My goal this coming year is to catalog and journal more diligently in several areas of life but top priority is to get my yarn stash and multi project piles under control and get some of my patterns written up and maybe sell them. Yeah!
Then maybe I will start that book I joke about all the time. Hahahha. Well I need to at least get these stories written down for scrapbook purposes. Time is going by so fast and I really need to get Alex's album started. He keeps asking if I remembered he was born. Did you take pictures mom? Well, yes I did and still do but can't seem to get them printed from the Land of Digital. Uggh.
Getting ready for school next week is proving more challenging every year. I am amazed at the amount of THINGS that are considered SUPPLIES these days. I don't remember ever having to buy post it notes, expo markers, and highlighters for kindergarten or fourth grade when I was in school.
Does anyone have fantastic sack lunch ideas? Our school has not been able to complete the cafeteria yet so that means days and days of mom made lunches. Last year sandwiches were making me gag. I can't imagine how bored the kids were. So if you have any suggestions post a comment, I would love to hear them.
Along those lines any fabulous work from home ideas to generate some extra income would be great too!
I thought I would share with you how good Alex has become at communication this summer. We have been diligently working on a way to cut down on the amount of tattling and angry outburst going on around here. One thing we implemented was a talk to the person your upset with FIRST, resolve it if you can forgive each other and play on! Well, that hasn't exactly been working for A man. So he has come up with an opening phrase before pleading his case.
“Uh mom I have something to tell you. I'm not tattling I'm telling you the truth." It is hard to argue with him on that but it still isn't accomplishing our goal.
In my attempt to lead by example, I too have had an angry outburst here and there this summer (not a proud mommy moment, but I think all moms’ can extend a bit of grace and maybe even relate). The outburst part is not the example point. hehehe. After a more trying day with schedules and a lack of cooperation from the troops I felt myself getting upset. Fast forwarding through the less interesting events of the day. We still had not finished our chores for the day. I would love to say that I laughed and played with my boys and relished in the smell of dirty socks and shoes strewn about the house and ingnored the piles of unfolded laundry waiting to be put away. First we needed to FIND the floor to walk into each room. Blah, blah, blah.... Enter my ANGRY OUTBURST. I will spare you the exact words used during this time, but immediately following my monologue was the silence of my kids, their stunned glazes and then laughter. My third born angel looks and me and says “Mom, your face got so red it looks like you have a sunburn.” I was not finding the humor in it. So I left the room to sign each one up for military school.
The “quiet time” that followed scared them more than my many words flying about in loud volumes. They cleaned ever square inch of their bedrooms and wanted to make my lunch, a snack, get me a drink, anything that would get a response. I just shook my head and continued on with my day (I was thinking the entire time what a horrible person I was to have been so mad), after all the chores had been done. I sat them all down and apologized for what I said and how I behaved and asked them to forgive me. Here is what happened.
“Mom, you don’t need to say sorry to us. You just need to be nice and stop being angry.” (ALEX)
So now mom is working on this and they are storing up more events in the “Therapy Vault” for a future day. Ughhhh.
Sorting through the mountain of school supplies is not exactly how I imagined spending our Labor Day weekend. But I am working on not being ANGRY.. hahahaha.
Happy Back to School Week.
3 comments:
First, have to say those MATCHING green sweaters are the cutest! :) That hat was amazing, btw. You are so talented.
Then, lunches-all I can offer is a thermos for soups. If you boil water and heat up the thermos for a few minutes, then add the soup, it will stay warm until lunch time. (so the boy I nannied told me) We had a hard time getting him to eat lunches and that seemed to work for him!
Then..wow...great humbling story Des! I got all teary eyed and really appreciated it. AMAZING how our kids can call us on our sin and we can't argue it. Now...if we could only flip it so the kids would not argue as well! :) The lessons we continue to learn while we are teaching our own children...
Great post, and I think an angry outburst is normal when you've got five kids to take care of during the SUMMER!! Your knits are wonderful.. you are extremely talented!
Lunches... growing up we only had ONE lunch: tuna sandwiches. Every single day. No change. Ever. The only variety was that my youngest brother wanted hard lettuce and we wanted soft. Tuna sammich. An apple or orange. Milk. That was it. Maybe a cookie.
I guess when we were growing up the school provided a lot more stuff than it does now. We didn't need stuff like highlighters and post-it notes. Why do kids need them now?
How about bento lunches? Would that work? You wouldn't have to do all the fancy kine stuff that people do. Or would that just be too much trouble?
I am in awe of the hat...actually in awe of you knitting at all with everything else that you have to do. I was just telling my sister how humbling being a mother is. I hate losing my temper and I do it more than I want to admit. I am always humbled by how willing my kids are to forgive me.
I really miss you and truly wish that we could get together once in awhile.
btw - I use mostly Abeka, but I am kind of unorthodox about it. My kids are just in 1st and 2nd grade and I think too much repetitive paperwork is a bad idea. I cross things off in the workbooks if they are tiresome. We pick our own history and science stuff out at the library, stuff that we are really interested in. I am big on reading interesting books to learn things. And getting school done before lunchtime. And field trips.
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