about lent

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, the kick off for the season of Lent.  I struggle every year with this time.  I have good intentions to form new habits, break old ones, be sacrificial through it all.  I say I'm going to read the Bible each day - for myself and the kiddos...but then one day is missed and another and another, and I give up.  I say I'm going to give something up (like Dr. Pepper or Chocolate - you know something I'll actually miss, but need to learn to live with out anyway), but am back at it two weeks (and that's being generous) later. 

I also tell myself that I'm going to make a big deal out of the season for my boys, teach them about the meaning of Easter and Jesus and his sacrifice - the whole shebang.  I tell myself I will put as much effort into Lent as I do into Advent.  And I don't.  (In my defense I had some success a few years back when we did Love Life Live Lent as a church.)

Come Easter Sunday I'm a stressed out disaster - every. single. year.  I'm cranky about the kids screaming about chocolate bunnies and baskets and toys instead of Jesus and kicking myself because of course it's my fault - after all I dropped the ball teaching them.  And instead of focusing on my Savior, I'm worried about getting to church on time in the right clothes and the big meal that follows after. 

I don't want to do that this year.  Any of it.  Sure, I want to make this season special, but not in a way that crams it down the throats of my family and leaves me feeling drained and like a failure.  I think my biggest problem with Lent each year is that I overthink the details and forget the big picture:  Jesus' sacrifice for me, for all of us. 

So no details this year.  And no guilt.

We didn't make it to the Ash Wednesday service last night, and that's okay.  Things happen and Jesus gets it - even if other people don't - and his opinion is the one that matters.

I started up with my daily Bible reading again yesterday.  My goal for Lent:  to finish my "read the Bible in a year" project that I started a year and half ago.  I want to start reading through a children's Bible with my boys again, too (We HAVE done this before - SUCCESS!  Time to do it again!)

I'm going to dig out our Love Life Live Lent activity book from a few years back and choose some activities to do as a family on weekends. 

I gave up soda and fast food.  I believe that God wants me to take better care of my body - and teach that to my boys - then I do, and here's a start.  I also believe He wants me to use my money for better causes then the enormous amount of junk foods and drinks my family consumes.

I believe God wants my family to tithe more to our church each month.

I may not get all of those things above right everyday either, but I won't give up this year.  Each day I will see as a new day, another chance.  Lent is going to be special this year, but not because I'm going to make a huge production out of it.  Instead it will be special because it will be about Jesus and family and sacrifice and forgiveness. 

snow day

Our snow day in bullet points:

• wake up at 4:30, remember there is no going to the gym this morning and hit snooze for the next hour
• wake up to the phone ringing and the snooze going off again...at the same time.  Turn off alarm, answer phone, find out school is cancelled due to ice.  Return to sleeping.
• Jump out of bed and fly out the living room to relocate Tony, the elf on a shelf, since I forgot to last night...and we're off to a great start on that little treat...

• sleep until seven enjoying the fact that for the first time on our Thanksgiving break the boys slept IN instead of RUNNING! SCREAMING! and FIGHTING! (both play fighting and real fighting) at 5:30 in the morning.
• Climb out of bed, bundle up, drink water, start coffee, all while watching the boys make their own pop tarts.
• FIRST DAY OF DECEMBER!  Boys check their advent calendar for our activity and discover that they get to open their first Christmas books.

• Read day one out of each Advent book and hang our first ornament on our Jesse tree

• boys disappear into spare room to watch Wreck it Ralph.  I drink coffee, eat leftover waffles, and watch ten minutes of some ridiculous show on TV before deciding not to watch TV all day.
• Finish online Christmas shopping.  Done!  Yay!
• drink more coffee and catch up on some Bible reading.
• Text Justin, shower.
• Decide to catch up on photo books on Snapfish, but find things running too slowly (probably due to cyber Monday??) 
• Feed the boys left overs for lunch and return to snapfish to do some photo Christmas shopping instead.  Save 55%!  Woohoo!
• Decide to take this opportunity to upload all of my photos (both camera and phone), edit, organize, and upload them.  This takes hours.  Like three of them.  Finish the pot of coffee and catch up on blog reading while doing all of this.  (P.S.  My children are silently entertaining themselves elsewhere - it seems after spending five straight days with me over Thanksgiving break that they are tired of me and willing to let me do my own thing.  rare!)
• feed the children again.  they seem to need A LOT of food.
• Now write a blog post.

