Heaven?

Sometimes, I find myself dreaming about what heaven will be like. I know a little bit about what the Bible says heaven will be like, such as streets paved with gold and no more sorrow and no more pain and that sounds amazing and wonderful, but I also like to believe that heaven will also be a place where I am never in a hurry.

I really don't like always being in a hurry and that is pretty much a given during the school year. I hurry home from working out to hurry up and take a shower to hurry up and get Abigail up so she can hurry up and get ready while I hurry up and make her lunch and prepare breakfast. Then I "encourage" her to hurry up and eat so that we can hurry up and make it to school on time. Then I spend the day hurrying around trying to get laundry done, errands run, emails returned, before I have to hurry and make lunch. After lunch I try to hurry Rebecca down for a nap so that we can hurry up and be at the school by 3:00 to pick up Abigail. After school we hurry to piano lessons and sports practices and we hurry to finish homework and cook dinner. I hurry to get to PTA meetings, doctors' appointments, play dates, Bible Studies. After dinner we hurry through baths and stories and prayers so that it is not too late when we get to sleep so that we can wake up the next day and hurry, hurry, hurry all over again. Don't get me wrong. I like to stay busy. It's the constant state of being rushed in my busyness that I can't stand.

The past 4 days have been a little like what I hope heaven will be like. Thursday, we got 11 inches of snow that almost completely shut down the city. Schools were closed, extracurricular activities were cancelled and the streets were a mess so there were no errands to run. Were we bored? No way! We stayed busy playing games, making soups and chili, baking, watching movies, shoveling snow, playing in the snow, reading, updating long neglected blogs, etc. But we were never in a hurry and it was WONDERFUL!!!

Tomorrow we will be back to hurrying around and I will be back to dreaming of what it might be like in heaven.

Philippians 3:14

I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Heaven?

 

Heaven?

 

What a coincidence!

I've been wanting to update my blog for a long time now, but things have just been so busy! Well today is a snow day which means no school, no errands, no play dates and no extra-curricular activities and while I want to spend a good portion of the day enjoying my girls, I thought I would take a moment or two to try and get back into this blogging business. When I logged onto Peaceful Chaos, I realized that it has been exactly 7 months to the day since I last blogged and and also exactly 1 year to the day since I first started my blog. What a coincidence and my how time flies!
A lot has happened since my last post.

Our sweet Abigail turned 8 years old and has already completed her first semester of 3rd grade. She enjoys school and loves her teacher. She has sweet friends that we enjoy having over to play. She stays busy with piano lessons, sports (soccer, basketball and volleyball) and serving on the motion team at church. And she finally got those two front teeth that she lost over a year ago.

Yours truly turned, well let's not go there. Let's just say it was a significant birthday worthy of a significant celebration so the Zfam went on a Disney cruise. Chris never thought he would enjoy a cruise, much less a Disney cruise. But we had an absolute blast! It was the perfect combination of fun and relaxation. The cruise people were so wonderful about accomodating Rebecca's nut allergies. We are already talking about taking another Disney cruise in 2011 to celebrate our 20 year anniversary. Most people don't take their kids when they take trips to celebrate anniversaries, but Chris and I had 10 years of alone trips before Abigail was born and we have every reason to believe we will have more opportunities for fun trips with just the two of us when our girls have their own lives. Before that window closes, we agree that we want to spend our limited vacation time and resources doing fun things as a family. So fingers crossed, the Zfam will get to set sail again next summer.

The past 7 months have not just been all fun and games. In August, we said a tearful goodbye to Chris' brother Andreas who finally lost his long battle with melanoma. Andreas was Chris' only sibling and Rebecca's godfather. We are still very sad, but we will always cherish our memories of the two trips he made from Switzerland to visit us.

In September Rebecca started school or at least that's what we call it. She goes to Mother's Day Out once a week. She is not always eager to go and she usually cries for a few minutes when I drop her off, but when I pick her up she always tells me she had fun and her teachers usually report that she had a good day. I wish I could report that we are done and finished with the potty training, but Miss Rebecca has proved to be one tough customer in that department. I think she just loves her MDO teacher, Ms Manda, so much and somehow realizes that being potty trained means promotion out of her class.

In addition to all of that busyness, in October Chris and I decided that we would renovate and move into the house my grandparents built for their young family over 60 years ago. It is a long story and I will have to dedicate another post on another day to tell it.

Right now I have popcorn to pop and games to play.

