Mindy's Non-Adventures

We were supposed to close on our beautiful house on Friday, but the closing got bumped to today because of paperwork. Actually, paperwork was the mundane excuse given. After looking at Timehop this morning, I knew exactly why things got bumped to today. First, if you don't know what Timehop is, I'm sorry that you miss out on such a fun experience every morning. Basically, it's a fun app that shows you all the things you've posted on social media on that day in previous years. It's like my very own "On this day in Mindy's history...".  That makes it sound important. It's usually more like this: 4 years ago Mindy was baking cookies and dealing with a crying/vomiting/screaming child. Fun times. So why did Timehop have such importance to me today? Well, exactly one year ago today I shared a couple of posts on Facebook that perfectly bookend where I am today. The first post was about how our church's moving ministry came to our Cary, NC apartment ...

I hesitate to even say anything because I don't want to put anyone through the emotional whiplash that I felt last week. Still, things have changed. I know that many of you have been praying hard for us, and I want you to know that those prayers have not gone unanswered. First, regardless of how things have changed or will change again, I can't say how much your prayers, messages, phone calls, and meals carried me through. God really used some of you to encourage me through a very stressful week. Thanks for that! You don't know how much it meant for people to reach out to us. You really were the hands and feet of Jesus to us last week. Second, imagine if you will, that you're almost a year past a season of unemployment and legitimate uncertainty about where you will live.  I mean, it's not like we were ever going to be homeless on the streets because we have a great support network of friends and family, but still. We didn't know what we were going to do or wh...

*Sigh* . . . . . . *Double sigh* . . . . . . . Okay. As you probably saw from my facebook post, Jon's job is being cut in a few months. If you missed that facebook announcement, SURPRISE! No, we did not see this coming. It's not often that I'm completely shocked, but this one solidly goes in the shocked category.  It wasn't a personal reflection on Jon. It was budget cuts. Thanks for that, Congress. You're awesome. I just LOVE how well you handle your shit. (Sorry mom. Sometimes certain words are the most appropriate. Also, if anyone wants to have an etymological discussion on why certain words are considered crass, it's actually very fascinating and goes back to the French and English wars years ago. But I digress.)  So where does that leave us? Well, it's not as dire as it looks (That's what I keep telling myself). First, we still have a lot of time to find something else. We are very thankful to have so much notice. Second, although w...

I don't know about you, but time is flying for us. November is nearly half over already, and I'm still stuck in October.  So where are we now? We're in week 14 of school. We've got a contract on a beautiful house. Everyday I pull up the pictures and redecorate it in my head.  This is what Pinterest was made for, friends. I've imagined 5 different counter top options, light fixtures, paint color schemes, DIY kitchen islands with tile, copper, slate, or butcher block on top. I've pinned landscaping ideas including plans for an "easy diy weekend pergola". Jon is worried. I can't blame him for that. Otherwise, we've continued on with our busy-ness. At least one kid has an activity on Monday, Tuesday, or Thursday evening. Church is Sunday. Our homeschool group is Tuesday. I've kept everything under control well enough (understand that I have a lower standard of "well enough" that most), and kept that balance between too much spare ti...

We've been busy. What else can I say? It's been 2 months since I've written anything worth sharing. We've been busy. First and foremost, we've been doing school. We're on week 11. My planning notebook clearly shows the downward slide in the last few weeks which means it's about time we kick things back into high gear to get as much done as possible by Thanksgiving. School gets really spotty between Thanksgiving and New Years. Any homeschooler that denies this is lying to you. We went to Maine. It was beautiful. Instead of  spending 6 days in hotels, we were able to stay with friends most of the time instead which was great. It's much better to spend time with friends than in an anonymous hotel room. It's a gift that I hope to be able to give to other people one day which brings me to our biggest news... We're in the process of buying a house! Just writing that sentence was hard. This is a decision that has brought me great joy and anxiety in ...

