Shelter - It's about relationships

I ran accross this blog and this post this morning. Love it.

It's an issue Mark and I have been putting a lot of thought into lately - giving our kids the freedom they need to thrive, yet providing the necessary security to grow up as strong people. I really liked a lot of what the author is saying in that post. In particular, this jumped out at me:

Although we need to be wise about keeping our kids safe (let's not be simplistic here), sheltering our kids from every potential evil is impossible. The world is corrupt. Hey, the youth group is corrupt!

I would love to withdraw my family from society and keep them from having to face the messiness of navigating relationships in a fallen world. But that’s just not feasible. Maybe not even desirable. Besides, we have enough sin nature between all seven of us, they’d still get to see plenty of corruption!

Instead, we want to make sure our home is the safe place, the most comforting sanctuary on earth, where our kids are guaranteed acceptance, affection and genuine love. Our relationship with our kids should be a reflection of God's relationship with us - overflowing with grace and forgiveness.

They sure are scary...

Ally, knocking on the outside door to come in:

"There are 2 llamas out there! Scary"

Hmmmm...

My Stick Family from WiddlyTinks.com

Florida Woman, 90, Behind the Same Wheel 559,000 Miles Later - Auto - FOXNews.com

Florida Woman, 90, Behind the Same Wheel 559,000 Miles Later - Auto - FOXNews.com

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Entitlement

Someday when I'm feeling creative (and not insane...) I'll take the time to write my own thoughts on the subject(s) of doing without and entitlement - which I think are huge issues in our society.

However, I ran across and oldie-but-a-goody post from Owlhaven on the topic and she says it very well. :) So, I'll cheat and share her wise words instead:

One of the reasons we decided to do the 30 Days of Nothing is simple: bills. Our daughter’s health issues this summer used our medical savings plan faster than we’d anticipated, and I’m eager to get things paid off. We don’t have much debt, and I get uncomfortable when the bills stack deeper than usual. But there’s a deeper reason to take this journey, one I haven’t talked a lot about this year. It has to do with the concept of entitlement.

Currently I’m sitting in a coffee shop with a Mexican mocha steaming in a cup in front of me. Once a week I take a writing day, and this is just what I do: head off to a coffee shop, and plow through some writing assignments undisturbed. Thinking of next week, I’m not sure what I’ll do on my writing day. Part of me thinks, oh, it’s $3. Let’s call that an essential. I’m entitled after rassling a zillion kids all week long.

But that sense of entitlement is a tricky thing.

I’m entitled to a cup of coffee, even though I can make something just as good at home. I deserve a new blouse, even though my closet is bulging. I earned the money (or at least the stellar credit rating) to buy a new car- never mind that my 10 year old paid-for rig is still chugging along. And the chipped-up vinyl floor in my kitchen– no one’s floor should look like that– we really should do something about that. Or so the thoughts go in my mind.

Meanwhile, the coffee farmer who grew my posh coffee can barely feed his family. My closet could clothe half a village, and the clothes I just discarded from my little girls’ room could clothe the other half. My 1998 Ford Econoline would make most people in this world feel as rich as a sultan (though, granted, the gas would bankrupt them). And kitchen floors in homes all over the world are just dirt.

How much am I really entitled to? And if I didn’t have such a large sense of entitlement, what could just a bit of my excess accomplish for someone else? Tough questions. Questions we’ll be thinking about this month.

And we wonder why our kids don't play outside?

Where Does Your State Rank

Very interesting.

Sad, not shocking, but interesting.

It is no secret that Michigan has been kicking the unemployment rate statistics (and I don't mean that in a good way...) but I thought this map showing unemployment, state budget deficient and foreclosures was interesting. The deficient (although terrible) was slightly less bad than I expected given the recent climate. And I was very surprised foreclosures weren't higher. I hope that bodes well for the real estate market here ... someday....

My Baby Boy is FIVE (5) -- (loooong overdue)

So, you think with all the excitement these past few weeks, I would be a blogging machine. Eh, not so much. Apparently I enjoy blogging much better when I have no real topics to write about? ha.

But getting to the point. Last Sunday (yes, over a week ago), my little boy turned five years old. Five. Can you believe it? He is SO not the same little guy that joined our family a year and a half ago...

We spent the weekend camping with other families that had adopted from Ethiopia (our 2nd annual - we went last year too). So that was pretty fun in itself (and yes, post-worthy, but I'm behind you know). Very fun weekend that tired us all out. So Sunday was a little anti-climatic unfortunately. But Abi was a trooper and enjoyed himself. It was pretty low-key, a few friends came over for dinner and brownies/ice cream. The weather was beautiful. It was lovely.

Since I'm really feeling the blog-block these days, I'm going to steal an idea from Erinand use as-many-words-to-describe-as-their-age. So, since Abi is 5, here are 5 words to describe my little guy:

adorable, sweet, stubborn, charming, well-liked.

She's Ours!

We are parents to five (count 'em FIVE) kids!

Get the details here.

It's tough being a wizard...

Abi: "I am magic. For real. And you are not. But I don't want to be magical any more. But I am magic."

Me: "That must be tough."

Abi: *sigh* "It is."

=)

Perks of being a parent - fresh flowers

flowers, picked fresh, with love :)

works-for-me: Family Closet

Laundry.

I hate it.

Or, more accurately, I hate putting it away. So, all to often, I don't (or didn't). But with 6 (soon to be 7) members in the family, it wouldn't take long for everything to be a HUGE mess. :( Something had to give.

So, of course I stole an idea. We nabbed the idea of a family closet from Jillienne (see her's here). This solved a couple of fairly big problems for us. One is that hauling loads and loads of laundry from the basement laundry room upstairs to the bedrooms (and then actually putting it away!) was just awful. Now, I can pull it out of the dryer and immediately sort it right on top of each kids' dresser. Usually it gets put away (but, I'll admit, not every time!). Much easier and faster!

The other major benefit is that our house isn't all that big for 4 kids and will soon be getting smaller. Taking the dressers out of their bedrooms opened up a lot of space and made everyone's life easier. The kids needed new dressers anyways (they were sharing and needed room!) so we grabbed these great, economical ones from Ikea and it's been a good fit (literally and figuratively).

You might think running down to the basement for clothes would be a huge pain. And sometimes it is. But what we *try* to do, is pick out a weeks' worth of clothes on Sunday - these are full outfits, including undies and socks that we organize together, by kid, by outfit. Each kid has a hanging closet organizer in his/her closet (like this one, but white) and we just put in their outfits weekly. It makes school mornings much easier! Now that summer has started, I've been a bit more lax on the planning...

(please ignore the clothes sticking out of the drawers! We are between seasons and running out of room!)

In a perfect world, I would have a bit more space to have a nice big table for folding and racks to hang up their nicer clothes. But I make do with folding on Ally's dresser (her's is the long wood colored one that doesn't match) and their nicer clothes are still hung up in their closets in their rooms. So not too big of a deal.

Whoo hoo! Works for me!

Making Life Complicated? Perhaps. :)

Yup, it's a new blog. The old one was meant to be pretty much all adoption related ... but I gave up on that pretty quick and it's been a bit of a hodge-podge. Hodge-podge makes me feel disorganized. :)

So, I'm going to keep that one going for now (which makes sense since we still have an ADOPTION going right now!) but start transitioning to a "family blog" here.

Or I might get tired of it and give it up. Who knows? I'm not fully committing to anything just yet! hahaha.