The Disney savings jar

From the moment I posted the picture above on Facebook early Christmas afternoon, I was getting query after query regarding what we were doing, how we were doing it, etc., and I figured the most efficient way of explaining our plan was to write about it here.

This past Christmas was tight. Not just for us, but for many people. Times are rough; money seems to be leaving the bank quicker than it arrives for many families, and many of us are more concerned with the business of stretching pennies than we are with the newest, most popular, latest, and greatest "thing" to give our children. Frugality calls for creativity, and this past Christmas, as we finished up our Christmas breakfast, we gave our girls a gift that, as they said, was better than anything they had under the tree. This year, we gave them the promise that, by year's end, we will take them to Disney World. My poor hubby's ears took a beating ... there was a LOT of squealing as the jar with those mouse ears painted on it came out of the bag! For those five little princessy types, the idea of visiting the "most magical place on earth" was almost more than they could handle!

Wait ... Disney? FRUGAL? Am I out of my mind? Well, that's beside the point. I know my rocker is a bit off-kilter. Hear me out. No, we don't have the $4000 (give or take) that it is going to take to get our family of seven a five-day stay at what we have affectionately (and snark-fully) dubbed "the Mouse trap". We just don't have it! We have some MAJOR house repairs that require every penny of our savings, plus a whole lot more. See, we didn't hand the girls seven tickets. We handed them a plan, and the opportunity to be a major part of that plan! The jar is just a plain plastic cookie-jar type thing that I painted the Mickey Mouse head shape onto. It was empty when we gave it to them. We told them how much it is going to cost, how much we can put in from Pete's travel pay (about half) during the next year, and then told them that it will take ALL OF US working together to fill that jar. They didn't seem all that worried. They immediately started brainstorming ways of saving the money. A week and a half after Christmas, there is already over $100 in it.

As for an actual savings "plan"? Well, mostly we are resolving to eat out less. We spend a LOT on restaurant meals that could go into savings. Yes, we make the wiggle room in our budget to do that, but if we are spending between $60-75 a week for food, we could be plunking at least 3/4 of that in the jar every week and eat at HOME! We are also planning a massive, get-the-entire-family-involved yard sale that will hopefully help us do some big-time decluttering while boosting the savings for our trip at the same time!

Our hope and aim is to make this trip DEBT FREE, while showing the girls that making small but powerful changes in our spending habits can benefit us all in BIG ways. :)

Did I set my own bar too high??

 

The little cutie above turned 6 last month. Unlike every other child in our family, Dani's birthday is completely isolated from everyone else's. ALL of our other children have at least one sibling whose birthday falls within two weeks of their own, but Danica is out there all by her little lonesome in October. Her birthday usually falls right in the middle of crazy-season for us--right as we are getting prepared for the holidays, and finally back in full swing for school. For the two years prior to this, it was in the middle of MAJOR family events; Derrick and Kelsey were married in late October of 2010, Jon and Meagan were married in August of 2011 ... plus for the last two years, her dad has been away on business for her birthday. The poor kid has middle-child, left-out issues. I was determined this year to remedy that by somehow pulling off a NICE birthday party for her. Granted, the last *real* birthday party (one that was actually a party for KIDS, not adults) I did was for Kelsey's 10th birthday. Umm ... it's been a few years. So nevermind I was seriously out of practice, but we also had a family friend visiting for the weekend! It was crazy, but I wasn't going to cop out. Dani wanted a Rapunzel party, and I was gonna DO it. 

Pinterest to the rescue! I found all sorts of ideas for cakes, decorations, party games and favors. YAY! Problem was ... every single cake I found was either a huge carved, elaborate monstrosity of pastry and frosting (which I was seriously NOT going to do), or involved a tower constructed of stacked cupcakes. Also not going to happen. Bad things happen when I attempt anything cupcake-y. I decided I was going to have the base only, a mound of green frosting "grass", be cake. I'd be all artsy-craftsy and construct my own tower using a Pringles can. Sure! It'll work! But what did I do? I waited until the night before the party to even try figuring it out!!! What was I, NUTS?

I'll answer that one for you. YES, I was nuts. That tower, which, OF COURSE, had to at least come close to looking like the tower in the movie Tangled, was a bear. Weird angles, strange coloring, and some kooky ivy-looking thing climbing up it?? It didn't take me long to question my own judgment. I will admit, though, that it turned out really, really well! I didn't think it would when it was at this stage, though ... 

Yes, that's a Pringles can. The weird angle from the tower up to the ... uh, ... "house" (??) portion was an upturned plastic cup. Same cups I had used to make the jello "boats", which you'll see in a minute. There's another plastic cup on top, forming the base above the house (a frosting can, by the way) for the cone-shaped cereal-box-cardboard roof to hold onto. I used hot glue to hold everything together; I wasn't crazy enough to think I was going to sit around waiting for anything to dry, and I *knew* I was going to need some seriously strong glue! A little scrapbook paper, some paint, Sharpie-outlined "timbering", and green frosting ivy/grass later, plus a tiny little Rapunzel doll, some candy flowers and pink pearls, and here's what I ended up with: 

Not too bad, if I do say so myself!  

