FREE Give-Away! It’s my Blog-a-versary!

Yes, My Sister’s Jar has been filling up the pages of the internet for three long years now.  Wow!  And for ONE of my faithful readers, including anyone new who happens to find MJS today, I’m giving away a copy of each of my books: Laughing in the Midst of Mothering and Laughing in the Midst of Marriage.  Both books are guaranteed to make you grin, if not/and/or loudly guffaw while holding your belly while tears stream from your eyes from the hilarity of the stories.  Really.  I’m not just saying it because I lived through them either.

Yes, you read that right… TWO FREE books!  Wow!  Generosity is seeping from my pores today. Here’s how it works.  Leave a comment with your name in the comment section below.  I painstakingly copy all the names onto paper, carefully cut them into strips, fold them so there’s no cheating, drop them into a light blue snowman bucket, and then….. drumroll please….. one of my darling children reaches in and picks out a name.  I broadcast the winning name on this blog in the comment section, as well as the next blog.  So you have to be okay with your name being broadcast. Well, you could use a fake name, and then simply notify me before I mail the books as to your truthful name.  I privately email you for your mailing address, which is NOT broadcast for all the world to see.  Free contest starts now and ends at Feb. 2, 2011 at 11:59 p.m. (Members of my family are not eligible, nor people from Guam or Madagascar…. just kidding….. not kidding about my family!)

Thank you again, from the bottom of my heart, for being faithful readers to this overworked homeschool mom/author.  It does my heart good each night as I check the blog stats and drift off to sleep with happy thoughts that I just might have made someone smile today with these words I type.  You guys ROCK!

Happy Three-Year Blog-a-versary!

And my sweet husband adds, “You can buy the books at www.cbd.com.”   I’m not a saleswoman… I’m a mom!

Current Household Update

We have been home from Colombia with our new daughter for three weeks!  I believe we’re all adjusting as well as expected…. considering that her whole life changed, I’ve been sick since we got home, my husband was out-of-town for four days and we started homeschooling this week.  It’s been a draining time for me.  I need a nap every day… thankfully I have the freedom to take them!  This morning Nora dragged out of her room with her hair all wild and asked where Papi was!  I told her he was at work.  She slumped over, dragged back up the stairs, got back into bed and pulled the covers over her head.  Well, he was home for her every day for the first 5 weeks!!!  How could he leave her now almost every day!?!

Many monumental occurences have transpired as well.  We got a new dishwasher!  This may not seem that important to others, but we have been hand washing for 14 months….. when we weighed the importance of adoption funds and a new dishwasher….. adoption won… hands down.  But for Christmas, a little bit of everyone’s gift was the new kitchen appliance.  The kids were genuinely thrilled!  When the first cycle was completed, I cracked open the door and breathed in the hot steam that smelled of new appliance!  Sweet mercy, it did my heart good.  When the truck pulled up to deliver it, I did a happy dance in the cul-de-sac that mortified my kids who have known me for more than two months.  Nora, however, thought it was fantastic and joined me!

My husband, the one who owns part of a pest control business finally took the first of his two insecticide exams… and he got 90%!  When he told us, our daughter said, “That’s better than you EVER did in school!”  And it’s almost true.  He is currently studying for bug test #2.  He just read to me tonight the dangers of sitting on a portable potty and disturbing the web of a black widow spider hiding under the seat.   Gross me out.  That adds uneasiness to my already uneasy porta-potty stops.

Nora is totally addicted to riding her bike!  Every single day she asks if someone can go outside with her and watch her ride!  It starts when she is still in her pajamas at the kitchen table…. and continues until dark.  She is a persistent little thing! 

Nora was in complete shock when we first arrived home and she discovered that we don’t watch tv.  We don’t even get any channels.  At first she didn’t understand… so we handed her the remote and she clicked through about 20 totally blurry channels.  Her shoulders slumped a bit!  Then we turned on the movie Winn Dixie in Spanish for her!  She’s been fine with no tv ever since.  Every time she sees a dog, if it’s white she calls it Trixie (our dog) and if it’s brown she calls it Winn Dixie!  So cute!

