Welcome to 2021, my friends!

For my first blog entry of 2021, I thought I’d share a funny story that is sort of at my own expense. I’ve found it’s best to stick to that sort of tale to avoid angry phone calls or emails… Haha!

Sometimes I can be a little oblivious to my surroundings. It is true. This is how my brain works. I am that rare woman who finds it necessary to focus on only one thing at a time. Sometimes this leads to an extreme form of tunnel vision.

Yesterday my mission was this: Operation Unpack All My Suitcases

All four boys had already full unpacked because they had to do so before they could go play.

Alan was also completely unpacked because he is Alan. He hates to pack and waits until five minutes before time to go to do so, but when UNpacking, he is the speediest.

Me, I can do some serious unpacking procrastination, but not this time. It was day one from the road trip, and I was all in. I had three suitcases to unpack: my clothes suitcase, my extra stuff suitcase, and the Christmas present suitcase. All were packed to bursting with Christmas galore.

The first suitcase was the present suitcase, and I was halfway through it.

I came to the stack of Christmas stockings. Each one had a few things left in the bottoms. In dismay, I realized that our youngest two boys had about 100 tiny Nerd candies in the bottom of theirs, no longer in any kind of box. There was not even a box in the stocking. Just loose Nerds–who does that!?

Being the thrifty, non germ-phobe that I am, I decided to pour these Nerds into a sandwich bag. Why waste good candy?

As I was doing the pouring, about three or four individual tiny Nerds escaped onto the carpet. Drat.

I decided the floor must be vacuumed promptly so that these candies didn’t end up smooshed in the carpet, eventually turning into brightly colored stains. So like any good, logical housekeeper, I trudged downstairs and retrieved our vacuum cleaner from the coat closet.

The Kirby

Our vacuum is a heavy eleven-year-old upright Kirby. It still has excellent suction, but it has caused me several different problems in recent months:

1.) It weighs so much it is hard to lug up and down the stairs. With six people at home 24/7 this year, this is a significant issue.

2.) The Neutral/Drive switch jammed. Alan took apart the vaccum and fixed it for me.

3.) But then the on and off switch actually broke. It can no longer be turned off. You have to unplug it to turn it off.

4.) Did I mention it is heavy? Also it smells like dirt, so I have to spray the carpet with essential oils each time I use it.

I just don’t love my vacuum anymore, obviously, but it does still work.

Ignored Warning Signs….

I noticed that in front of the vacuum there were big dirt smudges. See, I’m not always totally unobservant. I shrugged it off and hauled Kirby on up the stairs.

Usually, I stop to check and see if the bag is full before I start vacuuming, but I wanted to get back to unpacking my suitcase, so I decided to skip it. Mentally, I criticized myself even then for skipping this step, but I forged on nonetheless.

As soon as I turned it on, I noticed the air in the room seemed to be filling with dust. What in the world? This I also shrugged off and kept on going. It seemed like some dirt was just getting blown around and there was more dust than usual, but that served to only make me vacuum harder.

Once I finished vacuuming my room, I unplugged the vacuum, and shook my head at this monstrous machine. I was sneezing. This was ridiculous. The old thing needed to be replaced soon!

I got out my Flonase nose spray and then popped a Claritin. I didn’t know why the air was full of dust, but I did know I would end up sick if I did not manage my reaction to it.

John David was in his room across the hall. He called me in there, and that’s when I looked down at the hallway behind me!

OOPS!!

The entire hallway, which is thankfully hard wood floor and not carpet, was covered in hair, dirt, and dust bunnies. It was dirtier than the floor under an old sofa. “What in the world??? John David, look at what this old vacuum cleaner did. Man, what is wrong with this thing? It was blowing everything out from behind the whole time I was cleaning. Gross.”

Clean up from the clean up

So then I had to go downstairs and grab my Deebot. That is the robot vacuum I bought this fall. I love that thing, but it cannot handle thick carpet. It handles hard woods expertly though. I had to clean all my (constantly shedding) red hair out of the brushes, and then I set the Deebot to work on cleaning up the hallway and hall bathroom from the massive vacuum cleaner incident.

Now most people would stop and wonder why that dust explosion happened and stop to examine the offending vacuum cleaner.

But I am not most people. Ha!! This was my chance at a new machine, and even Alan would surely see that!

I hopped right online, researched the best bagless upright vacs of 2020, picked one, and ordered it, all in less than ten minutes. I may be oblivious, but I can be very decisive.

