Core Truths

I am going to keep tonight’s post short and sweet and still well worth your time. See, I am currently on a winter trip with my hubby and our five kids.  What you should know about this trip is it is in the winter…and we traveled north…to the cold.  What you should also know is that I really hate the cold.  I hate winter actually.  There aren’t that many things that I know for sure just aren’t for me, but the winter and the cold are for sure not for me. But here I am.  Thankfully, it snowed and snowed here last week and now it is actually relatively mild…so that’s good.  We did drive up a mountain yesterday to find snow…that was good for the family.  Once our four-year-old discovered snow is very cold and wet (and quite miserable) when it melts, he needed someone to sit with him in the warm car while the others played…which was also very good. What you should also know is to get here we drove 15 hours in our small SUV with all seven of us c...

It takes little explaining on my part to tell you this is a busy time of year, a busy season, a busy week, and a busy day.  We are on the brink of Christmas morning…even closer to Christmas Eve when many families begin to celebrate.   My current situation is wrapping paper strewn across my bed, bows and ribbons are littered across my comforter, bags from stores are tucked in corners of my room each stuffed with price tags and plastic wrap.  From one end of my room to the other are remnants of wrapping paper and tape, bits and pieces, cut off and left behind.  In the next room is my family, immediate and extended, all together, the football game on TV,  the little kids playing dress up, others are making little necklaces.  Dinner is cooking on the stove. There’s so much happening and still so much left to do.  It is easy to be anxious, to worry if everything will get done in time, to worry if everyone is taken care of, to worry if I bought ever...

Oh, the holidays.  A time to be happy, and together, and giving.  A time to be thoughtful, and grateful, and cheerful.  It also tends to be a time of stress and worry.  A time to be short-tempered and irritated.  A time to be worked up and overworked.  But I really do not think that it has to be that way.  Trust me, I have spent plenty of holidays in a bad mood, but I have realized that most of that is my own doing and I can easily undo that or do it another way.   I have compiled a little “Dos and Don’ts” list for the holidays.  If decking the halls leaves you feeling like you are going to deck the next person that asks you something, this may be for you.  Since I am a person that practices what I preach, these are things that I have either learned to let go, things I have learned to do or stop doing, or things I am working on this year through constant self-reminders and some strong self-talk! DO: —Do smile at the sales asso...

This week has been one of the hardest weeks. It’s been more than hard, but right now, that seems to be the only word I can come up with to describe it.  It has been one filled with much grief and sadness, and one where we have had to learn to trust the reckless love of God even when we do not understand. Like the rest of the country, we woke Saturday morning to the news of the death of former president George H.W. Bush.  I immediately began to read the most recent articles, written only hours before, which highlighted the remarkable life of the humble public servant.   Like the rest of our friends, neighbors, and school community, we woke on Monday morning to the news of a car accident very nearby in the very early morning with a single fatality.  As our kids woke for school, we shared the news with them and we all said a silent prayer for whomever would have been involved.  As the morning went on, more details of the unfortunate accident emerged, inclu...

Sometimes I am just frazzled! I mean, I am all about “let it go” and “just be patient,” and I truly believe those things, and I do practice what I preach.  But sometimes….   Like last Thursday night.  Hubby was out of town, I had all five kids to myself, and they were all rowled up!  We had frozen pizza for dinner yet the kitchen was still a disaster.  We had our four-year-old’s birthday party here at our house nearly a week earlier, and the house still looked like the party-goers had just left.  The little kids wanted to sleep in my bed since hubby was gone, which was fine, but then they cried forever before going to sleep saying “It’s scary in here!” The teenagers were all on their phones and were laughing at memes and listening to the latest rap songs.  It’s cool that they were all getting along, but then again, it was super annoying…because they were just so loud!  The 12-year-old was still getting over a cold.  I was glad she was fe...