Nora’s first English sentences are emerging…. slowly.  Yesterday she said, “This is so cute!”  Probably because I say it all the time to her!  She also asks everyone, “Are you ok?”  We respond and ask her the same.  She replies, “I’m ok.”  I wondered if she was just repeating or if she understood it.  Then she wiped out on her bike and scraped up her hands.  Austin asked her, “Are you ok?”  and she said NO!  Daily she is correcting my pronunciation of Spanish words.  My Spanish is so lame, it’s not even funny.  But we get by.  We’re also discovering many words that must be different in Colombian Spanish than Mexican Spanish. 

Nora went to McDonald’s playland for the first time yesterday.  She wasn’t fond of the food…. go figure!… but she loved the climbing tubes.  She was in there yelling, GWOW! the whole time!  (We don’t know why WOW starts with a G, but it does.)

Our 14-year-old son went to school for the first time in his life today!  We signed him up for a writing course that is 90 minutes on Thursday mornings.  He was pretty excited to be leaving with his sister this morning!  We asked how it was at nerd school (It’s a collection of homeschool kids) and he said there was a kid in his class with Crocs and socks.  Ultimate nerd alert!  Oh well.  Get used to it!

Ciao for now!

It Ain’t What it Used to Be

Yesterday was not only my eldest son’s golden birthday (14 on the 14th) but it was my youngest son’s introduction to headgear.  Eeeegads.  My brother wore headgear in the late 1970s, but times have changed and so has headgear.  I’ve made a solemn promise never to post pictures on facebook…. or my blogs.  A mother’s got to protect the dignity of her children, after all.  I also promised son #1 that if he made fun of son #2 I would make some headgear for him to wear and pictures would be broadcast for all to see.  (I’m the nice mom, remember?)

So, the purpose of the contraption is to pull the entire upper bridge, including attached cheek bones, forward… while holding the forehead and chin where they are.  I’ve never seen anything like it.  At least it’s a pretty blue color.  :o)  Dr. Ortho said that our son didn’t need to wear it to school.  I said, “Oh yes he does!”  Yet another advantage to homeschooling…. cutting headgear time down by two-thirds.  He even wears it to sleep.  Not my idea of a good time, but he’s coping well.

Every time I see Mr. Headgear, I am surprised by the metal bar dissecting his face.  Hopefully I’ll get used to it… it just looks so much like a transformer, or a cling-on, or a muzzle.  I’m the mom, though, so I still think he’s cute.  I told him at bedtime that we actually do need to take a picture of him wearing the headgear so his children will know how we tortured him.  That’s what parents do.

A Windfall of Thoughts

The email last week announcing our forthcoming adoption referral has sent me into a tizzy of excitement. It is a rare night when I’m not asleep within nano-seconds of my head resting on the pillow…. but now I lie there in the dark with questions running amuck in my mind. I got out of bed last night at midnight and sent an email full of questions to our case worker. It’s nice, because they are two hours ahead of us, so I awake to answers!

In two weeks, one of my college roommates (and bridesmaid) is coming for a five-day visit with her hubby and three kids all the way from Manitoba. We have not seen them since their wedding day…. it must be about 21 years ago now. We are bosom friends and a fabulous time will be had by all. But I looked around my very lived-in and loved house and thought to myself, “These walls were white just five years ago!” So, with that bit of inspiration, and company coming, decorating and redecorating has commenced.

Our family room is not large and we have had a very large oak computer desk in there for the same five years when my white walls changed colors. A friend came up with the brilliant idea to cut the back off. Duh! Why didn’t we think of that five years ago? So, with skill saw in hand, my husband cut 15 inches off the back of the desk and added over a foot to our living space. YAY! (Really, I know it sounds ghetto, but even Larisa thought it turned out great!)

