Living IN Canaan

The Funny Thing About Blogging...

..is that you actually have to be living and doing something to have something to blog about.  No one really wants to read about my deep, undying love for Puffs with lotion, my humidifier, Nyquil and my heating pad.  Whatever this cold thing is, it is straight from the pit of hell, as my Nanny would have said. My children have really been angels and I have been able to accomplish 90% of my school goals for this week, which is just downright miraculous.  But even with all that excitement, there is not a whole lot to blog about these days.

I have spent some time organizing all my blog feeds in Google Reader.  Oh blogosphere, how do I love thee!  Let me count the ways!  My computer is a merely a smaller representation of the general disorderliness and disorganization of my life and this seemed a good a time as any to tackle it.  Whoever would have thought that one would have to de-clutter a computer. 

I am really in the planning stages of what I am calling my "Life Makeover."  It sounds so Oprah-esque or Dr. Phil-ish, but really that is not it at all.  I can't wait to begin posting on my plans and their subsequent follow through.  I am so excited at the idea of really making my life what I believe it can be, what I believe God wants it to be.  One step at a time and according to His priorities. 

The entertainment for today has been watching my husband try to train his Basset Hound puppy.  In case you didn't know, Basset Hounds are one of the most stubborn breeds in existence and also, unfortunately, one of the stinkiest.  She really is cute but as my husband just said she is kind of a brat.  We interrupt regularly scheduled blogging to bring you a gratuitous puppy pic....

Tomorrow is our first Upward basketball game, so me, my Sudafed, and my Puffs are donning our coach's gear and going off to help coach some little cheerleaders.  Sniff...Cough...Sneeze...Sniff...

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Think Thin Thursdays

Bridgette over at The Not-So-Blog Blog has had a fabulous idea to help with our New Year's Resolutions.  To participate in Think Thin Thursdays, head over to Bridgettes, grab the button, post an attainable weight loss goal for the link, and revist Bridgittes each week to post on Mr. Linky.

I am so tickled over this--accountability and a chance to make some bloggy friends.
I have a severe weight/food problem.  This is my year.  But I am going to have to take baby steps.
This weeks baby steps are
1) To weigh myself
2) To write down everything I eat
3)To take vitamins daily
4) To drink some water each day

Well, there it is!  See ya next week!

Wordless Wednesday

There are just no words......
Go here for more Wordless Wednesday posts.

Homeschooling When You are Sick or Flexibility

I am down with a very nasty cold-type virus.  I had such great plans for a gung-ho first week back to school and started getting sick Sunday night.  So, I had to get real flexible, real quick.  We have managed to do most of our school work but our Epiphany was not at all what I had planned. We are so blessed in our household to have a husband/daddy who jumps in with both hands to help.  He has cooked dinner every night this week and brought me cold medicine and cold drinks.  Bless his heart!

Learning the flexibility lesson is so very hard.  I have a perfectionist streak.  If I can't do something perfect, I often tend to not try at all.  I cannot be this way when it comes to school.  I am trying to not be that way about blogging either.  So this post is posted and tomorrow will be longer, more fun, and more insightful!  Well, maybe not all that....

Marriage Monday ~ The Humor of Marriage

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Should I tell you of the Valentine's Day when the dog jumped on the counter and ate a 1 pound box of chocolates?  After a phone call to the vet, I spent Valentine's Day in the snow in the back yard straddling a 125 pound Labrador Retriever, pouring salt down his throat, and trying to make him throw up.  Oh the romance!  It really is indescribable.
My marriage has been hysterical.  Many of the things we thought were going to kill us are the very things we laugh about now.  Like making that dog throw up in the freezing cold was not funny that day, in fact I think I cried.  Today, it makes me laugh so hard my sides ache. 
In 2003, we went through the most difficult time in our marriage.  It was so difficult that we have not found ourselves laughing at it very much, if at all.  We were in a financial death spiral that was precipitated by our house, which we now lovingly refer to as the money pit.  Every time we would try to fix one of the myriad things that needed fixing, that fix would cause 5 more things to need fixing.  We thought it would never end.  This was punctuated by a one year old and a 2 1/2 year old who decided to give up naps the week we had to put the money pit on the market.  I have wondered every now and again when would we ever be able to laugh at that time.  We laugh at everything.
On New Year's Day, we were watching an episode of Monk.  If you aren't familiar, it is about a private investigator with severe OCD.  Everyone can see a bit of Monk in themselves.  In this episode, Monk buys a house that ends up destroyed by a criminal posing as a contractor.  In one scene, Monk is fussing at his police officer friends for not stopping him from buying the house. They defend themselves by saying that they tried to stop him.  Monk says, "You should have shot me.  What good is having a gun if you don't have friends who will shoot you?"  Paul and I looked at each other and we laughed, hard.  Finally.
If God is the foundation and cornerstone of our marriage, humor is the main support beam.  We would all crumble under the pressure of life without it. 

