The BFG and the Train

Tuesday I scored tickets to the Wednesday performance of The BFG (Big Friendly Giant). I was a bit curious as to how they intended to have a giant on stage, but mostly I was just excited for the excuse for a field trip. So were my children.

Tuesday night I mentioned to K and L that we were going to a play, and after a few questions along the lines of "What's a play?", my personal activities coordinator came up with a great idea. Why don't we take the new train uptown since it stops *right by the library/playhouse*? Sounds great to me!

So Wednesday morning, we got everything organized and made a quick stop by the Target because we had to have school badges for the show. Did you know your kids will be super-dooper excited when you say "Sure, we can use those really cute (and clearance priced) luggage tags as school badges!"? We drove over to the train station, bought our tickets, and sat down in the brand-spanking new light rail train.

For the next 30 minutes (we rode from one end of the route to the other; heck, may as well get our money's worth!), we were treated to views of the city I didn't even know existed. However, it wasn't the warehouses and questionable shops that stuck out like a sore thumb. It was the station names.

We started at South Blvd. Station, boring, but not too weird.

We passed East/West St. Station. You'd think the city could be a bit more creative in this naming streets thing.

Then there was Bland St. Station. I can just hear someone's address.
Mr. and Mrs. Boring
300 Bland St.
Snoozeville, ZZ 00 0 0 0 (zzzzzzz..........)

The one that took the cake, though, was Scaleybark Station. Hello?!? What kind of name for a street is Scaleybark? It sounds like some horrible tree disease and we're so proud of it that we put a train station there! On the train, a lovely female voice announces the upcoming stops, but even she can't improve that one.

In the end, the girls loved the play and they had a very interesting way to handle the giants. Sometimes the humans were puppets, the BFG was a regular-sized person, and the bigger giants were tall costumes. Sometimes the humans were regular size and the BFG was a big foam...puppet...thing. And sometimes they made it easy on themselves and used shadow puppets.

The girls loved the play and even L sat mostly quietly through the whole thing. She did have to jump into my lap when the big giants started talking about the kids they ate. Gross. The play was worth the trip, but I think the train ride would've been enough to excite us all by itself.

Mixed motives

In reading my CBS lesson on Psalm 139, I came across this

"We are often perplexed by our errant thoughts and impulses, but He is not. We do not understand our mixed motives, but God knows the secrets of our hearts. Knowing us, He understands us and loves us, even when we do not understand and cannot love ourselves."

There are so many times in my life that I question my motives even when I ultimately know the action is right. Many times I'm motivated by equal parts of selfishness and duty, pride and service, desiring and giving. Perhaps it's a mission trip where I want to teach others about God, but I'm also excited about the trip itself. Or singing in the church choir - do I want a chance to show off and enjoy the challenge of singing or am I using the opportunity to minister to others through music? I know the motives behind my actions are infinitely more important than my actions themselves, but often I cannot pin down or understand my motives. Praise God that He can see through our human weaknesses and still loves us!

The Quiet Families

I read a post about The Quiet Family over on Scribbit's blog and was inspired to try my own hand at creating a set. Or two. When you have two girls, you can't get away with making just one of anything.

My wonderful, excellent Mr. at Home gave me a couple of hours off yesterday afternoon and I went off to the store to find the wooden game pieces, boxes, tiny painted toys, and felt. Less than $10 total. After dinner, I pulled out my supplies and got started. I painted the boxes and the dads and used scraps of fabric, ribbon, and scrapbooking fibers to cover the moms, girls, and babies. I lined the boxes with felt so the pieces wouldn't get knocked around (after all, this is the Quiet family) and packed them all up.

The girls *loved* them. I let K pick out the colors, fabrics, and hair for hers, but I did L's after she had gone to bed, so I had to pick out hers myself. The hair was hard as I was running out of stuff that was "hair colored", so her dolls have some...interesting hair. I did discovered that ribbon worked much better as clothes than the fabric and L was overjoyed at her "ballerina princess". This morning I had a hard time tearing them away from playing with their families to get them focused on school. Yep, the Quiet families were a success.

Eh....I got nothing

After a long and desperate search, I have found that I have nothing really worthwhile to say today.

I'm so sorry.

I *could* complain that I feel like I've been sick since Halloween with a variety of colds and other viruses. Add that to the on-going trauma of the allergies and my current sinus headache, I feel about as exciting as a wet rag. But no one wants to hear about all that.