Then I noticed these dated lamps and too many end tables, and too many chairs…. and a garage sale was born, organized, conducted and finished in two days. $280 raised for paint and valance fabric! Yes! I’ve decided to break out of the white all mode and ….. brace yourself…. pale lime green will go up on these walls on Wednesday. I hope I don’t regret the bold move.  Of course, pictures will follow.

And Keeve, …. Keeve, Keeve, Keeve.  My 11-year-old son has been living in Zaza’s yellow room with a purple bed and lime green accents for over two years.  There are bunk beds in the boy’s room, but he gravitates to solitude.  So, today is the day!  He is moving out for good!  I have little wooden butterflies, dragonflies, flowers, bird houses and the smiling sunshine to hang up around the border of the room.  There are shelves to hang and the hand painted tea-table and chairs to move in there.  The antique gold trim on the dresser needs to be painted purple.  The legos and foam swords need to BE GONE!  I have two weeks until company comes, and then school starts the next week.  Then our referral comes… then we travel to Colombia.  So today is the day!  Wish me luck!

My Bucket List

Tonight I pulled out a journaling book that I started in 2007… it has in it, among other gatherings of words… my Bucket List.  One hundred things I want to do in my lifetime.  It’s been at least a year since I went through the list… that only goes up to 72 at the moment.  When I accomplish a listed item I highlight it.  There were eight lines highlighted already.  Surprisingly, tonight I highlighted three items from 2009 that were accomplished. 

I read somewhere long ago that if you write down your goals your brain grasps onto them subconsciously and even if you’re not remembering them… you are drawn to accomplish them.  I’m not sure if I believed that until I was married about 14 years and came across my scrapbook from my senior year of high school.  There was a page for 1 year, 5 year and 10 year goals.  What 18-year-old has any clue what they will be doing when they are 28???  Please.  Unbelievably, all the goals that I wrote down had been successfully completed… without me remembering that I jotted them in my scrapbook in 1984. 

Back to tonight and my Bucket List.  In case you live in a cave, a movie came out a few years back called the Bucket List and the premise was about two old guys determined to live out life’s wishes before they kicked the bucket.  I never saw it.  Anywho…. I highlighted three lines on my list tonight.

#10.  Take the kids on a missions trip.  Larisa, Austin and I went to La Mision, Mexico last summer… and it was Austin’s first time seeing an impoverished city.  It changed him, as I knew it would.  My 11-year-old son still is on the list to go, but I highlighted it anyway.  I firmly believe every American kid needs to see poverty, desperate need, and the happiness that is still available in spite of living conditions.  We are so spoiled blessed.

#51. Live close to the church.  For more than 10 years we have driven 30 minutes to church.  When your kids want to get more involved… an hour round-trip is a long way.  When gas is over $3 a gallon, every little trip counts.  Little did I know that we would be changing churches in 2009 and the new one is 8 minutes away.  Glory!

#61.  Publish a book for married women.  Last September my book Learning to Laugh in the Midst of Marriage came out.  Sweet! The book was not even started when I made the list!  See…. subconsciously!

Some of my other entries include traveling to far away spots on God’s green earth that I have studied and long to see.  Others involve helping others, teaching the kids new tricks, taking an emergency truck ramp…. quit laughing… they are so tempting,  learning a few tricks myself and reaching many for God’s kingdom.  I believe 2010 will bring at least three more highlighted lines… maybe more!

Do you have a Bucket List?

Oh My, I’m Old!

After last night’s fiasco at the grocery store, my 16-year-old daughter was flabbergasted at the thought of not having a cell phone… like in the “olden days” when I was a teen. 

She asked incredulously, “What would you have done in this situation when you were 16???” 

Wise Old Mom (me) replied, “I would have used the store’s phone at customer service.”  (no big deal!)

16yo:  “What would you have done if you ran out of gas??????”  (wide eyes at the thought of the stranded situation)

WOM:  “Walked to a gas station and used the pay phone.”

16yo:  “What if there wasn’t a pay phone?”

WOM: “When I was a teen EVERY gas station had a pay phone, as well as all shopping malls and even some street corners.”

16yo:  “What if you didn’t have any money to use the pay phone?”

