Category: Yearly Goals

It’s been an interesting week, full of activity.  This was a week for immunizations, appointments, trips to the post office.  Lots of little things that are necessary but which can also be frustrating.  I also taught a friend how to bake bread, put together a bulk food order and took care of the purchasing, packing and delivery of the food.  We threw a birthday in the mix as well, along with birthday shopping.

Yesterday while my husband and son were in the mountains for the opening day of snowboarding I took seven children to the mall so two of my daughters could spend their birthday money on a pair of Toms and have them custom painted at a Nordstrom’s event.  And for the record, I don’t especially recommend taking seven young children to the mall, especially when you need to hang out in one spot while people paint shoes.  I have no idea how many times my little ones went up and down the escalators, but it was a lot.  We finished off with a trip to Krispy Kreme with report cards in hand for free donuts.  It was a fun outing, but it was also exhausting.  I find that being in crowded places while keeping track of my children is overstimulating for me and I always come home drained.

Sometimes I wonder how Saturdays are supposed to work.  You’re supposed to use them to take care of all the work that doesn’t get done during the week plus any family work projects, run errands, do something fun, provide opportunities for your kids, participate in sporting activities.  Because I believe in the law of the Sabbath, Saturday also needs to be used to prepare for Sunday which also means preparing for Monday.  We do homework, make sure clothes are taken care of for the next week, and make sure lunches will be ready as well.  So why is it, when I need to do three days worth of work on Saturday, that I expect it to be an easier day?

I find that weeks like this, when every day holds unusual activities, take a real toll on how our family functions because it profoundly affects my productivity.  There is less time for cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc.  The house gets cluttered which also means people start losing things.  I have multiple time-sensitive things I’d love to blog about but no time to even log in.  Although I know they are necessary sometimes, I really dislike weeks that throw us off.

Coinciding with the busy schedule came an unexpected factor:  my heart.  For some reason I wasn’t entirely myself this week.  I’ve had this trembling inside, this feeling of worry gnawing at me regarding my real work as a mother.  I could tell myself that I’m doing great because I took care of the shots, the birthday shopping, the errands and so forth, but instead I’ve been filled with an awareness of the enormity of what I really need to accomplish as a mother, and it has me shaking in my shoes.   It’s more than feeding them every day, clothing them, keeping track of homework and doctors appointments and playdates (although to a degree those things alone make me shake sometimes).  It’s about what they’re becoming, about spending enough time connecting with them to really know what’s going on inside, about purposefully planning so that they will grow emotionally and spiritually in healthy ways.  It’s about finding enough time to talk about the things that matter, time to teach them, time, time, time.  And so often life gets in the way of life.  The homework, important as it is, sometimes prevents us from doing what really matters, and sometimes it makes me tremble inside.  Such was my week.  I cannot count the times I blinked back the tears stinging at my eyes and thought of the words, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.  Not as the world giveth, give I unto.  Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”  I will do my best, but sometimes it makes me weep to realize how far from good enough my best really is.

What I really need is a couple of days of quiet to read, plan, pray, regroup.  I keep thinking that if I could do this I would feel more centered and better able to face each day, but every time I sit down in a quiet room someone follows me in with a need or a problem and I have to make do with about 45 seconds of quiet instead.  I can get by on that sometimes, but this week it felt entirely insufficient.  (Once again, back to my daydream:  one week alone in my house.)

I missed the sun this week.  Several times around 11:00 a.m. I asked myself, “What is wrong with me?  Why do I feel like this?” and then realized it still seemed like 4 a.m. in the house because it was so gray outside.  I’m praying we get some sun this winter because I really don’t know how to prepare myself for 5 months of gray.

I hope this post doesn’t sound like I’m complaining.  I’m not.  It’s my life and I chose this.  It simply turned out that my schedule and my heart had some badly timed irregularities this week which made things complicated.  I can say this:  prayer helps, and things always work out.

So in the habits department I guess I feel like I’m holding a lot of loose ends that need attention.  I need to whip the house into shape,  get back on top of everyone’s grades and assignments, plan Thanksgiving, wrap up projects and clean my studio.  Mostly, though, I need to pause.  I need to find a way to slow down, pause, and get my heart right.  And finish reading all the assigned take home books with all the children earlier so we have time to cuddle on the couch with some real literature.  That kind of thing.  It will be wonderful to have them all home for a few days over Thanksgiving.  Perhaps I’ll be able to pull it together this week.