It's not super-fancy, and it certainly won't win any design contests, but it made a certain 6-year-old and her sisters giggle and squeal when they laid eyes on it! That's all I cared about. :)

Here's the spread we had set out in the dining room. The dip for the pretzels and veggies, plus the veggies themselves, were served in cast iron skillets. Oh, and yes, that cake "plate" was actually a cast iron griddle pan. The punch (which was a 64-oz. bottle of red grape juice combined with a 2-liter bottle of ginger ale ... YUMMY!!) was served in one of my stock pots! My older girls thought that was a hilarious touch. And of course, we had Dani's stuffed chameleon representing Pascal on the table guarding the food. :) 

This was one of the ideas I found on Pinterest that I absolutely had to re-create. Blue jell-o "water, with orange wedge "boats" and a little paper sail. The kiddos loved it!

Of course, since it was a Rapunzel party, we had to have a braid somewhere! What I decided was to have part of the guests' party favors be a headband with a braid attached (hot glue again), and prizes for the games would be little hair clips to attach to their braids. Dani's headband had a purple tiara hot-glued on as well. Hey, the birthday girl has to be something special! Kudos for this project go to my master braiders, Morgan and Jamie. This would never have gotten done if I had been the one to braid all that yarn. 

 Yep, we had to play "pin the frying pan on Flynn Rider". Had to. Wasn't even an option!

 

 This game, inspired by apple-loving horse Maxwell from the movie Tangled, was without a doubt one of the most hilarious games I have seen in a long time. The apples were tied to different lengths of yarn hanging from our clothesline. The object was to get a bite taken out of the apple without using your hands!!! 

 It proved to be VERY difficult for the girls to bite, they were laughing too hard!!

 Believe it or not, the one REQUIREMENT Danica had for her party was to have a pinata. Sorry, I was just too lazy to make one. Target had a good price ($15), so that's what we did. Thankfully at the end of October there is plenty of candy in bulk bags available in stores!

This was not an easy party theme, and it certainly required a lot more crafting than I was expecting, but eh ... it was worth it! 

Dani was one very happy six-year-old! 

The only problem? I have four other girls who are now expecting me to go all-out for THEIR parties!

OOOPSIE!?

Color-coded children!

I'm asked all the time how I keep my sanity with five little ones at home, how I keep things organized, etc., because all of the STUFF that these little people require certainly must warrant some sort of system, right?

EXACTLY!!!

I have become one of "those" mothers. I color-code my children. For us it works out really well that each of the girls has a DIFFERENT favorite color (YAY!) and that those colors pretty much are available in anything we need. We have color-coded beach towels (yes, seriously), color-coded shoe bins, color-coded school supplies, and color-coded earrings. We tried winter coats, but those get handed down and it really doesn't work to be "off" a color!

Color-coding has solved a lot of challenges for us--especially when it comes to school supplies. I always know at a glance who hasn't put away something. Is it purple? JAMIE!!!! Come get your folder!!!!! We don't even need to put names on their supplies--they all know whose color is whose! The biggest challenge, oddly enough, has been drinking cups. Having all one color is rather dangerous with five girls who are incredibly THIRSTY all the time. "Who drank my juice!!!????" "HEY!!!! I just poured that lemonade! That's MY cup!"

Enter the color-coded cups.

 Pink for Morgan, purple for Jamie, blue for Danica, green (the color of TURTLES!!!!) for Shelby, and orange for Kasey!

We use the smaller cups for juice in the morning, the bigger cups for lemonade, water, and to take with us in the van. By the way, the lidded cups were from Ross for $2.99 a piece!!!! LOVE Ross!

Reality set in today.

I had one of those "lightning bulb" moments today. No brilliant ideas, no major epiphanies warranting major life-altering risks, but I was involved in a series of conversations today that made me realize that Pete and I are at that really odd point in our life together where we are reaping the consequences of our decision to reverse his vasectomy. In two hours' time, I helped my daughter-in-law to be finalize some frazzling and stressful plans for her wedding to my son this coming Saturday, and then learned that my oldest daughter has less than a month left here with us in Alabama before she "officially" leaves to join her husband following his graduation from Army advanced training.

By our 22nd wedding anniversary, Pete and I will have two married children, living in two different states, with our home somewhere in between. Our original little-family will cease to exist. No longer will we be able to expect to spend holidays with our son and oldest daughter. We now have to share. Don't get me wrong; I'm not sad about this in the slightest; this is exactly what we wanted for both of our children. We knew that we only get to hold on to them until they reach adulthood. We knew that all the mistakes we made as *really* young parents would be mistakes they would likely struggle with during their adolescence ... and they did. They rebelled; they tested limits; they looked to the world for things that the world ultimately could never give them. But now, today as we had real, adult conversations with our real-adult children, we realized we have reached the end of an era.

And it hit me like a brick ...

