This has not been the best week as far as my relationship with my older two kids. It seems that aliens have overtaken their bodies and caused them to make me crazy. They have been in a lot of trouble, just one thing after another - all little things in the whole scheme of life, but constant little things are frustrating. So, in the midst of all this, I was out for breakfast with my dear friend Amberly, who I so appreciate because I can tell her all my frustrations and my failures (in my parenting this week) and know that she still loves me and my boys. Thanks Amberly!!! As we were ending our time together yesterday morning, she was telling me how great my boys are and just giving me a good reminder of that, which keeps things in perspective. As she was telling me that, I recalled a precious conversation I had with Jason, my 10 year old, last week! We were in the car and for some reason we were talking about foreign exchange students. I said something about talking to James, who is 13, about those opportunities (not that I would really let him go, I don't think!!) because I think I would have liked to do that as a teenager had an opportunity posed itself. And James is a teenager now. Anyway, Jason said, "James would never go away for a year." We continued to talk about it for a few minutes, and he again said James would never go, so I asked him if he would, and he said he could never be away for that long. I said something like, "When you are older, you might think it would be fun. I would have enjoyed it when I was a teenager." To which he responded, "Mom, we are too connected to you to leave for so long." I can't tell you how that warmed my heart. I know over the next seven years, he will grow and be ready to spread his wings and fly, but it brings me great joy that right now, he is so connected to us that he cannot fathom being anywhere else! What a sweet kid! I love him! I love them all, even when the weeks are difficult! This too will pass, but my relationship with my kids never will. They are still grounded, but after some time of venting with a friend and thinking through what's important, I apologized to them for my frustration (and loss of temper) and gave them each a big hug when they got home from school yesterday!!! Parenting is tough stuff! Those little glimpses that I am doing something right are precious!

The kids are gone to school.  Sarah and I are sitting quietly at home.  Brent's in the other room working.  It's kind of strange.  David was so excited for kindergarten.  He had some anxiety on Friday when we went to orientation, but this morning he was great!  He got up, got dressed, brushed his teeth and hair, put on his back pack, messed with his hair some more, and messed with his hair some MORE!  We are a little stressed about how important his hair was to him.  Even as we were taking pictures in his classroom, he was still trying to make sure his hair was just perfect - strange child!!!  He was happy and excited.  He had his lunch/library number memorized, which impressed me a little.  When they showed me that number on Friday and said to help him memorize it, I thought they might be a little crazy, but he had the six digits in his mind by the time Friday was over.  However, he is still having trouble with his teacher's name.  It will be interesting to see if he is better at math than English!!!

Jason found his classroom and met his teacher with us following.  It's nice that he likes to have us around still.  I am excited about his teacher!  After we found his desk and dropped off his backpack, he took off to the playground to be with his buddies.  

James left home on his bicycle before we left with the other kids.  He is in eighth grade.  I am okay with that, but I am having a little trouble with the fact that next year he will be in high school.  Time flies!

Sarah and I are going to have to get used to the quiet - it may take several days!  Hope everyone else had a good first day of school!

 Summer's almost over, and I am bummed.  i like the laid back schedule of summer - no early mornings, no packing school lunches, no homework, more free time, so it is always hard for me to send the kids back.  But, more than anything, this summer flew by, and while we had lots of fun and enjoyed our family immensely, there were a lot of things that I wanted to do that did not get done (including blogging!!!).  I will send three of my four kids off to school.  That is one more than last year - David will enter kindergarten, so I will have only Sarah home in the mornings.  I am looking forward to that time with her, but I will miss the boys.  I tried home schooling one year because of how much transition was going on in our lives, and I know that at this point that is not what I am supposed to be doing, but sometimes I wish it was.  I love having them home.  Some people might think I am crazy, and certainly there are times when I want to send them all away, but most of the time having them around is wonderful!  So I am feeling some end of summer blues!  I'm sure once we get into the swing of things, it will be great - I will have to let you know in a couple weeks!

 I have decided that I have absolutely got to cut down on caffeine.  By cut down, I mean eliminate Diet Coke!!!  I am terrible.  I don't even want to say how many cans of it I drink a day - I'm not really sure, but the estimate would be terrible.  So, on Saturday, I told my husband that the next day I was going to do it and that it was going to have to be cold turkey, and he had to help me, or I would break down.  So, Saturday night, I drank my last can of Diet Coke, at least for a while.  It is now the end of Tuesday, and I have not had any.  I have had some caffeine in the form of Excedrin to help with the headaches and in the form of chocolate, which I am NOT giving up!  I don't eat as much chocolate, though!!!  I have wanted to give it up for a long time, but have not been willing to do it.  I am excited that I may actually accomplish this goal!!!  I do realize that we are only three days in, but I think it will happen!

