Due to my crazy schedule this week and having almost zero mental energy left to come up with things you'd like to read, I asked a friend of mine to guest blog for you today! This is Brooke (and her beautiful family!). She blogs over at Here's To You Mrs. Robinson. When I was thinking of asking someone to guest blog, she was my best and easiest choice. I love reading her insights and her funny stories about marriage and raising kids. Thank you, Brooke, for once again making us think and laugh with this guest blog! My Picket Fence
I've only been married for 8 years. So I'm aware that I'm not an expert on marriage, but I've seen many couples that have gotten married after me and are no longer together. I've learned a lot so far that I'd like to share and, hopefully, it will be useful to someone. Here are 8 marriage lessons I've learned in 8 years: 1) Take time out for yourselves. Lives get so busy with kids and jobs and church that it's important to go on dates. At least once a month. It doesn't have to cost a lot of money... drive around a look at Christmas lights or grab a cup of coffee or dessert somewhere. 2) It's not all about me. It's 100% about the other person, and the minute I begin to think that it's 1% about me, I get selfish. 3) It's important to be on the same page with everything! If you aren't on the same page about things like finances and the way to discipline kids it makes life hard. Matt and I sit down once a month and write a budget. The #1 thing couples argue about is money, we very rarely argue about money. Because at the beginning of each month, we've already made money decisions together and know how everything is going to be spent. 4) Never talk bad about your spouse... ever. Sometimes for me as a woman, this is hard. This is what women do, right? Complain to their girlfriends about their spouse? What would I have to talk to my friends about? But I've learned that there are many things to talk about. Like, how my daughter threw up all over Old Navy on black friday or that my son asked me why the Walmart greeter was so different or how my grandma with dementia introduced herself to me 49 times during thanksgiving dinner. There are always things to talk about. :) 5) Don't compare yourself to other couples. Steven Furtick says "Don't compare your behind the scenes with everyone else's highlight reel." I love this quote. It's easy to think that others are doing well when you see them in public... their kids are well-behaved and well-dressed, they drive a nice car. But you have no clue what is going on behind the scenes. Kelle Hampton says, "Because, once a long time ago, I had a white picket fence, but it fell down. And while I didn't choose the crazy colored one that was erected in it's place, I had grown to love it. I wouldn't change it for anything in the world, and if there's one thing I've learned it's that you can never ever go wrong with vibrant color." This makes me think about my picket fence in my back yard... it's old and falling apart. It hasn't been well-maintained and is in desperate need of repair. Recently, Warrick pulled a board off of it. I feel like this is a great analogy to go along with marriage. If I don't maintain my marriage, it will fall apart and need serious maintenance. But if I take care of it daily, it will be strong and withstand the storms of life. 6) Listen (and write it down if necessary)! I am a bad listener, I would like to blame it on kids who distract me, but I think I've always been a bad listener. There have been so many times that Matt will say something like, "Remember, I have a meeting tonight and won't be home for dinner." And I am baffled...I just put dinner in the crockpot. Well, he's told me close to 7 times throughout the week, but I don't listen. Now when he tells me things, I write it down. 7) Be in God's word daily. The only way I can be a great wife is if I'm in a close relationship with God. Every time I stray or slack off on my time with God, I'm a bad wife. It's inevitable. 8) Communicate! There have been times in our marriage that I'm mad about something that Matt had no clue about. When we finally discuss it, he says, "Why didn't you just tell me that was bothering you?" I would love my husband to be a mind-reader, but unfortunately, he is not. So I have to clue him in to what I'm thinking :) Couples aren't married for a lifetime because it was easy and perfect all the time. They are together because they worked hard and put God first. My husband is amazing, much more so than me and I am blessed to be on this journey with him. Now if only he would fix our fence....
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I'm still here! I didn't forget about posting. It's just been a crazy week for us here. We're getting ready for out of town company AND finishing the living room AND doing a few minor projects in the kitchen AND we just decided we'll be painting the girls bedroom when my parents get here, and I've got these terrible (but very cute) wall decals that aren't as removable as they claim.
