This is my Christmas present from Shane. Yes, I finally got an mp3 player. I know all of you, except Luke, have one and you've had one for years but mine is only a few days old. I didn't think I'd use one enough to justify the purchase until I used my friend Shelly's while hanging out in the hospital. I used hers a few times at home before I reluctantly gave it back. I didn't realize you could still hear outside sounds while rocking out at the sink, but, lo and behold, when my children argue and fight I still get to be referee!

Although I've used it a lot the last week, mp3 moms have to be careful. Here's what I'm thinking, feel free to add to it:

It can't consume us. Listening to Nancy Leigh DeMoss teachings about being godly mothers does not trump our children's needs. Being available to our kids takes priority. Just know you're going to have to use the pause button frequently.

Keep it down. I can't lecture my children on the dangers of listening too loud if they can hear Chris Tomlin pulsing in my ears.

Keep it legal. A woman of integrity isn't going to pirate her music. Even if most of her church family does. It's still illegal because it's umm, like stealing!

Keep it diverse. I've enjoyed listening to everything from Tin Man Jones, MercyMe, Lifehouse, and Nicole C Mullen to Canon in D. I also downloaded a lot of (free!) podcasts from Oneplace.com. I've been listening to podcasts about homemaking, Advent, exercise, parenting teens, along with a few sermons. It's a simple way to get some good info in while doing housework, nursing the baby, or walking.

Keep it clean. This player came with some factory placed songs. Yuck. One was especially explicit. Given that kids get these players, I cringe. I let Bethany use my player before I heard the song. Thankfully, she's too young to get the lyrics, but it could have easily been her older sisters listening.

Keep it cool. I didn't like the ear buds that came with my Sony (they didn't fit) so while shopping for my super discounted Christmas cards for 2009, I found these red Skullcandy Ink'd beauties for a steal.

Okay, so the last one isn't too critical ;) What would you add or disagree with? Have you found a good source for (legal) downloads? How about kid friendly downloads for their mp3 players?

Crafty Wendy

Ashlyn said I've been "crafty" lately...I think I get this way before a baby comes. My first on-my-own sewing attempt was right before she was born. I wrestled with a Noah's Ark wall hanging that I sandwiched & sewed together incorrectly several times before getting all the layers in the right order. I'm not much better at sewing now, but I can sew a straight seam-after I've ripped it out several times!

I made this sling and bag out of some clearance fabric ($1.25 a yard) I found online. In all the thrifty excitement, I didn't think about the print being so out of season. I worked on the bag and the sling the week my Grandma was in the hospital. It served to burn off some nervous energy. I put them away for the spring, so I had to have something for this season, right?

I went online again and found the pink & brown print (not as cheap, unfortunately) to go with the brown I already had. I sewed this bag & sling up Wednesday & last night. I messed up the handle and had to go back and fix it, then my machine started acting up so it's not as nice as I'd like it, but it's DONE (hint, hint, Audrey, you can come anytime now, everything is ready!).

We had another craft bite the dust this week. We were going to make birdfeeders out of pinecones, peanut butter & bird seed. Well, we got all the supplies out and Ashlyn rather excitedly told me the birdseed was moving! It was full of weevils! I hadn't thought of weevils since my Grandma served us cereal full of them when we were kids (buying in bulk for the occasional grandkid meals has it's low points, I suppose).

Signing out,

Seam Ripper

Karate talk

Edit: I had trouble with the YouTube videos, so I'm putting them on Photobucket. There's only one so far, but I'll put the others back up as I have time :)

I uploaded a couple videos of Ash (and one with my brother, Stanton). You can see them above. The one with the fewest people is the belt test. Ash is now an orange belt. After her test, Stanton tested (it was pretty funny, by the way-he didn't know what to say when he was asked God's name). I was using our new camera and thought I turned it off between their tests, but didn't--sorry! I will promptly put "learn to edit video" on my long list of things to learn to do!



Our trip to Tulsa was interesting. Jaybird didn't like the ride home too much and we had to take lots of breaks to get her out of her carseat. Our trip there was the longest trip in the history of ever, though. Shane's glasses broke along the way, we'd forgotten to get mouthguards and someone else needed some, ahem, special guy equipment...so we had a layover at--you guessed it--Wal-Mart!



Our hotel room was the dirtiest hotel I've ever stayed it. I took a picture to prove it. Now, I have grime at home, but it's MY grime (or more likely, my kids' grime).




It was all worth it though to see our oldest shine. First, she was thrilled to compete. In front of people. Lots of them. That alone would have sent me home. She had a great time and almost placed in kata. It was a great learning experience for all of us. Besides, it's always a blessing to be with the fun people in Ash's karate class. The instructors are jewels. If you need some encouragement, just hang out in that class for a few minutes!

