The manly art of filling in for the missing sister!

Last night was very interesting here. With me being the only "girl" in the house and so NOT a girly girl like Fred things were very unusual. I had the boys filling in for a lot of the things that Fred normally takes care of around here and quickly learned that teaching boys to do the household kind of stuff is a way way waaaayyyy different task than teaching a girl. It was a very different experience for all of us but the evening ended well with a really yummy meal that we all had a hand in preparing.

We ended up naming the bread basket Fred and sitting it at her place at the table so we would stop talking to the empty chair. It got to be ridiculous how often we would turn to the chair and comment about how good the food was!
See what I mean about different?! I guess sometimes you need a little macho in the biscuts because I swear to ya'll that was the best batch of biscuts that ever came out of this kitchen.....sorry Fred, but you've been beaten.
Laundry folding fell to Jared who wasn't wearing a gun, but you can sure tell that those clothes weren't folded by someone who cares much about how wrinkled their shirts are either! At least he didn't just wad them up and stuff them in the basket!

I miss Fred!!!

For over 37 hours

Our family has suffered from lack of Sassifrasiasis........We have searched high and low for the cure to this particular ailment to no avail! The one family member who can help is just nowhere to be found.

She isn't in the boys room helping with the chores, or should I say tormenting the boys while they are doing their chores?!
Poor Garfield has given himself over to languishing away in their favorite petting seat.....his last thought was "maybe if I sit and wait it out she will come to pet me again".
She isn't stalking the baby tomatoes waiting for them to be ripe today.
She isn't sitting in her favorite shady spot.....no not under the tree, IN the tree....thus the constant sewing of bloomers at our house.
She isn't wading through the corn or eyeballing the baby green beans and squash either.

No Fred here! She isn't hanging out laundry today either!

She's not helping in the yard with her brothers today.

Actually she is perfectly safe and doing just fine. She is visiting with a family that we love dearly and hopefully being a blessing to the momma by helping with the younger kids and the house chores. "Fred" as we have taken to calling Tae is feeling very pressured to hone her homemaking skills and takes nearly every chance she gets to practice....she felt like helping our sister in the Lord who is dealing with twins and 3 kids besides them all under the age of 10 would be great training for the day when the Lord blesses her with a family of her own. Anyway, we love and miss our Sassyfrass!

Pictures of our trip

My kids will never forget their first ever visit to an amusement park!! We all had so much fun. I thought I would go ahead and post a few pictures here so all you folks can see it too but silly me never stopped to think that there aren't many rides that go slow enough to take a good picture of the kids on. Troy took one of them riding the carousel though.
Okay, so maybe I will never really be enough of a techie to get pictures on this page the way I want them but that's okay by me.



They were all just plumb tuckered by the time it was all said and done! Ain't they cute!!!

Wow, what fun we had!!! The kids still haven't stopped talking about visiting their first theme park and roller coasters and all the fun that was had. I don't think I will ever forget the looks on their faces and it was all so worth the long wait for them to be the ages that they are before going....I know they will never forget it either. Some very sweet and very generous friends of ours blessed us with this outing and we really enjoyed the time with their family too. Just look at their smiling faces standing in the parking lot just before the park opened chomping at the bit to get in and ride the rides.

Mama's little tattletales

I'm learning more and more as the years go by in my childrens' lives that there are certain things you just can't take their word on.....ever. I had to take both of the boys to the dentist this morning...Tae goes on Friday. Well Caleb, who swears every single night at bedtime that he has brushed his teeth "real real good", has 12...yup that's TWELVE cavities. I was talking with the hygenist (the dentist never bothered to speak to me) and told her that since he has learned the trick of licking the slightly moistened toothpaste tainted toothbrush I have a hard time telling if he has really brushed or not. She gave me some really handy little red pills for the kids to dissolve in their mouths. The pills stain their teeth and they have to really brush and really brush again to get the coloring off.....taaa daaaa my new best friend. I introduced my new little best friends to both of the boys as my little tattletales who will tell me whether or not they have brushed correctly. If your kids are having problems brushing correctly or if you just want a tool to help train their techniques these can be bought at most pharmacies.....I was told that you can buy a large box of them at the WalMart pharmacy for around $3 but to be careful because some pharmacies want to seriously overcharge for them. They are made by the Butler company and sold under the GUM label as Red Cote dental dislosing tablets. When I think of how much fillings cost I will gladly fork over the $3 a box until I'm satisfied that he is doing his part.

