Archive for the ‘family life’ Category
Fishing And A Pregnancy Update
Monday, August 9th, 2010
We went fishing for the first time this weekend. My poor husband has wanted to do this all summer long and we just haven’t gotten around to it yet. So,Saturday while I was at a baby shower, he grabbed the girls and took them fishing. I met up with them after the baby shower. I had originally planned on going home and taking a nice nap (yep, I’m so there right now!!) but then I felt guilty and thought I really should meet up with them and see the girls fishing. Well, I’m glad I did! It was fun and I got some cute pictures. The girls were really more interested in the snacks Mike brought them and throwing rocks in the lake. What can I say? They take after me in that department.
The only thing “we” caught was a snapping turtle.
She makes a cute fisherwoman, right?
My other cute fisherwoman.
I adore them and this picture.
Madelyn with one of her many rock treasures.
Me!
A rare sight. Me in front of a camera instead of behind it! Since I had come straight from the baby shower I was not wearing the most appropriate fishing attire. Those black pants were darn hot!
Now the pregnancy update part:
Yep, still pregnant! It feels weird and exhilarating to write that. And as I do I feel like I’m jinxing it. But, ahem, I don’t really believe it that. I’ll be 7 weeks along this week and I thank God for every day that passes that I continue to stay pregnant. I’ve kind of been walking around holding my breath right now. It’s amazing how oblivious I was to miscarriage with Katelyn and Madelyn. I went along knowing they were common and happened to other women but never thinking it would actually happen to me. Now I’m so aware of that! I don’t want to be a nervous wreck until the first trimester is over but I’m definitely nervous. I really have to keep myself in check. And I know that God has his hand in everything that happens to us. And the reality is(not to be morbid!) anything can happen to this pregnancy, this baby or any of my children at any time. I can’t live my life in fear of this.
{Wow, this update went off the deep end! } So all morbidity aside, I’ve been feeling pretty good. Only a little nausea every now and then. Tiredness is starting to set in. But other than that I can’t complain! I have my first prenatal appointment on the 25th of this month. I really looking forward to that. I really, really , really want to exercise during this pregnancy. I’m also going to try to go to the Chiropractor once or twice a month and see if that keeps the migraines at bay.
If you’ve read this far I thank you.
Peace!
Saying “No”.
Monday, August 2nd, 2010
I’ll admit it. I have a hard time saying “no”. Whether it be to my kids, fattening foods,church ministries, friends or adding more activities to my schedule. And when I do actually decline something (other than the fattening foods!) I feel sooo guilty! Why say “no”, when it feels so good to say “yes”, right?
What I’ve found, however, is that the guilt is not making up for the stress that is being added into my life every time I say “yes” to something. I’m finding that I’d rather feel guilty than stressed and resentful.
Do you struggle with saying “no” to people, things and activities in your life?
I’m slowly learning that saying “no” is not only a good thing, but sometimes a necessary thing. I’m learning that, in this season of my life, I am even having to say “no” to good things, and even, great things. There is just not enough time or child care! While I have small children (and am growing my family) I’m going to have to wait on certain activities and even church ministries. My focus right now is my children and my home.
Church ministries are like crack to me. I love doing them. I love being part of them. Heck, I like starting them! There’s just something that draws me to that sign up sheet and makes me want to sign my name to yet another activity or Bible study. I get this rush of good feelings and excitement at the thought of being a part of a wonderful Bible study or hosting church cookouts. But after the initial rush wears off and the reality of the commitment sets in I start to get resentful at the time it takes. I start noticing that I’m not at home as much, that my housework is piling up, that I’m snapping at my kids more because I’m busy trying to get caught up on stuff that piled up while I was taking a part in another activity I signed up for. Back before I had children taking a part in all of this stuff was a lot easier. Now that I have children my focus needs to be on raising and mothering them.
For instance, here’s a list of things I’d love to be doing or starting right now:
-Hosting a weekly Bible study at my house.
-Starting a drama group at church.
