Back again!!

Ok.. so I totally dropped of the blog radar (huge suprise for those who actually know me.) I'm much more of a researcher and "lurker" than a blogger, but I am determined to give this whole blog thing another go. My kids started summer vacation this week, and I want to be better about documenting our days with pictures, so my head automatically went to blogging. Maybe this time will be the time I actually stick with it. :) Only time will tell. Right now I'm shooting for blogging through the summer and we will see if I can keep it up beyond that.

So today I took the girls to the library and took some fun pictures of them outside before we headed home for dinner.

Awesome Place to Buy Books

So we are starting to homeschool this year and have been using the Five in a Row Curriculum. I came across an awesome site to add to your book collection and even better is that they have free shipping the month of August. HomeSchool Library Builder has great selections and very great prices. They sell used and new books. What are you waiting for check them out and tell them I sent you. :)

Menu Plan

I'm trying to get more organized with meals and decided to make up a menu plan for the week. I have a ton of fresh produce to use up and I want to keep track of it better. I am also going to try to use up what we have on hand for meals as much as possible the next several weeks, because we had an unexpected car expense yesterday that I'd like to try to pay for out of our food budget (we have savings I just don't want to touch it if I don't have to). What better place to put my menu than on my blog so I don't risk loosing my paper that I write it on.

Thursday: Pizzets and corn on the cob.

Friday: BBQ chicken at my mom's (I'm bringing broccoli salad)

Saturday: Lunch - Picnic for hubby's work
Dinner - Tacos (tomatoes from farmers market & lettuce from garden) with peas

Sunday: Lunch - Sandwiches and/ or soup
Dinner - Chicken Stirfry (snow peas from garden, chicken cooked on thursday, green pepper, onion and tomato from farmers market) with rice

Monday: Burritos (left over taco meat, tomatoes) with fried zucchini

Tuesday: spaghetti with garlic bread

Wednesday: Grilled Pork Chops, crash hot potatoes, peas

Thursday: left over burritos

Friday: dinner at mom's

Living Intentionally

So I have just spent the last hour reading the blog of an old acquaintance from high school and was challenged on many levels. First of all I was plesantly suprised to discover that she and I have a lot in common. She seems to be very passionate about bargins and finances. She is also a christian. But there were a few other things I noticed. She seems to live her life with passion and intentionally. She got married last summer and from what she has written on her blog she seems very happily married (which is exciting to see someone else from school make wise choices in the marriage department - but that is another post for another time). Any way "A" has spent her first year of married traveling all over the country with her new hubby and just having a great time. I look back at my first year of marriage and remember spending it in grad school and then with a new born before the year was up. Not quite the exciting cross country adventures that "A" has had. But before I get stuck comparing myself with others, I realize its not her cross country journey that I am envying, but the intentionality with which she lives her life. I have gotten stuck in a rut. I no longer am taking life by the horns and going forward, I'm just doing what needs to get done for the day or week. Now no matter what I do, my life won't resemble "A's" life. I have three kids and can't just up and travel all over, but I can live with purpose. I can be intentional with what I do and my attitude. I think I need to get back to setting goals and more detailed to do lists. I need to focus on getting back (or maybe starting for the first time) to living intentionally. I also want to focus on my hubby. We have three beautiful girls, but he tends to get lost in the daily shuffle. I want to be more intentional about spending quality time with him and showing him my love in tangable ways. Well thats enough rambling for now, its late and I'm really tired.

I now officially drive a van

So we traded in my baby for this 2007 Ford Freestyle Van tonight. Pretty sure its time we joined the ranks of the minivan drivers since we have three kids.

