Not sure I want to post this...

Since getting married I have gained 37 pounds. 

Ugh.  Really?  37 pounds?

I have also gained a double chin.  Or maybe three?  But, who's counting?

I also have this fat roll around my middle that makes me gag when I look at myself in a mirror. 

My thighs are starting to touch. 

In general, I'm getting fatter and older each year. 

But, you know what else? I've gained 5 wonderful children who don't see my fatty chin and love to press on my wiggly belly.  I've gained friends who may or may not notice, but still think that I'm worth being around no matter how much weight I've gained.

Tomorrow I'm going to start running again.  I look forward to it.  Not because I have illusions of becoming a supermodel... though I wouldn't complain, mind you ... but because I feel better when I do.  My body feels better and my mind is clearer.  I'm not as easily depressed on days that I run.

Last year I made it my goal to run a 5k and I successfully accomplished that goal. 

This year I want to run a 10k.  And last year blogging about wanting to run a 5k, insured that I wouldn't give up.  So now you're my accountability partners.  So this year a 10k, next year a half marathon and who knows what after that!

I want him to move it, move it... a little quicker.

Yesterday I received the following text from a friend:

"R u guys still thinking of adopting?  I know a family group u could adopt as long as they weren't split up."

I read it and immediately had a physical reaction.  My heart pounded a little faster and I gasped.  I had to remind myself that I was driving and I needed to get my emotions under control. 

Every time I hear of an opportunity to adopt I want to stand up and scream, "Pick me! Pick me!!!!!"

Yesterday, I feared that my heart might get too quickly attached (like always) and that if it didn't happen I would be devastated.  So I took a deep breath and silently prayed that God would protect my heart no matter the outcome and then asked Him, "Is this really it?"

A stillness filled my heart and soul.  God is protects me from my own emotions and is always good to me.

Turns out that my friend was offering her own children up for adoption!  She of course wasn't (entirely) serious and they had "straightened up" before I got the chance to take her up on the offer.

I'm not sure if God will ever see fit to let us adopt, but I do know is that He has not forgotten me.  He knows my heart and is faithful to care for it. 

But, I sure wouldn't mind if He would move a little quicker! :)

Thanks for the advice Nancy!

Today we didn't go on the field trip planned by our home school group.

I said no... just like Nancy Reagan taught me to.

My turkeys really wanted to go, Ben thought it would be a good idea to go, a few of the other moms told me to go (while a few said they understood why I wasn't going... and one said she was jealous) and a few other random people who I confided in told me to go...

I still said no.

It's March and March Madness is alive and well in our home.  No, not the NCAA basketball tournament, but the chaos that is our home in March.

And to be honest that chaos that is our home in January, February, April, May, September, October, November and December.  In short any month that is not summer break!

Around mid-February I start to feel the itch.  The winter blues mixed with school blues and topped off with we have something planned for every day of the week except two and those two days get filled up relatively quickly.

Around this point in the school year I feel overwhelmed and just plain weepy.  I don't want to do school anymore.  I don't want to be stuck inside anymore.  I'm tired of my winter clothes and I start giving up... seriously.

You don't believe me?  You should have seen me at Awana last night when I picked up kids in too big yoga pants, Ben's insulated flannel shirt and my new polka dotted rubber boots.  While the boots are fabulous the rest of me looked like crud.  I'm shameless and couldn't care less.

My kids are tired of school.  They too are overwhelmed and weepy.

I dream of having a Spring Break, but have to balance that with my desire to just get this over with already.  Do we take a week off in the midst of 30 degree weather for the sake of our sanity?  Or do we wait until April when we may see 70 degree days and we're all itching to get outside??  Maybe when it's 70 degrees out I can make up a reason why we're outside... maybe Vic Collins will show us his bee hives and then we can have a picnic and eat honey and call it a field trip?  Or we will skip Vic and just go bee hunting on our own at City Park! ;)

So perhaps today's field trip would have broken up the chaos a bit.  But, we would still have our curriculum waiting at home.  And it would have weighed heavily on me the whole time we toured The Herbert Hoover Museum.  So I stuck to my schedule and plugged away at English, math, phonics, reading, catechism, and so forth.  I even started a bit with Gabe and the three older kids helped out a bit.  And we continued our research on honey bees which has given us great joy.  God is incredibly wise in His creation.

Determined not to waste the day I did 5 loads of laundry and 2 loads of dishes.  I have supper started for tonight and tomorrow night. I worked on budgeting our tax return.  I did some work for Turkey Bottom Haven.  And I spent 30 minutes solid talking to my husband when he walked in the door... because I was here when he got here.  I didn't have to rush out of bed this morning so I was able to read my Bible and have an awesome prayer time, something that my heart needed.

I'm content with saying no today.  I wish that I would be wise in saying it more often.