If we hadn't had that vasectomy reversal done, if we hadn't chosen to put our family size into God's hands, our hands-on parenting job would be over. Our nest would be empty! We would be "free" to do whatever we wanted to do. In all honesty, THAT was what made me sad. Not that I am tied down to these young girls for sixteen more years, but that our lives would be so much less interesting had we never been blessed with them! It may be odd to consider, but I couldn't help thinking that living "for me" would be so boring that I would drive myself batty! Sure, things would be calmer now; I could sleep in, garden to my heart's content, spend HOURS on the internet, keep a clean house ...

No thanks. I like where we are now. I like knowing that while Pete is away for his three-week business trips, I have five little someones keeping my mind and body busy all day, every day. I like the noise; I like the activity.

I am only 38 years old; I'm too young to live the life of a "retired" stay-at-home mom. Maybe after Kasey has graduated and all of the little girls have moved on to whatever God has planned for each of them, maybe THEN I'll be ready to sit back and quilt, follow Pete around the globe and sit in a hotel room for days on end while he works. Not now.

Two years ago ...

God blessed us with our seventh child, Kasey Lee, on August 5th, 2009. It was a pregnancy fraught with complications but we can't imagine not having this spirited little girl in our lives! She has certainly been a *unique* addition to our family!

Even from birth, Kasey made sure we knew she was not going to fade into the background. Her high-pitched scream caught the attention of the maternity ward staff and let everyone know that Kasey meant business! Like her big brother, she couldn't stand to be left out of the excitement if there was ever anything going on; sleep was just not in her vocabulary and she has fought it with everything she has since the day she was born! Of course, she's also been entertaining us with her grins and her antics ever since she realized she could capture an audience!


In just two years, Kasey has earned the reputation of being somewhat of a tiny tornado. We have had many "Kasey-tastrophes" as a result of her active imagination and intense curiosity. She has an almost insatiable need to take things apart, dump things out, knock things down, and generally act as an instrument of destruction and mayhem. Watching dry dog food swell up in the water dish, separating grains of oatmeal or rice on the floor after emptying the entire package, spreading baby powder on the dark-maroon carpet (Mom didn't even know you could take the top OFF of that baby powder container!!), painting her face with her sisters' paint-by-number acrylic paints ... she certainly keeps us busy!!!

Knowing that this mischief-maker is just following her God-given bent to explore her surroundings, we are well aware that this is not 'rebel' behavior. One of these years, we'll be able to tame this wild creature God has entrusted to our care, and be able to channel her curiosity and all of that energy. Right now ... well, right now we just have to repeat to ourselves at least five times a day that God is building patience in us with this little ball of fire!

Happy Birthday Kasey!!!!

This is one of "those" weeks.

This is shaping up to be a "totally useless" week by all external standards, but if there is one thing I've learned over our years of home education, it is the value in looking beyond the academic learning to the "real life" learning--there is a huge relief in knowing that my children ARE learning very valuable lessons even if their math books remain untouched. 

Sunday evening, our little three-month-old puppy Sasha started showing signs of illness; by mid-day Monday, she had lost two pounds and was starting to look severely dehydrated from incessant vomiting.  Monday afternoon, she was diagnosed with parvo.  It wasn't what the vet considered an "extreme" case, so she sent her home after giving her fluids and medicine.  I spent most of the morning yesterday (Tuesday) trying to keep fluids in her and when she took a turn for the worse, there was only one other course of action--Sasha is now in the animal hospital, being given intravenous fluids and medication in hopes of keeping her alive and strong enough to fight off the virus. 

As if yesterday wasn't stressful enough, early in the morning we learned that one of our dear friends had been taken by ambulance to the hospital...and Pete called from the hospital last night to tell me that Josh had no brain function at all.  Our hearts are hurting, but this was a victory for a young man whose life was frought with suffering.  Josh was born with birth defects and developmental handicaps and wasn't expected to live very long; he outlived both his mother and his grandmother!  Taken in and cared for by his aunt and uncle, he has been struggling the last few years (since his grandmother's death) with what to expect in the afterlife.  It frightened him, and the idea of a new and perfect spiritual body, he said, scared him to death.  He feared being able to know people he didn't know here on earth, he feared seeing dead people alive again, and he feared seeing the face of God. 

Thankfully, death came quickly for Josh--one minute he was complaining that he couldn't feel or move his arms or legs, the next, he was blue and lifeless.  God truly knows what we can handle, and in His infinite wisdom and provision, He chose to let Josh pass from this life to the next quickly and without being challenged with the fears he didn't understand.  Josh has nothing left to fear; he is in the presence of his mother and grandmother, in paradise with our forefathers, waiting on the Lord to take us all to Heaven.  In a fitting end to his earthly life, his organs are being donated so that Josh's life may be a blessing to people he didn't even know, extending the reach of people this young man touched with his relatively short life.  What a blessing Joshua Lyle was...and will continue to be.

