Thankful for New Friends and Answered Prayers

Last winter was a very lonely one for me. I was semi-new to the area (having lived here for almost a year and a half).  I realize now that I should have spent more time in my first year making new friends, but I guess I was just too busy with getting the new house in order, having more kids, and clay rosaries to take time for friends.  I am thankful for a couple friends I had at the time, but I saw them so rarely, it still felt like I was all alone.   At one point, one of the only friends I had, asked me to have a party for her business. I gave in to her pleas and agreed.  It nearly caused me to go into depression because the more I thought about this party, the more I realized I didn't have anyone to invite. I finally had to call her back crying and apologizing for being such a pathetic loser (as far a friends go!).

I prayed to God for friends since we started moving about five years ago. We lived in California for two and half lonely years until we moved to Colorado and just when I was starting to make friends, we had to move again for my husband's new job.  The job was a blessing, but moving took a toll on me.  When we lived in Maryland, I met some very wonderful moms, but then again, we had to move into a house of our own and leave the budding friendships I had started.  I felt my prayers were never really answered and I started obsessing about how I was all alone.  Of course, I had my family here, and my family in Minnesota to call and the occasion calls for college friends, but this was not enough.  I need community in my area.  The more I thought about how everyone else had friends, but me, the more I started to get down on myself for being "too this", or "too that", or "maybe not enough"...it was making me sad all the time.   So last winter, I finally gave it all up to God.  I told him I would stop wining about friends, and just put my worries in his hands. It was now up to HIM to find me friends and if they never came, I would offer this up too.

During this time, I realized that friends would not drop from the sky and I needed to start inviting people over.  It made me feel like the biggest dork to email someone I had barely known from mom's group or where ever and ask if they wanted to hang out!  It must have been the grace of God that I was given the courage to step way out of my comfort zone, but the more I did it, the easier it became to do it again.

During this time, another woman was also praying for friends. I met her randomly in line at a book signing.  We exchanged numbers and have now have a budding friendship.  While at my house, she shared her prayer for friends was only a few days before we exchanged numbers. I thought, wow, God answered your prayer quicker than mine!

This friend introduced me to another family who had just moved to the area and my husband's nonexistent prayer for friends was answered.  I think God answered a prayer of his deep in his heart because that new friendship has made him so happy.

Now I am blessed with almost more budding friendships last spring and this summer than my schedule allows and my heart is full.  Making time for friends, I have learned, needs to be a priority (not the highest priority, but still a priority).   I've so much enjoyed time spent this summer with all my new friends and have God to thank for his faithfulness.

A few of my friends also have blogs! Here is Heidi's blog, and here is Ginny's, where you will find me today (I'm sure you know her already!) , here is Mary's, and here's Lori's. 

I also have a funny story about how I met Ginny who does the yarn alongs.  While reading various blogs, I kept running into these yarn alongs.  Having no interest in yarn or knitting, I never stopped to check it out.  One day, I clicked on the link, just for curiosity and found a women who I know from church and who was good friends with other women I knew- Ginny!  I emailed her and probably sounded like a stalker, but she reciprocated with such kindness, I knew this one was a keeper :-) I've so enjoyed getting to know her and her sweet family.

Savoring the Last Days of Summer (two weeks ago)

Hanging out on the river with friends before school starts and fall comes. Great memories!

A True Sign of my Boredom...

is letting my kids get soaking wet in the warm summer rain!

Our gutters are working really well...

Liam didn't have a rain coat, so he put on Analee's.  Silly boy.

Jude and Analee watching the rain shower from above

It was worth all the wet clothes and kids for this smile!

Homeschooling (a.k.a. Flying by the Seat of my Pants)

This year, I am homeschooling my five year old for the Kindergarten year.  Last year, we did a very laid back year of preschool, but this year, we're stepping up our game a little more and gearing for a very enriching year.    We will be participating in our Catholic community's home school coop on Wednesdays and then on Mondays, we will be participating in a mentoring program called Aquinas Learning. You can learn more about this amazing new homeschool program here. It follows the classical curriculum model with a Catholic twist.  I am very excited about this new program which will encompass every subject except for reading and math.   I will let you know how this program looks when I get it figured out!!

