Snow White

I'm as ready for spring as the next guy.

But thankful for one last chance to build a snowman and snowfort and snow angel.  And snow granades.

 

 

And thankful, during this Holy week, for the gentle reminder:

Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord:
though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red like crimson,
they shall become like wool.

Isaiah 1:18

Girl On Fire

What a tangled web we weave when first we try to do something outside our skill set.

So, I set myself on fire the other day.

I mean no ER visit was required, but clothes had to be thrown away because they were not salvagable. 

The Honey left town for a while and to ease the pain we took a little walk.  I told the kids it was because the weather was so nice but it was actually because we had some trash that had blown out in the fields that needed to picked up.

Suckers.

We enjoyed our walk and I enjoyed the tidied field.  We managed to head down to the creek to get our feet wet and make some memories.  But before we went inside I thought I would try to help out by burning the trash we had collected.

Me and my big ideas.

So the wind was up more than I thought and it caused some of the grass in the garden to catch on fire.  The boys and I stomped it out while Sweet Yahoo and Baby stood there looking a bit shell shocked and helpless.

Within a few minutes the fire on the ground was out. 

But I still smelled smoked.

Oh, oops.  Look at that!  It's me!

On fire.

A small pat down and a bucket of water later and all is well.  Except for several gaping holes in my coat we were all unscathed.  So we made our way back inside to make ourselves some bologna sandwiches. 

Because nothing says "I escaped a third degree burn" like a bologna sandwich.

I was tickled by the whole event.  But The Yahoos?  The Yahoos were a bit unnerved by it.  And alas the thought that their mother could have literally been Alicia Keys' Girl On Fire moved them to action.  As I made their sandwiches I sent them upstairs to take their baths.  But instead, they ran ME a bath.  They lit candles and cleaned the bathroom and even unwrapped for me a new bar of soap.

Isn't that sweet?

So, Moms, the moral of this story:  Anytime you are feeling a little unnoticed or underappreciated the quick fix is to strike a match.

After the bath I did some extra cuddling with the kiddos and a movie night.  I thought they needed to unwind a bit.  As I was sitting there on the couch with them one of them mentioned how I didn't even smell like smoke anymore.

And that reminded me of something.  

I have been through a bazillion Bible studies, but the one that sticks with me the most is a Beth Moore study through Daniel.  And one of the biggest things I took away from that was when she shed light on how Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego handled the fiery furnace.

So Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego came out of the fire,  and the satraps, prefects, governors and royal advisers crowded around them. They saw that the fire had not harmed their bodies, nor was a hair of their heads singed; their robes were not scorched, and there was no smell of fire on them.

Daniel 3:26-27

We all face our fiery furnaces in this life.  And though most are not of the literal kind, they are difficult.  Beneficial and fruitful, but difficult.  But when we get through our trial, do we still have the smell of smoke on us?  Is it obvious we are still wearing the pain of the trial or have we left it behind? Do we allow the trial to refine us or embitter us? 

Trials are difficult, even heartbreaking at times.  But the trials we are allowed to go through are not to harden us, but to heal us.  To heal us from ourselves.  To mold us into the image of the One who took our Fiery Furnace for us.  And the end result is not to burn us, but to perfect us.

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials,  so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ

1Peter 1:6-7

Do you smell smoke?

The Unofficial Firstborn Turns 16

This is the Unofficial First Born.

And today he turns 16.

And he's all the things I wanted to be as a kid.

 He's a risk taker and a go getter.

And he takes very few things seriously. 

Except playing.  He takes playing very seriously.

I hold this kid pretty close to my heart.  Because he was my unofficial firstborn.  I practiced bottle feeding and diaper changing and wrestling and tag all on this little guy.  And even though I had to sit through 6 hours of Barney videos everytime I babysat him I didn't mind.  Because he made Barney awesome.


And now, now this boy has become a man.  And I'm scared for him.  Scared he will go and make some of the same mistakes I made. 


Because I was 16 once and had all this life at my fingertips.  But I often sacrificed the permanent at the altar of the immediate. 


I cared more about possessions than people.


More about myself than anything else.


And now those feel like wasted years to me.


So I pray for this kid. I pray that he doesn't waste a minute of his life.  I pray that he will love wisdom and humility.  That he will be eternally minded.  I pray that he speaks the gospel truth to himself and to the large circle of people around him that he influences. And I pray that he will be successful.  Not as the world sees it, but as His Father does.  That he will be a man of integrity and substance and unwavering faith.

I'm so proud of this guy.  I'm so proud of the man he has become and is becoming.

And I love him.

