Five Year Plan and Marriage

What plans can you make with your spouse specifically for the two of you? Dig deep now and ask yourselves some questions while you're at the planning.

How can our marriage be a blessing to others? Are we discouraging to others because we are constantly bickering? Am I speaking negatively or flippantly about my husband/wife to other people? Am I treating my spouse the way I would want to be treated without any return expectations? Am I presenting myself in a pleasing manner to my husband/wife?

I think a great place to start in setting marriage goals as a couple is to sit down with your spouse and envision together what life will look like when you both have silver hair. What will you have accomplished as a couple over your lifetime? How will your marriage have affected others for the better? What regrets can you foresee if you continue the way thing are now?

Set communication goals.
Over the years Sean and I have realized that we respond very differently when we are upset. Sean needs quiet and time to calm down and I like to talk things out right away. Now he makes me aware that he is not ignoring me and I give him time to be quiet. Compromise.
I've always been the type to sit and mull over issues that are bothering me (not Sean related ones) and Sean has been very good about encouraging me to talk to him. If you are like me, maybe you can "plan" on being more diligent in bouncing ideas, opinions, etc. off of your spouse instead of keeping them internal.

Invest in intimacy.
This can be done by spending time together, reading, listening and talking with your spouse.

Get into a marriage group or start one.
Years ago I saw an advertisement in the paper from a couple opening their home once a week for couples to come, enjoy fellowship, and learn practical ways to strengthen their marriage. We've never gone so far as to advertise in the paper, but we do enjoy having couples in our home for this same purpose.
Start a couple only chef's night or supper club, where everyone brings different ingredients for the menu, cooks, and then eats together. Read and discuss a book on marriage over a desserts only menu or themed food night. Pray together. Invite couples from outside the pack you normally gather with.

Purposely plan to spend time as a couple without the kiddos.
Over the years I have head of so many instances where the children left the nest and the couple is left staring at a spouse they don't really know. How sad. Don't let this be you. Trade off with another couple for babysitting. Watch their kids for a few hours one week and they'll watch yours the next week. This, unfortunately, does not work if you are like us and have a big family and everyone else has 2.1 children. If you have willing family - great! We hire a babysitter. We are very, very, very picky about who we leave our children with and our babysitter is awesome! If money is too tight for a babysitter, grab a movie from the library (free!) and split a really, really good candy bar (think beyond Hersheys) or tub of Haagan Daz after the kiddos are in bed.

Sean and I also talk about how fun it will be when our kids are out of the nest (yikes!) and we can do "couple" things again like skiing and weekend trips and go out at a whim without having to get a sitter. For someone like me, who dreads empty nest syndrome, thinking ahead to good things with Sean helps!

Purpose in your heart to safeguard your marriage.
Marriage is not just a slip of paper or a legal document or promises that can be broken. It is a covenant with each other and God. Be accountable with each other. For example, I give my husband access to my email accounts and all other internet correspondence. There is nothing hidden in my life.

What about you? What plans do you make for the different seasons of married life?

Five Year Plans and Parenting

I remember during one of our endless, swooning, long talks over the phone during our dating days, sitting sideways on one of the shag green stairs in the apartment where I lived with my Mom and sis, phone cord stretched through the kitchen and round the corner, never again to coil properly again, that Sean started talking about his five year plan. Five year plan? I think that was the first I had ever heard of it.Keeping in mind that "man makes plans but the Lord orders his steps" (totally paraphrased, I'm sure), I think it is a wonderful idea for couples to sit down and have an idea of what goals they have in mind and then break it down into feasible itty bitty bits.

For example, one of our goals is to raise our children and have them turn out to be solid, functional human beings who have a growing relationship with the Lord and contribute to the betterment of their world. And I just pulled that off the top of my head so I am pretty sure there would be a more eloquent way of phrasing it. But there it is.A pretty nice goal, to be sure, but how can we see it accomplished? What steps do we need to take? How will we know we are on the right track? All of a sudden, simply because we have this goal in mind, we have a screen to filter things through. Education, media, friends, toys, games, family vacations, discipline - all the thousands of choices that make up a child's life become important and scrutinized because we have an end goal in mind.

