3 hours ago
Confession: I give my kids Marshmallow Mateys for breakfast sometimes.
Now that we've gotten that dirty little secret out of the way...
Lately I have been branching out a bit on breakfasts for the kids. When I went to the homeschool conference this summer, one of the speakers said that you can't really get mad if you gave your kids sugary cereal with nothing more substantial added in, and they act all crazy later.
As we've established, I have nothing against breakfast cereal, but I did think she had a point.
So while we still do Coco Puffs for breakfast occasionally, I've added a few other things into the rotation, with the intention of helping my kiddos get some brain-sharpening, focus-encouraging nutrients in, especially on school days! Here are a few of my current go-to's.
Oatmeal - One of the reasons I used to default to cereal was because it was a quick, easy breakfast for the kids - but I've learned that oatmeal is fairly quick and easy too! And it's healthier and more sustaining since they are getting the whole grain. I use old-fashioned oats, and add a little brown sugar, nuts, chocolate chips, raisins, apples, or cinnamon. The kids think I'm the best mom ever when I add in chocolate chips (but it's still less straight sugar than cereal!).
Muffins (made with freshly-ground flour) - I mentioned that I got a grain mill this summer, and I have to tell you, I love it! When flour is freshly ground, it still contains all the nutrients that the whole wheat berry contains, so it's more sustaining, has a lower glycemic index, and it's healthier. But beyond that, I like the way baked goods taste when they are made with fresh flour, and the texture is chewier (which I actually love!). I have a few go-to muffin recipes from this book. I try to make one batch every week so they can be our on-the-go breakfast, but that doesn't always happen.
Hard-Boiled Eggs with toast - Also quick to make, because I just pull them out of the refrigerator! (Are you noticing a theme here? I like quick and easy breakfasts.) I have to be careful with this one though, because sometimes I forget I boiled the eggs and we don't end up eating them.
Yogurt - We don't eat yogurt as often as I'd like, because with five kids and me that could get expensive really quick. But sometimes I buy a big container of plain yogurt, and I mix it with honey and frozen berries for the kids' breakfast. This is also one of my favorite breakfasts for me!
Cereal or Donuts - Everything in moderation, right? Sometimes cereal or donuts is just easier, and I don't shame myself or anyone else for going there. Having a sugary breakfast sometimes is fine in my book.
What are your breakfast go-to's? Any other quick-and-easy ideas for me?
(A picture from when we visited our friends' ranch in the Spring. Ranch...agriculture...seeds...let's just go with it.)
Last year I started going to the Community Bible Study I went to as a child with my mom. I can't express how much of a blessing this Bible Study has been to me since I started back! It's so encouraging to hear everyone else's insights, and it challenges me to get into God's Word and think about things a little deeper.
Today we talked about the parable of the sower in Mark 4. To be honest, I didn't love the questions and commentary in the lesson book this week - I felt like they muddied the waters a little. I was also frustrated with myself for not preparing my lesson ahead of time this week, which limited my ability to contribute to the discussion. Since I couldn't really get my thoughts out today in class, I thought I'd write them out here since I've had a little more time to think about it.
“Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed.4 As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. 6 But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain. 8 Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, some multiplying thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times.”
Mark 4:3-8
The parable of the sower is a tricky parable, and I've heard it applied different ways. But as I've read it, I've always understood it to be a representation of how different people who have not yet believed will respond to God's Word when they hear it. I did a little more research on it today after our lesson, and I wanted to write out my thoughts for my own clarity, and because I thought about one point in a different way after the discussion today.
"Then Jesus said to them, “Don’t you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable? 14 The farmer sows the word. 15 Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satancomes and takes away the word that was sown in them. 16 Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy. 17 But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. 18 Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; 19 but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful.20 Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop—some thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times what was sown.”
Mark 4:13-20
These are the categories and my thoughts:
The Hard Soil - Those with hard hearts, who hear the word but it doesn't sink in or take root at all. Satan immediately snatches it away, and they do not believe.
The Rocky Soil - Those who have an emotional response to God's Word, but who only have superficial, incomplete understanding of it and have never truly repented. They may even say they "believe in Jesus" in a superficial sense, but we know from other places in the Bible that just acknowledging the truth does nothing. Even the demons know the truth (James 2:19), but they will not accept it and repent. When tribulations come, the true colors show, and it is shown that these people never truly believed. They superficially accepted God's Word because it made them feel good, and as soon as it doesn't anymore, they fall away.
