Gratituesday Archives | Page 22 of 40

Gratituesday: Cooking for Three

July 4, 2011 by Laura 20 Comments

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We’re experiencing something this week we haven’t experienced for 12 years – we have only one child in our house.

Yep, Asa’s at church camp, and Justus and Elias are spending a fun-filled week with grandparents. Left at home with the parents: Malachi.

It’s quiet, there’s not nearly the volume of laundry or dirty dishes and wow – I can’t believe the tiny amount of food we’re eating. Yesterday I got out eggs for our breakfast, automatically getting out an entire dozen. Oops. All of our biggest eaters are away right now. We may actually have leftovers this week!

I got to visit with Justus and Elias on the phone this morning and it sounds like they are having a blast. Papa had bought some fireworks, Grandma Tacy had made cinnamon rolls and “a really yummy egg casserole thing”. There had been a potluck after church yesterday and last night they got to eat pizza.

Funny how much of the conversation revolved around food. See? Told ya my biggest eaters were out of town. (I’m sure Asa’s doing a pretty good job of chowing down at camp too!)

So what’s Malachi doing? Well he’s got big plans to invite over some friends this week to play with, he’s getting a little more PBS Kids time than normal – plus we’ve played at least six or thirty rounds of Blink. We’re reading Mr. Popper’s Penquins together and last night, he fell asleep in my arms while we read. Bliss.

As the youngest boy, Malachi hasn’t had much one-on-one with the parents. He’s living it up!

I’m thankful for this time with him, and so grateful that our other boys are being loved on and are making great memories this week.

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Gratituesday: Board Gaming

June 27, 2011 by Laura 23 Comments

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There are a few weeks during our year that offer a little more down time that other times of the year. Recently, since the garden isn’t producing a huge amount yet, soccer is not in season and we haven’t been traveling…we’ve been blessed to have a bit more time at home. We’re taking advantage of this “down time” to scrape and paint our house, invite people over that we’ve been wanting to get together with, and several nights recently, we’ve taken the time for family game time.

Slowly but surely, we’re getting to the point where all six of us together can play games (that don’t involve Chutes, Ladders or a Candy Cane Forest). I’m loving it. I tend to be so task oriented, focusing on projects that need to be done, dishes that need to be washed, phone calls that need to be made. It’s hard for me to loosen up and really participate in any down time we might have. There’s always so much work to be done.

The work will always be there.

But I’m always so grateful for the times I’ve put aside my “to-do list” and just played with my family. We get silly. We laugh. And every once in a while, I actually win a game. ;)

It’s an honor that my kids want to spend time with me. It’s a privilege that my husband is home in the evenings to hang out with. Quiet evenings at home are rare. In just a few weeks, we’ll have produce taking over our kitchen, soccer season will start, schooling will begin and all thoughts of down time will be buried under muddy soccer cleats and buckets of tomatoes.

For today and maybe even again tomorrow, I will say yes to a rowdy game of Apples to Apples or a lazy game of Traverse. I have yet to regret one moment of board game playing with my family.

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Gratituesday: Eye to Eye

June 20, 2011 by Laura 39 Comments

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I promise you he wasn’t this tall two weeks ago. Close, but not quite.

It hit me a few days ago that something was different when I’d have conversations with Asa, our oldest son who just turned 14. And then I figured it out. I am looking him directly in the eye when we talk now. He’s done it. He’s caught up to me. And if he keeps going at this rate, we won’t be seeing eye to eye for long. Instead, I’ll be getting a neck ache when we visit because I’ll be looking up to meet his eyes.

He’s pretty proud of this accomplishment and who can blame him?

I’d just like to restate what I said last year when Asa turned 13 (you know, back when he was shorter than me). Having a teenager is a joy. It is not all gloom and doom like so many people warned us about. I will admit that I’ve been taken aback by all the new territory we’re venturing through – all the new parts of life that include having a teenager (you know, like the “girls think my son is cute” part). Good gravy. I try to have an “Oh isn’t she sweet” attitude, but typically I tend to have more of a mother bear snarly, “Back off Sistah!” thing going on. He is only 14, ya know. Good gravy.

There is much we need to help guide him through, and as tough as the diaper years were, sometimes I’d like to run back to that time because even though I wasn’t getting any sleep, at least I felt more in control of the decisions our kids needed to make. Asa will be a high school freshman this fall. I feel a weight of responsibility as we are on our last few years of raising our son to be a godly man. I feel inadequate as we begin to figure out the moments to let go, while at the same time, offering guidance and what I hope is wisdom as he becomes more independent.

