4 o'clock

I see I have had 40 views of my last post! Wow! If I knew people were reading then I would probably post more often. Comments people? If I know you are there it might motivate me to keep updating. Okay so this next post might come off sounding a little negative but it is something I feel can be true for a lot of people, not just moms and since I have nothing else to write about this is what you get for today! You know that time of day. The time you wish never came each day. The time you have to force yourself not to keep looking at the clock wondering when it will be here and when it will be gone. It is currently that time for me and it shouldn't be that hard for me to get through, but by this time of the day I feel like all the energy and life has been sucked out of me. I could play ANOTHER game of hide and go seek, or read "that" book for the 10th time today, or go for another walk outside but I just don't want too. This is the mundane life of the stay at home mom. I know that sounds bad but I would probably say the same thing if I was a working mom. I stay busy at home doing things that moms do. Some days are great and we have lots to do. Some days I just wish I had a fenced in backyard and could have the boys play outside where they can take their fights, their noises, their whining where I can't hear it. For someone with very little patience I actually handle these daily battles better than I thought I would. I try not to yell. I try not to show how annoyed I can be when one of the boys has to whine about every little thing. These daily battles always seem to multiply by 10 at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. I still have 4 hours until I can put them in bed and have a few hours a peace and quiet. I'm tired, I am board(I hate saying that), but I really am. I try to get creative and find fun things to fill our time but those things get old to me too. Maybe not as much for the boys but for me, my ability to "play" has run dry. late into the afternoon. I often wonder what other stay at home moms do all day? I'm sure it is different in every home. I just can't be my children's only source of entertainment for the whole day. I want them to know how to play on their own for a few hours at a time and they can on most days, but there is always some sort of fight or one of them hurts the other and I have to go in and kiss the wounded and separate them. TV can be a nice option at times but not one that I want to use very often at all. In fact, the less the better. Having somewhat of a daily routine has helped, but don't most routines get to be soooooo mundane you have to break it up with something different. Knowing whats about to come up all the time can become so dull and I don't want the boys to grow up thinking they will always know what to expect all the time. I guess it can just be somewhat hard to mix it up during the week. We go to the library on most Mondays. That usually lasts about 10 min after they have tried to pull every book off the shelf. We go to the park on nice days. We walk around the camp almost everyday. We watch a show after nap time. We build forts. We play out in the yard. We even sometimes take a bath just to play in the water. I would love to have more play dates with other moms who are at home. It helps me connect with another adult and gives my kids a break from me as well as a break from being somewhere other than home. I miss my friend Andi who lived at the camp. She and her husband moved a few months ago to pursue a calling from God and headed to Dallas to study a year at Pioneer Bible Translators. It was so easy for Andi and me to get together often because we lived a couple hundred yards away from each other. Our houses were usually messy but we didn't care. We just understood each other and what life is like for a mom. Sometimes we would just drop by unannounced and see what the other person is up too. I loved that! I loved knowing that when I came over, even if she was in the middle of something, she would drop it to visit for a few minutes and I was usually not up to anything so important I couldn't drop something for her. (miss you Andi) I still need to get out more by myself or with friends which I am pretty bad at planning. Realistically that isn't as easy as it might be for some. I don't have very many people who can just take the boys whenever. Joe is more busy these days working at the camp and at the church and once he is home at night I don't necessarily want to be away from him when I haven't seen him all day. It is all a balancing act. How to take time for me so I don't become a crazy lady and how to balance my time with the boys, doing chores, time with Joe, time with God and time with friends. I can't be a mom without sacrificing a lot of time, a lot of energy, a lot of peace and quiet, a lot of money, and a lot of time doing other things that I love. It is part of being a parent where I need to find joy. I didn't understand much about sacrifice before becoming a parent. I did what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it and didn't have to think much about anyone but myself and Joe. I don't wish away the smallness of my children at all. I find them to be precious, funny, daring, risky, curious, playful, unpredictable, adventurous and most of all the two beings in my life besides God and Joe that loves me most no matter how unattractive I may look on the inside and out. Kids bring out the crazy in me but they also bring me to my knees more than ever before. They force you to grow and want to be a better person. They give you a sense of how not be too boring, or too clean, or too quiet, or too dense. They have a way of making life something you never expected it to be. The only thing that is to be expected is this hour of the day. 4 o'clock. Make it or break it. I guess it is up to me.

