I am living it.

Ah man I was doing so good and yesterday I totally slacked off yesterday… oh well!

Today’s question is: What is your dream job and why?

I have had many ever since I was about 5 years old. The first job I remember was REALLY wanting to be a model for several years. Then I moved onto wanting to be a Zoologist that studied Panda Bears in China. I was a big dreamer. As I got older and maybe a tad bit more realistic I really wanted to got to school to be and elementary school music teacher. But as I have said in my previous blogs I dropped out of school and didn’t go to college so that kind of crossed that one of the list to.

But you know looking at this question now I feel like I can honestly say that I am living my dream job. I get to stay home with my two beautiful, silly, amazing kids. The paycheck isn’t so great in monetary ways but the benefits are out of this world. I am thankful that I get to be home now. I haven’t always had that opportunity so in someways I feel like I almost appreciate it even more than I would have now.

What is your dream job?

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Things that make me….

Today’s topic is: What are the 5 things that make you most happy right now.

1) Listening to Marissa read. Now I admit there are days when her b & d reversal drives me up the wall or she doesn’t feel up to it so she doesn’t try and we butt heads. BUT, those days we sit outside on the porch swing and she reads me a 5-10 page book with little to no help. Those days I am beaming.

2) Fall. Summer isn’t quite over and I know that but we have had a few day where you could smell fall coming and I can hardly wait

3) Opening my canned good cabinet that is now almost full thanks to the 23 pints of pasta sauce I made yesterday. I look in that cabinet and I see a whole lot of love, and good food

4) Fight club (small accountability group) I have been wanting to do one for a while and I am so excited that God put the people together and we are getting started this week

5) Listening to Emily talk. Over the past few months she has really been expressing herself more. This has been funny, dramatic and adorable sometimes all at the same time.

What makes you happy?

Mantle

You know how you have one of those projects that just doesn’t seem like it will ever get done. We moved into the house planning to get the mantle done and life kept going and other things were more important and almost 1.5 years later it still wasn’t up. We had a plan and we knew what we wanted to do but getting it done was hard.

So for 1.5 years the wall looked like this

Something was missing.

A long time ago before we started building the house we kept thinking how cool it would be to incorporate parts of the old house into the new one. So we saved a few things. One of my favorite things we saved was an old door. But not just any door. It is “the” door. The door that was all that was between us and a tornado that was ripping our house apart. The door we opened when we saw the devastation for the first time. The door that is a wonderful reminder of God’s grace, love and protection over our family that day. Maybe in reality it is only just a door but it was special to us and we wanted it to have a special place in our new home.

So I searched Pinterest loads of ideas of things to do with old doors but none of the really stuck out to me. Finally one day Russ suggested using it to make a mantle. I thought it sounded crazy but agreed. I then searched the internet thinking surely someone else had done this but I didn’t find anything. He was either crazy or genius.

It wasn’t easy walls are not perfectly square and studs aren’t always exactly where you want them but he did it.

It looks even better than I hoped it would.

 

I am so thankful that this door is able to be a part of our new home now.
Now I need to find some things to brighten it up. A shopping trip? Oh darn :).

The things I now know

Well I am going to take a break from my current painting project to do day 3.

List 10 things you would tell your 16 year old self it you could

1) Don’t drop out of high school & you need to go to college

2) Don’t be in such a hurry to get to the next chapter of your life

3) Don’t force a relationship to work

4) Stop comparing yourself to other people

5) Keep playing that guitar

6) Stuff can not and never will really bring you happiness

7) The Gospel, like really really knowing what it is not just being a “christian”

8) Your not perfect and never will be, stop thinking you are

9) Your gonna have amazing kids someday

10) God loves you with a never stopping never ending always and forever love… ALWAYS

What are you afraid of?

Happy Saturday.

Today was a GLORIOUS morning. I woke up and the temperature was in the 50’s, WOW! Kind of sad it wasn’t a running day. But the weather should stick around for a while. I wouldn’t be at all sad if the temperature doesn’t get to 90 again this year. Doubt we will be that lucky though.

Day two of thirty: Describe at least 3 legitimate fears you have and explain how they became fears.

1) Stinging insects. I am not sure when or why maybe it was because I watched My Girl as a young kid? I am TERRIFIED of getting stung by anything. My fear is probably why I felt so, so awful when Emily got attacked by hornets earlier in the summer. Bugs with stingers = me running, jumping, and shrieking.

2) Wasting away life, blinking what feels like three or four times and my kids are grown up and moving far away. I guess this fear is 2 parts really. I really really wanna live life, not be so caught up in my stupid smart phone and what other people are doing that I don’t soak in my life and what we are doing. The second part is my kids moving away. This would kill me. Or at least right now it seems like it would. If there was only one of them they wouldn’t be able to escape me I would just follow them wherever they go. But for now I will love them and trust that God has a great plan for them someday.

