Tag: family life

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Heading to College Preview Week…revisted!

 

I originally wrote this two years ago and now we are facing the third child to graduate and leave our house, yet my emotions are much the same as they were then.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/103074242/comfort-coffin-fine-art-print-bird

Our oldest daughter is a senior this year. She will be graduating and  heading off into the great adventure called life which is exciting. I am sure that this is how she sees it. I know it is how I saw it. I am afraid that now I see it as an abyss full of dark and menacing shadows. Yes, I know I am being over protecting, but Moms do that sometimes. I did not feel this way when our oldest started out to college.

Well, back to the context, we are headed to a College preview week, not day or even weekend. It is a week of activities to help them get used to being at a college. It is a Monday to Thursday experience of living in the dorms, eating dorm food, even taking some mini classes, trying on a major to see if it fits. The college has bent over backwards for us. Which is exceedingly nice. There was one point on Tuesday that they had talked to me more on the phone than my mother had for the week.  I quickly remedied this on Wednesday and called my Mom for a long involved chat about sending your daughter to college. I came away with the knowlegde that it doesn’t get easier when you are a Grandparent. The abyss becomes the mouth of a hungry dragon that breathes fire.

I know that this weekend is set up to help us as home schooling parents cut the apron strings, and to assure us that they do know how to take care of our kids. So I will be there for the week as well, feeling I am sure somewhat like the third wheel. So there I will be living in the dorm, eating dorm food and even taking some mini classes about financial aid, helping your student prepare for college.  I  hope that I leave the week feeling that the abyss at least has some lights and a few life preservers stashed here and there, along with some friendly faces. I need to go and pack some super long twin sheets and my clothes, I keep putting this off as I am not quite ready to do the letting go required of me. Thankfully, I have a WHOLE YEAR of final events to get used to the letting go. Do I sound sarcastic, well I intended too. I rather wish that the letting go was like labor , BOOM there you go, and 24 hours later you have a graduate. They have fledged and left the nest successfully, but they don’t and it doesn’t happen this way.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/96487883/birds-nest-feeding-baby-birds-spring

Yes, well. She survived and did wonderfully well, loves college, made friends and has great grades. Her friends ARE the one she met at the college preview week.   So now on to the third child. Say some prayers for me as we head into the last stretch of the Sr. year of high school!

Thanks,

Karen

 

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Things I don’t do….

One of the joys of reaching this point in my life is the ability to say “I don’t do that well and I don’t have to prove that I can, or I can survive quite well not doing ___________.” In fact I reached this point one Thanksgiving when a very close and dear friend gave me a recipe to create a 3-d turkey cake. In fact it is this very cake here.

http://www.parentsconnect.com/parents/food/recipe-center/cake-recipes/turkey-cake.html

Susy made it and it was beautiful. “You can do this, won’t it be fun! It is so Easy” she said.When I was finished, my turkey was laying on his back with his little turkey feet up in the air. He looked like someone had blasted him with a shot gun. In fact, I made little turkey feet out of pipe cleaners and stuck them in so that you could see that he was in fact a true Thanksgiving turkey! I still smile about that turkey cake. Will I every make an elaborate cake like this again. Nope, never, ever, ever… I can make a bundt cake from scratch and I can cook good meals. I don’t have to make 3 -d cakes ever again! I don’t have to keep up with the other women in my life…they have their gifts and I have mine!

There are other things that have I have decided that I just don’t have to stress about anymore. I don’t have to have superstar perfect children. Bear with me a minute on this. Then there is the time we were signing some papers and I sent all four of  the kids 10 and under out the back yard to play. The lady we were meeting with said “what well behaved children you have.” I said, oh they are probably playing in the mud in the back yard. What were they doing…yes, exactly playing in the mud, rolling in the mud, throwing the mud. There wasn’t an inch on any of them that didn’t have mud on it or in it.

Our children are perfect children, and are perfect at being imperfect human beings growing, learning and making mistakes. Don’t even get me started telling you how I know what five rolls of toilet paper dissolved in a bathtub looks like…or how much water it takes on the floor to make it like a slip and slide,or exactly what kittens do when they are dunked in a kiddie pool, or what happens if you put a twist tie in an electrical outlet, or ….well the list is endless.