On to other things. I finally got to see a picture of my little honey Bella. She is just beautiful....as her name would imply and I sure am a proud grandmama. I sat here staring at her picture on the monitor for the longest time. She looks so much like her mommy that it sure does take me back a lot more years than I would like to admit. I can't wait to get to go see her. So far mom and baby are both doing very well and we are all praying that Jess will get saved and raise our little Bella up in the Lord.

I'm still working out how to word my next post on pulling it all together. Since I got the priorities post out, the next one will be on resources as soon as I get it all straight in my mind. I've also got a couple of recipes I need to get posted as soon as I get a chance to sit down and type them out.....they are tested in my own kitchen with a couple of picky eaters and went over well and cost very little to make. I'll try to get them on later on today. Until then I have laundry to fold and kids to catch up on schoolwork with.....

Finally!

Okay all of you back home folks who have pestered me and pestered me to bits and pieces wanting to see pictures of us now.....here ya go. I'll have ya'll know that to get this done I had to bug and pester one of my sweet sister friends to bits and pieces so I could figure out how to get this picture from in my camera to here.......thank you Steph!

Also to all of you folks back home who like to pick on me so much......I was grinnin like crazy because I was trying not to bust out laughing! One of the young fellas at church was cutting up and making me laugh....it was definitely a had to be there thing but oh my was it FUNNY! And before you start, yes I was holding something in my hands...I'll get there in a minute....first I want you to look at what Troy is wearing. If you made it to my wedding that may look a little familiar, if you weren't one of those who attended the wedding, don't choke...he has taken to wearing ties and dress shirts since he got saved and after much prayer he felt that a suit was more than appropriate to visit the Father's house. Now when you get done freaking out because the formerly known as mr. rebel biker hair and beard Troy is standing there in a suit grinning and happy even I'll tell ya what I've got in my hands.

Ya done? Okay, it's bird seed. HAHAHAHA ....no I haven't flipped my lid and I don't wander around feeding imaginary birds. The suit that Troy is wearing is the suit that he was wearing the day that I married him. He hasn't had that suit on since (or any other suit before or since til now) and when he reached into his pocket to put a tissue in there he pulled out a handfull of bird seed left over from our wedding. I'm still toting around some of that bird seed....it's very precious to me now. Pretty cool since a little over a year ago I was ready to burn that suit and anything else from the wedding....or that belonged to Troy.

It just goes to show you what God will do if we will just let Him take control! I'm so glad that He loves me!!!! Just look at all that He has blessed me with and how happy we all are nowadays. I don't remember any of us ever looking so happy when we were busy running around trying to satisfy the flesh but now we are all this way more often than not. God is so Good!

The payoff!!

I know I haven't blogged in awhile, sorry 'bout that. I have spent this week mostly lying in the bed wishing that I never got sick. I've had some of my dizzy spells and fell (fainted) once but thankfully I'm feeling a lot better now than I was the past couple of days. As I got up this morning I was thinking about all the stuff I thought I would have to do to get things "caught up" from having to take a couple of days off from my regular chores around the house. I was so pleasantly surprised to walk into the livingroom and find it all very neat and tidy. I had the same experience in the kitchen and the bathrooms. As soon as I got over the 'oh no they don't need me anymore' thought I was ready to shout over it.....how great is it that my house is basically cleaning itself now!

I spent last week working out a cleaning plan/chore chart for the kids. I made it so that they do all of the little day to day picking up and tidying type of stuff and then all I have to do is the stuff that requires an appliance......laundry and cooking mostly. So far this is working very very well. The kids know what needs to be done without being told to do it and they have been great about getting it done. All I have to do is cook our meals and throw the laundry in the washer....everything else is getting done almost all by itself! Had I stuck to the old way of doing things I would be running around like a crazy woman right now trying to do 3 days worth of housework and wishing I was still too sick to be up.....instead I'm sitting here typing away planning to do some sewing this afternoon and some cooking for a new mommy since all of my chores are done. WOW.

I ran across this 'Psalm of TV' and thought I would share it here.
The Psalm of TV
The TV is my shepherd I shall not want.
It makes me to lie down on the sofa.
It leads me away from the faith.
It destroys my soul.
It leads me to the path of mortal sin for the advertiser's sake.

