December at Our House

It’s been a peaceful December for our family so far. We’ve been having some lighthearted, affordable fun through our new family tradition, the advent calendar…

I have always wanted an advent calendar, and for the past few months, I have been scouring Pinterest for cheap, easy ways to make one. But then I found this one at Michaels on Black Friday. I used a couple of coupons and got it for about $12. Then Ryley and I spent an afternoon painting it how we wanted it.

I’m pretty happy with how it turned out! I think the little drawers are adorable. On to the fun….

So Day 1 was meeting our friends at the Plains Conservation Center for “Christmas in the Soddies”….

The girls had to wear bonnets, of course!

It was such a fun morning with good friends!

On Day 3, we made special hot chocolate with “cookie-cuttered” whipped cream:

It didn’t turn out quite as well as the pictures on Pinterest implied! But it was still fun….and delicious!

On Day 6, Ryley performed with the choir in her school’s winter concert:

The guy in the blue baseball cap really irritated me. As did the families who were talking. I even shushed a few of the parents around us.

On Day 7, we made candy cane milkshakes! They were delicious!

And on Day 8, we drove up to Georgetown for their annual Christmas Market. I have wanted to go for several years. What a hit! So much fun, albeit chilly!

I love this picture:

What a fun day!!!!

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I have really been working hard at becoming a nicer person this Christmas season. I get so easily angered and annoyed…by traffic, by co-workers, by customers, by people’s Facebook posts, even by my own daughter sometimes….  :-(

I seem to have a very short fuse these days. I know that I can come across as snippy and unfriendly. Honestly? Sometimes people make me soooo mad! Anger flares up in me like fire before I think about what I’m doing or saying, and I spit out mean words like nasty venom. It’s made me an extremely unpleasant parent, spouse, co-worker, etc.

So I am trying to be friendlier and more proactive in showing Christ’s love. Since making this resolution, I , of course, have found soooo many reasons to be angry/hurt/irritated by different situations.  I’ve actually had a lot of awkward issues come up in the last couple of weeks where I felt extremely vulnerable…like I was being walked on, and though I knew I needed to, I felt guilty for standing up for myself. I hate confrontation soooo much. I had to dig really deep to find my PR skills and ask God to give me grace and wisdom with each situation so that I could respond firmly, yet in love, not in anger.

But it all comes from a place of ugliness in my own heart. I am coming face-to-face with my own need for Jesus. What is standing in the way of His light shining through me? Why am I so afraid of becoming vulnerable with people? It’s as if I shut them down before they get too close.

I know these are disjointed thoughts, but it’s where I’m at. I also know it’s not possible in my own strength; only Jesus can diffuse my anger and replace it with His peace.

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On a good note, the last story I wrote for Good Catch Publishing won their monthly story award! I’m so excited that they liked it. I wrote it for an amazing lady in Kodiak, Alaska, and it’s about how God healed her after having two abortions.

If you’re interested, you can read it here:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Good-Catch-Publishing/91586751389?ref=ts&fref=ts#!/notes/good-catch-publishing/december-catch-of-the-month-giving-up-the-helm/10151398303653268

 

God is so good. I hope you’re all having a pleasant December. Thank God for Jesus, the absolute greatest gift of all! :-)

The Next Thing

A friend once asked me if there has ever been a “bad year” in our marriage….a year where everything that possibly could go wrong, did. At that point, when she asked me, 2008 was undoubtedly the winner.

Then, there was the last six months. I don’t know if 2012 has been harder than 2008, but it certainly hasn’t been a piece of cake, for so many various reasons. I don’t know how many blog posts I have started in the last month and have given up because they sounded too much like a pity party. I was afraid that my honesty about things would only serve to drag others down. And while I want honesty in my writing, I don’t want it to be depressing. And for some reason I just couldn’t shake the woeful tone. Everyone goes through their own crap; nobody is asking to share ours. :-)

So, at church on Sunday, I felt like God was telling me that the time of grief is over and that we need to get ready for the next thing. Now, I have no idea what that means… “the next thing.” But it excites me. And scares me. ;-) And deep down, I know it will be good.

