Talking with God

There was a brief respite yesterday from the heat wave that enabled us to take a walk as a whole family, something we rarely do. Schedules just don't seem to agree with evening free time (or perhaps we allow schedules to interfere? That's another post, I think.)

My husband pushed our 20 month daughter in the stroller, my older two walked, the middle son rode his bike and I had the pleasure of walking with my 3 year old son. This was the highlight of my week, likely the most enjoyable 1/2 hour I've had in a long time.

I loved hearing him talk the entire time. Looking at the world through his eyes, seeing the trees, the flowers, the sky, even a sprinkler watering a parched lawn. He would stop every now and then and pick up a rock, although it looked random to me, I'm sure it was special, in some way to him. As we came across patches of grass that had grown through the sidewalk, he would stop and jump and wait for my approval. "Great jump Sam! You're a good jumper!" He agreed proudly with me.

He heard every noise and would make sure I had heard it too. "Oh! What's that? You heard it mom? Yeah, it's a dog." Nothing escaped his attention. He held my hand for part of the time, the rest he ventured out on his own, not wandering far from me. The few times he ran ahead to his dad, he stopped and looked back to make sure I was following behind. His constant chatter made me smile. It was nothing and yet everything special.

As I reflected on it this morning, I realized how many parallels I could draw from our time to our walk with God. How does God feel when we talk to Him? I imagine He feels absolute joy when we come to Him. So many times we only pray when we need something. I know He loves us and wants us to come to Him and is a very present help in our time of need, but how wonderful to His ears when we just want to chat with our Lord. To tell Him about our day. To ask Him if He heard that noise in our lives. To show Him that we see His creation as wonderful and beautiful. To reach out our hand and want Him to take it. To draw encouragement from Him. We see God as some distant being, too high to reach, too majestic to care, but He's there next to us saying, "I'm here. I'm always here. I love you. Talk to Me."

Sam never once asked me to carry him. If he had, I would have gladly scooped him up in my arms and given his little legs a rest from walking so very far. How many times has God carried us? More times than I care to admit. More times than I actually know.

When should we pray? Always. How should we pray? From our heart. 1 Thessalonians 5:17 tells us to pray without ceasing. Is this possible? During our walk, Sam barely took a breath before speaking another word. Can we pray that way? To pray with each breath? With God, it is possible. I challenge myself to this goal.

In the meantime, I look forward to more walks with my precious son.

She's a grand old wreath...

I jokingly told my kids I was going to go out and get a job and they would have to stay home and take care of the babies all day. Jokingly.

My 14 year old son said, "Why don't you just amp up your blog and then you can get advertisers and they will pay you to blog." I told him that I'm not a very talkative person (they know this) so I wouldn't know what to write about each day. He said I should just blog about recipes, craft projects, stuff we do in homeschooling. Ok. I can do that. So this is my latest craft project (thank you Pinterest.)

I went to Pat Catans and bought a styrofoam wreath, three colors of yarn, and a pack of foam stars/USA stickers. Altogether, my total was just under $14. Not bad.

I started wrapping the blue yarn around the wreath, fastening it with scotch tape in the back (lazy, yes, but I wasn't about to dig out my hot glue gun and risk burning the fingerprints off my fingers if scotch tape was going to work just as well.) My daughter actually took over and finished the blue quarter.

We cut the yarn and taped it in the back and began with the red yarn. I eyeballed the spacing, I'm sure there's a more precise way to do it, but I'm pretty good at estimating. I like to call my style "Imprecise Precision."

I alternated white and red yarn until the wreath was covered. Because it is a circle, the yarn overlaps a little bit in spots on the inner ring. Unavoidable, really. When I was done, I stuck different size white stars on the blue field, not putting them in an order, just laying them where they would look good. I didn't glue them, I just removed the backing and placed them on. They stuck fairly well. If they start to come off, I can glue them then.

So here's my finished product. I think it looks pretty good. I'm happy with the result.

