New Blog Site!

After taking a very long hiatus, I have started blogging again. Shoe Momma no longer seems to fit, so my new blog site is, www.jennydalley.blogspot.com. Won't you come visit?

The Dance

The day after my brother-in-law's funeral, my husband and I joined my family at the park for my sister's wedding rehearsal dinner. I was there early hanging out with my family and waiting for Bob to get off work. When I saw him pulling into the parking lot I went to meet him. This song came over the park's loudspeakers as we were walking toward each other. When we met on the sidewalk we stopped and just held unto each other until even a little while after the song ended. This song has reminded me of my brother in law ever since.
This afternoon I heard George Winston's piano version on Pandora and instead of thinking of my brother in law, (it will be 10 years in June) I thought of my husband and I holding unto each other.
Today is Valentine's Day. Some friends have been living in the hospital for a few weeks after the husband was in a motorcycle accident. In spite of everything he has been through, he remembered to have roses sent to his wife and daughters. My boys and husband picked out flowers for me the other night when we were at Wal-Mart, but otherwise, we most likely won't do a whole lot, if anything. I am okay with that. But I am not entirely happy with other areas of my life that I seem to have become complacent with.
Why is it that when the status quo is generally acceptable, with money in the bank and healthy kids, we take things for granted? We don't depend on each other, or God, as much as when things are not so easy. Why, when things are tough do we work that much harder?
I have really been in a rut lately. The status quo is okay and I am feeling convicted. There is so much that I should be doing that I am not. I need to try harder. Work harder. Take advantage less. Be less complacent.

"Dance like nobody's watching;
love like you've never been hurt.
Sing like nobody's listening;
live like it's heaven on earth."

~~~ by Mark Twain

Menu Plan Monday

This is my first time linking to www.Orgjunkie.com. I think next week I will aim for side dishes, too. Happy Monday!

Monday - Meatloaf

Tuesday - tacos

Wednesday - I think we are eating at Awana

Thursday - Chicken thighs = hmmmmm, I gotta figure out what to do with those!

Friday - scrambled egg sandwiches

Saturday - Chicken taco salad (I made these last week and the boys dubbed it "Mama's Special!"

Sunday - Spaghetti

My Word for 2011 and Easy "Art"

I have seen Word Clouds of sorts on various blogs but until today I have never played around with them. Recently I discovered a wonderful website called Big Picture Classes. Ali Edwards is teaching a year long class utilizing the word you pick for the year. I think her word is Light. Kimmy's word is Intentional. My word is Action. I wanted to create something with my word that I can post somewhere as a reminder to me throughout the year.

I went to www.wordle.net, selected "create" on the top bar of tabs, wrote a bunch of synonyms for "action" that I found here http://thesaurus.com/, played around with the layout, fonts, and colors until I was happy, then I printed it. Easy-peasy! :)

It was so easy and fun that I decided to create some "art" for my living room!

Have you played much with wordle.net? I'd love to see what you've done!

Happy New Year!

A Social Network Christmas

I just had to share what greeted me on Facebook this morning. Such a simple and yet profound way of presenting Jesus' birth and the events leading up to it. Could you just imagine? I can so totally picture Joseph and Mary facebooking if Jesus' birth was this year rather than just over 2,000 years ago. The little flirtation at the beginning and the "so-and-so likes this" comments throughout the video were adorable. My boys and I have a joke about being "facebooked" when they do something cute or silly. "Don't put that on facebook!" is a common plea in our home. So imagining Mary changing her profile picture to include her new baby, friends' comments (hurtful & supportive), and Joseph typing out the name of his precious newborn, brought this amazing, life-changing, world-altering, prophesy-predicted Event that much more to life.

I just made my boys watch it with me. My 9 year old had to read some of the parts to his little brothers when I could not because of the lump in my throat.

My mother and I have had this silly unofficial contest of trying to make each other cry (in a good way) and as I hit the "Publish Post" button below I will be wondering how many of my readers will cry (in a good way).

Christmas Trees

A friend of mine wrote about Christmas Trees on her blog and as I was adding a comment I started remembering and writing all sorts of things about my past Christmas trees. My comment turned into a post. And here it is.

