"I think telling the truth is a means of grace to others.
I think sharing our weaknesses shows that God's grace is sufficient, that His
power is made perfect in weakness.
It is the opposite of "mommy porn," which tells us the lie that you CAN do it all, you can be self-sufficient and do everything perfectly. That lie can become an idol.
The truth - the broken moments mixed with joyful moments mixed with the details of our everyday lives - gives glory to our Creator and Sustainer. "
So here is some bare naked truth: My name means "full of grace." Sometimes I feel like this blog is another way for me to keep up with the Jones, like I can only report the good or the funny or the positive stories of my life. And other times I want to be real. I feel fine admitting that I found a flea on my child or that sometimes my kids say naughty words (I edited that post a day after I posted it, so if you were quick, you got the full story. If you missed it, I will never tell what happened again!). Sometimes people ask me how I "do it all." And I always say, "I don't." That is why I copied the above text for today's post. If being imperfect brings glory to God, sing Hallelujah!On Greening my Cleaning: I found that vinegar does indeed do a wonderful job cleaning glass. The smell does not stick around for very long either, which is something I wanted to avoid. I don't like the smell of vinegar! In fact, IJ said, "Wow, Mom! This door is so clean I can't even see it!" referring to our sliding glass door that was covered in dog nose and hand prints. What I didn't know (and readers write this down) if you are experiencing fruit flies, vinegar is NOT a good cleaner to use. I cleaned the bathroom mirror and returned to find fruit flies crawling all over the mirror! Duh! Fruit flies are attracted to decomposing fruit...which is how some vinegar is made! I should have known! I mean, I have an apple cider vinegar trap in the kitchen! Back to the blue stuff for now... Greening will have to wait.
This is a difficult time of year for our family because M is in the field all day every day and we never see him. When we do see him, he is very tired. When he is recovered, he needs to go down to Twin Firs to take care of our dying fruit orchard. So a lot of his household chores fall on me. For example, today I made sure all the garbage was on the curb for garbage day. I had to replace the back seat in my van all by myself, which I messed up on and now the seat is stuck. S knocked a plant over watching me, and learned the joy of vacuuming. With everything I have to do, when will I have time to homeschool?Only four weeks into our "school year" and we are already changing into a life-learning mode. We did three solid weeks of scheduled curriculum, but now we are taking a break to evaluate what is working, what isn't, and how we can change it. IJ is a great reader and is reading voraciously on his own. He has read his entire Beginner's Bible and has moved up to the Picture Bible (a comic book version). He has read every easy reader in the house. But he hates the Language Arts that goes along with his reading level. And honestly, it is too hard for a kid his age. Writing compound sentences and identifying conjunctions at six years old? I don't think so! So we are going back down to the previous year's curriculum and doing all the story writing we skipped last year. My goal is to have him love learning, not dread it. And S doesn't read yet, but he loves doing the workbooks for his language arts. And for a kid who acts like he doesn't listen, he sure gets a lot from our book themes. Last week's pirate theme inspired him to tell his grandad that when he grew up he "wanted to be a pirate so he could steal people's money!"
