This past weekend I had the privilege of attending an amazing conference called Sparkle for women with some great friends.  We stayed up way way too late Friday night talking and had to be up way too early Saturday morning.  I am definitely running on lack of sleep and my cold is back but so worth it!!!!  It is hard to take a picture and not look like I have 4 chins.

The speaker for the weekend was Charlotte Gambill Senior Associate Pastor from Abundant Life Church in England.   This woman is amazing!  She is a little spitfire, she’s also super funny, I laughed so much this weekend and I just love her spirit.  This weekend was pretty much amazing, the worship was fantastic, the decor was over the top, the message was incredible and I have much to process.

Which leads to my little announcement.  I’v always tried to keep it real on this blog and share in my struggles with anxiety, miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy, children struggling with anxiety and lately with the bitterness and lack of joy I’ve been having.  So here I am, sharing again.

I love doing projects around my home, organizing, recipes, marriage stuff and most of all, hopefully inspiring you.   I also love reading other blogs, meeting bloggers, chatting on fb with you and even browsing on Pinterest.  All of this is good stuff, it really is.  Yet, for me, it’s just kind of taken over my life and that’s not what I want for me or my family, I just can’t be the mom, wife and friend I need to be and blog.  God really showed me somethings this weekend and I have felt this way before so I know it’s just time to listen and obey.  My husband, bless his heart has always been such a big supporter of my blog, I’ve felt this way for a while and have shared it with him but he keeps encouraging me to keep going, don’t give up blogging, you love it and so I keep going.  Well I think it’s time to stop and I’m not sure for how long, maybe forever?  Maybe just a month?  Maybe 6 months?  Who knows!

I’ve also considered helping people out in person with organizing, picking out paint colors, etc.  I have had many people requesting  help recently and also encourage me to start my own business so we will see but first I need to process through this weekend and see where God leads me.   Wherever it is, I know it is good.

I’ll still be up for answering emails and comments on this post.  I’ll miss my blogging friends but if you are looking for other blogs to read under my header is Blogs that Inspire and also check out my list on the right sidebar, my friends are amazing and you’ll love reading their blogs!

Thank you all for your comments, emails, phone calls, support and love through this blog.  I will miss you all so much and maybe I”ll be back sooner rather than later but until then, God Bless You!!!

While I was typing my blog title I also thought it could say, What I want my Blog to be when she throws up. I really don’t want my blog to throw up but sometimes I feel like I do just that, throw stuff up on here.

What are my blog goals?

1. The biggest goal of my blog is for this to be a place of inspiration for your home and for your heart. I love to share my thrifty finds, how spray paint can magically transform just about anything and that having a home you love doesn’t have to cost tons of money. Sharing a few recipes, money saving tips and household organization are also things I enjoy blogging about.
I know that I have blogged about my home more often than not lately but I have a desire to inspire people in their hearts as wives and mothers. Sharing how our family has struggles with anxiety, my pregnancy loss through miscarriage and an ectopic pregnancy, how marriages can be saved from the brink of divorce and how to decorate your master bedroom and help your marriage at the same time are just a few posts you can find on here. The goal of these posts is to inspire our hearts which will reflect in our home.

2. This ties in with #1 but I want to be real on here. I am energetic, fun and creative person and hope that you can see this when you visit my blog. At the same time my life, my marriage, my home, my children are not perfect and I most certainly am not perfect. My hope is that no one would walk away from this blog feeling less than when they came but instead you would feel encouraged, inspired and empowered in your home and in your heart.

3. My favorite thing about blogging is all the great people you meet. I love people, love meeting new people, talking with people, connecting people and sharing people. That sharing part sounds weird I know but through my Blooming Blogger series the goal was to introduce you to blogs that I enjoy reading because I like the people behind the blog and I want to share them with you. Forming connections is one of my strengths so introducing bloggers to each other and sharing them with you is my way of using that strength. I would like to continue on doing this either through the Blooming Blogger series or maybe a different venue this year.

4. Lastly, working on my photography and yes, even posting skills. I am not the best at having creative and catchy blog post titles, or relaying in the title what I want. Also with a new DSLR camera, I am hoping to learn some mad skillz on the camera to wow you all with my photographic awesomeness. Ok, well probably not but I do want to take better pictures so that it doesn’t look like the sun is glaring off a balding men convention in my pictures.

