A Few Favorites

Well, hi there!  We’ve made it through hump day, and I thought I’d celebrate with a little writing!  However, I can’t bring myself to write anything deep, so I thought I’d cover a topic of utmost importance…some of my current favorite things!

~ The Best Fitting Panty.  I had not bought any new undies since, well, the last time I blogged about buying undies.  (And I have to insert here that I just took WAY TOO MUCH time trying to find that blog post and I CANNOT FIND IT.  But I know I wrote it!  It was titled something like “My Underwear Makes Me Feel Like A Super Hero” and I know it’s not just in my head because I remember several people speaking to me about it.  At least I think they did…)  (Edit::  Josh saved the day!  I don’t know why I didn’t find it.  It must have had a perception filter.)  (3,245 points if you caught the perception filter reference!)  And let’s just say that my special time of month/back-up when I’m behind on laundry panties were threatening to fall apart.  (In their defense, I bought them when I was a senior in high school, and they have served me well for 11 years!)  SO, the last time I was in Wal-Mart, which happened to be with all of my children on a day Josh was out of town and we were trying to accomplish All the Shopping for the month, I grabbed a pack of panties.

The brand of these panties?  “The Best Fitting Panties.”  That title was a little red flag to me, however the price was right and I didn’t see any Hanes around, so I snagged them.

Later, as I was taking them out of the pack to pre-wash them, I was looking at them thinking, “I just don’t think these are going to be that awesome.”

WELL.

I don’t know what they did to these panties, but they really are The Best Fitting Panties!

~ Men’s Basketball Shorts.  On that same exhausting shopping trip, I decided to drag my children to the athletic section so I could quickly grab a pair of running shorts.  I somehow managed to lose two pairs of shorts over the summer, so I was down to one pair and I’ve actually been doing pretty good at exercising 2 or 3 times a week, so there was a need for another pair of shorts.

A quick look-over of the women’s exercise clothes revealed that there are two ways women dress to exercise right now: either very short shorts or skin tight pants (basically leggings, but I guess the fabric is a little thicker.)  Not only are there modesty issues there, but also…who wants their clothes to touch them when they exercise???

So I headed to the men’s department.

Now, I realize that there are other stores that probably carry exactly the kind of shorts that I wanted in the ladies’ department.  But that would involve going to other stores.

SO, I bought a pair of men’s basketball shorts.

And let me tell you.

These things are SO COMFORTABLE.  And they have pockets.

If cross-dressing is wrong, I don’t want to be right!

~A fun free font!  I’ve really been digging the Appleberry font lately.  It makes everything better.  You should try it!

~ The Piano Guys.  The older I get the more…mellow…my musical preferences are.  I love that these guys cover a wide variety, from pop to classical.  My personal favorite?  Their Lord of the Rings Medley!  It will  make you want to be a better person and go watch all 6 movies…all at the same time!  (But I wouldn’t mind a little more “Orc Music.”)

~ World Market’s White Chocolate Mocha Mix.  Unfortunately, ever since conceiving Arrow, hot coffee has not really been agreeable to me.  (You better believe I can consume some McDs iced coffee, though!)  For those mornings that I just really want to start out with something hot in a mug so I can feel like a real homeschool mom, this hot chocolate mix is just right.

~Special K Protein Shakes.  For pretty much all the other mornings.  I made a lot of breakfast smoothies last year…but what can I say, this year has been busy!

~ Downton Sixbey.  Pretty much everything Jimmy Fallon touches turns to funny, and in this drought between seasons of my favorite period shows, these videos are just right!

~ Staying off facebook.  I  had let facebook become a big part of my life, to the point where I felt like it wasn’t possible to get off.  I convinced myself that it would inconvenience others for me to not be on there, since that is how so many people communicate, send invitations, etc. these days.

Well, long story short, God finally had me look square in the face of the lies I had been telling myself.  And I signed off.  So now I’m on once a week to check notifications, and that’s it.

It’s like a caffeine addiction…it’s hard at first, but after a few days, you start to wonder what the big deal was.

And now I can focus on more important things.  Like reading.  And sleeping.  And getting my work done.  Oh, and Instagram and Pinterest.

It’s not like I’m trying to be a hero.

A Shout-Out from the Boy Mom Trenches

Well, maybe blogging 3 times a week was too big of an expectation to have for myself.  Let’s start with once a week.