Make plans for the day to day, month to month, and year to year regarding parenting:

1.) Spend daily time reading the Bible and bringing all things before God in prayer. I know that this focuses my attention and makes me more a more purposeful and patient parent.
2.) Build or get involved with a community of parents who are purposefully parenting and have common goals.
3.) Utilize available parenting resources, for example Family life Today, Cloud and Townsend, learn to love reading (books on cd are great during housework!). Run everything you read through the filter of God's Word.
4.)Set specific goals for each child for the coming year. These can be educational, but I think at a young age it is more important to focus on goals instilling morality and character. If you want to see a child who is a sluggish worker become more diligent - what will you do? What will this look like? How will you know the goal has been accomplished? Buy a $1 notebook and write this all out.
5.) Encourage healthy friendships for your children.
Sean and I have been praying about one of our children finding a close best friend. As our children grow, I want our home to be the place where all of their friends want to be. That is an enviroment we can begin cultivating right now.
6.) Support your local church in these areas. Get involved! Be the dad who befriends the kids from single family homes, invite young couples over, encourage tired moms!
Do. Something. Make it not all about you.

In the past we have set goals for marriage, finances (Dave Ramsey!), areas of service, giving, health, business and parenting. All this week, I'll be sharing a glimpse into what these goals look like. Leave a comment and share yours with us too.

Weekly Menu

Weekly Menu

Sun am – coffee, milk, overnight oatmeal (crock pot)

Lunch – pita sandwiches, apple, fruit leather

Dinner -venison burgers with Grandma’s special sauce, peas and beans, homemade wheat bread with butter

Dessert – chips/salsa, peanut butter oatmeal chocolate chip cookies

Mon am – omelet, chocolate milk

Lunch – peanut butter and banana sandwiches

Dinner – fish, roasted potatoes with olive oil, salt, cracked pepper

Tues am – farina

(Brittany)

Lunch – quesadillas, salad, applesauce, wheat germ cookies

Dinner – Greek spaghetti, garlic bread

Bake bread

Wed am – farina

Lunch – cheese soldiers, cookies, apples

Dinner – twice baked potatoes, apple bars

Make chex mix

Thursday am – hash browns, eggs

Lunch – happy plates

Dinner – uncured pepperoni roll, salad

SMALL GROUP!

Tea

Popped corn

Apple crisp

Fri am - overnight oatmeal (crockpot)

Co-op Lessons!

Lunch – yogurt, carrot sticks

Dinner- (Eleanor)

Roasted chicken with potatoes, parsnips and carrots

Apple wrapper pie

Sat am – pancakes

Lunch – grilled goat cheese sandiches

Dinner – pizza rolls

Recommended books for advanced young readers

Our eight year old was the easiest child to teach how to read. Her six year old brother is the polar opposite. Once Kaelin learned the phonics chart and how letters flowed together, she just took off reading all on her own. Thus began the great hunt for longer books with appropriate content. Here are some of the books off the top of my head that she has read over the last few years:

Heidi by Johanna Spyri
The Boxcar children series by Gertrude Chandler Warner
The Five Little Peppers by Margaret Sidney
Mandie books by Lois Gladys Leppard
Books by Arleta Richardson
The Chronicles of Narnia
The Swiss Family Robinson
Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott
Little House on the Prairie books by Laura Ingalls Wilder
The Ivan series by Myrna Grant
Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink
Happy Little Family by Rebecca Caudill
Anne of Green Gables
Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan
Charlottes Web
The Bobbsey Twins
Hannah's Winter of Hope by Jean Van Leeuwen
The Little House series

