Updating our diet: Step 1 - Breakfast

As you may know, most of the ladies from this blog know a LOT about nutrition and healthy living. I've always been inspired by their dedication to what they put in their bodies. I can remember 7 years ago, when Krista, Margaret, Christina and I were all pregnant with our first babies and teaching school together...Krista and Margaret were eating eggs like they were going out of style and telling me about the Blue Ribbon diet. I saw how beautifully they grew those babies in their bellies and how healthy those little girls have turned out to be.

I feel like my family keeps a diet similar to a lot of my peers...I suppose I consider it "fairly healthy". I cook the majority of our meals, we only eat at restaurants about once or twice a month, and we eat a lot of fruits and vegetables. But I'd say we are "fairly American" in our diet as well. We eat cereal for breakfast 6 out of 7 days, processed cheese, crackers, snack foods, and bread. My kids probably eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich 5 lunches a week and we have more added sugar in our diet than I'm probably even aware of.

Anyhow, I've been inspired to take baby, BABY steps to overhaul our diet. I've heard/read of different ways to go about this, but I finally landed on changing it meal by meal. My first step: change what we eat for breakfast.

Breakfast for my family would be a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios with whole milk. We can go through a lot of cereal and milk this way, especially if I pour the boys a glass of milk to drink along with it. I think this breakfast has a few problems: cost, milk consumption, added sugar, and not enough energy to get us through to lunch. So I sat down with the kids and came up with a list of breakfast alternatives we could try. Here's our list:

Yogurt with Fresh Fruit added
Quick Cook Oats with Brown Sugar
Scrambled Egg Sandwich (on a biscuit with cheese)
Pancakes
Waffles
Bagel with Cream Cheese

In order not to overwhelm myself and burn out, I started with store bought versions of most of this. The yogurt is Aldi brand nonfat vanilla yogurt, the biscuits are Grands biscuits from a tube, and the bagels and cream cheese are from Aldi. I already made pancakes and waffles from scratch, so that wasn't a change. But I use white flour for them.

Now that we are into week 2 of our new breakfasts, I'm ready to start making a few more changes to them. My first step will be to make my own yogurt. My plan is to follow Money Saving Mom's Homemade Crockpot Yogurt Recipe. I'm going to buy a half gallon of organic whole milk (not ultra-pastuerized) and a container of plain yogurt with live active cultures. My goal is to change the nonfat vanilla yogurt we're eating now to one that has good fat, no sugar, and is organic.

I can already see some results from our changes. We have cut way back on our milk consumption, and everyone has more energy to make it through the morning. Plus I love looking over the table and seeing the boys eat something besides yet another bowl of cereal!

Dealing with problems in Marriage

My post today comes from some advice I received about a year and a half ago. I met with my pastor's wife one afternoon to talk about some problems I was having within my marriage. I had asked her ahead of time to be prepared to give me tough advice. I didn't want her empathize with me; I didn't want her to coddle me. I wanted her to be a straight-shooter with me. Well, she took the challenge! I walked out of our meeting with a conviction of sin, a clear plan of how to deal with it, and the confidence that she would be praying for me and checking in on me.

I won't really get into the specifics of the problems because I want to protect the intimacy of my marriage and the point is really that you can fill in the blank with any problems you may be experiencing in your own marriage.

When I met with Mary (name changed) I explained a little of what was going on. But I told her I wasn't looking for her to help me "fix" the problems - I wanted her to show me how *I* can change to make things better. Mary shared that my priority in life needs to be that my husband feels loved and respected. And the main way that's going to happen is for me to learn to hold my tongue and to put him before all other priorities/things. All the day-to-day decisions, efficiencies, projects, etc. will fade away and not matter in 20 years - but the way I treat my husband and make him feel day-to-day will affect him and affect our relationship for a lifetime.

Mary suggested I make 2 lists - one of the things I feel bother me about my husband and one of the things I appreciate about him. With the first, I need to decide how I am going to deal with my bad feelings as they come. With the second, I need to concentrate on building love for my husband through those, conscientiously praising him for them and using them to build him up.

These lists have really helped me. They allowed me to write down 4 specific things that were really bothering me in our marriage. Then I was forced to specifically answer how I would deal with my negative feelings when the situations arose. It helped me to have a concrete plan in my head for when those hard times came.  Also, wow, the second list helped me to see how much I appreciate my husband. I think I was so focused on the negative that I had forgotten about the positives. In my down times, I can focus on those 5 things and renew my spirit to love and respect my husband.

I challenge you to come up with your own lists. If you are having trouble with them, please feel free to email me at leah payne at hotmail dot com. I can share a little from my lists to jumpstart your thinking. But please accept my challenge and see if it helps you.

You're going to have problems...

When I asked Ed what advice he thought I should share about preparing for marriage, the first words out of his mouth were "Well, you're going to have problems..."! Oh, boy, I thought, this is going to be interesting!

When Ed and I were going through our premarital counseling, our pastor told us that the three main areas of conflict a married couple will face are Sex, Money & In-laws. We may have balked at the time, but over the past 8 years of marriage, I can agree that those are probably the three main sources of conflict that we have faced.

To a couple that is considering marriage, the idea that Sex would be a source of conflict is just laughable. I guarantee that every couple has said there's no way that sex would be a problem. But I can also guarantee that each of those couples has at one point or another experienced conflict about sex.

Money becomes a source of conflict because often times two people come into a marriage with differing opinions on saving, spending, giving, etc. A wife may have grown up in a household where money was handled differently than in the husband's house. Maybe one lived on hand-me-downs and the other always had new things. Maybe your parents shared a checking account and his had separate. All of this can often times lead to a third source of conflict, in-laws...

The way you were raised and how you relate to your parents has a huge impact on the way you live out your marriage. And that goes for whether you loved your childhood or hated it; whether you are really close with your parents or have a rocky relationship. All of your growing-up experiences influence your idea of the culture of marriage and can cause many speed bumps in your own marriage.