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Here are some quick Ryley Quotes:

At my birthday dinner, we tried a new restaurant, which looked large from the outside. As we parked the car….

“I’m getting excited! I love big restaurants!” she said. “Then you have to ‘navigate’ your way to the restroom, and sometimes you even need a map!”

***

Ryley has developed an obsession with watching Bob Ross, the beloved artist from the 1980s show “Joy of Painting.” We only get one show a week on PBS, so we have to carefully portion the viewing pleasure. After I informed her I would be picking her up from school one day, I also told her that if she finished all her homework by a good time, maybe we could watch Bob Ross.

“Maybe you can come get me early so we can have more Bob Ross time!”

She was completely serious.

***

On our way home from school one day, Ryley quite giddily shared that a boy in her class had said she was funny, which he said made her “so cute.”

“And I thought, ‘Oh no! Now my daddy has to kill you!’”

Ryan, of course, is always “joking” that when it’s time for Ryley to date young men, he will scare them off with his gun. :-)

***

Ryley often imagines other realities, quite vividly and wistfully. During Hurricane Sandy…

“If Hurricane Sandy came to Colorado, would we play games and stuff, just to keep our spirits up?”

“Hurricane Sandy is not coming to Colorado.”

“I know, but if it did…”

And then…

“If we had to evacuate, would you let us take Juliet?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, thank you!” And then she hugged me tightly, as if I had just literally saved our dog from certain death.

***

“When was the first time you ever met Daddy?”

“Sadly, I don’t remember the first time.”

“Well, did you bump into him in the hallway and drop your school books?”

If only it were that “romantic.” :-)

***

“I would never name my son DJ or TJ or any type of initial. People named DJ tend to become rappers, and it would be dorky for me to be the mom of a rapper. And if they were a business person? Oh my gosh! ‘This is All in One Contractors; my name is DJ. How can I help you?’ That would be dorky. Nobody would want to hire them. President DJ???”

***

Snapshots of October/November…

Ryley’s Halloween costume (Annabeth from the Percy Jackson books). She was just getting over a week and a half of strep throat, so we didn’t do anything…just passed out candy to trick-or-treaters at our door. I don’t think anybody recognized her costume, but she didn’t care. :-)

Ryan helps a little girl in our Sunday School class fill a shoebox for Operation Christmas Child. The kids’ support was overwhelming. They filled 22 boxes!

We went to my grandma’s house in Nebraska for a quick 28-hour Thanksgiving trip. Ryley was able to finish sewing her baby quilt on Honey’s fancy-schmancy machine…

And to usher in the Christmas season….

 

And that was November. Now on to the next thing. :-)

Where, Oh Where, Did October Go?

It’s been one of those months. This blog post could literally go any direction right now, but I am going to try hard to tether it in and stay focused. :-)

I think the theme of this post will be “It could have been a whole lot worse.”

Within the course of a week:

• Our old, rotting aspen tree on the side of our garage fell onto our van in the middle of one of my piano lessons. The damage to the van was minimal, though annoying. It could have been a whole lot worse. Ryan channeled his inner lumberjack and chopped the entire dead tree into a pile of firewood. :-)
• We were rear-ended on our way to school. It was not my fault by any means, and the guy actually had insurance, which I would not have guessed by looking at him. The entire back gate of the Odyssey has to be replaced; repairs will take place next week. Most importantly, Ryley and I were not hurt. It could have been a whole lot worse.
• On my way home from picking up our dog from the vet, she pooped in five places throughout our van. Poor Juliet felt bad; she had tried to tell me, and I wasn’t picking up on the cues. Plus, I was alone in the van, in heavy traffic, and there was not really a place to stop anyway. So I rolled down the windows for fresh air and prayed that she didn’t step in it. She didn’t. And it was mostly solid. It could have been a whole lot worse.