I don’t need to be some big name blogger, I just want the people who come here to leave inspired that you can make a difference in your home and in your heart. That’s all peeps!

I’m linking up with the awesome Cassie from Primitive & Proper. Do you have goals for your blog? Come share them with Cassie or any of these other great blogs that are co-hosting this great party!

Adventures of Our Fami-Ly (http://www.adventuresofourfamily.com/)
it all started with paint www.itallstartedwithpaint.com
Thistlewood Farms http://thistlewoodfarm.wordpress.com/
the space between http://thespacebetweenblog.wordpress.com/
Eclectically Vintage http://eclecticallyvintage.blogspot.com/
The Cottage Market http://www.thecottagemarket.com/
Stay At Home-ista http://www.stayathomeista.com/
Bliss Ranch http://blissranch.blogspot.com/
Top This Top That http://topthistopthat.blogspot.com/

This party will be open through March 8, Midnight EST.

What do you think and please be honest, am I on the way to achieving my goals? I’d love your feedback on this post, what do I need to do to improve? Why do you come to my blog?

Good Morning friends, it’s almost Thanksgiving and I am sure many of you will be traveling today to be with your families tomorrow and enjoy a great feast.  As we gather around our tables tomorrow and thank God for all we have been given, our family will also be reflecting on those who have nothing to eat and are starving.  Some days my kids think that they are “starving” but we really don’t have a clue as to how that feels and hopefully we won’t, ever.  
Today I want to share with you a cause near and dear to my family’s heart, Food for the Hungry. You may have noticed the ad in my sidebar on the left that I put up the other week.  I asked them to provide me with a banner because I love this program and what they are doing.

 If you have never heard of Food for the Hungry before, let me share with you what they are all about. Here is their mission statement:

When you give to programs you expect a large portion of your money to go directly to the people you are giving to but that is not always the case.  With Food for the Hungry they state:

More than 93 percent of total income, including commodities, goes to field programs. As such, we ship donated goods using matching grants from governments and corporations, and cooperate with other organizations in pooling resources for the purpose of gaining efficiencies.

What they do with your money is go to the hard places in Asia, Latin America & Africa teaching the community how to sustain itself, teaching families how to care for each other and giving the children a better education along with learning healthy practices.  They also learn that they are valuable in God’s eyes, the power of prayer and reading their Bibles.

We first started sponsoring children back in 2005 through another child sponsorship program.  Unfortunately it didn’t go very well, we kept sending letters to our child and then we would get a note from the program saying we had a different child.  We never actually received any letters from our children and we left the program after being switched around at least 5 different times. 

We first heard about Food for the Hungry when we attended a concert put on by 33Miles.  During the concert they shared with us how the traveled alongside Food for the Hungry and saw first hand the work they were doing and better yet, the difference they were making in lives!  You can read a blog post by one of the band member’s regarding this child sponsorship program here.
My husband and I decided to give child sponsorship another try and we are so thankful we did.  We picked Jesus out and have been writing to him, encouraging him and praying for him for the past two years.  It is great for our children to see how kids live in other parts of the world and they look forward to reading his letters and writing back as well.  We received a letter in the mail last week stating that Food for the Hungry is leaving the region where Jesus is located because the community is able to sustain itself and no longer needs sponsorship.  Our family is very excited about this yet we are sad that we will no longer be communicating with Jesus. We will definitely keep praying for Jesus!  Our kids are excited to pick out our next sponsor child and I love how they want to be involved in this! 
.   
  If you would like to sponsor a chld, you can head over to their website by clicking on Sponsor a Child.  For $32 a month you can give a child like Roger (pictured below) food, an education and most importantly, hope! 

There are other ways to give as well, including through the Gifts Catalog where you can buy things such as:

• Deworming tablets for 500 children for $25
• Vegetable seedlings for $25 which a family can use to feed themselves for a year
• Dairy goat for $100 
• Water purification tablets to provide clean drinking water for a year for $24
• School Fees for $50 allows a child to attend school for a year or a school uniform for $20
• 5 Bibles for $35 or Sunday School for all ages for $50
• Emergency Fund Every $10 provides an amazing $150 to $200 worth of life-saving food, plus hope for the future

You could get your family together and pick something out of the catalog to give this Christmas.  Maybe you could even bring your extended family together and combine your money to sponsor a child or purchase something from the catalog instead of purchasing gifts for each other this year.  Do you really need another sweater or pair of socks?  We did this one year, instead of buying our parents gifts we used the money for those who had nothing.

