3 hours ago
I have no big plans for the day, aside from homeschool and working on my Christmas card list (Christmas time and this baby's arrival are looming). I will probably do something a bit more elaborate for dinner, and by that I mean I'll spend the 45 minutes it takes to cut up potatoes for potato soup. It's a potato soup kind of day.
But for now, it's quiet, and I'm hunkering down in my room, trying to figure out what to write today. I was going to write about more frivolous things, but there are a few deeper thoughts left in the month after all. Snow always puts me in a reflective mood, and this morning I'm reflecting on keeping a good balance between memory-keeping and memory-making.
Much has been said about how obsessed we all are with getting the perfect picture to share on social media, and viewing our lives through the lens of our phone instead of the lenses of our eyes. I'm not sure I'm going to go that route with this post, because I've written this month already about how it's hard for me to even remember certain events without some documentation. I am not gifted with an impeccable memory for times and places and events, so writing something down or snapping a picture keeps these things from being lost to me forever. I don't think there is anything wrong with wanting to document the past, and indeed I think it's important. It's most important I think so we don't forget what God has done. How far He has brought us, and how He has worked in our lives and grown our character up to the present moment.
However, I think there is a certain danger in getting too caught up in the past. How we've "always" done things. How things "used to be".
Because the more years behind you the more you realize that things never stay exactly the same.
And that statement sounds wistful and sad somehow, but I don't really think it has to be. Because would we really even want things to stay the same forever? Would we want to never move to the next stage of life, to never watch our babies get bigger and develop their personalities, to never develop new traditions, try something new, grow?
There is room for a bit of sentimentality about the past I think, as long as we don't get stuck in our reminiscing about "the good ole days". Because these days that we're in right now, these very present moments, are good too. They drift on by, and tomorrow will be a memory before we even realize it. And I think it's good to embrace the way things change, to hold on to our memories while making fresh, different ones in the present moment, and not to resent the fact that things aren't always "the same". Because really, how boring would things get if they always were?
My goal I think, in all this memory-keeping, is to remember all that God has done for me this far, but not so I can wish for the way things used to be. I want to remember His faithfulness and gifts in the past so my eyes are wide open for His faithfulness and gifts that are still in the future. And when I keep that balance between the memory-keeping and the memory-making yet to be done, I think it's easier to live fully in the blessings of right now, and to be grateful for them.
Today I want to talk about a practical aspect of memory-keeping, namely, how I go about organizing photos.
First, I feel like I should clarify that I am not actually very good at this. I have plenty of photos stored on my computer, and I have something of an organization system, but there is much room for improvement. Still, I thought I'd share what I do and ask how you all go about organizing photos!
Organizing Digital Photos
For my digital photos, I try to keep the photos I take organized in folders by year and month. So I'll have a folder for 2017, and in that folder I'll have a folder for each month. In recent years I've organized them even further and I try to split each month into separate "event" folders - for example, in my September 2017 folder I have folders for "Autumn Hike", "Clarice's Birthday", "34 Weeks Pregnant", etc. I think this helps me find the photos I'm looking for a little easier, assuming I can remember the year/month of the event - which I usually can, because I somehow am able to remember pictures I take even better than the real-life events. This is one reason why taking photos is so important to me! It helps me remember the different fun things we did together.
My recent project - and by recent I mean the project I've been working on over the last year and a half - is going through all these folders and deleting the photos that were no good. In the past, I've gotten lazy and just dumped photos into a folder without editing them or deleting the throw-aways, so I'm trying to clear out some of the photo clutter. I am in the process of creating a folder for each year of my "favorite" photos, the ones that I would actually like to get printed up (this is difficult because there are so many).
Which leads to the next aspect of organizing my photos...
Organizing Printed Photos
I am really struggling with figuring out how to organize my printed photos. I have albums from our early years of marriage and Wyatt's first couple of years, but I quickly realized that I'm not going to have enough room in my house to store albums of all our family photos. So what to do? Like I said, I have a ton of photos that I hope to eventually get printed. I need to narrow them down further, but then what?
I'm considering just buying cute-looking boxes to hold each year of photos - I can fit a lot more prints into a box than in albums. However, I'm also aware that this is a messier option and not as fun as an album to look through, so I'm still debating on what to do. It's going to take me a while to get caught up on printing photos, so I guess I have time to figure it out!
So how do you all organize your photos? Do you have any sort of system? Are you better than I am at getting them printed up? Give me your tips!
Like Disney World. This last year everyone and their mother seemed to be going to Disney World, and I started to wonder if my kids would be deprived of something important if we never make it there.
Over the last few months though, my attitude has started to change on this a bit. I still think memories are important, and I work toward trying to give my children good memories. But I think the more I slow down and remember my own childhood, the more I realize that a happy childhood doesn't have to be made of big memorable moments. Some of my favorite memories with my mom and dad were just times when we did ordinary things together.