At this point, I realized we needed to pray over our van. ;-)

• Ryan also got strep throat that week. He got on antibiotics quickly, and by pure necessity and adrenalin, he didn’t miss a single day of work. Ryley and I downed Emergen-C packets and Wellness Formula and managed to stay healthy through the thick of it. It could have been a whole lot worse!
• Ryley is under the weather right now. Sore throat, slight fever, and squeaky little voice. But she’s going to be fine. What’s a little cold? It could be so much worse. And she’s here, our very own girl….not lost or stolen or hurt like that heartbreaking story of little Jessica Ridgeway, whose pictures remind me so much of Ryley.

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Ryley had Friday off of school, so I decided to take her to Anderson Farms, a pumpkin patch where we went several times when Ryley was little (ages 1 to 4, maybe?). In recent years, we’ve scaled back our pumpkin picking experience to our local nursery’s fall festival, which we love, and she always has a lot of fun. But I wanted to surprise her with the real pumpkin patch this time.

As it turns out, she has no memory of ever having been there before! She didn’t know we got to pick the pumpkins from a real pumpkin field!

I still think it’s so interesting that you give your children experiences that you think they will always remember and appreciate, but years go by, and they just don’t remember. So you get to do it again and re-live the wonder and joy of the experience like it’s the first time all over again. ;-)

Since this is starting to happen more and more in our parenting journey, I’ve begun asking myself what the point is of going fun places when they’re too little to remember. That sounds like a stupid question; of course, it’s always good to have fun with your kids at every age. :-) But when you get to age nine, and you think of all the time and money you’ve spent on these experiences that she doesn’t recall…. Well, I guess the real point was that all those fun things still contributed to the overall feeling of stability and happiness that will shape who she is as a person. We were setting a precedent for the feelings of wonderment and joy and an appreciation for fun as a family. Right? ;-) Anyway….

I had forgotten how exhausting corn mazes are! We actually did get lost and had to cut through some corn to get out.

We spent a LOT of time feeding goats. I am sparing you additional pictures.

Ryley thought this sign was hilarious, but she took it too literally. She was hoping I would leave her unattended for a while so somebody would actually give her a free puppy.

It was a perfect day! Ryley loved it.

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We also went to visit my grandma in Nebraska a couple of weekends ago. It was a really relaxing trip!

Honey and Ryley sewed a baby blanket…

and baked cookies…

We love spending time with Honey! :-)

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We tackled our home office and reorganized it into a Broncos room/office for Ryan. It had been a mess for a couple of years, so we finally just dug in. It took two weekends, but it’s one of my favorite rooms in the house now. Maybe it will motivate me to do the guest room and the garage. :-)

There’s no “before” picture (you’re welcome), but that filing cabinet previously held cell phone manuals from 2004 and bills dating back to 1999. Now it holds my newly organized collection of piano books, among other things. Yay!

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And just for fun…

They didn’t know I was taking their picture. :-)

I’m realizing there was a lot of “orange” in this post.

But, it could have been a whole lot worse.

Enjoy. :-)

Raising Ryley

Someday when Ryley is an adult, I will compile all my blog posts for her, and she can read through her childhood from her mother’s perspective. She may not like everything I’ve shared over the years, but it is what it is, I suppose. ;-) Regardless, it will be my gift to her.

Hopefully, more than anything, she’ll get a glimpse of how crazy we are about her. Of course I’ve heard that love multiplies and a mother’s capacity to love increases with every child she has, and I’m sure that’s very true. But sometimes I feel like we have enough love for a whole family of children, and Ryley gets the brunt of it. She is the focal point, and I’m sure it’s a bit smothering to her at times. :-)

She’s certainly not nearly as cuddly as we would like her to be. I would love for her to sit down next to me on the couch, her nine-year-old gangly legs curled up under her as she leans in to my side, watching TV. But it’s just not going to happen.  She’s too busy doing her “Ryley thing,” whatever that means from day to day. She’s always been on the move.

Even before she was born, Ryan and I have played a silly little game called “Joy’s Baby/Ryan’s Baby,” wherein we have tried to identify which of us she takes after….