So as you consider the prospect of marriage, you and your partner definitely need to be aware of these areas of conflict. The more you get to know your potential mate, the more you will learn about their spending habits, their saving habits, their relationship with their parents, etc. BUT, and I mean that in all capital letters, B-U-T, no matter how much you discover and discuss ahead of time, just as my husband said, "you're going to have problems." The time you spend getting to know each other before marriage is just as much about how you and your partner deal with conflict as it is with what the specific conflict is.

Ed and I were friends for 5 years before we started dating. But we were married within a year of starting a dating relationship (with the first 6 months long distance). When we reflect on our shared history, we agree that perhaps we were married too soon. Even though we had a good foundation of friendship, our courting period wasn't long enough to allow us to experience conflict and work through it. We swept what conflict we had under the rug and pushed through to our wedding day. So when the conflict came in marriage, we were often disillusioned. We felt we had been duped by the other person ("he was so sweet when we were dating"; "she didn't have this kind of temper before we were married"). Had we allowed ourselves time to process through some of the conflict ahead of time, we could have been better equipped to deal with it within marriage.

We will both say that we have definitely had our ups and downs over the past eight years - and a lot of rocky ground in between. We have learned better how to face the big 3 (sex, money & in-laws) through lots of trial and error and many mistakes. Those were hard fought battles that have ultimately brought us closer as we've arrived on the same page.

My encouragement would be to go ahead and have a few fights! :) No, seriously, don't be afraid to face conflict within your courting period. It will allow you each to see how you handle the conflict and allow you time to process through how you can, as a couple, work through a problem.

If you are thinking about homeschooling...

I sat down this evening to start setting some goals for 2012 - both personal and professional (ha, ha - by that I mean things to do with parenting, housework, and homeschooling). Even though we've been "doing school" for almost 5 months, I am still looking for ways to do it better. Namely, to put a little more effort into it.

In my organizing tonight, I kept coming back to the website Homeschool Creations, created by a homeschooling mom of 4 named Jolanthe. She does so many awesome things on her blog. And I got to thinking that her blog really could be the start and finish of a great homeschool curriculum for anyone starting out with homeschooling their preschooler. She has a long list of Printable Packs that she's developed that are centered around a variety of topics - ex. Princesses, Robots, Disney Cars, etc. The idea is to print off the free Printable Pack and use it over the course of a week to cover things like pre-reading, pre-writing, shape sorting, number recognition, etc.

She has also been working on developing Literature-based Printable Packs. These are along the idea of the Five in a Row book. The Printable Pack is centered on a book - ex. Blueberries for Sal, We're Going on a Bear Hunt, etc. It would be so easy, so fun, and SO educational to just do a book a week and use her free Printable Pack.


I realize as I write this that it sounds like one big advertisement for Homeschool Creations, and I guess maybe it is. Except I don't know this lady and I'm not getting paid for it! Really, I was just thinking to share her blog here because I know there are some of you with preschoolers at home that would like to try your hand at homeschooling. So I encourage you to go check it out. Pick a book, print off the pack and see what you think.

Knowing When to Take a Break

This year I have been working through The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading with Samuel, my five year old. About a month ago, he and I were really struggling each time we sat down for a lesson. We were stuck on Lesson 48: ank/ink/onk/unk. Did anyone else have problems with that one? There had been rumblings leading up to this lesson, but the bottom really fell out when we got here. We tried this lesson three times in one week, each one ending with Samuel being disciplined for having a bad attitude and me needing to take a break to cool off.

I realized I was crossing over into "reading isn't fun" territory - a place I didn't want to be, especially since we're just starting and because Sam is young. BUT, I also didn't want him to think he could just give up on reading. Part of me feared rewarding a bad attitude. So I had to think of a solution that gave him an opportunity to show he could do reading with a happy heart without building a dislike of reading.

What to do? We simply started over. I had a talk with him about how proud I am of him and all he is accomplishing. I also talked about things being tough and that we can always choose the attitude we will use to approach tough work. So I told him that the focus of our reading lesson for the next two weeks wouldn't be how much he read, or getting through a lesson, but the attitude he chose to have. We would pray and ask Jesus to give him a happy heart. And then we started back at Lesson 27: Words with Short-A Vowel Sounds. It took us the next two weeks to go through all of the lessons again and for him to make it through each time with a happy heart. But we made it and it worked.

Each day I would also go over the ank/ink/onk/unk lesson with him. I just had him read the words after me each day. I was dreading that lesson like you wouldn't believe! But we made it there and we made it through. Praise God! We pressed on through a few more lessons, but then I sensed it was a good time to take a break from the book. Samuel was approaching reading time with a good attitude, so I didn't feel that taking a break now would be rewarding a bad attitude. So we're taking a break for a couple of weeks.

Now I have a collection of easy readers that he can work on each day during reading time. Our bookshelf this week includes: Go, Dog. Go! by P.D. Eastman, The Baby Bunny by Margaret Hillert, Crabby Gabby by Sue Graves, Whose Hat Is It? by Valeri Gorbachev, and Mine's the Best by Crosby Bonsall (all from the library - praise God for our library!). Here's to happy reading!

Practicing Biblical Hospitality: Safe Families

We live in the suburbs of Chicago, IL - home of a program called Safe Families. From the Safe Families website:  

Since 2005, Safe Families for Children has offered sanctuary to thousands of children, minimizing the risk for abuse or neglect and giving parents the time and tools they need to help their families thrive. The ultimate goal is to strengthen and support parents so they can become Safe Families for their own children. 

Safe Families for Children strives to meet three objectives:
1. Child Welfare Deflection: Safe Families provides a safe alternative to child welfare custody, thus significantly reducing the number of children entering the child welfare system.
2. Child Abuse Prevention: Providing an overwhelmed and resource limited parent with a safe, temporary place for their child without threat of losing custody. By offering support, the goal is to avert potential abuse/neglect episodes.
3. Family Support and Stabilization: Many parents struggle because of limited social support and unavailable extended family. Many Safe Families Volunteers become the extended family that a parent never had.

