First Day of School

Monday was the day! We officially started our third year of homeschooling here with a second grader, kindergartner, and a pre-K-er. : )

Lord willing, I'll be back at the end of the week to recap how it went, but today, I'm looking forward to celebrating nine years with my favorite person in the whole world. My, we look young in that photo. (For the curious, it was taken at Tower Falls in Yellowstone National Park. I look forward to the day we can return with kids and hike it again).

Happy August!

Eight

Two people.

Eight years.

One house.

Three girl babies.

One very anticipated boy baby.

Much laughter.

Lots of forgiveness.

Happy Anniversary to my favorite person in the whole world.

Photo: Thanksgiving 2006, Clingman's Dome, TN

Wordless Wednesday

(Almost) every night he plays a little. Lately it's been a jazz/bluegrass arrangement of "Just a Closer Walk with Thee" but there is always a little music in the evening.

Photo from my 365:2010 project.

Valentine's

Do you do anything for Valentine's Day? It's still a "holiday" (and I use that word very loosely) that I'm finding my way on. Having not dated until I met my husband, it is safe to say that Valentine's was not a bright spot on my radar. Most V-days were spent in denial of the day or heading out to a dinner and movie with girlfriends so that we didn't spend the evening alone.

While I will agree with almost anyone that Valentine's has been blown way out of proportion by Hallmark and American Greetings, I love having a special day of love to celebrate with my husband AND my girls. Not that my girls (or my husband) don't know that I love them, but a fun day of little "love" treats on a day not their birthday can be a bright spot in the middle of cold, gray days.

I've been trying to think of things that I can do for at least one family member each day. This morning my girls helped me pack their Daddy's lunch for work and we had fun planting a little surprise in Daddy's lunchbox.



I'm hoping to send something in T's lunch every day this week and come up with a few treats for the girls as well - today we had a spontaneous picnic at the park. Unfortunately that backfired on us with a disastrous diaper incident so I'm working on a plan B. :)

Any plans in your neck of the woods for this week?

On Marriage...

It seemed to her that sometimes that the most important thing about marriage was not a home or children or a emedy against sin, but simply there being always an eye to catch.

Mrs. Miniver, p.32

I've been pondering long and hard about resolutions. I love lists. Love them, love them. I get so excited about this time of year. A blank calendar, empty days, plans to make, goals to pursue. Last year, knowing that I was about to have baby #3, I went for simple. I made one goal and that was to get in a routine to read the Bible and try and read through the Bible in a year. I feel like I did pretty good on this, although I didn't get finished; what I did was FINALLY establish a routine of getting up before my family for a few minutes alone with God.

All that to say, this year is going to go a little further. I have some definite areas of my life that I want to get in shape in '08. :) (Cheesy, huh?) Elizabeth's birth was ... hard ... for many reasons and I let a LOT of areas slide. Not yet willing to say that it was post-partum depression, but I'm ready to come out of what I like to fondly call the Great Funk of '07. With that in mind, I've made a few plans.

My eight areas are as follows:

1. God
2. Husband
3. Children
4. Others
5. Healthy
6. In the kitchen
7. With the pen
8. Create

Now, to elaborate. :) And, just to clarify. I don't expect to be rip-roaring successful in every single area. That would be too much. And I don't plan on focusing on perfecting each area at all times. That would be too much. All these will be are reminders to me of where I need to be improving and focusing my energies in '08 ... they are lifetime changes that I want so I fully don't expect to see perfection in a year, nor to I expect it to be possible. :)

1. God ~ My relationship with the Lord
My goals for '08: to continue with my morning quiet time with Him; continue reading through the Bible with a short-term goal of finishing it in '08. I also want to work on my prayer time ... and area that I've never really understood and would like to deepen with the Lord. Also, as part of this, I've joined Leann's Foundational Faith Challenge and my reading list can be found here. January kicks off with Mere Christianity.

