Frazzled Reflections

I looked down at the Clearblue Easy digital pregnancy test. "You have got to be kidding me!" I couldn't help it. The words just came right out. I walked back into our bedroom, sat on the bed, and told my husband, "Well, I guess we're not going to Florida for Spring Break." "Huh?" He's never been very good about waking up right away. "I'm pregnant." "Seriously?" Yep, I was serious. I want to be perfectly clear: I LOVE my son. My sweet, loving, beautiful children are a daily reminder of just how much God has blessed me. However, this was not what we were expecting to happen, and at that very moment it couldn't appear to be worse timing. Maybe I should back up. Three years earlier we were shocked to discover that we were pregnant with our daughter for very different reasons. We struggled for two and a half years to get pregnant. We had finally met with a specialist and were on our third round of treatments...

While we spent a fair amount of time celebrating family this weekend, we also got a much needed head start on the next set of projects in the house. We have several projects we are working on at once, but one of the bigger projects we are starting on is the renovation of our mudroom, pantry/laundry room, and family room bathroom. Our first step was getting rid of the cabinets in our "pantry" area. We think that the room must have originally been a craft room, but for us it works perfectly as a place to store the "extras" from our kitchen as well as a stock area for groceries on those rare occasions when I have the time and energy to plan a massive coupon/sales savings trip. Maybe now that I'm done with my MA, I'll have more time for that. Of course, that could just be wishful thinking. On Friday night, this is what our pantry looked like: And this is what the room looked like before we moved into the house On a whim I decided to post the cabinets o...

Done. Finished. Never again. My husband says he'll believe it when he sees it, but for now it is most certainly true. How's that for a good Lutheran phrase? What is done you ask? My Master's degree. As of today, I am officially done. I'm not walking at the graduation ceremonies next week, and that is ok. My parents, in-laws, and husband all drove out to Nebraska 11 years ago to help me celebrate the completion of my Bachelor's degree. With a busy life as a wife, mother, and teacher, I don't have the time to spend several more hours celebrating the completion of my graduate work. Instead, I'm just going to celebrate by writing about it, and maybe finding a time to hang out with my M.A. English peeps one last time. I knew in my first year of teaching that I needed to go back to school to get my Master's degree in English. After spending four and a half years in undergrad studying English, history, and education, I really thought I knew everything I nee...

It's been a long three years. When we put our Indy house on the market and found our current Fort Wayne house we didn't know the series of unfortunate events that would fall. Some we might have been able to prevent if we had made different decisions. Some were the result of life just happening. But the end result was the same. For the past three years we've been unable to sell one house and dependent on rental income to pay that mortgage, we've mostly just made necessary repairs (some really expensive) to the house we live in and put off the major  renovations that we desperately want to start, and we've been crushed under the debt that just never seems to go away. But we had to wait. Who knew that purposely missing two payments on a house you aren't living in could put you behind in other goals you want to achieve? Oh wait. We knew. But at the time we didn't have much of a choice. We needed to focus on moving on and paying for the house our family is livi...

My mom was a SAH mom, and for that I'm grateful. You hear that Mom? I'm grateful. As I watched my mom bake, cook, clean, take us to the doctor, take us grocery shopping (in an age where people didn't call CPS every time we were left in the car so my mom could get a quick item), play games with us (a personal favorite being "Stone School"), work as room mother, etc., I became convinced that this was my future. I would go to college, meet my dream husband, teach for a couple years, and stay at home to raise our four to five children. During those years I often heard my mom discuss the virtue of staying at home with us. I also heard her recount her days working at a daycare (before I was born) and her disappointment (to put it lightly) that there were mothers who would bring their kids to daycare even on days that they didn't work. It appeared inconceivable that a woman would bring her kids in to daycare on days that she could instead be at home with her kids. ...

When I started pre-school in 1983, a new show called He-Man had hit the daily afternoon cartoons. As one of the only girls of my pre-school class, I was quickly swept up into the make-believe world of He-Man, Master of the Universe. Having never seen the show (I was a 4-year-old girl after all) I stepped into my role as Teela, following the lead of my better informed male classmates. Two years later She-Ra premiered, and suddenly my after school hours were complete. He-Man didn't really interest me, but his twin sister, that was a different story. She was strong, blond (just like me), and a female superhero I could look up to. I didn't see her as the female version of He-Man. She was She-Ra, Princess of Power, end of story. Every day after school I pushed to make sure we made it home in time for me to watch. This was the 1980s. We didn't have cable, we had four stations that came in over antenna. DVR didn't exist, and setting up the VCR to tape She-Ra every day wou...

It's been awhile, and I guess that my initial goal of one post a week was, as my husband likes to call it, a Sarantee (a guarantee made by yours truly in which I will try my hardest to accomplish something, but I allow something else to get in the way). In this case, it was the second half of a busy semester teaching, taking a class, and still trying to make much needed valuable time for my family as we moved into the holiday season. And there was a lot for me to write about. But here I am, putting off the pile of papers that I need to have completely graded by midnight on Sunday (grades are due Monday morning) so that I can finally sit down and write words that are for me. Not for a professor or comments for a student that will most likely be left unread, but a time for reflection on the last year and thoughts moving into 2013. By all accounts, 2012 was a good year. I got a full time job that I love and now I pretty much have my dream teaching job, I am closer to finishing my Ma...