Guess what we are having for dinner? Meatball sandwiches… yum! This is a huge hit with the kids. So easy to make and most of the ingredients can be found on sale every few weeks. (Most of these were found at Dollar Tree last week.) Continue reading “Meatball Sandwiches”
JettProof calming sensory clothing can be worn discreetly under regular clothing. JettProof provides sensory input and sensory style compression to calm the sensory system and regulate the wearer, which greatly assists many Children living with Autism/Aspergers, Sensory Processing Disorder, ADHD and Anxiety.
Good morning everyone! It is such a beautiful day, isn’t it? I hope you all answered a big ‘Yes’.God is so good to us each and everyday. My cup is truly overflowing this morning. He has blessed us so richly and many times we just take those blessings for granted.
I am thanking him today for my family, for our health, for a roof over our heads, for food on the table, for the clothes on our backs, and the shoes on our feet. He supplies us with all of our needs and so many of our wants. Thank you Lord for being so good to me, my family, my friends, and the one who is reading this right now!
Yesterday I finally managed to get all of the Fall decor down and out to the building. DD17 helped me to carry out the totes. While we were in the building, which is a big mess, we dug out the Christmas totes and carried them to the house as well. I also restacked some of the other totes to make it easier when we need to retrieve them in the future. I am in the process of color coding our holiday decor so we can immediately tell by looking at a tote what is in it. This will help when I assign future tasks for the kids to help me with.
I am sitting at the island right now drinking my cup of coffee, typing this post, and working on my To-Do list. ( I am also messaging my friend and listening to some Christmas music as well.) The kids are finishing up their breakfast, Dutch Puff, and discussing their plans for the day which makes me smile.We do have one case of the grumpies, DS3, who kept insisting that he ‘needed’ brownies for breakfast.
They made brownies last night with DS17. Then while the brownies were baking we worked on our Advent Study, which I still need to pull out the nativity scene, and then enjoyed some warm brownies. I am really thankful that I did manage to get some of it together as the kids are enjoying it. I know when I get the nativity set out and they actually get to do the activities suggested they will enjoy this study even more.
So now we have a mountain of green totes in the Living room. This makes DS14 crazy but I have assured him that they will be out of the way soon. My kitchen island looks so bare right now, actually the whole kitchen does as it held the majority of the Fall decor, but I will use this as a chance to give it a good cleaning.
My To-Do list for the day also includes getting my stack of Christmas card addressed and ready to mail. I really hope that I can get them in the mail but that will be a bonus if it happens. I have the cards, the stamps, and the addresses on my desk so it probably won’t take too awful long to get them finished up. It is just finding a moment to actually sit down and work on it that my prove difficult.
We also plan to put up a few of our holiday decorations today. Yesterday the kids did stick Santa in the yard but someone had pulled him off his stake before we managed to get all the totes in the house. So that probably needs some attention too. We decided to wait until St. Nicholas day (December 6th) to put up our tree and the anticipation is driving the littles crazy! I don’t really know if there is a ‘right’ time to put up the tree. I figured we would do a lesson on St. Nicholas and try to incorporate the tree decorating into the lesson.
I’ve also noticed that something got into the trash bin during the night. So that will be on the top of my list to take care before the wind blows it all over the yard. It is an unpleasant task but needs to be done. Sometimes taking care of the not so fun things first will motivate me to take care of the other things on my list.
For now though I am going to enjoy a few minutes with the littles. DS3 has brought his plate to the island and is sitting beside me. DS4 is dragging sheets and blankets to the laundry room and just informed me that he had wet the bed last night. That doesn’t happen often and I know that accidents will happen from time to time.
It makes my heart happy to see that he is attempting to help with the clean up and that he is admitting what he did and accepting responsibility for it. He knows that it does affect the way I feel about him. He knows that he is loved and accepted and that we will not belittle him or make him feel bad about what happened. He also knows that we will help him clean up whatever he needs help with. He just told me that he will try harder to remember to use the potty before he goes to bed. So he is attempting to learn from the situation and prevent it from happening again.
