Psalm 13

The kids are still napping so maybe I can sneak in another Psalm. Lord let them sleep a little longer so that I may hear what you are saying to me!

Scrpture

Psalm 13 blueletterbible.org
A Prayer of Self-doubt

Observation

Ouch! Verse 2 says what I have been feeling for weeks! How long must I struggle with anguish in my soul, with sorrow in my heart every day?

If you have read my other posts from today you know that I have used the analogy that I feel like I have been drowning. The sorrow and sadness I have felt are because I have been struggling with simply keeping up every day. I have said to myself more than once - I am a terrible homemaker when I can't even make our home comfortable.

This short little Psalm has taken a terrible weight off of my shoulders. It is not my weaknesses that have been making me "drown", it is simply the enemy trying to defeat me! The Lord is allowing the enemy to do this so that I may learn from this. I needed a lesson in trusting the Lord. I needed a lesson in leaning on God and His Word no matter what else is going on in my life.

Application

Getting into the Word every day and doing deeper Bible study rather than just reading is so essential for me to be able to keep my focus on the Lord. I absolutely must work at doing this every single day.

Prayer

Oh Lord you are so wonderful in the ways that you work through us. I am simply amazed with what I have learned today just through two little tiny Psalms. Thank you for opening my heart to hear you speaking to me. And thank you for giving me these few minutes to study this Psalm.

My children literally woke up as I typed the last sentance of the prayer!!! God is good!

Psalm 12

I have been very neglectful with my bible reading, devotionals, and study for bascially all of September. Now I must stop feeling guilty, ask for forgiveness and repent. By repenting I have to simply get back into the Word and stick to my routines. In my prayers I have been asking God for strength and I feel like I am blessed to be receiving what I have prayed for. So back into it! I won't have alot of time today because I chose to work on my routines first and the kids will soon be up from their nap.

Scripture
Psalm 12
blueletterbible.org

Observation

Verse 1 hit me hard - the godly are fast disappearing! Godly people are harder to find, especially those my own age. Our new church is very rural and very small. Quite a contrast to the churches we attended in southern California! In California we were surrounded by young couples and young families. The children's ministries were in full swing and did not blink an eye when came with our three babies. Our little church now is very traditional and the young children in regular attendance are our three toddlers plus three others. Our kids are half of the nursery so they had to make some adjustments when we started to come to church!

Wednesday nights are the adult bible study and if there are 15 people it is a big crowd. I really enjoy Wednesday nights because it gives me a chance to be with the Lord and in His word, but also it is my break. However, I am the youngest in the group - all the others could easily be old enough to be my parents or even grandparents. I wonder every week, where are all the young families in this area. Surely we are not the only family with young children that could be attending church.

Application

I know of two families with young children that our pastor has recently visited. It is now my turn. I need to be visiting these families, not to get them to come to church, but to witness to them and then let the Holy Spirit work in their lives.

Prayer

Lord, please give me the strength to stay with my routines so that I can have peace with my daily life and the desire to gt into the Word. Also give me wisdom to witness and share your Word with the families that I plan to visit with in the next few days.

still catching up - house cleaning

It seems that one or two weeks of not keeping up with the house cleaning can take more than that time to catch up and get it to where it should be! Like I said in the post, there have been alot of times in the last while where I feel like I am drowning. I think most of it has to do with the fact that there is something messy and unorganized in every single room in the house. It drives me absolutely crazy and has been consuming my patience. I realized that I have been trying to accomplish daily and weekly tasks on areas that need much more attention. If you have not already checked out the Flylady.net website you really should. It has great advice and tips to having an organized house.

I needed to get back to basics. So I sat down with my calendar and rather than deciding what area to work on in a week, I picked an area for each day.

Monday - get the kitchen back to standard and I also needed to bake a cake for our desserts

Tuesday - Tidy the porch and school area plus get the laundry caught up. I also needed to bake bread

Today - Wednesday - Playdate in the morning (which was cancelled so I finished the last load of laundry instead and then talked to my mom & dad for a nice long time) This afternoon I have planned to tidy the Living Room and Den and mop the floors

Thursday - Clean the bathrooms and bake another dessert

Friday - Organize the desk and go shopping for birthday cards needed for Oct & Nov then sign them and send them out

Saturday - Yardwork (mostly hubby to do this) and clean & organize Master bedroom

Sunday - church, then continue with yardwork and clean & organize kids room & playroom

I think that if I can get this all accomplished then by Monday I can actually get back to the normal routine which I already posted here.