2. Husband ~ Home Sanctuary
I want to take better care of my husband this year. 2007 saw me doing what it took just to get by until I was even frustrated with how long it took me to do things because I wasn't doing a good job of keeping up. However, this goal isn't just limited to the house, but also to how I can better serve him in managing my part of our spending, spending time with him, encouraging him, etc. :)

3. Children ~ Deliberate Parenting
I'll flesh this out more later, but as my girls are getting older and needing more of me, it's been hard to let go of MY time. I am thrilled that my number one "job" is as their mama and that is why I am home with them. However, of late, I have spent more time frustrated rather than delighted with my calling and it's time for an attitude adjustment on my part. I think, to do that, I'll have to turn from some other things that I love, but eat away from time that needs to be focused on my girls ... 2007 saw me step down from part of my church responsibilities, but the next one that is all too apparent is my computer time. *sob* :) I'm not deleting the blog, but it's time to trim the blogroll, cut back on the online "research", and do a bit more living in the here and now.

4. Others ~ Hospitality
This was an area that I started working on mid-2007, and I want to keep working on it. (I heartily suggest Hospitality Commands by Alexander Strauch). I want to be open to invite folks over for fellowship and/or for dinner, and have friends over for my girls to have little playdates. I see this as any area of ministry for me as I shift my focus to husband and children and our home as opposed to more public ministry (ie., music team at church).

5. In the Kitchen
This ties in with #6, and builds on steps taken in 2007, but I want to continue to make most of our meals at home as opposed to eating out. Thinking ahead about meals, making meals to freeze so that I will turn to those instead of take-out on a busy evening. Bringing back the VEGETABLE in our diet ... not that it's disappeared entirely, but I've missed them and need to see more of them. :)

6. In Shape in '08 - My Heath
This is more than just losing the baby weight, although that is part of it. I want to move and keep up with my girls, be able to play with them outside, not fall over dead-tired in the middle of the day ... I want to work on this with eating healthier, getting some exercise and sunshine, and being better about making sure I get enough sleep.

7. With the Pen
Write, write, write. I need to get back to my journaling. Part of the reason I think '07 was hard was that if I didn't blog about it, I didn't write about it. Not that that is a terrible thing, but there are areas not blog-able, and I let them build up and put off working through them until I had the perfect time to write. I need to make the time, period. :) I also have journals for the girls that look great, but are no good unless I sit down and write in them.

8. Create, create, create!
I have gotten back into scrapbooking this year and it has been GOOD for my soul. I need that creative outlet where I am just "me" with my papers and scissors and pen. (Not that I don't scrap for and about my husband or girls, but this is for *me*, know what I mean?)

And, now if you are still reading this epistle, I'll wrap it up. I'll make another post about some things that I will be doing and tools that I will be using to help with some of these areas.

Happy New Year!

We Love Jesus. Period.

A few weeks ago we had an unusual thing happen. My husband had run over to our church late on a Saturday afternoon to pick up a guitar he wanted to practice with at home. While there, the church phone rang so he answered it. On the other end of the line was a young woman, very distraught, and wanting to talk to someone about divorce counselling right then. My husband explained to her that, as it was Saturday night, there was no one at our church that could meet with her right then. However, she was so upset that he said she was welcome to come over to our home and we'd be happy to talk to her if she couldn't wait until Sunday or Monday.

I admit, when he came home and told me this story, I knew that she wasn't going to come to our house - she had no clue who we were. But not 30 minutes later, she was in our driveway!

We invited her into our chaotic abode and for about an hour, we just listened. It's bad, folks. Really, really, not good. I didn't know what to say - I'm not divorced, my parents aren't divorced, even my grandparents stayed married until they all passed away. My husband is a child of multiple divorces so he did most of the talking and once she was talked out, he was able to share his testimony with her and tell her a little about the One who will walk through this situation with her.

The point of this story is to share one small thing that my husband said that I have been thinking about daily ever since he said it. Our new friend was sharing how she didn't understand why "he" would leave her - they had been together for so long, they had a beautiful wedding - why wasn't he commited to staying together. Travis' response?

The ONLY reason that Stephanie and I haven't gotten a divorce is because we love Jesus. Period.

