Saturday, December 26, 2009

a wonderful life

Today was just awesome. We spent a quiet day enjoying the kids and their excitement. Well, quiet might not be the best choice of word. There is now a wii Beatles Rockband setup in our family room and it has gotten much use today. William got a ton of baseball stuff, Jordan got her beloved itouch and has already downloaded the free texting app, and Grace has her first American Girl doll. We are blessed beyond our needs to say the least.

Tonight Grace was saying her prayers. I love prayertime. It's the sweetest part of the day. I used to encourage them to list everyone in the family, but as the years have gone by I am 100% in favor of letting them pray what is on their hearts and minds. They've taught me so much through this.

So, back to Grace. After praying for her five year old thoughts, she got toward the end of her prayer. All of a sudden she burst into song singing:

Happy Birthday to You!
Happy Birthday to You!
Happy Birthday dear Jesus!
Happy Birthday to you!


She sang at the top of her lungs. Then she went straight into closing the prayer. She looked up at me and said, " I just couldn't let the day end without singing it to HIM one more time!

God knew what he was doing when he made me a parent to this little lively spirit. She teaches me a lesson everytime!

Thursday, December 17, 2009

thankful

Some thanksgiving stuff came off the wall and made it into William's backpack yesterday. I had to laugh when I read what the little thankful message said on his leaf:

I am thankful for
my Dad and Mom.
I would not be born if
they weren't married.


Well, you can't argue with that!

sometimes the mundane gets you

OK, I want to commiserate with you. The holidays are here...filled with good cheer...yada, yada, yada. Right? Can you answer these questions below and make me feel better?

1. What does your "to do" list look like right now? Is it never-ending or can you see the light at the end of the tunnel?

2. What is your favorite part of the holidays?

3. If your kids are in school..well, tell me if you remember so much activity and craziness surrounding this last week before the break.

I'm off to the bus stop right now after a busy day at the school and appointments. I'll have to think about my answers. I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed at the moment. Here is something to help us all get in the spirit:

Friday, December 11, 2009

linkville

One of my friends reminded me this week of how she enjoyed seeing what other people posted as important links on their blogs and facebook pages. I don't take an old school newspaper unless I want the coupons. Besides books I am studying, my learning happens on the web. I'm probably not alone in this form of information consumption. Much of my world revolves around the people I am connected to and the tasks I need to finish by email or otherwise.

I enjoy reading other blogs and newsfeeds. There are some great writers out there and often I see ideas that really stimulate my ideas when I am off the computer. It's often helpful and encouraging. Obviously they are not official resources for writing term papers or verifying medical accuracy, but if you haven't set up a blog feed through one of the services I encourage you to do so. It is a great way to customize your reading material.

Two links that I found interesting this week were from blogs you might enjoy also:

"Robin Raskin's Raising Digital Kids" is an awesome resource if you are parenting a child. In a former life I developed children's software so I've found it a wonderful collection of ideas to supplement our homelife.

Raising Digital Kids

You might be surprised to find a blog called "GeekDad" in my blogroll. It is written by a collection of writers who work for Wired Magazine - some women, some men - who offer a great selection of new ideas and thoughts on "Raising Geek Generation 2.0". After all, our kids are certainly the first set of kids who have wired parents. Here is a recent article on something called a sugarstick...it looks like a thumbdrive, but is proposed as a way to bring computing to kids around the world in a different way.

GeekDad

And, lest you think I am a total techie, let me offer a blog which has intrigued me recently. It's Pioneer Woman by Ree Drummond. She's just a career woman who fell in love with a rancher and moved to the further regions of land ownership and cattle rustling. Know why I'm intrigued? She's like a renaissance woman. She takes awesome photos and features photoshop tutorials in one area of her blog. The next blog post might be some yummy recipe or photos of her basset hound making funny faces. She's wickedly funny and she just wrote a cookbook that is wildly popular. I like her and I haven't even met her. Now, that's good. Here is a link to her homepage:

The Pioneer Woman

We are off to spend a weekend full of Christmas cheer and craziness. Dave has his barbershop shows all weekend - The Big Chicken Chorus: Have yourself a Merry-etta Christmas! and the kids have a sweet play at church which is guaranteed to be fun to watch. Tonight we have a company party for Dave's work. Did I mention the other thousand things that need to be done for the holidays? 'Tis the season, right?

Have a great weekend yourself. Let me know what you think about the links and what you are doing this weekend. I'm interested.

Tuesday, December 08, 2009

out of the mouths

If I were smart, I would record all the funny comments these kids of mine make each day. Every day there is an observation from a young point of view. And usually those comments come with perfect comic timing...not always my preferred timing, but my three are always expressing their opinion on something. It runs in the family I guess.

I'm trying to remember more of these moments. Here's one that happened in the van last week. We were traveling around town. I often put in a cd of stories. Amazingly the kids seem to enjoy it. They normally quieten down and listen the the storyline. I've done this with Peter Rabbit, Magic Treehouse, Little House on the Prairie, and others through the years. It's good entertainment without the mom guilt. The library has a huge selection of them. Recently Wendy's gave out books on cd for happy meal toys. I was all over that. So much better than some plastic thing I trip over and eventually throw away.

I had a Jigsaw Jones Book playing through the CD player. As a sideline to the mystery, a father comes into the kitchen for dinner and gives the mother a big kiss. Grace pipes up loudly and says,

"I don't really mind when you give Daddy a big, sloppy kiss."

To which I replied, "Oh, you don't???"

Now at this moment I had expected Grace to spout about how loving our family was, or how much our marriage meant to her happiness, or something angelic. Instead, in a loud, dry, almost cynical voice I hear these words:

"Naaaah....it's really none of MY business!"

And then I laughed pretty hard. That girl is funny even when she is not trying!