What is your ideal Christmas Tree? Real or plastic? Do you bundle up and head out to the wilderness in search of the perfect tree to cut down yourself or do you shop at a lot in town? White or green, if fake? Do you like colored lights or white lights? Are your ornaments predominantly homemade or store bought? Does your Christmas Tree have a theme? I have a dear friend who wants to have a Charlie Brown tree this year. I'd love to see that!

After about 8 years of fake trees, mostly with colored little tags at the base of the branches so you can tell which hole to fit them into, we are finally getting a real tree this year!

During our first several years of marriage hubby and I did not have much money. We rarely felt that purchasing a live tree was something we could afford so we used hand-me-down fake ones. One year my hubby and his brother surprised me with a real tree. We didn't have a truck but Dan did so he met us at a tree lot. The tree lot was next to the grocery store I was told we were heading to. Dan has been in Heaven for over nine years now. That December, seeing him standing there by those trees, is one of my favorite memories of him. He was always so giving.

I love the elegant look of white lights on a tree, but as long as I have kids in the house I just have to have colored lights. I tried white lights a few years ago but it just didn't seem as cheery.

Tinsel is not my favorite. Last year I purchased a couple of boxes of the silvery stuff with the intent of using it to hide the ugly little tags and other monstrosities on our ugly plastic tree, but I was afraid my kids would eat it and die, so I never put it on. My dad always liked tinsel. My mom always hated it. One year Dad threw tinsel on the entire left half of the tree. What a compromise!

I love my ornaments. I love unwrapping them one at a time relishing the memories of how they came to be in my home. There were a few years when I was single that I thought I wanted a cat-themed tree. Thus many of my ornaments are cat figurines. My husband grew up on a farm and my sisters used to tease him about farm animals so for a few years we inadvertently collected little sheep ornaments. Our poor trees have never been themed and probably never will. It just may be impossible to have a single theme when most of the members of the family have ADD. "Look, a squirrel!"

I did it!

New Directions Kind Of

I know I said no blogs until after NaNoWriMo, but I have a thought I wanted to be sure to follow up on in December.

First of all, I have written over 19,000 words. Woo Hoo! I am so proud of myself! It is hard to write a novel. I always just figured my biggest enemy was in not applying myself and not writing. But now that I am writing I am struggling with things like plots and character development. Since my novel is set in 17th century Ireland I am forced to do a ton of research while I am writing. And because the major premise is conflict between Protestant and Catholic characters how do I portray the truth without being judge-y? I have been consistently behind in my daily word count but I know I can still make it.

That was not my thought, but related somewhat. One of my biggest character flaws is laziness. I am great at coming up with ideas and I know what I should/need/want to do, I just don't. This writing business and actually being close to achieving such a huge goal has fired me up a bit.

Have you heard of Hannah Help Me? She is this mom who goes to other mom's homes and help them in their overwhelming lives. She sells a coaching program where she will send daily e-mails with a 5 minute video to help with everything from married life to budgets. All for only $39.95. I have been so tempted. I have at least 8 parenting books and more self-improvement books. I am a die-hard FlyLady fan.

The thing is, I know what I need to be doing. I plan to journal/journey starting in December, after I write 50,000 in my novel, in this blog about what I am doing/not doing to get my life on track. Putting God first, husband second, kids third. Budgeting, homeschooling, home-making, and you get to join in on the fun!

That's it until December. I have a house to clean and a novel to write. We have a pastor visiting from the other side of the country and members of our church have signed up to cook dinners and lunches for him this week. I signed up for tomorrow. Don't know why I did during NaNoWriMo. Don't know what I was thinking! Other than that it will be nice to meet him and kids will get to see service. Something they don't witness from me nearly often enough.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Snooze Buttons

My husband, after being told I was having girl problems, tried to smother them out of me with a pillow. Isn't he ever so helpful?

My friend overheard her four year old daughter telling her big sister in a warning tone, "Don't you shush me again!"

I have an associate who dabbles on the dark side. It used to really bother me. It still does, but not to the extent it once did.

What do these little accounts have to do with Snooze Buttons? Well, I'm glad you asked. My Bible Study this morning was about letting the Holy Spirit within you lead you. And after I fell asleep on the couch afterwards rather than dive into my day and get homeschooling going, and writing done, and morning routines, it occurred to me to ask; How many times do I feel the nudging of the Holy Spirit and ignore Him?

I smother those feelings, shush His voice, and as a result, things that should bother me don't.

