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.