Unicorns and Rainbows vs. Orange Jumpsuits and Licenses Plates

Confession time.

I hate home schooling.  Let's just be real clear what I mean by "I hate home schooling."

What I'm trying to say is, I HATE HOME SCHOOLING!!"

I'm pretty sure that I'm also not allowed to admit that.  It's against the code of home schooling moms to say it aloud.  Which is why I typed it!  Ya, loophole!

Before I go any further with this I will say that while I hate home schooling there is no better option for my children.  I will not send them to the public school and if I listed all of my reasons for why I wouldn't you'd stop reading this before I got to my "I hate home schooling" post.  Also with every breath in me I will fight for the rights of parents to make the choice of how their children are educated.

Now, why do I hate home schooling?

First of all it's hard.  I have 3 turkeys in school now and it kind of stinks.  Without a doubt if someone is struggling with understanding a concept the other 2 will need help.  I cannot help everyone at once and it physically drains me.  Besides that I don't always have the answer.  For instance, is the letter r the only letter that modifies a vowel?  Is that a dumb question? Can we just skip that question in their book and move on to something I can answer?  And even though I am keeper of the answer book, it may tell me what the answer to the question is... but not why that's the answer to the question or how I should explain how or what or when or why or who modifies the stupid vowel.  And when this happens I will use the trusty Internet to look up the answer.  While I'm looking up the answer someone else will have a question that I can answer and I will put the modifying vowel question on hold.  I will get up to answer the second question and while I'm walking towards child #2 I will notice that I haven't thawed anything for dinner.  So I'll go into the basement to get something out of the deep freeze and remember that I have 4 projects needing to be painted and start on it.  In the meantime no one is doing school because mom is AWOL and they have no idea how to answer the question that they're on.

So this naturally brings me to my next point... I am horrible at home schooling.  I am obviously easily distracted and not very bright myself.  But on top of that I'm lazy.  Home schooling constantly exposes my bend towards laziness.  I don't want to do art projects or science projects.  These take time to plan and almost always make big messes.  I hate cleaning up after them and it's much easier just to skip them.  I don't need  another mess we have enough of them as it is!  Plus I hate field trips.  Field trips are always during the day when Ben is at work and for some mystic reason always on days when the weather stinks.  So that means I have to load up all five kids by myself and then spend the entire field trip reminding Gabe and Jack not to touch anything, to stop running, to remember their inside voices, to stop wrestling... just thinking about it puts me on edge.

Next, home schooling is not living up to my expectations.  I always imagined that home schooling would be a Utopian experience where the kids and I would read great works of literature which would naturally lead to us creating art masterpieces and writing works of music that would be enjoyed for generations to come.  We would invent things and learn to live off the land all while memorizing the entire Bible.  But, not only would we memorize the entire Bible we would live it out and people would have to veil their faces as we walked by because the Holy Spirit would be radiating out of the ends of our hair.  Not only would we be incredibly spiritual we would have fun.  The kids would become fluent in Latin, Hebrew, Greek and Laughter.  Our neighbors would have to call the cops because the laughter and jolly joy making would drive them nuts and all the children of the neighborhood would be knocking on the door begging for me to home school them.

None of this has happened yet.  I never expected that these reasonable expectations would be interrupted by laundry, dishes, dusting, vacuuming and life.  And never did I count on the fact that if I only draw stick figures and am tone deaf that this would somehow hinder my ability to teach my children these skills.  I never counted on all the crying that would occur when someone just doesn't understand that you have to add the ones column before you add the tens column.  I never knew how hard it would be to teach a child to read when I pronounce short "e" and short "i" the same way and they pronounce the letter "f" and the letter "v" the same way.  Not to mention when older siblings try to help them read and the older sibling pronounces the letter "f" and the blend "th" the same way!!  We have not memorized the entire Bible yet.  Most days I just wish it was easier to teach the books of the Old Testament... you try teaching a kid who can't pronounce any letter blends or short vowel sounds to say words like Ecclesiastes, Haggai, and Habakkuk!  Ahhhhhhh!!!!

Finally the amount of pressure that I feel on a daily basis is tremendous.  If I sent them to the public school and they had a horrible 2nd grade teacher there would be hope that in the third grade they would get a wonderful teacher that would inspire them to become a lifetime learner.  This third grade teacher might also be able to make up for lost time in the second grade and all would be rainbows and unicorns.  Instead  my kids are stuck with me.  If I don't inspire them to learn they don't get another chance for a better teacher until college ... assuming that they make it that far.  Now they don't have the option of being on the rainbow and unicorn trail instead they are on the trail towards orange jumpsuits and the license plate making business.

The good news is that I only have 15 years left of this and most importantly God is bigger than all my failures. He's going to have a lot of work ahead of Him!