Proceed with caution: Reality ahead.

I've been reading a few different homeschooling blogs lately.

Bad idea.

I see how so many moms are doing science experiments everyday and taking their kids to the park and painting and reading Latin and yet, they still find time to finish all their chores and eat 3 nutritious meals. I'm thinking either these people are lying or they are only posting about their good days. REALLY good days.

Don't get me wrong, most days, we get our school done and done early. But some days....well, those are the days that you don't see written about in blog posts. Until now. DUN DUN DUN.....

Now, for your reading pleasure, this has been our day:

7:00 am 14 year old son's alarm starts beeping. And beeping. And beeping. For quite awhile, it keeps beeping. He finally jumps out of bed and shuts it off and promptly jumps back IN to bed and falls asleep. At least this time, he didn't reset it for half an hour later.

7:15 am 10 year old son gets up and goes downstairs. Is he getting a head start on his schoolwork like the studious lad that he is? No. He watches the Three Stooges (thank you Husband for introducing that to the boys) on the Roku.

7:30 am Sick Husband goes downstairs and calls his boss to tell her he won't be coming in today. A rare occasion, you know he's sick when he doesn't go to work. 13 year old Daughter comes downstairs and eats breakfast. 14 Year old son still sleeps. I try to fall back asleep and pray that the babies will sleep a little longer so I can get some sleep.

8:00 am The 2 year old Boy starts making noise. Whining and crying (most of my kids wake up this way, never laughing or talking.) So I take him downstairs. On the way, I tell the 14 year old to get up. He grunts.

From 8:00 am until 9:30 am, we did nothing. By nothing, I mean, we played Wii. Husband slept on the couch, trying to rid himself of the cold. I am thanking God that my husband is NOT the stereotypical big man baby when it comes to colds. He gets sick, sleeps for a whole day and is better. Doesn't whine, doesn't demand, doesn't act like he's dying. He's a good guy. :o)

9:30 am Baby girl wakes up crying. We get her up in all her 17 month old glory, hair a mess and pink jammies covering her from head to toe. 14 year old is up, but in the bathroom. I tell the 10 year old to do his Bible and spelling (at least some learning will take place today!!!)

I'm going to summarize 9:30 am to 1:30 pm. Whine. Eat. Drink. Wii. Clean. Change diapers. Write grocery list. Whine. Temper tantrum (just to be clear, this isn't all me. It is indicative of all 7 of the humans in my house during this time.)  Change diapers. Eat again. Watch Max and Ruby. Change diapers AGAIN because, apparently, clean diapers are more fun to poop in. Nap time (YAY!!!!) but only for baby girl. Husband tells me to go to the store with the older two while he stays home with the youngest 3. I'm not going to argue.

3:30 pm and I've already been to three places. Halfway through the grocery list, I need to sit down because I'm winded. No, I don't need to work out more. It turns out that the cold that has hit EVERY person in the family has now finally hit me. So I send out the older two to get a few items on my list while I recover.

4:00 pm. Last store. We need to get home by 4:30 so I can make dinner before Husband goes to school for the night. List is done. Older kids check out and bag groceries for me.

5:00 pm. We eat dinner. 2 year old doesn't want the pizza or ham or cheese that is on his plate so he sticks his finger in them and then shoves the plate to the floor.

5:45 pm. Husband leaves for school. After a few temper tantrums from a little boy who should have napped after all, we have bath time, snack and then bed, at 8:30 pm.

LET THE CLEANING BEGIN!!!!!

Did I forget to mention that I am having my two friends and their kids over tomorrow for lunch? So that means we clean. Since we are all getting over a cold, the cleaning has been slow. It is now after 10 pm as I write this and we still have a lot to do. I just downed a cup of coffee, trying for some energy to finish up tonight.

Hmm....weren't we supposed to have school today? I guess there was some learning going on.

Life experiences. That's what we'll call them.