The garden work is beginning to pay off with yummy daily treats....
My yellow squash is giving me approx one a day now. I love yellow squash!! The green beans are also yielding a fair amount for what little we planted. So every day, I have been adding them into the menu somehow. Last night, I sauteed up some squash and beans in butter, garlic and Parmesan cheese-YUMMY!
The kids and I have not gone anywhere this week while Matt is gone, we are trying to stick to a very tight budget considering all the economic struggle these past years that everyone is feeling more and more. So, I told Matt on the phone yesterday that I have kept myself busy on restructuring almost our entire house- and guess what, he just was not the least bit fazed-imagine that;) With that said-one of the biggest projects I tackled was putting up the bunk bed in the boys room. The bottom half of the bed has been in our basement, taking up too much space and ending up a mess everyday from kiddos climbing all over it and Noah has been occupying the top of that bunk. Now that Noah is old enough to handle being on the top bunk, it is a no brainer to give the boys more floor space! So we reunited the bottom and top-Cole was my right hand muscle for this heavy job of up and down stairs with furniture. And may I add from personal observation from being a mom of 3 girls and 2 boys-GIRLS ARE MESSIER! Especially when it comes to their beds! I feel like we have to plow off the girls beds every night for them to sleep-but the boys-a bed is for sleeping on, that is it. So having the boys in a bunk bed works practically for this mama. Noah is loving it!! And Madison loves to climb up every night at bedtime to read Noah a story(being a home school mom-I like that she is practicing her reading but I also love the bond they are building) And Cole is loving having an overstuffed chair in his room to lounge in and read.
So----now that Cole's old bed is a free agent, I had fun setting it up downstairs as a day bed in the family room. I told Cole- " I bet you have never seen your bed look quite so pretty!" I also used a trick I had read about a while back concerning box springs. I was quite pleased with how it looks. If you don't use a dust ruffle on beds, the box spring stands out as bare and ugly, especially if you are not dressing the bed with blankets to cover it. But there is an easy fix-so simple- I wish I had thought of it years ago! Simply use a fitted sheet on it! So, on this bed I coordinated some pink stripes and polka dots-FUN!
Cole also helped me move the love seat downstairs to the family room and the chair and school bookshelf upstairs for the reading corner. It is that time of year that i am getting ready for a new school year. Not only does that mean curriculum choices and cleaning out of supplies, it also means coming up with a plan of how and where we will do school. learning from the previous year and making adjustments that will hopefully be more productive. I came to a decision to have all the schooling supplies and curriculum upstairs this year. Doing school in the basement gets too dreary with the lack of light and when the little ones are playing down there it gets harder for the older to concentrate. Thus, the redefining of space in our house-again! We have a new/old apple desktop for the kids to work on in our living/dining room(Joslyn is currently working on school in the picture). Having the room function less as a TV space has helped with schooling. It is good for me to leave the basement for certain parts of school as well because my studio is in the basement and can be a distraction for me:)
I think I will be making curtains for the bookshelf though. For me, it is too much for my eyes.
Bell is keeping busy with dress up and riding her horse;) -oh, I mean Ellie, our horse sized pooch. Honestly, our old gal really cannot carry Bell, it was just a brief photo shoot, and Ellie laid right down.
The heat has been bad-warnings almost every day, so we do not go outside for long. Just enough to swim for a bit and get some gardening under control. The storms have been a pleasant relief but still not enough rain for my liking. We lost power almost a week ago, for awhile, and honestly I felt a bit worried with Matt being gone, how I would deal with no frig, air, etc. But fortunately unlike a few years ago when we were out of power for 3 days, we were restored shortly this time. Matt and I only get a few minutes to talk if at all each day and I know he has been really homesick this trip. He has one more smaller trip next weekend and that will end the summer trips with the youth. While I am used to him being away on trips and certain aspects of the care for the kiddos alone has gotten easier with the older they are, both Matt and I feel a bit weary with the amount of trips each year. It is getting harder for both of us to recoup the older we get. And life does not slow when the trips are over. The being apart so often doesn't necessarily change when he is home. I do know that this circumstance is not restricted to youth pastor's families. I know that their are many of you who's husbands must work far away, maybe even in another country or have long hours just to keep afloat-for all of you-I pray that the times you spend together is blessed by the Lord! That those times will bind you and that the saying "absence makes the heart grow fonder," will be true for you. It helps when you can both feel the other's hurts and have compassion, but to also encourage the other in the tasks they must do! Matt is always sensitive to my hurts of his absence and understands them, he would never belittle them. And I on the other hand will always be his encourager, to go...do what you are called to do, we will be fine and well taken care of. I will also work to make our home a place of rest when he returns. We both know and are resolved to the fact that it is in service to the Lord and the trips and full schedule of youth ministry impacts kids for good in a crazy hopeless world, so it keeps us pushing ahead and the Lord provides the strength for both of us in the different places we are in. But none the less, it is hard not to long to see each other and have our family together. Noah, a few days ago, asked "where is daddy?" his tone was in sort of a bewilderment. I said "remember, he is on a trip with the kids from church?" and he replied, "It is taking way too long" yes, I think we all feel that way.
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