I only have a couple issues with the routine.

First, I might swap workout in the morning with cleaning in the afternoon. I am much more motivated to clean in the morning.

Second, I have to work on the kids having "quiet time" on the days when they decide not to nap. When they don't nap I don't get to have computer time which is my time for bible study and writing in here. I don't think I have done a SOAP bible study all month! How horrible is that! But at least I am starting to feel like I am at least able to keep my head above the water, maybe within a week or so I can make it to shallow waters!

still catching up - meal planning

This month of September has been horrible. It seems that no matter what I do I cannot catch up. I am not even sure what I am trying to catch up to anymore! There have been moments and even entire days where I feel like I am drowning and can't hardly catch my breath. I needed to do something to turn it around so I fell back on my ever faithful skill of making lists.

First I needed to get back to our weekly meal plan. I set this up some time ago and then a few days ago I redid it and simplified it even more. I have a weekly calendar where I set these up, but mainly it is the same items repeated.

Breakfasts are one of:
Cereal with milk
Oatmeal
Waffles (soon I plan to make them from scratch - for now it is Eggos)
Bread with PB&J (fresh homemade bread is so much better slightly warm than toasted)

Lunch is always leftovers if there is some in the fridge otherwise I choose from:
Turkey slices, Cheese & Crackers
Hot Dogs & "ronies"
PB&J Sandwiches, fresh veggies & dip
Chicken Quesadilla, fresh veggies & dip
Soup, cheese & crackers

Snacks are now only once a day and is fresh fruit and yogurt or appleasause. I try to have at least three types of fruit around and give them the choice. Surprisingly they seem to vary the choices nicely. They still also get small bowls of goldfish, animal crackers, dry cereal, raisins - but I am trying to cut back on these.

Suppers seem to be the most consistent as to what we are going to have on what day. Probably because I have to put more planning and effort into these meals. The variety comes with what recipe I choose and with what meat I have bought. Some weeks I might buy a beef roast, other times maybe pork.
Sunday - Crockpot Roast with Potatoes/Carrots/Onions
Monday - Pasta & Veggies
Tuesday - Stew or Casserole and Bread
Wednesday - Homemade Soup and Bread
Thursday - Hamburger Dish such as Meatloaf or Chili
Friday - Pizza night
Saturday - Leftovers or Ham or Chicken

Next is a plan to get the house in order...

New Routine

I had created a routine a couple months ago but was having trouble following it. I always seemed to be behind and of course things later in the day would never get done. I needed a new routine and for it to be simplified and more complex at the same time! I figured this routine out yesterday and I don't know if it will work yet, but I feel good about it. Today was an off day because I have three sick kids which means I was up half the night and then today I was cuddling somebody nearly all day.

6:00 - 7:00 Bible reading & devotional time

7:00 - 8:00 Kids wake up and start to make their way into our bed and we watch Blue's Clues

8:00 - 10:00 Morning routine which includes making beds, getting dressed, breakfast, cleaning up the kitchen, any needed supper preparations and laundry that needs to be done

10:00 - 11:00 Time for exercise and play. I am hoping that I can do some kind of beneficial workout with the kids along side me.

11:00 - 12:00 Lunch

12:00 - 2:00 Naptime and my time for Bible Study and blog reading & writing

2:00 - 4:00 Snack and school. We are following the preschool curriculum from hubbardscupboard.org.

4:00 - 5:00 Cleaning, I have a schedule for my cleaning routines that I will post later. I developed these using ideas from flylady.net

5:00 - 6:30 Supper routine which is preparing, eating, dishes, and taking the garbage to the dump.

6:30 - 7:30 Bedtime routine which includes storytime, family devotional, teeth, bath, prayers & bed

My previous routine was too detailed and too split up. I was constantly looking at the routine to see where I was and what I was supposed to be doing. The best part about this routine is that I could type it out without having to look back too much at the printed copy. It flows alot better and the big chucks of time are good for when things don't run as nicely as they do on paper.

Of course this is our at home routine. The routine is thrown out the window on days we go to the library for storytime, days we will be going to MOPS, and days for playdates or shopping.

Storytime

Today was our very first storytime. Well, we have storytime at home nearly everyday and sometimes several times a day, but today we went to the library and joined in with their organized storytime. The main group of kids are from the local preschool so they are all about 4 years old. Mine are still in diapers! Sam will be 3 in Nov and Ben & Carlee are 2 next month. So you can imagine how nervous I was as to how they would behave! They are not used to sitting still and paying attention.

