Old Yeller

Long ago, when Colin was a baby and Trevor was 2 or 3, I remember yelling at Trevor for something and then going outside to get the mail. As I slammed the front door and walked down the driveway towards the mailbox I could hear through my open upstairs window Trevor crying in his room. I realized that my neighbors probably just heard me yelling at my kids and now heard crying and I could only imagine what they were thinking. You would think that experience would have stopped me from yelling at my kids, but it didn't. Dave always told me that when he first met me and during our first two years of marriage he thought I was the most patient person he had ever met. Then we had kids and that changed. I would always pray for patience, for anger control, to be a better mom and not yell at my kids, but it seemed the more I prayed the more I yelled. I think the Lord was testing me and I was failing, big time.

But I am happy to say that I am now a recovering yeller. I have not yelled at my kids in over a week. For real. Last week I watched a webinar on parenting. I knew the webinar was more or less just an advertising tool to get people to buy the book and pay for the online classes. But I watched it anyway, and one thing really stood out to me. The lady giving the webinar said that your parenting personality has a lot to do with how your kids behave. She said what you do will reflect what your kids do. If I'm a yeller and can't control my temper then my kids will be the same way. If I am calm and speak to them in a respectful way then they will do the same. I know I have heard this before and I know Dave and I have talked about it before but it finally hit me and this time it sunk in. So I've been trying it out and it works, for the most part. My kids still fight and throw temper tantrums, they still disobey and talk back, but there is a huge difference now. I don't yell. I don't argue with them. I don't pay attention to their tantrums. And their behaviors are changing. I don't know what it is but all those 10 years of praying must have finally paid off because I have never been able to control my temper like I have this past week. And right now as I write this Logan is sitting next to me yelling because he doesn't want to do his chores, "Mom! Mommy!! MOM!!! You're not listening to me!!!!" and I am just ignoring him, kind of laughing at him and happy that I don't have the urge to yell back like I used to. Keep praying for that patience, Moms and Dads, because eventually it will come. 

Clean and Organized

I will be the first to admit that I am not the best housekeeper. I see all the things I have to do and I get overwhelmed and then I don't do anything. But this week that all changed. I've been a little obsessed with the blog A Bowl Full of Lemons for about a few weeks now. I stumbled upon it while I was on Pinterest and it's been a blessing. I found this great Daily Cleaning Schedule and tried it out this week. I didn't do everything on the list every day, but I did do a lot. Each boy got a "color" for the week and did that chore every morning and they did great. There were some complaints, but they got on board and it really helped. I love how clean the house was on Monday. My bedroom stayed clean all week (and the bed got made every morning). I woke up every morning to a neat and clean kitchen. There weren't as many Saturday chores to do today as there usually are. My kids were perfect angels all week (not really). I noticed that when my house looked good I was in a better mood. I was the nicest mom all week and never yelled at my kids (not really). I've really been in an organizing/cleaning mood lately and today Dave helped out too. Here are some of the things we've been working on:

We have a HUGE closet upstairs. We took everything off the shelves, threw away the crap and put stuff back nice and neat. We even had extra space for the holiday decorations that were in the garage.

When we got a treadmill upstairs in the TV room it was in the way of the book shelf. So I got a new shelf to fit under the window and put the books there. I love this new shelf. The basket is where we keep all the library books so they don't get lost. The shelf was $50 at Target and they had all different sizes and colors.

The playroom is always messy. Always. I threw away a bunch of junk, rearranged the shelves, and  table and brought out the toy canisters that were in the closet. Now everything is out to play with AND half the closet is now empty!

More room to play now, every toy is out and organized in it's own bucket or bin. I put the little table and chair in here along with the white board so Logan can play "school".

