Going Public

I'm a little nervous about going public with my blog. I sent out the address with our holiday cards that were mailed today. We didn't get it together in time for Christmas cards so they're New Years cards. That's okay. One year we sent out Thanksgiving cards so it's okay to send New Year's cards this year. I'm just glad we got them out, whew! But anyway now that some people know about my blog I'm committed to posting more. I love the idea of blogging! It's a whole new medium of communication and I'm excited to be a part of it. I'm hoping and praying it will be a way of connecting with some dear friends that I don't get to connect with very often.

I love reading blogs. It's like having a little window into a peoples lives. I've been "blogsurfing" (is that a word?) the last few weeks. There are some really good professional news and commentary blogs. But the ones that I enjoy reading the most are just regular people who post some of the mundane details of their lives such as what their kids are doing, what they're going through and what they're learning. I connect most to the "mommybloggers". It makes me feel connected to a larger community of Moms like me and relate to their day to day experiences.

Like I said, it's like having a little window into someone's life. I was thinking this morning about how Chuck and I like to walk around the neighborhood and look at houses. Many times you can get a glimpse through a front window of the interior of a house. I don't consider it snooping unless you actually stop to gawk, but a quick look through an uncurtained window provides an enjoyable glimpse into someone else's style of living.

I'm excited about blogging, excited about 2006 and looking forward to God's abounding grace and mercy for the coming year. I pray a blessing on every friend and every stranger who may come to get a little glimpse of my life. My prayer is that they get a glimpse through the window of my soul and see the love of God.

I will put links to the blogs I enjoy on my blog as soon as I figure out how to do it.

Thanksgiving Traditions

It was a strange Thanksgiving for our family. I think everyone was worn out by a rather grueling Fall schedule which culminated on the Sunday before Thanksgiving with the State Gymnastics Championship for my daughter where she placed 7th all-around in her age-group. She had a great first competitive gymnastics season, placing 1st all-around in the North Sectional Championships.

She went into the State meet expecting to win and was extremely disappointed by finishing seventh. The Monday and Tuesday before Thanksgiving both my son and daughter were sick with the stomach flu; they were feeling better on Wednesday. Aimee felt well enough to go to gymnastics practice on Wednesday night. We shopped for Thanksgiving dinner food on Wednesday and Chuck made potatoes au gratin on Wednesday night while I stayed at the gym for four hours with Aimee. After an hour and a half drive home (fifteen miles on the LA freeway on the evening before Thanksgiving), I had a stomach-ache and went to bed without eating, hoping I’d feel better in the morning because I had to get up and marathon cook.

Okay, so I woke up feeling terrible. I won't go into the gory details but suffice it to say that it was the stomach flu. Strangely enough Chuck and I were both sick at the same time and neither of us were up to getting the turkey stuffed and in the oven. The kids were kind of amazed, "What no Thanksgiving dinner?, But it's Thanksgiving! My son Eric offered to do the cooking but I knew that despite his good intentions he would get stuck and need me to come help, and the thought of oyster stuffing, well you know.
We told them to fend for themselves, there was frozen pizza in the freezer, or heat up some potatoes au gratin and have some pumpkin pie.

The kids survived, we both felt well enough on Friday to cook and so we had Thanksgiving dinner a day late. I was really happy that I hadn't invited anyone to eat with us so no one was disappointed but our family and they got over it.

This brings me to the title of the post which is Thanksgiving traditions. Being sick on Thanksgiving is not one of our traditions thank God and I don't intend starting it now. But we do have a traditional New Orleans menu for Thanksgiving and Christmas and I wanted to share it here. I grew up in the suburbs of New Orlean and this is what I normally cook for Thanksgiving dinner:

Oyster stuffing
Turkey
Jambalaya
Potatoes au Gratin
Broccoli Casserole
Cranberry Sauce
Gravy
Salad
Homemade Bread or Dinner rolls

After dinner is over I pick the meat off the Turkey carcass and boil it for several hours to make the stock for gumbo. The day after Thanksgiving we have gumbo. I've been working for many years to try to duplicate my mother's recipe which I was didn't get from her before she passed away when I was 21. I still don't have it down but I am close.

I read an article in the local newspaper a couple weeks ago about the displaced children from New Orleans in schools in Los Angeles. When asked what they missed most about New Orleans almost every one of them mentioned the food and especially gumbo! It's that good!

I always encourage young adults I know to get their mother's traditional recipes while they have them available; learn how to make those special dishes. I wish I had. But like I said, I am getting close after 20 some years of trying.

organization issues

Coleridge is the supreme tragedy of indiscipline. Never did so great a mind
produce so little. He left Cambridge Uninversity to join the army; he left the
army because he could not rub down a horse; he returned to Oxford and left
without a degree. He began a paper called The Watchman which lived for
ten numbers and then died. It has been said of him: "he lost himself in visions
of work to be done, that always remained to be done. Colerige had every poetic
gift but one - the figt of sustained and concentrated effort." In his head and
in his mind he had all kinds of books, as he said, himself, "completed save for
transcription. I am on the even," he says "of sending to the press two octavo
volumes." But the books were vever composed outside Coldrige's mind, becuase he
wold not face the discipline of sitting down to write them out. No one ever
reached any eminence, and no one having reaced it ever maintained it, without
discipline.

From William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975), p. 290 by way of Gordon MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1984) p. 65.


I basically am in the midst of an organizational crisis. I was about to write that it started last week on Thanksgiving when I was sick in bed and had some time (albeit nauseated and feverish time) to reflect and pray about the current state of my life. Okay, it didn't actually start then; but the recognition of the crisis came then in the midst of feverish chills and stomach flu aches and pains. I realized that I needed to change some things to take back some kind of order in my life.

I was discourgaged about homeschool, about how well I'm doing with the important job of educating my kids, discouraged about my seeming inability to accomplish things, the state of disorder in my house, my relationships at home etc. In a word, I was discouraged. Of course being sick didn't help those feelings. But I realized that I needed to make some changes. I know it all starts with my attitude and then I can change some of the scheduling issues. Greater Expectations is a key phrase here. This is the name of a book we own about education. I think it's a book about public schools and the issue of lowering expectations to allow kids to feel good about themselves and how this is the cause of many of the problems with public education. (Is that a run-on sentence?)

It's not the book's contents so much but the title that speaks to me at this point in time. I need to expect more from myself and then I need to expect more from my kids. I had basically given up on the house. So anyway in those feverish hours I resolved to make some changes. The next morning I pulled out some of the books I own on organization to get inspired to make some changes and get some control over chaos. One of my favorite books on this subject is Gordon MacDonald's Ordering Your Private World, from which the quote at the top of the post comes. I don't want to end up like Coleridge, although at this point he has me beat in the production category because despite his time-management and organizational issues he is still one of the best known authors in history. But I have lots of ideas in my head and even more just waiting to break through if I had more discipline.

Another book I own called The Organized Home-Schooler by Vicki Caruna sent me the book of Proverbs to study diligence, prudence, order, haste, and confusion. After studying the Bible for awhile I realized what I most needed was the discipline to get out of bed early enough before the kids so I can spend time in the morning reading, praying, planning, and preparing for the day. This has been a thirty-year quest of mine, the early morning prayer time and I need it now more than ever.

I am resolved to make better use of my time, write more, read more, and yes, clean more and even better, make my children more responsible for helping with the cleaning and chores around the house. I will be like David the Psalmist when he faced opposition; I will encourage myself in the Lord and let His healing touch refresh and restore my great expectations for the future.