Disordered details, cute quips, and other November nonsense

This month has been a whirlwind.  I feel like my mind, emotions, and concerns have been all over the place, so this recap of miscellaneous happenings in November may be as scattered as my mental state is right now.  Yet, these catch-all posts tend to be some of my favorite because they are such a real reflection of the day-to-day chaos of our lives that could possibly be sacred moments in which God in imprinting His grace and truth into our lives. With that intro, let the ping-pong post commence.

Bucking Bronco and Frolicking Foal have now entered their third and final year of Y-Princesses (sniff, sniff).  At the fall outing, they made survival bracelets for each other.  They wore them all weekend, and I wonder how many parents noticed the pink cord bracelet around my husband's wrist during our son's birthday party that weekend.  I love that he is manly enough to love and honor our daughter..even if it means donning his least favorite color, pink.

Please note the silver Acura pictured in the top left corner of the photo above.  That car has been a money pit from day one, but my husband has kept it because he says it's fun to drive because it has a manual transmission, fun features, and a high performance engine.  In his mind, "high-performance" means "speed and acceleration",  but in my mind, in only means premium only gasoline. After a crazy ordeal with each of us driving all over multiple counties trying to meet up with one another, my husband finally got my girl in his car and drove her to the Y-Princess camp area.  However, once he parked it, he never drove it again.  The car would not start when they were ready to leave, which was especially alarming since they both needed to get home in time for our son's birthday party scheduled to begin two hours later.  So, he called a tow truck, and I picked them up at the auto-repair shop.  We ended up paying hundreds of dollars for minor repairs and another chunk of change for a rental car* only to find out that the car also needed a new timing chain which we had already replaced at least once not long ago.  So we ended up junking the Acura and buying him a new Hyundai Genesis.

*Note: When AAA car car centers say they will complete the diagnostic check in 30 minutes, that really means they will not even look at your car for another three days, so go ahead and get a rental.

 

He likes his new car.  It practically drives itself with more automated features and buttons than some spaceships....or so it seems.  The two thick manuals that came with it are overwhelming to read, so we've been learning what it can do via trial and error. As long as it gets me from point A to point B, I'm happy, but I am concerned about the ridiculous number of modes of failure with everything so automated. The car has helped my husband's mood during an exceptionally stressful and hectic period of life, so anything that makes life easier right now is a worthwhile expense.

When my parents drove up for our son's birthday party, they brought some old photographs.  I immediately noted the similarities between my daughter and me when I was closer to her age.  Check out this comparison of me on my 6th birthday and my daughter at age 8.

So, I wonder if, when she's a teenager, she'll look in the mirror and see this image:

My Senior Prom

To find out what I truly hope she sees in the mirror, read "Parenting Your Mini-Me".

My daughter continues to speak my #1 love language by leaving me thoughtful notes.  One evening this past week, I attended one of the best LAMBS socials ever. I remember commenting after the social that I would rather sit around discussing God's word with like-minded women and lifting each other up in prayer than attend the most elaborate gala. 

Proverbs 27:17
As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.

As I was driving home, I was thinking how much I needed that social and didn't think the evening could get any better until I saw this note from my daughter lying on my bed.

 

My daughter isn't the only one who has encouraged me with written words this past month. On one especially difficult day, I arrived at my PE class to immediately be showered me with gifts and words of encouragement from my students.  I always rejoice to see God answer prayers, but when He does so through the words of a precious child, it is ever sweeter.  One student went the extra mile by making me a Christmas card that honored Christ while encouraging me.  While her words may sound like vain flattery, they come from the heart of a child, and knowing this girl as I do, I know her heart was sincere and filled with love as she wrote it. This card is definitely a keeper!  Here's a photo of the inside for my blog book which now serves as my personal keepsake journal.

My son speaks love to me with his words as well.  One evening while I was tucking him into bed, he started talking about his plans for the future and asked when he would be old enough to do those things.  To answer his "when?" question, I said that he probably would not be living here anymore when that took place. He lamented, "But I don't ever want to leave you, Mommy. I want to stay here forever, ...(he pauses as he is thinking)...but does that mean I can't have children if I stay here because I want to be a daddy some day yet still live here."  I'm glad he likes living here, and I'm glad he wants to become a father some day.  Let's just pray that he isn't still living here when he becomes a father.

My knee, neck, and back pains flared up in a big way this month, most likely as a result of increased stressors,  just when I thought I was finally beginning to see some lasting improvement.   It's discouraging to have spent so much money and time driving 30 minutes each way up to four times a week for chiropractic care for years only to see the pains return, but more days than not, my back and neck are still much improved.  Now I mainly just need to get my knee to cooperate and my plantar fasciitis and achilles tendonitis to fully heal.  I am thankful to now own an ultrasound machine and to have a live-in ultrasound technician to assist with the application of gel and sound waves.