As I said before, this week has been just "too much" already, for us to continue unimpeded with daily schedules and lesson plans.  Sometimes academics have to take a back seat to life, and that's what has happened this week.  My girls are still learning, however.  We've had discussions of viruses, hygiene, caring for the sick, even death and Heaven.  We have wept with joy and with sorrow, all at the same time.  And in celebrating death, we are also celebrating life.

Today is another milestone for our family--the middle child of the younger 'set' is four years old today.  Morgan, Jamie, and I have had several discussions this week about making Danica's birthday special for her, since she is often the one who gets the short end of the stick in many things.  Dani is sandwiched between two sets of Irish twins, so she is "all alone" in the middle--neither one of the babies or one of the big girls.  It's difficult sometimes to find something that identifies her because she wants so much to fit in that she really doesn't express her favorites or what she "loves" like Morgan and Jamie do.  It's going to be challenging to make today extra-special for her, considering that a lot of the focus this evening at Bible study will be on Josh's family....but we're taking cupcakes for Dani to share with everyone, and she gets to choose what we have for dinner tonight.  This weekend, we're going to visit the zoo as a special treat for her birthday. 

Happy Birthday, Danica Jill!!!

One day...

One day I will be able to eat a bagel without sharing more than half of it with a little one who never wants to eat her OWN...just wants bite after bite of mine.

One day I will be able to take more than a minute and a half for a bathroom break without wondering what chaos is ensuing on the other side of the door.

One day I will be able to go to the grocery store and actually get everything on my entire list before having to leave because someone has had a meltdown.

One day I will be able to sit at a restaurant on Sunday afternoon without having ten people stop to ask me "all yours?" or comment on what they think my patience level is.

One day I will take a vacation with just my husband and not have to include something to occupy impatient and bored little people.

One day I will have "my life" back.  One day I will have an empty nest.  One day I will have the opportunity to live for *ME*.

I'm not in any hurry.

Is it really so shocking?

Not too many weeks ago I was shocked speechless by a completely unsolicited comment by a random walker-by in the post exchange food court, and this time...well, this comment is just really bothering me. Understand that I've heard "are they all yours?" probably two or three times a DAY when I've got all five of the little girls out in public, and I always answer that with a smile and "well they are all mine, but they're not ALL of mine, I've got two more!"; for the most part, I've only been met with a handful of quasi-negative comments. My girls (well, all of my kids, really, but the girls are the only ones left at home) are pretty well-behaved, and fairly polite in public, and as a result people's comments about the size of our brood are usually encouraging. So when I get a person who will literally stop in her tracks to be ugly toward us, it does catch me offguard.

The girls and I were just sitting there, minding our own business, waiting for Kelsey to get off of work, when an older-ish lady walked up to us and said to me, "Surely you're babysitting for someone, these CAN'T be all of your children!" I replied to her that no, I wasn't babysitting, and no, they weren't all of mine, that I had two more who weren't there, and as her jaw dropped, she just seemed to lose all of her decorum.

"YOU HAVE SEVEN KIDS????"
Yes, I have seven children.
"ARE YOU CRAZY????"
Yes, as a matter of fact, I am crazy. But crazy works for me.
"THAT'S THE CRAZIEST THING I'VE EVER SEEN...AND THEY'RE ALL GIRLS?????"
No, our oldest is a boy.
"I'D SHOOT MYSELF IF I HAD THAT MANY KIDS!!!!"

Silence.

I couldn't speak. Well, maybe I could have, but it probably would not have been pretty. Or Christian. Something (thank you, Mamaw, for that training...) told me that this was not a woman who wanted to engage in a conversation, she simply wanted to cause a scene--hence the yelling, catching the attention of everyone in the food court. Besides, my girls were there, and I really did NOT want to give them the impression that shock-and-awe displays warranted further attention, so I simply turned my head and went back to tending to my daughters. The lady rambled on for a few more minutes to herself and to Kelsey, who had just walked up, about how she was the oldest of nine and that having that many siblings made her determined not to have ANY children, that she got her tubes tied before she even got married. Kelsey's reply, however....both shocked and thrilled me. The only thing my eldest daughter said in response to this woman's verbal assualt on her family was:

"Well, every one of these girls is a blessing to our family, so it's a wonderful thing we have seven kids in our home."

Is it any wonder I couldn't speak? Shock from every side.

You know what? With kids like mine, I consider myself VERY blessed. I don't regret for one moment having more than the standard two children. Our life with our chaotic little seven-ring-circus is WONDERFUL.

I was browsing through the pictures I just uploaded onto my computer, and it hit me....all these goofy pictures reflect a life that few people are blessed to have. The zaniness my girls bring to our life is like a brilliant orange and pink sunset...God could cause the sun to set without any flair at all, without any color and without bringing any attention to it...but He chose every so often to give us a reminder that He is a master artist. I'm ever so thankful that my life is colored with so many crazy children.

You don't like it? Tough. Who asked you, anyway?

To those of you who look on larger families with disdain, you have my pity. It's a shame your life isn't as brilliantly colored. You might be a tad happier and less likely to try to make everyone else feel miserable!

So...how did YOUR May go?