Anyways, I haven't forgotten about the blog! I'm hoping to have a few surprises for the rest of the week. Stay tuned! I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend! I know we did. We celebrated with Aaron's family and then I shopped till I dropped! I planned to blog on Friday but never found the chance! Well, Thanksgiving is over and that means Christmas! And at our house, that means family visiting from out of town! Because of schedules, we're celebrating Christmas with my parents and sister and her family this weekend. I'm also excited because my parents have been storing our Christmas decorations and I've really been wanting to decorate. On Thursday, we will finally! Because of family coming in, I only planned 3 meals for this week. It was a very easy plan. Emmy asked for one, Aaron asked for one and suggested the other. Thursday and through the weekend we'll plan with my mom when she gets here. Monday- Spaghetti. Emmy's been asking and asking for it and I've been out of spaghetti noodles. So, tonight I finally got some. So finally Emmy will get her spaghetti. Tuesday- Green Beans, Sausage, and Potatoes. This is one of Aaron's favorite meals. And I love it for 2 reasons (beside the fact that it tastes good!) #1- it's easy. It's cooked in the crock pot. And #2- it's quite possibly the easiest recipe I fix. Wednesday- Sausage and cheese omlettes. We love breakfast for dinner and it's been a while since we've had it. Plus, for some reason I've got 3 dozen eggs in the fridge. So, omlettes it is. Ok, so a little bit of a Holiday and Weekend Recap in pictures.... #1- Getting back into a bit of a routine. I'm working on a bible study with a friend and seriously folks, this is one of the best studies I've done so far. It's called No Other Gods by Kelly Minter. #2- I've been able to be in my happy place some this weekend. I've been working on some crafts and projects for the living room redo, and a few small things for the kitchen. #3- Yesterday was the Hubs birthday. The girls insisted on having a tea party with him yesterday morning to celebrate! Well folks, we're getting closer on the living room. The truth is that right now, our furniture is in layaway, and it probably will be for quite a while. So a big living room reveal will be a long way off, because our ugly furniture just won't do this room justice. So, I'll give sneak peaks here and there as we get things put together. I'll post a few more sneak peak pics as we get stuff done. Have a happy Monday!
For the first 10 years of my life, Thanksgiving and Christmas were exactly the same. We traveled to North Carolina to celebrate Thanksgiving with my Dad's side of the family. Then about a week before Christmas, a big group of women from my family would get together and bake as many cookies and brownies and candies and all things sweet as we could in a 12 hr period. School would get out, I'd have a great time enjoying that freedom.
On Christmas Eve, our stockings would appear under the tree right before our big night of celebration began. After enjoying our stocking loot, we'd head out to my Aunt E's and Papa Cliff's house (my dad's sister and bro in law) where my dad's immediate family would get together and we'd eat and open gifts. And most of the time it included some cheesy 3 person Christmas pagent put on by my cousins and I. After we were done with that Christmas celebration, we'd head out to meet my mom's side of the family, which happened to be much more extensive. We'd play games, eat some more, open gifts. And I do remember a Christmas show or two during these parties as well. We'd head home late at night on Christmas Eve then wake up in the morning and open gifts as a family. Then the feast preperation would begin. We always had family over. There was turkey, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, rolls, corn, pound cake, pie, and cookies. Oh man... we would EAT! And every year it was like that. It was exactly like that long enough into my life that I remember starting to feel a little sense of loss when things started changing. When I had my own children I really struggled with wanting to create tradition for them. I wanted them to have the same type of happiness I had knowing exactly what was going to happen during the Christmas season. And I wanted it to be exactly like what I had growing up. But I've come to realize this.... it wasn't the schedule that created the happiness- it was the people. It was the love. It was the family. Don't get caught up in making a routine and finding happiness in that. Don't get frustrated when things don't happen exactly like you want them to. Don't feel dissapointed when tradition isn't exactly like what you hoped. Instead, find ways to love others in a new way. Think of a way to serve with your family this year. It's funny how as an adult, I see the value in things I did as a kid that I didn't like doing. When I was young, every year our kids group at church would go sing Christmas songs at a retirement home around the corner from our church. I'll be honest and say that it was NOT my favorite thing to do. But now, as an adult I know that maybe that was the only Christmas gift some of those folks got. This year, pass that message onto your family. I got so caught up in making my children happy by doing things for them that I lost sight of the fact that doing things for others would make me AND my kids happy too (even if they don't understand it now). There's always ways to serve around the holidays. I challenge you to find something that everyone in your family can take part in, even if it's as small as donating toys. Nothing small is too small! Yay!! It's Thanksgiving week! I love the holidays! And I love that my meal plan for this week was rather short. I planned Mon- Wed and that's it. I did my grocery shopping last week, so I