My Peacefully Chaotic Life

Well, it's that time of year again! New Year's resolutions and good intentions on steroids. While most are making plans to improve some area of their life and just hoping for the best, we have been busy at our house! For quite a while now, I have struggled with keeping up with clutter. Some might think, hey, you're home all day, what's the problem? Therein lies the problem. I am home all day! Along with a 9 yr old, a 7 yr old, and a 3 yr old. Not to mention, the husband who is right next door at work and pops in and out at varying times. When you throw in books, paper, projects and all those enriching activities that fill a day...well, it tends to fill your home. After Christmas (which was lovely, by the way), I looked around at the piles of gifts, dishes and paper and groaned. It didn't help when a couple of days later the tree toppled over. Oh, what a beautiful mess! My children do pretty well about cleaning up as long as it hasn't turned into a chaotic ...

How was your Thanksgiving? Ours was very good. My oldest son was able to come home. We were afraid this might be the first Thanksgiving he wasn't with us but he was able to arrange his schedule to make it home. His band was away shooting a music video. What might have taken all week, they managed to do in one full day! He headed homeWednesday and stayed until Sunday. My guys were able to do quite a lot of hunting over the holiday. They both love to fish and hunt. We've been very blessed that our last home and this one, there are several places for them to enjoy the outdoors. We love deer meat. It is healthy and really helps to stretch the budget. When prepared correctly you might even think it is beef! The kids and I got a little creative with our vegetables on Thanksgiving day and created a fun centerpiece. My youngest named it Pluto. ;) Since I had a smoked turkey and a brown sugar ham, we opted for sandwiches for lunch and ate our Thanksgiving Dinner for supper that n...

This week we have been enjoying a business trip that has us staying in the Atlanta area. Coming through Atlanta was absolutely crazy! The place we are staying is actually considered a suburb. You can't tell though because you never knew when you left Atlanta itself! Our hotel is very nice and that is always a plus. I had hoped we could sneak in a field trip of sorts but there really isn't anything close enough. There is a lot of shopping here though and our family enjoyed seeing the large malls and letting the kids ride the train and carousel. Wow, what a difference from any of the places we ever called home! Even the place we used to consider the big city is really nothing more than a town in comparison. Before we moved to our current home, we lived in a very rural area. Snakes and coyotes were a constant in life, traffic and people were not ha ha! But I loved my quiet life. It was peaceful. Peace was welcomed anyway we could get it during the stress of the last couple of ...

Are you familiar with Samaritan's Purse Ministries ? Maybe you've heard of their ministry, Operation Christmas Child where you pack a shoebox with goodies of all kinds and it is sent to needy children around the world. This year my girls wanted to do something in honor of their baby sister, Abigail, who is in heaven. I suggested they pack a shoebox. These girls have been so excited. They chose just the right wapped box from our church windows (the one with disney princess wrapping paper). They chose just the right knitted cap from the Christmas tree in our sanctuary. ( we have a member known as "the knitting lady" who makes dozens of caps and hangs them on a tree to be included in the boxes). They plotted and planned for what they might like to include. While we did buy about a dozen items from the dollar store, we went elsewhere also in order to buy some nicer toys. The cheaper ones do not last and we wanted her to have something nice. I would rather fill one sho...

yes, she is as tall as a water bottle!

It's been a lovely week here. The weather has been absolutely perfect, not too hot, not too cold. The leaves are changing with colors so vivid that I almost can't take it all in! I mean, have you just stopped to admire the beauty lately? The sunsets this week have been breathtaking! God's amazing artwork is at its finest in autumn, don't you think? Yesterday afternoon the children played outside, busily piling up leaves and jumping in them, only to do it all over again. Today the weather suddenly took a turn and temperatures plummeted with freezing temperatures expected tonight. I went out and cut armloads of camellia blooms to decorate the house with. With their delicate pale blooms, I wasn't sure how well they would stand up to the freeze and I wanted an excuse to bring their beauty indoors! Now I sit here curled up in the recliner with my cat, Tiger, trying to get warm by the fireplace. He has a hard time staying warm now that he is older (almost 16 years) ...

Did you get your extra hour of sleep? Not me, my body knows when it is time to wake up. I lay there for  a moment before the alarm went off. I marveled that I had finally managed to sleep in. But when I got up and saw all the clocks said the same thing, I realized my husband had forgotten to turn the clocks back. ;) Just as well, because I needed to get Sunday dinner started. I wanted to put the meat in the crockpot last night but it was still frozen and I wasn't so sure about that. I am hoping it will be done by the time church is over. I had originally gotten the recipe from the facebook sensation, Crockpot Girls. They are in the process of changing up their facebook site because of the whole trademark name change deal. they are Crockin girls now, I think? They have loaded a lot of the recipes on the new one, but I couldn't find the one I needed. So I thought I would google it. I was shocked to find all these blogposts up that were criticising them and were suspicious o...