Moving in fast forward

Its funny how sometimes you can feel like life is moving in fast forward even though nothing is really changing outwardly. This is the way Jay and I feel right now. We have been praying about being in full time ministry for quite a while, and it has seemed like doors were opening. Nothing has really happened though. It just finally feels like its our season. Like God is going to be opening the doors for us to step into the next season of our life. I have been so proud of Jay lately. He has really come out of his shell lately. He has been working on being more social and having conversations with people, and has had three major situations where he has really put his skills to the test the last couple of days. He has also gotten better about processing through things with me rather than his normal canned responses of "we'll see". I feel like I'm finally able to tell him what has been lacking for me in our relationship (nothing bad, just really needing him to open up to me and really talk things through) and that has in turn really helped him in ministry too. I don't know... this probably doesn't make sense, but i just wanted to get it all down while it was in my mind. I just feel like God is getting ready to do something big with us. Either here or somewhere else. I feel like the signs are pointing to here, but I'm trying not to get my hopes up. Either way what God is calling us and equipping us to do is very much bigger than us, which is exciting because that means it has to be a God thing.
Also wanted to quickly post that I feel like God was really clarifying Jay's vision for me this morning. I can see how his vision will really easily transition him from youth pastor to student ministries / education director at a church. THis also clarifies the whole him being a principle dream he had. I can really see us starting a christian school at our church in the next five years. I'm excited to see what happens. Well this is just random... but I wanted to get my thoughts down.

We are at a crossroads - we can go our way or God's way

So I have been wrestling with two very related decisions lately and I'm not sure where I stand on them. One reason for the wrestling in these decisions is that Jay and I have very differing views on the issues. These two issues are homeschooling and family size. Jay wants me to homeschool the girls and he wants us to have several more kids. He jokes about it, but I know that deep down inside he really wants 7 kids. This has been an issue for us from the beginning and we acknowledged our differences before we got married, but I guess we each secretly hoped the other person would come around to our side. I have always said I wanted to have 3 or 4 kids. Right now we have three and I'm torn on having a forth. I like our family the way it is now.... Leah and Hannah are getting to be much more independent and Abby is a pretty easy going baby for the most part. Also it helps that I finally feel like I'm finding my groove as a mom. Some days I look at our family and definatly want another one. Other times I look around and enjoy that it seems to be getting easier. I know my whole attitude on this kills Jay. He really wants a big family, and 3 or 4 is not a big family to him. To me who only had a brother it is. I under stand both sides of the coin. I just don't know what the right answer is. This leads me to my second dilema. Jay really wants me to homeschool the kids. I have kind of gone along with it and done my research about it. I attend the homeschool moms group at our church. I even have gotten some books (Five in a row) so I can start working on preschool type activities with Leah. In theory I want to homeschool my kids. I like the idea that I have control over what they learn and the speed that they learn it at. I want to be able to protect my kids from all the bad out there in the world and keep them innocent. I went to public school and I loved it. Jay was homeschooled for part of his schooling and went to public school for the other part. He loved being homeschooled and had a really bad public schooling experience. I am so torn. I feel like I am guiltly of being a bad mom if I don't homeschool the girls, but at the same time my heart isn't in it. I can't motivate myself to start working with Leah and Hannah on it now. Its definately not my gifting. I also feel like that would be just one other area that I will have let Jay down in if I choose not to homeschool the girls. (family size being the other area). A big part of me wants to send Leah to school (she is a ton like me and I think she would really like it). But I think I would feel bad / sad sending my baby out into the big bad world so soon. I think some of the guilt I feel about not wanting to homeschool is by things I have read and heard from other homeschool people. In a way its a lot like christianity. THere is a lot of pressure to do things the right way or the "godly way". Like somehow you aren't as good of a parent if you don't homeschool your child. Or you must not care about them if you want to send them out to be tempted by the evil world we live in. Its funny cause I used to feel that is was the same way about being a stay at home mom... you must be a bad mom if you choose working over being with your kids full time. I wish there was an easy answer to this whole thing, but there isn't. I don't want to be a jerk and ask Jay to give up his dreams, but I also don't want to give up my dreams in the process. The more I think about it, the more I think this whole thing relates to what I felt like God was saying to me at church last night. We are at a cross roads we can go our way (each of us having our differing opinions and reaching the best possible compromise we can - but neither one of us being truly happy about it.) or we can go God's way. I have no clue what God's way is, but I'm sure that is the best way. I'm sure it includes both of us dying to self and to our desires and seeking God's will for our marriage and family. Not sure how God's plan for our family will look, but I have a feeling that when we discover that, we will both be a lot happier and fulfilled. I also think a lot of other things (ministry wise) will fall into place when we are both seeking God's will for this area of our lives instead of seeking our own desires. I have no clue how our opposing ideas can merge into a solution how we can both be happy and fulfilled, but if any one can work it out i'm sure God can.