We can learn so much from this. Life happens, accidents happen, mistakes happen. When they do happen we need to remember that God still loves us and that He is there for us. When we come to Him and tell Him what we have done, when we repent and ask for His help He will forgive us. We can use our mistakes as learning tools and try not to make them again.
As a parent we can also use these accidents and mistakes as a model of God’s love. We can listen to our children and remind them that we still love them. We can show them the same mercy and grace that God has shown to us so many times. We can show them the power of forgiveness and not make them feel guilty about things.
We also need to remember to be quick to admit our faults and mistakes. We need to apologize to them and ask for forgiveness if we have done them wrong in one way or another. This sets a good example for them. They will see that we are not perfect and that we make mistakes too.
I pray everyone has a blessed day!
We all have people in our lives that we care about and some that we truly love. These can be family members or friends. These people have touched our lives in so many ways and we couldn’t imagine life without them.
So what happens when you just can’t be around them? Maybe you’ve had a fight or they’ve moved away. It helps when you can apologize and makes things right again. Or if they’ve moved we still have many ways to communicate with them.
Sometimes though things happen that just can’t be fixed and no matter how hard we try it seems that we only make things worse. Sometimes our friends and loved ones just walk away and never really give a reason why. They don’t reply to our attempts at contacting them. It feels as though we have been abandoned. This can hurt worse than anything as I have come to find out.
Sometimes as I’ve learned that others may have been jealous of your friendship with someone. They may have been making your friend’s life miserable because of you through no fault of your own. This happens when others are selfish and desire control over another person. They may call it love but that’s not how love works.
Love wants the people in your life to be happy, love is not selfish, and love does not come with conditions. Love shows in your everyday actions towards others. It shows in the little texts you send just to make them smile, the little notes you leave to let them know you were thinking of them. Or buying them there favorite food or drink and leaving it somewhere they would be sure to find it.
Love gives without expecting anything in return. When you’ve made another person smile out of pure joy then your heart fills up until its about to burst. Just seeing that person happy is enough until it’s not and they are gone.
So, if you’ve experienced this and you’ve tried to do rectify the situation but haven’t succeeded, what do you do? If you just want an answer, what do you do?
Well, for me I’ve come to the point that I am not going to do anything but pray. I have taken this person and their situation and left it in God’s hands. I don’t know what is going on in their life and no matter how bad I wanted to be there they didn’t want me there for them.
I’m not going to cling to the ‘What ifs’ and wonder what might have been because it’s not reality. I’m not going to harass them or pour my heart to them because that would only make them feel worse. It’s possible they walked away because they cared about me and didn’t want me to be caught up in their drama. I don’t know. I do feel that if that was case I should’ve had a say in it as to whether I wanted to stay or not. Why didn’t I get a goodbye?
I do know that I valued this person’s friendship and I have some really fond memories of them. I will keep those in my heart and I will continue to pray for them. I know that I loved them and that I my love was shown with everything I did for them. Maybe that scared them? That I don’t know and maybe never will.
I know that I tried and I know that my friend knows where I am if they ever need me. We may never be able to pick up where we left off but we could still have a friendship and be there for one another.
I may never get the answers I sought as to what happened but that’s OK. I trust that God knows the circumstances and that there is a reason for these kinds of things to happen. He brings people into our lives for different reasons and I am not going to question His plans for me.
So even though months later pain is still there and my heart bears the deep scars but I know I can walk away. I know that my presence would only cause more heartache and grief on their part so I will walk away. That’s how love works. You would sacrifice your own feelings and comfort for another person’s happiness. Yep, that’s how it is supposed to work.
OK, I should’ve written this before I started on the other posts about routines. I didn’t realize until I was writing another post, how complicated and daunting routines can seem. Truth be told we all have some kind of routine already. Continue reading “Getting Routines Started 101”
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