I don’t have to have a perfect house. Wow, I admitted that on paper. Really, all my real friends really already know, I don’t have a perfect house. It is usually in a state of perfect disarray. It has six visual people that leave things out so they can find them again. A perfectly logical thing to do. We also tend not to see the work that needs to be done, but I will admit that I am working on that. It is getting better and getting cleaner as time goes by but a neat freak I am not. Come on by and hang out.

Talk to you later,

Karen

 

 

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The Speed of Life

Do you ever get frustrated at the speed of life? I know I do, sometimes life seems to crawl along and other times it is moving at light speed. I wish that I knew the secret of keeping life at a steady pace. When life is zooming by me, I tend to feel like I am missing something important. When life is at a snails pace then I feel that life is passing me by.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/165353781/great-things-take-time-fine-art

Well, I think this all boils down to one thing contentment. Learning to  be content with our lives and not reaching for the one thing that is out of reach will help us to live in the here and now. When times are slow I need to prepare myself for the days when spare minutes are non-existent. When times are fast I need to learn to slow down enough to enjoy the ride. I feel that God wants us to learn to lean on him throughout all of the times of our lives. Thankfully life’s speed tends to ebb and flow like a river during the seasons.  It is ok for life’s speed to change we just need to be ready to work or rest depending on what our life speed is.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/154501027/how-we-spend-our-lives-inspirational

https://www.etsy.com/listing/154501027/how-we-spend-our-lives-inspirational

What is the speed setting on your life?

Talk to you later,

Karen

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Monday: Goal Check 1!

Here we are another Monday. I am running a goal check. This helps keep me on track and remind me that I AM reaching those goals and actually doing something!

Business goals:

  • Finish three two afghans (I have two left to finish this goal. Currently I have three afghans started….

 

The zig zag chevron stripe is finished. The one on top is started….and I have a granny striped started in my new yarns, and a sampler granny square afghan started.

  • Start three more afghans
  • Sew 50+ cup cozies in new styles ( I prepare for the holiday buying season in advance, because I also home school.)
  • Sew the 30+ new items I need him to photograph
  • Make the new Christmas items….
  • Blog more consistently (I have been writing ahead and found my blog planning pages…)
  • Write a business plan

Family goals:

  • Take two summery day trips every week
  • Make some meals for the freezer for THOSE days when I just really need them (one lasagna down…)
  • Help K get her things ready for College…. (two major things marked off our list.)
  • Take T for driving practice
  • Exercise (walked and/or exercised three times last week.  YAY!)
  • Make the kitchen a better place to be, using things I already have. (It seems small and I really have to work at loving being in there.)
  • Make the curtains in the living room fit the windows better and the hems the same length (I put these curtains up super quick when I realized that the bamboo shades are see through at night with the lights on.) 

Rather lofty goals aren’t they. I also have some personal ones that I have not added to this list.

Personal goals:

  • Work through my Bible study that I stopped this Spring.
  • Have us sit at the table for dinners 5 nights a week. (Totally missed out on this one this past week, but we have another week ahead of us!)
  • Keep my kitchen and laundry caught up and ready for action. ( Frankly, got clothes washed but not folded or put away. Laundry is my most hated chore. It is never finished)
  • Have some friends over for dinner…or coffee or dessert or something.
  • Read some books about homeschooling
  • Attend the home school curriculum sale this weekend.  (Totally missed out on this. Now, I need to find inspiration in another place…)
  • Help with the Youth at church at least 2 times a month.

Well, those are my rather lofty goals. I hope that things get better and I get more organized at meeting my goals.

Things I/we accomplished that weren’t on my list of things to do!

I started cleaning and organizing my studio areas.We also moved the furniture around in this area and I need to finish organizing, pitching or donating items.  I have a lot of boxes left to go through but we are happy with the new arrangement of the room and how it is starting to come together.  I re-opened my Amazon.com shop by listing more books for sale. We did a quick check up on our budget and re-affirmed our money goals. I sat down with our calendar and checked dates and times of appointments as we missed some important things last week.

Talk to you later,

Karen