When you are a kid, having mom and dad join in with your activities makes them so much more fun.
I vividly remember when I was in elementary school, my mom and dad joined in with our game of hide and seek one day. But instead of just hiding, they changed up the game. If it was mom's turn to hide, she would take each of us kids and tuck us away in different spots throughout the house...and then my dad had to be the one to find us! They came up with the best hiding spots, places that we kids couldn't possibly reach by ourselves. My dad hid me on the top shelf of the closet. My mom hid us behind the TV stand. It was so hard not to giggle when I knew I was getting close to being found.
I try to think about things like that when I'm considering how to make good memories for my kids...because as fun as a trip to Disney World is, things like hide-and-seek can be just as memorable, and just as fun. (And these things are free.)
I was thinking about this yesterday. The little three were down for a nap (and they were actually sleeping, which is rare these days), and Derek and I were on the couch reading while Wyatt worked with his Legos. He sat over there, silently laboring over his Lego boat. He asked me to come help him figure out how to make it into the shape he wanted, and I have to tell you right now, my Lego skills leave much to be desired. After doing what I could, I mentioned that we might have to ask Daddy to come help us figure it out, because he is better at Legos than me.
I started googling how to make a boat out of Legos, and Derek came over to see what I found. He and Wyatt declared the plans I found to be "boring", and Derek sat down with Wyatt and started to sort through the Legos. Wyatt bounced in his seat as Derek started helping him form the base of the boat.
"Wow, that's perfect! Dad, you're really smart at Legos!"
They built a pretty impressive boat together, complete with a hook to haul things out of the water and a movable ramp. Wyatt declared it a "rescue boat", and he's been carrying it around with him ever since.
I stood their in the kitchen and watched my husband and oldest son building a boat together, and I just thought, this is it. This is what makes a happy childhood. It's not these big, extravagant offerings that I so often worry that our kids will not experience. (Because hello, we have five kids. Disney World vacations are likely not in our future, at least not anytime soon).
No, kids need far less than we often think to be happy. It's these little moments, when we parents take a minute to slow down and step into our kids' worlds. To show them our love by giving them our time and attention in the little things. To make an ordinary game, an ordinary interest that much more exciting because we're willing to join in. It's enough to make a child's day. Maybe even enough to make their whole childhood.
If you are expecting this list to be populated with all the "children's classics", think again, my friends! When I was in elementary school I mostly read a few series that captured my attention at the time. I don't think they'd be considered great works of children's literature, but they did get me reading! Just for fun, today I thought I'd share a few of the book series I remember reading as a kid.
The Saddle Club Series - These are some of the first books I remember being interested in, ever. I think what drew me in was not so much the stories, but the collectible cards that came with each book. Not to mention that I met my closest elementary school friend because she was also reading the Saddle Club series. They were basically just stories about girls and their horses, and I remember very little of them now. Like I said, I was in it for the cards.
American Girl Series - Did anyone in my generation not read one of the American Girl book series? My favorite was always Felicity, because my favorite era of American History was the Revolutionary period, even back then.
Encyclopedia Brown - I used to love these books! Each book had multiple stories - mysteries with clues! And it wouldn't tell you the answer at the end, you had to guess who you thought "did it" and turn to the back of the book to find out if you were right. I was always so proud of myself when I picked the right culprit.
Grandma's Attic - Okay, this one is sort of a classic. I mostly remember whichever book is the one where they pull an old quilt out of the attic, and each patch on the quilt has a different story. Really cute stories.
Grandma's Attic - Okay, this one is sort of a classic. I mostly remember whichever book is the one where they pull an old quilt out of the attic, and each patch on the quilt has a different story. Really cute stories.
American Adventure Series - I'm actually relieved to see you can still buy these! Around the time we started homeschooling, my mom bought a couple of these American History books and assigned done of them to me for school. I didn't get too excited about that one, but about a year down the road I got a hold of a book a little further in the series. I was hooked. Each book in the series follows the children of the characters in the previous book, so it's like one long family story down through all the eras of American History. I used to save up my own money and march into the Christian bookstore with my $4 to buy the next book in the series. Until a friend started loaning me the books, which I kind of regret now. I wish I had kept buying them so I could have completed the series. The ones I did buy are in a box under Gwen's bed, waiting for my children to get old enough to read them.
What did you like to read in elementary school?
My siblings are twins and are two years younger than me. We had a lot of fun growing up, being so close in age. I remember so many different games we came up with, and we would play with each other for hours. We had pretty good relationships with each other, and I loved having both a brother and a sister.
I think when we are young (especially us girls), it's easy to think that you get to plan your whole life out. When I was in middle school, I decided I wanted to get married at 22 (my mom's marriage age), wait two or three years to have babies, then have three kids (because it seemed to work for my family of origin). I even had names picked out (because of course my husband would love every name that I did).
