Cleaning House With Kids

O.K. yesterday I was reading an article on Christian Women's Online Magazine about keeping kid's rooms clean. And I felt bad, really bad. Like usual when I read those type of book/articles, I begin to feel guilty. Because these women always have like, twenty kids, and their dinner's are always cooked, and their house is always immaculate, and they never raise their voice over the gentle hum of a whispering wind as they quote Bible verses all day long to their (homeschooled) children who soak up their words as sponges soak water...etc.
I feel like such a dismal failure! Can anyone out there relate? Anyway, I decided to give the tips a try (minus the Bible verses, because frankly, I thought she was stretching them a bit.), and I must say it went a lot better than usual. When I stayed in the room with them--calm and peaceable--while they cleaned and offered encouragement, I was amazed at how clean the room became. Real clean, too, not the toys-stuffed-in-underwear-drawer pick-up or the don't-open-the-closet-unless-you-have-a-death-wish straighten. I will definitely try this strategy again.
But I'm going to be totally honest with you...my four oldest children had peanut butter and jelly for dinner, the baby I nursed on a Boppi while I folded a few items from the monstrous pile of laundry on my sofa. I can't recall any quoted scripture today, but we did administer the rod of correction to my five year old, who poked her little brother in the head with a pencil. I'm counting the days till I can send her to public (collective gasp) school. BUT, their rooms are very clean. And I still love Jesus. And, best of all forever, He loves me.

Bringing in the Whats?

My husband is the pastor of a small, mostly graying congregation. They live for a "good ole fashion Sunday singin'." We just came from one-complete with fiddle, banjo and harmonica. Only thing missing was the mouth harp and someone playing the spoons. My husband loves to request the oldest, and hokiest of southern gospel songs at the singings for our own private enjoyment. Tonight, he called for "Bringing in the Sheaves." We were in the second verse when my five year old little girl looked at me and whispered, "Is it bringing in the sheep or bringing in the shees? Like you and me are shees and Daddy and Papa are hees?" I answered "Neither, it's bringing in the sheaVes." She asked "What's a "sheave?" And I just had to laugh because I don't really know. Is it another word for a wheat stalk? And I wonder how many generations of southerners have sang that song and not known what it was. We don't even grow wheat, for goodness sake!

Just Another Day

I have no great purpose for this blog. No major epocs to chronicle in my life at present. It is, as one of my favorite country songs puts it, "just another day in paradise." I mainly wanted to be able to comment on other people's blogs. And besides, "everyone is doing it." I am the stay-at-home mom of five (mostly, but with side job so as to feed said children). We live along the Texas coast, and when we moved here a year ago, my husband started calling our home a "tropical paradise" because we have a palm tree in our front yard. The fact that the palm trees and yards in which they sit are surrounded by refineries continuosly belching cancerous polutants is completely irrelevant to him. He is an eternal optimist, and I a permanent realist. But since my family lives, laughes, and loves here, makes it--in its own way--a paradise.