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I’ve started keeping a list in my phone of words that Ryley mispronounces in everyday conversation because she has only ever read them in books. This week’s choices?

• Cooperate (pronounced Coop-er-ate)
• Determined (pronounced “DEE-ter-mind” with a long I in mind)
• Resume (pronounced “Resoom” with a soft S)

The thing is, she is so stubborn that she rarely allows us to correct her pronunciations without a fight.

“Well, that’s how I’m going to pronounce it.”

That’s Ryan’s baby. In every way.

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She sits there in our living room armchair, crisscross applesauce, playing the latest Taylor Swift song on her I-Pod, line by line, and writing down the words. Line. By. Line. Stop. Write. Play. Stop. Write. Play. Then when all the words are written down, she plays the song again and sings along with Taylor. Over and over and over again.

That’s Joy’s baby.

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She plays the Laura Ingalls-era penny whistle my mom gave her to the beat of Morse Code because she saw a chart of it in one of her books. “What am I saying?” she asks, then delves into the beat via her whistle.

Toot. Toot. Tooooooooot. Toot. Tooooooooot.

That’s Ryan’s baby.

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The other day Ryley showed me a paragraph she had written for school, and I noticed the words “its” and it’s” were each used within the paragraph, and they were used/punctuated correctly both times. Just to make sure it wasn’t a fluke, I pointed to the word “its” and asked why she didn’t include an apostrophe. Ryley calmly re-read the sentence, substituting the word “its” with the phrase “it is.” She then looked at me expectantly, as if she wanted me to draw my own conclusion for why there should be no apostrophe.

That’s Joy’s baby.

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She has an obsession with the German language. Both Ryan and I took German in college, so we know enough to understand basic conversation, though we’re not fluent by any means. Ryley read a book this summer where a German character was introduced via the following conversation:

“Ist das Amerika?”

“Ja. Das ist Amerika. Wilkommen, Wilhelm. Wilkommen!”

Ryley’s impression of this conversation, read or recited to us probably 30-plus times this summer – the combo of her exaggerated accent and lilting voice – leaves us laughing every time.

A couple of nights ago, she used the German translation app on her I-Pod to help her write a note to me in German, asking me for permission for something. She clearly thinks I know more than I actually do. I don’t know why she thought it was better for the request to be made in German, except that she was trying to butter me up. And um, it worked. She got what she wanted.

Um, Joy’s baby. ;-)

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She asked Ryan if she could download an app of a game involving the Periodic Table of the Elements.

No question. Definitely Ryan’s baby.

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She names her stuffed animals, usernames, and passwords after favorite characters in books and movies. That is, I think, a little bit of both of us: She likes to name everything, like me, but she uses book characters, like Ryan.

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I have been teaching Ryley piano for four and a half years, since she was four years old, before she could even really read. She’s got talent, she enjoys it, and it comes naturally to her, but we honestly haven’t progressed very far. The moment it gets a little too hard, she gets impatient with herself and loses her temper with me. I have threatened to send her to a new piano teacher probably five times in the last year. Then I back off because I don’t want her to hate it. I want her interest to lead us;  I didn’t start taking lessons until I was nine anyway.

But every year before my Christmas recital, she renews her desire to learn/practice in the interest of playing in the recital. She’s competitive, and she couldn’t stand for a recital to commence without her involvement.

The musicality? Joy’s baby.

The stubbornness? The impatience? The competitiveness, even? Ryan’s baby. :-)

The desire to perform? ALL HER.

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All these little parts of her personality -- little bits of me, little bits of Ryan, and tons of bits that are all her very own – all combine to make our Ryley girl.

Between the quasi science projects going on at any given point in our kitchen or her bedroom floor,

the doll clothes she made with packing tape and scraps of material before she had a sewing machine, and the shoebox-turned mailbox sitting in the hallway outside her bedroom door, Ryley’s mind is always working, and life with her is always exciting. Her creativity knows no bounds.

She makes no apologies for her nerdiness; she comes by it honestly and naturally. She is 100 percent completely herself.

And we love her for it. :-)