If you have been following this blog for a while, you know that none of that worked out like I thought it would!
So to answer a question from my blog buddy Natalie, I didn't always want a "big" family (unless you consider three kids "big", which I don't).
I continued on with my well-planned-out life, and when I was 19 years old and in dental hygiene college I read a book called "America Alone" by Mark Steyn. I can say with certainty that this was the point when I started to think about family size a little differently.
This book was not necessarily about family size, it was about international politics, but it did address the history and current state of birth rates in different countries. In the book, Steyn presents evidence that countries or cultures that have higher birth rates tend to accomplish more in the world, and those that have anemic birth rates tend to go into decline.
This was a shifting point for me, because for the first time it occurred to me that maybe choosing how many children to have isn't a decision that should be merely based on personal preference or some arbitrary "ideal". It introduced to me the idea that having children is a way to pass something on, and if there are more children in the family, there is more of a chance to pass it on to more people. As a strong believer in Christ, that idea was interesting to me, because I want to pass on my faith to my children, and for them to pass it on to their children. For the first time I thought about having four kids instead of just three.
I think the Lord used that unexpected book to get me thinking in a new direction, because a year later Derek and I got married, and a year later we went off birth control because of our pro-life convictions. Still, I clung to the idea that I could control everything in my life, including the timing and size of my family. This was my decision, and I didn't think about God's opinion about my family much at all.
But God wasn't finished working on my heart, and I was rudely awakened to the fact that maybe I wasn't in control of this. Things weren't working quite right after I went off the pill, and for the first time it occurred to me that maybe getting pregnant isn't as simple as I thought.
We went through about eleven months of waiting for things to get back to normal, and I very quickly went from thinking we'd wait to try to get pregnant to being desperate to have a baby. This was what God used to turn me toward what He wanted for our family, instead of just what I wanted. This is what He used to change my view of children from something to check off my list, to viewing them as a true blessing that He was in charge of giving.
Fast forward a few years later, and instead of the two or four Derek and I said we originally wanted, we are expecting our fifth baby. Until about two years ago, the idea of five never even entered my head - but I credit this baby completely to God working in our hearts and family. After we had Clarice there was just that nudge from the Holy Spirit to wait, to not do anything permanent quite yet, and we wouldn't have been listening at all if not for all those years of God slowly changing my attitude on children. We would have cut things short long ago if God hadn't used our trouble getting pregnant to teach me to seek His will for our family, not just my own. He used a stressful time in my life of dealing with sub-par fertility to actually bring me more babies than I would have otherwise! Looking back now, I'm amazed at how gentle He was with me. He gave me just the right resources and circumstances at the right times to change my heart.
So here we are, having a "big" family. (I can probably say "big" without quotation marks now - it's just that the Duggars and Bates kind of redefined "big" for me.) Derek and I never really planned this out, but looking at our five babies (even the one still in my belly), we really cannot imagine not having them here. God has been really gracious to us, and He gave us what we didn't know we needed.
So, to finish answering Natalie's question, my favorite part of having a big family...well, they are all running around, laughing as I type this, and the joy is pretty infectious! (Of course, there are also times of everyone crying, but let's just skip over that.) I think my favorite part of having a big family is those moments when they are all gathered around me for school or Bible time, and we are talking about something really important, and I know that this is it. This is what God made me for, and these children are one of the only things I will do on this earth that will really last...and He trusted me with five of them.
It's a powerful thought, and it's humbling, and it makes me want to cry for the responsibility and privilege of it. He's been really good to me, and I see that nowhere more clearly than in these little faces that look back at me every day.
P.S. If you asked Derek his version of the story, he'd have a very different one than mine...but I saw how he kept his heart open to what the Lord might have for us over the years too. There is a reason God sent us each other, and these five kids are good proof!
P.P.S. If you have any "getting to know you" questions for me, now's the time! It'll help me come up with material for the last two weeks of my 31 Day Writing Challenge!
I listen to a lot of homeschool and book-related podcasts, and a recurring theme seems to be the question "How do you turn your kids into readers?" A lot has been said on the subject, most of it quite a bit more scholarly than what I am sharing here. But whenever I hear this question come up, I start to think about my own childhood. What made me love books? What turned me into a reader?
I'm sure much of it has to do with some of those "right" things parents are supposed to do. My mom always had an abundance of books around, and I used to love digging through the boxes of books she had hidden away in our basement. I saw my parents reading frequently - usually when I came upstairs in the morning, my mom would be sitting at the table with a cup of tea, her Bible and devotional book stacked neatly next to her on the table (I could tell she had read God's Word first), and her nose in a book. My dad would bring books when he knew we would have lots of leisure time (like on vacation), and it was fun to see him get involved in a good story.
