Nov
15
2012We’re trying new activities over here and auditioning a couple of sports trying to find a fit to teach the girls some great life skills.
This week: Ballet
The teacher put down spots. The girls were familiar with these and actually stayed with them. One problem: the girls were separated by two classmates. Bronwyn waited a bit and then picked up her spot and moved it right next to her sister. Beautiful strong willed loyal Bronwyn.
Ballet instructions were followed. They plied, grand jeted, and twirled around the room. (They were really upset that they didn’t have the proper shoes). The wore their tutus and laughed when Sedryn tried to join the open room multiple times! (I think ballet may be a good sport for his meticulous nature. Ha!)
Their teacher Mrs. Lindsay was amazing! Beyond amazing. Patient. Fun loving. Fast paced. Gentle. Didn’t even mind herding cats. Between the two classes, Mrs. Lindsay was the obvious choice for me. She loved teaching and she loved her students. Oh, how I wanted her to be the hero they chose to teach them in these early years.
But the girls, they like gymnastics best. The craziness and the varied nature. The tumbling and climbing and bouncing. So soon that’ll be where they stick their landing and take a few classes to learn life skills disguised with fun and nap inducing physical activity.
Nov
12
2012It’s no secret that I tote three kiddos around in the back of a Toyota Corolla. Three carseats smashed in that back seat like sardines (two Radians and a Scenera… poor baby in the middle). I love my Corolla, but it’s just time for the mini-van. We were saving for it and praying for a van.
Late August Derek got in a wreck. He barely bumped the truck in front of him at 10mph, but sent the truck’s trailer hitch right though his headlight and into the radiator. His 1999 Saturn was officially totaled a few days later.
We were committed to paying cash for our ‘new’ van and did not have nearly enough yet saved to purchase one even with the cash for his totaled car. We asked his very generous parent if they could lend us their “child emergency fund” and we could pay them back come spring and our tax return. They agreed and gave us a figure to shop for.
We had around $8000 total with his parent’s loan and shopped in earnest. Being that we want to drive the ‘new’ van into the ground, we wanted her to last a good long while. We searched for as long as the insurance would let us keep a rental and then another 2 weeks I stayed at home while Derek took my car. We were interested in a few vans (and one Chrysler Pacifica Touring wagon/crossover), but they either came not passing inspection or would/could not drop the price to be in our range.
All the mini-van doors were closing and, yet, we had peace.
Our small group leaders talked to their car hoarding father about parting with their Toyota Camry. We purchased it a half week later for $500 less than the money received for the totaled Saturn.
We smiled at our still full emergency/saving account and had hope for purchasing a minivan in the spring. Yet, we still wondered why our van prayers were unanswered.
A week later we closed on a refinance of the house. We were bringing our interest rate WAY down and allowing ourselves to prepay an extra $200 a month toward being debt free. We had thought the process would be mostly free for us, but because our home valued at less than we thought, we were required to pay enough to bring the debt down to less than 90% of our house value. A $1000 dollars slipped out of our emergency savings toward being debt free.
Six weeks later, I elbowed Derek awake in the bed startled by a strange noise that sounded like a cross between a motorcycle and a cat in heat. He popped out of bed and immediately started flipping breakers off. Our air handler was having an issue. We called an HVAC service company. It not worth it to repair it, we had to replace it.
All of the remaining money except $300 disappeared from our emergency savings account.
All of our van money.
Gone in an instant.
Yet, Derek and I were giddy like the kids at the beach. We knew why we didn’t own a van! We knew that our God had prepared us financially for this emergency (lows the week of no-heat hovered around 52 degrees IN the house) by saying no to our van dream at that time.
The day the repair was complete Derek opened an envelope and pulled out a check. He started laughing.
“What?” I said.
“We just got a check for over a grand.” He replied.
I looked at him skeptically. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No. Really.” He said between laughter. “It’s the leftovers from our old mortgage escrow account.”
Our emergency fund (which we try never to let go below a grand) was restored above that point.
I don’t own a van. I still have three kids strapped across the back of a Sedan (though I’m currently driving the Camry so the kiddos have a wee bit more wiggle room). I don’t even have 1/2 of what we had had saved for the van.
