Homemaker Chronicles

After I tell you this story I hope you feel sorry for me rather than think I am nasty, but I’m willing to take that chance because it’s so typical…

I mean, uh, funny…

This morning I was in zumba class like I usually am at 9:00 on Wednesdays.  There was a girl leading the class today that is not usually the leader, but I know her from class because she is commonly referred to as “Barbie”.  Barbie was doing a great job leading us  in some super-groovin’ moves and she decided to call me up to the front to “help” her lead for a song.

Most of the moves we were doing involved raising our hands above our heads and shaking our booties back and forth.  You know, normal everyday stuff.  I was doing my best to hang in there with the blond bombshell as our guide, but I did take my eyes off of her for a split second to check myself out in the mirror.  (Come on…I had to make sure I didn’t look totally retarded)

Arms lifted high, I thought to myself, “man, my pits are looking dark and shady.  Is that a lighting issue or did a black shirt rub off on me.  No, I haven’t worn a black shirt.  Hmmm….yeah, their looking funky fo sho”.  And back to dancing I went.

I didn’t think about my armpits again until later on today, long after I had come home and changed clothes.  Ironically, I was getting sick of my hair being in my face so I found my way to the bathroom to get a clippie.  Normally I just slide the clip around my wad of hair, but today I found myself in front of the bathroom mirror, again, checking myself out.

Wow I sound vain!

Again, arms raised and up to fix my hair, I noticed that my pits were looking dark even in the bathroom. A sudden panic struck me as I rubbed my fingers across my completely unshaven armpits!

That’s right.  Completely unshaven to the point that you could see it in the mirror in zumba class, which happened to be a good 5 feet in front of me.  I began reeling through the last couple of days, “when did I shower last?  Oh yesterday.  Whew.  Surely I shaved…I remember shaving my legs.”

Obviously I had not shaved in quite some time and I’m pretty sure quarter-inch armpit hair does not constitute good hygiene even though I had showered in the last 24 hrs!  I think I have way too much pride to tell you how long it has actually been since my armpits have felt the cold metal scrape of a razor, but just be assured that I could have used my hair-trimming scissors on those babies.  Better yet, I could have started a new trend of pit-hair styling.

Braids perhaps.

After the shock wore off just a bit I immediately grabbed the first bic I could find and went to town…soapless, creamless, waterless.

It had to be done, ladies!  At all costs.

Now, as I look back over my zumba experience I realize that I had the potential to gross out so many people today.  I can only hope that they looked not at my dark pits as from a lack of hygiene, but simply a shadowy area on my arm due to a bulging bicep.

~Embarassed

Homemaker Chronicles

We are half way through our second week of waking up by 6:00 am.  This is something my family has not ever done, except for when I worked a life-time ago.  Titan has never known getting up at a certain time during the week.  He only ever did that when we were on a worship team at a church, which practiced at 6:30 am on Sunday!  But he was in a car seat and could care-a-less!

Anyway, God has been so gracious to us with the getting up early thing.  I have prayed for years that I would be one of those people that just gets up to spend time with God and that wakes up with joy beaming from my aura.

It has never happened.

Probably because I wasn’t really willing to put the effort into it, but now I am.  And I am.

Here is our new schedule, since you are so anxious to know…I assume.

6:00 am:  arise with joy beaming from my aura, change clothes or shower or both, make coffee, read Bible, review daily activities and requirements

6:30 am:  wake up Caleb and Titan (Regan is already up usually) to go shower in the shop behind the house, begin breakfast and making lunches

7:00 am:  everyone, even the littles, sit down to eat breakfast together and have a little reminder of what God expects out of us as we enter “the world”.  That usually includes a speech about loving others and putting God first and also includes a few scripture verses.

7:15 am:  Regan and Caleb leave to catch the shuttle bus from the elementary school to their intermediate school.  It takes them about 8 minutes to walk and until yesterday I had been going with them…now they’re on their own!

until 7:45 we do dishes and get the littles dressed; pack Titan’s bag and brush his teeth; talk about what a great kid he is and finally set off to walk him up to the elementary school.  Unless we drive him, which we don’t have to leave until 8:00 to do, but Regan is on this “go green” kick and has asked us to conserve gas and energy.

I delightfully oblige.

On Tuesdays, however, we must drive Titan to school because the littles go to a babysitter’s house for the day.  We dropped them off for the first time yesterday and they stayed until we picked up Titan from school at 3:00.  We got so much work done it was sick!

