bsmiles and sunny days

If you remember, Tuesday is our Friday. When Dale gets off work today, we will be in weekend mode. I especially love today because we don't have ballet, this is the last week of karate, temporarily, and my house is (relatively) clean! I worked out this morning, the kids are at school, Leila and I did her lesson, now after lunch I'm a free agent. I can do whatever I want because I have worked really hard every day this week. As much as I loathe housework when it's piling up, I really don't mind doing it a little at a time. Of course there are plenty of things that could use some extra attention, but as far as being on top of things, I am king of the mountain! I'll tell you what does trip me up on our "weekends" though. I get in that mode, you know? And I want to just order pizza for dinner. Have Dale grab some hamburgers after running errands tomorrow. Go out for dinner and a movie to celebrate a well-deserved break from the rat-race. It's a snowball ef...

I woke up this morning with this little bundle of joy and as much as I wanted to put my tennis shoes and and get going on my workout, I couldn't keep my eyes open. I sat down on the couch next to her and slipped in and out of consciousness. I am just going to have to start going to bed earlier. I think if I would just go straight to bed when I get up to go, I'd get an extra half hour of sleep. But you know how it is when you're the mom. You get up and say, "I'm going to bed." Then you carry all the dishes into the living room. You move the laundry from the washer to the dryer and turn it on. You pick up the pieces of dog food that were scattered all over the floor earlier in the day. You go into the bathroom to brush your teeth and pick up laundry around the hamper, wipe down the sink and edge of the tub with the towel that was left on the floor. On the way to the bedroom, you pick up socks and toys and pieces of trash off the floor, then deliver them...

Every couple of days, there is some sort of instruction happening in my yard or at the park or in the forts. For a while they had Bible study, then they were teaching hula dancing, as in with hula hoops, also French classes, math this summer... and so on and so on. The latest frenzy is ballet for the girls, and karate, or any sort of fighting, for the boys. Along with the instructional classes, Kennedy has organized a girls' club that meets once a week, or more if they have pressing issues to deal with, and random fund raisers. To share the fruit of their labor, they girls arrange recitals at various intervals and invite anyone that will sit in a lawn chair and watch, as well as clap and cheer at the end. Sometimes there are snacks, sometimes there aren't. This week we had the pleasure of a mixed martial arts display in the yard next to the dancers. It was riveting! Leila was not allowed to participate in the recital because she did not commit to ALL the practices and she r...

I don't always take the photos that I post on this blog. Usually they are my originals, but these two dolphins came off the Internet. I'm not trying to steal anybody's thunder by doing this; I am just aware that it's more fun to read when you have an image to connect to the experience. So celebrate with me and know that I'd MUCH rather be looking at an armadillo dead on the side of the road than a frolicking dolphin in the crystal blue ocean, because it would mean that I'm home. In other news, there is a position opening up this winter that we are very, VERY interested in. Currently there are a few roadblocks that could make it difficult and even impossible to get the transfer. If you know Jesus, we need your prayers. Honestly, in the deepest recesses of our hearts we only want what God wants for us. With that said, we believe He has put that desire in our hearts as well as plans for the ranch, etc. So ask Him on our behalf. Just add it to the end of your praye...

Yesterday we took a trip up the coast to go to Avila Barn and to the fish markets on the pier. As we were pulling into the parking lot, Micah said, "Hey what's that! It looks like a shark or a whale or something!" We all balked at him knowing that sometimes the sea lions can look like fish in the way they slip in and out of the water. You can imagine our exuberance when we saw this right out in the middle of the fishing boats off the pier! Apparently there's some sort of migration this time of year and they are hanging out at Avila Beach for a while. We backtracked a little down to the beach where we spotted a school of six all diving in and out of the water together. It was a breath-taking sight! God continues to deliver these sweet, sweet blessings to us out here on the other side of the world.