And now it is 3:30 and I'm contemplating starting up the over to make frozen pizza because despite having been home all day and having spent most of that time on my butt and on my computer, I still have no desire to cook.  And I'd like to continue this relaxing (some would call lazy) thing I have been doing all day.  

A Christmas House Tour

I really, really love getting to decorate the house for Christmas.  We don't have a ton of decorations, and we don't go all out, but I love what we do do.  Every year I try to add something or change something up a bit so its not the same old, same old.  This past spring we got some new furniture and completely rearranged our living room, so decorating for Christmas was a bit of challenge. 

But...we pulled it off, and when we were all finished, Justin and I looked around and decided that this was our best work yet.  (Yes, we do tend to think that every year.  But still...this year is the best!)  Let me show you...I'm sure you'll agree!

Let's start at the front door.  Though not one single thing here is new...everything here has been repurposed this year making this a "brand new wreath."  What I love most about it though isn't how it looks...I love the fact that Logan and Gavin helped me do it all:  beads and ornaments!

Next to the front door is our desk...nothing fancy here.  It's the last thing I decorated, so it has all the "left overs," but I think it turned out nicely.  Best thing here is our Jesse Tree.  While the tree itself is not new, the idea of a Jesse Tree is.  I topped it off with one of our little wooden crosses, and filled our coffee bean jar with each day's ornament.  This little tree here is probably my second favorite Christmas decoration simply because of what it represents (my favorite is coming up later!).

And the tour continues!!! 

Up next is the "TV area" of our living room.  The TV stand is part of the new furniture we bought this spring.  Turns out it is an excellent place to put stockings, and it also provided me with one more little nook to tuck a few Christmas decorations!

This is also where we decided to let the boys put up their little tree this year.  We set the tree up, but they (mainly Logan) decorated it all by themselves!

This year I decided to start a new tradition with our Christmas books.  I wrapped each one up, numbered them, and put them under the boys' tree.  Each night they've gotten to open another book!  I like having this tree to put them under, too, because it gives this new tradition a separate home from our main tree (coming soon!).

While the boys' tree sits in the TV area, it also is in front of our sliding glass door.  It looked beautiful after it snowed!  We also hang a huge garland above this door and decorate it with ornaments (this year I bought new ones - one of my very few splurges this year).  Then we hang a wreath on the door - one Logan picked out last year!

The splurge for new ornaments on the garland was well worth it, because I had a few leftover that Justin then turned into a pretty center piece for our table!

Coming up next is the black cabinet I received for Christmas last year.  I combined it with an old table cloth, a short strand of lights, and some Pinterest inspiration to get this:

And now we come to the back door.  Here is where you find my favorite Christmas decoration:  the Nativity.  This year we hung a wreath above it, and Justin placed a very special cross inside.  The boys helped me set up both Nativity sets, and Logan told me the entire story of the birth of Jesus while we did it!

 

 

 

This area is also where we hung the boys' Advent calendar, and of course, the door was perfect for yet another wreath!

If you haven't noticed (which I wouldn't if I were you and/or had never been in my house before), I'm kind of taking you in a big circle.  Really, all this means, is we are now headed back into the "formal" part of the living room (I use the term "formal" very loosely hence the quotes) and back towards the front door where we started.  Up first:  the book shelf.

And now we come to the Christmas tree:

This year it found a new home in the corner instead of centered in front of our big window, and I have to say that I really like it better this way!  Decorating this monster tree is always Justin's job, but he didn't get to go it alone this year.  Despite wanting very little to do with helping Logan decorate their tree, Gavin would not be stopped when it came to decorating this tree!