-Singing monthly at the Christian coffee house close by.
-Starting a mother’s group/ play group.
These are all great things and things I really enjoy. But right now I just have to say “NO” to them! There isn’t enough time. And if I tried to keep up with all of this I’d eventually become stressed and resentful and no fun to live with! Right now my focus needs to be at home. My family needs me. My children need my love and unstressed, undivided attention during this period in their lives.
Ecclesiastes 3:1 says “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven”.
This is not to say I’ve given up on all activities and ministries. I have a pretty full plate as it is! Here’s a list of what I/ we are doing in the fall:
-Driving Katelyn half and hour to school and back every day.
-Soccer for Katelyn (thankfully only once a week!).
- Dance for both girls (also once a week).
- Mission Friends on Wednesday nights. ( We will no longer be doing Awana at the other church. I’m teaching the youngest group of children about missions in our new Wednesday night ministry for kids at our church).
-Choir (The rehearsal happens to conveniently fall after Wednesday night activities so I’m doing two things on one night of the week)
As you can see that is plenty for our family right now. Mike has a couple of new things up sleeve as well but those need to be worked out. His time is mostly taken up with work!
We have a new motto we’re trying to apply to our lives and our home right now (oh, especially our home!!): SIMPLIFY!!!! Sometimes, (not all the time) God can teach us and use us even more when we learn to say ” no” ! ( Not to Him, of course)
Another thing I’m having to learn to say “no” to is PERFECTIONISM. My schedule, my home, my children and myself are not going to look perfect or be perfect. I don’t think I’m EVER going to get my house to look exactly the way I want it to at this point in my life. I have to stop stressing about it and do the best I can. And then MOVE ON!!
How about you? Do you have a problem with saying “no”? C’mon, practice saying it with me : ” NNNOOOOOO”
Feels good, doesn’t it?
(Say “yes” )
An Afternoon At The Park
Monday, July 26th, 2010
We went to the new park/playground in our town the other day for some family fun. We took Timber so he could get out a little bit too. It was a fun, much needed, relaxing afternoon.
The girls chased Timber around and he got pooped fast. ( I was holding his leash so that means I was running too!)
Ready, set…..go!
Although the girls had a lot of fun on the playground, they enjoyed running around in the grass the most.
I heart this picture of Madelyn
The girls also loved it that I was chasing them around.(What a sight that was!) Mike did get pictures of that but I consider those black mail pictures. Here we are laying in the grass looking at the clouds. The girls were looking at clouds. I was recovering from running.
Aaaand Timber was ready for a nap. (As was I)
It’s days like these that we’ll remember so it’s important that we do more of this. Our children won’t remember the toys we bought them today in five years. But mom chasing them in the grass? Ten years from now they’ll say ” Mom, remember when you chased us in the grass at the park and you looked really silly? That was fun.”
Sigh.
A Girl And Her Puppy
Wednesday, July 14th, 2010
We acquired a new family over the weekend.
Meet Timber.
He’s our new, 3 month old Siberian Husky. Katelyn loves him. Madelyn is afraid of him. (Although you can’t tell in this picture)
So far he’s been pretty good. He’s not shedding (yet) and his accidents have been minimal inside. Katelyn has taken on the job of taking him outside whenever he needs to go.
She’s very proud of him and is very willing to help out with him (for right now anyway!) I’m not sure how long it’s going to take Madelyn to like him or be willing to be near him. That’s been a challenge so far.
This is about as close as she’ll get to him at this point. There has to be someone in between him and her. Of course, she doesn’t understand that he’s trying to play with her and not hurt her.
Katelyn loves to lay in Timber’s bed too. I think she spends more time in it than he does!
This is going to be interesting! Or crazy. I’ll keep you all updated on how it’s going!
This post is linked to Wordful Wednesday over at Seven Clown Circus.
Defunkifying
Thursday, June 10th, 2010
I find it funny that my sister wrote a post recently about” defunking“. And then the next to last episode of “Glee” was called “Funk”. It seems that a lot of people are in a funk here lately. Is it in the air?