No, but I have a God who provided for all our needs through a very strange set of circumstances and the faith to trust him more. That’s a pretty awesome trade-off, don’t you think?
(Thanks here from our beach trip. Written in a spare notebook… taken awhile to track down the graces)
4533-4566
- Sunrise 9 stories high on the beach
- Ham and eggs
- Sand and pools
- Aeralind jumping in the lazy river when I wasn’t looking
- Giggles and singing with my girls in the lazy river
- Sleepy boy cuddles
- Shovels, buckets and a net in the condo
- Heading over to Huntington to see the birds and alligators
- Derek and I praying for an alligator to be close to shore and seeing one with the girls just as we left
- Bronwyn cautiously approaching the alligator “Mommy, I scary.”
- More sand
- Sedryn lying over our sand pit and splashing when the waves filled it
- Just a few scrapes and bruises on me and not on Sedryn when I slid/fell into the kiddie pool
- Pineapple and hot chocolate with a sunset and all my family
- early bedtime for all
- Yummy breakfast
- Long beach walk
- Aerie walking behind me “I walk in Mommy’s feet” (Footprints)
- Singing with Sedryn
- One good long nap for Sedryn finally on this trip
- Bronwyn and Aerie beggine for Kay Kay to ride with them
- Toddler girl wardrobe shopping in styles that fit their personalities
- Nerd shirt for Sedryn
- All 3 kids gleefully coming down the slide
- Sedryn waiting for daddy to push him down
- All of us exploring Anthropologie
- Little girls pouring over tons of books at Barnes and Nobles
- Ice Cream
- Quiet evening with Sedryn
- Sedryn fighting a nap and for once falling asleep on the bed with me. Napping in a big boy bed.
- A new book that corresponds so sell with Ladies Bible Study
- Girls coming back with Halloween art masks and Necklaces and spiders and tales of feeding fish at the Papa’s fish show at Bass Pro
- Everyone safely asleep
Nov
09
2012
There are days I just wish for quiet.
No whining. No screaming. No “Mama, mama! Hold me!” No noisemaker running constantly while the baby sleeps. No breaking up fights. No wrestling for the time and peace I need to make dinner or create an idea floating around my brain.
Quiet can be my idol. My safe spot to run instead of the arms of the One who calms all storms (when needed) with just a word.
The silence is eerie when I do get that brief moment of quiet. I find myself doing nothing that I had longed for and just wasting the quiet. Wasting it on pointless endeavors.
The truth is, I really do thrive on chaos. I thrive on painting tape and moving furniture and finding solutions to the loud realities of life. God knows this. It’s why he doesn’t give me quiet very often.
I grow when it’s loud. When it’s not my preferred state of quiet.
Nov
09
2012We’re trying a couple of sports the next couple weeks.
Now I’m not a push my kiddos into sports and hope they win an Olympic medal kind of mother. (Though if one of my kids had both that gifting and that motivation, I would support as best as I could.) However, my girls aren’t in any type of formal education setting. They’re not learning to walk in a line, to wait their turn, follow instructions from a trusted adult, or to cheer on a friend. I want them to learn these things and in a fun environment, so I asked for lessons from the grandparents for Christmas.
Most places let you do a free trail class. So we jumped on that to allow the girls to pick their lesson of choice.
First up: Gymnastics.
Derek and I almost died laughing watching our girls learn to adapt to the classroom structure. Aeralind obeyed and stayed on her spot, but just couldn’t figure out what the teacher was doing or how to do it herself… until the teacher had moved on to the next activity. Bronwyn just ignored her spot and went about doing whatever she felt like in a sort of over giddy way. And that was just the warm up stretches! Ha!
By mid class they were following complicated instructions (do a cartwheel over this bump, a forward roll down this mat, bounce on the ball to and back to these lines, wait to do a back handspring, and repeat!) with relative ease. Looks like our mission would be accomplished.
Aeralind actually cried when we left the gym because she wanted to walk on the high beam (believe me… she’s fully capable of doing it too, right Chanwey?).
