Perspective

An ice storm knocked out our power on Tuesday for fifty-something hours. I think the prayer that Kyle had me write on the chalkboard today pretty much sums up how we are feeling.

In case you can't read my beautiful chalk dictation, it reads:

Jesus Christ is our Savior. Thank You God for my toys, thank You that we have lights and electricity, but most of all just thank You for loving us. Kyle 1/30/09

I would personally like to add: Thank You, God, for Internet and heat.

A Sweet Find

I am the official record keeper for our family. The gift purchaser. The birthday remember-er (or sadly, the birthday forget-er, as is often the case). The photographer. The videographer. Let's just say, if something needs to be remembered or kept for posterity, in this family, I am the go-to-girl.

That's what made this recent find so incredibly sweet. In all of my de-cluttering and reorganizing, I came across something in the bottom drawer of Mike's dresser -- two little sandwich baggies with the names of our children scrawled on them in Sharpie marker. Inside were ticket stubs to every sporting event each boy has attended.

If Mike had asked me to put them in a scrapbook I would have done so gladly, but it is so much sweeter that he collected them himself. The little plastic bags with their names written in his handwriting are more special than any papered, ribboned, tagged, or fancied-up scrapbook page I ever could have made. I love that man!

Simplifying My Life, One Closet at a Time

Oh my goodness, how strange to be typing a blog post! My computer seems like a stranger to me. All of my spare time, and even my not-so-spare time, lately has gone to tearing my house apart and putting it back together again.

Now when people come over, I will be tempted to offer them a peek in my closets. (Okay, not a peek so much as an extended viewing involving "oohs" and "aahs.")

We lived in our previous house for seven years and we accumulated a lot of stuff. But before we put that house on the market we seriously de-cluttered. It was a fabulously freeing feeling. Then we moved here and even though it's a smaller house, everything we had fit and it was great. For a while.

However, in the three years we have lived here our stuff has seriously multiplied. It is very difficult to have everything in its place when there is not a place for everything. I have been feeling overwhelmed for the past few months because of the amount of stuff in our house.

I was antsy to simplify and de-clutter, but each time I would go into a closet intending to get rid of stuff, I would see things I didn’t want to part with, then turn around and close the door. I felt paralyzed with too much stuff, but not ready to totally say good-bye to it.

Then I hatched a plan that set me in motion. I decided to pack things up that I knew I wouldn't need right away (and possibly never need again) and get them out of our valuable indoor closet space and into our attic or basement. I packed up things like Mike's letter jacket, the dress I wore for high school graduation, leftover napkins from our wedding reception, little knick-knacks I've had since childhood, a lamp we bought on our first anniversary, and you know, stuff.

How do you get rid of things like that? But who has room for it all? It is a dilemma, or was a dilemma. But now they are nicely boxed away. No doubt, many of the things I will be ready to part with next time I see them, but for now I am just thrilled none of it is taking up prime real estate in our house.

When my wedding dress was professionally boxed up eleven and a half years ago, my veil and train wouldn't fit, so they have been in plastic bags on a shelf in my closet. I was very surprised and pleased to see they were not yellow. I took a picture for nostalgia.

Here is the train, yes it takes up the whole king-sized bed. Did I ever mention I was princess of a small country? Gee, I can't imagine why it didn't fit in the box with the other 45 yards of tulle.
I also boxed up many items for a garage sale or to donate, so don't think I'm a total pack rat.

I took pictures of my closet organization victories, but somehow they don't look as impressive in the photographs as they seem in real life. This one of our craft/cookbook/dog food/swiffer storage cupboard gives you an idea though.
In keeping with the theme of simplifying, here is a simple recipe I made last week. My mom never made chicken and dumplings so I am no expert, but this was very yummy and oh so easy!!

The inspiration recipe came from Mary Hunt’s newsletter Everyday Cheapskate. I first heard about her on Focus on the Family or Family Life (I have a mental block that refuses to let me differentiate between the two). I really love her advice and strategies on debt-proof living. She and her husband have the best strategies ever for teaching your children to be grateful, responsible stewards of money. But that’s a whole different post, back to the dumplings:

Tina's Version of Slow Cooker Chicken & Dumplings:

2 large chicken breasts
1 tablespoon butter
1 can condensed cream of chicken soup
20 ounces of chicken broth +/-
7 buttermilk biscuits
1 can sliced carrots

Place the chicken, butter, soup, and broth in slow cooker. Cover, and cook for 5 to 6 hours on high. One hour before serving, shred chicken breasts with forks in slow cooker, add can of cooked carrots, and open the biscuits. With palm, smash each biscuit to be about 1/4-inch thick and cut into 1/2-inch strips with pizza cutter. Add to the slow cooker. Try Make sure to get the dough covered with liquid, adding broth if necessary (or even water). Continue cooking until the dough is no longer raw in the center, about 1 hour. Don’t keep opening your slow cooker to stir dumplings or dumplings will take much longer to cook and your family will be starving to death and your children will be writhing on the floor saying, "But I need to eat now!" Just saying, keep the lid on while the biscuits are transforming into dumplings.

Recipe notes: I put my chicken breasts in frozen, no problems. I had a 32 oz. carton of broth so I just added what looked right, but I think it was pretty close to 20 oz. I also went ahead and baked the remaining biscuits and saved them for breakfast. Waste not, want not! (glancing around) Where did that come from? Is that you, Grandma?