I would hate to trivialize real depression but I think I was suffering a little bit of that as well. Many things were getting to me. I found myself to be totally unmotivated to do anything, sad and just…. blah.
Thankfully I’m getting past all that now. I think the more I didn’t do anything, the more it bothered me and the more it put me into a slump. I received some great encouragement from a couple of friends that really helped me start to snap out of it. I’m starting to get back on track with some things and it feels good.
Here’s a random list 0f what’s been going on in my life the past few weeks:
~I’m back to getting up early to read my Bible and pray. It makes such a huge difference in my day.
~Summer is here! Woohoo! Most, if not all, of my commitments are done for the next few months.
~ We finished all of our floors! We still have a few more projects to finish but everything is coming along nicely. I do have pictures,for those of you who have requested to see the results. We’re having a yard sale soon and I can’t wait to get rid of some of our stuff and get some money for it.
~We finished Financial Peace University! 13 weeks of hard work on our budget and changing the way we handle our finances. The good news is that we’ll be debt free (except for our mortgage) at the end of this month!!
~I started getting back on track with my healthy eating and exercising. Granted, I haven’t actually exercised yet but I’m getting my mindset headed in the direction. I was super discouraged about that for awhile but I know the longer I go without exercising and overeating the more discouraged I’m going to be about that area of my life!
~ The pool is open!
~Katelyn still sees bugs in her bed every now and then. We’ve noticed a pattern, however. When we have, crazy, busy days where our normal schedule is thrown off and she gets overexcited and over tired that’s when she sees bugs. Days where she eats junk food, goes to bed late and has a ton of extra coming and going seem to contribute to her seeing bugs. I’ve really tried to keep her schedule consistent. We also moved her into the bed closest to the door. She begged for that and said it would help her not see bugs. That also seems to have calmed her down a little. She still has at least one episode a week where sees and feels bugs in her bed. She did end up getting MRSA (which was completely unrelated to the bug episode) Mike also got it too. Thankfully we’re all healed up now!
~We’ve had the pleasure of getting to know our neighbors behind us the couple of months. I wish we had gotten to know them a long time ago. They have three adorable girls that my girls love playing with! The girls ages are close ( almost 2, almost 3, 4.5, 5.5ish, 7.5ish) and they are so cute playing together. My neighbor, Jess, snapped these pictures of our girls playing together at her house a couple of weeks ago.
(The youngest little girl is not in these pictures. She’s just as cute as her older sisters. I may have to steal her one day. Ssshh… don’t tell her mom.)
Jess took this awesome picture of Katelyn that I just love…
and another awesome picture of Madelyn!
Seriously, it’s they’ve been a huge blessing to get to know.
Have you ever been in a funk? If so, what do you do to get out of it? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
*~**~*
UPDATED:
Alli from Alli ‘N Son just told me about her new blog carnival called “Thank You Journal Thursday” where you can link up your post about stuff that you’re thankful for in your life. What a great mood lifter. Talk about defunkifying! So, I’m linking this post up to her carnival.
Umbrella
Friday, May 7th, 2010
I got some really good shots this week of the girls playing with their umbrella outside. It was an overcast day and about to rain. While I was watching them play it hit me how God is our umbrella in life.
He shields us from the rains, big and small, of life.
We usually are happy to have God as our umbrella when life is sunny and there’s no rain.
Then life starts to get a little dirty..
And the rain starts to fall and the mud starts to fly
And God sometimes allows us to get a little wet and muddy.
Then we start to complain, worry and cry. Sometimes we lose faith and completely try to get away from His umbrella and do all our own protecting. But God wants the rain to draw us closer to Him. He wants us to gather even tighter under His holy, righteous hand.
No matter how strong the rain and how far away we stray from that perfect umbrella of His hand
He always welcomes us back.
Even if we’re still a little muddy!!
