Birthday Update

Today was my birthday. Happy birthday, to me! Melinda might be wondering if I heckled any singers. More of that in a moment.

My dear friend Melinda sent me a birthday card, which I received a day or two ago. On the front were various things that the birthday gal might do when being serenaded with the birthday song. Once was avoid eye-contact and politely smile. Another was sing along with them and replace your name with "Me". My favorite one was heckle the singers! On the inside, she wrote that personally she would go with heckling the singers and wished me a happy birthday.

Getting to and from my birthday dinner is half the fun! We enjoyed seeing the city riding the People Mover around town. It was fun to see the boys see the looming buildings, seeing Canada across the river, and looking at all of the artwork in each station. Not to mention all of the new construction we saw. Can't wait to see how the city changes.

After we got to the restaurant, the Saganaki flames at various tables were more than disturbing to the boys. Then, we ordered a Saganaki, too. After our server flamed our cheese, he set it down on our table, still flaming! The boys were just about beside themselves at this point. The flames died down and my Dearest and I dug in. Ethan was hesitant to try it; Isaac flat out refused. They did end up trying it and lo and behold! They both enjoyed it and had fun looking for more Saganaki flames throughout the restaurant.

We all had too much to eat and enjoyed every bit of it! Dearest and I shared an Athenian Chicken breast stuffed with spinach and wrapped in phyllo dough and a fabulous dish of lamb shanks. As Rachael Ray would say, Yum-o! or Delish! The boys opted for less adventurous-fare and had hamburgers and fries.



As it turned out, we were too full for dessert so we passed on dessert at the restaurant. Dinner ended much later than we expected so we drove home and put boys to bed. My Dearest picked up some cheesecake (my fave!) and mint chocolate chip ice cream (Homemade brand, my fave ice cream ever!). As I was opening birthday gifts, he turns off the lights and there was a lit candle on my cheesecake. He sang to me and I must say, I contemplated heckling him. But, I just couldn't do it.

Book Sale Update

It worked! I ordered all of my wish list books and added one - Biblical Foundations for Manhood and Womanhood. Now, I just have to wait until the books get here!!

Do you remember the commercials for Mervyns? At least I think it was Mervyns. A woman anxiously awaits the store to open and is standing at the front door at 4 am opening and closing her hands saying, "Open, open, open". That's how I feel about waiting for UPS to deliver packages for me.

Lord, please grant me patience. NOW! ;-)

Book Sale!!

50 Toes was kind enough to post about a sale and can I tell you just how excited I am about it?? All of John Piper's books are on sale for $5, but only through the 28th. Today. HURRY over there.

I think these are the books I would like:

Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist
Don't Waste Your Life
Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism
Most of All, Jesus Loves You! (Children's board book)
Building Strong Families
When I Don't Desire God
Battling Unbelief

I skimmed Desiring God, but I think I should read it.

Editor's Note: You know, when I was learning about titles and how they should be underlined in what, second or third grade, I cared. A lot. Now with blogger, I just can't figure out how to underline titles, except if I copy and paste it from somewhere else. The italicized portions elude me as well. Even as I select the text and click on the handy little italicized "i" it won't change. Please forgive me for my titles being so whimsical. I really don't mean for them to be so.

June Updates...

Here are updates on my To Do List for June.

Homeschooling: We finished school in mid-June! YAY!!! I (and my Dearest and two boys) have all survived our first year of homeschooling! There were times I wondered how this would work, but God is so gracious. Ethan has learned to write cursive, tell time, do fractions, read better, count money and so much more! Isaac didn't have formal school, but we had art, math (counting), and phonics (at the fridge). Now, he's reading!! So excited about all of our successes. At the beginning of the month, I looked at Ethan's tests and figured out that he wasn't really learning anything that he didn't already know, I gave him tests every day instead of school lessons. If he already knows it, why not skip the tediousness of doing worksheets?? LOVE the flexibility of homeschooling!

