Baseball been berry berry good to me

Okay, you have to be kind of old to get that one, it is a really old Saturday Night Live bit.  I am talking John Belushi/Gilda Radner old.  Although it was not them in the skit, I cannot for the life of me remember the guy's name, but it was funny.  Baseball season is upon us!  Tyler made the freshman team and Grant will be playing in the Shelby Rec league.  Baseball, baseball, baseball.  Fold up chairs and coolers and snacks and blankets and gatorade and all that jazz in my trunk.  Explaining to Cooper that we really do have to go to their games, and that will be basically five days a week until the middle of June.  Seriously, I am not kidding.  Ty plays tues/thurs, Grant plays mon/wed/sat until the middle of June.  That does not include practices and stuff.

Here is the thing about baseball in Michigan.  You can freeze at a game.  Wind comes up, it's only 40 degrees to begin with, the sun is going down, and  suddenly you are freezing your patootie off on the field.  I have watched the end of games in my van.  You can also boil at a game.  I actually got a sunburn on one side of my body because of the way I was sitting.  Literally just the one half.  Made for some really strange tan lines the rest of the year.  In Michigan this time of year it can snow, hail, rain, tornado, be hot, be cold or just be.  You can sit on a blanket for part of a game and wrap yourself up in said blanket the other half.  Michigan, you gotta love it.

For some families it is baseball, some soccer, some lacrosse, some basketball, some football, some gymnastics, some cheerleading, some the science olympiad.  Whatever the activity, your whole family becomes involved.  That is just the way it is.  Everyone goes and watches the games.  The younger kids complain that they want to go home.  You can promise the moon, they still want to go home.  I have to tell Cooper that being outside for an hour and half will not kill him.  It is actually quite good for him.  

You get to know the other moms and dads.  You learn all the kids names on the teams, even if you won't see them next year except on an opposing team.  You yell and scream and cheer and freak the heck out if your kid is pitching.  Or catching.  Or under a pop fly.  Or let one get through his legs.  Or whatever.  It's great.  And overwhelming and by the beginning of June, I am praying for rain so I don't have to go anymore.  That makes me a bad mom, but there you go.  It's kind of sad when you are so tired from baseball, that you hope they don't make the playoffs.  Sad.  Bad, bad mommy.

So, batter up and all that good stuff.  What sport takes over your life this time of year?  Share the love.

God bless you and yours.

It's my birthday

So, I just heard that forty is the new twenty, so officially, I am 22, not 42.  Okay, so I am 42, but I am okay with that.  Thirty was the hardest one for me to hit and now I have no idea why.  I think as women, we come into our own in our thirties.  So as I sit here, I am okay with the 42 mark.  I have earned my gray hairs and the right to cover them ruthlessly with a wonderful dye job.  

So, we officially celebrated my birthday last night because Scott has to work late tonight so he can get off early on Wednesday for Tyler's first baseball game.  It was nice.  Tyler had one of his friends at church make me a cross for my cross wall.  I was so touched that he thought ahead and did something so thoughtful.  For those of you who don't know, I collect crosses and have a cross wall with all kinds of crosses.  Fun stuff.  I have to laugh because I got money from my parents, Scott and my mother-in-law.  This happens every year.  When I have money, I cannot find one thing I like.  When I am broke, I find twenty purses I cannot live without.  Whatever.  I will either get a great purse, my favorite perfume or some great shoes.  That being said, with me clipping coupons and all that jazz, I know I will hold my favorite perfume in my hand and not want to spend that much money on perfume.  Birthday or not, forty bucks for perfume is expensive.  Yikes.

So, what do you do on your birthday?  If I were in Arizona, I would have at least two friends who would kidnap me and take me to lunch and to get our toes done.  So that is what I want for my birthday, either my sister or my friends in Az to get here to Michigan where there is SNOW ON THE GROUND, and pick me up to do lunch and our toes.  Except I want to go to Tommy Bahama Cafe in North Scottsdale, perfect for a gal's lunch.  Oh well, Janet just said she is taking me to breakfast, what a great start.  

God bless you and yours.

Kids Birthdays

I am not talking about my children's birthdays, but all of those around us.  This week alone I have two nephews and one niece and my own on Monday (shameless plug for my birthday, which is monday).  Luckily, they are all of the age that they just want money.  Sounds callous, but once they get over legos and princess dolls, they really just want to get what they really want, not something their Aunt picked out in a panic at Target at 11pm at night.  Just write a check, they will be happy and you will not be at Target with all the midnight shoppers.

I have thrown birthday parties and thought I did a pretty good job.  Then I went to someone else's birthday party and thought I failed miserably.  I want to know when it all became a one up-manship?  Why?  Not that you should not throw a party for your child, it's fun and wonderful and a great time is usually had by all.  I just want to know why I feel like a failure if your party is better than mine.  I think I am mostly over this, but it used to weigh so heavily on me.  I remember going to my first neighborhood party in our new neighborhood.  A very crafty neighbor who is now a wonderful friend had saved baby jars and made "jars of honey" for her daughter's Winnie The Pooh party.  Little baby food jars full of candy, fabric lid and a bow.  I am the mom who gets the pinata and hands out ziploc bags for the kids to take the candy home.  Then, my pinata was not big enough.  The goodie bags not full enough.  The decorations lacking in some way.