Tuesdays will be our appointment days from now on.  We will meet with potential clients and have client meetings with the clients we are presently working with.  Then, when we aren’t meeting with clients or potential clients, we will drink coffee from Starbucks while designing websites and improving our business.   Atleast that’s what we did yesterday.

It’s actually a great plan…I think.

It sure does take off the pressure and guilt that I feel while I’m trying to spend time with my littlest younguns and work at the same time.  I have found out the hard way that it is almost impossible to be creative while playing with two and three year olds!  Unless that creativity includes finding fun games, crafts, or activities that the two and three year olds can play and then it is pertinent that the adult is there to supervise and not, I repeat…NOT, be busy being creative with his/her own project.

Yes, I have discovered this.

The hard way.

That is what we are up to these days.  We have the morning schedule all smoothed out, but now we are working on the after-school schedule.  Any advice from you old pro’s out there?

Angie

Homemaker Chronicles

I am very much alive, although I can’t say that my brain is all there at this moment.  Just hold on to your underpants cause this post is going to be W.I.L.D!!

First, I’ll start by saying that I haven’t slept much in the last two weeks, so if you see some mispelled words and if I use incredibly bad English, please just overlook and forgive.  It all started when I decided to go on a juice fast-

ish…

Really though, I wanted to go on a juice fast but also i knew that I would need some protein.  So I snuck in some protein via nuts and seeds.  That plan lasted for a whole day before I got incredibly sick and was in bed for two days…still hanging on to my juice fast.

Last week, as I lay in bed sick while working on a graphic design I began to feel an overwhelming pressure and a sense of  “oh my goodness, I have so much to do and I can’t get it done because I’m sick”.  But honestly, all I really wanted to do was lay in bed and have no responsibilities whatsoever.

After my sick spell I kept up with the juice fast but added in some veggies, just to keep it interesting.  By the end of the week I was so worn out physically that I didn’t think I would make it through the weekend without “real” food.  Therefore, I took the plunge and ate some chicken and chocolate cake!

It was delectable.

However, emotionally I didn’t feel any better and I knew it wasn’t that monthly hormonal thing I encounter.  I had several deadlines to meet with Ripple Effect Designs (our web business), the co op that the kids would be attending and teaching at would be starting in just another week, and I still hadn’t had the time to finish anything.  (Including the 200 items I had to enter for Rhea Lana’s consignment sale)  I mean, I started all of my projects, but I kept getting distracted by the kids and by Salem’s messes and by anything in the world that wanted to fall apart in one stinkin’ week!

Right in the middle of everything falling smooth apart, Todd and I landed a HUGE account with our business.  I am so jazzed about it and I can’t wait to show you what we’ve been doing as far as work goes.

Actually…I’ll do that now…check these out.

These are a few of the logos/business card designs I’ve been working on the last few weeks. Not all that fabulous, but still took some time and effort!

I have also designed a couple of websites, but I’ll show you those later because I have bigger things to discuss.

Here Todd and I are, working our fingers to the bone and I have absolutely no time to spend with the kids, to teach and train my babies, or to even make lunch.  (I am so thankful for my bigger kids that help out all the time)  I have this co op right around the corner that I have done absolutely nothing to prepare for (no books have been ordered for the kids, no class planning has made it’s way into my spread sheet, I didn’t even have time to read the “supply list” email), a huge client that’s ready to see what we’re made of is knocking at our door, oh yeah, and I live with my parents to top it all off.  It was so bad that we actually had cereal for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Just kidding!  But we did have sandwiches for the majority of our meals!

I feel the pressure to hang with the kids, I am seriously stressed about that constantly, I feel the pressure to be creative, which takes time, I feel pressure to do laundry and clean and cook, which takes effort, and I feel pressure to be praying and seeking the face of God.  What was my response to all this pressure?  Explosion.

Last week I think I truly went crazy.  Even Todd was very worried that I had just stepped out into the deep black hole that is psycho-land.  I tried to get him to see what I was going through and to understand it from my perspective.  He was so sweet to bring me flowers and to help out with the kids that day.  He really pressed himself to understand and take in what I was saying.  But we were still struggling to put all the pieces together into this crazy puzzle.

Then it hit me.  The answer was right there in my face all the time and I just didn’t want to admit it or give in to it. That answer made perfect sense and Todd made a decree that it’s what we are doing. Absolutely.

So, what I would like to announce to you all today, my faithful readers, is that I am no longer a home schooling mom.  Atleast for the school year ‘10-’11.  I have passed the baton to my comrades at the local Elementary and Intermediate public schools down the road.

