Two thumbs up!

Even good eaters have picky spells, I've learned. However, I felt totally proud of myself for getting two thumbs up last night with my 5 and 3 year olds. I didn't even have to use bribery. It even had very apparent squash in it--and onions! What was this madness? Here're the tricks. I called it pizza. We made it ourselves. The kids helped assemble (which doesn't always work, but it does help a little). They were on little biscuits, so they were kid sized. They picked out the vegetables themselves at the farm market. This is the hugest secret to getting your kids (or Grandpa) to eat vegetables--keep trying. Seriously. 10 or 15 times before you expect them to say, "Oh! I like this! This is wonderful! Will you please make it at every meal?" Okay. Well maybe not that enthusiastic, but pretty close. That's my sage and oh-so-wise thoughts for today. I really was very excited, though. Hopefully, tonight goes as well as last night did. A girl can dream can't she?

nipples

I know what your thinking. Great title. It's really not what you think. Seriously. Monday is one of our ditch water days during the summer. Basically we just turn on the ditch water and flood the back yard. It makes for a really green backyard. Aidan and Breanna love to play in water. Any water. Dirty ditch water or not. Another of Breanna's favorite things to do is to be naked. Ditch water and naked is not necessarily a good combination. Eeewwww. I did put sunscreen on her little body, but I have yet to purchase bug spray for this year. Needless to say, she got a couple bug bites, one of which is on her knee. Bear with me here, but I'm going on another bunny trail. This will all come back together at somepoint. I wear a lot of hats--and by hats I mean I am involved in a lot of activities, volunteer and otherwise. One of the hats I wear is to be a La Leche League (LLL) leader. If you're not familiar with LLL, it is essentially a mother to mother breastfeeding support group. Among my duties are leading the monthly meetings and doing phone support for moms that need help. Obviously, when I am talking on the phone, it is not a secret as to what I am talking about. Words like nipples, latch on, breastmilk and the like are common words at my house. Do you see where I'm going with this yet? I'm almost there. So--Breanna. She gets this bug bite on her knee. It is eventually time to come in from the backyard and take a bath, so we can go out into public with out smelling yucky. Breanna is naked in the bathroom. This is how the conversation goes.
"Mommy, I have a nipple on me." Of course you do, I'm thinking. We all do.
"Okay," is my outloud response.
"I need a band-aid on my nipple," says Breanna.
"No, your nipple is fine," I say, looking at her nipples and seeing they are fine. Silly girl that Breanna is.
"No, Mommy. Right here. I have a nipple on my knee," she says as she points to the bug bite on her knee.
"Honey, that is not a nipple. That's a bug bite," as I bite my lip to keep from laughing at her very real to her anguish over this suddenly misplaced nipple.
"NO! It's a nipple!" Breanna says, in true, calm 3-year-old fashion. Some battles are not worth the fight, I have determined. (I just heard a new response that I am excited to try, "I love you too much to argue."But I haven't had the opportunity to try it out yet. I'll let you know how it goes.) So...we took our shower and I put a band-aid on her nipple, I mean, her bug bite. I figured, at least, it should keep her from scratching it, right? I share this episode with you because I keep getting reminded of it myself. Everytime that Breanna looks at the band-aid she tells me that she has a nipple on her knee. If you see her in the next few days, she will probably tell you, too. Consider yourself forewarned.

A new mind

Romans 12:1-2
Living Sacrifices

1Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual[a] act of worship. 2Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Footnotes: 1 Or reasonable

That's our verse for this week. No, it's not Aidan's verse for Sunday School. It is my and Brad's verse for our small group. Interestingly enough, it's not the first time I've heard it this week. I've been reading (a lot lately!). I'm about to finish Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover. Can we say, "VERY CONVICTING"? Anyway, that verse was in there, too. We are about to make some big changes. Now that we have our mortgage taken care of--in the sense that the payments are reasonable--we need to address our debt. By the grace of God, we don't have that much debt outside our car. The car...the silly, ridiculous payment car. We have to get rid of it. That's all there is to it. Brad actually brought it up, but I know it was from God. Brad, on his own, would not suggest it--Brad likes cars. Okay, I do, too. I guess it just boils down to this: it's just a thing; it's just stuff. Stuff can be replaced--by saving and paying cash later. We won't be completely carless, though. We have our old truck. It's paid for. It runs. It needs a little bit of work, but not the $20,000 plus interest that we owe on the Explorer. Peace of mind is a great thing. When you are in God's will--no matter what is happening around you--you have peace of mind. That is just how it seems to work for me. There is turmoil sometimes in finding God's will for me, but when I get there...aaahhhhhh. So now we are in the process of renewing our mind. We are learning not to think like the world does. Debt is not okay. As someone said, money makes a great slave, but a terrible master. Our master is the Lord with His good, pleasing, and perfect will.

Genesis

I got a new Bible for Brad. I should say I picked it up--I ordered it in February. It's really cool. It is the One Year Chronological Bible. What that means is that it is broken up into small sections to read everyday and then within a year you will have read through the whole Bible. The neat thing about this one is that it is written in the order that things happened, hence the Chronological part. So we are starting at the January reading --as opposed to starting with June and coming full circle. I asked Brad to read it to me aloud. It came to me while reading "Redeeming Love". After much convincing on my part, he did read out loud to me. What does he happen to read to me? Genesis 3:16. Not a verse I had memorized. One other thing I forgot to mention about this new Bible: it is the New Living Translation. We are used to using the New International Version, which is good, too. In case you don't have your Bible handy, here is what Genesis 3:16 says in the NLT,

" And you will desire to control your husband, but he will rule over you.”