Check out my new hair bow!

Many thoughts in my head

I have a ton of different thoughts rolling around in my head right now. I started my day off eating some breakfast (yes i can call a rice krispie bar with chocolate and peanut butter on it breakfast) and surfing my normal blogs. I got stuck on a blog this morning though with a post about large families. I am very undecided on the size of our family right now. Jay has always said that he wants 7 kids and I have always said I want 3 or 4 (to me that is a big family, as I grew up in a home with only my brother and I). We have had many discussions about our family size and have basically left it with the we will take it one child at a time and see where that takes us. As the days go on I seem to get more set in my ways of only wanting possibly one more (if I can even handle that) and I know Jay is very saddened by that thought. He has made it clear that he wants a big family, but I think has resigned himself to the fact I can't handle a houseful of kids.
Even though I think I am pretty close to capacity of the number of kids I want, I am very intriguied by big families. I find myself drawn to blogs of big families and love seeing pictures and reading about large families. They just seem to have such well behaved kids (probably out of necessity) and just seem to be such neat people. I guess the fact that I'm drawn to observe large families should be at least a small indication to me that God might have something different instore for me other than having a "typical American" sized family.
Anyway back to this morning.... I was reading a blog I read regularly and she had a post about being Quiverful. I of course was intriguied by the post so I kept reading more posts about it this morning and have a ton running through my head as a result. I'm not sure exactly how I feel about trusting God with my fertility (sounds worse when you actually write it out... like I'm saying God can't be trusted) because I'm pretty much get pregnant as soon as Jay looks at me.... which following this mindset would mean I would have a new baby every 18 months or so... which I'm not ok with. But anyway that isn't so much the point of this post as to say God might be calling us to have a big family and I might be coming closer to accepting that fact. (Don't worry Anna - I'm not going to run out and act on this yet... Abby is still too young to have a new sibling)... :) I'm just alot more open to the fact that maybe a big family is in the cards for us and I'm kind of excited to see where this whole thing takes us.
Jay and I really desire to be in youth ministry full time but the idea of trying to balance many kids (read new babies) and be a youth pastor's wife overwhelms me.... I fear I won't be able to be involved enough if I am constantly popping out new babies. Well obviously God knows more than I do and He obviously has a plan for our lives, so we will see what happens. Maybe God has another plan that I can't imagine.... I know He is in control & always has been. He has lead us to this point for such a time as this, I need to trust that He knows the next steps even though I can't quite understand what they are.

Oh and here is another interesting quote from another blog I randomly read this morning. "We believe in letting God control the size of our family. We believe the Bible teaches that children are a blessing, and we should not deny God the ability to bless us how He sees fit. I mean, really, if God were blessing us with tons of money, would we ask him to stop because we have too much? No thanks, God, I'm having trouble controling the bank accounts of what I have already... please stop sending the cash flow my way. Of course not. That's ridiculous. Yet that is exactly what many people do each and every day." Just some food for thought today... I will have to see what Jay's opinion is on all of this later.

Great quote I found this morning

"The Bible calls debt a curse and children a blessing; but in our culture, we apply for a curse and reject blessings. Something is wrong with this picture." ~ Doug Phillips

A trip down memory lane...

Two of my childhood dolls and Jay's bear sitting together on the shelf in Abby's room.