That must be why it turned out so beautifully...

P.S.  Enjoy this picture of our tree fully lit.  I know I am.  It seems that we jinxed ourselves over Thanksgiving by telling our family how awesome our tree was, that after five years of use every single pre-lit bulb still worked.  Since then, four strands of light have burned out.  We replaced the first, but have since resigned ourselves to the fact that the tippy top, the bottom, and the middle of the back of the tree have gone dark.  Come take down time, we will be unwinding every inch of lights so we can replace them next year.  Yay...  (That "yay" is filled with sarcasm and loathing by the way.)

Introducing Tony!

Tony* is our family elf - you know, from the whole "Elf on a Shelf" phenomenon.  Last year was our first year to have an Elf on the Shelf, and there were a lot of hiccups in the process.  For instance, Tony often forgot to travel to the North Pole at night and report to Santa.**  Oooops...bad elf!

So...I had high hopes this year to whip Tony into shape.  *Ahem*  I wanted to start the whole thing off with a bang, so I wrapped Tony up (my mother-in-law had bought us the fancy box set with elf and book from Barnes & Noble last year, so this was easy) and let the boys work together to unwrap him on November 30th.  We read the book again, named him again (see * below for clarification if necessary at this point), and found a good home for him to start off his adventures.

So far Tony has been very successful at remembering to travel back to the North Pole each night (I told you I would whip him into shape!).  He has been found in our Jesse Tree ornament jar...

...writing a letter to Santa...

...and hanging from the ceiling fan by candy canes.

At this point I find it necessary to point out that our elf, Tony, is a very well behaved elf.  He doesn't make messes or anything like that.  There are two reasons for this:

1. Since the whole point of having an elf is to encourage children to behave, it makes sense to me that the elf should also behave and set a good example for the children.
2. I don't like messes.  Any little mess I try to make will be increased ten fold by my three fat cats during the night.  Plus, I don't want to clean up any mess...even a little one!  Let me repeat:  I don't like messes.

(NOTE:  The first reason is the one I give when I'm trying to look like an awesome parent.  The second reason is the reason I give when I'm being really honest with myself and others.  Yes, it is all about me.)

Okay, now back to Tony's journey through our house so far...

Occasionally I try to place Tony Tony shows up in places that hint towards whatever activity I have planned for the boys that day.  For instance, the day he showed back up holding an apple in our fruit basket was the day I was taking the boys shopping for our "Feed a Family for a Day" charity:

 

Then, right off the get basically, Tony almost forgot to visit the North Pole (see ** below).  Luckily, Justin "reminded" Tony to get going and he ended up back in our house here which had absolutely no connection to the days activity because, well, I hadn't discussed the day's activity with Justin before hand...

 

Since then, Tony has been a pretty reliable elf popping up in a variety of places around the house:

 

At Day 11 there was almost another mishap...Tony forgot to take his trip until about 4:30 in the morning which is coincidentally the time I get up to go to the gym... 

 

Then he was back on track again and has been trucking along nicely...though he's starting to run out of creative places to perch and that whole "go to a place that hints about the day's activity" has all but died completely.  What can I say?  Tony's creative juices - like mine - run out after awhile!  

 

Our adventures with Tony so far have been a trip!  I love listening to the boys hunt for him each morning and their excitement at finding him (well, as long as that hunt and those squeals of glee come after 6:00 a.m. anyway).  Tonight Tony is going to make his way over to our Nativity scene and hang out with Baby Jesus as one more reminder to my little ones of what Christmas is really all about.

...And then after that he's going to gorge himself on sugar cookies and milk, write a thank you note to the kiddos on the magnadoodle, and pass out.  After all, my his job will be done until next year!

*I don't remember what we called Tony last year...whatever name Logan picked out I forgot to write down, so we had to rename him this year.  His name is now Tony, as in Tony Stark a.k.a. Iron Man.  My boys may be a little obsessed with super heroes...

**Meaning I constantly forgot about him until the next morning when Logan would shout, "Mommy, Tony didn't move last night!"  Crap....