Well now, look at me getting all weepy. It’s just that, he’s my first baby, you know? And we see eye to eye, can you believe it? Thankfully, we still see eye to eye about spiritual matters too. I pray constantly that Asa will continue to grow in his walk of faith.

God is good to walk this journey with us. I’m thankful that He can protect Asa with a more powerful stronghold than I ever could. I’m thankful that God saw fit to give Matt and me the opportunity to raise this teenager. Bless Asa’s heart, we don’t know what we’re doing. We’re practicing on him before we raise three more teens in just a few years. But God is faithful and promises to make up for our weaknesses. Yes, even in parenting.

Especially in parenting.

God is good.

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Gratituesday: Free Groceries…Twice!

June 13, 2011 by Laura 16 Comments

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I never win anything. Now, this could be because I hardly ever sign up for anything, but still. Anytime I’ve entered a raffle or signed up for giveaways on other blogs, my name is never chosen.

Until recently. And then I won twice – in one week. Wowza.

Here’s how it all went down: On a fluke, I entered a giveaway at Tammy’s Recipes for a $50 Kroger Grocery Gift Certificate. I really don’t enter giveaways much these days, but if you dangle free groceries in front of my face, it’s hard for me to resist the opportunity. So I entered.

And then I won. Wow. Now I understand how excited all of you are when I draw your name and email you. That was one of the most fun emails to receive, ever!

THEN, just two days later I received a phone call from one of our grocery stores here in town. Every time you make a purchase there and sign your receipt, it goes into a drawing for a $100 gift certificate. I’ve signed my receipts for years and let the boys put them into the “drawing box” as we leave the store. Never figured I’d win, but it never hurts to try – and it was fun for the boys to put the receipts in the box.

Long story longer, you guessed it: The grocery store was calling to tell me that I had won the drawing that week! $100 of free groceries from our local grocery store!

Do you know how much fun a person can have with $150 of free grocery store gift cards?!?! We don’t have a Kroger store in Nebraska, but they are all over Kansas – so we took our $50 certificate and used in on our way home from visiting family earlier in the month. Here in town, I just used bits and pieces of my $100 card anytime I needed bananas or watermelon or cantaloupe…

Yeah, we spent it mostly on fruits and veggies. FREE fruits and veggies.

It was so much fun. What a blessing to be gifted twice with free groceries!! (Come to think of it – three times – as we had some Whole Foods gift cards saved up to use last week when we went to Omaha, thanks to all of you!)

God does provide, doesn’t he? I pray that we’re always wise with the blessings He gives us and that we’re always willing to be generous and share with others as we’ve been blessed!

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Gratituesday: The Surprise

June 6, 2011 by Laura 13 Comments

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Well, I’ve been taking pictures of our surprise activities all day long. I had all kinds of fun things to tell you about. BUT, we seem to be having some internet issues where we are staying, meaning I may get zapped offline at any moment.

For now, I’ll only stop here long enough to say, Wow I’m thankful for our surprise. The boys are loving it. Their faces have lit up when we’ve sprung on them each surprise on top of the surprise – it’s amazing what they get excited about when we hardly ever do anything vacationy like this!

As soon as I can, I’ll get back online and share more fun details about what we’ve been up to. :)

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Gratituesday: Reunions

May 30, 2011 by Laura 20 Comments

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Wanna know how old I am? Well, I just celebrated my 20 year high school class reunion this weekend. This means that I’m very, very young – unless, of course, you consider that last time we had a reunion, all of our kids were babies, and this time some of them have a driver’s license. ;)

And then we realized that if we have another reunion in 10 years most of our kids will be adults.

But we didn’t dwell on that. It’s crazy enough that all of us are as old as our parents used to be – if that makes any sense – which of course it does if you’re talking with classmates from years past.

It might give you a chuckle to know that there was a grand total of 17 kids in my graduating class. (Yes, I bet a couple of you had just a few more in your class than I had.)

I’m also happy to report that of all seven of us girls from the graduating class of 1991…none of us has big hair anymore. (Unless you consider that the wind did some interesting things to mine on Sunday.)

This Gratituesday, I’m thankful for reunions and a chance to catch up with people. Not only did I have a high school reunion, today we had a wonderful family reunion full of cousins, babies, aunts that give great hugs, homemade ice cream and shared memories. We decorated graves together, cried together, laughed together and if I haven’t mentioned it already – there was homemade ice cream.

I hope your Memorial Day Weekend has been a blessing to you!

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Gratituesday: My Nana is Here!

May 23, 2011 by Laura 31 Comments

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Last week we got a surprise email. Nana had the opportunity to come to Nebraska (from Arkansas) – and she’d be here Saturday! I can’t tell you how excited I was to hear this news.