NaNoWriMo

I apologize about my lengthy absence. We were planning a trip to Texas and Texas was the only thing on my mind. I did not want the world (at least not local criminal types) to know we were going to be out of town. We're back now and had a BLAST! We visited hubby's brother and family, went to the Texas State Fair and The Alamo. On our way we explored Bent's Old Fort in La Junta. On our way home we explored Carlsbad Caverns and Santa Fe. Our little GPS, who my crazy hubby uploaded a squirrel's voice to, told us we drove for 52 hours in our 9 day trip. The kids were wonderful in the car. I guess that would be a miracle considering how long we were driving. Hotel rooms were a different story. They were wanting to be awake and doing things WAY before we were. It was also tough getting them to stop fighting over blankets and pillows before falling asleep. Overall it was a wonderful vacation. Here are some of the highlights:

• The squirrel stuck in the Nuvi - AKA the GPS with a squirrel voice. Bob had also uploaded a "scary" voice but he had a British accent and was NOT scary. :) Bob promptly switched to the squirrel who randomly exclaimed such things as, "If you see a squirrel run in front of the car, it's probably my uncle Frank. He's crazy like that!" and "Do you think the gas station would sell walnuts?" and "Sometimes I get a little distracted... Hey do you want some peanut brittle?" All in this cute, sometimes grating, squirrel voice. When bro-in-law drove us around in Ft. Worth he did not appreciate the squirrel. He made disparaging remarks when he veered off course and caused squirrel to exclaim, "Oh NUTS! Don't worry, I'll get us out of here!" Poor squirrel.
• Rhianna did not like driving in the dark. "I want to go home and watch Dora!" "I don't like the freaky stuff!" Daniel had asked her about Texas, "Do you like Texas, Ri-Ri? What do you think of Texas?" "I don't like Texas. There's no sun!"
• Mike bought us fudge. Yum? No! It was HOT! What was hilarious is that his piece was not hot and he did not mean to buy hot. So he says. He did seem genuinely surprised at our reactions. Brendan was fanning his mouth. Rhianna had tears in her eyes, fist in her mouth and was drooling. Later we walked past another candy store and Ashton told Mike, "No fudge!" It was pretty funny.
• Carlsbad Caverns is a MUST SEE. It was a little disconcerting walking underground. Daniel was quite nervous and Bob talked to him on the way down. I was shaky and did some self-talking myself. But the scary part was brief. The lighting, shapes, colors, crevices, and tranquil pools were breathtaking. It was amazing. God was there. The boys asked how long we had been underground after about 2 hours. I reminded them about watching the miners in Chile coming out of the mine after being in there for 69 days. Just no comparison.
• Some pictures below.

We are all happy to be back home. Well, except Bob who had to fly to California two days after we got back and is currently driving 12 hours in one of their new police cars. 7 states in a week. Poor thing.

So that is why I haven't blogged recently. And this post's title is why I will not be blogging in November. November is National Novel Writing Month - NaNoWriMo. I am fixin' to write me a novel! It will be like number 4 in my priority list; after Bible study, Bob, and homeschooling. But I figure since I will be cutting out Facebook (cleaning), blogging (reading & writing) and movies (cooking), I should be able to reach the 50,000 words.

The Birthday Princess

Our little Princess is 3 years old today! Isn't she a doll? I need to remind myself that sometimes. She and I actually had quite a little discussion yesterday about how it was the last day she would be 2, so "NO MORE Terrible Twos!"

This afternoon I went to a neighborhood dollar store to find a princess doll for her cake and a homeless couple got in line behind me. Have you heard that the olfactory sense is one that provokes the strongest memories? Well this was one of those times! Reminded me so much of when my little one and her brother first came to live with us just over two years ago. Their biological mother has been homeless for most of her life. I was told that the little family had spent the night in a tent once because they did not get to the shelter in time. A baby girl and her brother in a tent. Not for fun. I've been crying most of the day since the dollar store trip.

I have been thinking about her bio mom today. What is going on in her heart? I wonder about her little baby. He is less than a year old. Every time I hear about them they are just losing another house. And I wonder about her other boy. The one who entered our home and left, but will always be a part of us. And ...I can't go there. So I'll push it aside for a time and save it for another day.

Back to the Birthday Princess... I could not find the right princess doll at the dollar store so I went to K-mart where images of the dollar store homeless couple followed me and I came home with a Disney Princess comforter when I had already gone over budget.