'Cause mine was a bit of a blur. I know, I know....I started blogging about serious stuff, caught some people's attention, then disappeared off the map. Sorry. It's been one of THOSE months. You'll have to 'scuse me and my blatant disregard for the internet as of late. I would like to say I've been out in the backyard, camped out on a comfy quilt with hubby, watching the girls play....

But alas, I have not. If my mind wasn't already sidetracked with what has turned out to be a roller-coaster of emotions with my son and his fiancee (or is she? I'm not sure anymore), I had a graduation to prepare for, and that was no small undertaking. The biggest time-taker-upper was a scrapbook I made for her to have on display at the homeschool group's graduation reception following the ceremony, and I'll tell you...that scrapbook was EXHAUSTING! It's a good thing I'm not one of the types who gets all mushy and teary-eyed over old pictures of my kids, because I'd never have gotten it done! Thankfully, Kelsey actually enjoyed the scrapbook (even if she does still say that scrapbooking is silly), and all of our new friends and "family" got a good glimpse at all the years leading up to our move here--including pictures that they could compare all of the girls with, and the general consensus is that each of the little girls looks somehow "just like Kelsey" in their own way, yet they all look completely unique. God is truly an artist when it comes to creating biological "art"!

At any rate, we now have another high school graduate...and possibly another future in-law (??); regardless, this mom is tired. Emotionally, physically, and mentally. I just don't want to think for a while, if that's okay with everybody. After the last week, my brain needs some time off. Especially since we spent a week semi-worrying (and praying VERY hard) because the company Pete has been working for since February did NOT get their contract renewed and his job will be disappearing on June 1st......and yesterday, God came through with a HUGE answer to prayer when a much LARGER company with a much more important Defense contract (not to mention....the contract is long-standing and renewed!) contacted him and offered him a job doing exactly what he'd hoped to be doing when he retired from the Army! God truly does provide! But my brain....it's fried.

I hope y'all will excuse me whilst I do a little bit of brain renewing. I need to read and reboot. I'm SOOOO glad I've gotten next school year "covered" already so all I have to do over the summer is get to know the materials that already fill our schoolroom! Yay for preplanning!

Oh yeah....here's our newest homeschooled grad, Kelsey!

"Just" the ten of us...

This picture was taken the day before Jon left for Afghanistan, at a park not too far from Fort Campbell. We'd gone up there early that Sunday to meet him and Chelsey at church, go out for lunch, and then spend the day together. It's one of those memories all of us will hold onto till we get to see him again in November.

Funny thing about this picture...I'm sure to the other folks around us that day, our entourage looked huge! Consider that we also had two others with us--Pete's father and his wife--so there were a total of twelve of us both at Golden Corral for lunch and then wandering around the park that afternoon. To us, though, it doesn't feel so "huge"; ten just feels like family. When I look back at pictures of our family when it was just four of us, I'm reminded just how positively tiny it looked...and incomplete.

Do we feel like our family is "complete" now, with seven children and the prospect of having more naturally not a possibility anymore? No, we don't. To be perfectly honest, both Pete and myself ache for an even larger family; we just knew that adding to our family naturally was not just dangerous for my health, it was a risk neither one of us wanted to take. Call that a lack of faith if you want, but it's a decision that was definitely made with much prayer and self-seeking. We know our motivations were right this time, and while we're "okay" with it, the prospect of not bearing anymore natural children does bother both of us. You know what? If God were to want to grow our family further via adoption, we'd both be thrilled! I'm sure we'd have to pick all of the grandparents up off of the floor...but children ARE a blessing, no matter how shocking their addition is to any family!

Our family is really nowhere near complete, I hope! By the end of next month, we will have two children who have graduated from high school and we know it is the natural course of things for them to strike out on their own and begin families of their own. It's not a sad thing for our "nest" to begin emptying--it's what is supposed to happen! However...as our nest empties, the nests of each of our children will, hopefully, begin filling up. I hope one day to need to "move" our dining room into the bonus room that is now the girls' bedroom! I hope one day we'll NEED a Duggar-sized table to seat all of our family members. It is my dream to have holidays that are just busting at the seams with sons-in-law, a daughter-in-law, and a ton of grandchildren! Oh...and it has been our hope and prayer for years to be able to have a church family that functions almost as a biological family--and we have that here finally!

So yes, we're actually making plans to extend our family to FAR more than "just the ten of us"! I hope that's God's plan for our family too!

Lessons Learned

I was thinking the other day that Pete's vasectomy reversal and the five children we've been blessed with following that reversal have given us a very unique set of circumstances--we really DO get to "do it over". I've often heard parents of teens or young adults talk about what they'd do differently if they had the chance to, and what's ironic is that MOST of them would have been stricter. I guess that's a sad fact of my generation--still trying to eek out from under the iron fists of the baby boomers, we went a direction that led us and our children down a path we'd have avoided had we known the outcome.