 

In all the craziness that November brought this year, I totally forgot to do our annual Thanksgiving tree tradition.  Thankfully, the kids' teachers made sure the kids completed lots of Thanksgiving crafts to document what they were most thankful for this year.

Our daughter is thankful for:

• Jesus
• parents
• food
• clothes
• her bed
• teachers
• school (she wrote her school name at least 3 times)
• cousins
• friends
• pets (especially horses)
• grandparents

Our son said he was most thankful for:

• God
• Mom & Dad
• family
• food
• friends
• Ms. Angie (his teacher)
• his school
• his house
• pumpkins
• the world

After celebrating Thanksgiving with my family we slept in on Black Friday.  This cleverly captioned photo sums up my thoughts about Black Friday, but I will admit to doing quite a bit of shopping online that day.

Thanks to a generous Sunday School teacher who let our daughter borrow her felt Bible story flannel boards and felt set, I have discovered a great way to keep the kids entertained.  They will sit quietly for hours assembling various Bible stories with those felts.  Perhaps I should get them some for Christmas or sign the kids up to help in children's ministry.

 

 

Our 8-year-old is a deep thinker.  Here are a few of her recent thoughts on various topics:

Motherhood

 "They say moms have eyes in the back of their heads. So Mom, will you teach me how that works so I can use those eyes when I am a mother?"

Economics
One evening our 6-year-old was reading off the dates on all his one dollar bills. I noted that he better hold onto the one with the oldest date because the fed is printing so much money that bills with older dates will seem rare. The 8-year-old, having recently read Whatever Happened to Penny Candy, said, "Well if they are printing lots of money, then that is going to cause both a recession and inflation." 

While I realize that federal manipulation of interest rates and inflation is far more complex than that book or any of the texts I read for my economics minor in college could explain, my first thought after she made that comment was that maybe we should send that book to Bernanke in case he didn't learn that at Harvard.

Politics
My 8-year-old scribbled out this poem one evening when she wanted her parents to stop discussing current events and begin playing games with her.  Her poem is entitled, "Politics".

Laws, people, government
Add up to one thing
Politics - some think are so important
But make others' ears ring.

Politicians thing they are so great
But that's just not the thing
People get, for no reason, ticked

All because of politics 

...(other verses which I have omitted for the sake of brevity)...

That's my opinion.

You probably don't have the same.

But I don't know what you know

About boring politics.

 
Our 6-year-old doesn't think quite as deeply yet, but his thoughts sure do amuse me.  One morning, I splurged a little by serving him a processed, sugary cereal.  When he saw the cereal box, he asked, "Does it have honey or pollen in it?"  

He does like to think deeply about mathematics, though.  He recently asked me if anyone has ever counted to a googolplex. If not, then he wanted to be the first. I warned him that he would be busy counting for a really long time.  He kept at it until his daddy shot him with a Nerf gun signaling an invitation to battle.   He may enjoy counting, but Nerf gun wars are prioritized much higher in his mind.

While he likes mathematics, he does not enjoy the study of finance. Recently, he kept listing all the things he wanted us to get him for Christmas until I explained to him that there just wasn't enough money in our Christmas budget to buy him all those things. So he replied, "Let's DESTROY the word 'budget'!"

And that, my friends, is precisely what is wrong with America today. 

Our son also often thinks about music.  He recently asked me if I knew the song, "Everybody Dance Now". So, I turned my mouth into a beat box, busted a move, and delivered my best impersonation of C&C Music Factory singing that song. I was hoping to impress my little boy, but he simply replied, "I don't like that song."

Our son is learning the art of selective hearing. When listening, he sometimes seems to hear whatever he would really like to hear.  After attending a super crowded gun show in our area one afternoon, my husband said to me, "I saw the perfect pistol for you at the gun show." And our eavesdropping little boy replied: "Did you say missile? Did you buy a missile, Daddy?"

My husband sent me this photo while at the gun show asking me which one he should buy.  I told him to buy ALL of them!  While made in jest, that comment is so unlike me but perhaps a good indication of how topsy turvy the world seems to be right now.

Yet another clue that this month has been unsual for us is that I made some drastic changes to my hair.  After the hair appointment, I went to get my kids at school.  When I walked up to the school to greet my children, and they totally did not recognize me.  All I did was take the color back to my natural color, which has turned considerably darker after my pregnancies, so that I would no longer feel enslaved to my dark roots.

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