I love him so much that when he goes off to college in a few years he better believe that I will be keeping tabs on him and should he go and start screwing up his life I will totally break bad and come down there and bust his head.  Because I didn't watch 6 hours of Barney every weekend just for you to go act the fool.  keep him in my prayers.

Me and Jesus are watching you.   May God be with you.


Happy Birthday, Unofficial Firstborn.  This Yahoo crew loves you!

The Wild West

I am always super impressed with myself for taking the kids on a field trip.  So I thought I would post some pix from our field trip to the The Wild West exhibit at our Community Arts Center.  Because I know you will be super impressed with me too.

This was information we did not have before.  Thus I mark this up as a school day.  Yeehaw!

Grinding some corn

I mustache you a question........Which one looks best on me?

Building a log cabin with the lovely ladies.

Panning for gold.

 

 

 

That face says it all.....guilty as sin

He grows facial hair as fast as his father

 

 

 

 

 

The little lady and the cowpoke in their covered wagon.

Little Middle and his lady friend reading the Wheel of Fortune. Sadly, it said they ended up dying of frostbite.

Darlin'.

 

 

Doesn't that look like fun?  And aren't you proud of me?

 

Anyway, as I was loading these pictures I found some stuff from February that I had forgotten about.  So I thought I would privilege you with them.  Go ahead.  Stare.  That's what works of art like these are for.

 

 

 

 

 

The Goat Whisperer

 

 

Taking a ride

 

 

And then a few shots from Valentine's Day. 

I know.  I'm late.  Deal with it.

Alrighty now.  Get along little doggies.  It's time to herd in some Yahoos.

 

 

 

Lego My Idol

So today was hard.

And I don't do hard things.

That's what The Honey is for.

But today The Honey was doing his CIA thing so the only one left here was me.

So there I am blogging away about how I should do the next right thing when I hear two cute as a button heathens killing each other over the idol of all idols.....Legos.

Can I take a moment to explain the sacredness of the Lego in this home? 

I am ashamed to admit that we have a room in our house devoted to them.  Granted it is a small room in the basement.  And also, to assuage me of any more guilt, the room serves a necessity.  Because Legos were getting scattered everywhere and we were constantly hunting down Yoda and his lightsaber.  And if you've ever had to find a Lego figure lightsaber it is excrutiatingly painful to the point that you ain't finding that thing unless The Force is literally with you so you  might as well pack it up and drive all the way to Walmart and buy another blasted light saber rather than searching through your entire house on hands and knees with a Yahoo asking you every 11 seconds if you have found it yet really hard.  So I banished all Legos to the dungeon in the basement.  And during "recess" the kids go and play with them.

And then there is Baby.  Baby is 3 now and 3 is hard.  Because he wants to do big kid stuff.  But he is 3.  And he loses things.  Like Yoda's lightsaber.  But the big Yahoos all generously loaned him their junk extra figures.  But Baby.  He's 3.  And never satisfied. 

So I heard Baby and Little Middle starting to fight over them.  And I really did try to let them work it out on their own.  But once I heard the blood curdling screams and what could have been a kick to the ribs I decided to investigate.

So in my sage, experienced Mommy-dom I calmly walked downstairs and silently picked up their Legos and proceeded to box them all back up.  I've had to do this once before.  They had been fighting over them so I locked them away for a week.  Don't mention it to them, though. They're scarred from it.

Moving on.  So I pick them up, box them away and proceed to lock them up. 

Well you would have thought I was on a crusade to rape and pillage their Lego village.  The panic and begging and pleading and falling out on the floor was a sight to behold.  It was.....okay, it was actually a little funny.  But I couldn't laugh.  So I put on my disappointed face.  And kids were hyperventilating and slamming doors and screaming things like

'Please, Mommy, don't!'

But in their hearts they were saying things like

'I hate your stinking guts!'

 

But you will be glad to  know that I stuck to my guns and locked them up and calmly tried to talk them down.  All of them.  All four of them.  I couldn't hear myself talk because they were screaming so loudly.  Two of them had run to their rooms and one was clinging to my leg and one was trying to pry his grubby paws around the Lego room door to get it opened.

 

And then there was me calmly telling them to get control of themselves.

 

But they didn't hear me.  Because of the screaming.

 

This is Baby's reenactment of the events that unfolded

Surprsinginly Little Middle was the worst.  I for real could not get this kid to settle.  So I opened up the door outside and had him stand there until he could pull himself together.  So there he stood.  In the snow.  Barefoot.  And without a coat. 

 

Don't tell his grandmothers.

 

Now I will say at this moment I did have some reservations that maybe  I had been too hard and maybe  I should let him throw his fit in the house.  But I couldn't think about that now because I needed to go upstairs to get two of the four calmed down enough to come back downstairs so we could start our obviously overdue Bible study.