Incase it wasn't obvious that our cat is psycho...

Introducing the newest member of our family

I am finally posting some pictures of our newest daughter. I've been playing around with the camera more lately in preparation of getting my new camera in the mail any day now. I can't believe Abby will be 3 months old next week. Time really does fly.

Another Household Expense

The oven in our house is really old, and we knew it wouldn't last forever... can you see where this is going. Leah's birthday party was on Saturday and I decided to serve frozen pizzas for dinner. First problem was the pizza's are supposed to cook at 425 degrees. Well our oven has been working, but only at 350 degrees for a little while. We made a total of 4 naturally rising pizzas (two at a time) which each were supposed to cook for 20 or 25 minutes. So in theory we should have been able to eat in no more than an hour after I put the first pizza in. Well two hours later we were finally sitting down to our pizza... I think thats a bad sign. The burners on the stove still work fine... but now that winter is coming up I'm going to want to bake in the oven more and its probably not very energy efficient to have to cook things for so long.... let alone the fact that not everything will turn out when baked at 350 degrees. So it looks like this guy and this guy will be finding a new home in my kitchen on thursday. Good thing we have some Lowes gift cards and a 10% off coupon... that will make it a little more affordable. We are still working really hard at paying our new central heat and air we had installed when our main window airconditioner died on us in the hottest part of the summer. Oh the joys of homeownership.

Our oldest turns 4 today!

It's so hard to belive that Leah is 4 years old today! It seems like just yesterday we were starting out on this journey of parenthood. Now 4 years later we are doing it all again for a third time. As I write this I am 34 weeks pregnant with our third daughter. It was just hitting me the other day that Leah's birthday and the new babys birthday could potentially be very close. My due date is just over a month away, but I've been having a lot of contractions lately so its possible I may go into labor early.

Leah has been so excited about her birthday this year. She told us today that this is her best birthday ever. Last night my mom took us all to Chuckie Cheese and then we went back to her house for presents and cake. Today my dad stopped by first thing this morning with a card for Leah (and she is very excited to spend her birthday money by the way). I took the girls to Target for a birthday shopping trip and then we picked up Chickfila for lunch. Daddy stopped home on his lunch break and Leah got to open up her presents from Grandma-ma. She opened up her presents from us last night at my mom's (I know I'm not sure how I got that one past the present nazi - we don't open presents early in our house) :) Then tomorrow (day three of celebrations) is her birthday party with her friends. This will be Leah's first birthday party and she is really excited. We are just having a couple of friends over for pizza and cake, but Leah is really excited. (so is Hannah for that matter). Well all this talk of the party tomorrow reminds me that I need to go clean the house.

Back to blogging

So I think I'm finally going to start blogging again. I know, I know you probably thought I died. I'm going to attempt the whole blog thing again. Its hard to believe its been almost a year and a half since I last blogged... where has time gone. First of all... we left Arkansas (yay us), went to St. Louis for about 2 months and then ended up back in Iowa at my moms house. We lived with my mom for just over 2 months and then finally bought our first house. We were so excited to get our stuff out of storage and have our own space again. We purchased our house in December of 06, and have been learning more and more about frugal living each day. Through trial and error (and of course God's provision) I have learned many ways to stretch a dollar and we are actually doing much better financially now than when we were making double the salary in Arkansas. I am very thankful to God for all the ways he has provided for us and blessed us in the last year. Its really amazing when you think about it all.

Well since I spend so much time online looking for great deals, I figured I would start blogging about some of them. Hopefully I can create a one stop place for my fellow frugal friends to find deals, plus it will be nice to have a record to look back at and see all of God's provisions.

some random thoughts about our future and direction

So Jay and I have been having continued conversations about us moving... and what to do... where we want to go, etc. I feel like we are getting closer to a decision.... but still have a long ways to go. Anyway when I was talking to Anna about things yesterday she had some very good points, that I have been pondering today.

• Jobs are temporal, more important than finding a job in a certain location is just deciding on a location that you want to be and will be happy.
  