I am typing up this post on my own accord because our family believes in this child sponsorship program.  I am also not writing this post to make anyone feel guilty about what we have or where we live.  I am writing this post because I want to share with others who maybe looking for some way to give.  I know there are many programs out there and some of them have given child sponsorship programs a bad name.  I am sharing with you today to let you know that there are places out there doing the work, giving the money you give to the people it’s intended for, being the hands and feet of Jesus.

During this time of celebrating God’s goodness, abundance and grace to us, would you please consider sharing your abundance with someone who has nothing?  More important than food or clothing you will be sharing hope when many of these people have none.  The blessings we are given are not meant to be kept to ourselves but rather to share with others.

Linking Up Here:

This is the third and final installment in Life and Love: Miscarriage and Ectopic Pregnancy Loss. Here is where you will find part 1 and part 2 if you missed them.

So we end up at the ER, check in and then wait.  While we are waiting I see a woman from our church who also happens to work in the ER.  She pokes her head in and says hi which is a comfort to me.  Then we also end up seeing my sister-in-law’s future sister-in-law who is doing an internship in the ER.
We waited for at least an hour maybe longer before I am wheeled up for an ultrasound.  When we get in the room who do we see but Emily, my favorite ultrasound tech.  She does the ultrasound and then we’re sent back to the ER where we wait again.  I am starving by this point because all I’ve had to eat is a few jolly ranchers.  I am pretty sure everything is fine and we’ll be going home.  The doctor comes in, he’s a very kind looking man, I immediately like him.  He sits down and proceeds to tell me that my fallopian tube has partially ruptured and I have some internal bleeding going on and that I need emergency surgery.  Wait a minute, what?  I thought I was going home, I’m starving, I’m tired and I am about to freak out!

My knees start shaking and I start crying.  I don’t want surgery, I hate IV’s, I don’t like elevators, I just want to go home.  I tell my husband, well God had a great message for me in church today and now I get to put it into practice.  Ha, I hate when that happens.  The sermon earlier in the morning was on worrying and placing trust in God.  The doctor gives me a verse right there in the room of the ER before he heads upstairs to OB to do a quick C-section while they prep me for surgery.  I somehow talk the nurse into only giving me one IV and letting them do the second one while I’m under because I hate them so much.  I also ask for some drugs to help with my anxiety before surgery.  I don’t remember too much after that, I remember being wheeled into the operating room and the nurses and anesethia guy talking to me and that’s it.
The next thing I remember sort of, is talking to my husband, my sister-in-law, the doctor and some intern that is with him.  Who knows what I was telling them, I don’t think I want to know.  I was supposed to spend the night in the hospital but because I hate elevators, the doctor let me go home to recover.
The surgery was done lapriscopically so I had three very small incisions and that was it.  The recovery was fairly easy, I wasn’t supposed to do any lifting or a lot of walking at first.  One of the hardest parts of the recovery was our little girl who was 3, she kept talking about the baby in my tube.  She didn’t understand and I know that but it was hard to keep hearing that over and over again.
God was faithful through all of this, he brought friends and familiar faces to me in the ER, friends helped care for our children, we had meals made for us, friends helped with shopping, visits and just lots of love.
While I was in surgery at 9pm on Father’s Day, one of our Pastors was at the hospital visiting someone else and heard we were in the ER.  He stayed with my hubby while I was in surgery which was a blessing because my hubby was a little freaked out that I was in surgery.   Finally, the doctor that ended up doing my surgery was just a HUGE blessing to me.  Having someone listen and hear your fears, that’s hard to find.  Finding someone who hears your fears and has compassion is even harder to find!
At my four week check-up after my surgery, I asked if our chances of conceiving would be reduced without two fallopian tubes and we were told they would be reduced by 50%. and the chances of a second ectopic pregnancy increased by 30%.  Awesome.  Not.  So I told my husband we were not getting pregnant again, I didn’t want to go through that again.
Well, I changed my mind not long afterwards.  So the plan was to start trying to conceive again in September.  On September  11th I took a pregnancy test and it was positive.  I was really excited and really scared at the same time.  I couldn’t believe that we were pregnant so quickly and before we even tried.  I was able to have my HCG levels tested a few times and also at 5 weeks along we had
an ultrasound to confirm the placement of the pregnancy.  Everything was great and we were able to hear the heartbeat at the end of October.  We debated finding out the sex at the 20 week ultrasound but finally decided to go ahead.  I was pretty sure it was another girl and so was the hubby.
We were able to get our ultrasound in before Christmas but we didn’t tell our parents.  At the ultrasound we were quite shocked when we found out we were having a boy!  It was fun to surprise our parents’ with a Christmas tree ornament that had the ultrasound picture of a little baby boy part framed between his legs.  We have sick humor, in case you didn’t know this already.  We ended up needing another ultrasound in April and joy of joys, it was Emily our favorite tech!  It was so aweosme  to have her doing the ultrasound, our girls were also in the room and she made it a wonderful memory for all of us!  I love how God used her in our life through both losses and then both subsequent pregnancies.
So to make a long story short, our healthy baby boy was born the end of May 2009 and the doctor who performed the surgery and became my OB doctor was able to deliver our son!  It was a wonderful moment for all of us and  I am so thankful for another baby and for God’s blessings after the pain.