The Eve of Normal

Normal or whatever counts for normal around here.  Paul has been off for 2 weeks, school has been off for most of December, and our schedule has been completely kaput!  So, tomorrow is the day when we try to return to regular life, which on Mondays includes  laundry, school work, a trip to speech therapy, gymnastics and a Boy Scout meeting.
This week will bring us Epiphany and I realized that I packed away the Nativity without thinking.  So we will have to imagine the Magi, and not actually move them to the manger.  Every year I say I will leave it out and every year I pack it away.
I am excited about our religious education plans for this new school semester.  We are going to be praying a modified form of the Divine Offices.  We will probably just aim for Matins and Vespers to start with but I would really like to see our school day ride on the ebb and flow of prayer.  It is like a microcosm of the liturgical year, a rhythm, a heartbeat.  I have never had consistency in my personal prayer life. I am challenged daily.  It is quite an amazing and humbling thing to discipline yourself so you are able to provide discipline and steadiness to your children.  So, have a marvelous Monday and happy Back to Normal day! 

Festival of the Circumcision and the Name of Jesus

The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod calendar has this day listed as a minor festival on January 1.  Normally, I do not take it upon myself to toy with the liturgical calendar but I was concerned that this would be lost amongst the New Year shuffle.  At the ages of my children, the actual discussion about and focus on Jesus' name seemed more important than its actual day of observation (especially since I wasn't feeling quite up to the whole circumcision conversation today!), so I waited until there was a little quiet, down-time in our house. We focused on the 'name' (or The Name, in this case) this year.  Oddly enough, today is actually the date of this feast in the Roman church. 

Cyberbrethren has a lovely post and collection of links to information and reflection on this day.

I once again 'borrowed' an idea from Dawn.  It took on its own life as I knew right away both children would insist on doing their own.  The 'Chi-Ro' symbol is more frequently observed on the paraments at our church, so I thought it would be a nice addition to the craft.  I think we will add some rays and maybe brainstorm on some more names of Jesus tomorrow after to tie up the loose ends.

I had a terrible time getting a picture, as I waited until the sun went down.

A Nugget of Truth

I love to read these little nuggets from people who know the President Bush.  Many will see Mr. Rove as intensely biased but then so is most media these days.  I think history will judge more accurately than the present. And even though I disagree with some of his decisions and policies, I think his character has been severely misjudged and maligned.  I plan on reading this to the bookworm in our house. 
*Hat Tip to Holy Experience

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The Boy Who Doesn't Like Homemade Pizza

When I was pregnant with my son, it was our weekly Friday night ritual to make homemade pizza.  Well, I say 'our' like I really had much to do with it.  I should say it was our weekly ritual for me to mix up the crust and for Paul to make me homemade pizza.  I ate so much of it when I was pregnant I was sure that my baby was going to come out looking like a pizza.  But it appears what you eat while pregnant has zero effect on the growing baby, because this is the face he made tonight when we made homemade pizza.

In case you can't tell from the photograph, that is NOT a smile.  That is more of an "EWWW!! GROSS!!" face.  He tried to be enthusiastic for our sake, he really did try.

In case you couldn't tell that is a face of feigned enthusiasm.  As opposed to, you know, real enthusiasm, which looks something like this:

So tonight, Dad and I learned that you just can't make someone like homemade pizza AND it can, in fact, be something within the same category as water-boarding to make someone eat homemade pizza.  I wish I had some pictures of his face during the actual eating but I was too busy being one of those moms who try to make their children be something they aren't, which I swear I will never do again every single time I do it.

On that note, his favorite Christmas gift was an egg shaped alarm clock that tells the temperature and changes colors.  It fell today and broke.  He cried.  We drove 20 minutes away to replace the $4.99 alarm clock while quietly wondering why he can't play with nearly indesctructable G.I. Joes instead, like other boys.  Why? He isn't any other boy. Each day he teaches me something about me when he teaches me something about himself.  God made him exactly who he is, exactly.  We can guide and teach but we can't really change that thing that is him because God put it there.  Truth be told, we wouldn't want to change it if we could. 

On the way home from the getting the alarm clock, he told us all about his plans to create a new computer operating system that would rival Windows.  He also said he planned to sell it and make lots of money like that guy at Bill.com (Bill Gates).  He then made sure that I knew he would give me a set of disks for free because I am his mommy.  

So if anyone asks me why I homeschool?  That is why.  Could any teacher respect that sacred place in him, that God-breathed, unique, one of a kind place? That place in him that may never like homemade pizza or play with action figures.  I am not so sure, and I am not taking any chances.

"Everybody is a genius.  But, if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing it is stupid." --Einstein

How Soon....

I took Dawn's wonderful suggestion to bake bell-shaped cookies for the New Year after sharing the Tennyson poem with the children.  It was sweet and simple and they enjoyed it.  As you can see, I let them go whole hog with the icing. 

I had dough already in the refrigerator that was another one of my 'we didn't get to it' Christmas projects.  They are deliciously light and lemony German butter cookies that I found here.  The photographs of her cooking/baking are marvelous. 

Martin Luther once said, "How soon not now becomes never."  I have been thinking on that a lot this New Year's.  It is the great lament of the procrastinator, but I do not want it to become a recurring theme for my life  So tonight, as the hours ticked away, I was not feeling like making a cookie mess with the children and realized that we hadn't marked this holiday together in any real way.  I remembered Luther's admonishment. How soon not now becomes all grown up. How soon not now becomes never.  And I immediately called them downstairs and began to gather the flour, dough, cutters, and wax paper.  It took maybe 10 minutes from first flour sprinkle til I slid the cookie sheet into the oven.  I would have missed marking this moment with my children, completely and totally missed it. 

So in the spirit of not missing a moment, I am really committed to chronicling 2009 on this blog.  Not so others can see but so I can stay accountable with my own self about the 'not nows.' 

Happy 2009!