Surprising

 I am truly surprised at how satisfying and fulfilling it is to grow your own food.  What started as a means to an end (feeding my family better), has accomplished so much more than ever imagined.

It is relaxing to spend time in the garden, inspecting the plants, caring for them and watching them grow and mature.

There is so much more involved in gardening than simply planting, watering, and harvesting.  There is bug identification (friend or foe?), plant diseases to watch out for and treat, pruning (knowing where, when and what to snip), all the various methods of supporting vertical growth to pack more into our space...

I was a bug catcher as a kid, so using my bug app on my phone to identify all the critters in our garden is fun.  We have California Glow Worms that look like tiny lightening bugs, parasitic wasps, lady bugs, leaf cutter bees, ants, leaf miners, cabbage moths, flea beetles and lots more that I can't remember the names of.

The kids love to help me water and end up soaked at least every other day.  They like to learn about the different bugs and see the food growing in the garden.  It was my baby this year, next year, now that I have a better idea of what is going on, I will involve them more in the process.

We have harvested a handful of strawberries, three cucumbers, radishes and one zucchini.  We still have at least two more months of harvesting to come!

Loss

 We had to put our "puppo" down yesterday.  It was unexpected and heart-wrenching.  

She liked to play with rocks.  She tossed them into the air and would try to catch them again.  Kind of like she was playing catch with herself.  The x-rays showed a jagged rock stuck in her small intestine.  It was completely blocking her system and too large to pass.  The price for the 'exploratory' surgery would have taken up everything we had, with no certainty that it wouldn't happen again.  We have a lot of rock in our yard.

Choosing to put her down was one of the hardest decisions of our lives.  I didn't anticipate that being a possibility.  Her spay surgery was so much cheaper, I never imagined the cost being so high.  Grieving her loss has been hard.  The unexpected loss adds to the hurt, watching our children grieve is absolutely heartbreaking...

Our older three were present.  Everyone got to say their goodbyes.  Our kindergartener sobbed and hugged her, he asked all kinds of questions.  I explained everything as simply as I could for him.  On the way home he was sad, but still curious about the world and asked me which was meaner, wasps or mosquitos?  That's when I knew he would be okay.

Our freshman bawled and bawled, but seems a little better today.  Our oldest is taking it the hardest.  She always does.  Walking through grief with them is hard.

Catching a Healing: Covid-19

 Our entire family has come down with covid.  I haven't been tracking days, but I would guess we are around days 4-6 based on the first person's symptoms appearing.

It has been so long since I've been sick, that I forgot how miserable it can be.  The first few days I just had that sick sensation in my chest and had some slight congestion and sneezing.  I could tell my body was fighting something.

Tonight has been the most miserable.  I have such pressure in my sinuses that my head hurts and if I bend down, it multiplies exponentially.  A steam and hot soak in the bath helped to clear some of it.  I had a slight fever prior to the soak, but afterwards it had gone down a little.  

Each of us takes turns helping with the responsibilities around the house.  For example, while my little guy takes his afternoon nap, my older kiddos will hang out and watch a movie while I try and take a nap.  My hubby has been stoically working full days at home still despite my pressure on him to take it easy.  He plans to...love my stubborn man!

We thankfully had a lot of leftovers from Thanksgiving to get us through the first few days, and I've been stocking up on our staples the last couple months, so we are able to use what we have.  My friend has insisted on making us soup and salad and bought us some fresh apples and cuties.  She doesn't take no for an answer sometimes, although she does it in the sweetest way.  She'll drop it off tomorrow and while she doesn't know the kids are already tired of soup (I had made some in the beginning and we've been drinking bone broth daily too), I am looking forward to not having to think about supper for one night, and very grateful for her.

We've also been taking our supplements that my mom gave us, she also told me how to make the bone broth.  I can't take the essential oil pill because it is made with olive oil, but I've been using the roller version of it on my lymph nodes where it hurts.  It has been helping.  Having family and friends who care for us is so nice.

Serving the Lord

 Tonight I was a bit bummed and weary from a busy day, so I decided to use my 'work night' as a 'me night' instead.  I treated myself to a hot soak and am now listening to some soothing instrumental music as I write to you.

God has been moving our focus more and more on Him these days.  With so much going on in the world around us, He is our hope, our source of joy and contentment.  Spiritual things and being intentional about them are recurring themes that run through my thoughts.

What can I do for Him?  What do I do with the time He's given me?  How do I honor Him in my daily, mundane activities?

My time is often consumed by my family, my role as 'mama' is quite a primary one.  Our conversations are often sprinkled with spiritual concepts and scripture.  Very rarely, do I have time to do much outside of our busy family life.  I try to treat others with kindness and act with humble integrity when we are out in our community.  Living out God's character is a goal, showing His love and grace through my imperfectness is something I aspire to do.

Recently, my daughter has joined the high school worship team at church, it's kind of like a worship team in-training, as they are only meeting on a temporary basis working towards leading worship on a specific day later this year.  Practices are an hour long so I don't have time to return home and accomplish anything before having to pick her up again.

I was using that hour to run errands or work on lesson plans.  But one day in church, it just seemed that our youth pastor looked burdened to me and I had the desire to help ease that burden.  We are to be the body of Christ, so I volunteered that hour to help out in any way needed.  For three practices now, I have spent time cleaning bathrooms.  