I copied this excerpt from our family blog during May of 2009, Today at my appointment he starts off by telling us how special this baby is and how he is so excited to meet him, how this baby is bringing full circle last summer’s surgery and how we wants to be there to deliver the baby.  We were so blessed to have this doctor in our life for a year and to be able to celebrate with us the birth of our son.  The hubs and I joked about having the baby’s middle name be our OB doctor’s first name.  We had picked out the name Jacob but when our little bubs was born he didn’t look like a Jacob to me.  I thought of a different name and my mom actually thought of the same name.  I convinced hubby to name him the name I thought of and in the baby book, his name means “God is willing” which was so perfect!  He was willing!
God was very faithful during the dark hours and I look back now and just see His hand everywhere during those times.  I know that not everyone can conceive again after a pregnancy loss but I want to put this experience out there for someone who needs to be encouraged after suffering an ectopic pregnancy or miscarriage.  Thank you for reading this and if you ever need to talk with someone about a miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy, I’d be happy to chat with you.

If you missed it, you can find part one here: Life and Love:  Miscarriage and Ectopic Pregnancy Losses Part 1.     To give you a little background, I was diagnosed with GAD or General Anxiety Disorder in May of 1999.  I have struggled with anxiety and fear for many years, even as a child.  I do not like elevators, airplanes, driving alone or anything medical among the 743 other things I worry about.
In May 2008, I had my wisdom teeth removed, which was a big deal for me. It was a victory in an area of my life that I have struggled with a lot. I remember feeling so excited I had finally broken those chains of fear. So excited in fact, that I’m pretty sure we conceived that night after having my wisdom teeth out.  I did not need to have them surgically removed, they just pulled them right out so I was not high on painkillers or groggy from anesethesia.
Towards the end of May I have symptoms that make me think, maybe I’m pregnant. So I took a test and yes, I was! Wow, ok, four kids, we can do this!  This picture was taken at a wedding we attended the very end of May.  I remember thinking maybe I was pregnant right before we left for the wedding.

