Good Bye Vacation-Hello Life

The vacation is over (stay at home vacation)- back to life.

It is a rainy and cold Monday to start off our week. Sometimes that is better, the sun and nice weather doesn't distract us from all we need to get done in a day.

We had to get up at the crack o' dawn and take our pet bunny to get "fixed". We adopted her from the Humane Society and that is their rule. We got her when she was only a few months old so we had to wait until she was full grown and 6 months old.

Back to homeschooling today. It is VERY HARD to get focused after a long break. 5 weeks left until SUMMER BREAK. We are trying hard to finish strong and we are on a good pace to finish out all of our 5th grade curriculum.

My brain is on over-load with planning. I'm in charge of organizing a big going away party for our Sunday School teacher and the details are keeping me up at night. I wish my brain had an off/on switch, so I could turn it on during "business hours" and then turn it off at night and on weekends. I'm a hyper-organizer...to the point of OCD...I have to think through every detail and idea, and plan things down to every small detail. It usually serves me well to be that organized- it is also my curse.

Finally, my husband and I went to an AWESOME parenting conference at church Friday night and Saturday morning. We learned hands on skills and tools to train up our children's HEARTS..not just raise robots but work on hearts, so they will respond to their conscience not just wait for mom and dad to prompt them. It was really inspiring. Now the trick is to try and remember it all and not respond to my default attitude of frustration, but to breathe, step back and do the skills they taught us.

Sometimes I just want to say, "Just do it, because I'm the mom" I get tired of explaining and going the extra mile to teach a good value or characteristic. It pays off in the end-but takes perseverance and hard work. We learned great ways to teach your kids to honor others (honor is doing more than is expected). How to have honesty under pressure, how to teach kids to deal with the wrong choices they make, and how to teach kids to make choices based on CONVICTIONS not emotions.

Honor is doing what I asked you to do (obedience) and then.....look for something to do extra (honor). For example- You tell your child to please set the table (obedience) and then tell her when she is done, find one thing she can to to honor the family.....and let her come up with a way. An example would be to make little cards for each family member or set flowers on the table. They gave us the idea to tell your kids to "Do an honor check" when leaving a room they have been asked to clean up. They are to clean it all up the correct way and then give it one last look and do something extra to honor the family. It gives kids the idea to do MORE than what is expected. Can you imagine having an employee for example, who did MORE than what was expected of them? What a great trait! We can't wait to teach this to our kids.

To get great info. on parenting you can go to http://www.biblicalparenting.org/ They have a weekly email they send out with GREAT tips. I usually shy away from email stuff, who needs more STUFF IN YOUR EMAIL BOX...but this is worth it. They also have great resources on the website. We bought several books at the conference. I've already read one and it was very helpful with hands on, actual skills and tools you can put into practice NOW.

Happy Monday!