The BEST dog treat ever

Lately every time I have any empty peanut butter jars I give them to the puppy and she LOVES them! She licks and licks and licks until the jar is almost totally clean!

She can reach her tongue almost all the way to the bottom until there is just a very small amount of PB left on the bottom.

It's so cute!! {and yes, it's totally common that she lies IN or ON her bowls!}

PLEASE tell me ...

I'm not the only one whose house gets this messy EVERY week?! Papers, books and junk all over the hutch ... The kitchen table COVERED with crafty stuff, books, school stuff, etc ...

Not one square inch to eat on!

The ironing board in the middle of the dining room where it has sat for DAYS! {I've even begun to make it useful by setting my makeup on it while I use the mirror on the wall!}

Kitchen counters covered in school work, dishes and stuff for science experiments ...

Box full of scrapbook stuff that sat literally in the center of the kitchen floor for DAYS until I finally put the stuff away ...

More scrapbook stuff that needs to be put away ...

DISHES, DISHES AND MORE DISHES!!!!

Laundry by the basement door - notice it's NEXT to the basket, not IN the basket!

Laundry baskets in the living room are a daily occurrence - usually filled with clean laundry that needs to be put away!

The top of my dresser COVERED in stuff - which I JUST cleaned last week!

Foot spa in the middle of the bathroom floor - which sat there for days!

Um yeah ... I'm sensing a theme here ... a whole lotta stuff that just needs to be PUT AWAY where it belongs! UGH! I hate when my house gets messy and out of control! It always makes me feel so stressed and anxious. I feel so much more organized and happy when it's clean!

Anyone else have this problem??!!

The growing up of girls

A couple weeks ago I talked about going through a particularly tough week with my oldest daughter. I forgot to come back and blog about it. Sorry!

Anyway, a few things sort of snow-balled that week leading to a week full of tears and trials. First, she went to 2 sleepovers in less than 5 days. And I'm not sure about your kids, but my kids hardly EVER get any sleep at 'sleep'overs!
Then, she had her braces adjusted. And when they put the new wire in it was poking the back of her mouth really bad. She was in pain, her mouth was being cut up and it was really hard to reach the protective wax back there where the sore spot was.
Then, she learned ALL about what happens to girls when they grow up. Sort of by mistake.

So yeah, it was a rough week for my girl.

I had been planning to talk with her about girly stuff like periods and such for awhile now. I knew she was already starting to grow and change {much too fast for me!} but thought I had a little time still. Then one day she came home from the library {she went with Grandma} with the American Girl book called The Care and Keeping of You. Basically it's 'the body book'. It tells girls what to expect and how to deal with it and get through it. {by the way the book is fabulous}

So she comes home with this book and my heart sort of starts to skip a beat -- wait, what? We're gonna have to do this NOW?! But I think, OK, you can do this Kathy. Maybe it's a good thing that SHE picked it out, not you. So I tell her that I think that is a book we should read through together. She's OK with that so we have a plan.

But plans sort of fail sometimes, you know? And I SHOULD have thought ahead to put the book aside until we could read it together but I didn't and the next thing I know was ....

I'm about to get in bed one night around 11pm and I hear her crying in the hall asking for Mommy. I come down the hall to see what's wrong and she tells me she read the book. 'You read the book? How much did you read?' I say. The whole thing she tells me. 'You read the WHOLE BOOK?!' I say - sort of trying not to freak out!

Basically she couldn't sleep so she turned her little bed lamp on and read the WHOLE book in one evening. Then she was so upset by everything she read that she couldn't stop crying or go to sleep! She told me she's afraid to grow up, she doesn't want to change and she's afraid she won't feel like herself anymore and that she'll just want to go back to the way she was.

We ended up having a great talk about it and I assured her that she will still be 'her' and that the wonderful person she is will still be there despite the physical changes. I felt *so* bad for her. Poor thing was just so upset. I can't say I blame her, I mean who would want to go through all these crazy changes! ha!

Anyhow ... ALL of these things made for a very emotional and tear-filled week.

It's so hard to see your child go through difficult times. It's hard to see them sad or scared or worried about the future. I have seen a lot of changes in my oldest over the past year and I know that this is just the beginning of the changes to come.

At times it can become draining. I get tired of the tears and the battles and such. But overall I'm so impressed with the wonderful young lady she is becoming. A few months ago she was mad at me one day and told me she was going to run away. I seriously felt my jaw hit the floor. I was both sad and scared when she said that. I barely held my tears in as I explained to her how sad it would make me if she ran away as well as how fearful I would be for her safety and well being. We talked through it and she then clung to me saying 'I don't want to leave, I was just mad but I would never want to leave.'

I'm sure there will be more trying times to come. I'm sure she might even threaten to run away again. I'm sure she will hate me at times. I'm sure there will be lots of emotional times and lots of conversations together.