I am grateful for what I’m learning.  I am grateful to have been trusted with such a great work.  I am grateful for my life, for my children, for my challenges and even for my personal weaknesses which are humbling me so deeply and opening my eyes to all I need to learn.  And I’m grateful for a husband who’s in the ring with me.  I couldn’t do it without him.

Life is good.  Happy Thanksgiving week, everyone.
Jennifer

Here we are.  November marches on and the holiday season approaches.

If you looked at my laundry room right now, you’d think that things are under control.  I’m all caught up; it’s washed, folded, put away and the house is relatively clean.  If you looked at my studio, you’d wonder what kind of explosion happened in there, and once I assured you there wasn’t one you’d recognize the mess as evidence of a woman whose mind is racing with too many ideas, too many plans, too many projects (along with a few invasions by a certain two year old I adore).  I know I should slow down, cross some of it off the list, and relax.  I can’t.  There is too much I want to do, too much I have to do, and too many special things upcoming for me not to work like a crazy woman in every spare minute I can find.  I do feel like I’m keeping it all in perspective, which is why the laundry is done.  I’m learning to squeeze things into tiny pinches of time without throwing off the family (or maybe I’m dreaming, and just wish I could learn that, but I really am trying).

Let’s see, how did the week go?

Well, in some ways it went really well.  I went from feeling deeply discouraged about my ability and potential in raising teenagers, and if I’m really humble I’ll admit to some discouragement about the ability and potential of the teenagers as well.  Seriously, where are their brains?  But that’s not worth discussing now, because if anybody knew the answer to that question I wouldn’t be asking.  Oh, how I wish I had some experience in this area!  I took a step back, prayed a lot, tried to do a better job of listening, tried to understand my role as a parent, and really sought to feel and communicate more love.  It helped.  It didn’t change the child, but it tempered my behavior, which is really all I can control, and I feel thankful.  I do feel like, although I’m still a rookie and don’t know anything, I’m growing as a mother.  I’m slowly getting better.  As for a soft reply, let’s just say that when a certain teenager slammed into a wall today and made an 8 inch strip of plaster fall off, I had nothing negative to say.   That wouldn’t have happened a few months ago.

In the same area, I tried to connect with my children this week and felt that I had some really good experiences with many of them.  I have one child who has really struggled with her homework.  She avoids it and often cries for more than an hour over her math homework.  This after being a math whiz last year!  I have prayerfully tried to help her and we had a small breakthrough this week.

Healthy eating.  I haven’t mentioned this for a few weeks because I haven’t made any progress and it’s been difficult to motivate myself to be super strict.  I have, however, kept the weight I lost off, and am slowly working my way to where I need to be.

Housekeeping.  These habits were among those that weighed heavily on me at the beginning of the year.  I have some areas that still need help, like the bathrooms, where I need to work out a better schedule for staying on top of them (like maybe clean them all every 30 minutes?) but in other areas I’ve really gained ground this year.  The children are much better at maintaining their bedrooms, the toy room is clean most nights, and while things can get torn apart in 15 minutes flat, I can put them back together pretty quickly too.  This weekend we cleaned out the van and organized the bike/toy/random everything area of the garage.  The basement was also addressed.  I’m working hard and it feels good.

Creativity.  I am so grateful for every opportunity to be creative, and feel blessed to have fit some of those moments into the week.  It really calms me down.

I was thinking this week that my record keeping has really fallen off this year.  While I’ve grown in my capacity to recognize the Lord’s hand in my life, I haven’t written those experienced down enough, and my miracle box is lacking many of  little details which would have been such a blessing to go back and read.  I feel a little sad about that and wish I’d done a better job of adding that layer to our lives.  I also haven’t written in the childrens’ journals for a while and I need to repent.  I’ve had to become more strict with myself about getting to bed at night so I can get us going in the mornings and I haven’t left room anywhere for that kind of record keeping.  I need to schedule time to capture all that I can still remember.

While we’re on the topic of poor performance, I haven’t been a very good friend.  In some ways I think I’m a great friend, but the stage I’m in is so intense from early morning until late at night without a pause that I’ve fallen out of the habit of fitting in time to nurture friendships.   It’s not something I ever thought would happen to me, and I certainly didn’t plan it, but here I am and it makes me feel so sad.  I want to work at being a better friend.