Well....I know that outcome, and I'm blessed with the awesome task of somehow correcting mistakes with the second "set" of children. Don't get me wrong; I don't think my older two children are hopelessly broken or that they're awful people. Quite the contrary. Both Jon and Kelsey are pretty good kids, now that we're past the "worst" of their rebellion (I hope). Problem is...somehow we missed the mark in training them how to be holy--and by "holy" I don't mean self-righteous Pharisees, but in the truest sense of the word--set apart for God's purposes. Unfortunately, giving in to many of the things that even our Christian parent-peers were doing with their own children has left our children blind to the fine line between black and white. I want to be sure that our younger children learn to detest the "gray area" just as much as the darkness. THAT is where we went "wrong".

I know I'm not going to earn the Mother of the Year award for any of this; I really couldn't care less about that. I just want to see my children grow up to love the things of God more than the things of this world. And it is not going to come easy to any of us. I can't sacrifice too much more than I already have with the first two--except my comfort. This is going to be hard work for me, and most of it is new territory, because I know of very few people who hold their children to higher standards than their worldly neighbors; most Christians, it's sad to say, are just like "everybody else" except they may not participate in the "truly" sinful stuff. Is it any wonder that a whole generation of children raised in the church are spiritual midgets without true conviction not only regarding doctrine but also conduct, thoughts, and what they worship?

What would God say about the quasi-idolatry of putting things, friends, "fitting in", and entertainment (yes, entertainment....look at what most youth groups around the country DO and you'll see what I'm talking about) before the true task of living God's purposes in our life? What would God say about how floppy most Christians' definition of idolatry is?

Pete and I have a growing list (based on the results we've seen with our older children and their peers) of things that we're doing differently with the younger girls. Listed by themselves, each thing would be considered a tyrannical abomination to most kids/teens.

I.

Don't.

Care.

From here on out, if it doesn't fulfill God's purpose for my children, it won't be happening. Sorry. My girls' lives will be far from "bland", I can assure you. They will have friends, as do their parents; they will have enjoyable activities; they will have everything they need. But as far as the "rest" goes.....

As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.

I am in LOVE with these pictures!

So....my son is engaged to a wonderfully well-rounded young lady who just so happens to be a pretty talented photographer! First, I was just thrilled she was raised in the church; then I was beside myself with glee over the fact that she has wanted to be a stay-at-home mom her entire life and was "just waiting for the right guy to come along"; then it tickled me pink to learn that she pretty much homeschooled herself her senior year and now wants to homeschool whatever children God blesses them with (they're wanting six boys--hey, did I mention she's a glutton for punishment? LOL). I'm a very happy mother-in-law-to-be, and Chelsey and I do get along really well. GREAT! And then this.....
The girl has an artist's eye, and it's (as she'd put it) UBER talented, already at the tender age of 19! She set up this shot, handed the camera to Jon, and then popped her nose (and glasses) in the pic below:

Have I mentioned how much I just LOVE those pictures??? I've got them in black and white on my walls already.

Sigh....

The first "set" of birthdays

I'm terrible at this "keeping up" thing.

A whole month ago, our not-so-little Jamie turned five. That is HARD to believe, for some reason. I still can't wrap my mind around her being so OLD already! She plays the part well, though. Learning to tell time (she's got it down to the hour now, yay!), learning to read, learning to add, learning how to spell everything under the sun, coloring with detail that shocks us....she's not a baby or even a toddler anymore. I guess when you deal with potty training, bottles, and sippy cups all day, you just don't get to think about how quickly the older ones are growing up right under your nose! Jamie truly loved turning five and being the "same age" as Morgan for a whole 15 days!

Just two weeks and two days after Jamie's birthday, we celebrated another birthday (aside from Dani, who has her "own" birthday in October, our kids have birthdays in two's!) as Morgan turned six! Complete with the missing front tooth that she refused to show off in pictures, Morgan "defines" all that is six years old. She wants to do EVERYTHING that older people do. She even wants to do the dishes! This year, (FINALLY!!!!!) Morgan has a new "love" other than princesses--Hello Kitty! Better. I can deal with Hello Kitty; the princess thing made me a wee bit nauseous at times!

Next "set" of birthdays is next week! For the first time, we won't be with Jon on his birthday. Can we send a cake to Kandahar?

Moving along...

We've been moving toward this day for twenty years, and now that it's here, it feels a tad anticlimactic. That's okay. We've had too much excitement over the last oh, seven years, we are welcoming a bit of calm transition with open arms.

At long last, after what seems like a lifetime of preparation and paperwork, Pete signed the last of his military forms today. Walking out of the transition office with a HUGE smile on his face, he said simply, "I'm done." And with that, his military career ended. Like I said, it was anticlimactic. We then went over to the post exchange and purchased that all-important "Retired Army" baseball cap that is standard for retirees, and picked out a "US Army Retired" window cling for each of our vehicles. You could say he's just SLIGHTLY excited. I have lost count of the times today he's said "I'm retired!"

