Finding time in the mundane.

I had the opportunity in Sunday school class to get insight from parents who raised some pretty terrific kids. They were the parents of my dear friends Shon and Jenny Yust. Our discussion was regarding how to focus more time on family. There were 2 things that I don't want to forget so I decided to blog about it.



1. Find time in the mundane tasks. This isn't how Jen's dad said it but it was how I took it. He talked about how growing up on a farm whenever he had to go to town he'd grab a kid or two and load them up in the truck and take them along for the ride. He talked about the conversations and the things he would learn during those moments. He also shared how sometimes they would play games or use imagination to pretend their truck was an airplane and they were headed to a far away land instead of the feed store!

It made me think of how I always try to figure out how to run my errands without kids. How my focus is almost always on how much faster I could get things done if I could just go by myself. In the past, I have waited and gone to the grocery store at 11 o'clock at night just to be able to go alone.



2. Finding hobbies to do together.

Arty and I couldn't think of a hobby for which we both share a passion we could share with our kids.


I welled up with emotion when Shon's dad shared that his children are his single greatest accomplishment. If he had one regret, it was that he didn't spend more time with his kids. Even more specifically, he wished he had spent more time having FUN with his kids.


I want to find moments to share with my girls in the mundane tasks of my life. I want to find hobbies and activities to share together. And most important, I want to always feel grateful for my family and believe they are my greatest accomplishment.


It was a good weekend. I had fun with my husband and kids.

The Unintentional Status Update

The unintentional status update is when you read between the lines. A friend posted a new photo album this week. "Valentines Party 2012 - Bow ties and Boas" All her friends were there and they had a BLAST! Interesting. I was NOT there. Unintentional update - "We're not really friends. But we can still be FB friends. Have a great day!"

Pathetic effort.

So, I thought I could use Pinterest to boost my effort to write more frequently. Epic fail. It amazed me, though, how thoroughly linking something I liked, Pinterest, to something I procrastinated, writing, sucked the fun and attention right out of the thing I liked. I can't tell you the last time I logged on to pinterest. Aversion therapy at its finest. I remember the Lung Association coming to a place I worked to do a workshop on smoking cessation. This was about 20 years ago and although I went to the class I really had no intention of quitting smoking. Aversion therapy was one of their methods. They referred to it as negative association. The idea was that you wear a rubber band around your wrist and every time you thought of smoking you would SNAP the crap out of your own arm. Therefore, creating the negative association of pain and smoking. Yeah, I didn't try it. In fact, I'm pretty sure I mocked the people who did try it. I wonder if I could use aversion therapy to sever ties with Facebook the way I cut off pinterest. Hmmmm.

I think I must try.

I will write commentary on things people post on Facebook. My goal is to write once a week. Seems easy enough, right? Well, it hasn't been. How can I love to write and yet when I try to write consistently it becomes something I avoid like cleaning the toilets!?

Hopefully one of two things will happen here. Either I will begin to write more consistently or I will begin to avoid Facebook. I would consider either outcome a win.


Good luck.

Ridiculous!

I hope that all my Pinterest endeavors aren't this difficult.

















So I was mega excited about my first choice - Spice clips. I thought it was simple with the potential for exemplary impact and success. Mostly because this is my plethora of spices:





Ridiculous! Let me just say. Of this lot, I use 5 or maybe 6 of these on a regular basis. We are not great cooks in this house but we get by and most of us do NOT bake. I find that if you bake, you eat and while I am a fan of the eating I am not a friend to the after effects. I was surprised to find in my supplies: corriander (no idea what to put this on), cream of tartar - it does not go on fish - at least not in its powdered state, and STICK cinnamon - I have no recollection of this entering our home. But those don't get to me as much as these: 4 bottles of cloves, FOUR! 2 gigantic bottles of dried sage, 2 cumin, 2 poppy seed, 2 dill weed and 2 ginger. OMG! And! AND...we have enough freaking ground cinnamon to hand down to my children's children's children. I am not kidding!

Great. Simple, easy selection to ease myself into this writing gig. Uhhhh, fail. I went out with Arty to pick up my super handy spice clips and after 2 hours and 3 stores, nada. Nope, they didn't exist. Home Depot, Target, Bed-Bath, not a single clip strip (trying to copyright this handy dandy term as it seems no one has heard of it but it sounds like marketing magic to me!) to be found.

No problem, Google or Amazon will hook me up. Problem...they are on back order. What the heck! Did everyone on Pinterest have the same spice conundrum as me?? Dang it! But then...wait a minute. It must be said - I love google. Spice organizer. Check. Images. Check. WOW! Look at all these options. So 45 minutes later I have placed my order and finally! today I have my first installment.

Voila!!





And guess what...they are in alphabetical order! Gasp!!