Our family just joined the Safe Families movement about a month and a half ago. We received our first placement at the beginning of October. Four year old K came to stay with us because his single, pregnant mother was hospitalized with pregnancy complications and she had no one who could care for him. Her main support person, her mother, had recently passed away. She was without anyone else to support her. K spent five nights in a crisis nursery until Safe Families was mentioned to the mom as someone who could take care of her son for her. K was with us for three days before his mom was released from the hospital and he could go back home.

On Saturday, we got the call that K and mom had been in the emergency room all day and she was being admitted. K sat by himself in the emergency room lobby until someone could get to him and bring him to us. He's now back with us until mom is released from the hospital.

I love this program for so many reasons. One, it gives us a way to show Christ's love to our neighbors in a way I wouldn't be able to do without the organization. Two, it gives us a low commitment way to see how we would feel about doing foster care. Three, it gives me an opportunity to go out of my comfort zone with the relationship I am developing with K's mom. I am learning so much about her and the struggles she faces in her daily life.

The director of Safe Families spoke at our church this Sunday during a luncheon we hosted for Orphan Sunday. He shared that someone once asked him what the theology behind Safe Families was since they kids they served weren't actually "orphans" (referring to James 1:27 - pure religion to care for orphans and widows.) He said that he looks at Safe Families as a way to practice biblical hospitality - showing kindness to strangers by opening up your home to them. He started Safe Families back in 2005 because he had mothers coming to him (he works for Lydia Home Association, a ministry that includes residential programs, foster care, family services, etc) who had no support system and needed someone to take their kids for them temporarily to give them time to get back on their feet or get out of a dangerous situation. They were good parents - they didn't need DCFS to get involved. But he said his hands were tied until they became wards of the state. He then came up with the idea of Safe Families and started out with just his family. Then he asked friends to help, etc, until it bloomed into the program it is today with 800 families set up as Safe Families. Amazing.

Safe Families has now extended to 13 different states, as well as Canada and the UK. Please look to see if they are in your area and consider joining this amazing movement. You can visit their website here.

Secondary Infertility(?)

I'm going a little personal today, so brace yourselves!

I shared awhile back that my husband and I have been trying to have another baby. This month marks our one year of trying. I thought I would give a little update on how I'm feeling about it all and what our next steps will be.

One of the things that I frequently feel is that I have the heart and mindset of a mom of many children. I would have loved to have a "stair step" set of children, you know, 5 under 5 and all that. So when I read blogs of these moms or read stories about them, I feel like I want to relate. I used to think, "oh, that will be me someday soon." As more and more space grows between Joel (my youngest) and the possibility of another child, I feel that my family dynamic will be different. I look at the growing gap and think oh, man, I'm not even one kid behind now - I'm two kids behind! I 'should' have had one when Joel was 1.5 and another when he was 3. I'm not even pregnant now, so he will turn 4 before another baby could even be born. These are the kinds of thoughts that run around in my head!! I'm not making any claims that these are rational thoughts, but I wanted to share with you in case someone else out there feels this way. So when another mom talks to me and makes a comment on bigger families and says she could never do that, I realize that she is trying to relate to me because I have two kids just like her. It kind of takes me by surprise because I don't think of myself as a "just two kids" kind of person. But more on that in a second...

As far as the next step, we are going to see a Reproductive Endocrinologist this week. I have gone back and forth about this decision. My husband and I have said that we don't have any intentions of doing any fertility treatments (a personal decision we've reached for ourselves only) but I still feel like I want to go and at least see if we can find out what's going on. I couldn't explain why until yesterday when our pastor shared something during the sermon and I was like, "yes, that's exactly what I'm trying to say." He said that there are basically three answers to prayer - yes, no, and wait. The yeses are great, of course. The nos are tough, but at least they're an answer. The wait is the hardest because it requires us to really wait on God and trust in him (thus making it the hardest but the most beneficial! Ugh!). I guess I've been feeling that if I can't have a "yes" to having another baby, I'd rather have a "no" and move on than a "wait". Even as I type this I see that that is me choosing what is more comfortable for me than what is going to stretch me. Again, remember, I gave the disclaimer that I was going to get personal today!

So we'll head to the guy this week and see what he has to say. Ugh.

And either way, back to the bigger family thing, we are still walking down our road to adoption sometime in the future. We just joined a program here in Chicago called Safe Families, which is like Foster Care Light (we don't receive any money and the placements are for a short amount of time to provide relief for families in need without abuse or neglect). And we'll probably start our foster care classes this winter/spring on the road to Foster Adoption. We will continue to walk this road regardless of whether I get pregnant again or not. But there is still the waiting and the longing and the trying to find closure.

So, that's my super personal post for you this Monday morning!! Please share any thoughts you have - whether you have been here before or are here now. I'd love to hear what you all have to say.

The Dollar Store for Homeschoolers

Do you live near a Dollar Tree? I LOVE our dollar store and I find so many great things for homeschooling there. Looking around our homeschool room, here are a few of the items I see that came from the dollar store:

1. Workbooks. I have an unhealthy obsession with the workbooks from Dollar Tree. They are just so great and so cheap. My boys are not coloring book kids. They don't enjoy sitting down and coloring or drawing. But I've discovered they will sit down and do a worksheet. Some of the ones we work on aren't really that challenging to them (draw a line between the two matching Care Bears, for example) but it is great pencil practice for them. And I always make them write their name at the top of each worksheet (front and back). This has been great practice for them. Some of the workbooks are more at their skill level and they enjoy cutting, writing, and doing mazes.

2. White Boards & Dry Erase Markers. I found these great framed white boards for $1/each and a 3 pack of markers for $1. We use these boards to practice writing letters and to draw Mat Man (from Handwriting Without Tears). I used white boards a lot as a classroom teacher and I can see us getting a lot of use out of them when drilling math, practicing spelling, etc.

3. Card Packs. This was a 6-pack of card games for $1. I have these in our Busy Bag Box and can pull them out when we need a fun activity to break up our school day.

4. Puzzles. Each of the boys picked out a Disney Cars 48 piece puzzle the last time we were in Dollar Tree. These also live in our Busy Bag Box for a quick activity. The boys can practice teamwork and turn-taking when working together on the puzzles.