Happy Snow Day, Y'all!

Talking to Myself

Last Sunday we had a guest preacher, Jud Wilhite from Central Christian Church in Las Vegas. I always enjoy Jud's messages and last Sunday was no exception. He gave a quote from Dr. Martyn Lloyd Jones: "We should talk to ourselves more than we listen to ourselves." Jud went on to explain that this means we should speak God's Word to ourselves more than we listen to the internal script that goes on in our minds. The one that says: "You don't measure up; or You're fat; You're weak; You're not successful at this that or the other." I guess everyone's internal script is different, but I've been trying to speak God's Word to myself instead of listening to my script and these are some of the verses I've been using:

Psalm 139:14

¹⁴ I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.

2 Timothy 1:7

⁷For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.

1 Peter 3:4

⁴Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight.

Philippians 4:13

¹³I can do everything through him who gives me strength.

These are just a few of the verses I've been using lately. I use different verses at different times depending on what I am struggling with at that particular time. The more time I spend in God's Word the more verses I am armed with to help me through life's difficulties. What about you? Do you have a particular verse that you speak to yourself?

Silence is Golden?

It is said that silence is golden. I say: Silence is golden unless you have a 2 year old and then silence usually means trouble. Twice this week I have found myself blissfully enjoying a quiet moment and then panic strikes. Where is Rebecca? The first time, the whole family was going through the house calling RE-BE-CA! We finally found her back in our master bathroom with the door closed using Chris' deodorant. Even though the picture shows her using it in the prescribed manner, she also had deodorant smeared all over her face, feet, the bathtub and the bathmat. The second time, I found her up in her room, once again with the door closed, with a jar of VASELINE! That could have been a nightmare, but I caught her before she did too much damage. She did ruin the shirt she was wearing because I forgot and just sent it through the wash untreated. I'm just thankful she didn't smear it all over the carpet.

The second picture was taken when Abigail was two. She had decided to give herself a facial with diaper rash ointment or maybe she thought she would shave like her daddy. I don't know, but I do know kids are a hoot.

Just a quick PT update: Things are going well for the most part , but yesterday I took the girls with me to do my grocery shopping which I really try to avoid. I had probably one third of the things on my list when Rebecca said, "Nee go potty." We had already made two previous potty stops while out and about, so I said "Rebecca, I'll hurry and we'll go home." So I'm rushing through the store trying to quickly get the rest of the items on my list. Unfortunately, they have recently changed everything around at my Walmart and you know how that goes. Well, Rebecca is growing more and more frantic to the point that she is almost panting and saying "Where's the potty train? Where's the potty train?" So I zoom with her in the basket with Abigail running behind to find the restrooms. I whisk her into a stall, hurriedly place a seat protector on the pot and then get Rebecca situated only to hear, "Don nee go potty." To make a long story slightly shorter, I bribed her to take care of business and was finally able to finish my grocery shopping while Rebecca shared her new bag of Skittles with her big sister.

All Aboard the Potty Train

Well it's been a while. If you read my last post, you know we have been potty training Beccabu. With all of the last week of school activities and all the trips to the potty and cleaning up all the missed trips to the potty and getting ready to leave town, the blogging kind of fell to the wayside. I have been trying to stay faithful with my study time, but even that didn't happen while I was in Dallas...the trip that almost didn't happen.

Last Monday was an especially trying day and I came very close to canceling the whole trip because I just couldn't imagine dealing with the PT process anywhere but my own home. I' ll spare you the gory details, but let's just say that a sluggish digestive system has added several degrees of difficulty that I didn't have when potty training my first daughter.

Well I didn't cancel the trip and I am so glad I didn't. We had so much fun with my sister and her girls. It took some brain storming to come up with activities that would appeal to an eight-year-old, be fun for an almost 2 year-old, provide quick access for one potty trainer and her mom and not be too hard on a 5 month old and her mommy. We got lucky with the weather and were able to enjoy a picnic at the park and a Frisco Rough Riders baseball game. We went to Chuck-E-Cheese and swimming at the Allen Natatorium. A trip to Blockbuster provided afternoon entertainment for the 8 year-old while the little ones napped.




And the good news....I think we made significant progress in our PT efforts! My sister discovered that she has a gift for getting little ones to go. I wouldn't go so far as to say we're done and I'm still thankful for pull-ups in public situations, but as Rebecca would say, "We go on Potty Train" and I'm confident we'll eventually reach our final destination.