Next, I finished unpacking all three of my suitcases. Feeling all sorts of accomplished, I headed on downstairs, where I forgot all about the vacuum cleaner until I told Alan about it a few hours later.

We all sat down to eat dinner, and I literally brought a list of things to talk to Alan and the boys about. At the very top of the list was this story.

I did not get halfway through my story when Alan said, “There was no bag in the vacuum cleaner.”

“Huh???”

“It was not even zipped shut! You didn’t notice?”

Oh.

Well, that does explain the whole back blast thing.

I defended my purchase anyway. My new one will be lighter and easier to carry.

Later I came back upstairs and looked for myself. Sure enough, the vacuum bag compartment was wide open with no bag at all inside. I shook my head at myself. How did I never even notice? Why didn’t I even look?

So in conclusion, don’t ignore your conscience when it tells you not to take shortcuts, like skipping checking the bag.

And if you ever need to borrow a vacuum cleaner, I guess you should come see me because I now own several. haha! We will just call it my New Year’s present to myself.

We hope you all had a jolly Christmas. It has been a long time since our world was this ready for a NEW year. I hope your 2021 is off to a wonderful start.

The post How Three Tiny Nerd Candies Got Me a New Vacuum Cleaner appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Today is the 5th day of school, and guess what.

It is definitely time to recover from summer.

And you know what else? It’s going to take me way more than 12 days to recover the basement playroom and the stacks of papers from a summer of neglect.

There are about a billion cluttered surfaces in my house that I’ve saved for “when the boys go back to school.” And you do not want to see the storage room where I shoved all the bins of items I didn’t have a place for when I unpacked them from the move. “I’ll find a place for those when the boys go back to school.”

Ah yes, that day has come. Time to put my working hands where my mouth was.

Do you listen to music when you clean?

I HAVE to.

Like it or not, cleaning must be done. It’s quite important, so I find it imperative to distract myself with some fun, upbeat tunes from people with better voices than my own. And of course, I will be singing along, sometimes even dancing, and not just because I like to watch my children roll their eyes.

My big accomplishment of the day wasn’t just cleaning though.

(Cleaning is the never-ending job.) It was this YouTube playlist I put together of a few (like 14) of my favorite songs to listen to while I work! After all, who pays hundreds of dollars for music when you can listen for free on YouTube?

It’s super simple to do. I thought about typing up an explanation for how to make a playlist, and then I figured that’d be time-consuming, and it’s already been done. Here’s a link for how to make your own YouTube playlist.

Here’s my playlist below. What’s on yours? I’d love to hear more ideas for songs to add.

Link to my playlist:  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIigYXl0ipjUCeVz0lttQ71FPZZD7JRr8

1. Someday by Michael Bible and Meghan Trainer (love those 2!!)
2. I Wanna Go Back by David Dunn
3. Grace Got You by MercyMe
4. Tell Your Heart to Beat Again by Danny Gokey
5. A Million Dreams from The Greatest Showman Soundtrack
6. The Lost Get Found by Britt Nicole
7. Hold Me by Jamie Grace and Toby Mac
8. Little Ol’ Me by Jamie Grace
9. Fight Song by Rachel Platten
10. You Belong with Me by Taylor Swift (The high school girl inside of me finds this song quite relatable okay)
11. Still That Girl by Britt Nicole (Skip the first 30 seconds of the song and then listen. LOOOVE the rest. She could’ve had a huge hit with this one if she’d chopped off the intro, in my humble opinion..)
12. Better Place by Rachel Platten
13. This One’s For the Girls by Martina McBride
14. Keep Walkin’ On by Faith Hill & Shelby Lynne

I need more songs for it. I’ve already listened to this whole list twice in the last 24 hours. What should I add??

The post 12 Days of Summer Recovery: Day 1 is My House Cleaning Playlist appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

I love Christmas break. Time off from spelling tests, chauffeur duties, graded papers, packing lunches, and best of all I’m not desperately rushing everyone to not be late…..oh how I love time off.

We always spend a few days at my parent’s house and a few days at Alan’s parents’ house, and it’s such a blessing to spend time with them and soak up the rest and good conversation.

With people you see on a daily basis, it can be easy to fall prey to simply talking about your shared problems and the annoying people you have to deal with. Ha! We all have them.

But when we get together with family at Christmas, we can re-focus on what matters and gain wisdom from others. We can always do that during the everyday too, of course, but I get the best ideas when I have some time and space to read and think!