5. Magnetic Alphabet Sheets. I found this cute sheet of alphabet magnets the other day. I bought two sets so we would have doubles. The boys worked together right away to lay out the alphabet and spell some words. Also, I didn't buy these yesterday because we don't need them, but Dollar Tree has Wooden Magnetic Letters. These would be a super cheap version of the Melissa & Doug letters.

I also love the Target Dollar Spot, especially when they put out their back to school items. Here are a few of the items I picked up this year:

Do you have any great Dollar Store items that you use in your homeschooling? Please share! I'm always looking for new ideas!

Choosing to be the Peacemaker

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God." Matthew 5:9

Do your kids argue? Do they fight over toys or whose turn it is? What do you do? How do you approach the situation and what is your solution?

Here's an example I'm sure we can all relate to:
You are in the kitchen getting dinner ready (or, maybe even on the computer looking at Facebook!!). Your kiddos are in the other room and you hear an argument errupt. They are going back and forth with "It's my turn" "No, I had it first!" etc. When you walk into the room, they are both pulling on two ends of a toy and yelling at each other.

Approach #1: The judge.
You separate them and ask them, "who had it first?" Then you listen to each of them tell their version of the events that led up to the screaming. You have to decide which one sounds more plausible and give the toy to that kid. Queue screaming child.

Approach #2: The mean mommy.
You take the toy away and say that no one can play with it. Queue two screaming children.

Approach #3: Find the peacemaker.
You take the toy and ask the question, "which is more important - your brother or the toy?" (insight into my family: Joel always says the toy). Correct or encourage that the brother is more important than the toy. Then ask, "who is going to choose to be the peacemaker?" Someone will volunteer - I have never had neither volunteer. One always chooses to raise their hand. The peacemaker gives the toy to the other sibling. The peacemaker is praised for his choice. We even have sticker charts that say "Samuel is a Peacemaker" on top for him to give himself a sticker when he chooses to be the peacemaker.

The third approach is my choice for a number of reasons.
#1 - It's biblical. The Bible teaches us to be peacemakers.
#2 - It's realistic. As adults, arguments are best diffused by someone choosing to be the peacemaker.
#3 - It doesn't require you as the parent to know the backstory. You don't have to make a judgment between the two children.
#4 - It allows one child to have the first turn with the toy. And the child that chose to be the peacemaker receives your praise.

These ideas came from both Ginger Plowman's "Don't Make Me Count to Three" and Susan Hunt's "My ABC Bible Verses" Letter B.

As further encouragement to you, this lesson spoke to me just last night. My husband and I were not getting along so well yesterday. He took the kids to the park and I went to the grocery store. I was recounting to myself all the ways that he was in the wrong and really making me upset. (I'm sure a similar train of thought was running through his head). And then the Holy Spirit gently reminded me of this lesson. God doesn't want to hear the backstory. He doesn't want my list of why I am right and Ed is wrong. He offers us a choice: Who will choose to be the peacemaker? I knew that I couldn't walk away from that choice. I had to choose to be the peacemaker. God's grace is so awesome and His word is so true that it applies to mom just as much as it applies to child!

Service Project Ideas

My mom is one of those people who lives in a golf-cart retirement village in Florida. But I wouldn't say that she fits the image of a blue haired Bridge player. She is very active there in all sorts of fun things. One thing she does is make BEAUTIFUL greeting cards. She teaches classes and leads stamping groups. She also volunteers at an organization that sends supplies to troops deployed overseas. She is a really talented cardmaker...I am always amazed at the cute and beautiful ideas she comes up with.

Her latest service project is to make 100 Thanksgiving cards for Thanksgiving baskets for the families of deployed National Guardsmen. She has come up with 6 designs to show the coordinator. On her blog, The Village Stamper, she shows all 6 designs and she is giving away the card with the most votes to one of the commenters. It's a fun, easy giveaway and a way to encourage my beautiful mother! :) Plus, while you're there, you can see all of the beautiful cards she makes on a daily basis!

Communicating with our Husbands

My specific topic today deals with how much we should be sharing with our husbands. And this is probably just as much a question that I want to turn over to the readers as it is my opinion on the topic.

How much do you share with your husband? What do you do if a friend reveals intimate things to you - about herself or about her marriage? What about things going on with you personally? Do you tell him all the different things that go through your head throughout the day? Do you share areas of struggle with him? What if they involve him?

First, if a friend shares personal things with you, do you share them with your husband? I had a friend share with me that she really struggles with anger. She loses her temper at home with her kids. She shared this with me and asked me to pray for her as well as to share some ideas with her about how she could deal with her anger. Do I tell my husband about our conversation? I guess I step back and ask myself, "how would this knowledge affect my husband?"

A harder example: My friend tells me that she is worried about a relationship her husband is having with a co-worker. She shared this with me because she was really upset and feeling defeated. She poured her heart out to me. Our families are friends and our husbands interact. Do I share this secret with my husband? Did my friend tell me in confidence or did she know that I would tell my husband?

I have tried to find wisdom from the Bible on this subject. Here's where I keep coming back -

Proverbs 11:13 A gossip betrays a confidence, but a trustworthy person keeps a secret. (NIV)

I don't think by telling your husband you are being a "gossip", but perhaps the second half of the proverb instructs us to be trustworthy and keep the secret. I asked my husband his opinion, and he said that he would rather not know these details about our friends lives if they didn't come to him directly.

Does it complicate the question if your husband is a pastor/elder? And what about communication the other way? Does your husband keep these types of confidences from you? Perhaps the wisest idea would be to settle these issues with your husbands beforehand. Talk with your husband and discuss what is appropriate to share between you and what you will keep in confidence from each other.

The second half of my questions has to deal with personal, private issues. How much do you reveal about yourself to your husband vs. how much do you filter to protect him and your marriage from unnecessary insecurity?