I called OB and they drew my blood just to see how far along I was because I think it was the night of my wisdom teeth but I really  have no idea.   OB calls and confirms, yes, I am pregnant and they want me to come back in a few days and make sure the numbers were doubling. I did, they called back, the numbers didn’t double but they did increase so they weren’t too worried. I am uneasy about the answer they give me and ask them about it but they tell me as long as they increase, it’s fine.  I try not to worry about it. A few days later we went to the park and before we left I went to the bathroom and when I wiped, it was orange. Well that’s weird. My friends tell me, don’t worry about it, I”m sure it’s nothing.
The next morning, it’s a Tuesday and I’m about to sit down and write a blog post when all of a sudden I have a horrible cramping pain and a wet feeling.  I run to the bathroom and there’s blood. I remember this moment so clearly even now while I type this. Yuck. I start crying, shaking, call the hubby to come home, call the OB, they want me to go in. Hubby gets home, I call OB back and tell them I think I’ll just stay home.
They insist I come in so I do. They draw my blood. The nurse walks in and I already know what she’s going to tell me. I don’t remember when exactly but I do know I told my husband and my friend that I thought I had an ectopic pregnancy and they both thought I was nuts. We need to do an ultrasound to check the placement of the pregnancy. Sure enough, I have a tubal pregnancy.  I go back down to OB and talk to a doctor I’ve never met before.  He tells me that I qualify for a shot of methotrexate which is a dose of chemotherapy and alternative to surgery. I don’t like this doctor, who has no compassion or bedside manner other than to tell me that my tube could burst and I would need emergancy surgery or I might bleed to death internally.  Great, thanks, just what a person with anxiety needs to hear.
The hubby manages to work from home for the rest of the week, I don’t want to be left alone with the kids and this tubal pregnancy that I’m freaked is going to explode within me at any moment. The week passes by so slowly, it’s horrible waiting to see if the metho is working, if it will eventually shrink the sac and dissolve it or if I’ll need surgery.
Sunday is Father’s Day, we go to church, we come home. I have hardly eaten all week because I don’t have an appetite and I’m afraid to eat anything in case I need emergency surgery. We decide to head to Culvers for the free Sundae for dads. As we are walking out to the vehicle I feel a weird pain in my side. I call the OB doctor on call and talk to him. He tells me to go to the ER. We dropped the kids off at the neighbors and head in to the ER.  I am sure it’s nothing, I tell hubby.  I am probably freaking out about nothing.

To be continued……….

This blog post has been on my mind a lot lately maybe because God knows someone out there needs to read it. Maybe it’s for my own benefit. This is going to be a three part series because it’s long but I hope that this will benefit someone out there, in letting them know they are not alone, to encourage someone that there is hope after a pregnancy loss.
I have been pregnant six times and I have four children. The first time we found out we were pregnant was December 23rd 1999. Funny how the day and even what I was doing sticks in my mind. I was so extremely crabby, I was vacuuming our living room and when my hubs came home from work I sent him to the store for a pregnancy test. We were not trying to conceive, we were using birth control and we had only been married for about 17 months. He came back, our friends came over and sat with us while we waited. Sure enough, there were two lines, I was pregnant! I freaked out, I cried, I was not ready to be pregnant, I was scared, I was not in control. After a while I calmed down and was a little more rational.
Later that night we decided to call our parents and tell them they were going to be grandparents,  early Christmas present for them and sharing the news with other people helped us to be more excited.   We also found out that some friends of ours were also pregnant and we would be due within days of each other.  I was starting to feel better, was starting to get a little excited yet I was still unsure.
I had never been pregnant before but from the very beginning I always felt like there was something wrong. The clinic here does not see a pregnant woman until she is 10 to 12 weeks along and I was only 5 so it would be a few weeks before I would see a doctor.  I tried calling another clinic 30 minutes away and they would see me about a week earlier so I decided I would just have to wait it out and I was probably worrying for nothing.
Life continued on for a few more weeks and then on January 6th, I had some spotting but it was mostly brown. Sorry if it’s tmi but it’s just part of my story. I called the nurseline and they told me that it’s not uncommon to have some spotting or brown discharge early on in pregnancy, it could be implantation bleeding, just watch it and take it easy for the rest of the night. I tried not to freak out and just hung out on the couch but eventually the bleeding increased and my neighbor who was a nurse decided we should go in to the ER. We went in, they took some blood, they examined me and told me that yes, I was probably having a miscarriage, call the OB tomorrow and tell them what is happening. That was it. I don’t really remember the rest of the night.   The next day was my husband’s 23rd birthday and also the day of our very first ultrasound.  The ultrasound tech was just wonderful, her name was Emily and she was so kind and compassionate, unlike the doctor in the ER the night before. We were told that the sac was empty, I was having a miscarriage and to just wait it out.
They sent us home and the waiting game was on. We waited until the following week, went back in, still bleeding, still pregnant. After doing this for almost 4 weeks the doctor finally told me that I had to have a D&C because my body wasn’t doing what it needed to and they had let me wait long enough.  I did not want a D&C, did not want to be put out, did not want to deal with all of this.  In a way, I was still pregnant, I hadn’t lost the baby.  They also handed me a pamphlet that talked about how the baby would be buried in the cemetary across the street under a tree.  The baby was too small to require a funeral but with a D&C they take the remains and bury them together once a month.  I remember sitting in the waiting room at the doctor’s office and trying so hard not to cry, surrounded by pregnant women, scared and alone in my grief.
On February 4th I went in tot he clinic and had a D&C procedure.  Physically I was fine, I felt normal but inside I was hurting.  I was depressed, I didn’t do anything but stay home all day and watch tv or sit on the computer.  I didn’t really know anyone who had been through a miscarriage and we had only been living in this town for about a year so we didn’t have a lot of friends or support where we lived.  I eventually found some women in an online community on Babycenter and that was really helpful, to be able to talk with someone who was going through what I was going through.
During this time we were attending a church in town but it didn’t have a lot of young people our age and I didn’t grow up in a church so I didn’t know that maybe our church should have come alongside us in this time of grief.  When I think of women who have lost babies and how our current church has reached out to them, I am so thankful!  To have people to walk along side of you during this time of loss is so so important.  That is why I want to share this story and also give you a few more links from women who have also lost babies, you are not alone!!
In April we found out we were expecting again, this time we actually tried to conceive!  I was so excited and also so worried, I was constantly checking to make sure I wasn’t bleeding and I was so relieved when we were able to get in early and have the blood draws to make sure my numbers were increasing like they needed to and then to have an ultrasound at 6 weeks to see the little jelly bean all safe and snug in the sac!
Our due date was December 28th but I ended up being overdue which led to being induced and so we went in on January 7th, the night of my husband’s 24th birthday.  I was so thankful that God redeemed that day for him, making one year later a happy day, the day we go in to have our first baby!  Well she wasn’t born until January 9th but that was ok, we were just happy to have a healthy baby girl!