most of what I'm cooking this week is from the pantry. As usual, recipes are linked to my recipes page. Monday- Chicken N Biscuits. Easy peasy. And my kids eat them. Tuesday- Spaghetti. Don't really need much explination for this. Wednesday- French Onion Burgers. Always a favorite in our house. Thursday of course is Thanksgiving, which we're celebrating with Hubs family. I'm making cheesecake for that. Friday I didn't plan anything. Not sure what the plans are for this day yet so we'll probably just order in or eat out. And Saturday is Hubs 30th birthday celebration dinner! Some people know this about me, but if you don't, I'll put it out there. Music is a big thing for me. I played a few instruments (not well) in jr. high and high school and I'm not musically inclined in the way of acutally playing it. I love to sing and that's about all I do. But I listen to music constantly. I listen to all types of it. Normally, I wake up in the morning, feed my kids breakfast and music goes on. Sometimes it's on all day. It wouldn't be uncommon to find the girls and I having a dance party in our kitchen on any given day. Over the last few days there's been one song in particular that I find myself listening to more often than most others. Sometimes on repeat. I wanted to share it with you today in hopes that maybe it would bless you as much as it has blessed me. I wanted to see if I could find the music video, and there wasn't one. I'm not going to upload just the song, so you'll get the lyrics instead. Which is the important part anyways.... Times by Tenth Avenue North
I purposely listed the lyrics in 2 columns because I wanted you to be able to see how the song is written. It's written as a call out to God. It's someone reaching out to God and God's response to that person. I believe 100% that the Bible is God's written word to us. But I also believe that God has blessed some very talented song writers and speaks through them as well. I know He's been using this song to speak to me almost hourly the last few days! I hope that maybe sometimes the truth of this song will bless you too! Lyrics posted here. An end to another week. I'm actually pretty excited about next week starting. I enjoy the holiday season so much. I'm excited to spend Thanksgiving with family and kick off the Christmas season. And, to be honest, I'm pretty excited about Black Friday Shopping. Last year I headed out at 8pm and got home sometime around 8 am. But I loved every minute of it. I love shopping. And I think it's a great opportunity to #1 save some money on Christmas shopping, but #2 Be a good Christlike example in a situation where we hear so much about fighting and arguing and so on. I saw this pin on pinterest and I had to chuckle... Let it be known that I've never trampled anyone for a sale! Pinned here. Well, onto the Top 5 for this week... 1. Number 1 has to be Emmy's Thanksgiving program. She did such a good job singing and I was super impressed with her teacher being able to get her to actually put face paint and a feathered headband on! 2. My living room is painted! I love it. It's such a nice change. It really does feel like a totally different space. 3. Last night the girls and I made biscuit pizzas for dinner. It wasn't on the menu until today, but it just sounded good last night. I realized as I was pulling all the ingredients out of the fridge that I had very little mozzarella cheese. Oh well, we used cheddar and american instead and they were still great. 4. Due to the pink eye that's been making it's way through our house, I've been able to spend lots of time at home with the girls this week. Emmy didn't go to school on Tuesday so we've had 3 whole days of hangout time. It is safe to say that I no longer have a baby. Macie is now fully toddler and she surprises me every day with her growing awareness. I've convinced she's known how to talk for a long time, she just decided not to until about a month ago. And Emmy's imagination is so active she cracks me up. My girls are definitely the best 2 daily companions. It makes me sad to think that some day very soon I won't have this time with them.
5. This one is going to be somewhat abstract... but I'm thankful for change. Even if it's hard. It's a continual reminder that I'm alive and God has given me another day. The last few weeks have been difficult, but God is faithful. And I know that in a perfect world situations and circumstances could be changed with the snap of a finger. But, if that were the case every time, we'd never learn things about God, ourselves, and each other. Have a good weekend! ...that tells you to take the stroller in! Today was Emmy's Thanksgiving program at school. I got there right on time, but had an internal struggle on whether or not to pull the stroller out and risk waking the sleeping Macie. I knew we'd be eating a Thanksgiving dinner and I knew Emmy would be singing. And I knew that Aaron was planning on coming but was going to be late. Well, I didn't listen to that little voice. I carried the sleeping Macie in only to have 2 hours of 2 kids on 1 mommy chaos ensue. I apologize to those other parents who sat around us. I know that I looked a total mess. But honestly, I do have to say that I made it out alive and Emmy made the best little Indian of the bunch. :-) The picture was post program, because of course I forgot my camera. I got a few (more grainy than not) pictures on my (using because I have 3 more weeks to phone upgrade and my good phone broke) flip phone. I got a video of her singing too. Although, once I had the chance to watch it back I realized I got a little bit more of the grandma sitting at the next table clapping and singing along with her grandchild than I did of my own singing. And you couldn't hear Emmy at all, but you could hear me telling Macie to sit still about 15 times.