My first reaction is to say that husband and wife should share all things with each other. But is this the wisest course of action? Or even practical? I say that a personal filter can be helpful in your marriage. For example, let's say I find myself feeling attracted to another man. I need to deal with that between myself and God. Telling my husband may cause him to feel insecure. But what if it gets to a point where spending time with that family is causing problems for me to have victory over that sin? I need to step up and confess that sin to my husband so he can help me in it.

And what about areas that directly involve your husband? I often struggle with anger and disappointment towards my husband when I feel like he doesn't meet my expectations. (I will insert here that the problem is my attitude, not my husband "falling short.") In the past I've tried to share this with my husband because I thought I should be honest with him about how I felt. But there is a difference between communicating expectations and sharing your feelings of anger and disappointment. My confession of feelings caused a lot of insecurity in my husband. I was not building him up at all. I am learning to take things to the Lord and ask Him to refine me so that I can speak love and encouragement into my husband's life. There is a filter there to protect our marriage - definitely not a filter between me and God b/c I need to lay it all at his feet, but a filter in how much I am confessing to my husband.

Please share your feedback on this topic. I feel like I really asked more questions than I answered. And I feel like there could be a lot more biblical wisdom shed on this topic. I'd love to hear your reactions and thoughts. I am not dead set on any of the opinions I gave here, so please feel free to disagree...just so long as you give your reason why and a thoughtful rebuttal.

Money Saving Ideas

I wanted to share a list of Money Saving Ideas that I keep in the back of my monthly planner. I refer to this list any time I'm feeling frustrated about finances and need to be reminded of some basic ideas of how to save money. This is my go-to list that I share when someone asks me how to save money (and most of these can be done without clipping coupons).

1. Make a menu that repeats. I use a menu that repeats every two weeks. I plan for 6 dinners a week, leaving room for leftovers, a night out, or a night at someone else's house.

2. Stock up on non-perishables. If you are sticking to a basic menu, you know things that you can always have on hand. When there is a sale on something that I use weekly, I purchase in multiples. My stockpile currently contains canned fruit, pasta sauce, ketchup, oil, Italian dressing for marinade, paper towels, and Ziploc bags.

3. Double meals & freeze. Meg is actually the best at this I think! I have mini meatloaves and lasagna in my freezer because we don't need to eat the entire recipe at one meal. So instead of making lasagna in a 9x13, I make it in 2 8x8 pans and freeze one for the next time. Same with the mini meatloaves - I cook all 8 for dinner, but then freeze half of them to be eaten later.

4. Check Comcast.com for special offers. If Comcast (I think it is actually called Xfinity now) is your cable provider, be sure to check in at comcast.com periodically to see if they have any offers for current customers. I had heard other people say that they would call Comcast and negotiate a better rate. I have tried this quite a few times (even threatening to drop my service) to no avail. But then I discovered an offer on comcast.com for current customers that cut my bill for basic cable and high speed internet from $55/month to $30/month.

5. Lower your cell phone bill. I am new to the cell phone world, but I know this is an area that can save money. Evaluate how many minutes you are actually using per month. Then visit MyRatePlan.com to shop around. I use a plan through Virgin Mobile. For $25/month I get 300 anytime talk minutes and unlimited text/data/web. I bought my phone (LG Rumor 2 with slide out keyboard) for $30 from walmart.com. The best part for me is that there is no contract, so I can back out of it whenever I want. And I was able to buy $100 in Top Up cards (used to load money onto my phone) at the grocery store and receive a $20 off my next order coupon for the grocery.

6. Buy Secondhand. Always step back and ask yourself if there's anyway you could do this cheaper - baby furniture, clothing, cars, furniture, etc. Craigslist and the Salvation Army are my best friends.

7. Check for on-line coupons/discounts. Before making an on-line purchase, check out RetailMeNot.com for a coupon code. I also check in at the coupon database on Hot Coupon World. Even if you don't clip coupons, check out this site. Often times it will have links to Internet Printable coupons that you can print off before heading out.

8. Keep a Gift Closet. I try to maintain a gift closet with toys, games, etc. that I find for a low price. This helps save money on the last minute gift purchases for birthday parties. My gift closet currently holds 2 Zhu-Zhu pets and 4 board games, as well as a cute baby girl dress I bought on super clearance from Target.

9. Check MoneySavingMom.com for grocery/drugstore weekly deals. She has a link to almost all of the grocery/retail/drugstores in the nation as a collaborative effort with frugal bloggers. Even if you don't clip coupons, there are helpful deal ideas to be found. This is a great time of year to be checking in as she posts about Back To School deals (few of which require coupons).

10. Evaluate your cable/internet/cell-phone/gadgets/etc. These items eat up a large portion of a family's monthly income. Consider what you could do without for 1 month, 3 months, 6 months. Cancel that service for a pre-determined amount of time. After you have been away from it for a time, re-evaluate whether you really miss it or need to bring it back.

Do you have any ideas to add? Do any of these inspire you?

Do I ignore this behavior?

My family spent the last week on vacation visiting friends in Colorado. We had a great time catching up with old neighbors from our seminary days and then visiting with close friends that are serving with Athletes in Action this summer. We collected many memories, photos, and souvenirs. But one thing we picked up that I wasn't expecting was a new habit of Samuel's.

Mid-week Samuel (almost 5) started dropping his "r" sounds. Let me tell you, it is super annoying. He consistently changes all "r" sounds to a "w". I know lots of children do this, but it's not as if this is how he's always spoke. He has had no issues with this sound, or any speech, before this week.

I have a couple of ideas of where he picked this up. One, it may be from friends he has here at home that don't pronounce their "r"s. But I don't know why he would start doing it on vacation when we are away from them. Two, the family we visited on the first half of our vacation has a 4 year old daughter with a few speech problems. She doesn't pronounce her "l", "k", or "r" sounds. Maybe he got it from listening to her? But why? Three, I have been reading Wonder Pets books to the boys and the duck, Ming-Ming, doesn't pronounce her "r"s and so when I read the book I change the "r" sound to a "w". But we didn't have any of those books on vacation with us.