Since my last Post...

Boy oh boy! I don't know how I can give you an accurate update of all I have been up to since my last post in May but I will try and try to make it interesting too. I keep thinking about blogging about different things but sometimes blogging to sucks too much of my time. I would rather be outside reading a good book, or getting some housework done, or baking healthy snacks on most days. But here I am back into the world of blogging. I love to read my friends blog so I guess I am just doing it because of how much I enjoy keeping up with my friends who blog. Well summer is over and fall is amazing! I love summer, but this one really got to me with all those over 95 degree days. I did not want to be outside unless we were at the camp pool. We found out we were pregnant in April and since then I have felt like my pregnancies just get more and more uncomfortable than the last. I'm just guessing it's because the more kids you have the more your back hurts from all the extra work and the more tired it makes you having more than one to care for. I think this one is going to be our last baby. We talked about only having two but two just didn't seem as complete to me and I had been praying that if God wanted us to have another that he would just make it happen. I get more and more excited about it the closer we get to due month. I haven't been giving a due date since both my boys were around 21 days late. We also won't be finding out the gender of the baby so you will just have to wait! This summer I was asked to join the steering team for my MOPS group and I happily agreed to help out. Phew! It is a lot of work planning for an entire year but I am on a great team, a small team, but we know how to get things done and I hope the registered Moms have been enjoying their every other Fridays with us. We have already had some fantastic speakers and we had a lot of new faces this year which is always nice. I know this time has been so valuable to me over the past couple of years just coming to MOPS so I am hoping we can be a blessing to them and give them some much needed down and as much encouragement and support that we can during motherhood. Onto my wonderful hard working husband...He has been an amazing person in my life this year! We hit our 10 year anniversary this August and I feel closer and closer to him the longer we are married. I love our time spent together of an evening and our conversations we have about anything and everything. I just love spending time with him talking about life. The last 6 weeks he has signed on at the church as the youth interim until either next Spring or until the church finds a new full time youth guy. He loves kids and was already pretty involved in teaching S.S. and Bible Study on Wed nights so now he just spends a little more time planning events and organizing volunteers or people to teach etc. It takes a little time away from the camp but at this time of the year things slow down enough that it doesn't effect camp work in a negative way. If anything it will actually benefit the camp because of the relationships we are building at the church. Jake and Wade are a riot! They love playing with each other and fighting over toys. I go a little bonkers by the end of the day but what mom doesn't? I love having boys except for the dirty side of them. I think I change their clothes a couple of times a day from playing in dirt and puddles and sand but love how easy it is for them to have fun. They each have a tonka dump truck that they will push around the house or at camp all day long! Wade has been talking more and more of course. Some of his words come out even better than his brother such as the word "yellow." That one is pretty hard for Jake to say. Every morning when I get Wade out of bed he grabs his diaper and says "ewwww" and he has been standing in front of the toilet and tries to pee. I don't know if he will be potty trained before he is two or not but Jake was so I am praying I get lucky again and can encourage that to happen! What have I been up too... Gardening, canning, painting the house, reorganizing the house, reading a lot of books, praying more, working on examining my heart, thinking about home schooling, singing with my kids, trying to play more and be silly more. This year has been an interesting year for me. I can't lay it all out in one paragraph but I love how being more aware of God's presence in my life as given me the desire to see what he desires for my family. Jake has been asking so many questions about Jesus and God and heaven. I love having those chances to answer his questions and see how his heart is molded as he grows. I have begun to see that my most important goal is to make disciples of my children. Of course I can't save them, but I can give them a picture of how great our God is and that he is a child a God, created by God, and loved by God. Lots of times I think about all the things I want to teach my kids or that Joe wants to teach them. They are all great things but more important than their education and how to shoot a gun we hope that we can make faith our number one goal before anything else because nothing else can save them. I think it's time for me to get my laundry folded so maybe in the near future I will start another post for you, hopefully with some pictures of the kids and our nearly finished housing projects. Blessings!