Psalm 84:11
11 For the LORD God is a sun and shield;
the LORD bestows favor and honor;
no good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless.
Psalm 37:23-24
The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and He delights in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down; for the Lord upholds him with His hand.
Top Ten Ways Our Life Is In Disarray Right Now
Tuesday, April 27th, 2010
This week for Top Ten Tuesday I’d like to show you how our life is in a bit of disarray right now. Mike decided to sand and re-stain our bedroom, dining room and playroom floor.
Top Ten Ways Our Life Is In Disarray Right Now
1. EVERYTHING is covered in sawdust. Everything.
This is Mike sanding our bedroom floor. We tried( to no avail) to get our dresser out but it won’t round the corner in our tiny upstairs hallway. It was either leave it in the bedroom or carry it all the way downstairs. And there was no where to put it in our living room! So Mike is doing our bedroom in two steps to work around the dresser!
2. Sleeping arrangements tight.
We’re sleeping In our girls bedroom. We just finished the floors in there so we hadn’t moved them back in there yet. It’s a very messy, over filled, tight squeeze. You should see the room the girls are sleeping in! Then again, it’s probably best that you don’t. There’s no where to walk!
4. Our stuff is crammed into odd places and we can’t get to any closets!
5. Our living is now the dining room and play room as well.
6. Stuff is stacked everywhere and we can’t find anything.
Even our poor birds have something stacked on top of their cage!
7. We can’t get to our basement (where our laundry room is located) from the inside of the house because, yep, there’s stuff stacked at the top of the stairs too. So I have to go outside and go into the basement from the side entrance. It’s been real fun carrying laundry baskets in and out like that. Not!!!
8. I have no convenient “office” to speak of right now so I have not where to put my laptop with our excel spreadsheet on it. All of our bills and paperwork is spread all over the living room and it’s completely disorganized. Our tracking for spending is not up to date and we’re going to have to catch up on all of that.
9. The girls have no where to play! Other than the living room and their bedroom. And you’ve seen the living room. On nice days I send them outside. Thankfully we haven’t had a lot of rainy days. The floors should be finished this week. Mike was supposed to put the last coat of polyurethane on the floors last night but he got home from work at almost midnight so that didn’t happen! The gall!
10. Oh, then there’s this:
But this has put our lives in good disarray! It’s a huge blessing!!
Head over to Oh Amanda for more great Top Ten Tuesday posts!
Wherein Katelyn gets the “Rachel”
Sunday, April 25th, 2010
My girls decided to cut their own hair last week. Don’t ask me why because I thought we were past that stage. Thankfully the damage isn’t too bad.
Okay, first of all, this girl needs to stop growing. She looks fourteen in this picture. See the shorter hair that is framing her face? Yep, that’s what she added herself. It was all one length before. She apparently was going for a “Rachel” hair cut.
Here she decides to start having fun with the fact that I’m taking pictures of her misbehavior. But, if I didn’t do that what kind of mommy blogger would I be?
Think she’s sorry???
Don’t answer that!
Here’s some shots of Madelyn’s hair. Who couldn’t be bothered with us while watching t.v. Or, she may have been sitting on her little potty at the time and didn’t like the fact that I was taking her picture.
But…whatever, right?
She seemed to only have chopped a little chunk of her hair. Her hair has various layers in it since it’s still growing out so this chunk blends in a little better than Katelyn’s layers do.
You can see the chopped layer where it ends right beneath her ear.
Do you think they have futures as hair stylists?
I wanted to share with you some of the funny stuff the girls have been saying recently.
Madelyn insists on being called “Diego”. If you call her “Madelyn” she will calmly say ” My name is Diego.” If Katelyn refuses to call her that she’ll burst into tears and go into hysterics over it.
The other thing Madelyn is going around doing these days is stopping and shouting at me (or whoever else is near by) “ You’re out of the herd!!!
She gets this line from ” Ice Age” which both of the girls adore. She’ll only say it on her terms though. If we stand on our head, bribe and beg her to yell ” You’re out of the herd!!” she refuses to say it.