I can't take away her past. I can't let her live with her biological mother and biological brothers. I can't guarantee her a Happily Ever After. But I can buy her a princess comforter for her birthday. And way more important, I can teach her about Jesus and assure her that she is not just our little Princess, but she is God's Princess, too.

A Few Little Discoveries

I went to my first Writer's Conference this weekend! It was affirming, inspiring, and free. I chose not to go the the afternoon session I had originally signed up for; marketing and publishing. I chose instead to attend the panel on writing different genres. I loved it and learned a lot. I even took away a few blogging tips. A friend of mine attended the marketing/publishing session and came away slightly overwhelmed and discouraged. I was so glad I didn't go to that one. I am not in that place in my writing. It would be good to actually finish a piece first, don't you agree?

This afternoon, as I was looking around my living room, trying to figure out how to make it more Nester'ly, it occurred to me that I am slightly overwhelmed and discouraged in my attempts at decorating my home because I am not in that place in my home-management.

I am closer to this:

I dream of this:

The blogs and television shows that I am thoroughly enjoying reading and watching are these:

The blogs and television shows that I will benefit more from at this point are perhaps these:

So now I am off to de-clutter our home-school table. My decorator dreams will be placed on the back burner until I have a better handle on the management part of keeping our home. Thanks for letting me share. I'd love to hear suggestions for other blogs and t.v. shows that I would enjoy or benefit from. Does anyone want to share their dreams and realities?

Monday CHAT

I would love it if you would CHAT with me every Monday.

C = Challenge
H = Habit
A = Action
T = Time

Here's mine for this week.

Challenge: I just read The Nester's post this morning titled Meaningful Beauty. She offers a challenge to her readers: "My encouragement to you today is to be intenional about surrounding yourself with PERSONAL meaningful beauty." After I read that I walked around my house and found basically nothing, besides my books, that would qualify as "personal meaningful beauty." So that is my challenge this week. Purposefully place items around my home that would be meaningful to my family. I've been wanting to frame some of the kids' artwork.

Habit: Go to bed at 10:30 and wake up at 6:30.

Action: Go to the gym or walk up the neighborhood hill 3x this week.

Time: Something I desperately need to spend some time on today and possibly throughout the week is my form for our vacation. The school we signed up under this year will pay for part of our trip. It has to be pre-approved and I keep procrastinating.

I'll update on Thursday to let you know how I'm doing on my CHAT. I'd love to hear about some of your goals for the week.

"I Saved His Name In My Heart."

While driving my seven year old home from his speech session this afternoon, I was trying to find out some of the kids' names in his group. He could only remember the two girls' names. Go figure! Then he says, "There was Adam. From a long time ago." "That was a long time ago." After he thought a moment he said, "I saved his name in my heart."
Isn't that beautiful?

Last Days of Summer

I am sitting on my Driveway Swing, (kind of like a porch swing, but it's in our driveway instead) watching my boys swim. The neighbor kids, poor little darlings, will be in school for another hour. We are so blessed! My hubby found a blow-up fighter jet (Gotta love Woot!) that all 3 of my boys are able to float on. Although currently the two youngest are on it and the oldest is "rocking" it.
I read a touching article on Heart Of The Matter this morning by Sheri Sears listing the reasons she homeschools. The point that I have been reflecting on ever since is:

• I don’t want my children to grow away from each other as schools seem to promote. They need to know that while friends come and go siblings are forever.

So this day, probably one of our last that is warm enough for swimming, is extra sweet to me.

All I Want is a Dress for a Little Girl!!!

Oh, and I don't want to pay $50 for one. Is that too much to ask? I invited my sister to go dress shopping at our local mall for my 3-year-old girl for her adoption next week. I thought it would be a simple task. But no! There were no cute, inexpensive dresses. There were plenty of skanky, expensive, grown-up, 80's punk-Cyndi-Lauper-ish, or just plain ugly ones. We finally found a cute one on clearance at Target. Yay! Should have gone there first.

And, of course, when I looked online to get pictures of some of the horrible dresses we found, see below, I found lots of adorable dresses and they were on sale, too. Figures.

When Mama Ain't Happy...

It's not that I'm not happy. It's just that I'm not happy. The difference is subtle but important.