It is with sadness in my heart that I belay this message though.  Sadness because I will desperately miss those afternoons of watching movies with Regan and Caleb.  I will  really miss baking cookies with Regan and seeing my kids on the couch reading their library books.  I have so enjoyed swimming together in May and making fun cold-weather foods when winter arrives.  I love the freedom of going and doing whatever we want.  But most of all, I hate to think that someone else gets the privilage of being in their presence each day and I don’t.

What I can finally admit is that, I cannot do it all.

I am not supermom.

I do have breaking points and I have hit a brick wall.

It’s not feasable for me to teach school, be a creative web designer and business woman, be a thriving menu-making/deal-seeking/child-training wife and mother all at the same time.  Something will suffer if we go on like this, and it has proven so far to be with my children.  I push forward and work so hard at making money while they run rampant.  So, I am sacrificing what I want for the betterment of my family as a whole. For Todd to have his Priscilla (that would make him Aquilla…from the Bible).

The details as I know them so far:

Regan will attend the Public Intermediate school as a sixth grader; Caleb will be at the same school as a fifth grader; Titan will begin Kindergarten at the same school I went while in third and fourth grades; and Adia and Salem will get all the benefits of being the only two at home with parents.  Beginning this Thursday, they have to be at their prospective schools and in their seats by 8:10 and the bus leaves at 7:30…which they have to walk about 3/4 of a mile to catch.  We already have their school supplies and we have already begun the “watch out for worldliness” speeches.

As for me:

I do not see this as failure.  Only as a strategic move in the direction we are going as a family.

I do not see this as permanent.  Maybe that’s my pride.  We’ll see what God says.

I do not see this as harmful or lacking in good judgment toward my kids.  Moreso as a way to make a better life for them in the long run by allowing Todd and I the time needed to build a business.

After crying for a solid 24 hours, I am relinquishing my solid grip on schooling these great kids.  It’s not the end of the world and I know that God is their #1 advocate.  He will be protecting them and guiding their impressionable hearts.  But I would ask, even now as I sit here crying over my keyboard, would you guys pray for us?  Sincerely, I ask for you saints to ask our Lord for provision for this family- we’re only one in a bazillion…I know.

We need help.  We need Him.  Our identity is not in whether we home school our children, or whether we go to church every Sunday, or whether we eat organic food, or use cloth diapers.  No.  Our identity is in Christ alone.  He’s the only thing we can stand on and we need to stand on Him right now.

Whew.  That was harder than I anticipated, but I’m glad it’s out there.  Hopefully, I’ll be back to blogging a little more since my schedule won’t be so piled up, but my time is already getting planned for me so we’ll see…

Thank you for all your support and the great emails I often get with all the encouraging things.  Please keep them coming- I need it!

With love,

Angie

~Homemaker Chronicles

Perks of living with your parents include:

1.  Getting to use new Shark steamer for the floors.  Awe-some!!

2.  Having an alarm system on the house.  Never had one before and might not ever have one, but they’re great for keeping track of kids.   Theirs is anyway.  It beeps every time a door is opened so, whenever I hear that beep, I start counting heads.

3.  The air conditioner actually works and works well.  I mean, you could hang meat in our bedroom at night and I wouldn’t have it any other way.  Thanks mom!

4.  When grandpa decides to get candy, everybody benefits!  Salem now has a favorite person in the world besides me.

5.  112 degrees.  Swimming pool.  Nuff said.

6.  When your mom decides she wants to buy an expensive juicer, there’s no end to the refreshing taste of real juice blends.  Except of course when I run out of money for fresh produce.  Or after using all of mom’s fresh produce.  I mean, it shouldn’t dare go to waste- that would be irresponsible of me to let that happen.

7.  There’s always a light on for us.

8.  DVR.  Yeah baby!

9.  Endless supply of tools and saws and spray washers and riding lawnmowers.  Now, if I could just get Todd to use them…

Just kidding, babe.

10.  When mom wakes up on Saturday morning and decides she wants a pedicure, guess who gets to tag along?  Not my brother who doesn’t live in the same house.  That’s for sure!

Wish you were me, don’t ya Aaron?  Don’t be jeally.

Reasons why my parents might be ready for us to move out:

1.  We can- and do- use their stuff constantly and many times without asking.

2.  There are incredible amounts of paraphernalia lodged in the swimming pool vacuum cleaner.

3.  Glass doors will never, ever, be see-through as long as Salem is alive.   Which might not be much longer if he doesn’t quit.

4.  “Grandma’s drawer” in the kitchen has yet to remain off-limits.  I’m pretty sure she’s purchased 5 million packages of pens since we’ve lived here and not one pen can be found…anywhere.  A-mazing.