After that we had 2 more healthy beautiful babies. We were not sure if three kids was the stopping point for us or not.  We had scheduled a vasectomy a few times and then I’d call my hubby and ask him to cancel because I wasn’t sure I was ready to be done. So our life as a family of five just continued on for a few years…….

To be continued!

Here are a few other blog posts on pregnancy loss, I am sure there are more out there.

http://madeinhisimagemomma.blogspot.com/2010/10/he-knows-your-namehe-sees-each-tear.html

http://belleofthebustle.blogspot.com/2011/05/no-easy-answers.html

http://angiesmithonline.com/2008/01/the-beginning-of-the-story/

Thank you for reading this post and I pray that if you have lost a baby, you will find hope and healing through these blog posts!

We’ve only been in our new to us home for almost two weeks. This house doesn’t need anything done to it really except maybe a new roof in a year or two and the deck could use a new coat of stain. Compared to the last house, it feels wonderful, freeing and strange. I don’t know what to do with myself.  Obviously there are 1001 things I could do to this house but do we need it?

I had a conversation with a good friend the other day about projects, home improvement/decor, blogging, pinning and children.  Do we need to do all these projects, decorating things to our houses when really we’re just going to change it up again in a few months years anyways?   What is the real cost of all this? Why do we do it?

My friend and I both decided that it’s not the approval, opinion and compliments from our husbands that we like. No, it’s the comments and compliments from friends, family and strangers on blogs that we like. It’s getting feedback and acknowledgment for our work, something we don’t get with raising children or doing laundry. No one says, wow, you did an amazing job on that load of laundry! Way to go mom! And we all know that raising children is hard work with little sense of accomplishment for many, many years. So is it wrong to make our homes look nice, to better them even? No. But do I often browse pinterest or blogs and see something that has been done to a room and then decide that maybe I don’t like my just fine a few minutes ago dining room anymore? I need to do this cool thing and maybe it will make our dinner times happier and won’t we be cool. But then, if I do the dining room it won’t flow with the kitchen and I will need to repaint the cabinets and the walls, tile the backsplash, buy some new hand towels, window treatments and perhaps some new dishes as well. Which then the kitchen leads into the family room and on and on it goes. Then I will eventually end back up in the dining room and start the madness all over again!