My hubby and I can tell when we're in sync with each other. We finish each other's sentences. We crave the same foods. We want to watch the same kinds of movies. Then there are times when we're out of sync. We're off. Occasionally one of has to proclaim, "We're so off!" Well lately, we've been fine, but I've been off. I don't want to write. I've been sleeping 10+ hours a night. I've been napping.

Fortunately I know exactly the steps I need to fix the problem.

Read the Bible every day. Things are so much clearer and brighter when I start with God's Word.

Practice His presence throughout the day.

Exercise at least 4 times a week.

Make and follow an eating plan according to my two favorite "diet" books.

I will be back to chipper self soon!

In the meantime, I will be writing more regularly.

Eyeballs... really, eyeballs!

My wonderful father watched the kids for me yesterday morning so I could go to my Optometrist appointment to fill my contact (or eye-tact as my 8 year old calls them) prescription. I tend to stretch out their use for as long as I possibly can. I confessed this to my new eye doctor and he told me exactly, in gory detail, why it is a bad idea to wear disposable contacts for months longer than they are intended to be worn. I won't give you all the details, but if you are interested, here is a link: http://www.allaboutvision.com/contacts/fungal-eye-infections.htm.

After looking through the 2nd or 3rd machine at my eyes he made an interesting comment, "I've been doing this for years and have seen hundreds of eyes. It never ceases to amaze me how different and yet how similar each one is." Not knowing his beliefs I hesitated a moment before asking, "Proof of a Higher Power, huh?"
"Exactly!" He told me that in one of his classes there was a discussion about evolution. Evolution in a science class, you ask? Seriously, this was good. There are apparently only six types of eyes on earth. Six! Well, in his class, they were wondering about the fact that the Giant Squid's eye is the same type as the rhinoceros or hippopotamus. His classmates were, "Wow, isn't evolution something?" And he was more, "Hello! This just screams Creator!" I'm paraphrasing the quotes, by the way.

I just love how Creator God works. I love how He put an eye, just one, in a giant squid, and gave it the same kind of eye as a pachyderm. Why? So doctors-in-training can see Him in a science class? So an Optometrist can casually mention to his patient that perhaps there is more to creation than random acts of morphing? Isn't He amazing?

NOT Back-To-School

Beginning our school day with PRAYER!

Reading...

(2nd picture - Daniel is so excited about learning how to read! I love that he showed his big brothers the word he figured out.)

Recess

Science - After drawing the butterflies the kids set them free in their own backyard!

We took a day off and went to the lake. Just because!

Back to School

I love this time of year. I love shopping for Back To School things: New crayons that smell so yummy, folders with pictures of adorable animals, mechanical pencils, Trapper Keepers.... Whoa! I just dated myself there, didn't I?

This is our first year of starting home schooling from the beginning. My sisters recently took my niece and nephew to do some big-city school clothes shopping. Lots of money was spent. Yet another public school tradition I don't miss. Well, maybe I miss it a little. But not my spending my grown up money on boys' jeans that are going to rip out in the knee within a month anyway! What I miss is being young again and having my mom and dad buy all my new school clothes. One of my fondest childhood memories is lying in bed at night planning my wardrobe for the first few days of school. My sister's and my conversation would have been similar to this:

"What are you going to wear on the first day of school?" I would whisper.

"My red corduroy jumper with the yellow flowers on the front and my yellow socks." My sister would excitedly reply. "What about you?"

"My blue and green striped shirt with the jeans that have the flowers at the bottom. What are you gonna wear the second day?"

We had at least the first three days planned out every year.

Every once in awhile I feel a bit guilty that I am depriving my kids of memories like that. Not that I can imagine my boys being that excited about what they will wear on days 1, 2, and 3. Although they do like getting dressed up for church. I just sometimes wonder if they will feel they missed out.

Then I look at those memories and traditions they will get to enjoy instead. Things like taking two weeks off from school to drive to Texas in the fall. Reading lessons in front of the fire place or snuggled up under a blanket on the couch. Learning fractions by baking cookies.

Are we crazy for doing this? Probably. I know we are doing the right thing, though. We have already grown closer as a family. My boys are not always excited about doing school work, but they are still happy that their mommy is their teacher.

And now we're off to attend a local Home Educator Conference!