I'm so thankful to be the Mama of these girls though. I'm so happy that I get to be the one sharing with them about growing up and changing and stuff like that. I'm glad that even though they get mad at me sometimes they still trust me and talk to me and share with me honestly. I pray that they always will.

I'm currently {slowly} making my way through Bringing Up Girls by Dr. James Dobson. It's amazing. I love it. I can't recommend it enough. {sorry, just had to throw that in there cause it applies}

I feel like prayer has been my saving grace in raising girls thus far. I truly need to hit my knees for them daily. I'm not always good about remembering that - I've had plenty of times where I thought *I* knew best only to be humbled and realize that HE knows best and that the best gift I can gift to my girls is to pray for them daily.

So that's it in a nutshell. I love my girls. They need my prayers. And I pray that through His strength we'll all get through these tough years and come through the other side closer than ever.

If you have any insight into raising pre-teen or teen girls I'd love to hear from you!

1,000 Gifts {Mar. 15th-21st, 2011}

It's been a fabulous week. You know how they say the weather affects your mood - well it's SO true in my case! Last week was gorgeous, with warmer temps and sunny days. This week - well let's just say that today is the 2nd day of spring and we have a snowy/rainy mix coming down ... and the rest of the week doesn't look much better. That's OK though - we will use the time this week to get school work done and projects in the house and then when the sun shines again we'll be ready for it!

Here are the many gifts from our past week:

* my husband Bob, who does a million little things to help me out - like working in the yard, scratching my back, filling my gas tank in my car, etc ...

* learning alongside my kids {adjectives and roman numerals and a million other things I haven't thought about in about 25 years!}

* being married to my best friend

* a quiet afternoon to myself

*Ladies Bible study at church

* busy school days

* letterboxing with my family

* sweet, snuggly dogs

* enjoying the great outdoors

* tromping in the woods and stream with my girls

* FUDGE!

* new rain boots to tromp around in the stream with

* seeing signs of green!

* running with Bob

* the girls telling me the story of St. Patrick "MOM! Did you know he was a Christian??!!"

* green cupcakes

* a fun family field day - Aquarium, out for lunch, letterboxing and hiking through our woods

* having lunch and a fun field trip with our homeschool friends

* 70 degrees!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

* amazing creatures made by God

* sitting on a park bench chatting with my friend while the kids play on the playground and the sun shines so warm over us

* white chocolate/peppermint mocha that my friend lovingly prepares for me so I can enjoy it on the ride home

* Friday night dinner cooked by my hubby

* all of us playing basketball in the driveway together

* laughing at youtube videos together

* tucking them in with snuggles and talk of the day

* library passes for admission to local museums and sites

* lots and lots and lots of GREEN! a whole day dedicated to GREEN!

* chocolate coated almonds

* a sunny Saturday afternoon

* the SUPERmoon, perfectly designed by our SUPER Creator!

* Saturday pizza night with friends

* watching the St. Pat's day parade - SO MUCH FUN!

* teaching the Sunday school kids about thankfulness and learning the lesson myself

One Thousand Gifts #485-518
I'm linking my list to Ann Voskamp's blog A Holy Experience. If you'd like to join in with your own list of gratitude please visit Ann's blog.

Our first Balcony Girls!

A couple years ago I read about a concept called Balcony Girls from a blog I really like called the Reluctant Entertainer. Basically Balcony Girls is a group of young pre-teen or teen age girls and the idea is that they learn to build one another up, not tear others down.





When I read all of the blog posts about Balcony Girls I knew in my heart it was something I would like to do with my daughters and their friends. I remember very well from when I was younger that these are tough years for girls. And unfortunately girls can really be downright mean to one another. Now I'm not saying that my daughter and her friends were treating each other badly, but just that it's so important to teach girls the right way to be a friend.





I loved the idea of creating a group of girls and helping them see their friendships with each other as a strong bond that could withstand the tough times. I wanted them to grow in their relationships with the Lord as well as with each other. I want each of them to be a shining light for Christ in their schools.



I decided that I would do this group with my older daughter and a bunch of her friends this year, and maybe in a couple years do it again with my younger daughter and her friends. In our current group we have 2 homeschoolers and the rest attend public school. It's so cool to see the differences in each of these girls, the things they enjoy, the things they are passionate about, the different personalities - all brought together to create an amazing group of girls!



So, let's get right in to what we did.

The first lesson was about CARING.

Lesson goal: To become a caring girl and to understand the importance of building one another up, and not tearing each other down with our words and actions.

I had each of the girls introduce themselves and then stand up front and share something that they are into - such as swimming or singing or basketball or something like that. After each girl spoke the rest of us all cheered and clapped loudly so we could all feel how good it feels to have people encourage us and cheer us on.

Then we had some discussion time about how we have each experienced being put down or bullied at one time or another. We talked about how those situations made us feel and how we might handle them in the future. We also talked about times when we have been encouraged or built up by others and how that made us feel. It was a really neat conversation and I was pleasantly surprised at how open the girls were and that they really shared their hearts.