WOM: “I would call home collect.”

16yo:  “What is collect?”  (Oh, the generation gap was widening in my mind….)

WOM: “It’s when you call the operator and ask for a collect call to be placed.  They ask for your name and then call the number you gave.  When someone answered they would say, “Do you accept a collect call from Linda?”  And when they said yes, we would talk.”

16yo: “Are there still operators?”

WOM: “I think there are.”

Following that unimaginable conversation, I told her about my college dorm that had one pay phone for 36 girls to share.  She couldn’t believe it!  She asked who would answer it, what we did when we had to use it and it was busy, how our parents left messages, how much it cost to call from Canada to California, and was basically in a state of shock that I lived such an archaic life.

I didn’t feel like she was quite ready to handle stories of her dad’s teen years with party lines…. I’m saving that for another day.

End of the School Year

Tomorrow is supposed to be the last day of school for LAKE Academy.  (L = Larisa, A = Austin, K = Keeve and if Zaza’s real name starts with E… it will all be so perfecto!)  However, none of my pupils are finished with their work.  My most hopeful student did not pass his last math test with over 90%…. which is not a passing grade at LAKE Academy.  We have high standards to uphold… and math requires skills that need to be remembered over and over.. and mastered.  He will be doing some review and then retaking the test.  Some of you may balk at my expectations, but the kids know they can live up to them… so I set them HIGH!  If I set them low, they would live up to those as well.  We are not striving for mediocrity in this home school!  No, I’m not pushing my kids beyond their capabilities either.  Calm down.

Pupil #3 got braces put on this week and it has slowed his progress in math and grammar.  I gave him a check-off list five weeks ago with what needed to be accomplished each day.  He has been faithful and diligent until this week.  He may be able to complete his work for the year on Friday… if his mouth is not distracting him.  Wires poking your cheeks can be such a detriment to every day life.  Good grief!  Thank God for wax!

Pupil #1 has had an unbalanced year.  She had way too much of a good thing during the first semester and much making up for the lacking things during second semester.  I also gave her a list of what needed to be accomplished to complete her sophomore year.  Frankly, it will probably take her another month.  But that’s OK.  Her calendar is wide open!  She’ll be winding down the same time as her cousins in Washington who don’t finish school until end of June.  Perfect.

As the homeschool marm, I reflect on my teaching for the past year… right about now…..  Mid-May.  I didn’t do as well as I had hoped with staying on top of high school history.  Spanish for my boys died mid-winter and is still in need of resuscitation.  We may be doing that all summer.  For spelling, both boys advanced more than a year!  They also finished math and are right on course… actually, #2 son is about 2/3 of a year ahead.  Their writing dramatically improved this year thanks to an IEW course.  (Institute for Excellence in Writing)  They know how to take notes from three sources, compile them, make an outline, write a three paragraph paper with opening and closing/clincher sentences… AND know how to add strong verbs, adjectives, adverbs, clauses and sentence openers.  (More than most high school graduates!)  So I feel great about that!  Not so great about high school history.

Out of my nine years of homeschooling my kids, I would only say I did a great job one out of nine years.  That’s not good odds. I’d tell you the exact percentage, but my calculator is missing from my desk.  And I don’t do math in my head.  As soon as I have to carry a number, they all get mixed up.  My great year was last year…. year EIGHT!  But, hey, there’s always next year!  And if we don’t set our goals high… we wouldn’t accomplish hardly anything at all!  Next week I’ll be breathing easy.  Whew!

Crash Helmet Time

Yes, it’s true.  She’s driving.  My baby girl, whom I delivered just a few years ago, is behind the wheel of a motor vehicle.  If you live in the vicinity of Phoenix, Arizona, please consider yourself warned.  She has actually been driving for just over a year and she is a good driver if I do say so myself.  But, as the mom, there’s nothing quite like the feeling of your firstborn offspring driving away from the house for the first time in your life.  Who is going to monitor her speed?  Who is going to do every blinkin’ synchronized shoulder check with her?  I don’t enjoy relinquishing any amount of control… at all.  Is this what it feels like to grow up?  I don’t think I like it.