Less important than where he picked this up is what to do about it. My husband says to just ignore it and he will stop. But it's driving me crazy!!! I've been very good about not showing my annoyance at it. I just keep going with him as if nothing is different. But I don't know how long I can hold out. And I'm afraid the longer he does it, the harder the habit will be to break.

So, what's your advice? Ignore the behavior? Ask him about it? I just don't know what to do and I'd love to hear some opinions. Thanks!

How to get your kids to eat their vegetables

One word for you: FROZEN.

Since my youngest was about 10 months old and teething, I have given my kids frozen fruits and vegetables. This is a quick, simple way to get vital nutrients to your kids in a fun and delicious manner.

When Samuel was 10 months old I had a friend recommend giving him frozen peas and carrots to eat. The cold veggies felt good on his teething gums. And the small size provided great development of his fine motor skills (the pincher grip). Since the veggies are pre-cooked, they are actually easy for a baby to chew and swallow.

Even now at ages 3 and 4, my boys love frozen fruits and vegetables. I love it too because it's easy to keep a few bags on hand and shake them on their plate at mealtimes or for a quick, refreshing snack.

Some of our favorites:
Sliced Carrots
Peas and Carrots
Whole Green Beans
Blueberries
Strawberries

My boys hands-down favorite is Frozen Blueberries. They love this simple snack. It is especially great in the winter when it's harder to get quality fresh fruit.

Do your kids enjoy frozen fruits and veggies? What are your favorites? Does this post encourage you to try it?

The Wisdom of a Mentor (advice on dealing with Back Talk)

A friend stopped by tonight to encourage me in my efforts to train up Samuel. What a blessing! She brought over the book "For Instruction in Righteousness" by Pam Forster (published by Doorposts). This is a gem of a book! The index lists a multitude of sins that you may see in your child. Each chapter is about 3-4 pages long. To give you an idea of how the book is laid out, I decided to look up the chapter on "Scoffer/Scorner". The chapter gives:

General information and commandments about this sin - a list of 11 Scripture references.

What happens, or should happen, to the scorner - a list of 17 Scripture references, some with additional ideas of how that consequence may look in the life of your child (for example, Pr. 13:18 Poverty and shame - take away belongings and rights).

The sin of scorning is likened to - a list of 3 Scripture references and a teachable idea (ex. Isa. 5:24 Root as rottenness, blossom as dust - Examine the roots of shriveled plants in the garden; observe what happens to flowers after they are picked.)

Stories that illustrate the consequences of scornfulness - 11 stories to read from the Bible.

The blessings of humility and a teachable spirit - a list of 8 Scripture references, some with ideas (ex. Pr. 19:25 Reproof leads to understanding - help the child to see his own growth and progress as he correctly responds to discipline)

Stories that illustrate the blessings of a teachable spirit - 2 stories to read from the Bible.

Verses to memorize - 4 verses

Scriptural principles to follow when dealing with a scoffer - a page and a half of Biblical wisdom/insight as well as ways to pray for your child.

Isn't that awesome?!

Also, Ellen shared with me some experiences of raising her own three children as well as fond memories she has of them growing up. She allowed me to talk about how I'm feeling about things and what I'd like to see. Then she prayed with me and for me.

This was such a sweet encouragement for me and a challenge to be a godly mother. My plan is to sit down with Samuel in the morning and talk about the issue of talking back, look through the Bible together to see what it has to say about it, and then agree together with him on a consequence for disobeying as well as a promise to be looking for him to answer with respect. Hopefully we can really focus on this this week and then move on.

As for the new book, I am definitely going to be ordering one of these and keeping it on hand! It is such an awesome resource!

How to deal with Talking Back

Have any of the following conversations ever taken place at your house?

Mom: Son, eat your sandwich please.
Son: No, YOU eat your sandwich.

Mom: Son, it's time to pick up our toys and go to bed.
Son: NO!! I'm NOT going to pick up my toys. It's NOT time for bed.

Mom: Son, please don't call your brother names. It's not kind.
Son: No, my BROTHER's not kind. HE's mean. HE's a stinky head.

Some variation of all three have transpired in our home over the past two weeks. My almost 5 year old has recently started talking back, sometimes as many as 10+ times per day. Talking back shows a lack of respect for mom as well as a heart that is hardened to receiving instruction.

My original attack on this back talk was to address it directly. As soon as Sam would talk back, I would get down to his level and say, "Samuel, that is talking back and it is not allowed. You need to respond 'yes, mommy'." He would say "okay, mommy" and we would move on. After repeating this over and over throughout the day I decided that my approach wasn't working.

So I took to the internet. I searched "how to discipline talking back". A lot of the information I found encouraged me to model positive behavior for my child (i.e. not be a back talker myself) and to ignore the behavior. I don't believe Samuel is seeing back talking modeled in our home. And I can't agree that ignoring the problem is the best solution. Back talk is the symptom of a deeper issue and ignoring it doesn't solve the symptom or the underlying sin. It allows the problem to grow and fester.

I sat down and tried to discern what was really going on. I believe talking back is a symptom of the deeper issues of not respecting a parent and having a foolish heart that doesn't receive instruction. Here are some proverbs I pondered:

Proverbs 10:17 - He who heeds discipline shows the way to life, but whoever ignores correction leads others astray.

Proverbs 1:8 - Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction and do not forsake your mother’s teaching.

Proverbs 13:1 - A wise son heeds his father’s instruction, but a mocker does not listen to rebuke.

Proverbs 13:13 - He who scorns instruction will pay for it, but he who respects a command is rewarded.

My project for the next day or so is to come up with a new plan of attack on dealing with back talk in our home. I have been praying today for wisdom in how to creatively approach this as well as for tenderness of heart for my son and the power of the Spirit to change his heart.

A mentor friend is coming over tomorrow evening to talk with me about the issue and she's bringing along a book she wants me to read. I'll post about our conversation as well as the book after our conversation tomorrow.

Have you had to deal with back talking in your home? What did you do and what made you decide to do that? What has worked for you and what has not?