I've never had a solid daytime routine. Every morning/evening is different from the next and does not resemble the day before. We eat three meals a day, but they sit in about a two-hour window. The chores get done (almost) every week, but not on the same days, and not usually by the same person. I get up early with Deisha, but usually I sleep on the couch for an hour while she stares at the magic box in the living room sipping her milky. Bedtime may be midnight, it may be 11:30, it may be 1:30am. My life is a wild card; it's something that has always troubled me. I explain it away by the number of times we've moved, the constant shifting of my husband's work schedule, and the fact that we home school. What I really would love is some regularity, a little predictability, some kind of routine in my universe. (It's funny how my friends that live routine lives crave a little chaos in their worlds...) There have been a couple of little things in my day that have ...

I love it when they entertain themselves with fort building. Unfortunately for me there's no place to sit when the forts are up which means I'm usually sitting here in this chair while all kinds of insanity swirls around the next room. As long as they are busy and working together instead of fighting, I encourage them. When the fighting starts about who got the best cushion, I start to lose my mind. I mean really, what could "the good cushion" be? Deisha also loves this game because it means someone is running around inside with her. Lol is a creative builder. If the need ever arises to live in a squatter's village, she'll be the first one I call. She uses everything she can find in her house. I'm wondering if my spatula disappeared into one of these creations. It's been gone for some time now. Micah has the mind of an engineer. He is constantly asking me how things work. The other day he asked me who invented electricity and how it works. I hope I w...

I have a constant list running in my head. It started when I was planning my wedding and hasn't stopped running since. One of thing recurring things on the list is "read to the kids". It stays because it rarely makes the cut in the day-to-day. I love to read to my kids. I especially love to read to them when they are attentive and begging for more. Usually that only happens when they are all tucked into bed but not quite ready to sleep. But this day, we somehow found ourselves with a quiet afternoon in a relatively clean living room. It started with Leila, and then Trebo joined the fun, only now he was taking turns doing the reading. Then Snow White climbed up on my lap and listened. These are the moments I thank God that I'm alive. It was pure bliss for me and a treasured moment of peace for these three, my little ones.

This morning I woke up to screaming. Not once, not twice, but three times I rolled out of bed to check the baby, remind her to sleep, and shut doors in an attempt to let everyone else get some rest. By the third time, Tre was yelling alongside the screaming baby because she kept waking him up. Poor dude sleeps right next to her crib and there's just nothing we can do about it. Micah doesn't wake up, Dale has to rest in order to be sharp for work, and frankly, there's just no room in the girls' room for another bed. I cried a little today. For a year I've been telling myself that by this time it would be over with, but it's not over. There's no end in sight. Oh sure, she sleeps through the night sometimes. Even several nights in a row she'll zonk from 7:30pm-6:30am, but I never know when I go to bed whether she is going to wake us all up with that blood-curdling scream. It's draining. On a happier note, Dale and I are reading a fantastic book...

Every time I use baking soda to clean something, I make a mental note to post this little miracle of science on my blog. Have you ever used baking soda as a household cleaner? Today I took my dish drainer apart. It's white. It's ten years old. We live in California. The mineral deposits here are orange. OK? Orange. So every couple of weeks, the resting tray on my dish drainer has an orange hue. It sounds like it could be nice, but it's not nice. It's not nice at all! It's nasty. I took it apart to clean it, right, and there was a box of baking soda just like the one you're looking at right now sitting on the window ledge in front of me. I dumped a bunch of this powerful powder all over the tray and scrubbed it with a green scratch pad. Within a few minutes every stain was gone. It works to clean all kinds of things. I use it to clean grease spots off my cookie sheets, burn spots off my pots, baked-on spills on my stove top, grass stains off white leather tenni...