Some of these books, the Narnia series for example, contain topics that you will have to decide when you want your child made aware of. These are things like peril, orphans, war, communism, consequences of moral choices, smoking, etc. We gave these books the okay because we feel the topics are dealt with in an appropriate manner (Eight cousins talks about the effects of smoking a pipe, the character in the Mandie books learns about lying), as opposed to glorifying the inappropriate behavior.
I can also recommend with some caution the American Girls series of books. It seems that since the maker of Barbie bought the company, it has gone south. We enjoy some of the earlier books.
Of course, previewing books your child is reading, screening their library selections, and keeping a running dialogue of what they've read and the topics is a wonderful idea.
We enjoy ordering our books through the inter-library loan system, scouring rummage sales, thrift stores and used books sales in order to build a nice home library.

Weekly menu

Weekly Menu

Sun am – orange Julius, apple coffee cake

(Eleanor for dinner)

Dinner – roasted chicken, cornbread, veggies

Dessert – sour cream apple pie

Mon am – omelet, o.j.

Lunch – pizza, apple slices with peanut butter

Dinner – fish, roasted potatoes with olive oil, salt, cracked pepper

Tues am – farina

Lunch – leftover pasta, garlic bread

Dinner – huevo rancheros with avocado, apple crisp

Bake bread

Wed am – farina

Lunch – egg salad sandwiches, cookies, apples

Dinner – spinach salad with bacon dressing, warm bread and butter

Thursday am – apple sauce muffins

(Invite Kim and her girls over)

Lunch – sandwiches

Dinner – broccoli soup with cheddar cheese

SMALL GROUP!

Tea

Jewish Apple Cake

Fri am - kashi with fruit

Co-op Lessons!

Lunch – yogurt with honey, carrot sticks

Dinner- Sean’s business dinner

kids (mac and cheese)

Sat am – blueberry pancakes

Lunch – salad, grilled cheese

Dinner – twice baked potatoes

Our family

I'm Hannah and I'm thankful you're here.

I hate writing these things about myself but feel obligated. Perhaps that should be number one.

1.) I sometimes do things just because I feel obligated, and I don't want to let anyone down. I trembled saying "no" to baking bread for a chili sale at church. But I said it. Progress.
2.) I have conflict-avoidance issues God is working out of me.
3.) I see beauty everywhere. I notice the light and line and color in everything.
4.) We are a gluten free family and have been so for over a year since discovering my husband is severely allergic to gluten.
5.) We homeschool our kids and think it is an awesome way of life. However, as much as I like to categorize things, we don't fit into any homeschool peg-holes. We're somewhere out in the field of eclectic, I believe, with a dash of classic and a pinch of unschooling thrown in for good measure. See, I tried to categorize the uncategorizable....
6.) I love God and have a love/hate relationship with His workings in my life lately.
I love that He has the best in mind for me; I hate the discomfort that often comes hand-in-hand as He gets rid of my junk.
7.) I am aiming for honest and transparent in my bloggy words, hoping to add in grace and encouragement too.
8.) My husband holds office/position in our church and so anything I say/do/write that is stupid or controversial is not a reflection of his work with the church.
9.) I love list making.
10.) We live in a 230 yr old farmhouse on two acres and traumatize our nice neighbors with our mini farming ventures.
11.) We are praying for a real farm.
With a barn.
Where the pig won't stare down the neighbors through their glass door as they eat dinner.
And we won't be the house where cars slow down and fingers point.
And the dog warden won't be called on our chickens.
12.) I like just about anything crafty. And books - we all love books.
13.) I'm retired from nursing to be a mama, my husband Sean is a local business owner. My nursing background and experiences make me anti-conventional medicine in many ways. I am very thankful for conventional medicine intervening and saving our son Aiden's life and his wonky kidneys. Our kids are selectively vaccinated, we use natural remedies/preventative care to keep our family healthy, and I have been blessed to be able to birth our last two babies at home. I am very thankful for life and know it is so much more than I deserve.
14.) I get sick of making lists sometimes, which is why I squished a lot into number thirteen.

Any questions, just ask away. And have fun browsing!