5.  We’ve broken more dishes than there are cars in the driveway.  Yes, it does look  like a used car lot here.   Except you can tell which side of the driveway we park on.  To put it like my brother said last week when his new Avalanche was delivered to his house (across the street),  “you’ve never even paid for a car so you can’t be jealous”.

6.  Five kids.  Endless whining.  Nuff said.

7.  Cloth diapers don’t get washed immediately and “some people” might find that disgusting.  I won’t name any names, but there are many evenings when we find our laundry baskets have moved out into the garage. Just try to imagine what 185 degree urine-soaked clothing smells like.  Evidently it’s better than a laundry room smelling like the butt end of a cow.

8.  On a similar note; there is rarely, if ever, a free washer or dryer in this place.  No joke.

9.  The only way to get rid of all the scuff marks, food particles and hieroglyphics on the walls is to paint.  It’s that permanent, friends.

10.  They can officially have their “naked room” back.  Just kidding!

I’m sure that room was really their office or something…

Someday, mom and dad, we’ll be out of your hair.  Until then…we owe you- BIG TIME!  Thanks for putting up with our shenanigans!!!

~Angie

Homemaker Chronicles

Is it strange to hear a child say, “WHAT THA…”?  What about, “no freakin’ way”, or “DANG IT!”?  I guess I don’t think too much about it until I hear my children saying something like that.  It sounds so vulgar coming from their innocent little mouths.

I know that some parents allow their children to say things like “butt” and “stupid” and even “shut up”, but those are dirty words in our family.  So you can imagine what happens when someone says a word that emulates an actual curse word!

All hell breaks loose.

The first time I heard Regan say “butt” when she was a baby, we decided to cut that out right then and there.  Instead of butt, we say “booty” or “bottom”.  I used to not like it when the kids said “booty”, but now I think it’s too cute when Adia sings “shake your booty…shake your booty…yeah, yeah”.  Our rule is that they can only say booty when they are actually referring to their own, well, booty.

As for the others, the “what tha…” and the “dang it”, they are absolutely forbidden.  Until they are old enough to make that decision themselves anyway.

What does that mean for Todd and I?  Well, we do not want to be bad examples for our children, but there are times (many times I must admit) when we say “dang” and “crap” and “pissed” and the like and our kids over hear.

It’s simple though, we tell them not to say what we say and they obey us….

Please tell me you did actually believe that??

Actually, it’s not that simple but it is a good lesson in teaching them self control and then they can help hold us accountable. Personally, I think that bad words are incredibly cultural and based on social norms, so I could care-a-less what everybody else deems a “bad word” to be.  However, we, as a family, will steer clear of the socially bad words (curse words) and we will weed out other words that aren’t looked upon as bad necessarily.

Basically, as Christians, we want to be in the world and not of it and choosing to use more appropriate language is one way that we can separate ourselves from the world.  That doesn’t make my family better than the people that choose to use curse words, we aren’t pointing fingers and saying “you evil sinner…” (unless we’re talking about using Jesus’ name or God’s name in an unholy manner- that’s one of the big 10 no-no’s).

The point I am trying to make is that this is our choice to teach our children how to have self control.  It’s not the only way to do that, by far.  I honestly don’t think I’m doing the kids this great service by teaching them to not say “dang it”, the great service I am doing them is teaching them how to have the fruit of the spirit…

…self control.

That’s the goal…to point them to Christ and the Bible.  Not just abide by social norms.

Are ya with me?

~Angie

Homemaker Chronicles

write!

Update:  Regan and Caleb both got into sixth grade math at the co op we will be attending next year.  Therefore, I will be teaching K5 and we will be going there one morning a week this school year.  The only thing is, now I have to get organized to teach four other five-year-olds!

Oh yeah, and to teach Caleb and Regan everything else in the world…

Salem is officially candy crazed.  That’s all he wants and cares about in the world.  I think it’s going to be easy to potty train him though- that’s one plus about living life for candy.

Adia is passy free and loving it.  She talks a lot more and is quite a bit more temperamental, but I’d rather see her personality than hide it behind a sucky thing.  She is doing a lot better at laying down for nap time and bed time…it took a week to get that going.

Todd and I are working like crazy on websites and I actually need a favor from you!  Can you take a look at these templates and tell me which color scheme you like better?  It’s for a day spa…

Remember, this is not the complete site, just a sample for them to look at.  I just couldn’t decide which of the colors look more spa-ish!