Bottom line, I love Jesus. Yes, I love my husband, too, but somedays it's harder to love him (and it's harder for him to love me). :) We are both sinners, but we love Jesus and we are committed to glorifying Him, learning about Him, and walking with Him - that's the only reason we don't yell "divorce" or "I hate you" or "I'm tired of trying" when we disagree.

Something that's just been on my heart and mind a LOT lately - how well am I loving Jesus in areas like my marriage, raising my girls, diligence in managing our home, etc.

Marriage Meme #2

Found at Karla's.

1. Where/How did you meet?
We met at church. Travis was new to Nashville and looking for a church. My Dad introduced us that morning when he found out that Travis was a musician (I was on the music team at church).

2. How long have you known each other?
Seven-ish years.

3. How long after you met did you start dating?
About a year.

4. How long did you date before you were engaged?
6 weeks.

5. How long was your engagement?
10 months

6. How long have you been married?
5 years tomorrow!

7. What is your anniversary?
August 3.

8. How many people came to your wedding reception?
Best guess would be 200-plus.

9. What kind of cake did you serve?
I cannot remember for the life of me. It was pretty though. : )

10. Where was your wedding?
At the Scarrett-Bennett chapel on Vanderbilt University's campus - a stone church that held about 300-350 folks.

11. What did you serve for your meal?
We didn't have a formal meal since we were married at 1 p.m. - heavy-type snacks. But again, I don't really know because I don't think I ate anything.

12. How many people were in your wedding party?
Twelve. Five bridesmaids and groomsmen a piece plus our flower girl and ring bearer.

13. Are you still friends with them all?
Yes. Almost everyone who was in our wedding party, with the exception of the best man (my husband's brother) and one of the groomsmen (who is in seminary) lives here and we still see them regularly.

14. Did your spouse cry during the ceremony?
No, neither of us did.

15. Most special moment of your wedding day?
For me, was when we had a few moments together before pictures. We did all our pictures before the wedding so after I was ready, I went inside the chapel and Travis met me there. We had a few minutes to ourselves before we rejoined our bridal party and took lots of photos.

16. Any funny moments?
My neice, our flower girl, growled the whole way down the aisle. Her way of coping with nerves I guess. : ) But she did make it down the aisle!

17. Any big disasters?
Not a one.

18. Where did you go on your honeymoon?
Yellowstone National Park.

19. How long were you gone?
Eight days.

20. If you were to do your wedding over, what would you change?
Not one thing. : )

21. Greatest strength as a couple?
We work really well together as a team.

22. Greatest challenge as a couple?
Sometimes we don't work well as a team. : ) I occasionally can be, um, stubborn.

23. What did you dance your first dance to?
No dancing - not enough room! However, there was jazz music playing in the background and we entered our reception area to the Star Wars fanfare. : )

24. Describe your wedding dress:
How about a photo:



25. What kind of flowers did you have at your wedding?
See photo above. : )

26. Are your wedding bands engraved?
Mine is not - his is. With Genesis 2.18 and the date.

Eight Things About My Marriage

A marriage meme ... in honor of our 5th anniversary on Friday. Tagged by Stephanie.

1. I love being married to Travis ... he is the only guy I've ever kissed and really dated. I love that.

2. I am several years older than Travis. SEVERAL. Do you want to guess how many? : ) Most people don't realize that because I look so young. LOL

3. We started our marriage by a one-week honeymoon at Yellowstone National Park, planned entirely by the husband. It was fabulous. No phone, TV, internet for over a week.

4. We've lived in two homes since we've been married - a two bedroom condo and our current house.

5. In our marriage, Travis handles the finances and budget. That is a Good Thing. All part of him being an amazing provider for us.

6. He is a supercalafragalisticexpialidocious kind of Dad! Our girls ADORE him and I love it. Case in point: I went to a baby shower last night and left all the girls home with him. They had a ball with Daddy complete with hide-and-go-seek games and I'm sure there was some jumping on the bed time. : )

7. He is a better housecleaner than I am. However, I am slowly warming to his desire to purge our house of all extraneous material and that, also, is a Good Thing.