Last Saturday

we all sort of stumbled out of bed after a late night and a happy, smiling, eyes wide open baby in the middle of the night. Ugh. I sent Douglas to do his chicken chores and started the pancake batter.
Back in rushed Douglas, then back out again, doors slamming, followed by three of his siblings, one without pants and a few without shoes. This is what all the hoopla was about:













Two hot air balloons floating over the house and landing in the field across the road. Fun stuff.

Tonight

I am sitting here in my cozy kitchen chair, a bit under the weather. What wonderful smells are coming my way as I watch!Kaelin is cooking a rendition of this recipe. Bright red onions, leeks, and celery are sizzling ever so gently in butter and the aroma is . . . mmm.
Lovely.
Sean is standing over the stove, which the gas company finally hooked up yesterday, frying some small purple potatoes with goat cheese.

I didn't grow this pretty variety, they came from my Dad's elaborate veggie gardens, which simply just sprawl row upon row, so bountiful and lovely. I've tucked some of them away to use as seed potatoes next spring. Can't wait!


The photos two posts ago were all from our Sunday trip to visit my Dad and stepmom, Pam. I dug potatoes while Sean lent a hand building a garage/chicken coop with my Dad and step brother. The children ran, which children love to do, chasing cats and kittens, and then greedily inhaling every morsel Grandma put in front of them.


Back in our happy kitchen now, peanut Catherine is telling Papa about her day and confessing that she was naughty (her words!) for the babysitter last night, purging her soul, I suppose :) and relaying how she got out of bed many times last night while Sean and I were out at a favorite Japanese restaurant, enjoying sushi and miso soup and discussing our five year plan which we've been steadily praying about.


Kaelin's sweet potato soup, which she is so proud to have made by herself with a teeny bit of help, is simmering on the back burner, just to be pureed and some yogurt added.
Also on the menu is some venison tenderloin, fresh from a doe Sean shot last Saturday.
Isn't it so nice that everyone is cooking beautiful food for me tonight?


Earlier today the kiddos and I dipped fall leaves into some melted beeswax, painted rocks, made a batch (should have doubled it) of Grandma Johnson's oatmeal raisin cookies.

We sat in our cozy, almost finished kitchen and ate warm cookies, I reading from some of our favorite books, Wisdom and the Millers. a newly acquired book from the library, absolutely ancient but adorable on etiquette for children, and our science lesson for the day on leaf cutter bees from this book.


Now the day is closing, Papa has come home, a delicious dinner cooked, a beautiful table lain - this by Kaelin too, who is busy chit-chatting all the happy while, trying to convince me she is big enough to make dinner (lunch too!) every single day. Yes, every single day, she says. The boys have rough and tumbled their way outdoors, soon to be called in for washing.


After supper Papa will take the older boys out meandering over the farmer's fields, searching hedge rows and under scraggly apple trees for where the deer trod. Bow season begins here soon and I am very thankful for good meat in the freezer.
Have a beautiful night,
Hannah

Seen around town (blog town that is)

A great recipe for powdered laundry detergent here. With our hard well water we have to stick to liquid but if you don't have incredibly hard water, well, check this recipe out! Making your own detergent is easy and healthier, not to mention the whole being a good steward of your money and earth thing.

After you make your first batch of laundry detergent, grab a cuppa something and read the following article by Kendra Fletcher of Preschoolers and Peace. She answers a question that we often get asked. Many thanks for her permitting this to be copied here.

"Remember way back before our enterovirus experience with Mighty Joe? I asked for and received dozens of questions in hopes that I could answer in some helpful way. Some of you asked funny questions, and for that I am grateful. Less pressure :) Many of you wrote very serious questions and I do hope that I can do them justice. Before Mighty Joe nearly lost his tiny life, I had more confidence than I do now. Not sure why.

Vicki asked me a series of questions both funny and serious. This one is common amongst home educators:

Do you have homeschool fears that you’re not measuring up? (I get that all the time. Afraid I will never teach my children anything.)

