A Brief Explanation

Good Morning.  It's me.  I'm still here. 

Sorry for the sudden departure but things have been really crazy around our house.  Two and a half weeks ago my husband interviewed for a job in Shreveport, Louisiana and last Wednesday he was offered the position.  He has to take a test on April 24 and, if he passes the test, he will have to be in Shreveport by June 1.  Which means we have a short time to pack up and relocate from Michigan to Louisiana.  Crazy, huh?

We are very excited about this move but also a little overwhelmed.  This is a fantastic job offer for my husband and he is certain that this is where the Lord is leading.  We have been in this house for 8 years and I have a lot of cleaning/sorting/purging to do.  Our goal is to have our house on the market on May 1.

So, I am going to be a little random here over the next few weeks.  However, if you stick with me I promise I will be back to a more faithful schedule as soon as I can.

Have a fantastic week!

What A Crazy Week

Whew...I wasn't sure Saturday morning would ever get here.  This has definitely been an interesting week around our house.  Looking back, I am amazed that the kids were able to finish all their planned school work for the week and that my house is relatively clean.

Of course you will recall that my husband had knee surgery on Monday, so we knew this week was going to be a little different as he would need some down time to recover.  Then there was the trip home from the surgery center when we got a flat tire in the pharmacy parking lot and spent some extra time waiting for a wonderful friend of ours to drive so far out of his way to change my tire.  When I went to bed Monday night (by myself, since my husband couldn't get into our bed for the first few nights) I really thought all the excitement for the week was over.  How wrong I was.

My husband spent most of the day Tuesday trying to rest, which was very difficult for him since he couldn't find a comfortable position for his knee.  Around 11:30 Tuesday night, we were both still up in the living room when his phone signaled that he had a new e-mail.  As he read it he started laughing.  He handed me his phone so I could read the e-mail.  It was an invitation to come to Shreveport, Louisiana for a fellowship interview.  A while back, my husband applied for a position through the Louisiana Teaching Fellows program.  This program places new teachers in at-risk classrooms...and they are interested in my husband.
As Tuesday turned into Wednesday my husband and I checked out the interview details on-line.  He could interview at the end of this month or near the middle of April.  We decided not to select an interview time until Wednesday morning, when at least one of us would be coherent.

Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were filled with scheduling an interview (he decided on the March date), making travel plans (thanks to a dear friend who is also a travel agent who helped us with this one), and watching our emergency fund rapidly dwindle away.  By the time we went to bed Friday night my husband had vouchers for his round trip flight, a voucher for his rental car, and a confirmation of reservations for a hotel in Shreveport.  And to think, when I went to bed on Monday night, I believed that the flat tire ordeal would be the most exciting part of my week.  Ha.

As for the fellowship opportunity, we are both experiencing a range of emotions.  We are excited at the prospect of my husband getting this position - he is very interested in teach in a public high school and we feel that he would be wonderful in this type of setting.  We are also confused - we don't know a single person in Louisiana and we are unsure if God wants us to move so far away from our friends and family.  We are nervous - for the interview and the long trip so soon after my husband's surgery.  We are overwhelmed - at the thought of getting our house ready to sell and then selling it in such a bad market.  I for one am thrilled at the thought of living somewhere with many more warm days and much less snow.  And on and on the list goes.

We are trying to concentrate on the day to day as we wait to find out if this is where God wants us.  Through it all, it is so comforting to know that God has a plan for us and that He already knows where we will be this fall.

Surgery

This is just a quick post.  I have been running around like crazy this week trying to get some extra work done around the house.  Why you may ask.  Because on Monday my husband is having arthroscopic surgery on his knee.

He has needed surgery for quite some time but put it off for a while – first because we didn’t have insurance and then because the referral requirements were a bigger pain than the pain in his knee.  When that balance shifted we nudged the doctors a little and now we are just a few days from surgery.   I will try to be faithful with my daily devotional series next week, however, it is possible that I will be late or even miss one day.  Next weeks' devotionals may be a little shorter than planned as I don't know how much time I will have for editing. 

On a side note, we have had three B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L sunny days here in SW Michigan.  While I usually love the sun, that worries me.  Our March has certainly come in like a lamb.  If you believe old wives tales, you know what that means…a snowstorm may be heading our way to close out March!

Quick Organizing Post

Just a quick post today.  Last month I saw a solution at Complete Organizing Solutions that I loved.  One of the contributors added a hanging rod in her laundry room and I loved the results.  I spent a little time yesterday reorganizing my laundry room (and adding that hanging rod) and I thought I would share my progress.