8. He is my defender, 2nd only to God. There have been a couple situations where he has risen to my defense and has totally blown me away with the seriousness with which he takes that role. Makes me feel unbelieveable loved and cherished.

I'm going to tag Pattie, Maria and Cheri if you want to play along. : )

Honor Your Husband - Week 4

Lately I've been working on something ... getting up for some quiet time in the morning before the rest of the house is awake. I set my watch alarm and the coffee maker for 6:00 a.m. and when they go off, I creep out of bed - trying my best not to disturb the baby in the moses basket next to our bed, or the girls in the room next door. I make a cup of coffee, adding whatever new flavor of cream that I'm trying out, and come out to my desk in our family room. I lay my Bible open across the desk and try and figure out where I left off yesterday. How handy my little read-through-the-Bible-in-a-year bookmarks are. : )

This is hard for me. I've struggled for years with setting aside time to read my Bible and study ... there are more "exciting" things to read, or I want to have the "perfect time" - no disturbances, hot coffee, maybe a cute coffee shop where I can journal and be uninterrupted by children for a couple hours.

That's not my reality. : ) And that's okay. However, putting off time invested in my relationship with the Lord is only going to be more and more detrimental in the long run. Whether I get a whole hour alone in the morning, or I end up reading my Bible while feeding my 10 week old, I just need to do it.

Now, why am I writing about this when this is supposed to be my Honor Your Husband post for the week? This is something that I've been thinking on for a couple of weeks now ... how can I be the best wife for my husband, one who puts God first and serves her family out of that relationship if it's only a casual Sunday-morning relationship at best? I am honoring my husband by making time with God a new focus and priority. It is changing my attitude and my heart about serving my husband - when I submit my sinful self to the Lord, I'm seeing a difference in how I choose to submit to my husband (and with what kind of attitude). : )

Head over to Christine's at Fruit in Season for more HYH posts and encouragement.

Honor Your Husband - Week 3

I'm late this week on posting my update for the Honor Your Husband challenge hosted by Christine @ Fruit in Season. Life is in full swing here - complete with ant issues (ick!), girls that won't nap, and laundry like you wouldn't believe. That, and I've been wrestling what to post for this week's update! It seemed that once I posted my thoughts on contentment last week, I immediately began a battle that I struggled with all. week. long. Rebellious and contentious thoughts. Anger. Frustration. You name it. Both at life in general and toward that certain someone. Not so much in the success department.

However (and isn't God funny this way?), this morning I picked up my Bible to read a chapter in Philippians before my girls got up. I've read these verses before, but they JUMPED off the page at me this morning:

Not that I speak from want for I have learned to be content in whatever
circumstances I am. I know how to get along with humble means, and I also
know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned
the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and
suffering need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens
me.

And my God shall supply all your needs according to His riches
in glory in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 4.11-13, 19

Timely, eh? More to work on in this area, most definitely.

My goals last week were:

• to continue to think before I speak.
• something practical ... remember to fill the coffee pot and set the timer EVERY NIGHT for a week so that I'm not doing it in the morning and there is hot coffee ready for Travis to take to work. (Yeah on this one!)
• have a good attitude this week as I have a lot of evening kid duty by myself this week. Travis and our oldest are doing VBS this week, and so I'll have the two littles all by myself every evening and then a hyper/exhausted/filthy 3.5 year old to wind down when they get home. (Did pretty good on this one...)
• read my Created to Be His Helpmeet book and study verses on contentment. (Um, not so good here ... but then again, I haven't read much of anything in the last week so it's not that I put it aside for something entertaining. Will work on this this week.)

And my new challenge (just adding one):

• Work on improving my mind (and memory) so that I can have intelligent conversations with my husband.