So, like I said... listen to that voice that tells you to take the stroller. And if you don't, once it's all over, be proud of the fact that even though your child stuck a can of redi whip tip down into a slice of pumpkin pie, it's all right. There was no blood. No injury even. And we all made it out alive. Yesterday was one of those days when I woke up already wound tight. I ran on emotional overdrive all day. Emmy's got pink eye and it's literally like wrestling a bag of snakes trying to get her medicine in her eyes. We did it sucessfully on Monday and I was hoping yesterday would be the same. Boy, was I WRONG! She looked miserable yesterday and told me often that her eyes were hurting her. Yesterday afternoon, she asked me if I would kiss them because they hurt. That was about it for me. It broke my heart knowing that I couldn't fix it. And on top of that, I knew 1 had 2 more doses of medicine to give her. Right before dinner yesterday I realized that Emmy was being rather quiet. Macie had just started making noise after her nap and Emmy ran upstairs to go talk to her. Or so I thought. It did not occur to me that the paint we'd been using in the living room was being stored upstairs in our room. Let's just say our intention was not to paint our stairway and upstairs hall.... So, needless to say, our afternoon ended with a bang. Thankfully my night wasn't as crazy. Aaron got home not long after the paint fiasco and took over the craziness. Thankfully he had a sense of humor about it and was able to laugh. I'm still not quite to that point yet. Although, I'm sure this will make a great story to tell when she's 18.
I think the truth I'm taking from yesterday is that today is a new day. Yesterdays stresses don't have to carry over to today. The remants of the stress are still there (and will be till we can paint over them) but that doesn't mean I have to choose to experience the emotion. God promises that his mercies are new every morning and I asked for those new mercies before I even opened my eyes today! We're in the process of redoing our living room. It's going to be a very S-L-O-W process. We just painted it from a cream color to a nice new color called Swanky Grey. I love the color. I just don't like that my furniture doesn't match the color and I don't have the perfect stuff to hang on my walls. We're planning on putting some new furniture in layaway and paying on it as we can with hopes that sometime in 2013 we'll be able to enjoy new furniture! As for the perfect stuff to hang on the walls, well, that'll take some time too. I'm having a hard time coming up with a "vision" for this room.
For those who know me well, you know that I don't exercise the virtue of patience well or often. I'd say it's honestly probably one of my biggest struggles. And it's funny how it affects every area of my life. Ususally people think of patience having to do with a traffic back up or waiting for a birthday or holiday to come. But for me, it directly affects my level of contentment. I've struggled with feeling that what I want and what I think my family should have hasn't come fast enough or at all; therefore, destroying my contentedness. Which in turn, has allowed me to justify my anger and resentment. My living room as become and outward picture of my life. Or at least it will be. I will choose to be content with slow progress or no progress at all. I'll be content with change as it happens, not as I make it happen. And I will choose to be content with my circumstances and surrroundings even if they don't match as I think they should. Monday! Monday! Monday! I don't really dislike Monday's. I feel like my week normally goes so quickly that I can't complain about the begining of a new weeks. This week is rather slow on the social calendar so I've got meals for every day. Our church is having our Thanksgiving Feast on Sunday, so I don't have a meal planned for that day, although I am fixing green bean casserole and cheesecake. So, I don't totally get out of cooking for it. I'm trying a new recipe this week. I'll link them up to the original recipe or to my recipe page. Monday- Pierogi Casserole. I fixed this 2 weeks ago and it was delish! But don't think for a minute that this will help out your calorie count for the day. This is RICH comfort food! But oh so yummy! Tuesday- Chicken Spaghetti. This is my new recipe for the week. I've heard people rave about this recipe so I'm very excited to try it! Wednesday- Fried Chicken. It's been so long since I've made my mom's fried chicken. Sorry, no recipe for this, it's kind of a family thing! Thursday- Sandwiches. This was Aaron's request. I have been not putting this on the menu because he takes sandwiches for lunch to work, but when I asked him for ideas for this week's menu, this is what he asked for. Thursday is going to be a very busy day for us, so I'm good with easy dinner too! Friday- Biscuit Pizza. This is easy easy easy and pretty tasty actually. The girls love them because they're easy for them to eat. Emmy loves fixing her own. Saturday- BLT's. Pretty straight forward. And actually, we're not tomato eaters in this house, so normally we eat BL's. I use turkey bacon for a little extra calorie cut. Sunday- Fishers Point Thanksgiving Feast Extravaganza! Not a complicated menu this week, and I was able to get all the groceries we needed for this week and next for about $70. I had a lot of these ingredients on hand. Next week's menu will include Thanksgiving! Oh my time is flying! |
HEY, I'M JESSICA!
Christian. Wife. Mommy. Daughter. Pastor. Friend. Saved.Redeemed. Beloved.
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