Madelyn, who is usually my quiet and shy child, found herself quite fascinated by another little girl at dance class the other day. The little girl was playing a hand held video game and her bangs kept falling in to her eyes. Madelyn kept reaching over and wiping her bangs out of her eyes. The little girl just ignored her and kept playing her game. Finally Madelyn looked at me and said ” Does she talk?”
Katelyn has been obsessed with death here lately. She keeps asking me when she’s going to die. Then she’ll say she doesn’t want to die and that she just wants Jesus to take her to Heaven. I’m seriously running out of ideas to get her mind off the subject. I keep telling her she doesn’t have to worry about that right now because it’s not going to happen any time soon. But she’s the type that wants answers now.
Katelyn walked around the grocery store with four fingers in the air the other day. When I asked her what she was doing she said she wanted everyone to know how old she was.
She seriously embarrassed me with a comment at church a few weeks ago. We had been ooohhing and aahing over this tiny newborn girl. She was super dainty and adorable. We then walked over to talk to another acquaintance that has a baby boy who’s about six months old. He’s big and chubby and super cute. As we were walking away she said very loudly ” Mama, I want a cute baby. Not like that one”. I wanted the floor to swallow me up. I don’t know if the mom heard her or not because I just kept walking. I know what Katelyn was trying to say and it wasn’t that she didn’t think the little boy was cute. What she meant was that she wants a newborn, tiny baby. She doesn’t want a big, older baby. I also explained to her that she can’t say things like that because it will hurt people’s feelings.I don’t know if she gets that yet.
I’m still walking around on a pregnancy high. I think it’s too early for me to really start feeling any pregnancy symptoms. I have been very tired but that’s it. I didn’t have morning sickness with either of my two girls so I have my fingers crossed that I won’t get it this time around either. I’m planning to post all about the day I found out I was pregnant.
For now I need to go to bed!
Guess That Drawing And More
Monday, March 22nd, 2010
UPDATE- This answer to what Katelyn drew is at the bottom of this post!
Here we have another masterpiece drawn by Katelyn-
What in the world could this be? I’ll warn you that the answer may seem obvious but it’s really not…. or maybe it is! I guess we’ll find out
Give me your best guesses!
And in completely unrelated news our friend Marian was in town this past week and she stopped by yesterday for a visit
This is Marian. We go waaayyy back. In fact we go so far back that her parents are the ones who introduced my parents to each other! Cool huh?
Here’s take 1 of a group shot at dinner time. My sun room turned dining room is small so I was wrapped around our corner lamp trying to get everyone in the shot. Katelyn was being a wicked brat nincompoop about taking pictures.
Here’s take 2.
Take 3
And the final take!
We enjoyed catching up, eating pizza and playing Wii. I was so happy to find out that I’m in better physical shape now than I was 442 days ago (which was the last time I was on the Wii Fit!). I was able to do a lot of the exercises on there faster and/ or longer. My scores were all significantly higher! That was a great feeling. Plus I got a little unexpected exercise yesterday.
The girls balked big time when it was time to go to bed. Katelyn begged for Marian to “have a sleep over” and Madelyn tearfully declared she was going to ” miss Mary”.
Now I’m off to clean house and get myself started on a hopefully better daily schedule now that my weeks are a lot busier. I’ve been allowed to practice the Easter musical with our church choir and we are performing it in two weeks! It’s going to be beautiful. I haven’t had the pleasure of being able to be part of a choir in years so this has been a treat at our new church.
Have a great Monday!
*** What did Katelyn draw above?
A PINK SUBMARINE!!! You see it now, right? I think it totally looks like a submarine *wink*
A Visit, A Budget And A Mystery
Monday, March 8th, 2010
Yesterday, we had the pleasure of visiting with Lauryn and Daniel for a bit while they were finishing up the week and a half stay of their honeymoon here in New England.
That’s right, their honeymoon. They were willing to share part of their honeymoon time with us! For those of you who don’t know, Lauryn is my cousin….sort of. In law.
