Ikea Aftermath + Real Life = NO BLOG POST FOR YOU

In the spring I accidentally purchased a chair instead of a mattress from Ikea.

You are now wondering how it could possibly be a good idea for me to homeschool. But certain chairs and mattresses are packaged identically at this store, and therefore it was an honest mistake made while trying to finish up in the store so that I could drop everything off at home and go get Christian from school before the hurricane hit.

There were so many things going on right after that, and then we were out of town, and once we returned home I finally found the receipt, and with two days to spare before my return window was up, I took that chair back to Ikea.

My plan was to go early in the afternoon and be back in time for the baseball game.

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We interrupt this post because of real life. I am going to post that beginning of the story, which is not particularly exciting, but which has some funny parts, but I have to vacuum some giant whiteboard pieces, iron clothes for church, and fold some laundry.

And let's just be frank...the laundry probably won't get done. 

Also? Eliana's birthday is tomorrow, and I don't have a cake made for her. Nor do I have a solid plan for making her cake; my goal is to accomplish making the cake sometime after church tomorrow and before dinnertime. Since she does not like any actual food that our family eats, could I get away with giving her just cake for dinner?

I'm sure she would like that, but no, no I cannot do that. 

I'll be back at another time to finish telling you about my trip to Ikea. It was a lot like a certain three-hour tour that we all know about (but longer). And minus any islands. Well, there were kitchen islands...

I Should Be Sleeping

I'm having trouble getting to sleep, even though I very badly want to be asleep. My mind is in overdrive. Thinking of the many projects that need to get done, trying to remember the tasks that I CANNOT forget to take care of, mentally sifting through homeschool paraphernalia, and considering some things that are going on around here are apparently not enough to wear my brain down!

My eyes want to shut (which makes writing a blog post tricky), but my mind persists in thinking about grammar rules, chaos all over the world, IJM and their work (its work?), my laundry pile, homemade macaroni and cheese for Michaela, Eliana's birthday, my kids' hearts (virtue-wise; health-wise they're fine), dentist appointments, doctor appointments, shoes all over, plans for rearranging furniture, and I wish I could play the drums.

Sleeeeeeeeep! Please?

Sometimes Sweet Siblings

Christian and Eliana are most alike of the three kids, personality-wise. Sometimes this leads to fiery interactions; they can push each other's buttons and neither one wants to let someone else have the last word. However, they spend an equal amount of time getting along beautifully, and when they do, beautiful things come of it...

For that, I am grateful. 

A Royal Beauty

Hello.

This is me. Right now (well, more like an hour ago...so pretty close to right now). This picture is mostly unedited. I upped the exposure just a tiny bit, because I took it in a bedroom at night, so the light wasn't so great.

I am on a mission: As a mom of two daughters, I want to show them what it means to be truly comfortable in one's own skin. 

I have not done a good job of this so far, but I am hoping to change that. The first step will have to be me being comfortable in my own skin. This means I must stop caring so very much about my appearance, or rather what other people think of my appearance. (And you have to know that the great irony of it all is that I care what people think while not putting in a single ounce of effort into what I look like: I barely brush my hair, I wear sloppy clothes. I care, and yet...I don't care.) Since this has been a major (MAJOR) preoccupation for a couple of decades (plus a few years) now, it is a habit that I am going to have to work on in order to break. I am going to have to dig deep into the Word of God in order to learn what it means to be made in God's image, and how that defines beauty, and how my value and worth lie in, not what those around me see or notice regarding what I look like, but in how God has loved me and made me his own. 

Here is where it gets ironic, again! I am beginning to understand, in a new way, that for me to get up, freshen up (take a shower, or wash my face and put in my contacts, brush my hair and teeth), and put on real, and even nice, clothes means taking care of myself and honoring God with that care, because instead of looking nice for other people's sakes, I'll be looking nice for my heavenly Father. To me, this is directly related to the sermon that Charlie preached on Sunday (Seriously...if you have an extra twenty minutes (ha!) you should go to my church's website and listen to this sermon (even if you don't, listen anyway...it's that good). It is special, powerful, and you won't be sorry.) in which he told the story of the king who adopted a peasant. The peasant was glad, but also alarmed; he (or she) was now a child of the king! New ways must be learned. A new home and new manners must be gotten used to!

One cannot become a child of the king and remain as one is. 

Of course, this is a spiritual analogy. But what if, like so many things (!!), it's not just spiritual? And becoming a daughter of the king actually affects my everyday, real, practical, housekeeping, homeschooling, laundry-doing, dish-washing life?! 

I could be sassy and say,"Well, a child of the king would never be expected to wash dishes or do laundry."

But I am not going to be funny and avoid the point by making a joke. It's too serious for that. 

Please hear me when I say I believe that God loves us as the peasants. He looks at the peasant and longs for the peasant to be his very own child! But he also sees the peasant as future royalty...he sees the son or the daughter of the King of Creation. He gives his children new clothes, those bright and shining robes of his Son's righteousness. He washes all the dirt and muck away, and makes his children clean. And this, on the inside and out! 

How ungrateful I have been for the royal robes that were placed on my naked shoulders. How forgetful I have been of the riches that were lavished upon me, and continue to be! 

This will be a long road, this road to the king's home. Yet, I'm not traveling it alone, and there is grace for the journey. Oh, thank the Lord for his grace. I hope that as these days pass by, and as my daughters get older, they will see a new kind of beauty in me; one that they can imitate without me worrying. I pray that we can walk hand-in-hand up to the gate of the house of the king, and as the doors are flung open wide and he joyfully catches us up in his arms, that we will be even more beautiful than we imagined ourselves to be, or could ever see ourselves. 

We'll be too caught up in his beauty to notice our own. Quite literally. Amen. 

Needed: Schedule (Can I Get That on Amazon?)

As the summer nears its end, the kids play sometimes, and get along.

But other times, they have zero tolerance for one another. They fight about, for example, who gets to sit where on the steps. 

Because that is very important, especially since we are about to walk out the door anyway. 

I have offered to play with them, too. They definitely are looking for things to do. Catan has been quite popular. It is my new favorite (I am addicted. I would play right now if I could. Maybe I will.)

What we need is a schedule, but I need it imposed on me by someone like a boss. And I don't mean "like a boss" as the catch phrase that cool people use these days, but like an actual boss. Someone be the boss of me! I am not a good boss of myself. 

Ah, school. I am looking forward to you this year. 

(I will need a reminder that I said that in about three weeks.) 

How are you staying busy as the summer ends?