The Thorny Soil - From the way I read this same passage in Matthew, these are the people who hear the Word, and initially want to accept it - but they love the world, they love the things of the world, and as soon as they get back to their lives, it all comes to nothing. John MacArthur (his sermons were some of my "research" - listen to them here) gave the rich young ruler as an example of this. They love money and everything else the world has to offer, and that love stifles the Gospel, because we cannot serve two masters (Matthew 6:24).
I think the important thing about those second two there is that these people did NOT lose their salvation! Jesus tells us that once we are His, NOTHING can snatch us out of His hand (John 10:27-30). Those second two categories of people are those who were never truly converted in the first place. The love of the world, and misunderstanding of the truth, led to false conversions.
I think the temptation is to try to fit people we know into these categories, but I don't think we should do that. God knows what kind of soil a person is, and in the end, time will tell, because true believers will abide with Christ and bear fruit (John 15:1-6). If someone eventually falls away, it's because they never truly let the Word of God take root in their heart and change them, they never truly repented.
I think another important note here is that we shouldn't assume that just because someone "prayed a prayer" that they are actually saved. God is the only one who truly knows, but if a person has turned away from God, by all means, I think we should preach the Gospel to them again!
Our CBS director said something that was encouraging to me today - she said that no "soil" is beyond hope. God can pull out those weeds. God can remove the rocks. God can break the hard ground.
He can make the soil good.
The final category:
The Good Soil - Those who hear the Word, understand it, and accept it with repentance and faith. They bear fruit, and spread the truth to those around them, leading to a greater harvest.
All that we have to do is be faithful to spread the seed of the Gospel. The true Gospel, not a incomplete, feel-good, emotional gospel; not a false, you-can-follow-God-and-keep-all-your-sin gospel. The true Gospel that we are sinners, people who broke God's law, who deserve death and Hell, but that Jesus, God Himself, came to take our punishment. He died in our place and rose again to save us from our sin. We must recognize the truth of who we truly are as sinners and what Christ has done, repent, turn our back on everything the world offers, turn our back on our sin, and follow after Christ alone, with all that we have.
The thing that I realized today is this:
It is not in my power to change the soil of someone's heart. Only God can do that.
I can't make the soil good by saying things a certain way, or following certain "strategies". If I am living out and speaking the whole truth of the Gospel, I can't mess this up. My only job is to spread the seed of the truth of God's Word to those around me. I can spread the seed, I can water it, but it is God who makes it grow.
"So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth."
1 Corinthians 3:7
I can't explain how comforting this is to me. I've lately tried to speak to people about the Gospel more, for the first time in my life really, and I've been shut down, and it breaks my heart every time. It's easy to worry that I did it all wrong. But according to this passage, I should expect rejection, I should expect that some will not truly understand. God is in charge of that, not me. I don't know how big my personal harvest will be, and I'm not in control of that anyway. I only need to be faithful to the Great Commission, to spread the seed and pray for God to prepare the ground.
And oh, the joy when some of that seed will take root in good soil.
That's what will make it all worth it.
This house will officially no longer be ours on Friday. I thought I better get a move on and show you the last couple rooms!
This is our "master" bedroom. I put "master" in quotes because it doesn't have a bathroom actually attached, but it's the biggest bedroom in the house. It's gone through a few transformations over the years, and this is what it looks like now, right before we are about to leave it.
This wall color is a good example of how a color can be scary until it's finished, just like our house color. When we painted the outside of the house gray, we were afraid we made a mistake until we added the white trim. When I painted this room "Ice Cube" by Behr, I was afraid I had made a mistake! I wanted something that could feel airy, but could also feel cozy, and when I got this color on the wall it just felt...chilly. But I persevered, and once I added all the furniture and wall decorations back in, it hit that balance of airy and cozy and colorful that I was going for.
I'll probably go with a different color in our new master bedroom, because it's much bigger and I think this color would actually feel cold in that room. But here, I've enjoyed it!
I don't have a linkup going anymore, but PLEASE comment below if decide to join in and show us your home!
One of my goals for this year has been to develop a better morning routine.
I have had visions in my head of getting up before the kids, accomplishing my devotions and a ton of writing work before they even get out of bed, then graciously closing my laptop, giving my darling children a kiss, and going upstairs to make everyone a picture-perfect breakfast. I look adoringly at my troop while I drink a cup of hot coffee.
Yeah. That hasn't been going so well.
This is closer to what our mornings actually look like.
6:30 - The sun starts shining through the window, and wakes me up, but I am still exhausted from the night before. This isn't even just Georgie's fault - the three youngest and the dog all conspire to wake me up at least two or three times a night. I turn my head and try to go back to sleep.
6:40 - I hear little feet pounding around upstairs. I roll out of bed and call up the stairs, telling the kids to go read books in their room for a while. I stumble back to bed and fall asleep.