Daniel and his favorite cousin at Christmas. They were born only a month apart.

I am reading 2 books and taking 1 online course that I’m gaining immensely from. One is on grocery budgeting and the other is on marriage. The course is about planning.

Alan even found an app for us to use for grocery shopping that has also been hugely helpful. I wanted to pass those along to y’all.

The Books

1.) How to Win the Grocery Game

I’m including an eBay link above for that one, which I do not make any money from. I just found the eBay price to be slightly better than Amazon.

This is an extremely practical book about saving money on grocery shopping. However, it was written in the 1970s and is extremely outdated. I’ve had to look for more modern ways to implement some of the strategies in this book, but it’s the strategies and the meal planning tips that make the book worth while…..if you can look past the insane price amounts on everything. You have to ignore those since this book is from the 70s!!

I’ll share with you a modern app I’ve used to help me do one thing from the book later in this post.

2.) Created to Be His Helpmeet

The above link is to the Amazon Kindle edition, but it is available in paperback on Amazon and other sellers as well. I do earn a small percentage when you buy through this link.

This book doesn’t even attempt political correctness with words like “hillbilly ugly” and “submit”. Ha! You have been warned.

But I’ve found it to be practical and helpful, a solid reminder. It has also helped me understand my husband better, as she divides men up into three groups: command types, visionaries, and steady men.

The book is about becoming a kinder, more helpful wife, and by doing that, you can’t help but improve your marriage, even if you’re married to the Grinch himself. I’m only 1/3 the way through it, but so far it has helped me to straight up be a nicer person at home with my husband.

I also love that it’s written by an older woman. She has walked through all the phases of life, and she’s sharing what she has learned.

Us with Alan’s side of the fam. Greg was MIA this year due to food poisoning. You were missed, Greg!

The App

As I mentioned above, I’ve found a more modern way to implement the grocery strategy, but it isn’t foolproof. I’m not sure if the database is leaving out all the goods from stores like Aldi and the Pig because they came up less frequently than I expected. Some work may still need to be done there.

But if you want an easy way to compare everyday prices at one store with sale prices from the circulars, this is an awesome app.

It’s called Basket.

You type in your grocery list. It gives you options for brands and lines them up by price. Try it out. You may end up spending hours on it like Alan and I have.

We put in our entire grocery list, and then we hit “compare prices”. It showed us that the cheapest way to get all our groceries at one store was to go to Walmart. However, the real issue was that Walmart was the only store that carried every item on our list.

To get the best savings, you can tell it to break it up into 2 stores. That gave us Walmart and Food Depot. In the list, it breaks down which items we should buy at Food Depot and which ones we should purchase at Walmart.

Wow, huh?

It was funny how it would switch stores as we put more groceries in!

However, Alan found that not all of the prices and sizes were available at Walmart, so checking your weekly circulars is still important.

I think this is a good tool, but it doesn’t truly replace searching through the weekly grocery ads.

Christmas morning

Chore Looping

Another exciting tip I got this Christmas is “chore looping,” which my sister-in-law, Amy, told me about.

For those of us who have trouble with other methods of keeping up with house cleaning schedules, chore looping is the way to go.

You make a list of tasks, like this:

• Scrub hall bathroom.
• Clean the kitchen.
• Sweep and mop the floors.
• Scrub master bath.

etc., etc. Add whatever rooms you have.

Then you work through it until you reach the end and start over, and it doesn’t have to be all in one day, all in one week, or even all in one month. You just work through the list as you are able.

Some tasks you have to write on your list more than once, like scrubbing that bathroom that all 4 boys use…bleh…

For Example:

• Scrub hall bathroom.
• Clean the kitchen.
• Sweep and mop the floors.
• Scrub master bath.
• Vacuum.
• Scrub hall bathroom.
• Tidy up dining room.
• Clean the kitchen.
• Tidy up living room.
• Dust the house.
• Scrub hall bathroom….lol…again and again and again…

…And the list goes on until you’ve covered all the tasks you can think of.

Some days you do 3 or 4 of them. Other days you do 1 or none at all. It just depends on when you have the time!

If you do marathon clean, then you skip the repeats. I almost never marathon clean. Why? Because it’s exhausting, and I was always hoping I’d be affording a maid by now….lol

Daniel helping with the Men’s Pancake Breakfast at church

I’ll save my excitement of my new Brilliant Life Planner and accompanying online planning course for another day. I can’t wait to show it to you. In fact, I’m definitely going to do a Facebook Live all about this planner this week, on my Stories of Our Boys Facebook page.