The good news is, we survived the first week of All the Extracurriculars.

Also, I now have a 7 year old boy in the house.

When I was thinking about writing Israel’s birthday blog post, I tried to think of all the sweet, sappy things I would typically write.

But I just wasn’t feeling that.

SO, I’m going to write about quirky things, instead!  Even though I have 3 boys, it wasn’t until recently that I started to feel like a “boy mom.”  Ava is just so high maintenance (I think it’s a first child thing) that I had not had time to put a whole lot of thought into the implications of having so many boys.  But as they get bigger and rougher and louder, it has been brought to my attention that I am, indeed, a “boy mom.”  But then I try to forget about it because the thought is just a little terrifying.  I was sure that I would have a house of girls, so that we could reenact Little Women on Saturday nights.  I didn’t really grow up with boys, so everything that is happening is new to me.

I guess it validates the saying, “God doesn’t call the qualified, He qualifies the called.”

In other words, I’M WINGING IT.

So here are some peculiarities about boys that I’ve discovered since becoming a “boy mom:”

• LEGOS.  The boys love Legos, and I think that’s awesome.  I’m not going to pretend to know how it works, but I know that Legos are good for the brain.  (I also know that they can occupy my children for large blocks of time.  Hallelujah.)So my beef is not with the toys themselves (the prices, however, are a different story.)  The peculiarity, to me, is how many series are a spin-off of Legos.  Right now, the boys are really into Lego Ninjago.  At some point, someone decided to take 4 Lego ninjas with the personalities of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and make a show and book series about them.

  A Lego crafted after a show I can understand.  But a show crafted after a Lego?  I am still scratching my head.  And still trying to figure out where to draw the line with such…toy violence?
  

• EXHIBITIONISM.  We are trying to at least teach them not to streak when we have company.

• ALL THE VIOLENCE.  I know this is controversial so if you fall into a different school of thought you can cover your ears and say “LALALA.”James Dobson explains in Bringing Up Boys that God places an inner desire within boys to battle.  (He explains it so much better, there’s something about a testosterone flood and some other stuff….go read the book!)  I definitely see that in my boys, and even though we don’t really have “war toys” (light sabers and bow and arrows don’t count,) everything is all fighting, all the time.  I’m still trying to figure out how to balance cultivating a respect for life and proclivity towards peace while honoring their God-given desires that will hopefully someday turn into them being protectors of their families, their faith, and maybe even their country.
  
• NIGHT-TIME POTTY TRAINING.  Israel seems to finally be out of the woods, but I’m wondering if Egan will ever get there.  There are some things that can’t be taught, folks.
  
• COW LICKS.  Israel’s whole head is a cow lick.  Seriously, if his hair gets much longer than it is in these pictures, he starts to look like a peacock.
  
• TRANSFORMERS.  It’s like the ultimate boy obsession.  Not old enough to watch the feature length explosions disguised as movies?  Don’t worry, there’s Transformers Prime.  Not old enough for the cartoon?  Don’t worry, there’s Rescue Bots.  Now that I think about it, maybe toy violence isn’t so bad!
  

Despite the winging it, I think I’m going to really like this “boy mom” thing.  I may not have a clue about football or marshal arts or necktie usage, but boys give the best cuddles, and that’s something I understand!  I may not have had a lot of experience with boys, but I have been blessed to spend a lot of time with two wonderful men: my dad and my husband.  My eldest son shares a lot of personality traits with them both, and I could not have asked for anything better.

Now, if you need me, I’ll be trying to figure out how to get the pee smell out of their couch while wondering how the rubber rat got stuck to the ceiling.

First Month of School! (AND my FIRST ever free download!)

Well, hi there!  We have found ourselves already wrapping up week four of our school year, so I thought that if I was going to write a “beginning of the year” post, the time would have to be now!

Remember when two years ago I meticulously documented the first day of school with photographs and blogged a detailed description of that day?

Yeah, that’s not happening this time.

But I did manage to get our traditional first day of school photo…

I know, who are those gigantic people?!

Every year I pick a theme, and this year, as you can see, it’s “Linker’s Gone Tribal.”  I realize that this is sort of a continuation of last year’s theme, “Team Linker,” but I ended up using it because…

• The tribal thing appears to be trendy, and we are oh-so on top of the trends around these parts.  (Psyche!)
• We are studying ancient history this year, and there are a whole lotta TRIBES involved in ancient history!
• First and foremost, I was able to recycle a lot of things from Arrow’s birthday party to decorate our bulletin board!

