Year 2, Day 176: Tension or peace?

Let's see.  My day started with some slight dizziness which almost sent me into a panic because I did NOT need another 3 days of vertigo.  Thankfully, it was not that.  Jared let me get up more slowly by taking care of the kids and getting their day started.  He was also very tender and listened to my pity party about many things, which are just that, a pity party.  I have issues with fear, jealousy, and control that I have to continually work through, so they were/are rearing their ugly heads today.  But I did have some great peace and quiet (3 hrs!) this afternoon hanging out in Jared's office while Benaiah was at tech rehearsal for church.  I worked on stuff for our homeschool meeting and learned about a new show called "Descendants" by Disney.  It's a no go for this family but I'll tell you why.

"Descendants," "Descendants 2," the animated short TV episodes, and the books by Disney are about the children of the villians of Disney's classic animated princess movies.  They are all evil, and have a mission to infiltrate the good children's school, but eventually turn good.  However, that doesn't happen until the very end.  Meanwhile, they sing multiple songs about being "wicked (bad, not the slang that New Englanders use instead of "very")," talk about dating, have tons of cat fights about whose outfit is better, their outfits show too much and their dancing is too sexualized.  I told Keturah that I understand that they turn good, but the stories could have been told in a much better way.  Thankfully, she understood.  So, be warned about this new hot series for tweens and teens (and younger girls like Keturah).  There are much better shows out there that demonstrates redemption.  "Maleficent" was one of them.  It's just another reminder to get checking what the kids are watching and talking about and even reading.  And I did my research checking Christian and secular review websites, watching the songs and animated shorts, and perusing the book.  We won't catch everything, but when we do, and we teach our kids how to recognize it, they will be able to discern for themselves when we aren't there to do it for them.

But, I did have the quiet I needed to calm down from yesterday and today's pity party and prepare my mind for holding babies in the nursery and going to church.  The sermon was about loving our enemies from Matthew 5, which is always a great reminder and easy to understand but hard to apply.  After church, I got home and saw that Jared had worked all day in the yard and painted the front door white because the black paint was making it so hot!  Usually he takes a nap, so I was very impressed.  And the kids had eaten dinner before church, which doesn't always happen.  So, it was good evening until I threw a hissy fit about house repairs again.  Sigh.  I'm not going to lie.  I have a problem with contentment, too.

Tomorrow, Jared and Benaiah drive to Kansas City, Missouri, and since Jared is doing the driving of course, by himself, please pray for them.  Benaiah likes to sleep in the car, so I'm not sure if he'll be good at keeping Jared awake.  It's a 7 1/2 hr drive.  But at least they take the fun "vroom" i.e. Gary's sports car, the Veloster or what I call the "velociraptor." Jared loves stick shifts, and it has a GPS in it, so it should be fine.  Then Benaiah and the team sign in on Monday and compete Tuesday through Thursday, while Jared helps Gary, and the other guys, with their booth and ministry talks as well at the North American.

That means, I'm a single parent for the week.  It should be great weather and we have a couple of things planned.  I also have some goals for the next week or two as well, like the school room and kids' bedrooms.  Pray for sanity and for me to be able to purge as I go because I know all the books will not fit on the shelves and all their stuff won't fit in their rooms.  It's a process, and I have to remind myself that I have come pretty far already.  It takes 16 years to accumulate this much stuff, and it won't be gone in 1 year, but maybe a few years.  Little by little.

Ah, the peace and quiet of the office at the church.  Sweet!

The one and only baby at the 4pm service was someone I knew!  Miss Sarah!  She almost cried at first, but I think she did recognize me and eventually babbled a bunch!

We moved over to the bigger kid room because they were short staffed there and had about 10 kids.  But now I know what Abishai's room looks like and what his lesson was at the 5:30 service!

Baby hands!

Abishai is yes, in his pj's!  He refused to change!  And technically, Justin is in his pj shorts as well.  But the point of the picture is that Abishai is trying to hold Justin's water bottle like Justin does, with his thumb!

Awww, brothers!

I couldn't really see them, but Benaiah and Ethan saw me taking a picture and stopped in their tracks to make a derp face!

Jared asked me to look up what these are, and they are just weeds.  I used the app my friend suggested where you take a picture and then the app finds some plants that are close to what the picture shows.  The app worked well!

Abishai is getting good at filling up the water squirters and squirting them!

Part of what Jared did for work today was pulling down some old cable wires.

Checking out the fence line.  We did meet the neighbor tonight.  I think his dad lives with him.  He has a 15 year old son that sometimes comes on the weekend.  He's divorced.  He said there are voles in the yards and said we could use his trash cans for yard trash because he never fills them up.

Ready to fire!

His target: Socks!

Kind of pretty wildflower.

I hope he doesn't do this at college, licking up spills directly from the table.

Then he smeared it in his air and all over his body.  Fun!

I knew it!  I knew if I put the carts full of art supplies in Keturah's room, she would use them!  She took it upon herself to make invitations about her birthday party to her friends!  Excellent!  She also put all the girly and horse books on the shelf and will work on other doo dah's as well this week.

Loads of glitter, of course.  She put them on top of her dresser to dry.

Using her handwriting skills.  She'll be in 4th grade next year.  Growing up fast!

One of the tomato plants survived and started to regrow!  The long stem and leaves fell off in the transportation from the condo and transfer to the new pot.

Green papers are still growing.

Watching doggy eat his nightly biscuit.

Leah had Socks take the biscuit outside, so I let him out tonight.  I didn't put him on the leash, but stayed right there and brought him back in when he was done because he had been out for awhile anyway.

Playing around in Grandpa's car, as usual.  We've done that ever since Grandpa had a Z3.

Ice Cream's vroom, vroom!

Let's go!

Too much fun!

The sentry.  Jared said that Socks sat in the front open doorway and barked at a woman walking a large dog, but didn't attempt to run after them.  Wow!

Crazy girl in her pj's in Poppy's car.

The car is all packed up with lots of books for sale at the North American!

Mom, it looks golden!  Ta da!  We had opned all the windows today because it was so nice, so the blinds were up.  I can't wait to get the curtain rods fixed and find some real curtains instead of tacking up a blanket to make it dark in there for naptime.