Honesty is important ladies and gents.  You aren’t going to hurt my feelings…it will only make me stronger.  Well, and a little mad, but I’ll get over it.

Just kidding!

~Angie

Homemaker Chronicles

Monday I was having this issue with my eyebrows looking mangy.  I asked for your advice, but no one showed.

First of all, what up with that?

No worries though, my mom came to the rescue.  Yeah, she reads my blog…don’t cha mom?!  She suggested “eyebrow dye”.  It’s actually hair dye that you brush onto your brows.  The thing is that you have to have a pretty steady hand to do this because it will turn your skin also (which you know if you’ve ever colored your hair).

Luckily, I do.

Isn’t that pretty?

Salem literally pointed and laughed when he saw me.  Adia kept saying that I was scaring her and Titan commented that I was “freaky looking”.  But I assured them that I would wash it off and look normal again in 10 minutes.

When I did wash it off, these were the results…

Not fabulous, but not bleach blond!  I can atleast work with this.  Anybody else have some eyebrow tips and tricks?  I’m still open for suggestions!

~Angie

Homemaker Chronicles

FYI this is how my day is going…

Can’t tell what it is?  Try this…

Just to clear things up…that’s fecal matter!

What’s that?  Why is there more of it on his back than in his diaper?

It’s quite an interesting story actually.  See, I discovered the feces as I was attempting to pull Salem out from under a bar stool in the breakfast area.

He was stuck.

And screaming.

When I lifted him up I noticed brown smeary stuff on the floor, then on his shoulder, then I caught a whiff, then I saw the larger deposit directly above his waist line.  Nice!

All of that happened right after I finished cleaning up Salem’s milk/cereal spill, also in the breakfast area.  This spill nearly covered the entirety of the tile floor, by the way.  Don’t worry though, the one little spot that didn’t have milk covering it was smudged with poop.  Therefore the whole tile floor got cleaned up, thanks to Salem and his destructiveness.

Destruct-o-boy, I call him.

After the poop discovery, what else was there to do but gently scold him and wipe him down with a warm rag.  It’s what any reasonable mom would do, right?  Too bad I’m not reasonable! Holding his one clean bicep, I air-lifted him to the bathtub where I removed his shoes (he’s lucky I took the time to do that) and started hosing.  He came out all shiny clean and we went on with our day.

No more major issue so far, but I’m sure that will last a whole 3 minutes!

How is your day going?

~Angie

Homemaker Chronicles

Technically beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I think beauty is literally “the eye”.  More specifically, the eyebrows.

I think they can make or break a face, and that’s why I’m having issues tonight.  Admittedly, I have jacked up eyebrows.  Truly, they have always been weird, but as I get older they get worse.  See, I have blond facial hair, which isn’t so bad compared to having black hair right on the place that is the first thing you see!  My problem is that I cannot, for the life of me, figure out a good way to have eyebrows that look like this…

These don’t appear to be filled in with pencil, but if I wanted mine to look like that I would have to get some serious colorage going on.  Is that what most people do who want darker eyebrows?  Because, in their current state, my eyebrows look like they have the mange.

Advice?

I’m so excited about this new plugin I found for Gimp, my photo editing software.  Just so ya know, Gimp is free to download online.  Yes, I said FREE.

Warning:  it is gimpy though.

Well, I just discovered a wonderful script that is downloadable (I’m aware that this is not a word, but I don’t have a choice)!!  Let me just show you what it does first.  Have you heard of vignetting?  It’s awesome.  It’s what makes the corners of your pictures darker, lighter, blurrier or moodier.  It’s waaay cool!

Watch this.

Here’s the original photo

Cute enough, right?

I have always wanted to use vignetting, but Gimp doesn’t offer that.  So I found a website where you can download it to your “scripts” folder and then use it for making your picture look like this…

I did a little color enhancement and a few “curve” changes, but the darkened corners and the blur are from the vignetting script. It’s subtle, but can really make a picture look sharp.

In my opinion.

Here are a few screen shots for you just incase it gets a little confusing.  Remember, Gimp is gimpy…no lie!  Once you get the script downloaded into your scripts folder then you choose a picture to make fabulous.  Open it up and cruise on up to “Script-Fu” like so…

Now that you’re in there you have to choose what you want it to look like.  You’ll have to play a little bit to figure out exactly what means what, but you’ll get it.  I believe in you!

Just like that you have a fancy shmancy photo!  Thanks Harry, whoever you are!

You likey?

Let me see if you try out the Harry’s vignetting!  I’d love to see your mad skills.

~Angie

Homemaker Chronicles