 My laundry room - obviously the lack of a hanging rod is not the only problem this room has!

 The gap between my cabinets - the perfect place for that hanging rod.

 Clothes hanging from the door knob and the towel rack

 My clean and organized counter

 Yeah, a place to hang our line dry clothes

 The perfect spot for my husbands compression shirts - no more hanging them on the door knob to dry!

Super Surprise

OK...I promise not all my posts this week are going to be about the Super Bowl and all their titles won't start with "Super", just indulge me for a little while longer!


Have you ever faced a situation that you thought was going to be a hassle only to find that it was a huge blessing? Our family had just such an experience this past Sunday. My husband is a Deacon at our church and he is responsible for "counting and locking up" two months during the year. This just means that during his months he stays after church on Sunday evening with our church treasurer and financial secretary to count the offering and then locks up Sunday and Wednesday evenings after the services. This year February is one of his months. As I posted before, our family was very excited for the Super Bowl so we were all a little bummed at the thought of not getting home until around 8:00 and missing the first half of the game.


About an hour before church, we realized something - we have a DVR, why not just record the game and then we could start it over from the beginning when we got home. This turned out to be a huge blessing for us. We were able to come home, assemble our snacks, change into comfortable clothes and then rewind the game and watch from the beginning. Even better - we didn't have to sit through the commercials or half-time show, since we could fast forward through them. We had a wonderful evening together as a family laughing, talking, and just being together.


I know that time together in front of the television isn't always viewed as "quality time" (whatever that is). I also know that the extra $3 we pay a month for the dvr, on top of the money we pay for direct tv could be saved or spent differently. We have gone without television in the past and have even talked about turning it back off again recently. However, the fun we had together definitely made it worth it!

Blog Format Change Update

Last Week, I posted about my virtual carbon copy blogs and that I will be making some changes to my blog formats.

I am now ready to provide more details about the changes that I will be making.  Starting Monday, February 15, this is what you can expect:

Home School Mama (This blog, my Blogspot blog) will become my primary forum for devotional posts.  My goal is to post a short devotional each weekday directed toward a common theme for the week.

Home School MamaMI (my Word Press blog) will continue to be my primary forum for posts about our home schooling adventures and our family.  This blog will remain largely unchanged from it’s current format.

As I said before, there will be some overlap in content between the sites from time to time, but they will no longer continue to be near-identical sites.

Super Snacks

This year we let the kids make the menu and prepare most of the food for the Super Bowl.  The menu was not so healthy, but the Super Bowl only happens once a year, so I am sure we will all survive!  We had Rice Krispy Footballs, Puppy Chow, Cookies, Chips, Crackers, Cheese, and Pizza Rolls.

Timothy starting on the Rice Krispy Footballs

Linden measuring cereal for the Footballs

Timothy and Linden finishing up the measuring

 Footballs made and shaped, now it's time for the decorating

Timothy showing off his decorating skills

Rebecca pouring the melted chocolate and peanut butter over chex for puppy chow

Linden helping mix the puppy chow

Timothy and Rebecca cleaning up

The snacks were a big hit and the kids even did a good job cleaning up after they made their creations!

My daughter, the pirate

Yesterday my youngest decided she was a pirate.

Here she is in all her pirate glory.

I believe she is trying to strike fear in our hearts...little does she realize she is just too cute to be scary!

My Life With a Mini-Martha

Over the last few months, my daughter has really taken an interest in cooking and baking. She will stand in the kitchen when my husband is cooking asking him all sorts of questions about different spices and cooking techniques. During the weekly visit to the library, she will check out at least two cookbooks along with her other finds. She was thrilled at Christmas to receive two new cookbooks by Sam Stern – a Brit teen who reminds me of Jaime Oliver. One of her assignments is to write a book review for her favorite of these new books – I will be sure to post it when it is complete.


I am not a good cook – let’s just get that out of the way right now. I love, love, love to bake all sorts of breads, cookies, muffins, you name it. But I am just not that great at cooking dinner fare. Oh sure, I have a rotation of about 8 or 9 meals I can prepare that don’t elicit pained expressions on my kids when I serve them. I am still amazed when I prepare a meal and one of my children says something like “will you make this again, it’s really good”. On the rare occasions that happens, of course. Let’s just say that I am blessed to have a husband that loves to cook and is really quite good at it and leave it at that.

Baking has always been my turf in the house. My husband won’t even attempt it. He doesn’t even like to be left in charge to determine if a loaf of bread or a batch of cookies are ready to be taken out of the oven.