When they visited our church yesterday everyone was trying to figure out how we knew each other. Some thought it was a surprise to us that they came while others thought they were a visiting couple that we just happened to hit it off with. And some are probably still not quite sure how we know each other.
Lauryn and I share the same uncle. I’m his niece on his wife’s side of the family (my maternal aunt) and Lauryn is his sister’s daughter. She’s my cousin’s cousin but not my cousin. Sounds like one of those logic/math word problems, doesn’t it?
Lauryn’s mom and my mom have been good friends since they were little meaning Lauryn and I have “known” each other since we were little, although I’m several years older.I haven’t seen Lauryn in almost 10 years.
Lauryn got married two Saturdays ago in Texas and her and her new husband are honeymooning here in New England. Since they were about three hours away from us they thought they would stop by our church for Sunday morning services and then go to lunch with us after. It was a great visit and we were happy to get to meet Daniel for the first time. Daniel and Lauryn are a super cute couple and were glowing from happiness. This was also Lauryn’s first time to meet Katelyn and Madelyn after having read so much about them on my blog! Katelyn quickly attached herself to Lauryn and Daniel and wanted to hold hands with them. Lauryn even kindly took Madelyn to the bathroom while I was waiting to rehearse a song after church! And she didn’t even complain when Maddy got some urine on her. A gracious young lady all the way!
Congratulations Daniel and Lauryn! It was great seeing you! God bless you two as you build a new life together. Love you guys!
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As I’ve mentioned we just started attending a Financial Peace University Class by Dave Ramsey at our church. Tomorrow night will be our second class. Mike and I have been working on our budget all week. We’ve always had a very loose budget and …wow…this budget we have to create for the class is showing us how way off we were living before! We’re also having to share with the instructor {privately} how much debt we have-i.e loans, credit card, mortgage etc. Thankfully we only have a mortgage and some credit card debt. We could be in a much worse financial situation. We cut up our credit cards over the weekend. That was a liberating (yet scary!) feeling. I closed all accounts except the one we have debt on still. We had several accounts open that we weren’t using so it was nice to close those down and be done with them.
I have to say my biggest struggle is going to be a food budget! I’m not used to having an exact, cash only grocery budget. I know we spend way too much on groceries and that’s with the coupons I use when I can. I’m going to try to implement a weekly menu plan, including snacks, and start buying a lot of generic stuff.
I don’t know what the average family of 4 spends on groceries. I don’t know what is considered about right or way too much. I have a feeling we are in the “Spend Way Too Much” category. We usually spend, on average, $160-200 A WEEK on groceries. That makes about $800 a month on just groceries! Our new grocery budges is $100 a week. This will help in our losing weight endeavor as we’ll have to make sure our food lasts the allotted amount of time. We have budgeted eating out on Sundays because that’s what we do. We eat out after church on Sundays and we won’t be be stopping that any time soon. It’s our weekly treat.
This will be an interesting journey but I know we’ll come out ahead! Like Dave Ramsey says ” Live like no else so you can LIVE like no one else!!” (or at least, I think I got that right!) If you get the chance to take this course- DO IT! Even if you think you’re pretty good with your finances it still holds a wealth of info to make your finances even better. He talks about paying off your house sooner, planning for your children’s education, planning for retiring with dignity, and building your wealth. All with wise saving and spending and budgeting. He doesn’t have any get rich quick schemes. His advice and methods are actually hard work and all about delayed gratification- i.e being an adult!
I will most definitely be blogging about our progress!
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To end my post today I thought we’d do a “Guess Those Scribbles” game. Instead of guessing what Katelyn drew you’re going to guess what she was trying to write in this photo:
What was Katelyn trying to write?
I’ll give you some choices:
1) Katelyn Mietzner
2) Katelyn and Madelyn
3)Ni Hao Kai-Lan
4) It’s K-Mart Smart
5) Katelyn and Mommy
Go!!
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