6:55 - More foot-pounding. I ignore.
7:02 - A child starts to come downstairs. I want fifteen more minutes of sleep. I remind them to stay upstairs and try to squeeze in a few more minutes.
7:10 - I realize it is futile to resist and get up. I brush my teeth and wash my face, put in my contacts.
7:20 - I go upstairs and make the kids breakfast, while reminding them they can't actually eat it until they make their beds and get dressed. Breakfast used to always be cereal, but then I realized the kids where a little calmer if I didn't hype them up on simple sugars first thing in the morning, so now sometimes I make them oatmeal. After I make them breakfast, I remind them to put their dishes in the dishwasher. I go back downstairs to fix my makeup and get dressed.
7:40 - I finish my makeup and go back upstairs. All the bowls are still on the table. I remind the kids to put them away again, and then tell them to go play while I drink some much-needed coffee.
7:50 - I sit and read or type or listen to a podcast and try to get motivated to actually start the day.
8:30-9:00 - Georgie wakes up. I make her a bottle and go downstairs for some snuggles.
9:30-10 - We actually start some sort of school.
Give or take 30 minute on all those time slots, and that's how our morning usually goes!
While I still think it would be wonderful if I could manage to get up before the kids and get some of my own stuff done before the day, our actual morning routine isn't completely terrible. I would like to be more productive, but there is a part of me that truly loves this slow start to our day. I'll probably continue to try to drag myself out of bed early, mainly because I would love to be able to squeeze in morning devotions on a regular basis, and I think that is something that truly would be worth making a change for. As it is, I do my daily devotions at night, which is also fine, but ideally I'd like to refocus my day right from the start.
Do you have morning routine? Do you wake up before your kids? HOW did you become disciplined enough to wake up before them (especially if you have early risers)?
"You are a type A personality, aren't you?" my doctor asked as I packed away the papers full of information I came to discuss with him.
"Yeah, I guess so," I replied. Everyone always pegged me as a type A, especially doctors, because I love to research subjects that are important to me, and I liked my house relatively clean. So I always just assumed that's what I was, a classic Type A.
It was only after I had kids that I began to consider that maybe "Type A" wasn't exactly a perfect description of my personality. I always viewed things like cooking and sewing as more art than science (not very Type-A), and I was never very into planning (also not Type-A). But after I had kids, I realized that I had a spontaneous, let's-just-do-something-fun today side, which is far more descriptive of a Type B than a Type A. During the baby and preschool years, I loved having my days mostly wide open, and being able to fill the hours with whatever struck my fancy.
I admit, as my kids grew older and homeschooling requirements grew more immediate, I mourned the loss of my newfound spontaneity. Because you can't really be spontaneous when you have a list of things to be done each day, can you?
But this is my second official year of homeschooling (sort-of third year, but Kindergarten is only part time in our house), and I have learned that I still do not like to have my days planned out. When I have a list of have-to's for each day, I feel the pressure and stress rising in my chest. If I don't feel the freedom to run errands, grocery shop, or just declare a spontaneous field trip day, homeschooling can quickly start to feel like house arrest to me.
So my solution? I don't daily plan our homeschool. Instead, I plan weekly.
In my homeschool planning pages, I have a spreadsheet that includes all the different subjects, and what lessons and pages should be done each week. I don't care how much we get done in any given day, as long as we do some school each day and get everything done that I have assigned for that week.
This has been really freeing for me, and allows me to still play with our weekly schedules a little bit. If I realize we have no food left in the house, we might go grocery shopping and only do two subjects that day - then the next day we'll catch back up. If math lessons are humming along really well, we might do two or three lessons in one day and give ourselves a couple days off of math the rest of the week to focus on history instead.
(Or freedom to gather chicken eggs with friends? Just trying to make the pictures work here.)
So far, this weekly planning has been working much better for our family and my personality than daily planning would. I imagine some adjustments will be needed as the kids get bigger and their workload increases, but even then, I remember handling my own schoolwork much the same way when I was homeschooled. If I felt like doubling up on a few subjects and giving myself a lighter workload the next day, that's what I did.
So I don't know if I'd technically be a Type A or Type B, but I know as far as daily planning goes, as long as the weekly work gets done, anything goes. I love that I can still make homeschooling work with the side of my personality that loves freedom in my schedule.
Do any of you daily plan (in homeschooling or just in life)? Would you consider yourself a Type B or Type A personality?
I didn't realize when I started this prompt series that one of the first subjects would end up being such a touchy one, at least when a person has my angle on it.
I've never celebrated Halloween.