Not that anyone wants to hear my woes, but I have been completely out of pocket and am blogging right now to try to forget how overwhelming things are right at the moment. So, just a quick update on my life. On Saturday night my husband hurt his back, and on Sunday morning at 5:00 a.m., when he tried to get up so we could go to church, he absolutely could not stand. He is a pastor and was supposed to be teaching at church by 10:00, and it just wasn't going to happen. Thanks to a wonderful man from a partner church who came and filled in!!! I was terrified for a few minutes that we were either going to have to cancel or I was going to have to speak. I'm not completely unwilling to speak in front of people, but definitely not excited about it at the last minute. Also on Sunday morning, Sarah, my three year old, woke up with a fever, which she still has today, and of course, it is only a virus, so there is no way to treat it. On top of all of that, I work from home, which I am thankful for, and often I have very little work, but right now I am swamped. I have about 15 cases that need to be prepared for adoption finalization by the end of June, which takes a lot of time.So, I ask myself, what do I need to learn in the midst of all of this? There is always a lesson. For one thing, I am sure God is trying to teach me a greater amount of compassion for people who are sick. My husband can attest that I am not "Miss Mercy" when it comes to sickness among my family. I don't know why. I have empathy for all sorts of other people and other situations. But this week, I am having to be a servant to everyone around me. Brent is such a great hands-on dad and husband. He will wash the dishes or cook dinner and will bathe and dress kids, as well as help with homework, and I am so blessed, but right now, he can barely walk and bending over is not an option, so I am on my own, taking care of a sick little girl and an injured husband, as well as the three healthy and very active boys that are in my house. But what a great opportunity for me to serve others. Once a month our church likes to go out into the community and serve, and I love doing that, but for some reason, it is harder to serve my family - it doesn't feel quite as rewarding, which is silly! God has given them to me and they should be first on my mission field, so one thing I think I am to learn in all of this is to serve them better! Who knows what other lessons are out there for me during this?!! It's kind of exciting to think of what they might be! However, I hope Sarah gets well and Brent's back loosens up, um, yesterday!!!!Back to work and family I go - oh, and dinner . . .

Life has been seriously busy this past week, but with nothing overly exciting to report, so I have not been blogging at all! Still as I type I can think of nothing funny or monumental, but I wanted to post something! So, I thought I would say something about our morning. My husband is a pastor, and we moved here to start a new church. One of the things he dreamed of doing when we planted was to spend one Sunday a month out in the community serving and "being the church"! So, today, we went to the Bakersfield Rescue Mission with a partner church and painted one of their buildings. I use the term "we" very loosely because someone had to stay behind and watch little ones. That happened to be me today! But Brent was really excited about how it went. I heard the people at BRM thought we would only get one wall done, but the team got the whole thing done. There were about 40 people, many of them teenagers, who just worked hard but had a lot of fun doing it! I think there is something about working in a group and doing it for some great purpose that makes it fun! Why can't all work be fun?! Maybe we should get together in groups to clean each other's homes and do each other's laundry! LOL! Anyway, it was a good morning and a big task was accomplished. We are so thankful for all those who came out to help!!!

I've never been fired before - I guess there is always a first! But I didn't expect my first experience of being fired to be done by my own son, or by a five year old!!!! I didn't even know a five year old knew the concept of being fired, but yes, he used it appropriately. We were driving along in the car - that seems to be a popular place for him to get a smart mouth these days. That, in itself, is quite intelligent, as I cannot reach him in our huge van!!! I told him no about something. At the moment I cannot remember what it was. After a couple minutes - probably more like 30 seconds - he calmly said, "Mom, you're fired!" I never know if I should try to control my laughter or just let it out. Truthfully, he would be lost if I truly was fired. Of course, I tried to explain this to him, but he does NOT understand that part. He does not understand that he would not have someone to pour him juice or do his laundry or cook his dinner or lunch or any of the other MILLION things I do for him each day. He also does not understand how, on some level, being fired (for a day or two anyway) is appealing on some level (and even more so on a week when his dad is out of town)!!! Some day I will enjoy sharing all these crazy stories with him. Parenting note to self: If I am trying to raise him to be a respectable adult, he needs to learn that the can't just fire someone because he does not get his way, and maybe more importantly, that he cannot fire his boss!!!