I hope I'm not the only one who struggles with this one. I feel like I spend so much of my time immersed in diapers, bottles and the like, that when my husband asks me a question about how his Sunday School lesson for the youth went, I can't even remember what he talked about ... and I was sitting there the whole time! I need to be better about (1) paying attention and also (2) stretching my mind and growing in other areas besides that of playmate and chief diaper changer. Please hear me, not that those areas aren't important, but they so are, but as a wife, I think part of my responsibility is to also be an intelligent conversationalist with my husband and right now I'm not. :-) I want him to come to me when he has big thoughts to think and discuss and not find better conversation opportunities elsewhere. Know what I mean?

For more on this, visit Christine (our gracious host) at Fruit in Season.

Honor Your Husband - Week 2

We're at week two of the Honor Your Husband Challenge hosted by Christine at Fruit in Season. (A day late on posting here!) Last week, I had set several goals for myself:

• greet him when he gets home from work with a smile and not a frown or tired face
• pick a book on marriage to read over the next 3-4 weeks
• think before I speak
• think before I speak (so important it needs to be on there twice!) :-)
• work at doing a good job with our budget and what I have to work with for groceries and other needs (more about this later)

We had our ups and downs last week starting with a long, not-fun-type discussion on Monday night about various and sundry things. However, overall (and greatly due to our discussion) I have done much better about thinking before saying something that will hurt my husband. Of course, this is always something that I can continue to do better on ... actually, it would serve me well to practice this with everyone. Thinking before speaking - a good thing.

I've decided that I'm going to reread Created to be His Helpmeet over the next several weeks (and beyond the challenge if necessary). I know this is a controversial book, but it was a huge help for me, so no flames, please. :-) I'm also going to do a word study on "contentment" in my Bible. I have always, always struggled with jealousy and discontent to some extent in my life. Not that I don't wish good things for other people (I can rejoice with best friend who just moved into a beautiful HUGE big house), but I struggle with coming back home to our tiny 2-bedroom where we are trying to fit five folks and all our gear. Something I just realized recently, though, is this discontent and jealous is so not good for my marriage. It's basically telling my husband that he's not providing enough for me and that I'm dissatisfied with what he has worked so hard to provide us with. When I have a laundry list of things that we "need" what else would that say to him, but that he is not doing enough. I need to work and pray on contentment issues big time. (I hope this is making sense here!)

This week's goals are:

• to continue to think before I speak.
• something practical ... remember to fill the coffee pot and set the timer EVERY NIGHT for a week so that I'm not doing it in the morning and there is hot coffee ready for Travis to take to work.
• have a good attitude this week as I have a lot of evening kid duty by myself this week. Travis and our oldest are doing VBS this week, and so I'll have the two littles all by myself every evening and then a hyper/exhausted/filthy 3.5 year old to wind down when they get home.
• read my CtbHH book and study verses on contentment.

Head over to Christine's to join in or to be encouraged with other's pursuit of this worthy goal.

Honor Your Husband

I've been trying to find time since Monday to do a little post about the Honor Your Husband commitment (hosted by Christine at Fruit in Season) that I'm taking part in. My reasons (besides the fact that this should be a priority most of the time!) ... we're celebrating our 5th anniversary this August and I really want the commitment to spend the weeks leading up to it thinking about our marriage.

I have several ideas of areas I want to think about:

• where have I seen myself grow
• where do I see change needed (I'm guessing this list will be longer) :-)
• what are things that I am doing for Travis that show honor and respect
• what are things that I could/should be doing that I'm not

And the list could go on.

To quote Christine:

We are all coming to this challenge from different places in our
marriages. Some of you have been in a rough spot lately and may find it hard to
change habits. Some of your marriages are on a mountaintop and you will find
choosing to honor your husband easy. Some of you are new to marriage and some of you have been married decades. Regardless of our circumstances, the best way to work this challenge is to begin your day in prayer for your husband and your
marriage.

Some of the challenges I'm setting for myself for this first week are/have been to:

• greet him when he gets home from work with a small and not a frown or tired face
• pick a book on marriage to read over the next 3-4 weeks
• think before I speak
• think before I speak (so important it needs to be on there twice!) :-)
• work at doing a good job with our budget and what I have to work with for groceries and other needs (more about this later)

Visit Christine at Fruit in Season if you are interested in participating!