Ouch. If you go back and read the whole passage, you will realize this phrase was spoken to Eve, by God when he was cursing Adam and Eve for disobeying and eating from the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Even though I know that my husband is supposed to be the head of our household, I'll admit that I don't always let him be the head. Not only that, but, if I'm being totally honest here, I DO desire to control my husband. No, I don't physically force him into doing things my way, but I do use other tactics. Guilt trips, manipulation, the look...we won't go into more detail than that. Not the way God intended. Ouch, again.

I did enjoy having Brad read to me, though. He wouldn't do a repeat performance last night, though. I had to read for myself. If you can convince your hubby to do it, have him do it. I thought it was really romantic for him to read out loud to me from the Bible. Something about God's truth coming from the mouth of your husband, who should be the head of your household...Just knowing that he is learning to be in submission to God...It was just really wonderful.

A momentus day

It's a momentus day at our house. Aidan is officially not a little boy anymore. It's over. No, I'm not talking about kindergarten this fall--although, I'm not quite ready for that yet either. This day's item of interest is 2 loose teeth. Not just one, but two! He didn't notice them himself--which is actually amazing since he has been checking for loose teeth for the last several months. He was having a 5-year-old's attitude problem, so I asked him to come sit on my lap and talk. In the middle of talking to him, I noticed his tooth had a bigger space than usual next to it. Imagine my surprise as I touched it and realized it is about to fall out. Craziness! Then I touched the one next to it and it was loose, too! Super craziness. I am just not ready for these kids to grow up. It's just happening too fast! I know, I know. That's life, but it's just happening too fast, darn it! I am super proud of both Aidan and Breanna. They are just so sweet. Aidan is actually learning to read. He is getting really good at spelling. He loves writing words and mixing up letters to see if they make a word. He is just going to love kindergarten next year. That boy just loves to learn. I am just having some guilty feelings for giving up on the whole homeschooling thing. I know in my mind that if things are going badly, I can just pull him out of school. I just think that homeschooling is so wonderful! I know SO many people that are doing it successfully that I just wonder what my problem is that I can't get it together enough to do a little bit of school everyday. I don't know. I just want to do it all, but I know I can't. Once again, life goes on. He'll be fine. It will be good for him, right? I'm worried about it, but at the same time, I am also at peace about it. He's in the Lord's hands. Aidan and Bre sing that to me all the time. He's got the whole world in His hands--Aidan and Breanna included.

Here is today's Aidan-ism:
*Can I have a beagle? My response: No we are not getting another dog right now. Translation: Can I have a bagel? You know, those little round breads that look like a donut, Mom.

Overheard at light's out in Breanna's bed:
*Thank you God for nini's. Amen.
Isn't that cute? That's what she prays for most every night. In case you were wondering, nini's is our name for nursing.

New favorites

I didn't blog yesterday. I have really enjoyed this thinking outloud-on paper thing. The reason I missed yesterday was because I have a new favorite book. I had to finish it. Brad was laughing at me. It's not very often you find a book that you just can't put down. You become engrossed in the characters. They almost seem like real people in your mind. So what is this new favorite book, you ask? Some of you know because you suggested it to me and even loaned me a copy. The book is "Redeeming Love" by Francine Rivers. It was just beautiful. To summarize, and yet not give away too much, it was basically the story of the Old Testament prophet Hosea and his wife, Gomer, who was a prostitute. I don't know about you, but that story was not one that I recall hearing or reading as a small child going to Sunday school. God tells Hosea to marry this prostitute. This story is actually set in the 1850's in California. It's is just beautiful. It is about what God has in mind for marriage and love and...so much more. I just don't want to say too much. To be desired like that... To be hurt like that... God is good. It's not just smooshy stuff. Men can read it too. I know I'm talking about a book and this is not necessarily a book review blog, but I just loved it. Enough already. I'll sign off for now. Now you go read it.

The best garage sale ever!

I am not a huge fan of garage sales. Really. My mother-in-law (and my husband--it must be genetic) have a talent for finding really nice stuff--seriously--at garage sales. Me? Not so much. For example, a few weeks ago, we went yard sale shopping as a fun family event. We came home with totally gorgeous, like new living room furniture. My husband found it. We got a STEAL of a deal. The sales I wanted to go to? We bought nothing. Even more than not finding anything, I HATE putting them on. However, I am way too cheap to just donate ALL my stuff, so I have tried my hand at having yard sales. I usually make about 50 cents an hour, on average--and I'm not exaggerating. So I can't even begin to fathom why I would agree to (okay, suggest) having a yard sale at my friend Jen's house. It turned out to be the best yard sale ever! Not monetarily speaking, of course. I only made $15 bucks yesterday from the stuff I sold, but we had so much fun! There ended up being 5 of us with all our stuff to sell and all our kids running around for 5 hours unsupervised. So now I know. Do yard sales with your friends. You attract more buyers because there is more junk, er, stuff to sell and your kids aren't on top of you all day wondering why you are selling their toys to strangers. So there it is. Today's wisdom. Enjoy! I have to sign off now to go back for day 2 of the best garage sale ever.