We painted our kitchen last week. Excuse the blue tape in the picture – Ryan is still working on the top part. There is also painting stuff and tools on the back of the counter – ignore those. They aren’t decoration and will be there no more after this weekend.

Lately it seems that my non-busy, laid back lifestyle has become entirely too hectic. We have always made a point to stay relaxed but craziness seems to creep up on us, coming and going as it whims.
I can’t rightly remember when, though it was quite timely, but I read not long ago about a mom who was having similar time issues and it was causing her Bible time to feel squeezed in. She was also concerned that because of the time crunch her kids weren’t seeing her studying the word.
It might seem like a small thing but it is really important to model our devotion to God to our kids. How will they see that model if I hide away to do my Bible study before they get up or after they go to bed? I am by no means knocking early morning or before bed study and praise, not at all! I just don’t want to forget that my children also need to see me practicing what I preach.
I took the woman’s advice and we started a new “His hour” each morning. Now, this has taken a leap of faith because our lives seem so backed up and it feels like I don’t have any hours left to give up. Still, I knew it needed to be done. If I can’t give one hour to Him…

What we decided to do is this: Each morning the kids and I take one hour after breakfast and we give it completely to God. We take care of our teeth and hair, make sure we are dressed, then Kait(13), Joe(10), and I separate and sit down with worship music and our Bibles and read, study, and worship Him in the ways that seem fit to each of us. Gabe(7) reads a simple Bible story to Ben(3) and Matthew(4) and then occupies them with quiet play. After 30 to 45 minutes we come back together and discuss what we studied. Then we do a short group study using a book we have called “Not So Quiet Times 2″. It is a really great book to grab ideas and topics from when you have little ones with short attention spans.
Anyway, it is working really well. The baby(11 mo) does feel the need to interrupt but that is okay.

By the way – I wake up between 7 and 8. It is now almost noon and we are all dressed for our day, have had our His Hour, finished up all school work, and done most of the chores for the day. Amazing it is how much smoother the day goes when we put God first!!!

Joseph, my 10 year old, has been trying to get these Lego challenges off the ground but so far he is having trouble getting any participation. I told him I would promote his challenges here to see if there was any interest.

If you or your kids are interested in participating in Joe’s Ginormous Lego Joust you can visit his blog here to see what it is all about. The challenge this month is to create a coffee cup with Legos. It doesn’t have to hold liquid. Joe really wants participants to be creative.

There is no age limit so this could be a perfect Adultitis medication. Anybody can participate and there is a trophy involved for the winner. Go on over the The Bug Hunter’s blog and see what it is all about!

My review of

Sammy will be 11 months old next week. He didn’t start crawling until about 3 weeks ago and even then he wouldn’t crawl all the time, just scoot along on his belly more than crawl.
Finally he is crawling all over the place. We were beginning to wonder if he would ever really crawl – just go straight to walking.

I got this video of him today. He is the most gorgeous baby!

His first birthday is next month. Hard to believe it has been a year already. Then again, I have said that with every child. It is impossible to recall what life was like before each of my children were born, but at the same time every year has flown by at an alarming speed making me wonder where all those days have gone.

I love being a mama.

Kim & Jason want us to write a Haiku this week about things we are thankful for as a part of the Escape Plan Challenges that Ryan and I are having fun with. I have to admit that I take issue with this because I’ve got this aversion to poems that don’t rhyme and Haiku poems don’t have to meet the rhyming requirement. I think poems that don’t rhyme should be called something different, like poem-wanna-bes or something along that line. I have a problem with poemists that seem to throw together words with no thought at all and call them poems. I know, It sounds like a personal issue – and it is.

Anyway, here is my Haiku. 5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables – and it rhymes, mostly.

kidlets laughing lots
hot summer days icy pops
dirty feet flip flops

funny it’s to me
Ryan is very ticklish though
he can’t tickle me

Okay, so I got carried away and wrote two. Notice the rhyme. I just cannot not rhyme a poem.

And yes, poemist IS the term used for a poet writer. Just ask the Smothers Brothers if you don’t believe me.

In honor of Spring, our new blog design (which will be our new website design shortly, as well), our upcoming move, the fact that I am now 33, and to apologize for missing the giveaways for the last 3 weeks, I am funning up the giveaway this week!

I have been eyeing these doormats at The Lemonade Stand for the past few months. At first I wanted the one that says, “Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit, look who’s here!”. Then I ran across a different one that says, “Please stay on the mat. Your visit is very important to us. Your knock will be answered in the order in which it was received”. Still not sure which one I am going to get. Maybe both???

Anyway, for my delightful readers, I am offering to send you one of the door mats shown in the picture, should you enter and win. If you have any sense of humor at all you really should have a door mat that lets folks know what sorta funny dwelling they are entering. If you don’t have a sense of humor then make sure you enter this giveaway! You need one of these more than anyone!

Retail Value – $15.95!

Now, for the rules…
US and Canada residence are welcome to enter per the rules below. Pay special attention to the closing date! You can enter twice by following the directions here by 4/16/08:

• Entry #1: If you run across this blog and you want to win this item just leave a comment telling me what you would say if you were your home’s doormat.
• Entry #2: Link to this entry from your blog where you wrote about this giveaway and then leave a second comment with the link where you passed on this giveaway info. This entry should be SEPARATE from your first entry.

A winner will be chosen on 4/17/08. We will announce it on the blog as well as TRY to email the winner. I say ‘try’ because I often get email notices returned to me as undeliverable, I get no reply, or the winner doesn’t give a method of contact. Please make sure you check back to see if you are the winner!

