If You Give a Mom a Few Minutes

If you give a mom a few minutes...

If you give mom a few minutes of peace and quiet, she will probably get a cup of coffee.
While she is drinking her coffee, she will probably pick up her laptop and check her email.
She will be looking through her email until she reads one reminding her that she needs a dinner plan.
She will then start doing recipe searches based on the few ingredients one generally has after refusing to go grocery shopping for several weeks.
While searching for recipes, she will realize all the meat in the house is frozen, thereby leading her brain down the path of 'freezer cooking.'
So, in an effort to find a complete plan, she will start googling such terms as; once a month cooking, bulk cooking, and freezer cooking. 
She will find a plan and decide to print it all out.
While printing, the printer will run out of paper, so the mom goes to the usual spot the paper is kept.
She will find the paper missing.  While silently berating her organizational skills, she will go purge every last stack of paper and magazines in the desk.
When she finally decides that she is out of printer paper, and is having a discussion with herself about whether or not the plan can be printed on construction paper, her 11 year old artist will finally tell her what she did with the paper and the current location of what is left of it.
She will reload the paper in the printer.
After the printing is completed, she will take the grocery lists and look through all the cabinets, refrigerator, freezers, and the pantry and mark off the ingredients she already has.
While doing so, the children will think she is in the kitchen for the sole purpose of making them a snack.  The mom will see that it is 11:30 in the afternoon and tell all the children that lunch is on the way. 
The two year old will misinterpret this to mean that pizza will be delivered shortly, and announce with glee and sheer delight that she "loves pidda!"
The mom will notice the look of dismay the two year old gives the peanut butter sandwich. Which will remind the mom that grocery shopping does have to occur somewhere in the near future. 
The mom will tell the dad that she is going to the supermarket and leaving all the children with him.
Then she drives to the nearest Starbucks, and has a cup of coffee.

Choosing Peace

Scrolling across my screen this morning, I see “Hardees first chain to add turkey burgers to their menu”.  I am guessing this is supposed to be a positive statement.  I just thought “WHY?!! It’s not Thanksgiving!”  My shock and concern were furthered when I realized, some people must like them, as in, they enjoy the taste.  I can only think their mothers must not have fed them properly.  Is the “lettuce and ketchup taste good for breakfast” group responsible for this addition? 




Where's the beef?!


Random things like this are what I think about before my kids get up, in those few moments of quiet.  I can not seem to think rational thoughts at 7:00 in the morning, sans the noisy noises from my four children.  It is like their very presence and all of those noises that make me say, “Everyone stop talking, I CAN’T THINK!” that actually inspires me to think beyond the randomness that floats around in my head.  It is funny that all my best ideas come to me at the most inopportune times like while driving the van with the children singing along with Veggietales or grocery shopping or while serving dinner.  If the president could call on me during those moments, I could possibly tell him how to handle the current crisis in the Middle East in a way that would win him accolades from both sides of the aisle. 

A shout out and a thumbs up to mommy blogger Super J, for her vast knowledge and willingness to share!

I love being a stay at home mom and homeschooling. One of the reasons is that I like having my kids with me. I like having them close and safe, I am all to aware that one day they will be out on their own and I will have to settle for silence and wondering how they are and if they are going to remember to call me on Sunday afternoon.  There are so many things that want to compete for my time with them, the TV, the computer, the phone, Facebook, life in general….  We who are moms, should know that while our time is short and valuable, our time with our kids is shorter and even more valuable.  Sometimes when I lay down at night, I cringe in remembrance of the day, because I realized I let all the cares of life and distractions steal the majority of my time, and my children actually had very little of it, when they are the primary reason I am a stay at home mom. 

One of my goals while pregnant and then while the baby was very little, was to act with no regrets.  I did not want to look back to my time of pregnancy and the baby’s infancy and regret a single moment.  I generally live in peace and contentment.  I can typically move past my mistakes and failures and chalk those times up to the “school of life” and move forward.  If I miss an appointment, a friend’s birthday, or a day of school, it doesn’t bother me for too long.  Everything comes back around.  What I won’t get back though, are the missed opportunities to blow bubbles with the kids, to push Beks on the swing, and put together puzzles with them.  I miss these opportunities because I am trying to get things done.  I know in my heart that it is ok if the puzzle pieces are on the floor and the bed isn’t made if it is because I stopped what I was doing long enough to enjoy the children.  A bookshelf that isn’t straight won’t hurt anything but my pride and that is only when I am glancing around the room with a critical eye because people have come over.   So, I try not to sweat the small stuff. 

Especially that refrigerator door part....

It is the bigger stuff, like the bitterness that is in me towards some things in my life where I have a problem.  But, I know that bitterness and anger are best friends and will grow roots on the top of the garden of life that trip you and can cause you to fall.  These issues are the true time stealers for me.  They are the issues that make feel like I can not cope when the kids or my husband are losing their minds.  The problem is, these things are not going to go away.  They will be here, I am just going to have to learn how do deal with them and how to set them aside in “you can’t change it, so leave it alone” pile.  That is more of a process than I would like to think about.  The wonderful thing is that God indeed knows the issues I face and is aware that I fail miserably at dealing with them, and tend to just get irritable when they crop up.  God knows that although I mow them down they always come back and I know that He alone can dig up the roots for me, because I am woefully inadequate.  So, I can arm myself with that, some prayers, and a few deep breaths, and just be.  I know that I can put the mantle of peace and contentment down and that I can also put it back on, living with no regret means that I have to choose this every day, on purpose.