So, I still plan to use the spice clips (when they get here sometime in February). I am going to put my fave 6 most used spices in the clips. They are, in alphabetical order, creole seasoning, garlic salt, (perfect pinch) parmesan herb, popcorn seasoning - white cheddar, (grill mates) roasted garlic & herb and (morton's) season all. PSA - the white cheddar is only 2 calories per serving. B00-Yah! (or however that is spelled).

Whew. Honestly, that was stressful. But my spices are alphabetical so there ya go. This gets a resounding thumbs up for me.

Next up.....









It's time to fix those knotted, uncomfortable fleece blankets that we don't use because without fail those knots get up under ya and creep into those dark nether regions where blanket knots do not belong.

Pinterest - it Peaks my Interest

I have decided to attempt to choose 52 things (projects, recipes, styles, whatever) from Pinterest and execute rather than just browse. I got this idea because I stumbled across a photography tip for capturing a great pic of the Christmas tree. It worked so well that I decided it may be a worthy idea to put this into practice on a regular basis. You know, actually do something instead of just surfing the internet. Novel idea, right? So in the name of A.J. Jacobs, my favorite stunt writer, I am going to write about what I do.

I am following 35 people on Pinterest. Those 35 people have "pinned" 72,657 items. When you start up, pinterest gives you several people to start following. Of course, many of those suggested friends have over five thousand pins and are probably considered "Power Pinterest Users" or something like that. It seems like such a waste of time if you aren't going to use the ideas you've pinned and who can possibly have tried the 11,934 things they've pinned (Gift Guru).

Of my 35 following - 24 are people I actually know in real life. This includes my daughter and her best friend from high school, several ladies from my church and even my pastor! Those 24 people have only pinned 5,311 items with the most for any one person being 2,204. The least was zero.

In an effort to waste less time on the internet, find something and follow through on my intentions and write more (3 of my New Year's resolutions), I am going to pick one thing each week for 52 weeks put it into use then blog about the process and results. I will each week in my blog give you the pin (which you will also see if you follow me on Pinterest) that I am planning for the next week.

Here we go -- (feel free to join in and try my ideas and/or suggest pins you think I should try.)

Week 1

Girls, girls, girls

When I was younger, pregnant with my first child, I had hoped that I would have boys. What can I say? It is what I knew. Growing up with 3 brothers (ZERO sisters)I knew about sports, frogs, tree climbing, fort building, wrestling moves and championship distance spitting among other things. To say I was a tomboy is pretty accurate although my mom tried to girl me up with dance lessons. In the end, I think it was the nerd in me that won out over tomboy and girly-girl. Which is cool. I'm pretty okay with my nerd status.

It was frightening to me having the first daughter -- especially because she could definitely be described as a girly-girl. But then I had 2 more girls, followed by 2 step daughters, then ending with...yep, you guessed it, one more baby girl.

6 girls total. The reality is that as usual my fears were unfounded. My daughters have been the greatest gift. These girls have taught me so much about myself as a woman and have been my greatest source of pride and joy.

Today I was reminded of one of my favorite things about girls: giggling. We went to see Santa at Bass Pro and I scared Jill with a giant stuffed grizzly bear. Like a real one that has been killed then stuffed. You know...what is the word....taxidermy! It was silly but Jill, Riley and I just melted into a fit of giggles. It was so sweet. We had the best time my 2 littlest girlsies and me.

Challenge!

I'm right a lot. With 7 kids I get to be right. A LOT. In fact, many times even when I'm wrong I still get to be right. (I love that about parenthood.) I believe that at times I am so used to being "right" that I forget that I could actually be wrong. That is scary because I am neither that smart nor that experienced.

I will find myself making things up just to see if anyone will challenge the validity of what I am saying. I actually want to be challenged. I want someone to say, "Michelle, you are full of shit. And here are the 18 reasons why."

So, why do I want to be challenged? I started thinking about this last night. Hmm.

• I want to mix it up. Debate. Argue. I think it is stimulating. I find it stimulating in the way some people find jumping out of an airplane with a parachute stimulating. Thrilling, exciting, jumping into the unknown! Am I going to crash?? No! I know what I am talking about here! YES! The parachute has opened and I am floating gently to the ground.

• I want to learn. I feel like I stretch myself and my thinking the most when I get input from others. I especially grow when those other people don't necessarily think the way I do. Also, when I add their experiences to my own I think my knowledge expands to include their horizons.

But most of all --

• I'm tired. I'm tired of making the decisions. Sometimes, I feel like I want to say, "I don't really know what I'm doing here...you take over." I don't know what to fix for dinner, I don't know what punishment to levee for lying, I don't know what the right age is for wearing makeup, dating, having a cell phone or getting a credit/debit card. I don't know how to tell people no without hurting their feelings. I don't know if we should replace the carpet in the living room or re-tile the bathroom. I just don't freaking know.

So basically, out of laziness and the desire to abdicate my decision making responsibilities I want to be challenged. Laziness. Hmm. That sucks.