 

But while I am up there with them I hear Baby screaming in the basement.  Not the 'I want my idol back' scream but more the 'Get this dog off me' scream.  So I run BACK down there to find that Baby had opened the door outside because he saw Little Middle out there crying and in the process let the dog in who then started jumping up on him.  So now I'm screaming 'Get the dog out!' and Little Middle is screaming 'I'm cold!' and Baby is screaming 'I want to go outside!'

Then the dog was let out but the crying continued.  Sweet Yahoo was crying because she thought she was in trouble and Ninja was crying because I had been too hard on Little Middle and Little Middle was crying because he obviously loves Legos more than Jesus and Baby was crying because everyone else was crying and I was crying because I couldn't find any chocolate. 

 

Finally, after some heavy soul searching we found the problem.

 

There was a great big stinkin' idol in our heart.

And also, after some more heavy searching, I found the chocolate.  I forgot I had hidden it under the broccoli.  Ain't nobody looking for it there.

So today was hard.

Because idols must be destroyed.  Mine and theirs.  And idol destruction is slow and painful.  No matter how big your lightsaber. 

I got a feeling I need to go stock up on some Reese Cups.

 

 

 

 



We Are The Yahoos.

All good successful entities have mission statements or catchy slogans to define themselves. 

So I was thinking what might best define our little family.  When I think of how we do life, what statement best describes us?  Though the options are numerous, this week I would definitely go with

We Are The Yahoos.....We Bite Off More Than We Can Chew!

 

 

That's catchy, right?

  

I mean we did 0 to 4 kids in 6 years flat.  We double dog dared ourselves to become farmers.  We got us a tractor and a combine and a job at the CIA.  We've built some barns and a deck and a treehouse and a room to do some school in for the next decade or so.  And everyday we feed the masses and clean the latrines and iron our superhero capes.
 

Yes, there are days that I do believe we have just about reached our breaking point.  I feel like I do a bunch of things, but don't do any of them well. 

 

I'm not crazy about that feeling.  I'm more of a "Let's just accomplish one thing today but let's make it killer."  I usually slate that one thing to be lunch.  But not always.  Sometimes I let it be naptime.

 

This week has been insane.  Between dentist appointments and a 3 year old with a cavity and field trips and piano lessons and locking myself out of my van we also are wrestling with lots of the 'big' decisions.  Too many to go into now, but I'm sure you know what I mean.  Those types of decisions that you don't have a lot of time to really think about during the day because you are busy ironing your superhero cape, so you are up all night tossing and turning and wrestling with it in your dreams.  Those kind of decisions. 

 

I struggle with decision making.  Because I don't trust myself.  I can come up with the best reasons to excuse myself from doing things I don't want to do....or that I'm scared to do.  And I've taught my kids to do the same thing.

 

Like for instance the other night when we had some friends over and a certain Yahoo started waving his middle finger at everyone.  And his wonderful, sweet friend said "Ninja, don't do that.  It's not nice."  And that certain unnamed Yahoo said

 

"It's OK.  I'm homeschooled.  I don't even know what it means."

 

Nice.

 

And then of course another Yahoo saw the whole thing and thought it was funny so he, too, started flipping everyone off. 

 

I tell you all that to say that if my kids flip you off, don't be offended.  We haven't covered that yet in school.

 

As ridiculous as all that sounds, I am honestly not too far from it.  Sometimes I use some equally ridiculous excuses to continue doing the things that I want to do. 

 

Things like

 

"But I was up all night on Pinterest researching better ways to organize the school room, so I'm too tired to do school today."

 

or the equally moronic

 

"The cookie that was the size of my head that I ate while the kids were resting made my stomach hurt so I couldn't possibly make supper."

 

or maybe

 

"I was too swamped with reading books about the Bible that I didn't get time to read the Bible"

 

I wish I could say that I am exaggerating on some of these.  But the honest truth is that I can find lots of reasons to justify whatever it is I want to do.

This pretty fabulous lady once gave me some pretty fabulous advice about how to guide my Yahoos in matters of decision making and obedience:

Do the next right thing.

 

Ouch.  And Ugh.

 

That simple little admonishment is a kick in the tail to me.  Because I have no excuse.  I do know the next right thing.  Because we are worthless and God is magnificient He gives us beautiful gifts like our conscience and His Spirit to be our moral compass. 

 

So then I'm left with this

 

Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.

 



I do look forward to one day having my act together.   But until then I guess I just have to keep preaching this to myself.  And maybe after years of training we can change our family motto to:

 

 

We are the Yahoos.  We do the next right thing.  And we eat chocolate.