So we got started and Sam did really well sitting down when everyone else did. Ben & Carlee - not so much, after only a minute or so I took them to the back of the room to try to somewhat contain them. Thankfully they came quietly, and after a few more minutes of introductions and other things the story started. I had slowly started to make my way back to the back of the storytime mat and once the story started the three of us were sitting down and listening to the story. Hoorray!!!!

Meanwhile Sam had made his way to the front of the group and I noticed that he would occasionly look back to make sure we were still there. And whenever we made eye contact he gave me this cute little subtle wave that was just so darn adorable. It was almost like he was saying Hey look at me, I am a big boy now, butdon't go too far away just yet cuz I'm still only 2. I was very happy with how well he did with the "big kids", and he said he had "so much fun" and that he wanted to go to the next storytime.

Ben was a bit of a handful because he wanted to roll around on the mat rather than sit still. But he was so cute because he kept trying to see where Sam was. Ben is the only one who calls Sam "Samuel" so today he was asking "Where Samuel" and then he would say "There he is" It is unfortunate that I cannot recreate the cuteness of his speech in writing.

And my biggest surprise of the day was my little miss independant was my clingon. Usually Carlee is the one who is playing by herself, even when we visit the library to take out books she is the one who is off by herself moving books around on the same shelf every week. But today she would not sit down and basically buried her head into my shoulder for most of the time. I was surprised at the drastic shyness. But of course her cuteness came through. At one point of the story we were asked what we do with our lips. The kids yelled out "kiss". So when I said kiss she turned her head to give me a kiss, and then she says "hug" and gives a great big hug. Just so cute how lovable toddlers can be.

Catching up

I have had a rough couple weeks. I spent pretty much all of last week parked on the couch or in bed with a terrible migrane headache. I struggled just to keep the kids entertained and fed. But got through it and for the last few days I have been trying to get some strength back and now I need to get my house back in order. It is truly amazing how quickly routines can be tossed out the window and the terrible effects that it has. Every room in the house is a disaster and the kids are suffering from lack of routine too. Tempers are flaring, tantrums are worse, and to top all that now they are not napping! I think they are sleeping in later bacause it is not as bright in the mornings now and so they just are not tired enough at naptime. I have to rethink my whole routine structure.

First I need to get the house in order. I am basically trying to work on one room at a time to get it were it should be so that it is easier to maintain with regular daily, weekly, and monthly routines. I had already started to implement these a while ago when I stumbled upon the Flylady website. I love the concept and it is a slow process but it is working.

Anyway, here are the rooms I got through. First, as always, is the kitchen. It wasn't much worse than normal because I have the same routine that I pretty much follow every day no matter what. I cannot stand a messy kitchen - I hate to even pour a glass of water on a cluttered counter. Yuck!

Then I tackled the porch area which is a long narrow room that is usually a disaster area. It is where we keep all the hats & shoes and soon boots & coats. It is also where I have the change table. I still change 15-20 diapers a day so this is an important area!! On the far side of this room I have set up a school area with a child sized table & chairs and a cabinet for all the supplies. This is still a work in progress and I seem to not ever be organized enough to have an effective routine for our preschool program that I want to do. And that is the biggest motivater to get better routines in place.

The next area was to tackle the laundy through to completion. I have a bad habit of not putting laundry away when it is done, so today I changed that and put away clothes while they were still warm. It was so nice and cozy to fold warm clothes and see that they were not wrinkled yet.

Since I started to not allow very many toys downstairs, because they have a playroom upstairs, the living room tends to stay fairly tidy. Usually a couple minutes of picking up is all that is needed. But one of the weekly tasks for this room is to sweep and mop the floors, so I did that.

I also started on the den and the bathroom but there are so many interupptions that I did not finish either of them. I was sort of working on them both all day. Whenever I was in the bathroom I would wipe something down until I had a not so helpful helper underfoot. The major area of disaster in the den is the desk with 2 weeks worth of mail and all my Bible study stuff piled up. I absolutely must get this cleaned off so that I can get back to my Bible. I have not read a thing of substance in nearly 2 weeks and I am feeling neglected. Sure I have listened to sermons on the radio and read a few pages of devotionals, but it is not the same as the reading and studying I have been doing and started to post in here.

I just realized that I have started to ramble and I really should be sleeping. I will write more about my routines as I redevelop them.