I cleaned a urinal for the first time.  So yucky!  I work hard and am usually quite tired and sore afterwards.  Before I go to volunteer, each time I wish I hadn't volunteered, and each time I long for a reason to just stay home or do my own thing for that hour.  But instead, I honor my commitment and each time, I end up finding joy in serving the Lord with the time and abilities He has given.

Last time, our youth pastor and associate pastor thanked me.  I was awkward with it since I am terrible at accepting compliments or gratitude.  I said that I hoped they noticed because I was trying to do the deeper cleaning that probably doesn't get done often. (I'd scrubbed things like the walls just getting off some of the grime and little stains here and there that you might not notice, but makes a difference in the long run).  The associate pastor said with wide eyes and eyebrows raised that yes, he had noticed, and no, those things didn't get cleaned often enough.  

Just that little bit of validation made me feel so happy and renewed my motivation to continue on next time, and to continue to improve my efforts.  I've always hesitated in making a volunteer commitment at church because my family has to come first and life has a way of being so unpredictable.  Being able to give this occasional hour, has been the perfect, God-supplied, way of serving Him without sacrificing my other God-given responsibilities.

If you're ever in the position to notice someone's service of sacrifice, thank them.  That small thanks stretches such a long way!  And if you are desiring to serve, ask God to show you where, when and how.  He will open the door that is best for you!

Creating Unit Studies for Kindergarten through Highschool

Creating lesson plans are a passion of mine.  I love to learn and I love making learning fun.  It just takes a lot of time and effort, so I haven't done much of the creative lesson planning in the last couple years.  Something about having littles makes it that much more challenging.

For our science curriculum this year we are going a non-traditional route.  I'm taking the perks of homeschooling and running with the flexibility to customize our learning!  My girls gave me a list of what they wanted to learn and how they wanted to learn it.  So I've taken their input and am putting together a unit study.  We are going to be studying Marine Science/Oceans, Zoology, Weather, and Historical Geology.

We're going to start with Marine Science and Oceans.  I've purchased two books as "spines" for our foundation.  The "spine" of a unit study is often a reference/text book that acts as a guide for the course of the unit study.  We're young earth creationists and in the realm of science, finding non-evolution based information can be a challenge.  Our two spine books focus mostly on the current knowledge of the oceans and creatures therein, with very little said about the "history" of where they came from.  A few of our supplemental books do have some evolution in them, but it is a good thing for the kids to know that there are other viewpoints to a degree.  

Our first book focuses on information and separates the different ocean zones, creatures and ecosystems with beautiful pictures.  Our second book is full of hands-on activities (crafts, science experiments, and cooking projects).  I am putting together a lesson plan using these two books and taking into consideration that I have a kindergartener, middle schooler, and high schooler to teach.

As we cover the information to learn, I am incorporating hands-on activities.  For example, when I introduce the different oceans, I have a full page coloring sheet of the world for my kindergartener either to color or paint as I read about the different oceans.  He will get to listen to the information that I'm reading as he decorates his map.  For my older kiddos, they have the same map on a smaller scale that they can label with space below to take notes about each specific ocean.  We'll get out our globe and find the oceans and use post-it notes to label the oceans.  We'll build a water molecule, do a water density experiment, and bake some cookies to decorate as our earth to show the percentage of land vs water.  And that is just the 4 lessons!

I've found documentaries I can stream and fun educational tv series that teach about ocean animals and ecosystems too.  I want to do some sort of field trip, but I'm waiting to see what homeschool field trips come up this fall since regular entry prices are so high these days. 

Lesson planning is so much fun.  I hope the kids enjoy our learning as much as I'm enjoying putting it together!

It's Okay.

Sometimes it is okay to not look for that next thing to keep yourself busy or productive.

Sometimes it is okay to just stop.

Stop the process.  

Stop the mental pressures.

Grant yourself the grace and permission to put it all away for the night.

Pick yourself up.

Put yourself to bed at a decent time.

Maybe not because you want to.

But because you can.

Goal Adjustments

Back in October, I posted about striving to wake up earlier to have some "me" time.  Five months later, and I have still not figured out how to get to bed earlier.  It happens on occasion, but I'm realizing in this season, it just isn't going to happen.  My time is not my own with young children in the house.

The Lord has been good to remind me that the ultimate goal is to spend time with Him on a daily basis, to spend more time seeking Him.  It doesn't necessarily have to fit my idealistic bible time to myself where I can cuddle up on the couch with a warm blanket, bible, and journal.  In truth, the last time I was able to do that regularly was before I had children.

So, I am trying to be flexible and give myself grace.  I am doing pretty good at making time to read my bible and pray every morning.  Sometimes I get up 15 minutes earlier than I expect my kids to be up, other times I bring it out to the living room with me while my boys climb over me as they play.  Sometimes I have the opportunity to have extended prayer time and other days I write a sentence or two before motherhood calls.

My kids get to see me reading my bible and writing in my prayer journal.  They know that it is something I do every day.  If kids truly learn by watching, perhaps the Lord is using these moments to impact them for eternity.