Gleaning Wisdom

To glean is to collect bit by bit. What could be better to collect than wisdom? Bit by bit we first need to hear the truth, then have the opportunity to put that truth into action, and finally apply it consistently in thought, word, and deed.

Here are some nuggets of wisdom I have gleaned which have blessed me and I thought it would be a shame not to share them. Here goes:

When we allow our kids to experience “natural consequences” resist the urge to have a serves-you-right-attitude. Instead, be on their side and don't lecture them after they have suffered the natural consequence to their action. It won’t dull the learning curve for them, but it will enhance your relationship with them. (Gleaned from a National Center for Biblical Parenting seminar)

God, then husband, then kids. Not only is this the God-given order of priorities, it is just so practical. When the kids are grown and gone your husband will still be there (God willing), so make sure to continually nurture and prioritize your marital relationship. (Gleaned from the Bible and A Woman After God’s Own Heart)

Have a code name your children can use when they need your help and can’t come right out and say so. Example: If they normally call you “Mom” the code name can be “Mother.” If they need you to step in and be the bad guy in a situation they can say, “Mother, can Tom stay longer?” When you hear “Mother” you are alerted that something is up, you can say “no” and your child can save face. I think this would come in very handy with older kids, but even young kids could use it. I had a situation at the grocery store with Kyle where I stepped a few feet away from the cart and someone was too close for comfort to him, but he was in the cart and couldn’t get away. If he said, “Momma,” I might put him off with a, “Hang on,” or “I’ll be there in a second,” but if he said “Mother” I would know something was up and be immediately responsive. (Gleaned from a “seasoned” mom)

What is your husband’s favorite thing to do? (Hint: Most likely it starts with “s” and ends with “x” and has one letter in between.) What is your favorite thing to do? If it’s the same answer for both of you then great, skip to the next tidbit. Possibly it's not the same, in that case imagine that you could only do your favorite thing when your husband wanted to do it with you. Now imagine that your husband rolled his eyes and acted put upon when you asked him to do your favorite thing with you. Pray for a thankful heart that your husband wants to do his favorite thing only with you! (Gleaned from Is That All He Thinks About?)

Experience the blessing of serving together as a family. (Gleaned from multiple “seasoned” moms)

When our kids are grown would we rather they think back and say to themselves, “My Mom always kept the house really neat,” or “My Mom always took the time to sit and play with me.” (Gleaned from a “seasoned” mom)

Blessed is the man who finds wisdom, the man who gains understanding, for she is more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold. Proverbs 3:13-14

Happy Birthday to the King of Kings

All of our Christmas decorations are back in the attic. Or most of them anyway, because there will inevitably be things that I've gotten so used to seeing I don't even recognize them as Christmas decorations. I just noticed the Christmas table runner in the picture below and realized it's still on the table.

Even though it's not as much fun packing the decorations away as it is getting them out, there is something very satisfying about getting things back to normal. I love when the boxes are moved out, I can vacuum up the faux pine needles, and put everything back the way it was. I love the coziness of our home decorated for Christmas, but after a month it's nice when our house suddenly seems to have more space and room to breath.

Before we leave Christmas altogether I wanted to share something we do in addition to this fun tradition. We always bake a birthday cake (or cupcakes) for Jesus.This is the cake we made this year. One fun part about making this cake was figuring out how to do the jewels. We used melted Jolly Rancher candies. At first I used mini muffin cups, it worked, but they were bigger than I wanted. So I thought I would make my own molds with aluminum foil. We looked around the house and found that the bottom of Diego's foot was an oval, a diamond-shaped game piece, and a circular bottle cap. I formed the foil around each shape to make a mold, filled them with candies Kyle had crushed, and then melted them in the oven. Voila, jewels!

Snowmen

I have always liked the idea of making cookies or something for neighbors at Christmas, but finally the past couple of years I have actually done it. I think last year I made giant gingersnap cookies and the year before I made giant stick pretzels covered with chocolate and crushed oreos. (I guess I should have made giant snowmen this year, too late now.)

A while back, I saw a fun idea on this website and thought adapting that idea to make snowmen would be fun. It was fairly time consuming (actually I guess a lot of that time was just waiting while they were in the freezer, but still...). I think they turned out pretty cute.

I intended to do this more than a week ago, but with all the sickness in our house lately I just had my first good opportunity. Hopefully it's not too late to find some neighbors who are still in town!

From the looks of the picture above, there was a strong east wind in my kitchen at the time I took the photo.

If you want to make them there are more detailed instructions at the link above, but this is the nitty gritty: I combined a crumbled up, baked cake with a can of frosting, rolled it into balls of varying sizes, firmed up the balls in the freezer, put them on lollipop sticks, and coated them in melted chocolate. Bakerella is who I got the idea from. She has so many cute ideas and variations, but I didn't see that she did any snowmen.

We also made gingersnaps, but they are staying at our house.

In Sickness & in Health, We Wish You a Merry Christmas

To borrow Kyle's description of Mike today, our family has been "sicker than a sicky sickerton." For the past 2 weeks we have each taken turns being sick and it seems that Kyle is starting us in on round 2 tonight because as of about 20 minutes ago he had a fever of almost 102. Poor little guy, it's the worst when little ones are sick! So since I haven't even read a blog much less had time to think about posting recently I figured I'll take a bloggy-hiatus through Christmas. There is nothing like being sick to make you appreciate your health!

On an up-note, I love the person who invented photo-Christmas cards!! Genius. We so look forward each afternoon to checking our mail, looking at our new cards, and hanging them up (this year on the mantle). I love seeing them every day!

Merry Christmas!