Growing up, we always went to "harvest festivals" sometime during the month of October, but we avoided events on the actual day, holed up in our home with pizza and a movie. We never got Trick-or-Treaters because we lived in such a rural area. None of my friends really celebrated Halloween either.
As I became an adult, I not only never felt the need to celebrate it, but I also actively campaigned against it (you long-timers on here might remember a strongly worded blog post back in the day). As a Christian, I didn't feel good about Halloween, and for a long time I had a hard time understanding other Christians who had no qualms about the holiday.
I like to think I've grown quite a bit in my understanding of Christian liberty over the years. (Read Romans 14-15:6 - that whole thing.) I get now that a lot of Christians view Halloween as just an innocent kids' holiday, an opportunity to make memories and meet the neighbors, and they have freedom to celebrate it. The Holy Spirit convicts us in different ways on these non-essential issues, and that's okay! It's not something to argue about, or think less of anyone over, no matter which side you stand on.
As I've come to recognize that Halloween most likely falls under the umbrella of Christian liberty, and as I've had children who I've had to explain this whole issue to, it's forced me to further iron out my reasons for not celebrating Halloween. I get that a lot of holidays could have pagan origins or connections, and I'm not one to abandon Christmas because pagans a long time ago worshipped trees or something - so the pagan origins of Halloween are a factor for me (because it's so strongly rooted in paganism), but not necessarily a reason by itself anymore. We still live in a fallen world, and sin still contaminates everything; evil, neutral, and good. So why do I still choose not to celebrate it (besides having sensitive kids who wouldn't be into it anyway)?
First let me lay a little groundwork for my personal reasoning - as Christians, we know that Jesus came to give us life, eternal life, life more abundantly!
The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.
John 10:10
He came to free us from the consequences of our sin when we trust inHim to save us, to take our punishment, to defeat death by rising again!
So the bottom line for me is this: if all that is true and Jesus came to give us life, I just don't have a desire to focus on a holiday that, at it's root, glorifies everything to do with death.
The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.
John 10:10
He came to free us from the consequences of our sin when we trust inHim to save us, to take our punishment, to defeat death by rising again!
So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”
“O Death, where is your sting?
O Hades, where is your victory?”
O Hades, where is your victory?”
The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
1 Corinthians 15:54-56
When I talk to my kids about why we don't celebrate Halloween, that is what I say. I say that some people believe in Jesus and think Halloween is fun, but for our family, we want to focus on light and life, because that is what Jesus gives us. So far, they get it, and we just do our own thing on October 31st! (This year I think we are actually going to celebrate Reformation Day, at my kids' request, since it also falls on October 31st.)
To finish this off, I'd just like to say if you love Jesus and enjoy the innocent parts of Halloween, I'm not here to argue or persuade you to give it up. Like I said, I believe this is a non-essential issue that each Christian should prayerfully determine their own stance on, and I'm fine if you disagree with my take on Halloween. I know there are even a lot of Christians that use it as an opportunity for evangelism, which I think is wonderful and needed. I won't judge you, and I hope you won't read into anything I said either. But that's how I handle Halloween.
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Next up...well, I'm skipping meal-planning and daily-daily planning, because I don't do either of those things well, so next will probably be an update on my littlest lady! She just turned eleven months old, which means birthday planning is in full swing!
(The colors out there are just gorgeous right now! Seriously, the in-real-life colors look just like this.)
Last year I started a 31 Days Of Writing project, even though I had a baby due at the beginning of November. I wrote about Memory Keeping (you can read all those posts here), and I definitely didn't get to all the posts I had planned because I was in pain and huge and Georgie arrived before the end of the month!
This year we are moving before the end of the month, but I'm still going to try another October writing project, because the trees and the cool air and the candles and the hot drinks make my inner self scream "Pull out that laptop and write!".
I saw this little image floating around Instagram the other day, and I thought, why not? Let's do this (except I'm writing here instead of on Instagram)! It'll give me an easy way to scratch the writing itch.
I've missed the first few days (you're not missing much - my answers to how I handle those first two are "Um...I don't?"), but I think there are some good subjects coming up. I reserve the right to skip any days that are too busy or for which I have nothing to say.
However, PLEASE let me know if there are any subjects on this list that you are especially curious to hear my thoughts on!
It'll help me know what to prioritize when I get writing time.
First up - tomorrow you get to read my take on Halloween, which would probably be a highly requested one anyway, because if you've been around a while you might have noticed we don't celebrate it. (For you super-long-time blog readers, I've mellowed out about this subject in more recent years, don't worry). Check back in tomorrow if you want, and please do tell me what else on the list sounds most interesting!
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