What's pretty funny about today is that when we left the house this morning, he had an odd look on his face; offering a penny for his thoughts, he obliged and told me, "This feels like I'm stepping off the edge of a cliff into a fog, where I can't see anything below my feet but I *know* that the ground is just a couple of inches down under the fog". Pretty heavy stuff all of a sudden. I think that's the most philosophical he's gotten in several years! Needless to say, he stepped right onto that ground and will take the first few steps into what other retirees have described as "a whole 'nuther world" on Monday, when he starts his job a few miles from where he's worked for 18 months. This time, his work day is fixed; he will have a real, dependable schedule, but he'll have to choose what to put on when he dresses himself. Big changes!

As if ONE huge life change wasn't enough, our son added yet another BIGGIE to our day when he showed up unexpected with a "gift" for his girlfriend...Grandma, sit down. Our not-so-little boy, all on his own, went and picked out a beeeeutiful 5/8 karat diamond, set in white gold, and proposed tonight. She. Said. Yes. In a year or so, after he comes back from Afghanistan, we'll be gaining another daughter! He's done pretty well for himself this time, and we couldn't be happier. Now to introduce her to the complexities of being an Army wife!?

I am really beginning to understand Pete's cliff/fog metaphor!

Video of Kasey

I'm putting this here mostly because I just really don't like YouTube and Grandmas needed a way to see what Kasey's up to these days. Trying to crawl, already! Just too much going on, she's far too ready to be in the mix! You gotta love "the lip", too....

It's all about the accessories!

When Shelby first found this little purse, we thought it was sort of funny how she had to "wear" it around the house. Then she did it again when she got up the next day. And the next. And then Pete told me that I really should be taking pictures of her doing this...I'm sure when I get settled and get my scrap stuff out again, these pics are going to make an adorable scrapbook page highlighting her affinity for her little red purse. A girl's just gotta have a good bag!!! Stealing Daddy's coffee mug and snitching the last few drops...Ooh.....a new accessory--gotta be just like big sis and have a cell phone!I've forgotten...what is it that BOYS carry around???

Change is not a bad thing!

Change is something a military family comes to accept as a way of life. Things are constantly in motion. Our family has moved thirteen times in Pete's twenty-year career. The temporal nature of life is the only thing that really seems permanent. Ironic, no?

Standing in the threshhold of a new way of life, Pete and I (but especially Pete, who was also the son of a career soldier) are having a bit of a rough time adjusting our brains to think bigger than a three-year assignment. It's not easy to make the transition from the "dictated" way life has been lived for the last two decades to thinking that WE will be making the decisions from here on out. Where we live, when we take vacation time, our school schedule, all of it has been determined by the military for so long. You just tend to forget how that gets done when someone isn't telling you how to do it! Just the simple thought that this house we'll close on next week could actually be our HOME for the next.....well, till it's paid off.....that's not as easy to wrap our minds around as you'd think! We're learning fast, though!

The change in our children....that's another story altogether. What's funny is that every now and then, we run across someone at a homeschool or church function who remembers us from the very first time we lived here, nineteen years ago. They'll say something about how they remember that REALLY young couple with the little baby boy who loved to bounce on Mama's lap, and how MUCH things have changed now that the little boy is an adult and we're toting around his six little sisters. Believe me, we're reminded all too often of how quickly kids grow up. We'll have one of our girls talking about being a bride for Halloween while another is actually older than I was when I wore a wedding dress for real! We're all too aware that it seems like just yesterday that the child who is now preparing to deploy to Afghanistan was laying on the couch learning how to get his hands into his mouth to chew on. And we know it won't be long till our little stairstep girls are all the same height. Maybe that's another "side effect" of having such a large separation between our olders and youngers--we can actually SEE how quickly they go from babies to adults!

I'm reminded daily that I just have to be more diligent in taking GOOD pictures of the kids--and that they really do need to be labeled, because oh MY....our girls have a bad habit of looking just way too much alike at different phases of life! We took an impromptu trip over to the Botanical Gardens last weekend and got some pretty good pics; now I just need a few of their brother (that don't show the horrid tattoos he's defiled himself with) and the time to actually do some scrapbooking so I can freeze at least one moment in time.

Kelsey, age 17, and a senior in high school. She's sporting the "Kate" hairdo that her beau Chris has finally convinced her to grow out. YAY!!!Morgan, 5 and a half years old (that half matters!) and old enough to know how to work scissors....notice the inch-long bangs that Mom had to camouflage by pulling what was left up in a hair bow?Jamie, at four (and a half...again, that half is oh-so-important!), is just absolutely beside herself that she doesn't have any loose teeth yet like big sis Morgan. Slow down, short stuff....all in time! Jamie will probably also be the one to be the most freaked-out by the actual tooth-pulling process!I can't tell you how hard it was to get a good picture of Danica that didn't involve a goofy smirk, closed eyes, a stuck-out tongue, or some other oddity. I know, she's three....it comes with the territory!Something tells me Shelby will be our "model". NO, we aren't putting any of our kids into the modeling business, BITE YOUR TONGUE! I simply mean she's going to be the most photogenic child, the one most comfortable in front of a camera. And that SMILE.....she's got her daddy's killer smile. Be still, my heart.Yep, Kasey's me made over. Down to the unwillingness to be photographed smiling. Already. At three months, she already detests the camera. I feel ya, kiddo! I don't want to close my eyes. If I do, they'll be grown up and gone! No fair...