I hope you all had an absolutely fabulous Christmas and are as excited about the new year as I am! Actually, I’m pretty nervous about 2018. Moving…deep breaths…deep breaths…I’m going to need all the organization I can accomplish!

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”    Jeremiah 29:11

SaveSaveSaveSave

SaveSave

The post My 4 Favorite Homemaking Hacks for 2018 appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

This post comes from Anna Aamone, who runs a small cleaning company in London. She loves writing about cleaning and decorating. I hope you find this article as helpful as I did.

How to Spend Less Time Cleaning and Still Have a Sparkling House

Everybody dreams about having a spotless home, but they rarely feel the urge to spend hours cleaning. Considering there are thousands of better things to do than brushing the toilet and removing limescale build-up from faucets, it is understandable why so many people want to spend so little time housekeeping. The good news is, your home could still be sparkling even if you dedicate a very small amount of time to keeping it so darn neat. Here are a few tips to make house-cleaning more time-effective.

Focus on key areas

There are some telltale signs of why your home doesn’t look clean. The first one is your television. It needs dusting on the daily. No matter how much time you dedicate to cleaning, if dust still hangs on your DVD stacks and your television, it’s like you didn’t accomplish anything. It may sound a little “wait, what?”, but it’s not really important to have a clean home but rather a home that looks clean. So it’s wise to focus on those areas that show dirt and stains.

Some other key spots to focus on are your book shelves (dust), knick-knacks (dust), toothbrush holder (lots of residue), bathroom floor (soap scum, limescale, stains), kitchen countertops (food stains, crumbs), sinks (soap scum, limescale), space under tables (crumbs, stains), entryway (mud stains, dirt, soil), stove top (grease, burned food).

Wash the dishes right away

Do wash the dishes after your family is done with their meal. Dirty dishes look nothing but disgusting, making your home look like a sty. Because what kind of a housewife doesn’t have time to wash the dishes?

Get rid of pet hair on the daily

Pet hair can be difficult to remove, especially if you haven’t bothered to deal with it for a whole month. The easy way to cut down on hair and spend less time getting rid of it is to clean it on the daily. Put on rubber gloves and wet them. Run your hands over furniture or your pet’s favorite spot to hang around. Hair will get caught on the gloves and off your domestic surfaces.

Do one chore at a time

Because you want to do as many things as possible in the shortest time possible, you often fall into the trap of doing many chores at a time. But this is not okay. Staying focused on one task will make you more effective. So keep it simple.

Do small tasks every day

Cut down on clutter by doing small tasks every day. At first it may seem like you have to clean and tidy all the time, but soon you will find out that your domestic chores have been reduced to a manageable level. Because you will tackle small jobs on the daily, you won’t ever have to take a whole Saturday and spend it cleaning the house. Sweeping the floor takes about five minutes, washing the dishes is ten minutes, dusting is ten to fifteen minutes. Combine this rule with the next one to get better results.

Focus on a different chore every day

Monday could be vacuuming, Tuesday is organizing the shelves, Wednesday is for dusting, Thursday is doing the laundry, etc. etc. Even better, make a list of all the chores that have to be done throughout the week and distribute them evenly. You will find this to be a very good rule. Waking up knowing there is only one chore to do today makes it seem less burdensome and tiring.

This is the best way to spend less time cleaning and still have that spotless home you are willing to have. SW7 TenancyCleaning wishes you good luck!

*****************

The post How to Spend Less Time Cleaning and Still Have a Sparkling House appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

BOOM!! bounce bounce bounce

The school day is done, and I was answering blog comments, and I heard this loud noise. Don’t worry. All is well. I ran to check it out. I scanned the front yard. No one there, but it sounded like someone had hit our house with a basketball!  Weird!

Just then, Joshua barged in the back door and proudly proclaimed, “I just kicked a soccer ball OVER the roof! I’ll go get it!”

Big boys. I am lovin’ it. Babies and toddlers are adorable, but big boys are WHERE IT’S AT!

BIG week for Joshua: #2! He scored 5 points for his team on Saturday!!

They wipe their own bottoms, they still do hilarious things, they can get their own snacks (but then you have to guard your kitchen), and best of all, they only require minimal supervision. No, actually, the best part is that they can even help with their little brothers!!