3) Storms. Ever since the tornado in 2011 I have had problems with severe weather. I have mostly just blamed it on PTSD. This is the only fear that I can honestly say has ever really impacted my life. Sometimes I don’t even want to leave the house if I know the weather may get bad. I find myself packing bags and preparing the storm shelter when the lowest threat of severe weather pops up. My fear just about hit rock bottom this past spring when I couldn’t even sleep in the rain and was having several tornado dreams. I could be in a dead sleep in the middle of the night it would start lightly raining and I would immediately wake up and not be able to go back to sleep until it stopped. I used to think it was a time thing. Eventually time would heal the wound and I would be better. A good friend reminded me this spring that time doesn’t heal wounds, God does. Over the past few months I have seen some major improvement and can now sleep during the rain again. I will continue to pray for trust and healing knowing that God is for me and with me, especially on those rainy nights.

What are you afraid of?

Where in the world have I been…

Where in the world have I been? Well it seems home school has definitely put us in a state routine. Our schedule has been VERY routine lately. But on the bright side guess who just finished their first month of home school! We did it and we LOVE it.

New routines also haven’t left much time for blogging. I have missed blogging it has really been a great outlet for me. So, in an effort to be more intentional I did some research and found a blog challenge. Hopefully over the next 30 days (probably longer) I will be blogging more and you may just learn some things about us, me particularly, that you didn’t know.

Day 1: List 20 random facts about yourself (key word here random)

1. I love to knit, mostly when it is cold outside

2. I feel most comfortable in a kitchen wearing an apron

3. I went to Disney World for the first time when I was 27 and cried when I saw the castle ( I cried a lot that trip)

4. I paid $500 for my first car a 1987 Dodge Shadow

5. Gardening is therapy for me

6. I really enjoy running outside it makes me feel free

7. I RARELY wear jewelry

8. I am a bit of a neat freak

9. I used to play the guitar

10. I dropped out of high school, I like to glamorize the story when telling it but none the less I dropped out.

11. I really do love NASCAR

12. I am an EF5 tornado survivor

13. I love vintage cars, like actually vintage meaning 30’s-mid 50’s

14. I bake almost all of the bread our family eats. Tortillas, buns, loaves, biscuits. The only bread we buy is Emily’s sandwich bread since she doesn’t care for mine.

15. I love organization and I mean LOVE (see #8)

16. My favorite place to be on Friday or Saturday night is our patio in the backyard

17. I love country music

18. I LOVE being the mom of two girls, drama and all

19. I was 23 the first time I got on an airplane

20. I am the daughter of The King

We survived…

Week one of home school, CHECK!

We did it, we survived!

This week went surprisingly well. She was such an eager student. I suppose part of that has to do with both of us being so excited about the new adventure we are on. But, for now I will try and remain naively optimistic that this is how every school week will go at our house… yeah right!

We had handwriting lessons F & E & math. In science we talked about the world that God made and what science is. We had a bible story, discussed the first fruit of the spirit, love. In Social studies we checked out Google earth. I found it amusing that she was just as fascinated as I was the first time I saw it. We talked about our community, read a book about different types of houses and made a sack house. And lastly phonics. I saw amazing progress in her reading skills in only one week! She was looking at picture and spelling words and reading full sentences unassisted. Not to bad for Kindergarten!

We not only survived our first week, we rocked it!

What adventures will next week bring?!

Kindergarten

Today was our first day of Kindergarten.

Home school Kindergarten.

I NEVER imagined myself sitting at my dining room table teaching my child. But, there is something about it that just feels so right.

Am I still scared out of my mind? Completely. But with one day under our belts I am already confident that we made the best choice for our family.

  

I am so excited for this year, excited to spend time with her, teach her, love on her and by God’s grace teach her about God and his saving grace.

 

Crazy to see how much she has grown in a year.

We are so blessed.

The best six years of my life ~ Happy Anniversary

Today we have been married for 6 Years. 6 wonderful, trying, fast, beautiful, busy, seems like yesterday we got married years.

In 6 years we have had 2 kids and 4 job changes. We lost almost everything in a tornado, picked through the remains and tore down a house that had countless memories. Then we started over and rebuilt our home. We have had 12 cars (including some really cool vintage ones). We went on the most amazing trip to Disney World. I transitioned from working to being a stay at home mom. Most important we became part of an amazing, grace filled, really living out the gospel church. I can’t imagine what these 6 years would have been like if they hadn’t been a part of almost all of them.

Definitely the best 6 years of my life.

Happy Anniversary love, here is to many, many more!

She is beautiful

Marissa turned 5 in June and she had never had a real haircut. I have snipped at the ends a couple times, never trimming off much more than an inch at a time. On several occasions I have asked her if she would like her haircut. She has always looked at me like I am out of my mind and said a very disturbed “NO”. Like the kind of no that says why would you ask me such a bizarre question mom!!!

Until yesterday.

I was brushing and playing with her hair and I showed her what it would look like shorter. She got SO excited and said “Let’s do it!” “Get the scissors mom.” I was shocked, hesitant, and excited. As the day went along she kept asking and asking and asking when we would cut her hair. At bed time she asked again if we could cut her hair tomorrow. She had made up her mind and she wanted to do it now!

So, we did!

At 10:00 this morning she chopped right at 8″ of hair off grinning the whole entire time.

Best part is she cut just enough of to donate it to Pantene Beautiful Lengths. She was excited about being able to donate her hair after I explained the cause the best I could to her five year old brain.

She absolutely loves her new hair and can’t wait til daddy gets home so she can surprise him.

She is beautiful, inside and out. I am so proud to call her mine.