Graduation parties: Congratulations to all of our friends who have graduated!

Ethan's birthday: Our boy is now seven years old. I can hardly believe that this is the same boy who had hiccups like crazy. In utero. This is the same boy who cried with every minute change of altitude when we held him. We couldn't sit. We had to stand. The same boy who said, "mama" (Mama) and "mama" (apple). We had a small birthday for him on his birthday and then a family party with grandparents and other relatives the Saturday afterwards. His requested menu was chili hot dogs, pasta salad, and carrot cake to eat. This is the first year he hasn't requested strawberries and blueberries. He had fun being with the relatives and opening his gifts.

My birthday is tomorrow (the 28th). This is the first year I will be home for my birthday. The past two years I was in Las Vegas and Salt Lake City for my stamping and scrapbooking company's convention. Convention has been moved to the end of July to better coordinate with the launch of our new catalogs so I will now be home for my birthdays. It's fun to be with my girlfriends for Convention and my birthday, but I'm looking forward to spending it with my boys. We're going out for dinner to one of my favorite Greek restaurants. I can't wait to see Ethan's and Isaac's faces when we have the Saganaki brought to our table and hear "Opa!". It'll be fun.

We usually go to our friends' farm on Independence Day, but this year their Independence Day celebration is on the 30th. They have quite a bit of land, many sheep, two or three border collies, and mulberry trees. We play bocce (on the lawn, not on a court), croquet, volleyball, and horseshoes. The owner does a sheep-herding demonstration using their border collie dogs (think Babe). Last year I took Dance Praise which was super fun and made me feel younger than I actually am.

That is June in a blog post. :-)

Unexpected Emotions

My boys are so different. My oldest is quiet, pensive, and a bit reserved. He doesn’t share his thoughts or emotions readily. My youngest seems to be quite the opposite. Don’t get me wrong, they are still young boys and can wreak havoc with the best of them. However, with the boys’ “base personality,” being what they are, I encountered something today I wasn’t expecting at all.

We went to order some of our curriculum today. We picked up my Dearest from work and went to the curriculum display. After we were done, we dropped off my Dearest back at work and that’s when it happened.

I realized my oldest son was crying as my Dearest got out of the car to go back into the office. He didn’t realize that his dad was going to have to go back to work. The image of big, fat, tears rolling down my son’s cheeks, hearing his sniffling and bravely trying to hold back his whimpers as we left my Dearest at work was enough to make me cry on the way home, too. Call me a sympathetic-crier.

Daydreams and Forests

I daydream about life in the big city (pick one: Chicago, LA, NYC), having chic lunches, going to hotspots in the evenings, closing impressive deals (what kind, who knows), coming home to a place that is immaculate, and being child-free.

I daydream about going back to work. I daydream about going back to school. I daydream about my alter-ego-self in a job doing something meaningful, something with results that are tangible and quantifiable.

The reality is I am in the forest of motherhood. Sometimes, I am entrenched so deeply I cannot see the forest at all. All I see are trees. Everywhere I look. There’s no sky, no sunlight. I feel as though I will be the mother of two boys, ages almost 7 and 5 ½. FOREVER.

Seven years ago, I was pregnant with Ethan. My Dearest and I were living in an apartment. I was soaking my tootsies in the corner of the pool and declared to my Dearest that I could “launch myself over to the adjacent corner using the handrail.” He laughed and said, “Honey, I’m not sure I like any sentence with you and ‘launch’ in it.” In my mind, I still weighed x number of pounds and my belly had grown “a bit.” Did I mention I was fully-clothed, almost due to give birth, and was sitting on the edge of the deep-end? I sure did ‘launch’ myself over to the other side of the handrail, skimmed my bottom along the surface of the pool and was feeling triumphant. Thankfully, no one was near the pool.