Oh, and the most important thing-after a karate demonstration that reenacted Christ's last hours, twelve people trusted Jesus for salvation!

Here's some more pics:

Ash and one of her best karate buddies.



Ash's karate hero, Sensei Holzbauer, the leader of ABKA...this guy runs a mile for every year he's been alive on his birthday. He's a great man, a man of faith and a super encourager for the kids (and adults, too I'm sure).

One thing leads to another

Okay, I've been kinda rethinking my kitchen. I had planned an Americana look in our future house and had bought a few things that would fit...but now my interest in tea stained red, white, and blue is waning. Peer pressure is at the root, but that's a different blog post.

I've been searching for the perfect item to decorate my kitchen around. I want something unique-no roosters, fruit, or wicker baskets in my kitchen. I want to focus on a somewhat common household item that hasn't been done in a kitchen before. Something fun and whimsical. Something that people will see and say, "Ah ha, that's clever, I would have never thought of that before!" My problem is that I'm not creative that way. I can duplicate decor I've seen, but I'm not creative enough to come up with it on my own.

With my elusive item always in the back of my mind, I go about my daily business. Last weekend, while going through some trash & treasures in my grandmother's storage house (yes an entire house devoted to storage!), I ran across several old jars. They weren't antiques or anything, just old household jars that are in fun shapes. One is little and squatty, another held intant coffee, and others just had an old look to them. My Aunt gave me permission to take them and now they are cleaned and ready for display in my kitchen.

However, clear glass bottles are a little boring. I need something to fill them with to make them fun. I decided marbles would be a lot of fun. I started researching marbles and Wow! are there some cool ones out there. I'd love to put some in this post, but you know I still haven't picked up a new mouse--one with a working right click button--so you'll just have to follow the links. It's worth a short visit to the sites just to see the creativity of some marble artists. Fun stuff!

I can't pick out a favorite from this site, they are all so neat! And go check these out (they're more expensive, but check out the itsy bitsy tiny ones. I want me a few dozen of those!

On a side note, Ash got a marble set from the Awana store and loves playing marbles. She is the one who educated me on some of the lingo and told me cats eye marbles are the most common. She's such a marble snob she doesn't even consider them "real" marbles, lol. I didn't know she'd taught Hope to play marbles. They have a friend coming over tomorrow and there's a game planned. I think I might learn to play!

Go do some memory making this weekend!

Memory Making

I often try to look at my children's days through the looking glass of time. What will they remember as adults when they look back to their childhood? I hope it's not just "Wow, Mom, was always so stressed and edgy!". Although they won't remember their parants as perfect, that's for sure, I do hope they remember we invested time in making memories with them.

We took advantage of the 60 degree December weather and spent the afternoon geocaching. We found the 3 caches we were hunting and spent some extra time at a little lake. We just skipped rocks and enjoyed the sunshine, but it was nice. I felt so good inside, I just prayed, "God I want to feel this good more often."

I'm sleeping with Yellow Belts in the next room!

I'm so glad they're my daughters!

Ash & Hope worked hard to pass an intense belt test Saturday. Their instructors are quite wise and make the students wait until the next class session to hear if they've moved up in rank. This gives the students a few days to reflect on their performance and it gives the instructors time to mull over the students' abilities.

Everyone who tested passed this time around and we are very proud of the girls. Ash is a natural intellectual and studies all the notes on what is required to move up in rank. Hope is a natural socialite and isn't quite as focused as her older sister, so we were a little concerned with her. We've seen a huge improvement since she started, but not knowing what all the instuctors are looking for, it was harder to predict with certainty that they'd both pass.

In celebration, we had Lemon Meringue Pie (it's Yellow, like their new belt rank) and asparagus (because Ash loves it) with our dinner. Shane watched the test, but had to work tonight, however, he was elated when he heard the news!

Enough parental gushing, here are some pictures of the testing (My brother is in blue):

Geocaching

Good morning Muggle*!

In an email a friend asked me what geocaching is. I'd been thinking about blogging about it, so here's the scoop!

Geocaching is treasuring hunting using GPS coordinates (waypoints) posted on a central website to lead you to a "cache" of goodies (or sometimes just a tightly rolled up paper inside a tiny container).

You drive or walk by geocaches many times throughout your day, I'd bet. If you live in our town, you walk by two every time you go to the park. There's one on the service road leaving Wal-Mart, one past Brookshires, and many more throughout the countryside.