I have spent a fortune on my kids birthday parties and never rented a bouncy house or cotton candy machine.  I did "borrow" the snow cone machine from our church, but that's allowed and it was summer.  There is nothing wrong with a bouncy house either, I just could not afford one.  I also started planning all birthday parties around any kind of meal.  I will put out chips and stuff, but I am not feeding your kids.  I am very fond of the 2 p.m. to 4p.m. party.  No hot dogs, no pizza and that is that.  I learned this the hard way.  Tyler's first birthday cost us over $500.00 and he does not even remember it.  By the time all the family and friends came over and ate and had a beer or a soda, we were down the drain.  

When I was a kid, you went to your friends house, maybe played pin the tail on the donkey, ate the cake their mom had made that morning, opened presents and went home.  When did  Chucky Cheese get in the middle of all this?  It took me a long time, but now, I refuse to give in to the hype.  Who can afford it?  Let's get back to basics.  You can get a lot of decorations for birthdays at the dollar store.  If you must get a cake and you are having a crowd, Costco or Sam's Club make great cakes for great prices.  

In these trying economic times, let's tone it down.  If you are having a family party, maybe make it a pot-luck.  All we really want is the kids to have a great time right?  What did we have fun doing when we were young?  We did not require big rats in nasty costumes singing and scaring the babies.  

What is your best cost saving trick for birthday parties?  Share the love.

God bless you and yours.

My 100th Post

Okay, so it's not a real milestone, but it is for me.  I must say I am rather proud that I haven't given this whole thing up.  I really like it.  I am working on my craft by writing everyday.  I am consistent and when I cannot be consistent, it is usually because I am sick and I let all you guys know.  Considering that I did not even know what a blog was until my writer's conference, I am doing pretty well.

Basically, when I went to my writer's conference, I knew nothing.  I though if you show up with a great idea (of course my book is a great idea) they would just scoop me up and run with it.  I did not know I needed a platform and what a platform was and what was involved in getting a platform.  I learned so much.  So I am going to recommend something to all of you.

What do you want to do?  What is your passion?  What secret is pecking away at your heart?  I say try.  If you have something you have always wanted to do and have not done it, you have to try.  It is tough.  It took me eight years to write my book and I learned so much about writing that I have to re-edit my book before I could submit it to the three sources that said they would look at it at the Conference.  You have to purpose to pursue your passion.  Etch out time in our chaotic lives to work on something we really don't have time for.  It is worth it.  

I come down to this.....  You have all the time in the world to do what God has called you to do.  Period.  God can provide in the supernatural what we cannot fathom.  Life is good when God is in it.  Try your passion.  What have you always wanted to do?  Let me know.

God bless you and yours.

Grounding Kids

While this could take on so many meanings....Keep your kids grounded in the Lord, keep them level in their thinking and actions, keep them realistic in goals, all that jazz, it is not the meaning we are exploring today.  I am talking about grounding you kids for doing something wrong.

My children are in a place in their lives where spanking probably won't work.  I don't know how I would get Tyler at 5'10" and 150 pounds to go over my knee.  That being said, they still need discipline because they still get out of line.  So it falls to taking something away from them or grounding them.  

The problem with older children is when you ground them, you ground yourself.  They want a reprieve and want to negotiate an early release.  I will admit to wanting to cave.  I get tired of, "mom, why can't I come out of my room"  "I have been good all day, you guys are just being mean"  "mom, are you saying you never did anything wrong when you were a kid?"  All good arguments.  Quite frankly, I want them outside with their friends, messing up the woods instead of my house.  The lego projects alone are epic.  It is amazing what kids can come up with when they are under house arrest.  Of course, I refuse to budge.  Budging is admitting defeat and giving in to the little negotiators, it is unacceptable.  

I admit to guilt over discipline.  No one wants to spank a child or ground a child or take something precious away from a child.  But actions have consequences, good and bad.  That is a life lesson that must be drummed into their little brains, no matter how much they cry and say that everyone hates them.  I once heard that if your teenager tells you they hate you less than three times a day, you are not doing your job.  I am not my children's friend.  I am their mom and together with their dad, we are a unit that prepares them for the big bad world.  That is our job.  But like most jobs, there are good days and bad days.  So I pray a lot over my children.  

If you have trouble praying for your kids, join the club.  A book that helped me so much was The Power of a Praying Parent by Stormie O'Martian.  It has specific prayers for specific times in their lives, awesome.  She is a parent and a Christian and knows our challenges.  I highly recommend it.  Also, talk to your girlfriends with kids a little older than yours, what's working, what's not.  Remember that no one knows your kids like you do, but a little help and support during our challenges is wonderful.

What works for your family in the way of discipline?  Share the love.

God bless you and yours.