On Friday we raised the flag for Veteran’s Day in honor of my Grandpa who passed away in June.  It was really sweet to watch my children do it all themselves.  We miss him and hope he knows we love and remember him.

I got to see my sister this week, and we also got to see our brother and his wife who were in town from Spokane.  We all met at the new Crate and Barrel store that opened Friday in Utah.  Hooray for my favorite store!  And hooray for a mini reunion!  There were some things I would have loved to buy, but I was good and left them all there.

You know, life is crazy.  But it’s also wonderful.  I’m learning to smile more at both the good and bad.  I’m so grateful to be alive.

Jennifer

Here I am again, facing the beginning of a new week with mixed feelings.  I love this time of year.   In some areas our family slows down and in others my life seems to go on fast forward.   There is so much to do, so much to catch up on after fall sports slow down, so many things on my wish list of tasks to complete.  And yet it’s also a time of year that beckons me to slow down, snuggle under  a warm quilt and read a book.  Finding a healthy balance between the two can be tricky.

Was it really just Halloween last Monday?  Where did the week go?

I was good to my house this week.  A lot of little things finally got done and I like how much better things look and feel.  And here’s a newsflash:  I’m three loads away from being caught up on laundry!  Woo hoo!  I haven’t been this close to caught up in months.  The other amazing thing about it is that I’ve been really disciplined about getting everything folded and put away.

The down side is that when I get in a good housekeeping groove I always end up promising myself that when it’s completely clean then I’ll do such and such.  The thing is, I never quite get there.  It’s really never all clean at the same time.  I end up chasing the impossible when I should just accept “close” and take a few minutes to do other things that also matter to me.  Because I so easily fall into this trap I’ve had this growing tension, a desire to be creative.  It gets worse at this time of year when there are so many projects I want to finish both for the holidays and because I promised myself I’d do it this year.  I’m going to find a better balance this week.

Let’s see, the biggest surprise of the week came on Friday as I was driving home from the grocery store.  I had my window down an inch or two and was in the left turn lane of an intersection when suddenly I felt a sharp pain in my right leg.  I looked down at my lap and saw a wasp on my jeans.  I wanted to do three things simultaneously:  drive properly, kill the wasp, and cry because my leg hurt so bad.   But because my leg hurt I didn’t want to smash the wasp on my lap and risk another sting.  So I tried to brush it off and keep track of where it crawled to while I also kept my eye on the road and blinked back tears.  It was an interesting thing to think about on the way home, trying to decide what bothered me most:  the pain, knowing a wasp was crawling around inches away from me, and feeling annoyed with the construction worker that didn’t want to let me turn down my street.  Two days later I have a four inch round circle on my leg from the sting that has gone from being swollen and warm to the touch to what I think will be an ugly bruise.

The funniest discovery of the week came this afternoon when my seven year old daughter told all of us what she thought her older brother’s full first name was.  And it’s not his name.  It makes me laugh so hard to think that all these years she’s never once heard us call him that name and yet she was sure it was his name anyway.  Children are so funny!

I feel good about my efforts in the kitchen lately.  I’ve been focusing on more variety and more from scratch.  Yesterday we turned my kitchen into a bakery for my daughter and two friends to make cupcakes in.  I enjoyed teaching them some new things and they were adorable!

I also let most of the children spend more time with friends this weekend.  Not a big deal except that for me doing the whole friend thing is really stressful.  I don’t know why.  I just know that when my children have friends over I can’t relax, which means that all day Friday and Saturday I was battling major stress for 9-10 hours straight.  I’m consciously working on it in the hope that I’ll become a more relaxed mom when crowds are around.  On Friday night we had the soundtrack from Tangled blaring in the family room for hours as girls of many ages danced and sang at the top of their lungs.  It was incredibly loud, but also very cute.  And the timing was perfect:  our 14 year old son was away on a campout… in a snowstorm.  We made late night trips for Slurpees and last night I watched my husband take on three 14 and 15 year old boys in a wrestling match and pin them all in two or three minutes.  Sometimes it’s a healthy thing for Dads to dominate.

I feel good about the choices I made this week.  I feel good about the things I sacrificed for better things.  I feel good about the direction we’re moving in, even if we’re moving much more slowly than I’d like.   Slowly, slowly I’m getting the hang of this whole mother of 8 world I live in.  And I’m praying my children turn out to be much better than I am, in spite of me.

Have a great week!

Jennifer