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My review of
Adam
by Ted Dekker

Like I have said numerous times in the past, it is absolutely possible to write a utterly creepy, suspense filled story, complete with good and evil and a wicked villian, that allures the reader while freaking him out without adding even the smallest of curse words and not the slightest indecency.
Adam was the perfect example of this.

Adam. Just thinking about this book disturbs me. It was so good and left me with an eerie sensation that seemed to follow me around. The good v/s evil present in this book is extreme. Ted Dekker is a mastermind, my very favorite of authors. I have read just about all of his books, own quite a few, and I have yet to read one that I didn’t think was his best. In Adam Dekker had me feeling sorrow for the bad guy, and disgusted at him at the same time. It was one of those books I couldn’t read at bedtime but wanted to keep reading it into the wee hours none-the-less.

Alex and Jessica were kidnapped when they were just 3 and 4. They were not found. Their new mother was evil and the two kids were raised in a twisted world of warped religion and bloody ritual. They forgot their pre-kidnapped life but managed to cling to each other for the love and bonding that all humans crave. Alex took care of Jessica, and eventually orchestrated their escape – close to adulthood.
The two of them found the real world fascinating. They jumped into their fresh start in life, soaking it all in, and loving their new found freedom. Short lived this joy was and that is where Adam takes off.

The Positive:
Totally spiritual. The good v/s evil present is as real as it gets. I just can’t say enough about the truth found between these pages. Dekker is a pro at this – bringing out real life mega-struggles in people and showing the terrifying truth about what does happen when you step out from under God’s cloak of safety. Evil, Satan, exists in the rawest form, cannot be stopped by a locked door or barred windows; Hell is real, but salvation is just a prayer away. There is such a positive message in this book but I just don’t want to give any of it away.

The Negative:
There aren’t negatives in Dekker’s books, not one that I have ever found, anyway. The only thing I would want to warn you about is that the good/evil struggle is real enough to scare your socks off. Adam is not a book for children.

To Sum It Up:
I loved it. After I read the first chapter of Adam I was thoroughly captured and totally freaked out. I kept thinking, this book is really good but it isn’t reading like the typical Ted Dekker novel, what is he doing here? It didn’t take long to see Dekker shine through the pages, however.
Pick it up and read it. Just make sure you keep a light on when you go to bed, not that it will make a difference.

I am sorry I haven’t been blogging, no giveaways, not much of anything.

It seems life gets in the way sometimes.

The airline broke my computer – sort of. I have quite the colorful lines going across the screen and down it and I can’t see through them so I have to move my window around them to see all of it. This gets very annoying after a short while. Also, my keys like to quite working every so often. Not the whole keyboard, mainly just the ‘c’ key – which I use quite a bit. I will be getting a new laptop but I just can’t make myself spend that kind of money until I am sure that we are going to be reimbursed. Also, I want an Apple Macbook, which is a couple hundred dollares more than the Dell I have now. I have been sleeping on this one for a week now and still haven’t come to a decision. I asked Ryan what he thought. He doesn’t seem to care one way or another. The only negative here is that none of us have ever owned a Mac and we don’t know the first thing about them. That could hurt if something small went wrong and nobody here knew how to fix it. Maybe I will just stick with a new Dell.

Also, my baby has had an ear infection, a bad cold, and now an extremely persistent cough over the last 3 weeks. We managed to get through the winter without barely a sniffle and now I have had a sick kid in my house since the first day of Spring. Go figure.

We just found out that we could be moving as early as the second week in May – but probably closer to the first week in June. Not much time to get the house sold. I don’t feel too much stress about this one, though.

And, if that weren’t enough, I decided not long ago to redo my blog with a Spring/Summer theme. It is really cute and fun but somewhat time consuming so I can only do a little at a time. This new issue with the computer isn’t helping either. Still, I am determined to get it done before Autumn so keep an eye out to see the new blog!

We intentionally keep ourselves from being busy. All of the sudden we seemed to be thrown into the Lake of Crazy Waters.

So, if you will kindly pray for my sanity…

We found out Tuesday night that we could be transferred in as little as 5 weeks. We were really thinking it would be more like July or August, maybe even as late as September. That was just wishful thinking because we still have a vanity and two walls to build downstairs (the finished daylight basement) before the house is ready to sell, but such is life. My wonderful husband is fast at his work, though, so I printed off a list of things I could do to get the rest of the house ready to go while he busies himself with studs and drywall. I am not really worried about time too much – God has a plan and we already stand to make a pretty penny on this house.

Day 1 – De-personalize
I removed all family pictures, nicknacks, anything personal off my shelves and walls upstairs (our main living level). I packed up movie cases, gaming controllers, and everything else from the shelves of the TV stand – what we use regularly Kait organized neatly in the coffee table cupboard. I also cleared the fridge of maganets and pictures. We really didn’t have too many of these on there but I still wanted them all off. I’m going for clear spaces.
I haven’t emptied my book shelves yet. I need some more boxes for that chore. Plus, the kids still have another week or so of homeschooling. After that I will be boxing everything up.
The reason for this? I don’t want potential buyers seeing this house as my home. I want them to see it as their home. I want them to picture their stuff in this house. It is easier for them to do this when my stuff is out of the way.
Question – does this mean I need to paint over the big coloring book tree I drew on the wall in the baby’s room? It is really cute but I don’t know if it is a positive or negative. Any advice from anybody who knows about this kinda stuff?
I did leave some non-personal nicknacks out for ‘staging’ purposes.

Day 2 – de-cluttering! NOT my favorite but it won’t be too bad because I have been working on this one for a while now. Check back tomorrow to see how this one goes.