Juggling the kids

While the title brings to mind throwing my children up in the air, all at once and swinging them around, that is not exactly what I mean.  We as mothers, juggle.  We juggle schedules.  We juggle carpools.  We juggle work and home and everything in between.  I never learned to juggle properly.  By that I mean that I cannot toss three or four balls in the air and keep it going.  My husband can, I cannot.  But I juggle my life and usually do not drop the balls, so I think that is better.  It won't get me on the Tonight Show, but I always wanted to be on when Johnny was there, sooooo.

This Thursday, the cookie dough order for the fundraiser comes in.  I planned accordingly.  I took the day off.  I arranged for my mom-in-law to watch the kids when they get off the bus, get the other child and the neighbor child from baseball practice.  Even going to get the kids to youth group, where I will be handing out cookie dough.  Awesome.  Here comes the monkey wrench.  My mother-in-law is going to a funeral three hours away, has to leave tomorrow and won't be back until late Thursday.  Let the chaos erupt.  Now, instead of smooth sailing I will be tag-teaming.  I am going to reluctantly let my almost twelve year old watch the other two for one and a half hours.  This was a tough one for me, but for the love of all that is holy, I was babysitting infants when I was ten, I have to let it go.  I am going to arrange at today's meeting about said cookie dough to have relief ready for me when I have to pick up my younger ones at home and then proceed on to baseball practice, then drop off the neighbor kid, then drive through whatever for dinner, then back to youth group, then the twelve year old has drums, then I have to get the twelve year old from drums and take him to youth group (not at the youth center, only high school goes there) then I have pick him up and make sure the cookie dough that is not getting picked up gets to Nicolina's garage until Sunday.  I know that sentence is way too long, but there you go.  I think I will drink all day Thursday, just kidding.  Drinking does not help, that much I do know.

I know that I am not alone in all of this, we all juggle.  I also know that at the end of the day on Thursday, I will be tired, the kids will be tired and we will all be okay.  It's just one day of many that we have all survived.  Baseball season is upon us.  Grant is playing Monday, Wednesday and Saturdays.  Tyler just made freshman baseball at his Junior High (Go CHIEFTANS) and he plays on Tuesday and Thursday.  This is going to freak Cooper out, but this is not our first rodeo, we have been in baseball for years.  When Cooper was younger, I would leave the car running and he could watch a movie, that was the only way he could get through the day.  We all do what we have to do, I wasted gas and blew a hole in the ozone.  

What are you juggling today?  Work?  Husband's work schedule?  Kids?  Dance or girlscouts (oh crap, we have girlscouts tonight), or whatever.  Let me know.

God bless you and yours and all that you are juggling.

Books

So, I have a new little do-hickey on my blog.  It's called Shelfari.   Kind of cool.  You can put in books you have read and recommend on this little book shelf.  Neat.  Moments of Grace, the book with the flower on it, is actually a book that I am in.  It is a book with several authors with stories about Grace.  God's grace coming into their lives.  I was blessed to be a part of it.  My story is about Cooper and my battle with my demons in coming to peace with his diagnosis.  The second book, Saturdays with Stella is a great book written by a friend of mine, Allison Pittman.  If you have ever felt uncomfortable in God's family and wonder how and when to fit in, get this book, you will finally get it.  Both are available at Amazon.

The do-hickey brought up my love of books.  I love to read, it has always been an escape for me.  And a blessing and a breakthrough.  I read just about everything.  Or have at some point.  I do love a smutty book.  Not a nasty book, just smutty.  Someone like Nora Roberts, although her latest stuff has been too weird for me to read.  I do love her trilogies that are love stories.  Her last two trilogies have been about vampires and murder, yuck.  Her older stuff is love stories set in Ireland or about Scottish families and I love them.  Read them over and over.  She tells a great story.  I love Christian fiction too, Frank Perretti has written some amazing books.  Look up my pal Allison Pittman on that note too.  I am not really into science fiction, although my mother devours it.  I like a good mystery, but it is not my favorite genre.  I guess I am all over the place on what I like to read.  I do love Rob Bell's books, look him up if you get the chance.  Scott and I are currently doing the Love Dare, that is amazing.  I also have an obsession with Cookbooks.  Seriously, I should not buy anymore, but I cannot stop.  I usually use at least one recipe from every cookbook I have bought.  Or I want to try one out in the future.

I read my bible every day.  I know that gives me my purpose and keeps me level when I want to go off on a tangent.  That was a tough one to get into, especially for me.  I grew up Catholic, as a rule, we don't really read the bible.  My sister gave me The Way, which is a Catholic living bible, when I was 21 and running wild.  What I loved about it was that I could read it.  It made sense to me.  I have gone through many bibles.  Sounds weird, but true.  I currently read the Women of Faith Study Bible NIV.  It is easy to read too.  I write in my bible (I used to think that was blasphemous).  When I write something in my bible, I date it.  It's amazing to look back at something that hit me in my heart and remember what I was going through and why I needed that verse.  I am constantly humbled by the grace that God gives to me in my darkest times.

So what is on your book shelf?  What is on your night stand?  Do you like to read or is it a chore?  Let me know.

God bless you and yours.