The last month has been...weird. After nearly 2 weeks of some serious fatigue and even weirder breathing issues that had me in bed most of the time, the doctor has brilliantly (ahem, sarcasm alert) decided that I need to take a few extra vitamins and use an inhaler for a few weeks. Yes, vitamins. My problem is not really vitamins, but whatever. The random fatigue thing is gone to once again hit me another day.  Unfortunately, those were supposed to be my two weeks of obsessive housecleaning, menu planning, and freezer cooking to get me fully prepared to start our 2015/2016 school year. Sigh. I had such beautiful plans. For my non-homeschooling friends, this is how the school year starts every year. No, not with weird health symptoms that come and go, but with something that wrecks my sparkly, shiny dreams of getting ALL of our schoolwork done, the house cleaned, and healthy, home cooked meals every day. It's not a realistic dream. It's just not. Still, every year I hope that...

I just finished my 4th Homeschool Planning Weekend, and it was hands down the most effective weekend yet. I think that's mostly because I was half a state away from my kids. They were not taking up any brain space so I was able to completely focus on my school work. My kids are not so little any more, and my husband was able to take a day off of work to watch them so I could do what I needed to do. He's awesome. =) I am not one of those people that does well chipping away at a giant project for 15 minutes a day for months at a time. I'm naturally a project person, not a maintainer.  Give me a weekend of uninterrupted time, and I will get my head wrapped around teaching formal logic, literature, latin, science, and history to three kids ranging from Kindergarten to 8th grade. Give me 2 months of 15 minute moments every day, and I'll get almost nothing done. And you know what? Homeschooling is no joke. Did you read those subjects I'm covering? LATIN? LOGIC? Seriousl...

 What can I say? It's summer. We've been busy. I have tried my very best to be the fun mom for at least month. I've had no updates for the last couple of months because I've been trying to stay away from anything remotely emotionally or mentally difficult. Since that was a real life impossibility, I at least refused to write about it.  Some people would call this putting up a front. I choose to call it keeping everything below the surface of my life private. =) So what have we been up to for the last month and a half ? I'm so glad you asked. We have gone to the pool a lot. So much that the kids don't even get that excited about the pool anymore. They're spoiled. We've gone to the waterpark. We've had friends over. We've kept a friend at our house for nearly 3 weeks while said friend's parents went on an envy-worthy European river cruise. We've had a lot of ice cream in various forms: homemade by me, homemade by other people, milkshakes,...

Because I have a boy, I have to say these kinds of things.... On nudity... Matthew: "MOM! Can I get dressed on the patio?" Me: "The patio that faces the entrance to our apartment community? No. No son, you cannot change there." Matthew: "Why not? It's the patio!" On female anatomy... Matthew: *gives me a big hug then starts poking my boob* "Mom, can this pop?" Me: "Um, no. It can't pop." Matthew: "It feels like it could pop. Are you sure it won't pop?" Me: "Yep, I'm sure. It definitely won't pop. Now please stop poking." On Death... Matthew: "Have you ever almost died from a whale shark?"

I made it! I made it to the unofficial end of our school year. Yes, we'll still be doing math and grammar and other basic stuff, but it's Dumont Academy Lite for the next few months. I've never been in this position before. Never. I usually claw myself to the end of May until my will to continue has completely and totally shriveled up and died. But not this year! I've been so happy today. Giddy even. Me. I was giddy.  In spite of all the life that happened to us this year, here I am. The middle of April. Doing some light school because we FINISHED most of our subjects. You can't see it, but I'm doing a really ugly happy dance right now. And how did we manage this feat in our family? I must admit it's because my resolve crumbled, and I rejoined Classical Conversations. That's it. I can't deny it or take too much credit. Homeschoolers can hate on it as much as they want, but it saved our year.  I will never be a CC Kool-aid drinker. There are things...

We all know by now that we're not supposed to compare ourselves to others, right? I mean, that's the message we preach in Christian circles, mom circles, homeschool circles...those are pretty  much my circles at the moment.  Maybe this isn't the message everyone else is getting, but I certainly get the "Don't compare your life to someone else's highlight reel" meme weekly on my facebook feed. And we love it. I mean, we don't live by it, but we love the ideal. In all areas of our lives but one, we are supposed to ignore what everyone else is doing and simply do our best to the glory of God. That's enough. But in what one area does this not apply? I say we preach the exact opposite when it comes to suffering and pain. Comparison is king when it comes to suffering.  We're supposed to be stoic in the face of difficulty. "I can't really let fill in the blank get me down because so and so is dealing with fill in the blank , and that...