Perhaps I could pass on a little warning to parents of elementary-age daughters. It seems that little girls have found a new way to diss each other. As K was getting in the car after girl scouts last week, I was treated to the tail end of a conversation between her and an older friend (of the "Yes, I will", "No, you won't" variety). It seems that the older girl was trying to look cool in front of her friends and was threatening to un-friend K on the Webkinz site. Ah, school girl spats in the internet age. We had to have a talk about how M was just trying to make her friends think she was cool by trash-talking and she would completely forget about it before she got home and actually carried through on her horrifying threat *and* she would still be begging to play next time we got together without the other 9-year-old friends.

I could astonish you with the fact that my house is in a fabulous state of *clean*. I updated the girls' chore charts taking into account the fact that they are old enough to be taking on more household tasks. Their hard work inspired Mr. at Home to create a chore chart of his own, so he's been helping to keep up with housework, too. Don't worry that I'm sitting around watching soaps and eating bonbons while my family is hard at work; I just figure my chore chart would be too long, complex, and dynamic to print. Saturday morning we did a thorough cleaning, even moving furniture to vacuum under it, which inspired us to once again put on our hospitality hats and invite someone over for dinner. So last night we had some new friends over and had a good time eating some of Mr. at Home's amazing spaghetti, watching the kids play, and discussing everything from Bill and Ted movies to the emergent church and the post-modern world.

Just so we don't forget to discuss L, I could tell you that we are a completely diaper and pull-up free household. FINALLY. We would have weeks of success, then relapses into frequent accidents. So I decided that the night-time pull-up was causing confusion and, despite the fact that I'm not sure she's ever been dry in the morning, I took it away. And it worked. In the 2 weeks or so since that fateful decision, she hasn't wet the bed and she's only had a couple of daytime accidents.

For having nothing to write about, I sure went on and on. Brevity. I don't have it.

And God Showed Up

On Wednesday night, I was sitting around at the church building when I reached for my phone to call my sister and wish her happy birthday. I then checked the time and decided she'd probably appreciate it more if I waited until *after* the dinner hour to call her. People are funny that way :-)

So while I was sitting there, a friend of mine walked by whom I hadn't seen in a few weeks. As we started to catch up and I casually asked where her husband was, she dropped the news that he had left her. Did you feel it Wednesday night when the whole earth came screeching to a halt? Um, excuse me, I think I was hallucinating there for a moment. Did you say he left you??? You see this was the strongest couple I know. The kind where they taught classes on marriage and spent time working on their marriage. He had an accountability group, taught Sunday School, attended conferences, and talked about going into full-time ministry. And to one day, out of the complete and total blue, to tell his wife he didn't love her, had never loved her, and he had no intention of doing anything but divorcing her? Huh?

Of course, looking back, he had been edging away from things for about a year, but not so that it was anything that would give any clue that he was rethinking some things in his life. Things like, oh, his life. My friend seems to be handling things amazing well and is adjusting, but then I was up half the night thinking about what I would say if I happened to run into her husband. After I slapped him upside the head and asked him what in the world he was thinking, of course.

Thursday morning was CBS and the discussion started down the most consuming topic on my mind after another lady mentioned that she was obsessed with *her* friend that was going through a bitter separation and divorce. I didn't say much, but I did listen as other talked about how you couldn't get bitter and angry. God showed up and talked to me as we were continuing our lesson. One part of our lesson was Psalm 139 and it hit me strongly as we read, " Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?". For the past year, my friend's husband has been pulling away from everyone who would be a reminder of God's word. Even now, he is running full tilt from *anyone* who has reached out. He knows he's wrong and he's trying to hide from any reminder of what he knows. God was showing me that that's what he needs to hear. He needs to hear God's word reminding him that no matter how fast or far he runs, God is there waiting for him. God is running right there along side of him, bringing others along side of him who can be help if he'll just turn his head to listen. Psalm 94 says "Blessed is the man you discipline, O LORD, the man you teach from your law; you grant him relief from days of trouble". God promises that my friend's husband will receive blessing if he stops, turns back, and faces the consequences of his actions. My friend has said she still loves her husband and wants them to get past this; she's willing to do whatever it takes. Please join me in praying that there will be someone who can get close to him, rain God's word on him with love, and that his heart will be inclined to listen and act.