That was seven years ago. I have moved through the forest; even though it seems that each and every tree looks identical. God is gracious and merciful. He sees us through every circumstance in our life; He has planned every detail. I know He’s guiding my way through this forest. Without Him, I’d be completely lost.

Personal Policies Meme

I was tagged by 50 Toes for this meme. Here are some of my Personal Policies, "rules" for our family. Actually, these may be more like my quirks and idiosyncrasies. :-) Here we go!

1. We always buckle up before we drive. My father worked for a car company and did test research on seat belt usage. When I was growing up, we were one of the few families I knew of that buckled up before seat belt usage was regulated in Michigan.
2. The toilet paper must be in the holder a certain way. Paper over the top!
3. After watching a movie on DVD, the Special Features are next. I want to see the interviews, how they made the movie, bloopers, and deleted scenes.
4. We pray before meals and sometimes, snacks, too. The boys take turns praying at breakfast and lunch (and sometimes they both want to pray for the same meal!), my Dearest usually prays for dinner.
5. We pray together as a family before bedtime, every night, with or without guests at our home. If we have guests, it's in the boys' room, if not the location varies. After praying, we give hugs and kisses. Every. Night. (Okay, there are exceptions - my date night with my Dearest (then, they do the routine with GramGram or whichever Christian gal we have watching them) or if we get home late and the boys have fallen asleep in the car (late, late nights usually) or if I have a party.)
6. I cannot fall asleep for the night knowing someone is awake. What is going to happen as my children get older??!
7. All of the clothes on hangers must face the same way - shirts all "face me" when the hanger hook is on the left. (Leftover from my dry-cleaning job when I was 16.) The only exception is my Dearest's clothes. I leave his hanging-method alone.
   
8. All shoes come off when you enter our home. Let's face it - I'm Korean enough that we do this. More on this in another post, perhaps another day.
9. I shower first thing in the morning. If I don't shower first thing in the morning, I feel like nothing gets done.
10. In my pantry, my goods are arranged by type - all of my tomato products (diced, sauce, paste, etc) are together. All of the beans are together, soups are together, spices, etc. (Leftover from stocking shelves when I was 15.) It does make grocery lists easier to compile when you can see what you actually need.
    
11. My scrapbooking cardstock is arranged alphabetically. Nothing else in my home is alphabetically arranged.
    
12. I only use my scrapbooking company's products when I scrapbook or make cards. This way I can show everything I make and not worry about promoting other companies products. If I show it, they will most likely buy it.

So there you have it! Of course, this list isn't all inclusive, it's just the tip of the iceberg of what I wanted to share or could come up with spur of the moment. This meme is open to anyone who reads this blog - leave me a comment so I know you're playing along, too. If you don't blog, please leave me a comment with your Policies.

What are you?

ESFJ - "Seller". Most sociable of all types. Nurturer of harmony. Outstanding host or hostesses. 12.3% of total population.

Free Jung Word Test (similar to Myers-Briggs)
personality tests by similarminds.com

Okay, of the umpteen number of personality tests out there, should this one be more accurate than most? Who knows, but it was fun to take and didn't take very long.

Thanks to Rocks In My Dryer!

This June

It's June. Yes, it's been June for a few days now. It is the start of a somewhat busy month. Here's a peek of what this month holds for us:

• Finish school - we're looking to finish a few days before Ethan's birthday. This is what happens when you take, ahem, *a few* extra days off in December.
• Open Houses galore for high school graduates
• Ground-breaking Anniversary for our church (building is due to be finished in October)
  
• End of the Year Homeschool Picnic
• Order curricula for next year
  
• Ethan's birthday is this month. With gifts, he's fairly easy-going. He isn't one of those, "I want it all!" kids. At the same time, I kind-of wish he was only because it's hard to tell relatives what he would like for his birthday if he only comes up with one item! So far, it's The King from Cars.
  
• My birthday is this month, too!
  

So there are not as many items as I thought. I think it just seems like there are so many more items because we're not done with school yet.