Book page wreath

via http://jonesdesigncompany.com/

I've been wanting to make this Book Page Wreath (click for tutorial) for forever. When we finished painting our bedroom I thought it would look great above our bed because of the contrasting of colors. Over the weekend I found a blog called A Bowl Full of Lemons. It's all about cleaning and organizing your home. I found a great cleaning schedule on the blog and got all excited to clean my house. Once the house was clean yesterday (the kids each chose one thing on the cleaning list to help with) I decided I needed to add something decorative to my bedroom. I went to Michaels and got all of my crafty supplies and after dinner I started making my book page wreath. Doing crafts in a house full of boys is not always easy. They ask a ton of questions ("Why are you tearing up that book?!"), they touch the glue gun even when I tell them not to, they look at what I'm making with strange expressions on their faces. When I first started this project I was full of great expectations at my crafting abilities. Partway through I wondered if I was just crafting disabled since my wreath looked pretty crappy. As I continued on, burning myself with the hot glue (and thinking of my sweet friend Erin who had a tragic hot glue gun experience as a kid....love you girl!) and slapping pages on my wreath, I could see it transforming. The more pages I added the better it looked and I realized that I AM crafty! I finished my wreath in 4 hours (I think the tutorial told me 2 but that is a big, fat, lie) and hung it up before I crashed into bed for the night. I love it. Dave said it looked fine (not the "Amazing job, honey! You're the best crafter ever!" I was looking for). When the boys all woke up this morning and found their way to our room I asked what they thought. They're just like their dad. "Oh, it's nice." Ugh. I get no appreciation around here.

My wreath. Maybe it's my reader/English teacher/writer self that makes me love it so much. There are lots on Pinterest so go look and get inspired.

I love how it looks above the bed. Super simple, but it adds a little interest and texture to that big, empty space.

Worst Summer Mom Ever

My son was crying the other day. Whining about what a horrible summer it's going to be. I had just put up a 3 month calendar and schedule for the summer and he was freaking out. "Summer school! We have to do school in the summer?" I got the idea from my friend, Pam. Her kids are super smart (probably because they inherited their parents' smart genes) and I asked her once what she did with them to make them so smart. She told me she did Mom School in the summer. When she told me what her summer school schedule was it sounded very similar to the homeschool schedule I had for Trevor. The more I talked to Pam about it the more I realized I could totally do it. And I am going to do it. Even if my kids complain or cry or whine or throw super bad temper tantrums. We are going to do summer school this summer. End of story. But what about having fun and giving them a break from school and letting them run and play and be free and be KIDS? They will get to do all of that. Before starting homeschool, I didn't realize how much teaching and learning could get done in such a short amount of time. There will be plenty of time for my boys to swim and play and relax and enjoy their days off from school. But I don't want them to forget what they learned. I don't want their reading levels to plummet over the summer or for them to go back to school in the fall not remembering the math skills they worked on so many months before. It's not going to be all day, every day, but it is going to be a good chunk of our summer. My kids are smart, but they are not the best students. I know where they struggle and where they excel. I know I want them to work on certain things over the summer so they can go back to school and feel confident and smart. I want them to start off the school year knowing their stuff and not falling behind. I want them to enjoy school because I taught them at home how to enjoy learning. And it's not going to be all books and worksheets and tests. One of my favorite new websites is X-tra Math. It's free and it's all about memorizing simple math facts so kids can do their math easier, faster and in their head. The website even tracks your child's progress and sends you a weekly report. Each session only takes about 5 minutes so it's quick and easy for your child to do every single day. Another site I love is Easy Peasy - All in One Homeschool. This site is so awesome. I used it a lot with Trevor and we both loved it. It's broken into subjects and grade levels so you can find lessons and activities for your child. Everything is on this one site. There are links to videos, worksheets, books, games, puzzles, music. There are even great alphabet videos and activities for preschoolers or younger kids.
My kids might not like the schedule they see and they might fight me on "summer school" in the beginning, but this summer I am not backing down. When the going gets tough I am going to have to be tougher. Even if my kids think I am the worst summer mom ever I am sticking to what I think is best for them. And by the end of the summer I hope they will have learned more than just reading, writing and math from me.

Homeschool: The good, the bad and the ugly

As we come to a close for the school year there are lots of things I learned from doing homeschool.

THE GOOD: I loved the time I got with Trevor. We learned a lot of things together. I was able to use my skills as an English teacher to really help him improve in his writing. I loved how we were able to do a lot in a little amount of time. He wrote 17 essays in 3 months. We passed off scout requirements that went along with what we did in school. There were TONS of things I got online to enrich his schooling. We did art, music, US history, health, science, etc. If there was something he struggled with we kept working on it until he got it. He mastered things before we moved on to something new. He gained a lot of confidence in himself and his abilities and finally felt smart.

