the wee hours of the night... ;-/ hmm, I guess it's the only quiet time, uninterrupted time that I have to capture a thought of my own. The rest of the time is "run, little Liza, run" as my mother would say. I'm feeling sleepy, time to try to go to sleep before it's time to get up.

Awake again!!!

Why, I ask am I back to randomly not sleeping? I really do like sleep, I Do, I do, I DOOOO!!!! O.k. so tonight wasn't so random...the big thunder boomers came to town :-) and my son got shook from his bed apparently and right into ours. I have to admit that one shook the house pretty hard. So eventually I coaxed him back to bed and then tried to go back to sleep, but no such luck. I realized that because of the lovely fibromyalsia (don't even know how to spell the disease) was making me hurt, so I got up and took ibuprofen, tried to go back to bed and was tossing and turning so I gave up. And, here I am. Facebook checked, email checked, now what, I thought.... I know I'll check out my blog and to my surprise people actually commented on the last one. I about went into shock. Terri, I have no idea how to tell people I have a blog. So for now you and Jena are the only ones reading it....and I struggle with, do I really want everyone on my friends list to read it....I better have a few more clever thoughts before that happens. So for now the days events are playing through my head already. And what a long day it is going to be. I just had a thought...I should go get my Bible and read some and try to close the gap of the grand canyon crevise between God and I. I seem to be in one of those places. So on that note.

God bless, thanks for reading and have a grand week. And you might be surprised by blogs coming closer together. :-)

SUMMERTIME AGAIN!!

Well here we go.....starting off a very busy summer. I look at the calendar and just cringe. But I know it will be filled with lots of family togetherness and I'm sooo looking forward to my hubby being a big part of it this year. He is done with classes and almost done playing the drums, so we get to have him around more. So we have drivers ed for the oldest every day of the week for two hours a day and her work hours at the Childrens Farm and baseball one to two times a week for the youngest. Amy's activities will have to wait for fall. If I have any need to do anything, I will have to squueeeze it in somewhere.

One of my latest consumptions of the mind, is quilting. That is, at the moment. I tend to have some attention deficit problems and can't seem to stay on task. I usually have so many projects going around in my head that I don't know which to do first. And so many "to do's" that NEED to be done. List making is something I'm getting better at but have not perfected. One of the things I'd like to do more is this blog, but can't seem to find the time to change the background, think cleaver thoughts, or even tell anyone that I'm blogging....does anyone even read this thing? probably not, because I don't do it enough. So that is going on the list....tell people about the blog, think of interesting things to write about... hee hee...I'm cracking myself up. And, I think I was talking about quilting....maybe this blog should be called "diary of a victim of A.D.D." or "diary of the focus deprived".