Last night I spent a few hours trying to catch up on paperwork and filing while my husband was at his game. At some point during this time, my daughter announced that she wanted to bake something – like brownies – but she couldn’t because we didn’t have any chocolate chips. All we had in the house were peanut butter chips and peppermint chips. I didn’t think much of it, but told her to just substitute the peanut butter chips for chocolate and give that a try. I remember at one point wondering to myself why in the world she needed baking chips to make brownies, but that thought was chased away by the papers that needed filing.

And then, at some point before the oven timer went off, I realized that my daughter was making brownies FROM SCRATCH. I have never, ever, made brownies that didn’t come from a box. Not a single time. Me, the one who loves experimenting with muffin recipes and making home made pizza crust for my kids.

When my husband returned home last night, I told him about the brownies and the fact that my not-quite-thirteen-year-old daughter had done something that I had never done. He stood there in the kitchen with a blank stare on his face. It turns out that even my hubby - you remember, the one who claims to not be able to tell when a batch of cookies is ready to come out of the oven, yeah, that one - even HE has done this.

Oh yeah, the peanut butteries (that’s the name we settled on) were delicious

Daily Dose of Cute

Yesterday, my husband was getting ready to leave to take our son to a birthday party. Our four-year-old, Linden, was eating dinner while the boys were getting ready to leave. As my husband went to leave, he stopped to give me a hug and a kiss (as he always does before he is leaving). Linden rolled her eyes and disgustingly asked, "man, why do you guys love each other so much?"

Making Over Our Money

My husband and I have been reading through the Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey. We bought the book a few years ago, read it, placed it on a shelf, and promptly forgot about it. Surprisingly, financial freedom did not follow. With all the job and income changes of the past year, and with an eye toward my husband being back in school this year, we pulled the book out, dusted it off, and are reading it again.


Here is what we have learned so far: We are blessed to have no car payment and a lot less credit card debt than most people - but the fact that we still have credit card debt means that we are not patting ourselves on the back. Any credit card debt is too much. We need to get back to budgeting. For years we had a detailed budget - everything down to love offerings and gas for the vehicles was included for each month of the year. In the last few years we have gotten away from that. We need to find extra sources of additional income and work more diligently to maximize the sources we do have. An excellent opportunity to work on my goal of being diligent this year!

Long term goal: Be debt free, of course!

Short term goal steps to reach our long term goal: By the end of the week, we will have our budget for January drawn up and have a draft for February completed. We will also have a spreadsheet detailing exactly what we owe to every creditor. By the end of the month, we will have our emergency fund in a safe but accessible location. By the end of the year, we will have all of our medical bills, credit cards, and a small loan paid off.

Happy 2010!

Our Christmas decorations are put away for another year and we are well into our annual January cleaning projects.  Here are a few pictures from our Christmas festivities.
 

 Our living room - before the madness

Timothy, Linden, and Rebecca showing off their Christmas pajamas

 Linden got the movie she wanted and Timothy was thrilled to get a

New Orleans Saints outfit for his Build-A-Bear

Rebecca is holding fabric that was later turned into 2 denim skirts. 

We looked all over and could not find any denim skirts that were

longer than 6 inches - it was very depressing shopping for clothes this year.

Fortunately for us, we have a daughter that loves to get mama-made clothes!

Closing Out 2009

Wow.  New Years Eve.  The end of 2009.  The end of the first decade of the 2000s.  So many changes this past year. 

My husband lost one job, left another (after 7 years), and stopped coaching basketball and baseball at our Christian school.  He picked up 2 new jobs, one of which is referee for high school volleyball, basketball, baseball, and softball.  Not only has it filled the void left by no longer coaching high school sports, but it has proven to be something that he really enjoys.

We decided to home school the children this year.  As we sat around the table talking on Christmas Eve, everyone agreed that this was the right decision.  Well, almost everyone.  Our 4 year old still isn't sold on the idea, but she is usually the contrary one! 

We became a one car family.  Who would have thought that going from two cars to one would cause more disruptions than the decision to home school our children.  However, after a few confusing weeks I am happy to say that we really don't even miss that other vehicle.  And the savings in gas and insurance are a wonderful thing!

Of course, this year also had its share of the usual changes.  With our friends and families we shared engagements and weddings, celebrated the birth of babies and mourned the loss of loved ones.  There were tears and laughter and laughter through tears.  We all got a little older and hopefully a little wiser over the last 12 months.

This was a very exciting year for our family and I can't wait to see what 2010 brings for us.  I pray that it brings happiness and safety for all our friends and family!