Then we took a break for pizza for dinner ...

As they sat around the table they decided to play the telephone game - it was so cute to watch them giggle and laugh and have so much fun with their girlfriends!

After pizza we went back to the living room for the rest of our lesson time. I remember as a young teen doing an exercise where we had a piece of paper taped on our back and every one had to go around and write one nice thing on your back. So I decided this would be the perfect activity to do as part of this lesson. Some of the girls barely knew each other but I encouraged them to still find at least one nice thing to say about each and every other girl in the room. It took a few minutes for them to go to each and every girl ...

Then we sat back down and everyone got to read all the nice things that were said about them. I LOVED the comments -- some were compliments on their looks like beautiful hair or pretty eyes - but many were about their character such as brave, kind, caring, sweet, happy, etc ... I encouraged the girls to tuck these papers away in a special place to remind themselves that they are special and wonderful girls and that they have a great group of girlfriends who think the world of them.

Next for a craft we painted canvases. I asked them to paint Balcony Girls on their canvas and then paint either words or pictures that would represent what we're all about - kindness, love, truth, etc. They spent a good amount of time on these and it was neat to see all the different ways they created their canvas. They took them home so they could frame them as a reminder of what it means to be a Balcony Girl.

Here is one of the paintings ...

At the end the girls went home with a folder to keep any Balcony Girls papers in. We talked about upcoming dates {I'm hoping to do this once per month.} And we reviewed our key verse which is 'Make the most of every opportunity. Be gracious in your speech. The goal is to bring out the best in others in a conversation, not put them down, not cut them out.' Colossians 4:4

All in all I think it was a great time for all the girls! I am really looking forward to our next get together!

If you'd like to learn more about Balcony Girls, check out Sandy's blog The Reluctant Entertainer. She provides an e-book for purchase which gives all the lesson plans for 8 Balcony Girls lessons. I bought the e-book and printed it all out so I would have it to use each month. I believe she is just about getting ready to release a second e-book with even more lessons too. So if you think this is something you'd like to do with a group of young girls you know go check it out!

It's Been an Outdoorsy kind of week

We are finally experiencing some signs of spring this week and I am SO happy! I determined a couple things going in to this week. One was that I wanted to get out and DO more. I wanted to go on some fun field trips and I wanted to enjoy the outdoors as much as we could. Two, if we wanted to do those things we were really going to need to organize our time wisely so that we could still get our school work done and not feel guilty when taking time off.

I made sure that I carefully planned our school stuff so that it would all work and it did! Yay! Good things happen when I use my time wisely! {Which if you remember, 'time' was one of my words this year and using it wisely was one of my goals!}

On Monday we took the girls to Mystic Village where they have a big duck pond. The girls always love going there to feed the ducks.

Then we went on a hike to a place nearby that we'd never been before. We looked up letterboxing online and found a letterbox on this hike. It's always so fun and rewarding when you FIND the letterbox! woohoo!

It was one of the rockiest places I've ever seen! There were thousands of huge boulders. We did lose the trail for a short time and I *might have* had a slight panic attack and *maybe* even visions of seeing ourselves on that show 'I shouldn't be alive' but thankfully my wonderful hubby helped us find our way back to the trail - whew! I was never so happy to see that blue marker painted on the trees!

We came upon this awesome rock formation - it really looked like it would just tip over but amazingly it didn't.

One thing I'm trying very hard to work on is being a 'yes' Mom. Some of you know what I'm talking about. So often I say NO simply because I don't want to deal with mess or don't want to take time to do things with the girls. I'll be honest, I'm selfish much of the time and it's not something I'm proud of. I'm trying really hard to put my girls and Bob ahead of my selfish desires and in doing that I'm able and even HAPPY to say 'yes' more and more to the girls.

One thing they always ask to do is go back in the woods behind our house and go to the stream. Some times I say no because I can't see the stream from the house and if I'm busy doing something in the house I can't go with them. But often I just don't *feel* like going out with them. {selfish, remember?} This week I decided to say yes. I got a pair of rain boots at Target on clearance this week and decided not only would I say yes, but that I would JOIN the girls for a fun adventure!

And guess what? It was really fun!!

Later in the week we went on another letterbox hunt, for another walk in the woods with Daddy and the puppy, to a park with friends and played basketball in the driveway as a family on Friday night after dinner. {And two fun field trips that I will blog about later}. I can't say enough how wonderful it felt to get outside and moving again. And being with my family, building these precious memories is priceless. When my girls are grown I don't want them to remember Mom as someone who sat in the house on the computer - I want them to remember me as a Mom who got my wellies on and tromped in the stream with them or who got out in the driveway to play HORSE instead of sitting inside doing housework.

It's been a great week. I pray that I will take what I learned this week and carry it into the next one and the next one and the next one .... =)