Some of you might not know this about me, but I actually homeschool my kids. I know, I know. It's shocking. I just got back from my yearly homeschool convention trip, and it was amazing as always. This year was especially good for a couple of reasons. First, I actually had a budget to BUY something! It's always more fun to buy the books I need and want instead of caressing them lovingly before putting them back in a stack only to be picked up by some other mom that surely won't enjoy them as much as I would. I bought a few things that I'd been thinking about since last year's convention. So that was exciting. More importantly though is that it really helped me get over my homeschool slump. I'll let you know something else about me that's going to be fairly scandalous and shocking. We've moved a lot in the last few years. 5 1/2 times.  The half could also be considered an extended move since it took a month from start to finish. It's been somewhat....

After 12 1/2 years of traveling with kids, I've learned that certain things are going to happen nearly every time. This weekend's trip was no exception. So here's a rundown of our weekend trip to grandma's and Great Wolf Lodge with kids that exemplified the family vacation pitfalls. Kid #3 started with cold symptoms the morning of Trip Day 1. Kids always get sick when a trip is involved. On Sunday morning and Day 2, we went to church with our friends before going straight to Walmart to buy cold medicine for the ever worsening cold that Kid #3 chose to get just to spite me. I also needed to buy a toothbrush because I forgot Kid #3's toothbrush. I always forget his toothbrush. I'm sorry for whatever dental problems you have later in life, Kid #3. You can blame me. An hour or so into the drive, Kid #3 announced he was sick and started gagging. Because I expected vomit (I always expect vomit from someone) I managed to catch everything in the Wal-mart bag and av...

In my attempt to wrestle a routine out of our year, I'm falling back to some ideas I got out a book I read last year called Say Goodbye to Survival Mode by Crystal Paine (she's the moneysavingmom.com person in case you've ever heard of her).  It was actually a great book and very helpful. The basic point I'm using right now from the book is to make smaller, manageable goals. The other half is recognizing that I can't actually do all the things that I'll put on my list so I need to accept that from the beginning. Anyway, she suggests you make goals, then break them down into smaller, measurable chunks.  So that's what I'm doing. Sometimes it seems like a work of futility, but I'm going to keep pushing for routines. It's got to work one day, right? This week's goals are as follows: Work on organzing/decorating our bedroom for 15 minutes every day Eat at home (No restaurants until Saturday when we go out of town) Get math done before lun...

It's been a little over a month since I've done a real update. Some of that is because our lives became very boring in comparison to our last year.  I've been setting up house, getting the kids into their new homeschool group, and dealing with...reintegration.  Reintegration is something military families will get. Although Jon wasn't deployed last year, he was traveling  all. the. time.  Now he's home every day. Every single day. Like, really. Reintegration means we have to relearn how to all live together full-time again. And really, that's about it. We've been doing very normal, boring things together for the last month since we haven't had normal, boring lives in a long time.  But... there are a few things that have happened so here's the rundown. 1.  We've been here a month, and although I still have some work to do, I've got our home generally put together. Our bedroom is still kind of a catchall, but our home is a home. NOT rooms fu...

So this is it. A new year and almost a new life. The downward spiral our lives have been on for the last few months has reversed course, and we can see the end of this chapter. In another week, Jon will be in happily employed once again doing the same job he was previously doing on the AF base, and we will be in our new/old city of Charleston.  I have been waiting for this moment for the past couple of months. This moment when I can finally sit down, take a deep breath, and enumerate the ways that God used His people to carry us through this time. It's hard to list it all because people have gone above and beyond for us. But I'll give it a try anyway. People have given my husband work. Friends have given him a place to stay while he worked away from home Friends have given US a place to stay when we had a gap between homes. Friends have encouraged all of us, even the kids. People have fed us meals and listened to us talk through everything. People have watched my ki...