For math this year, we are going to do RightStart Math. I just got the huge kit in the mail and Liam was so excited about it! He ripped open the package and was amazing at all the hands on activities! He's soooo KINDERGARTEN! lol.

Then for reading, we are going to continue our lessons in 100 Easy Lessons and then probably move on to The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading (see side book) and the many little readers I have laying around like the Bob books.

I finished buying a million reading books from Amazon and such, so I will continue my daily task of reading picture books and stories until my voice gets hoarse.  (We just received The Holy Twins and just loved it!)

Just for fun, Liam is also memorizing the Psalms. It was a spur of the moment decision that we started back in April.  He's so good at memorizing, so we decided to capitalize on this gift and have him memorize something worthwhile  The classical curriculum we're going to start in a couple weeks will give a lot of great knowledge to memorize too (like science, history, Latin, parts of speech, etc. ).  So far, he's memorized up to Psalm 18. He enjoys it and gets a special treat every time he has another one down.  It will probably take him three years to memorize them all, at which time we will likely start over again and delve deeper into the meaning of the psalms.  The whole experience has been very enriching for all of us.

My decision to homeschool is a very personal one that I will not get into in this space.  I'm well aware of all the misunderstanding that surrounds homeschooling, but just know that.  Just know, I'm not going to mess up my kids for life and although this will incur more work on my part, it is going to be worth it in the end (so don't try to talk me out of this!)  :)

Lastly, I am not doing this because I have a degree in elementary education and have years of teaching experience.  That fact does not make me any more qualified and I see it as almost irrelevant to what I am doing now.  To be a successful homeschooling family, all one needs are caring parents willing to learn.  I see myself in the same position, if not further behind as most of my other friends who are homeschooling with other bachelor's degrees under their belts.  In fact, now I wish I had received an English literature or History major- that would be really useful right now! 

Wish me luck!

My "Go To" Lunch and a Story of My Shallowness

Thanks be to God, we are all ok and with power today! The storm wasn't too bad and I am so grateful.

When lunch rolls around, who feels like cooking? Not me. I usually will have a sandwich or leftovers, but if these are not sounding appealing, my all time favorite quick, healthy, easy and cheap lunch is a grilled tortilla with avocado and black beans.  An added bonus of this meal, I recently discovered, is that it's also an easy, healthy, quick and yummy meal for babies- minus the tortilla.

Here's how I roll:

 Drain black beans, heat 'em.

 Grill tortillas like this.  Makes them taste fresh!

Slice up an avo and sprinkle with salt.

Put the avo and black beans in a warmed tortilla and enjoy!  For the baby, I skip the salt on the avo, and mash the warmed black beans with a fork. He loves this meal almost as much as me.

I fell in love with this excellent food combo when I was in Guatemala the first time.  We had this a lot down there. One day we walked up a farmer's hill/mountain to his field. I think his name was Don Filaberto.  Under an avocado tree, his daughters patted out some homemade corn tortillas and grilled them right in front of us.  They took a few ripe avocados from the tree, mashed and salted them.  Then they heated up some black beans they had brought. It was unbelievably good! As we ate this typical Guatemalan food, we heard Don Filaberto's story told through a translator. I know it was a very moving and important story about this poor farmer, but I'm really sorry I don't remember anything but the food!! I'd like to excuse myself from this embarrassing shallowness by saying I was only 17 and it was a long time ago, but really-- it was the homemade tortillas that will take over my brain anytime.  Maybe my dad can fill in the blanks since my mind was lost in homemade tortillas...

What's your 'go to' lunch?

Finding My Style...Again: MOd ReTRo

After turning thirty, waist deep into mommyhood, and being a conservative Christian, it wasn't easy, but I think I've found my style again and some clothes to match. I'd describe my style as mod-retro.