A geocache is a small containter-like a film canister, a mason jar, or maybe a big pickle jar that usually contains cheap trinkets and a pen/paper log. Sometimes it contains a special coin or "travel bug" that is tracked as it goes along from cache to cache. Our next one will contain Pirates of the Carribean chapstick, scented bubbles, glo-sticks, mini flashlight, party poppers, mini picture frames, and so on.

A geocacher finds the info on each cache on geocaching.com, a free site where all things geocaching are discussed, tracked, logged, and advertised. Once the geocacher decides which cache(s) he or she is going after, they enter the waypoints into their GPS and head out with the family to find some treasure! When the treasure is found, the log is dated & signed by you and you can exchange a trinket in their cache with one you brought along. Upon returning home, the cacher logs the find on the cache owner's online log.


Its harder than it looks! There's a local one we've visited twice with no luck. It's probably that we need more practice using the GPS (although I noticed my friend Brandi logged it as a DNF--Did Not Find--too). There's a learning curve for sure and the first few treks result in a list of things not to forget next time: flashlight, bug spray, toilet paper, gloves, a pen...I'm sure we aren't done building our list, lol.

Even though we aren't so good at it yet, we're getting out of the house getting some exercise, and making good memories together. It's pretty cheap, too-after buying the GPS and gas!

There are more aspects to the game-like puzzle caches, themed caches, benchmarking (a similar game not invovling caches) and more. Hop over to geocaching.com to learn all about it and to see how many caches are in your area!

PS-I just saw last night that there's a forum page on the site that helps hook up people wanting to buy a GPS with people upgrading and selling their old GPS.

*A Muggle is a non geocacher-especically one who might be in the area while you're walking around the same tree for the 5th time mumbling to yourself while fixated on a small gadget in your hand.

Annual Family Camping Trip

Okay, so reading the post below, you might think we're cruel and just make our kids sit in the dark on the couch eating raisins while cute goblins ring the door bell. We don't. I promise.

In order to avoid Halloween and to make good memories, we go camping the day our town trick or treats. It simply removes us from the day-out of sight, out of mind kind of thing. Any bad attitudes are quickly left behind when we're outside experiencing God's beauty at a State Park.

We have had attitudes, too. Believe me. A couple of years ago, when we started this traditon, we were at Mineral Wells State Park and our oldest protested most of the day. We cheerfully restated our case and moved on. In a few days, I overheard her telling someone else what a good time we had and that she doesn't want to celebrate Halloween with her kids (someday) either.

Last year was quite an experience! I wish Halloween fell earlier in the month. In Texas, October days are usually stunningly beautiful but the nights get chilly by late October. I was overly optimistic about our ability to handle the cold--with a three month old! It was cold in that tent. We froze. I started to run a fever and froze even more. The only fever meds I had were for the kids. A half a bottle of Children's Tylenol later, my fever broke and I was burning up. Ever hear the phrase "If momma's cold the kids put on a sweater"? Well, when I was frozen, I cuddled little Jay close and piled the covers on us. When I was hot, I was sure she was hot, so I practically uncovered us, leaving her pretty bare! I promised I'd never tent camp again!

This year, we're day camping ;)

A Day of Karate

We had a fun day at our first karate tournament! This was totally new to me, but I compare it to a track meet. People, gear, Powerade, and cameras were everywhere. Sometimes, there was a big event taking up the floor of the gym, and other times there were six "rings" full of different activities out on the floor.

My "little" brother and I took all my girls, plus a friend of theirs about 2 hours away to Oklahoma. I was anxious, of course, about J-she has decided to explore the world and is now afraid of very little! I had to constantly worry about her toddling into the ring, where she could at the least distract someone competing and at the most be seriously hurt or worse. Here she is with a new friend-she kept trying to share her sippy cup and soggy graham crackers with this kind man (we've never met him; he wasn't with our group!






The girls both competed in sparring (fighting) and kata (kind of like a serious dance using karate moves). Neither placed, but that's not a surprise given their limited experience. They both kept a great attitude and showed much bravery. Hope fought against a boy (!) 6" taller than her! Ash fought a boy, too, but he was smaller-but feisty for sure!



I want to give kudos to the girls' karate team-the leaders did an excellent job taking care of all the kids' needs, even when it went against the wishes of the kids. The adults, especially Doc H, who is wonderful with the tiniest karate choppers, was constantly giving me tips or all of us encouragement. Everyone-both kids and adults alike were so helpful and thoughtful to me-from before we left the church parking lot through dinner. I'm very impressed!

Oh, and one of the leaders, a PS teacher applauded me for educating the girls well at home. She said she'd wished she'd been able to homeschool one of her girls and was happy about homeschoolers who take it seriously. That's always nice to hear!