But one of my best book memories from my childhood is when my mom told me one evening that tonight was going to be a "reading night".
I didn't know what a reading night was, but I laid awake in bed as slowly all the lights in the house went out. My brother and sister were in bed, even my dad was in bed, when my mom snuck stealthily into my room and told me to come with her.
We went up to the kitchen, and she pulled out two mugs and made us some tea. She pulled out a Hershey's chocolate bar and gave me half. We went to the living room and settled onto the couches with our books. I drank my peppermint tea and savored my chocolate as we each read a chapter of our books.
Once I was finished with my chapter, I put my book down and looked up to my mom grinning at me. "What happened in your chapter?" she asked. And I told her all about what I had read (I don't remember the book, but I am willing to bet it was a Nancy Drew mystery). We discussed my favorite parts of the book so far, and what I thought was going to happen. Then she told me about her book, and what was happening in her story.
We continued our occasional reading nights all through my middle school and high school years. I was the oldest, so I got to start reading night first, but I know my mom did reading nights with my siblings too.
Whenever the question comes up of how to make your kids into readers, my mom's reading nights always pop back into my brain. I can't pin down exactly what made me a reader, but I can pin down those reading nights as one of the things that made reading fun.
It's a tradition I fully intend to pass down. I'm counting the days until my kids are big enough to be reading chapter books, and I can mysteriously tell them that tonight is going to be a reading night.
I never said these memory posts were all going to be serious, did I?
Back When I Was A Blonde: Birth-Two Years Old
Yes, my friends, despite being solidly in the brunette camp now, when I was a toddler I was blonde. A picture in case you don't believe me:
When people wonder where my kids got their blonde baby hair, I can say for certain that it was from me. I don't remember what it was like being a blonde. Did I have more fun back then?
The Brunette Phase: Three Years Old-10 Years Old
My hair changed rather suddenly to a light brunette when I was three years old. It still changed to blonde in the summer when the sun would bleach it during all those hours outside, until I was in first or second grade - then I was solidly a brunette, and it's only gotten darker since then.
The Frizzy Phase: 11 Years Old-14 Years Old
Ah, puberty. That was a rough hair time for me. Something about the hormones made my hair want to try to turn curly, but it wasn't quite succeeding - I ended up with a semi-wavy frizzy mass. I am quite thankful for my mom during this period, who tried to help my hair situations with different anti-frizz products she would buy for me. But my hair just refused to decide if it was going to be semi-wavy, or sort of straight, or full-on curly, so it was a confusing time.
The Curly Phase: 14 Years Old-16 Years Old
My hair finally curled up enough for it to actually look like it was on purpose, and we found some decent products. Still, I had a hard time accepting my wavy/curly hair. The preferred hair style in the culture at that time was definitely sleek and straight, and my hair was just...not. I always felt like it was a little out-of-control, and it was hard to get my curls to look right because they were still half in the "wavy" category. (I'm still not sure how to deal with my curly hair au natural, to be honest).
The Straightening Phase: 16 Years-20 Years Old
I finally got a hair straightener and started using it more regularly. I found at this time that I liked my day three hair the best. The first day I washed and straightened it, it would still be on the frizzy side (I'd try to wash it on days we weren't going anywhere). The second day, the frizz had calmed down some. By the third day it actually looked pretty smooth! But by then it was time to wash it again. I wrestled with my hair in this manner until my 20's.
The I've-Got-It-Figured-Out Phase: 20 Years Old-Present
I got married and started working at a real job (and hence earning my own grown-up paycheck) at 20 - which gave me a lot more wiggle room to try out different products. And what do you know, I finally found THE product that would make my hair cooperate! Sexy Straight Hair (that's what the product was called). I even had the courage to try growing my hair long once I found this lifesaver.
It didn't last long, I think I'm more of a bob kind of girl.
I eventually switched to a Chi straightener (game-changer) with the Chi Shine Infusion Spray (which is pretty similar to the product above, just easier to find), and that's what I use today.
I do have one regret about the different stages of my hair up to now, and that is the fact that I have never figured out how to wear my hair curly and like it. I am not sure if it is because of the semi-traumatic experience of having my hair go rogue at a stage when everything else was changing too (oh, puberty), or if I internalized too much of the straight-hair-is-better message of that time when my hair was changing, or if I have just never found the product that would make my curly hair manageable enough to suit me.
But I do wish I could have figured out how to make it work and love it, because I would love to be an example to my daughters in that way - I'd love to teach them to embrace the unique beauty of their individual hair types, like my mom tried to do for me.
Maybe that will be the next stage of my "hair evolution" - The I-Finally-Get-My-Curls Phase.
Do any of you have wavy/curly hair? What products do you use? Did you ever figure out how to tame the curls, or do I just need to learn to go with the curly-hair flow?
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