Practicing Hospitality

I asked my husband if he had any suggestions for what to write about this week on POH, and he suggested I write about practicing hospitality. This is something the Holy Spirit has gifted me with and something I learned a lot about from having it modeled to me through my parents and through another couple who led Ed to the Lord and discipled him early in his Christian life.

Practicing hospitality in our family happens in a variety of ways. I want to share these different ways with you and encourage you to take a step of faith and maybe open up your home or your life in a way you haven't before.

1. Have people over. This is probably the easiest thing to do, but I think sometimes people shy away from it. I know some who fear the hassle, or think their home is too small or too messy or too whatever. We do not have the most ideal home for having people over for a meal. We have a small table that only seats four. And our house isn't always the neatest. But we like to have people over to our home - for dinner, for a playdate, for games. Our house is always open and always available. Some ideas to help in this area: 1) Eat in shifts. If we have another family over, we feed the kids first and then let them go play so that the adults can sit down to eat. 2) Have a leftovers get together. Sometimes we will ask friends to come over with their leftovers, we will pull out our leftovers, and we will share together. I may not want to eat that lasagna for the third night in a row, but it's brand new to my friends!

2. Host guests from church. We have a Japanese Language Congregation at our church and each summer they have a group of students come from Japan to visit. They ask for a host family for each student so they can see what American home life is like. We were able to have a really sweet girl from Japan stay with us for a week last summer. To say my boys loved it is an understatement. We spent the next month learning all we could about Japan from the library and talking to our Japanese friends at church. After the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, Samuel and Joel wanted to know everything that was happening. Hosting this friend helped open up the world a little bit more to my boys.

3. Have a student/young person live with you. This is probably the biggest test of hospitality, but one that can be a real blessing to someone else. We just said goodbye to our third student this past week after 1.5 years. Ed and I have always wanted our home to be a blessing to someone else. When we purchased our current house 3 years ago, we knew we wanted to open up one of our bedrooms to someone who needed help getting through a transition period. Our first student was someone we met at church. Mary was a graduate student who was planning on getting married in a few months and needed somewhere to stay until then. She stayed with us for about 2 months. Shortly thereafter, a college friend of Ed's had a sister who was moving back to the US after spending some time abroad. Janet was relocating to the Chicago area and hoping to get an internship in the city. She didn't know anyone here and didn't have a job yet. She was able to stay with us for about 6 months while she found work, figured her way around the city, and decided where she would move next. Our third student, Jonathan, was another friend from church. He was in his last year of a PhD program and had been renting a room from a family who was trying to sell their house. Ed told him he should take the $500/month he was paying in rent and buy himself a car and come live with us. Jonathan planned on staying from September 2009 to June 2010, but when June came he wasn't done with his program and had just broke up with his girlfriend. We encouraged him to stay on longer and finish his program before moving out. He finished in March 2011, got a full time job at a great hospital downtown and signed a lease last week. Our extra bedroom is sitting empty now, but we are getting together someone next week who needs somewhere to stay this summer. The man who disciples Ed has a college aged daughter and one of her friends needs somewhere to live for the summer while she works in the area and goes to soccer practice. Having someone live with you can be a real challenge. You are opening up your life and your home to someone that may not always be easy to love (hey, I'm sure there are many times when I'm not so loveable either!). But it can be a way to love someone and support them through a transition in their life. And it can be a living example to your children of how to love someone and serve them in a practical way.

Practicing hospitality in our home is one way we hope to put hands and feet to the gospel and to love others around us. I hope you are encouraged to step out in faith and give it a try.

Leah P's Homeschool Plan

I shared yesterday that we will be doing one year of homeschooling next year to try it out. I thought I would share with you today about what materials I plan on using and how I plan on spending our day. Samuel will be 5 in August and Joel will be 3.5. We plan on "doing school" Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Tuesdays will be our adventure days with Daddy - things like visiting the library, parks, zoos, etc. On Thursdays we will go to Bible Study Fellowship. If you don't know about this program, I would highly recommend it. It is a great Bible study for you and a great children's program for your kids. My boys have learned a lot over the past two years and they look forward to going to class.

For our "school days", we will be using a workbox system. Do you know about these? I stumbled upon the idea while researching homeschool ideas. I found this Squidoo article very helpful and informative. It has a lot of additional links in it for more ideas and help. Basically you put something in each box for your child to do and they work their way through the boxes each day. I like the idea because Sam & Joel will be able to see what they've done each day and what they have left to do. Plus it breaks the activities of the day into units that should only take 10 or 15 minutes each to complete. With Joel, since he's younger, I'm not going to stress out if he doesn't get all the way through his boxes each day. But at least they will be there and he can feel like he's doing school along with us. Here's an idea of what a typical days boxes might be filled with:

Samuel's Boxes:
1. The Bible (for family devotions).
2. A non-fiction book (to read together).
3. A puzzle.
4. Handwriting Without Tears workbook.
5. 3 storybooks (to read together).
6. Kumon cutting book worksheet.
7. The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading (to do a reading lesson).
8. Beans and an egg carton for a sorting and counting game (math skills).
9. Bingo cards to practice Spanish vocab.
10. A recipe to make a snack together.

Joel's Boxes:
1. Set of Little People (that correspond to our family devotion for the day).
2. A coloring page.
3. 3 storybooks (to read together).
4. A "go play trucks with daddy for 15 minutes" card.
5. Playdoh.
6. A non-fiction book (to read together).
7. A Kumon cutting book worksheet.
8. A sorting game (math skills).
9. Matching game to play with Samuel.
10. AWANA book to practice verse.

Each evening I would pack up the next day's boxes. I think this will be good for me because it will help me to visually see what I have planned for the next day and make sure that I have everything I need to do the activities I have planned. I'll plan out ahead of time what I hope to accomplish each week, so it's not like each night I have to come up with the whole plan.

I read two really great books to help me prepare for homeschooling. One is The Well Trained Mind and the other is 100 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum. I was able to check out both from our library system. They really helped me think about the bigger picture and what I hope to accomplish. Granted, we will be sending Samuel to public school next year, but I am going in to this year trying to fully embrace the homeschool philosophy. After reading The Well Trained Mind, even if we send Samuel to public school, there is probably a lot out of that book that I will do with him outside of school.