I have this great sister-in-law. You may remember meeting April earlier this summer. What you don't know about her is that she is one of the most selfless people I have ever met. There's nothing she wouldn't do for us. What's more, my kids call her, oh... if I had to guess I'd say three times a week, and talk to her for, oh... hours I'm sure. We have lots of videos that were made while I was at the grocery store, wherein she is present with the kids during the fliming of said videos via speakerphone. That always cracks me up. She's never too busy no matter what the antics are. I adore that about her; she's one of a kind. With this gal, what you see is what you get. She doesn't put on for anyone and you never have to wonder what she's thinking. She's the real deal and I adore her. I'm sorry I didn't have a chance to celebrate with you on your real birthday, but the sentiment is the same. We love you so much and are really thankful ...

A couple of things... Today I made this delicious salad and I want you to try it. -slice a cucumber and a red onion -add a tablespoon of sugar, a tablespoon of cider vinegar, and a dash of salt I made it right before we ate it, and it was fantastic. I'm sure it would be even better after about an hour in the fridge; I want to try it that way next time. Leila even liked it, she was sneaking cucumbers off my plate and eating them! And the other thing. This week I cleaned out the girls' room. I took a push broom and swept piles out from under the beds, moved all the furniture, pulled everything out of the closets, and made a mountain of stuff outside the door. The hallway was knee-high with stuff from the back bathroom all the way to my bedroom door. Crrr - AAAAAA - XZZZyyyy ! Yesterday I finally finished sorting the stuff, throwing away garbage, and dropped my burdens at Goodwill. I can't tell you what kind of relief I feel knowing that it's done. We don't hav...

In my day, I don't spend a lot of time reading. I read my Bible in the beginning, I read my blog after I write it, I read the Drudge Report, and occasionally I read other people's blogs after I publish mine. Outside of my Bible study, there isn't a lot of intellectual stimulation in my day. This is frustrating for me because my thoughts consist of about 85% kid stuff, 10% stuff I see of TV and about 5% original thought promoted by intellect. I understand that my life is pretty ensconced in my circumstances being that I am a stay-at-home mom. However, I have a responsibility to trigger intellect in my children's thoughts. If I am not triggering my own, I find myself laughing at SpongeBob antics. The other day Dale asked me if I ever read Voddie Baucham's blog, which I haven't for a very long time. Today I got on his website and uncovered a goldmine. There is so much here that I will keep myself busy for a very, very long time reading his thoughts and reading fro...

I was in the grocery store a couple of days ago buying Greek yogurt, Hoisin sauce, chives, basil, and Kalamata olives. The woman at the cash register asked me what I was making with all these ingredients. Caught off guard, I fumbled around for a second and then explained my new kick. I honestly didn't know what I was making until I got to the recipe and then I was sure to have the ingredients. What is really great about Cooking Light is that if you are cooking on a regular basis, from a menu that doesn't consist of a lot of convenience foods, you will have a good majority of the ingredients that the recipes call for. I have had to stock some things, like the ones I mentioned, but I figure if I keep cooking like this, I'll have everything I need on hand. One mistake I have made in the past is trying to substitute ingredients in order to save a trip to the grocery store. That has blown up in my face on more than one occasion. This time I decided I would pay for whatever I nee...

Marriage is a funny thing. I have always been an optimist, not just your average run-of-the-mill optimist, but a polar optimist. As in, if pessimism is the south pole I'm on the flag pole of the north pole right at the top. You would think life and it's hard-knock blessings would force me to be cynical and thus lower my expectations, but I'm a die-hard. Don't get me wrong, I can be very cynical, but if you could look past the superficial feelings, you'd find the shining light of optimism brewing underneath. This made our first year of marriage sort of a battle zone; Dale with his *hard dose of reality* hat and me fighting tooth and nail to hang on to my own belief that our marriage could be what I thought our marriage should look like was an explosive combination. Mad-dog tenacity doesn't give up easily, either. I've had to let go of a lot of my expectations over the years, but learning that lesson was one of the saving graces of my life. With that ...