Not that we don’t love the way changing up things makes us feel when we walk into a room.  Or as her husband even pointed out, the way their home makes people feel when they walk into their home relaxed, welcoming and comfortable.  We obviously want our homes to be welcoming and we like to live in a house that looks great.  But where is the stopping point?

Here is my analysis of a home improvement project. First I have to decide what I want to do with the space which involves reading blogs, googling things, spending time on pinterest, going to the various stores 573 times deciding on tile, paint, cabinets or whatever else we need for a project. Then, while actually doing the projects the house turns into a disaster zone, mom and dad can get kind of cranky not only with each other but also with the children, kids are left to their own devices and told they have to wait until the project is done for food, attention and love, and the pocketbook takes a hit.

AUGH! How much money and more importantly, time am I wasting? My children are only going to be living in this house for at best 15 more years. That will be gone in a flash. Do I want my kids to remember living in a home that was always under construction because mom and dad are at Home Depot, Lowes, Menards again. Mom is on the computer, again. 

Where is the balance? Can I have a nice home and improve the looks of it without spending a lot of time or money? Should we just not even care? Does it really matter?  If I knew I only had 2 weeks to live, would I spend it on blogger, pinterest, fb or google?  No, I would be trying to fill every moment spending time with those I love, soaking in my children and what they have to say, making sure they know how much I love them,  making sure my husband knows he is respected and loved, that I couldn’t have asked for a better man to marry.   Because the truth is, we really don’t know how much time we have on Earth, we like to think we’ll live to be 85 but we don’t really know what our future holds. 

So my question is, is this worth it?  Can there be balance?  Do you struggle with these same issues?   I would LOVE LOVE LOVE some feedback on this post.  You can comment below, comment on the Blooming Hydrangea fb page or even send me an email.  Am I just having a PMS day, too much time in the sun this weekend or maybe moving drove me over the edge?  Talk to me!

My husband and I lead a small group for couples and we just started reading the book “One Month to Live” by Pastor Kerry Shook and his wife Chris. We are only on the first week so I’m not sure what I think of this book yet but ask me in 30 days and I’ll let you know!
Day one asks you to think about 5 things you would change about your life if you knew you only had one month to live. This was really a hard question for me to answer. While hubby and I were laying in bed talking about our five things we started talking about dreams and goals for our life, what we would change, etc. This is something we don’t do enough of together, dream! I felt so energized after we talked about where we were in our life 10 years ago, where our life is now and where we want to be 10 years from now.
When was the last time you talked, dreamed, shared goals and aspirations for your life, your family, your character? If you haven’t done it or it’s been a while, do it, soon! I know that for women, we have a hard time dreaming sometimes, too many other things occupy our minds and we find it hard to dream when there is laundry and dishes piled all around us and kids fighting for our attention. Men on the other hand, they love to dream! They also love to share their dreams with us and too often we shoot down their dreams. We tell them what they are dreaming isn’t going to happen so why bother. We think they should live in the real world and not in la-la land. It’s time get your head out of the clouds, can’t you see all the dishes and laundry that we need help with. More often than not, your man is not really going to quit his job and move the family to Alaska so he can be on Deadliest Catch. In the way we women like to share our burdens and just want our husband’s to listen and not solve them, he wants us to listen to his dreams and not respond negatively. If your husband shares his dreams with you, please don’t squash them like a bug. Take the time to listen, hear his heart, he’s letting you in his world, enjoy it, encourage it and dream with him!

I can’t wait to do this with my children as well, listening to their hearts, sharing in their dreams and aspirations, seeing where they want to go in life, what they want to do, who they want to be! I don’t want to squash their hearts, to tell them that their dreams are impossible or foolish. Because what I’m really telling them is that they are foolish in their thinking and I would crush their spirit. So when my children share their dreams with me, I pray that I respond in such a way that encourages them and lets them know that I am always waiting to listen to whatever they want to dream about and I hope I can dream along with them!
So what are you waiting for, start sharing your dreams, you never know where they might take you, maybe even right into the heart of your husband or children!