THE BAD: It was sometimes hard to keep a schedule. Lots of things would interrupt the school day (phone calls, Logan, days I babysat, an online job I did for a month). Lots of times Trevor finished his work so quickly for the day (what I planned to take 3 hours only took 2) and had lots of down time. The lesson planning took a lot of time so sometimes I felt overwhelmed with everything I needed to do and not enough time to do it. He missed his friends. I felt like I neglected Logan too much. I felt bad that we were all home and Colin was not.

THE UGLY: My house is ALWAYS messy. I tried to keep up with cleaning but it was hard. With school, lesson planning, grading, doing stuff with the kids, babysitting on occasion, etc. it was hard to have a good cleaning schedule.

All in all it was a great experience and I am so glad I chose to homeschool Trevor for a few months. Would I do it again? Absolutely, if I felt like my child needed to be home. Am I looking forward to all of my kids going to school next year? You bet. Logan will be in kindergarten and I'll get 2 and a half hours to myself every morning. Now I'll be able to have a clean house again.

Adding Branches

Our church is big on families and doing family history work. We believe that families can be sealed together forever, which means that after death husbands and wives will still be married and they will be with their children in the next life. One thing our church does is temple work for people who have passed on. Those of us who are living can step in for those who have passed on and we can do their temple work for them. We can seal their families together. Yesterday in church in the adult women's class, we talked about how important it is to go to the temple and do the work there that needs to be done. One of the tools we have is a website called New Family Search. Last night I went onto the website to look at my family tree. My dad had completed some family history charts a few years ago, so I just wanted to see if everything matched up. As I searched, I found a mistake. When I looked up the name of Charles William Ashley I noticed that someone had entered the wrong name for his wife. What I had on the records my dad wrote did not match the family tree on the website. His daughter's name was there instead of his wife's. It took me a while, but today I figured out how to correct the mistake. As I worked, I was able to put Charles with his wife Elizabeth on my family tree and I was also able to add their children to their branches. As I worked to get this family all back together in the right place I felt the spirit of this sweet mother close to me. I knew that she was happy. I knew that she was excited that someone had found the mistake and was making the corrections. And now, Dave and I can go to the temple and stand in for Charles and Elizabeth and they can be sealed. Then we, along with others attending the temple, will be able to have their children sealed to them. It was so fun to look at my family tree and to click on names and to see how far back our family goes, to see the different directions the branches go, and to realize that no matter how big it gets, we're all connected.

If you want to look up your family tree go HERE. The website is free and you can search and see if information for your family has been entered. If there isn't anything there you can start making your own family tree, do research, look for records and find family members. Try it out and see what you can find.

Bedroom make over

When Dave and I decided to finally paint our bedroom and get new bedding I had visions in my mind about what I wanted. I wanted something like this:

I wanted something light and airy. I wanted pale walls and maybe some splashes of color. Lots of pillows on the bed, fun accents, wispy curtains. But what I wanted and what Dave wanted was very, very different. He wanted something bold and dramatic. When we went shopping for paint colors, the ones I wanted (pale blue. grey, butter yellow) were quickly vetoed. I decided that since I had painted the guest bathroom, boys' bathroom and Trevor's room the way I wanted, I would let Dave have his way. And I have to say that I really do love it. When I put the first stroke of paint on the wall I was a little concerned, but I love the way it turned out. Our room is big so the dark color is not overwhelming. I think it's calming and at night it looks pretty with the lights. We're not totally done. We still want to get a few more things, we still need to figure out what to put on the walls to decorate a little, but so far I am very pleased. I didn't think I would like a dark color in my room but I really do love it. Here are the before and after pictures:

 This is our old bedding from when we got married and the color of the room when we first moved it. A sage green and a pale yellow. I thought I liked pale colors, but not this.

BEFORE

Here is the new color. Super dark green and I love how it turned out. A dark color really added drama to the room, but does not make the room feel small or closed it. Simple bedding and a punch of color from the pillow. I realized I don't like a ton of stuff in my room, on my bed, on my dresser. I like things simple, neat, clean. 

AFTER. LOVE the dark color. I love that we did not go the safe route and do a neutral color with an accent wall.