Birthdays....well-belated!

Over both blog breaks--one intentional, the other *forced*, I have managed to miss blogging about two birthdays (three, if you count Kasey's actual birth day!)....oh, the SHAME!!!! I shudder to think about how behind I am in actually getting memories hard-copied into my scrapbooks...but I know "eventually" I'll get the opportunity to catch up, right? There WILL come a day when I'm not swamped with diapers and phonics lessons and grading chemistry quizzes and laundry and dinners...all too soon, I imagine.

ANYway....our first "missed" birthday was Shelby's. Our little ham turned one back in August, just a week after her baby sister was born! We didn't have a huge party (not our style), but we did have a couple of close friends over from church to eat and celebrate and eat and play and eat some more. What is it about church-folk and eating? Seems we can't get together without food!? Oh well, Shelby didn't mind. She was a tad overwhelmed with the whole cake deal, only getting her little chubby hands slightly messy with icing. I think we finally had not too many gifts, too, because she wasn't buried in presents and she managed to enjoy every one of them! That's something we've struggled to do with each child--figure out how much is just flat-out TOO MUCH. It's not easy, because it's in our nature to just lavish the stuff on our kids, but we know in the end, it's really not good for them to just have everything heaped on them. Shelby still plays with every one of her birthday gifts (and there's a Toys 'R Us gift card we still haven't even used yet! Maybe this weekend?), so nothing got lost in the pile this time! Yay! I think we're going to stick with the limited "stuff" for Christmas and future birthdays too. It was nice to just enjoy the day!

Shelby is fourteen months old now, and she's just a little ray of sunshine in our family. I simply cannot imagine NOT having her and we are so thankful that God blessed us with this little character! She became pretty attached to Daddy during my recovery time from the c-section, but now that I'm back to "normal" she's gone right back to being very much a Mama's girl. Shelby is my second left hand--she's sitting right here "helping" me as I type, in fact. She just has to be doing whatever I'm doing, and she LOVES feeling like one of the big girls. Speaking of big, she's our largest baby, even now that she's been walking a few months and is thinning out. She's a chunker, and she's got the weight to go along with her fluff! She's also got plus-sized personality--Shelby is definitely a showgirl to the core! We can't wait to see how her little character develops as she grows and matures!
Our little glam gal...
The other birthday I missed blogging about was our three-year-old, Danica. Unfortunately, it's all too easy for one child to slip into the background, and if we weren't careful, Dani would do just that. She's a "background" kind of kid, the type who is happy to be doing something that no one else will ever see. She doesn't do well in big groups, so a family party was more than enough this year. We did have big brother Jon down from Fort Campbell for the weekend to help us celebrate, so that was an extra treat for Dani! This year, she chose to have her ears pierced for her birthday (mostly so she could be like Morgan and Jamie), and we were shocked when all she did in reaction to having been double-gunned was utter a mildly surprised "Ow!" This isn't a great pic, but you can see her little red heart earrings she's so proud of!

Dani was the first of our kids to have a store-bought cake that wasn't a Carvel ice cream cake, with the lone exception being Jonathan's first birthday, nineteen years ago! That's a LOT of cakes, y'all! Oh, and for the record, Target makes a really yummy chocolate sheet cake! I've never had such a moist store-bought cake!Our family is going to be having some major changes before our next "round" of birthdays, but we're hoping that one of the changes is having Dani figure out the whole potty thing. She CAN handle wearing panties, but most of the time she's just not interested. She doesn't seem to care about being wet (even when she's just saturated our brand new couch like this morning) and frankly, I've not got the wherewithall to get serious about potty training right now. All of our other kids have pretty much decided like overnight that they wanted to be out of diapers, so we don't have any experience truly "training" for pottying....I'm sure she'll be out of diapers by her next birthday but it sure would be nice to have just TWO in diapers, ya know?

Warning to newbie moms...

This is what happens when you assume that your 13-month-old is quiet because she's engaged in some constructive activity behind you underneath the table as you check your email. (Notice the shirt.)

She spends five minutes taste-testing her big sister's markers. This, my friends, is why ALL markers in a house with children should be washable. And non-toxic. This is also why we keep a very good stain-remover on hand. In bulk.Note to self.....remove the mute button (aka, pacifier) next time you check your email. Laundry, anyone?

Houston, we have a problem...

Shoe overload!!! With six girls in the house (of course, only five wear shoes), we are amassing a terrifying mountain of footwear. What's more, we can never seem to find even one pair of appropriate foot attire for every person that has an available match! Why? Well, I dunno...you look...
My intentions were good. I had a shelf, dedicated to shoes, right there in the closet. No such luck keeping things organized, though. Methinks we're going to have to break out the big guns for this organizational project!