• so I've been thinking about that alot today... Jay has suggested that we just move somewhere and then find a job when we get there. This thought has scared me a lot. I keep thinking we need to find a job and then move where the job is. But maybe the more important thing is to move somewhere we really want to be and then find a job when we get there. It is all about location.
• Maybe us finding this job was less about it being God's will and more about the fact the the place that Jay works is always hiring and is desperate to find people. Maybe that's why they sought us out. Not because it was necessarily God's will for us to come here, but just because they needed an employee.
  

Well I gotta go make dinner, but those are two of my random thoughts.

Patience is a virture (just not one of mine)

So I wrote before about us moving soon. Well I know it hasn't been very long, but the impatient part of me is getting tired of waiting.

Its funny because I am normally a very impatient person (to a fault sometimes) and so when I have an idea I'm the kind of person who will run right out and do what ever it is that I wanted to do (or at least start planning it). If I don't do it right away my excitement runs out and I just don't end up doing it at all. I also feel that my outlook on life is generally optimistic. I normally feel very positive about being able to accomplish goals and I jump right into making plans. My husband on the other hand is what I call the eternal pessimist. (He would say he is more of a realist - but either way he doesn't share my optimistic view of things.) (love ya hon) He is normally a wait and see kind of person. If we have an idea he doesn't let himself get excited about it and normally just says lets wait and see what happens. Well this whole moving situation has been totally different. After a long heart to heart talk about things, we both decided that it was really time to move. I just figured we would start applying for jobs and see what happened. But instead Jay started getting really excited about moving and constantly talking about it (how very Lori of him). I tried to take on his roll of lets see what happens, but when the eternal realist/ pessimist is sitting there telling me that we should start packing (which we have) its really hard to not get excited myself (being the impatient optimist that I normally am). So we (read I) have done quite a bit of packing so far (most of the non essentials that we won't miss if they are packed for 6 months or so) and now we still have no job. We have had a few leads and still have one currently, but other than that we are kind just sitting still. So now Jay and I are both really anxious to get out of here and have an office full of boxes :) but still nowhere to go. Anyway I just think its funny that I've been trying to be the realist in the situation and Jay has totally taken on my roll. Its a good thing that we normally balance each other out, because I would hate to see what would have happened if I had married someone more like myself in these regards. I guess its good that opposities really do attract. Well hopefully we will find out about the job in NY soon and/ or find another job so we can get out of Arkansas.

Disappoint is looming near

So Jay and I have been job hunting. We finally decided that it is time to leave Arkansas!!! The whole thing was started by a conversation about us needing to be close to family and stuff for the kids sake. We started talking about moving up to Iowa for a few years to be around my familiy before we permenately moved up to New York where Jay's family is. We have been talking about things for a couple of weeks, and have already applied for a couple of jobs. We are applying in both Iowa and New York for now. Well we were leaning towards moving to Iowa for a while, but it just seems like those doors keep closing. But not even just closing clearly shut, but they close, then open then seem like they are open but then close again. Its like God is teasing me with moving to Iowa. I am so frustrated right now. We still don't have a decision made as to where we are going, but doors are definately more open in New York at this point then they are in Iowa. Why is me wanting to be around my family for a few years such a bad or impossible thing. Why are we going to end up in New York around Jay's family and not mine (no offense to any of Jay's family who are readin this. Its not anything against you guys - I just want to be around my family for awhile). Why does it seem that my desire to live in Iowa is never going to happen. Why do I feel like I am wishing for something impossible. I feel like right now I might as well be saying I want to go on a cruise or a trip to Italy, cause it seem just about as likely right now. What is so wrong with being around my family. And even if it isn't what God has for us, why does it seem like He has totally been teasing me with the desire to do so and then saying no. Why let me dream. Why not let me just be miserable here instead with no hopes and no expectation for the future. Why let me have dreams anyway. Why?? I guess I should know better than to dream.