Ah… February…

February is my crossroads month

 

 

Usually around February my known world gets shook up. Here is the run down on my significant Februarys.

February 1998: I was selected as a new sales employee for Fred Pryor Seminars, a training company. I didn’t graduate until May, but they were willing to wait for me to finish and join the team. This plan allowed the usual senior job crisis to not effect me. I truly loved my capstone classes and time with my friends. The fact I was joining an organization that was based on life-long learning was an amazing step.

February 2003: I had been home for five of my twelve weeks of maternity leave with Ian. I crunched numbers and prayed. We decided that with my previous schedule and Amon’s new work travel each month, I needed to be home. I felt like I was betraying my wonderful boss and all my faithful clients in exchange for the unknown, spit up and no sleep. How we were going to pull off this big, unplanned for step was intimidating. (I guess we pulled it off… it has been 10 years as of 2/4/13)

February 2007: I gave in and we purchased a one-year old orange mini-van and added our then two car seats. (Ian was 5 and Kaylee was 2.5) I knew that day our van, our home and our hearts needed another Wooldridge. More praying and listening. Rhett was born June 2009 and helped fill our mini-van, home and hearts in unmeasurable ways.

February 2010: I did my best to support my dear friend during her loss and my mom as she faced chemotherapy for breast cancer. I became a basket case. I had major times of doubt and questioned my faith in the same moment, I prayed for God to be with those I loved dearly. Now my friend and mom are my biggest cheerleaders to this day.

February 2012: I felt like God was putting many different encouraging voices in my path that guided, nudged and urged me to apply for the CREATE Masters of Divinity program at Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Shawnee, KS. More praying, worrying and doubting flooded my days. I pushed through it and applied even though I was terrified. I know my steps were guided and I was accepted to the fully scholar-shipped program.

February 2013: In two more class I will have finished my first of three years for my masters. Balance, commitment, and family are the three guides for my life now. It is fulfilling, challenging and divine. And completely unexpected. It keeps working out.

I didn’t know how it would work out each February, but looking back it speaks volumes to believing God will provide a path for me. My heart always leaps a little for February and I hope it always does. I hope you can find your month of calling and for you to see you have already been guided divinely or will be soon.

Love and Blessings to you and your families.

Kristin

PS – I felt compelled to share this note with you.  I wrote it for the MOPS@2BC February 2013 newsletter.  I hope if you read it earlier, you can feel a clearer stirring of your own month.

Advice from a Snow Day Veteran

Someone else’s snow day declaration. http://www.kooziez.com

OK!  So, I don’t have a ton of notches on my sled, but I have enough to share some tricks from the past five years of grade school mothering.

1. Never feed the pre-hype for school possibly being cancelled.  This can back fire when you do have to motivate your troops and get them OUT!
2. In preparation of possible snow day(s); get some FUN food that you usually don’t have in the house.  You know the things your kids tell you they eat at their friend’s house.  Sure having soup, grilled cheese and cocoa are staples on snowy days.  But surprise them!  We will be celebrating with brownies and cool whip!
3. Don’t let the day just unfold.  Talk to them and “let” them decide the day.  This works great when you need to remind them what they might miss out on if they keep throwing a fit.
4. Sure snow days are hard on the schedule, but if you can be home with your kids; become a kid!!!!  Let loose!  Play outside.  Throw the first snow ball.  Make snow angels.  Show your children that being an adult can be fun too!
5. Plan for some quiet time during the day, especially after playing hard outside.  We usually watch a movie and snuggle down under an avalanche of blankets in our basement.
6. I also highly recommend silly, loud times!  I can’t wait to start the first “tickle tackle” with the kids.
7. As a mom who blinked and now has a funny, bright 10 year old, please enjoy this bonus time with your children.  Don’t miss IT, while being in the same house all day.  The days are fleeting friends…
8. If you have older kiddos, put them to work!  We will get some mad dash race cleaning done tomorrow and I am pretty sure I know a 10 year old who will be shoveling my sidewalks.  If you have younger one, have them pick up!
9. Take lots of photos!  Do simple things and enjoy it!  As for me and my house we will be dancing in the kitchen to very loud music (and serving the Lord :))
10. Last but not least… Fights, Tears and Personalities are also part of a snow day.  Let laughter, forgiveness, and compromise be the goal for the day.

NOW HUDDLE UP WITH ME…

COME ON BRING IT IN CLOSE…

ON THE COUNT OF THREE…

ONE 

TWO 

THREE

SNOW DAY!!!!!!!

 

P.S. Here is a fun website for you to “predict” the number of snow days you might have for your area.  Looks like 2 for Liberty!