While all of us are unique, our personalities, our styles of running a household and raising kids, our neurosis, there are some universal issues that plague us all. One of those things is mealtime. In the hours I've spent whining about this issue, I've discovered that we are all in the same boat. I love to cook, I really do! The problem is that I the food that I make to be the best of whatever my eaters have eaten. This poses a problem after I cycle through my short list of "big hits". That's when I revert to some old standards that they will eat, and are good for them, but no one really enjoys. I really dread that part of the cycle and it discourages meal planning. I've been getting Cooking Light Magazine for months now and I always look through them for ideas, but until this week have never made anything from them. After a few sobering complaints about the menu, I sat down, ripped out enough recipes for a week, made a grocery list and stocked the fridge and...

Jasmine and Tre are in a combo class together at school. For the first day they were supposed to bring a picture of themselves so that they could do a self-portrait. Rather than scroll through the scads of photos on the computer, we just snapped a couple right there in the yard. The thing about these two is that they are so drastically different from each other, but in some ways they are very alike. If I had to give my children degrees of difficulty as far as behaviors go, I say Tre ranks in the top and Jas ranks in the bottom. They are polar opposites. But if they are each others' only option for a play date, you can bet they will have a grand ol' time together. They are just like that. Both of them have incredible personalities and super dramatic temperaments. They're mine and I love them just the way they are. Hey, Happy Labor Day everyone!!! Celebrate your labor with a hot dog and a smile!

I have some work I should be doing right now, but I don't really want to get up and do them. I'm stalling. When I came across these pictures, I thought it necessary to post them because I have these kids that rob you of all capability to reason. Thought you could use a dose of LollylollylollyPOP! She's funny, and wild, and manic, and has crazy hair, and despises washing her face. She only wears dresses if you want her to wear pants. She can light up a room in a minute. She's four and she's mine. When God gave us Deisha, I was shocked. I was in shock for most of my pregnancy as well as a good bit of her first year. You can imagine my surprise when I snapped out of it and realized I had a 15-month-old. She is busy all the time. If there is even a minuscule elevation anywhere in her sights, she will attempt to climb it. She gets up at the crack of dawn. It used to be like a bad dream; she woke up and screamed a blood-curdling scream to announce the arrival of the sun...

Political correctness in America plunges to a new low. http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/article6822127.ece

In case you haven't heard, we decided to join a charter school that is just opening this year for the first time. A charter school is basically a school that is funded by the state and caters to children's needs in ways that a public school doesn't. This charter is a hybrid program that incorporates classroom learning using the classical method with home schooling. They attend school two days a week and study at home three days a week. It's the perfect compromise. I couldn't have written the program to more perfectly suit my own individual needs. To the utmost delight of these children, the official school year has begun. They have backpacks, pencil boxes, lunch boxes and a truckload of enthusiasm! I thought it would be a scramble to get out the door on time, but everyone was awake by seven. Everyone was dressed and packed up to go out the door by seven-thirty. We didn't have to leave for another hour. It was a long and torturous wait. Deisha shared in ...

Hey, Pretty Lady, it's your birthday! Three cheers for one fantastic gal! Hip Hip Hooray! Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray! I hope you had a fantastic day. We love and miss you so, so much. May all your birthday wishes come true! xoxoxo

My little bitty Lolly is four. It's the strangest thing. This year she not only recognized the significance of her birthday, she demanded that each of us tell her happy birthday at regular intervals throughout the day, which we did gladly because we love birthdays just about as much as we love anything. She didn't expect much for her birthday because it's just not about all the bells and whistles, it's about being the center of attention for one day of the year. So we invited every member of our household to the party. Of course, there were presents which she opened with in a whirlwind. **Thank you to all of our loving family members that sent boxes full of wonderful treasures for Leila and the rest of us. I'm getting soft in my thirties; I let her open the boxes the minute they came through the door. If you have an aversion to that, just write it on the box, and I will be happy to oblige. xoxo We baked a cake and decorated it together. Most of the members of my fam...