As far as books I'll follow this coming year, I plan on using:
The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading by Jessie Wise
Handwriting Without Tears - Get Set for School
Kumon Amazing Mazes, Cutting, Uppercase Alphabet, Lowercase Alphabet workbooks
What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know edited by E.D. Hirsch (I highly recommend this book for lots of really great ideas. I plan on working my way through this book for ALL of the subject areas).
What Your Preschooler Needs to Know edited by E.D. Hirsch (ditto above).

I also plan on working our way through the 1000 Good Books List. This is a list of real books that is used by many Classical Christian Home Educators.

Finally, I plan on teaching a lot of our science and history through reading books, both fiction and non-fiction. I plan on letting the boys lead a little more in these areas according to their interests.

My main goals with Samuel for the year are to get him reading and writing. For Joel, I hope to encourage him to draw, color, and cut and love to be read to. I am really excited for our year and I hope it is a success.

The Education Experiment

(first, thank you to Christina for posting for me yesterday. I was at Disney with my mom and Samuel and typed up my whole post by phone to e-mail to her!)

Christina introduced the topic of Schooling Decisions a few weeks ago and shared a little blurb from each of the POH authors about what we would be doing with our kiddos next year. My blurb read:

Samuel will turn 5 in late August. The cutoff for school in the Chicago area is Sept 1, so I could enroll him in kindergarten if I wanted. We have decided to keep Samuel at home for two reasons: 1) We feel he isn't ready to enter the school setting because of his age, and 2) we are pretty sure we'd like to homeschool him and we thought this would be a good year to give it a try. We plan on attending a homeschool co-op in the area on Mondays, Bible Study Fellowship on Thursdays and a couple hours of "school" at home the other days. I plan on doing things with both Joel (3.5) and Samuel(5).

My husband and I have talked about our schooling options a lot and have come up with a sort of Education Experiment. We plan on keeping Samuel home for one more year and following the plan I outlined above. Then the next year, when Samuel will have just turned 6, we plan on enrolling him in kindergarten at our local K-8 school to give him one year in public school to see how it goes. We have committed to waiting to make a decision about which direction to go until after he finishes out that year (well, unless it is going horrible and we decide to pull him out early). Here is a sort of run-down of what we see in each choice:

Why would we homeschool? I really like the flexibility and individualization that is available with homeschooling. It just makes sense to me that a child would be able to excel academically when they can move at their own pace and with their own interests. After having read A Well Trained Mind I was really encouraged to think of all we might be learning in our home. The academic side of the equation is a big draw for me. Second, I see the days we spend together to be a time of character building and training. With the boys home with me and around me all day, I have plenty of opportunity to teach them things I want them to know that they may not see modeled and taught in a traditional school setting. I can be a side-by-side guide to a lot of character training. Third, the unity of the family is a strong draw. Instead of splintering the family for 8 hours a day, with each of us going to our respective "jobs", we remain a more complete unit that share experiences and responsibilities together.

Why would we go to public school? I really like the school that our boys would attend. It is a short walk from our house (just across the street from our little neighborhood). It is a small K-8 school in a single school district (meaning all the tax dollars from our district go to this school instead of being spread around many schools). Second, I see the enrichments and specials that a school setting is able to offer my boys that would be difficult to duplicate in a home setting (art, gym, group activities, etc). I know these could be done at home but not in the same way, with the same dynamics. Also, if Samuel and Joel were both attending school, I could (hopefully) get a job at the school (if we don't have any more children; see last post!). Finally, there is an intangible factor of growing up "going to school" and the good and the bad that come with it that can build character.

Our experiment is our way of giving ourselves time to experience both options and also to have two years to pray that God would help us to make a good decision. I'm nervous to try both and not just be decided in what we are going to do. But I think this will help all of us (me, Ed, and Samuel) decide what we want. We'll see!

Waiting on another baby

I just saw this pop up in my reader and thought I should clarify that this post is written by Leah P! I (Christina) just posted it for her while she is in Disney World! 


As you all know, I am the proud mom of two little boys. Our first, Samuel, was conceived during the first month of "trying." we thought we'd like to have a baby around the time Ed was finishing seminary and we knew it may take a few months to conceive. We were SO shocked to find out I was pregnant right away. We had gone to a ski resort for a weekend getaway before spring semester started and I was a little curious that I was so late getting my period and that I was super exhausted. I decided to take a pregnancy test just to see before we spent the day skiing. Lo and behold it was positive! We spent the weekend laying around the room adjusting to the idea that we were soon to be parents.


After Samuel was born we prevented coception for a few months but then decided to just see what would happen. I got my period back when Samuel was 9 months old and got pregnant the next month. Our boys are 19 months apart. Joel was born and things were going so well that we decided not to prevent at all after he was born and again see what would happen. That was 3 years and 2 months ago.

I trust in God and his plan through all of this. As Joel turned 1 and for the few months after, I began to get pretty discouraged that I wasn't getting pregnant. It was at that time that I got so sick and ended up in the hospital with severe ulcerative colitis. If I would have been pregnant at that time, it would have been a terrible situation. I was losing so much weight at that point that I don't know if my body could have carried the baby. And I wouldn't have been able to have my surgery if I were pregnant. I see now why God had shut my womb. 


We went back to preventing pregnancy during my surgeries and for 9 months after. But in Oct 2010 my doctors gave me the go ahead to try again for a baby. That means we are in our 8th month of trying. I am continuing to trust God with the timing and even with the possibility if we will have any more children. The big struggle for me is wanting to know if I am looking at my complete family or if God has more children for us. I don't know how I feel about being okay with not having more children. I just always thought we would. I know that women who have had my surgeries have 30% higher instances of infertility. I don't think that bothers me too much. I know I was so terribly sick towards the end that I needed that surgery. But I wished so badly at the time that I could have been at the hospital havig a baby instead. Will I be there some day? I just don't know.