Yea, though I walk in the shadow of Christian responsibilities there will be no interruption, for the TV is with me.
It's cable and remote, they comfort me.
It prepares a commercial for me in the presence of my worldliness.
It annoints my head with humanism and consumerism; my coveting runneth over.
Surely laziness and ignorance shall follow me all the days of my life.
And I shall dwell in the house watching TV forever.

busy busy busy

It seems like we are always trying to catch up on something or other around here lately. The kids have been trying to get caught up with school work that got "forgotten" with the holidays and just in general. I am always trying to get caught up with laundry and cleaning (but my decluttering project is really going great!!!) Troy is always trying to catch up on his reading or paperwork for work...currently he is trying to catch up on his napping though....hee hee. Do you ever feel like you are just chasing your tail? I've been feeling that way all day long.....but then I always feel that way when I'm getting over a migraine.

I'm so pleased with the progress that I'm making on my house!! I can now tell where things are without even having to go look for them! I have all of my sewing projects organized and stacked NEATLY in my room waiting for their turn to be finished. The boys room is cleaned and decluttered, though the decorating still looks like I did/didn't do it.....hahaha. Taeler's room is done except for her closet and that is only because it is storing things that have nowhere else to go. The kitchen is almost completely done. I have even cleaned and arranged the bathroom cabinets! I still need to clean out the filing cabinet and then sort and organize my recipes. We do still have lots of piles, but now at least we know what is in them and mostly they exist only because our house is so small that we have nowhere else to go with stuff. Along with the decluttering mission came a plan to get our lives more organized. I now plan our meals at least two weeks ahead....that doesn't always mean that we eat what is planned for that specific day because I am so very well known for changing my mind at the last minute but it does mean that I buy those foods at the store and nothing else. I have meals planned for the next three weeks and I've spent a total of $108 on food for the entire month of January!!! Troy keeps on telling me that I should write a book about how to save money on household expenses but I don't think there would be much interest...most folks don't want to do the things I do to save money. My personal opinion is that I can either work to save it or get a job and work to make it. It would be totally unfair and wrong of me to make Troy work as hard as he does and not do every little thing I can to make his money go as far as possible. (stepping down off of my stewardship/helpmeet soapbox now with a shy and embarrased wave)

I get plenty of laughs around here lately. One or the other of my kids is always saying or doing something that gets me to giggling. Jared is the one who makes the most comical slips in his day to day talk.....the last two of his will just never leave me. Jared said the last time we had a roast beef for supper "Hey Mom, what part of the cow is beef?" . He says this kind of thing so seriously and really wants to know the answer and you just can't help but laugh your guts out over it and it usually takes him awhile to figure out what everyone is laughing at. This time when we had roast beef for supper Jared asked for gravy on his meat.....rare since he usually hates gravy of any kind (for a long time I wondered if this could really be a child of my gravy loving self). After trying gravy and deciding that he had been horribly wrong all these years he smacks his lips and says "wow, it's kind of like salt only it doesn't fall off". Makes me wonder sometimes just what does occupy that space between his ears! Just kidding around, he is really bright about most things, he just says the funniest off the wall sort of stuff sometimes.

I have to wonder if things are really so funny or if we are really so easily entertained....probably we are just very very easy to entertain. I know the kids are.....I can remember so clearly the days right after I got saved when we didn't have a tv set in the house. Troy and I were sitting in the livingroom with the then baby, Jared, visiting with each other when we heard the sweetest most earnest giggling coming from the kitchen. The giggling would start suddenly, escalate to a loud and breathless peak and then stop. After several minutes of silently wondering just what it was that had our baby girl's rapt attention and was causing her to laugh so hard we finally gave in to curiosity and went into the kitchen. The scene we found when walking through the doorway took us a minute to figure out since there was absolutely nothing that gave us any immediate answers. We rounded the corner to see a two year old top knotted Tater bug standing in the center of the room on top of an upturned milk crate staring at the sink as though she fully expected it to fly away if she took her eyes off. I can only imagine how foolish we must have looked standing there looking at Tae looking at the sink! Well after just a minute or two the sink dripped and made a 'ping' as the drop of water hit the stainless steel pan and then the giggles erupted as Tae points to the sink with one hand and holds her belly with the other.....laughing so hard that she looked ready to fall off of her little perch. As soon as she caught her breath she again is totally absorbed in watching for the next drop to fall. Pretty soon we were so caught up with laughing right along with her we didn't care how silly we looked it was just fun.

I noticed today at the store how dour most folks look when they are just walking about. So many people look like someone just walked up and kicked their puppy....so sad! It made me think of the message our Pastor preached a little while back about being happy from Psalm 144. He said that joy is the echo of God in our lives. There are folks back home who won't go out in public with me because I giggle and cut up and have fun......but ya know what? I'm too happy not to!!! What makes people walk around looking like they ate a persimmon before the hard frost hit? Lack of the Lord in their lives. I'll keep on laughing.....I have every reason I need.