“Ew. public bathroom. Here, Joshua. Take Daniel to the bathroom with you, and make sure he washes his hands.  Thank you!!!”

They earn their keep for sure.

It’s a hazardous role.

but oh, so rewarding

One thing that is often mentioned in my comment section, especially yesterday, is that I am too hard on myself.

This is true. I am waaaay too hard on myself. I’m going to try to give myself a little more grace. Even my kids pick up on this.

Joshua looked at me the other day, as I was struggling to teach through the bronchitis, and said, “Mom! Go lay down!”

I adore them. Hang in there, Moms of only little bitties. Our work will pay off!

Are you afraid they will fall? 😉 They didn’t.

It’s ridiculous that we are so hard on ourselves, because if you step back and look at it, it’s all pretty cute and hilarious. I mean, the kids are cute and hilarious. Actually, our expectations are too!!! (She thinks she can home school 4 boys, update her blog daily, AND have a clean house, isn’t that cute and hilarious!??) Or maybe it’s just me….surely someone can relate…

We are raising four boys here. What did I think that would look like????  Ha!!!

Seriously, Mom. What did you expect?

As I was writing this, John David needed attention, so I stopped and sat with him on the porch. I love the little balcony I have in my bedroom, and so does J.D. I asked him if he’d like to read, and he did, so we went inside to the book corner. I pulled out several books.

He insisted on Old McDonald Had a Farm. It has good pictures. Plus, I sing that one.

I finished, and I tried to move onto Richard Scary. Nope.

JD scowled and handed me back Old McDonald. I sang it again. Daniel heard and came running. He wanted Oh, David next, so we read that.

JD scowled and handed me back Old McDonald. I sang it, half hoarse, thanks to the lingering bronchitis, for the third time.

That made Daniel think of his Old McDonald game, so he begged me to get it down for him until I finally did so.

JD scowled and handed me Old McDonald.  The only way I was finally able to get out of singing it for the sixth time was, “Hey, JD, do you want to go eat a snack!?”

Food works for everything. Food is our most powerful bargaining tool as parents, well, I mean, besides guilt (also effective bwaaahahahaha). I am not ashamed, besides, it was 3:00, and I was starving.

Three o-clock has to be snack time. Who in the world can go from 11:30 pm to 5:30pm without eating?

Well, it isn’t good for your metabolism either. 🙂

Apparently, JD was hungry because he consumed a ton of Greek yogurt, which he, of course, insisted on feeding himself. I’ve just recently let him do that, and he is really good at spoons now!

Cheeeeese!

As I sat there, just watching Daniel and JD eat yogurt, I couldn’t help but notice the yarn strewn across the floor. Caleb had been “building” something. The school books weren’t put away yet. The sink is still full of dishes. I unloaded the bottom rack of the dishwasher, but I didn’t make it to the top rack before someone needed something. Two baskets of clean laundry to be put away stared at me from the stair landing.

Most of all, I noticed their adorable faces, the way the yogurt falls from their spoons to the floor sometimes, and most importantly, the way they smile at me. They love and appreciate me with their whole little hearts!

It all made me think of this blog, and yesterday, and how uptight I probably sounded. Ha! Clutter! Mess! Yogurt faces….

What a beeeeeeeautiful mess. Glorious. It all means one thing. It means that I get to spend all this time with my four favorite little boys, and at the end of the day, my favorite man comes through the door.

Wow. I am so blessed. WHY am I being so hard on myself? How ABSURD! People often use the term ‘hot mess,’ and I think that more applies to a young, attractive person that doesn’t have their act together yet.

What we have here is abundantly more exciting than that. A house full of growing children. 

Now that’s what I call success. 🙂 That is what a beautiful mess actually looks like, and I LOVE it.

Perhaps I need to chill a little bit and embrace these gifts.

The post What did I expect this beautiful mess to look like??? appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Well, that’s been me for…well, since we moved, I guess. I just keep telling myself that if I just make it through this year, things will get better.

I love my children. I enjoy teaching them. I don’t even mind cooking dinner, but there is one part of this whole stay-at-home, home-schooling, blogger-mom gig that causes me very great stress.

Housework.

Where the school day ends, the house work begins, and with a house of 6 people, that “career” is enough to keep me busy all by itself. Then there’s the whole question of dinner. I’m out of the habit of making realistic dinner plans, so I’ve been pulling that together at the last minute.