After meeting so closely with God during CBS, I was feeling much better. We left CBS and headed to Girl Scouts, with a stop for lunch on the way. I wasn't feeling like McD or CFA, our usual lunchtime suspects, so I asked God to show us where we should eat, someplace we could be a blessing to someone. After all, God had been speaking all morning, why should he stop now? K piped up from the backseat that she wanted Burger King, a place close to scouts, not in the best part of town, but not too bad, so we went there. Walking into the building just in front of us was a woman that God said "That's her. That's who I want you to help".

As we entered, I saw the woman had sat down just inside the door. She was dressed in several layers of clothes with a small backpack she didn't take off and her hair was pulled back with a bandana. I glanced back at her several times as we ordered and waited for our food. She seemed like she might be homeless, but not desperate. She wasn't asking for money or doing anything to draw attention to herself, just resting and warming up.

I remembered the $5 bill I had tucked in my pocket this morning. It had been sitting on my jewelry box for days, but today I had grabbed it "just in case I need it". I knew God wanted me to give it to the woman, but by the time we had settled at our table with our food, she was gone. I knew God wasn't finished and I waited in full confidence that she would return.

We had almost finished our lunch, when she appeared back at the same table with a cup of coffee. I swallowed my chicken and my pride and walked over to her table. Sitting down across from her, I put the $5 on the table. "You'll probably think this is odd," I said, '"but God wants me to buy your lunch today." I pushed the money toward her and said, "I hope this blesses you." She looked down at the money in astonishment. "Thank you." She paused, "I think I'll take this money and get cleaned up. I'm going to go wash my clothes and get cleaned up." She looked back at me, "Thank you, thank you," she kept saying. I smiled, patted her hand, and walked back to my table and my wondering daughters.

As the woman walked out the door and across the parking lot to a strip mall, I explained that sometimes God gives us pretty specific instructions about what he wants us to do. Today he wanted me to give a woman $5 and we were both blessed because I obeyed.

I really needed a confirmation from God yesterday and He showed up and gave it to me like I have never experienced before. And today I'm passing it on to you.

And no, I didn't call my sister Wednesday since I was a bit overwhelmed, but I did talk to her last night. Happy belated birthday, Bethany!

Quick Kid Funnies

The girls both had some recordable moments today, which I thought I'd share. Really, I'm just not up to writing a real post tonight. I've got one preheating, so hopefully I'll get it organized, written, and posted tomorrow for all you to feast on. Tonight, however, you'll just have to be satisfied with these cocktail wieners on sticks.

L-
After spending the morning in CBS (Community Bible Study), L was obsessed with it the rest of the day and kept popping up with comments about "Bible Study" and "Miss Nancy" and "CBS" and "CVS" (obviously she's worried about running out of Benadryl and movie snacks). At one point she came up with "CVS!...dot org!...cyberspace!"

She's a kid of the 21st century. Or at least a PBS addict.

K-
K had apparently been seriously contemplating the date and the fact that we are almost finished with January. She asked, "If a month goes by so fast, how come a year seems so long?"

Honey, if you only knew.

Organizing *Stuff*

A few days ago I started cleaning out our little office area, which when I say little, I mean *little*. There's a desk and two shelves above it and it holds all of our computer equipment, homeschool supplies, scrapbooking supplies, mailing supplies, file cabinet, etc. And all that means that the place has a tendency to gets *messy*.

I straightened up the shelves, but after a few minutes of working on the desk, I gave up in despair. Last night, Mr. at Home got ambitious and cleaned up most of his stuff, but he didn't have a clue what to do with all mine. I looked at it this morning and was struck with the same sense of despair. Every inch was filled and I still had more stuff scattered around the house that needed to be put back here. Then an idea struck and we made a little trip to my favorite Target after dance class. What do you know, the very shelving system I wanted is *on sale*! Woohoo! I ended up having to go to another Target to get the shelves I wanted since the first one was out of the biggest size (they were all the same price, so why wouldn't I get the biggest?).

So we put the new shelves together and organized all of the girls art supplies and some of their school stuff into the various baskets and shelves. That left plenty of room in the office area for everything else to be neatly arranged on the shelves. Yep, Mr. at Home will be one happy man when he comes home and sees that he has room on the desk to move his mouse and room under the desk to put his feet. And the girls think I'm Supermom because they can actually reach their art stuff!

So if your art and school supplies are overflowing, this whole shelving system, including the colored bins is ON SALE at Target right this minute. For more Works for Me Wednesday posts, visit Rocks in My Dryer.