Time flies!!!

I just can't believe it!!! My sweet baby girl is a (gasp, sputter, gasp some more) TEENAGER! Sometimes you just want to shout "when did this happen? and where did the time go?" but we all know that they really do grow up whether we want them to or not....and boy does it happen FAST! It seems like yesterday instead of 13 years ago that I was laboring away at the hospital filled with thoughts of wonder at what the baby would look like, would it be a boy or a girl and what would those first few moments be like ....you know, the typical racing thoughts that get stuffed in between contractions in the last moments of mother-to-be hood. All of those questions are answered now and so many more....she is definitely a SHE, she is absolutely beautiful...sometimes so much so that it takes my breath away and makes me cry, and those first few moments just like the past 13 years have been more wonderful than any mother anywhere on the planet deserves for them to be.

It is amazing how much thought we give to decorating a nursery and preparing for a baby during those months of pregnancy and how few of us prepared for anything other than the babyhood of our children. From the minute mine began to walk I was filled with fear and doubt about my abilities to be the mother that I should be....not for lack of desire to be a good mother but for lack of having been taught what a good mother is. There are so few examples of how to parent properly and so much controversy over the different techniques and methods of parenting that it is soooo easy to get lost in the swarm of well intentioned advice and go the wrong way. I know how easy it is because I am one of the ones who is now having to walk that long uphill climb to the way things should be done....God's way. I am so thankful for His mercy and His grace in my life!! I know that the Lord has made getting back on the road to doing things right so much easier for me than what I deserve and I'm so thankful that my children do have a heart for the Lord and it shows in their responses to mine and Troy's efforts to raise them properly. I have such a long way to go and so little time left to get there that at times it is totally overwhelming and scary...but then I just have to take a deep breath and stand still and remind myself that God is in control!

Puppy love update and a lesson in waiting on the Lord

Well, for the time being the puppy love drama fest has been put to rest. I don't know if I'm going to like raising a teenage daughter or not...it is definitely going to keep me on my toes. As it turns out there were a few people who knew more about the situation than we did....like I said I will have to be more on my toes. I explained what had happened to Mr. Puppy love's mother and after the service Wednesday evening at church we all sat down and had a talk about things, got everything out in the open and Troy and I made it very clear that Tae is just too young for this kind of thing to be going on. Both of the young ones know that there should never have been ANY communication going on behind the backs of the parents of either family. I don't think that there are any permanently wounded feelings and I know for a fact that Tae is feeling much relieved....the last two notes that she had written (which I intercepted) were telling Mr. Puppy love that though she cared a great deal for him she wanted to stop writing until they were older and knew what God's will for them was and that right now it was all just too confusing for her. I think she learned the hard way how important it is to wait on the Lord.

I was so glad that our pastor's wife led the ladies meeting tonight and talked about waiting on the Lord as an action. Our young people who struggle so hard with feeling like they need to do something need desperately to learn that waiting can be a verb! It doesn't have to be waiting like sitting still in the doctor's office until it is your turn....it can be waiting in preparation which is what we have been trying so hard to teach Tae. Now she can be learning to lean on the Lord and to do all of the things that are necessary to develop who she is to be as a woman, wife, mother and servant of our Lord and Saviour....if you think about it there is always preparation for anything that we set out to do or that we are called to do in service for the Lord and that preparation period is waiting.

Consider Psalm 27:13&14 "I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait on the Lord : be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say on the Lord. "

Not only will waiting on the Lord (the right way, not the dr's office way) result in being better prepared to handle whatever comes our way, but it will also serve to discourage the deceivers who are waiting to derail God's plan for us by tricking us into NOT waiting on the Lord.
Ephesians 4:14 says "That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive;"

We are even told what will happen if we out wait the evil.....
"Wait on the Lord, and keep his way, and he shall exalt thee to inherit the land: when the wicked are cut off, thou shalt see it." Psalm 37:34

"Say not thou, I will recompense evil: but wait on the Lord, and He shall save thee."
Proverbs 20:22

I really enjoyed the teaching at the ladies meeting tonight, I think it was just what Tae needed to hear and also just what I needed to hear for me right now. Mrs. Hoyle quoted Isaiah 40:31 but I want to go back a few more verses to.....
Isaiah 40:28-31 "Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding. He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint."