Plus, every where I turn, we have another ant invasion. That’s right, our whole neighborhood has the most insane ant problem I have ever seen in my life. There are lines of them, eating-I can’t-figure out what in all of our bathrooms. With the rain, they have come into our home in record numbers.

Basically, around 3 or 4 everyday, I feel so completely burned out and defeated, that what I truly wish to do is get in my car and just drive until I find a restful place to stop.

The other day, in the depths of feeling as melancholy and hopeless as ever…

(I get that some of you have no idea why I would feel that way. Well, I’d take pictures of my house to explain it, but I’m afraid that would cause me to be judged by others of you, so I will be sharing no such pictures at this time.)

My messy house makes me want to cry. It sucks the energy out of me. People think of me as laid back, but I’m totally not. I’m actually a polite, high pressure, control freak that smiles a lot. There I said it.

Today I had 20 or so things on my mind, I was desperate to get out of the kitchen and escape somehow for a minute, and just as I thought I might go sit on the love seat and pout for just a second…Daniel spilled juice all over himself and the kitchen floor. At that EXACT SAME moment, JD knocked over a BOX of vanilla wafers, which at the bottom of the box, was more crumbs than wafers.

Did I mention that I had JUST swept and mopped the floor, not 30 minutes prior to this incident?

Did you also know that JD is so tall–almost freakishly so–that he can reach the kitchen countertops?

Somehow I didn’t manage to find all the crumbs to sweep up, so the floor is wet and crunchy. Daniel, Caleb, and JD are all taking a bath. That sounds nice, except I’m going to have to summon energy from SOMEWHERE to get them all dressed again.

When I say that I want to cry every single day, that is a gross understatement. I actually do cry most days. I have no idea how to catch up on all of the housekeeping, so I’ve taken to keeping one room of my house completely immaculate. I just started this a week ago.

It makes me feel like I have some sort of control over SOMETHING in my life. What room did I choose? The smallest room in the house: the laundry room. I’ve been working so hard on that room this week. It’s all I have time for! The washer and dryer are crud and dust free. The floor is spotless. The shelves are dusted. Nothing is in that room that doesn’t belong there–well, except for those photos that I haven’t hung yet.  But seriously, when?? When will I hang pictures?

So if you can’t find me……that may be where you will find me. NO, not hanging pictures, but cleaning my laundry room, so that I can feel like I’ve got something under control.

Do you think this is an awful lot of whining about house cleaning? It is! The cleanliness level of my house directly affects my mood–even if that should not be so.

Wednesday, as I was laying flat on my face, crying and whining to God in my prayers about how hard it is to teach these boys, never leave the house, and whoa whoa whoa whoa wheaaa wheaaaa wheaaa wheaaa wheaaaa….. I said, “I should just go get those boys right now, and put them back to work. Lord, what in the world should I do?”

“See them how I see them.”

No, don’t worry, friends, I do not hear the audible voice of God, never have, but I promise that he speaks to my heart.

I went to the boys’ window, and looked down at my three biggest boys, on the trampoline. JD toddled along beside me.

There they were. They each sat on a different side of the trampoline, Indian style. They appeared to be having some sort of meeting.

“Oh, right,” I thought, “They are just darling little children. I’m so thankful they have each other.This time on the trampoline together is good for them.”

I need not destroy the magic of their childhood with my own anxiety problems. Yes, I put too many demands upon myself. That’s not their fault. They are just children. 

So I have a goal, a very important goal. I am going to ENJOY the trip to Alabama this year. I’m not pregnant or breastfeeding, so I have that going for me. Yes, I have to fly with four children, but at least this time Alan gets to go with us.

I’m going to try to enjoy the plane ride and visiting the way that the children do, because normally I don’t, and that makes the trip less fun for everyone else.

Is this phase of homeschooling while also taking care of a toddler and a preschooler the hardest thing I have ever done?  YES. Aboslutely YES. I did home school Joshua in K4 and part of Kindergarten. That is  not the same at all as home schooling three different ages. Joshua and Caleb are so big now, that I don’t want to mess this up.

The really sad thing is that I’m letting all of these  pressures that I put on myself steal my joy. Why? I want everything to be perfect, and that is not an achievable goal.

Who likes perfect people anyway?

I’d better go take the boys out of the bathtub, remind myself to see them how God sees them, and try not to rain on everyone’s Christmas. 🙂

I feel like I’m giving my Eeyore-self a pep talk!!

“But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.'”            James 4:6

The post “See it how I see it.” appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

The post Finally! A Better Day! appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.