Well, yes and no. Seems to me that many of us are concerned about the “holes”. You know, all those things we think we’re responsible to teach our children but will somehow miss in the scope of things? I do every once in awhile think, “Oh yipes! This child knows nothing about World War II” (or whatever) and wonder if they’ll live without that knowledge. But then I remember why we chose to educate using a classical model:

The classical model aims, ultimately, to teach the child to think. The current government school (and sadly, the majority of private schools which choose to emulate the failing government institutions) model is to tell kids what to believe, cram it down their throats, and then test them on whether or not they memorized the “correct” answers. The result is a dearth of “educated” people in our nation who cannot think through anything more difficult than 6th grade math and who ultimately take their cues from television.

Honestly, I was appalled by the work many of my fellow college graduates put forth. And when I began homeschooling my own children, I was further appalled by how poorly educated I was. If you think I came from some backwoods school, ’tisn’t so. I was in GATE classes from kindergarten through 12th grade. I attended what was supposedly the most academic high school in our county and walked into college with six AP units. I graduated from California’s oldest chartered university. And yet, I know the truth: I was robbed.

I have hugely digressed. The classical model (not exclusively- other methods do as well) also teaches the child to teach himself. And not that I hold actor Will Smith to be the spokesperson for the homeschooling movement, but I must agree with him when he said:

“I know how to learn anything I want to learn. I absolutely know that I could learn how to fly the space shuttle because someone else knows how to fly it, and they put it in a book. Give me the book, and I do not need somebody to stand up in front of the class.”

When I see gaps in my children’s knowledge, I don’t worry about it. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that when they want to learn something not only will they have the desire, ability, and resources, they’ll be able to think through the subject and formulate a well-educated opinion.

Be careful to whom you desire to “measure up”. Results are consistently showing, year after year, that home educated students are better educated than their public and private school counterparts. It’s no secret why; one-on-one tutoring is unanimously the better option, and no one is more concerned about the child’s education than that child’s parent. Particularly those who give up everything else to commit to homeschooling."

The Woodstove

Match to paper on a damp fall morning
A quick, deliberate crumpling and placing
Lean-to twigs placed round and over
Damper open for sending sparks
A soft blow and another again
Wooden fortress ablaze and falling inward
Taken from small hands,
a log from the porch
split and seasoned
added to flame
A rush, a whir, a steady crackle
Damper pulled tight


the glass closed
Heat abiding.

Prayer

A friend, who happens to be our babysitter's mother, sent me a message the other night.

It included something sincere which caused me to pause and take a deep and refreshing breath.

It was her personal prayer for me as a mother. I thought, what a beautiful thing, so refreshing to read. Her written words were soothing and encouraging.

She is a busy woman, with a million important things going on in her life.
My friend Diane was over last week and prayed for me too.


I think sometimes prayer is underrated.

We see someone's need and say, "I'm praying for you" because it is the easiest, least awkward, but well intentioned thing to say.


If someone like Diane says this to you, you are one lucky person. Diane is an awesome prayer warrior. Meaning she knows how to pray and believe for great things.


Her life is bathed in prayer. I know this because I know her life and I've seen the results of her prayers first hand!


Diane's mom is in a terrible amount of pain right now from cancer. Would you say a prayer for her? For God's healing and peace...


I read the first verses of Philemon in the Bible and Philemon's request, "...refresh my heart in Christ" and thought of these women and their prayers.


Refreshing, life giving prayers.


I always try to be very careful with what I speak regarding motherhood.

I never want to be complaining and give my children (or anyone in society) the idea that my children are a burden.


Our children are a great joy.



Getting up in the middle of the night is tiring, even with your children being a joy, a gift, a blessing.
Can I have an "Amen"?


So prayers for strength and wisdom - I really appreciate those in this season.


I Thessalonians speaks of encouraging others and I believe our prayers can do this.
This is what I felt after these women's prayers.



Encouraged.




So thank you, Diane and Laurie. I feel so blessed.