today kinda sucked

Today I am feeling super insecure about my parenting.  Am I too strict or not strict enough?  I think I argue with my kids more than I should.  Do I focus too much on relationship and not as much on obedience?  Why is Jeneva so emotional and why do I feel so irritated by it?  Am I ruining her?  Why is Jude such a whiner and so negative?  Why is Josie so darn cute (I won't say that she's been my "favorite" this week or anything).  Do I do too much for my kids rather than letting them figure it out on their own?  Probably.  Are all of my intentions going to backfire when they are older?  Am I doing it all wrong?  Am I doing enough to train them to have a good work ethic?  How am I helping Jeneva to manage herself?  Do I enable her instead?  Are my kids going to love Jesus or falter because of my example?  Why is Steve doing a better job of parenting than me?  Are we on the same page? Do I worry too much?  Not usually, but today I do.

our week and a brief family update

This week we had the opportunity to host a woman from China who came to Minnesota to visit a friend.  She was the Morse's tutor in China.  She was absolutely delightful.  She loved the kids so much and they thoroughly enjoyed her sweet disposition and joyful enjoyment of them.  We had a friend's 4 year old son staying with us during that same week, so it was a full, but fun house.  Her English was limited making it was difficult for us to communicate verbally, but Jeneva did amazing! She interpreted back and forth for us and then they would talk and talk and I of course had no idea what they were saying.  On Saturday night, Ellen (Jeneva's age and very distant cousin:) stayed over.  She also speaks nearly fluent Chinese, so the three of them could communicate just fine.  Love it that my kids can be exposed to hearing other languages spoken in our home on a regular basis--Chinese and Spanish as well.

Right before our guest (dai laoshi) came we had some plumbing issues.  Our main sewer line backed up.  It took three plumber visits to get it fixed because one of the pipes under ground busted.  She couldn't shower and we couldn't flush her first night here (she was gone during the day, so it wasn't too inconvenient for her).  She was so gracious and didn't seem to care one bit.  Then the next day our hot water heater started leaking in the basement onto the carpet.  We knew we needed to take care of it immediately, so Steve called the plumber and got some estimates.  We did not want to pay that kind of money considering we just forked over a whole chuck of cash for our plumbing issues, so he decided to attempt it on his own.  He called his friend, Charles, who he thought might know better what he was doing.  He was available to come over right away. They bought a water heater and installed it in just a few hours.  We were so relieved and grateful to God for helping us get through that situation without any major hangups and to Charles for his help and expertise.

It has been a crazy long winter so far.  It's only January, but we've had oodles of snow, which I love, but also oodles of COLD days.  School has been cancelled 5 days so far in January for extreme cold!  Today was one of those days.  Tomorrow our school just has a late start.  Tonight Josie's prayer request was for summer to come quickly. 

I feel weary.  I don't feel down or depressed, just worn out.  And the "worn out" isn't unbearable (at this point anyway).  It is just go.  Go time.  All of the time.  I love the routine of school.  The kids are having great years, so that helps a ton.  I am liking our church routine too.  Wednesday nights are a helpful break in the week and enjoyable family time--and the food has been incredible too!  I am looking forward to books that I plan to read this year (last year I bombed at reading much).  Novels for book club and also children's books since I joined the Usborne book company.  I'm letting go of my expectations to have a perfectly clean and organized house.  When I let it go, I can enjoy life more.  It's hard to let go, but I have to otherwise I'll go insane.  I'll go insane if it's messy all of the time too though, so it's just a matter of finding a healthy medium. 

I came to the computer to type up a to-do list and I ended up rambling a blog post.  Figured it's been awhile since I've updated. Once again I haven't posted any highlights of the kids birthdays--or any other major or miniscule event for that matter.  Maybe if I put my to-do list on here I'd be more likely to do what I need to do (procrastination is my middle name).  Okay.  I have two things I NEED to accomplish tomorrow.  I need to order labels with my name and website on for my Usborne books.  AND, I need to find out when I can turn in my CEU's to the school district for my teaching license.  So, that's on my "to accomplish" list for tomorrow besides laundry, cooking, driving kids to and from school, and grocery shopping.  Good night.