Snow Day Calculator

 

Oh… Pandora

I was just sitting on my comfy living room couch working along on all my projects and loose ends that need tying up.  To keep myself focused I usually turn on Pandora to the Tina Turner channel.  My Momma didn’t raise no fool.  Song after song is either Tina Turner, someone like her or music from the 80’s and early 90’s.  It is one of my favorite channels because it just makes me happy.  I usually end up singing along.  As I write this Michael Jackson is belting out The Way You Make Me Feel.  Yes, I am signing in my head as I write.

Have you heard the line that music is just a memory?  I’d have to agree.  Earlier a song from 1991 came on and I instantly thought I had climbed into a time machine.  I was transported to my bedroom when I was 15 years old.  I could clearly remember singing into my microphone.  I mean hair brush.  Only one person seemed to understand me at that time, Ms. Whitney Houston.  We would duet together on How Do I know He Loves Me.  I remember begging for my Mom to drive me from our country existence to the mall 30 minutes away to get the single.  Oh, the simple times before iTunes, YouTube, and CDs.  I played that 99 cent cassette single continuously and I still have it.

Every time I hear that song it brings back a flood of memories about the first boy I would talk to on the phone.  Nothing too crazy or wild.  It was huge at the time. I would sneak off and call.  Of course, I thought my parents had no idea.  Except looking back it seemed that they always ended up needing to make a phone call when I was on the house line.  Hmm… that seems fishy now that I have a parental view.  I would die of humiliation when they got on the phone and started dialing a number.  I would get off the phone quickly and turn on that cassette single and sing.  Whitney seemed to be the only one who knew about love, boys and how I was feeling.

I will always know that song word for word.  Those days of teendom are 20+ years ago, but music can make me feel that age all over again.

Tell me one of your “time machine songs.”  I’d love to know!

Ok I have to write for class and possibly clean… hmm probably not the clean.  🙂

Make sure to check out yesterday’s blog post on Lucy and Ethel!!

Blessings,

Kristin

PS – now Whitney Houston’s So Emotional is playing…

Lucy or Ethel

Come on now… you know what I mean.  Are you the type of friend that creates crazy situations? Or are you the type of friend who is the accomplice to the crazy?  You might be either or both depending on who you are with.  You probably have a dominant I Love Lucy personality.

According to Sabienna Bowman, Ethel needed Lucy just as much as Lucy needed Ethel. Even without a show to call her own, the legacy of Ethel can be felt in every best friend combo from Mary and Rhoda straight on through to the raucous ladies of Don’t Trust the B—in Apt. 23.  

Let’s take a closer look at what comes to mind with Lucy and Ethel’s personalities.

         Lucy                                             Ethel

Crazy                                                      Steady

Loyal                                                      Loyal

Rule Breaker                                   Rule Follower

Truth Stretcher                                Truth Seeker

Supportive                                           Supportive

Hare-brained Ideas                    Voice of Reason

Maniac                                                 Balanced

I am without any doubt a Lucy.  I have gotten amazing girlfriends into crazy situations more than once.  Like the time I instigated a living /dining room flooring demo at my friend’s home. Yep, that was a big one.

Our husbands were out all Saturday and we both didn’t have children to exhaust us yet and stop us from what we did to her home.  It all started out simply.  We were hanging out at her new-to-them home and talking about the possibility of hardwoods under the carpeting.  I brought up how lucky we were when we pulled up two bedrooms and a hallway of carpet.  We found great hardwoods under twenty-year old carpeting.

I got that crazy look in my eye and said we should pull up a corner to see.  She agreed because together we are actually two Lucys.  We were giggling as we tugged on that corner and we were pleased with what we found.  So, we worked all day and removed all the carpet from the open living/dining room area.  As we pulled, sweated and laughed about what our husbands would say, we got to the middle of the room.  We were in trouble.  There was some major damage where walls had been removed to make the space an open floor plan.  I definitely felt like Steve Urkel from the show, Family Matters with the famous line, “Did I do that?”

I sure did.  Oh, we knew it wasn’t going to be a project that we completed, but a mess we created.  Then we did what we could, we cleaned!  We worked double-time to get all the carpet and padding out, swept the floors and then figured out how we would face our husbands.  We were dirty and little scared.  We definitely had some esplaining to do as Ricky would have demanded of Lucy.  To this day almost ten years later, our husbands still question what we are going to get into together.

I am thankful tonight for my girlfriends.  Those who are Lucys and those who are Ethels are both equally important to helping me have fun in life!  To my Ethel friends, thank you for coming alongside me in my craziest of times.  To my Lucy friends, I am sure another adventure is ahead of us.