The first month of school has gone very smoothly.  I was a little anxious because Israel’s workload going from kindergarten to first grade has basically doubled, and I didn’t know how well he would do having to sit for that long.  So far, so good!  Arrow is now officially mobile, so I wasn’t sure how he would do.  So far, he’s been content scooting around the school room under our feet!  Probably my biggest challenge is Egan, who is constantly interrupting instruction to tell me SOMETHING or another.  Waiting his turn will probably be his biggest lesson this year!  Fortunately, a few weeks ago he started PreK, which has given us some quiet school time and him a chance to run around on the playground like a hooligan, which is just not something I can provide for him right now.  (He’s still with us on Mondays and Fridays, so he gets the best of both worlds!)

But honestly, I feel like this past month was just a teaser, because this coming week, THE EXTRACURRICULARS BEGIN.

In other words, our week is about to look like this:

Sunday: Morning church, afternoon archery for Ava (shhhhh, don’t tell her, it’s still a surprise,) evening Small Group.

Monday: School at home, afternoon gymnastics for all the kids, evening karate for Israel, late night jog with Liz.

Tuesday: Egan at PreK, Classical Conversations, Pre-Essentials for Ava (while I am picking Egan up,) home!, Ava and I “work out”

Wednesday:  Early morning school at home, art/music co-op, pick up Egan from pre-K, go somewhere for our history lesson, gymnastics for Ava, evening church.

Thursday: School at home, pick up Egan from pre-K, evening karate for Israel, Ava and I “work out”.

Friday: School at home aaaaaand done!  I am going to do my best to do our monthly grocery shopping on the first Friday of each month, starting with a lunch date with Cynthia’s at Sams!

All of this is daunting, but that Wednesday is especially scary looking!  BECAUSE, as we enter our 3rd year of homeschooling, it will be my 1st year teaching any kind of co-op class!  I will be teaching a music and drama class for elementary age students as well as a music ‘n’ movement class for preschoolers.  I am both excited and terrified.  Excited because my children are desperately in need of some musical education AND I do love music, but terrified because I have never attempted to teach music before and it has been a looooooooooooong time since I have done anything with music.  (Long story short, I was involved in All Things Musical growing up, but I haven’t been able to do anything with it since Ava was born because there was a greater need in children’s ministry than music ministry everywhere I went.)

So, all that goes to say, I appreciate all your musical and dramatic prayers this Wednesday.

And if anyone wants to come teach it for me, don’t be shy!

~~~~~~~~

FREE DOWNLOAD!

SO, I love writing and Josh and I have been talking about how I need to pursue that passion more.  The easiest way for me to do that initially would be to spend more time writing the blog that I already have!  I’m not going to make any promises on how many times I will write a week or anything like that (3 would be nice, but no promises!), but I did think it would be fun to kick off my “Return to the Blog” with a free download for whoever wants it!

A few weeks before school started, God started drawing me to 1 Corinthians 13.  I know it is a very commonly used Bible passage, but I felt like we needed to start our school year by really unpacking what “love” means by using this passage.  The kids and I analyzed each “Love is” statement, and it ended up taking us 15 days to do it.  I realized that this could be a handy resource for other parents, not because there’s anything magical about what I did, but because sometimes our brains are tired and we just want to do a pre-written Bible study!

AND I WILL TELL YOU.  God really used this process to prick my own heart.  So don’t get into this unless you are ready to think about whether the love in your own life measures up to God’s standard of love!

So here’s some disclaimers, because you know I have to have some of those…

• I’ve never done a free download before, so I have no idea if this will actually work.
• I used the Holman Christian Standard Bible.  If you want to use a different translation, obviously, you can.
• I didn’t get out a Lexicon or anything like that with this study.  Other than the one Greek word I had to look into, I stuck with the English.  I’m sure if you dug deeper and looked into the original language, it would be that much better!
• I was a counseling major, not a theology major.  Please look at this with grace!  (And make any necessary corrections with love – or just correct it when you teach it to your own kids, depending on how you roll!)

OK, so here goes…

The “Love Is…” Bible Study in .docx format

The “Love Is…” Bible Study in PDF format