I like our ladies meetings! Now I hope that Tae can go back to waiting to finish growing up and I can go back to waiting for so many things while we all wait on the Lord. God is so good to us!!! It just makes me so teary eyed sometimes to think that the Creator of the ends of the earth cares enough about me to make a plan for me and if I am patient and WAITING for Him then He will see it through! How many times a day do we mommies tell our little ones....'will you wait just a minute'...or 'wait a bit and I'll help'...or 'wait, I'm on my way'....yet we expect God to jump at our beck and call....hmmmm, I'll wait.
Thanks for a great lesson Mrs. Hoyle!

Hmmmm......puppy love

I know I know.....I really don't need to be emailed again (thanks Chris) to be told that I should add more info to the profile or add pictures or even put up some sort of explaination about why I've named this blog Paid in Full. I'll get to it...ya'll know that I do half of everything backwards anyways so just be patient.

Things are blooming here at home....yes I know it is December and yes I know it is cold outside and yes I know that most things don't bloom in the wintertime. I'm talking about puppy love...it's gone from a tiny bud to a full out bloom without me catching on. Yup, I'm talking about my precious little Tae again. Nope, like I keep telling people she is NOT the perfect child....actually she is a very good girl most of the time but when she makes an oops it tends to be a bit bigger than ummmm, say "ooops, I tied a knot in my shoelaces". Sometimes it is as big as "oops, I sucker punched my little brother in the nose and then kicked him in the shin because he was irritating me and wouldn't get out of my way". Sometimes it is as big as "oops, I accidentally spouted off something really ugly about one of my sisters in the Lord without thinking first because I got in the flesh". I can assure everyone that the only perfect thing about Tae is that she is perfectly normal. I've known for quite awhile that she has had kind of a crush on a certain young man at our church and I'm not naive enough to think that it has been any kind of secret to most of the other people there either. I didn't encourage it and really did do my best to not even mention said crush because Taeler is only 12 and I certainly didn't want to give her the impression that I was encouraging her to start husband hunting already. I kind of secretly thought it was a little bit cute that she was behaving like a lady about this and dedicated myself to watching the situation carefully......apparently not carefully enough.

Yesterday afternoon I found out that Mr. Puppy love and Tae have been exchanging notes via a cooperative and very naive younger brother. Goodie for me, younger brother couldn't contain himself anymore and told baby brother who we all know has the biggest mouth in the family and nearly immediately spilled the beans to Mom in the middle of the days school work. Needless to say the remainder of the day at home got very interesting. The ONLY child of mine who has not gotten a thorough talking to and additional reading assignments was baby brother. Secrets from Mom are a super big NO NO in this house!! Things only got more interesting when Daddy got home from work last night and was given all of the little letters that have been received by his sweet baby girl.... he said and I quote "hmmm. hmmmm. hmmmmmm. He had better be really glad I like him." then read a bit more and the hmmmmm part started all over again. I won't go into detail here about who Mr. Puppy love is or what the letters had to say but I will say that Tae is being watched like a hawk and that she is FAR FAR too young to be courted.

I'm really not planning to be too harsh with Tae and the afore mentioned Mr. Puppy love. I don't think that Troy is planning anything harsh either. I'm not so old and hardened that I can't remember what it's like to have a crush on a cute fella. I certainly remember passing notes to boys and getting notes back from them. Truly I can only fault myself for not being more observant (bet that don't happen again) and for not having taught Tae a bit more about how to handle this kind of situation should it come up (working my tail off to correct that one now). Tae spent a couple of years in public school with me working full time and the world encourages our very young people to engage in such things as having boyfriends very early. I should have done more to correct that false teaching with Tae before now. If any of you have any great books to recommend please please do......if there are any out there for the parents I would certainly be happy to read those too! I don't want to risk any more poorly thought out or too little prayed over decisions when it comes to raising my kids for the Lord. Troy and I both want Tae to be ready for courtship and marriage when the time comes....we just never thought that the time would be now. Hooray for Tae for having good taste though....Mr. Puppy love is a very nice young fella who says he is 100% sure he is going to heaven, comes from a good family and kept everything within the notes in a good and decent context. The only real mistakes either one of them made was 1) not coming to the parents first 2)keeping secrets from parents and getting younger brother caught in the middle and 3) not giving themselves the appropriate circumstances to deal with such an important issue. Truth be told I really feel sorta bad for both of them....it's clear that they care for each other very much, there are just so many things that they are not old enough or mature enough to understand. I wouldn't be that age again for all the money in the world!!!