Nana is 84 (going on 43) and is my mom’s mom. We don’t get to see her nearly enough and well, I just needed a hug from my Nana. Not only have I had hugs, we’ve had a great time visiting and enjoying the boys (and their cousins).

We’ve had several family get-togethers since she arrived, with big spreads of food and wonderful story telling and memories shared.

What a blessing to have Nana helping me in my kitchen, just like I used to help her in hers.

I’m flying high this week. Thank you God for this wonderful woman and for the chance to make more memories!

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Gratituesday: My Computer is ALIVE!

May 16, 2011 by Laura 20 Comments

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Last week I whined to you that my computer seemed to be on the brink of death. This is quite a big deal for our household as we rely on our computer for many, many things, most importantly the work we do on this website.

Our computer is just over a year old, which should mean that having our computer up and die isn’t something we should have to fear. Yet, for the past couple of months we’ve been experiencing some crazy symptoms and scares. We’ve had it looked at, cleaned up and looked at again.

The guy working on it said he’d never seen anything like it – not a comforting statement from someone who’s been working on computers for many years. To say that I was under a bit of stress last week is quite an understatement. Looking back, I should have handled this better, knowing that God always works everything out. In the big scheme of things, having a dying computer, but having healthy children and a roof over our heads means that truly, all is well.

I won’t go into all of the specific stresses of the week, but let me just tell you a little bit about how God worked through this:

A few weeks ago, my friend Brenda told me about Carbonite, letting me know that it was a great way to back up your computer. We decided to go for it.
On Tuesday, Carbonite completed its back-up of our entire computer, including eBooks I have in the works plus hundreds of pictures we’ve taken.
The VERY next day, the computer refused to boot up. Yeah, the very next day.
After trying many other things, our computer-expert friend had to basically restore our computer to its original self, meaning that everything we had on it was wiped out and our computer came back to us like a brand new computer.

This means two things:

We truly have a wonderfully working, like new computer again. It’s working fantastically.
If we hadn’t just backed up all of our files, we would have lost everything stored on our computer.

I am so thankful that God prompted us to get everything backed up. Carbonite has already restored all of our files back to our computer. Wow.

I am so thankful that our computer is now working wonderfully again. And I am so thankful for friends who helped us out during that time, either by helping fix the computer, offering to help fix the computer or letting us borrow their laptops so we could at least do bare minimum work on the website while we waited to get our computer back. We have such great and helpful friends.

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Gratituesday: We Laughed, We Cried

May 9, 2011 by Laura 22 Comments

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This morning I had the blessed opportunity to go out for breakfast with two very dear friends. We rarely see each other and both were in town for a wedding. Visiting between bites of wedding cake yesterday, we realized we needed more time for chatting. Setting our alarms to go off with the roosters, we squeezed in an early breakfast before they headed out of town this morning.

We pretty much skipped all of the “I like your cute shoes” kind of talk and went right to the heart of life: “How’s your marriage?”, “How’s your spiritual walk?”, “How is God using you?”, “How have you been dealing with the pain from___ since the last time we talked?”

I felt so refreshed and sharpened by our brief but meaningful conversation. These gals know what it is to experience hurt and to let God help them land on their feet. They inspire me to be a better mother, a better wife and to have a stronger relationship with our Lord.

Do you have friends like this? If not, pray for God to provide them. The joy and encouragement from godly friendship is priceless.

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Gratituesday: Putting Away the Books (but not really)

May 2, 2011 by Laura 41 Comments

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Our homeschool schedule usually begins in early August so that we can be done in early May. We like it that when spring fever hits, we don’t have to be stuck behind math books, but can instead be working outside in the garden or playing ball in the yard.

So, do you know what this week is? It’s the beginning of the end of our school year! Each of the boys just have a few small assignments to finish up, and then they can officially stop learning for a few months. HA! Assignments from books may be finished, but I love that the learning never stops! In fact, we’ve got book lists and project lists already in the works.

Among all the other great things I could tell you about our school year, we’ve had a wonderful year of studying American History. WOW have we learned a lot! (By we, I totally mean me because I am much more knowledgeable about how our country has become what it is.) (I do think that the boys learned a thing or two as well.)

But now, we’re excited to have a more flexible schedule, to be able spend more time outside, to have more time to play games and to be goofy.

Not that we really need more time to be goofy. Really. We do that pretty well on a regular basis, even while we’re thinking of the best adverbs to fit a sentence. (You don’t want me to share examples.)

And so, let the lazy days of summer, which are anything but lazy, begin. Once again, I thank God for another wonderful year of learning with our boys.

(Our oldest will be a 9th grader next year. I’m choking on my muffin.)

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