The internet has been great in letting me window shop without strollers and kids running into the streets.  The website I've been frequenting is Modcloth.com.  I'd like to add about 8 inches of fabric to most of the their dresses, but here's some dresses on my wish list that I've found to be cute and modest:
How about you? Where's your favorite site to shop?

Now back to storm watching...

Natural Disasters 1, 2 and Getting Ready for 3

For those of you who don't live on the East Coast, you may be wondering how we are all surviving over here, or you may just be happy to be oblivious and out of the way of a tropical storm. I know I was the latter when I lived further inland!

First of all, let me tell you how terrifying that first earthquake was. I had been in two other very small earthquakes before- one in Guatemala and one in California. I think they were around a 3 on the Richter scale.  They were nothing more than a rumble and it was expected.  This one was a 5.9 and the epicenter was 43 miles from my home, and I didn't know I lived on a fault line!!! 

I was in my basement, on the phone with a friend who was in the park nearby. All of a sudden, I hear a loud noise like thunder and the whole house is shaking- really shaking. Some people say they thought loud truck was passing by.  I don't remember the last time a truck drove by and my house started shaking from the foundation and things started falling off the walls.  Also, when trucks drive by, it's not the sound of ridiculously loud thunder on a clear, blue day.   I think these people must live in a giant jumpy blow up thing or are on some very strong medication. There's no way I could mistake that 5.9 earthquake for a truck.  I was thinking more along the lines of Armageddon.  The world starts shaking and all of a sudden, Jesus comes down from a cloud in the sky to judge the good from the bad.  Seriously, what's more probable: huge earthquake in the middle of Virginia, or the end of the world.   I was thinking: the end of the world.  At any rate, that quake definitely put the fear of God in me!

My friend on the other end of the phone said, "Is that an earthquake? I think that was an earthquake!" I immediately started grabbing kids. I was just getting Analee out of bed from her nap when my husband comes out the bedroom and yells for us all to get under the door frame.  If it hadn't been for his never failing emergency plan, my plan would have just been to hold the kids and scream.  We just barely got under the door frame and it ended.  15 seconds of loud shaking and it was over.  Somethings broke and some things fell, but we were ok.

Then yesterday, we come back from visiting grandparents, and a huge storm hits. It was storm on fast forward, with the volume cranked up.  I completely underestimated it's potency from my window, and did a very silly thing.  Because we had no food in the house and I didn't feel like grocery shopping after a very long day, I asked my husband to pick up sushi.  The storm only lasted about 30 minutes and by the time we had our order figured out, it was over.  I figured it would be safe for him to run out and come back.  He goes and gets stuck in traffic for 45 minutes because of downed trees, no street lights and crazy, crazy amounts of stopped traffic. The sushi place is three miles down the road.  INSANE. I'm just thankful that we didn't lose any power. Most of our neighbors lost power for about three hours.

Now, after stocking up from two different trips to the store, I think I am ready for hurricane Irene. We didn't even have one flashlight in our house, or a bottle of water.  I don't know what to expect, but from what people have said about the last hurricane,  we're probably going to have power outages. I've never been without power for more than a few hours, so I've been going a little crazy trying to plan out what we'd do if there was no power and no water for a few days or even... a week. gulp. I couldn't survive a week.  I definitely would be checking in to Motel 6 if it were a week.  

So now we have flashlights, lanterns, bottled water, water in large basins (in case we need to flush the toilets manually or wash ourselves), baked goods, and a very stocked fridge and freezer with extra ice.  I'm not getting a generator.  Does anyone even know if those things work in an emergency?? My dad, who sells generators, wired a very big, professional one up to his house. It was able to power a couple things in the house when there was no other source of power. A COUPLE THINGS.   like a stove, and some lights. I don't see how these tiny ones that people buy can actually do anything.  I would like some evidence on this subject...

So that's what going on the East Coast for all you who are watching with popcorn in hand from your couches in my old habitats in Minnesota, California and Colorado and Ohio. I know what it's like to be you, but now I'm finding out what it's like to be on the other side of that news story. Keep us in your prayers!