Her first adventure was to Walmart and I sent her brother along for protection.  He’s 11…. but he’s strong.  As they pulled away from the house, he crossed himself in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Made me laugh. 

She was sent with a list and her own cash.  Great!  Now if I send her to the store I have to have cash all the time instead of my handy debit card.  At the checkout line, she said the little old man cashier was a bit surprised a young lady like herself was price matching her vegetables for the lowest possible price in town.  I’ve trained her well. She was aghast, “Mom!  The Roma tomatoes were $2.19 per pound at Walmart!  The price match was $.50 per pound!”  That’s my girl!

This morning she drove herself to school for the first time.  Yes, we still homeschool.  She is taking a writing course and Spanish at a homeschool co-op.  This frees up more time for me, but I’m not sure how productive I’ll be while I pray without ceasing. 

Sometimes I wish they could stay 4-years-old forever.  So innocent.  So sweet.  So imaginative.  So stinkin’ cute.  But I do have my own personal shopper now.   Hmmmmmm.

My Kids are SO Smart

It always makes my chest puff up a bit and my buttons strain before bursting when my children make a comment about something we studied together YEARS ago.  It means they were actually listening to me!  Glory be!  Some historical information was actually stored in their little heads.  And there is recall! Sweet mercy, it does a homeschooling mother’s heart good. 

It happened this week.  My oldest son who is 13 was asked to prune an unruly bush in the backyard.  He primarily does ball-shaped pruning, but this was a grassy plant with cat tail-like projecting sticks…. not the ball-shaped type of bush.  I was explaining to him that I wanted a diamond-shaped result and used repeated hand motions for clarification.

My 11-year-old son commented from the couch, helping his mother’s dismal explanation, “She means like a Russian onion dome!”  Immediately the older boy got it…. “Oh!  OK!”  And went outside with the electric pruning shears in hand.  We studied Russia in 2007!  My kids are so smart!  St. Basil’s Cathedral… that’s exactly what I meant!  I felt like yelling out the back door, “And could you please make the oleander bush into Khufu’s pyramid?”  But I restrained myself.

I’m the FOOL yet again

 

In case you’re new here at MSJ, my family is world-renown for the rubber band on the kitchen sprayer on April Fool’s Day.  I got blasted again this morning…. you’d think I’d have learned by now.  Hardy har har!  I guess I’m a slow learner.  The boys laughed hysterically… one even rolled on the floor holding his belly.  THEN they asked me to make them a special breakfast of egg muffins!  The nerve.  Being the nice mom, not the revengeful mom, I made the egg muffins.  But when I set them on the kitchen table I mumbled, “I sure hope there’s no plastic pieces in these.”  They quickly dissected the breakfast bounty before biting.

Next, one son uses the bathroom near the kitchen.  He returns to the kitchen table, but both boys are smiling like the Cheshire cat.  A quick perusal of the commode revealed a ketchup packet folded in half under the toilet seat, awaiting a victim’s hiney.  Hardy har har.  I threw it away.  An hour later there was a Taco Bell packet folded in its place.  Hardy har har, again.

At that point, I explained that the fool would be cleaning up any mess that fool cleverly caused.

Then Rick called me from work and asked if I remembered a job he told me about in Michigan.  This was a premeditated April Fools joke in the making commencing over three weeks ago.  He talked of the position, pay, home prices, etc. etc.  I rolled my eyes at the thought of Michigan.  No offense to the fine people of Michigan.  And I know they’re fine…. I’ve met plenty of them down here in Arizona in the winter months.  He proceeded to tell me that they did a phone interview and he got the job.  Again, I said “Hardy har har!  I know it’s April Fool’s Day!”  He was a bit surprised at my sharpness just after nine in the morning.  I told him I was wearing a wet bra from the kitchen sprayer to help me remember what day it was.

I hope your day was dry and taco-sauce-on-your-bum-free!