Hope you have a lot more adventures ahead of you too!

Blessings!

Kristin

PS- I am blogging daily for Lent (M-F)

Blog Resources:

Women in the Box: Ethel Mertz, I Love Lucy

This entry was posted on January 9, 2013 by Sabienna Bowman, in Women in the Box

http://classicland.tumblr.com/post/33621071702/lucy

So much…

I often hear the following:

“I don’t know how you do it all.”

“You should learn to say no.”

“I see you coming and going all the time.  Aren’t you exhausted?”

“Just watching you buzz around makes me exhausted.”

I’ll be honest sometimes it stings.  I do have a lot of plates spinning.  And sometimes I am not sleeping much.  My “extra” things are keeping me up late.  It is the soft footsteps padding down the hall from my sweet three-year old at 3:00 a.m.  And yes, I could have a big production of the injustice of getting out of bed to tuck him back in, but I’ve noticed that his current level of “momma need” is fleeting.  My gig is to be his “person.”

Being his “person” reminds me of a great line from the show, Grey’s Anatomy from a couple years back.

It is a different kind of “person” than the friendship described on that show.  But it still stands true.  I am his “person” and I will always be.  I am actually 3 smaller people’s “person” and one adult’s.

I try to not lose myself in all the doing, going and being.  It is a lot of ever-changing, coaching, and communicating.  I could use a nap just thinking about it all.  We all know that there isn’t time for that. 🙂  I keep my plates spinning and my people happy. (most of the time)  I am enjoying this phase of motherhood, family, MOPS Leadership, and master’s classes more than any other time yet.  It is freeing to have all these parts to my life and I am thankful for all the plates to spin.  Some days it seems like everything is falling apart and plates are crashing by the crate full.  Those are the days that stick out when some one comments about the business of my busy-ness.  It cuts a little, but I know that this crazy season is what I am in for now and it is a good thing I love it.

A Solid Investment

Our wooden play set stands guard in our backyard of dead, dry grass as a beacon of hope for warmth and long days outside.  We moved to our home a little over 2 years ago.  One of the first, big, non-negotiable purchases we knew would be a play set with swings.  It has been a staple in our outdoor play and many times during this mild Missouri winter, we have been outside playing on it.

Today was one of those days.  A day “too cold” in Momma’s opinion, but just right for all three kids.  I heard them through my cracked open kitchen window.  They were laughing, shooting storm troopers together and of course there were the predictable set of tears and screaming.  It was an accident.  It is hard for our three year old to remember to watch for swinging feet and spinning tire swings.  Especially after not being outside for a few weeks.

They all came in chilled to the bone, but gleeful.  Time with each other on their play set was just what they needed in the great outdoors to run, scream and pretend.  I asked more about what they pretended and they each went into different versions of a Star Wars: The Clone Wars.  I am thankful they can be so happy together on a cloudy afternoon.

That play set was a solid investment.  Their cackling laughter is worth every penny.  I am so glad we didn’t wait.  I know it would be have been a big mistake if we had delayed or never installed the play set.  Glad as parents we just did what needed to be done.

In My Rearview Mirror Tonight

In my rearview mirror tonight, in the dark as I drove home a new way on our busy highway I saw life differently.  As my kids chattered on about their day and church, I felt my heart in my throat.

In the backseat of my cluttered, orange van was my 3 blessings all buckled in unaware of what I was seeing.  Nothing out of the ordinary, except we had a lot more shining headlights near us on the highway.  As the lights shone in, I did what all moms do, I assume.  I glanced in my rear view mirror to see my kids as they spoke and asked me questions.  With the ever changing light, I couldn’t see them very clearly.  Their sweet faces would be lit for a moment and then go dark.

What caught my heart and made me try to do my best “motherhood moment time freeze” (MMTF for short) was what I saw upon their heads.  I saw two with little ash crosses and one with curls.  My two older kids took part of Ash Wednesday services, where they were marked with the sign of the cross in ashes by our Pastor.

He said to each person marked, “Remember who you are. Remember whose you are.”  I hope and pray that those are more than just words they heard once.  I hope those words are resonated in the love they receive from their Daddy and I, their Sunday School teachers, their church community, their extended family and friends.  That in our hearts and minds we can remember their cross on their foreheads like it is always there.

If they grow with knowing that, then we all will have blessed them.  

 

PS – I am challenging myself to post every day of Lent.  

        Dear Lord, Help us all. Amen

        Read, share, skip – – do whatever works for you.  I need to write and publish more.