We moved here last May from a small town in Oklahoma, where my husband had lived since he was 7 years old and where I had lived since I was 18. Between college, jobs, church, and neighborhoods, we knew, or at least recognized, lots and lots of people. We had never really had to think about making new friends, and especially how to do that from scratch.We moved here to start a new church, so it wasn't like we were going to establish relationships in a church that we joined. Because we were not working traditional jobs, we were not going to meet people in the work force. There are three churches who invited us to come, so we knew we would connect with some people through those churches, and we do have some very close relationships with people from those churches now, but that was not going to be the main place for us to build relationships. When you plant a church, hopefully you are connected to a coach, who helps you along. We were, and we were told that we each needed to establish six "groups" that we would be involved with on a weekly or every other week basis, which is a great idea, but where do those six groups come from? Plus, six groups for each of us is really a lot when you also have children to attend to. We did not establish all twelve groups, but it did cause us to look high and low to figure out how to find ways to meet new people, and we have been able to do that.One group I found was on Meetup.com. I joined a

stay at home mom's meetup group

. It took me several months to attend things regularly, but now I have made a lot of friends and acquaintances, who I hope to develop friendships with, through the group and would highly recommend you check out

meetup.com

. They have groups for all sorts of different people or interests. Our group has a fabulous organizer who plans a lot of different things for us to be involved it. Some of the other women blogging on Raising Bakersfield belong to this group also. I just wanted to give it a plug because if you are struggling to meet new people, this is a great place to begin this process. And I don't know that I ever would have found it without the coach that told us we had to look for groups. And probably most of you do not have this person pushing you!

For those of you who don't know my third son, he is a total character. He is so full of personality and ENERGY!!! I am sure we are up against an ADHD diagnosis - he is totally hyperactive! And though he keeps me on my toes, he is the most loving and grateful child and brings so much joy and laughter to us!Recently he started speech therapy, something he has really needed for a while, but I just didn't get it done along with our move and stuff. He goes to my older son's school with a speech therapist who seems to really enjoy him and know how to handle David's energy level. David LOVES speech therapy. He loves the therapist, and refers to Mr. Sheeler as "his friend." One day I told him we were going to go to the park when we were leaving therapy. He said he didn't want to. I said it would be fun because he could play with friends. He informed me that he had already played with his friend that morning (referring to Mr. Sheeler). Last week when I took him to speech, he asked me if I would please drop him at the door of the school because he knew where his classroom was and did not need me to walk with him. I could not do this, of course, because I have to sign in. But he ran ahead and beat me to the room! Something tells me that he will not have tears on his first day of kindergarten! But I might!

What causes people to graffiti things? I know that sometimes it is gang-related, but often it is not. Is it boredom? Is it anger or hate? I just can't figure it out. Usually it does not affect me too often, though I don't like my kids to see it, but today was a different story. I mentioned in my introduction that we moved here to start a new church. One of the things we have for our church, donated by some wonderful friends and a wonderful printing company, is a very fun ice cream and events truck, equipped with a bounce house and portable video/sound equipment to show movies or play Wii. We saw this at another church and thought it would be a great way to be a presence in the community, to do outreach and service events. We take the truck to different places and give out free ice cream, set up the bounce house, and get to know new people. We have taken it to a school, to several parks, around neighborhoods, to the League of Dreams opening day baseball games, which was a fabulous event. There were several children, who would not otherwise be able to bounce in a bounce house who were able to that day. It is such a fun and wonderful tool. Well, today, my husband went over to the lot where we park it. Mind you it is behind a locked gate where a portion of the wall is cement. When he pulled up to it, he saw something that completely horrified (among many other emotions) him. It is covered with graffiti, and terrible graffiti at that. The people (who are pictured on the wrap) are now anatomically correct, outside of their clothing, and there is terrible language all over it, as well as racial comments. I don't understand why someone would have done this to something like this. We don't know that it can be cleaned off, and it will be terribly expensive to repair. It is something that we hoped would be used for so much good, and for a while it is unavailable for that. We are sad - sad because we can't use it, sad because someone did this. We keep wondering what kind of pain that person might be in. This does not appear in any way to be a gang related situation. In fact, it appears to have been done by a child. Anyway, we are bummed. We loved taking it to parks and giving out ice cream and having great conversations with people. I would love to get to the bottom of this graffiti thing, but I'm sure I am not the only one. I do hope we can figure out a way to repair the damage that has been done.I tried to post a picture of the truck before the graffiti, but I can't seem to get pics to upload - if anyone has a tip, please let me know. I am trying to do jpg documents, but I have tried a couple times today without success.