5 Minutes for Mom has a great giveaway for a Lands End swim suit. Their suit claims to make you look a size smaller, so sign me up. Can I wear it all year?

Intentional Mommy

I have been reading My Heart's at Home by Jill Savage. The subtitle is 'Becoming the Intentional Mom Your Family Needs'. This year two words keep coming up: Purpose and Intentional so naturally I had to read.

In a recent chapter I've been reading about being your families cheerleader. That home should be a place of encouragement. I am not so good at that. It has always bothered me when parents (mainly mommies) go on and on about how great their kids are. All the accomplishments, awards and great grades their kids get. So I don't. But I need to some. This chapter really brought hit me with how important it is for our children to feel like mom believes in them. That mom is their number 1 fan. For that same matter so do our husbands. Need to work on that one too. So today as I sent hubby and our eldest off on a mission trip for the week I packed their bags with goodies and a card telling them how much I love them, will miss them and I am proud to be their wife and mom. Just a start.

We have some horrible stomach bug that keeps on finding its way back to our family. Five of the seven of us have had at least two battles with it, and it has gotten the best of us each time. Without the gory details we have never been sick like this before. SO...today I brought out the smoking guns.

I took several tubs of Lysol water and cleaned every solid surface I could get my hands on. Every door knob, cabinet, wall, counter, floor, window ledge, everything. My kids were lucky I didn't give them all a dip in the water too! The house has not smelled this Lysoly for a long time. Surly nothing can live through that. I guess Spring Cleaning is coming twice this year.

Here's to a clean house and healthy kiddos!

We are back from vacation and ready for all the fun and chaos that it brings. Being a family of a Youth Pastor means that when the kids are out of school dad is on duty more than the rest of the year. We came home Wed afternoon and went to church, had a summer kick-off party Friday night and youth and families to our home on Sun evening. It will continue like this til September. It is lots of fun, and lots of work.

While on vacation I picked up what promises to be a great book. My Heart's at Home by Jill Savage. I am only in Part I of four, The Foundation. Jill Savage has some great insight on the kind of home we need to have for our families. She also has great advice on not over-programing our children. A couple posts ago I talked about my inner struggle with wanting my kids to have all the opportunities available as we educate and disciple them. Mrs. Savage had several references that talked about how that it is actually bad for our kids to have too many opportunities. And how much they really need down time that is unstructured to use their imagination and learn to entertain themselves (without the TV). This was a great encouragement for me to really seek out God's best and not settle for just good things.

The book also has some great ideas and tips on Family Nights, Meal Planning, and the lost art of Neighboring or Porching. I look forward to the next chapters and will let you know if anything sticks out.