ManyMeadows

From my in-box this week:

Dear Robin,

What do you do when your husband doesn’t clean up after himself?  Do you leave it until he notices later while in the meantime it is driving you crazy and in the way of our daily life?  Or do you constantly follow after him cleaning up his little mini tornadoes all day.  We’re talking dirty clothes all over the floor when he has his own laundry basket, dirty dishes left at his place on the table and elsewhere wherever he leaves them in the house, and little projects he works on just being left as is,  mess and all.  I have really been focusing on this in teaching my kids, but when hubby doesn’t even do it,  how do I expect my kids to learn the right way?

OK – I haven’t replied back to this question yet.  See?  In our family, Dirk is the really neat one….a knot, if you will and I’m….well, I’m just not.  J  Not to make excuses for your husband, but I’m telling you, he just doesn’t see that stuff.  It’s invisible to him….and it doesn’t bother him a bit. 

Another thing to remember, even though his things are driving you nuts, I’m sure there are some things you do that drive him nuts too!  We all need a little extra grace from time to time. It’s one of the things that keeps a relationship healthy.

But, I know this wife wants to honor her husband, and not mother him.  So?  What are your suggestions?  How can she tactfully let her husband know that his stuff is getting out of control and help him see that he is setting a poor example to his children?

Come on…I know you have some great ideas.

Robin

This is a great way to use up your turkey leftovers!

(around 6 servings)

1 can fat free evaporated milk
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 pounds chicken meat
2 potatoes, peeled and cubed
2 cups onions
2 large carrots, coarsely chopped
2 1/4 cups frozen green peas, thawed
3 cup chicken broth
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

In a small bowl stir together evaporated milk and flour until smooth. Place chicken,  potatoes, onions, carrots and peas in pot. Pour in milk mixture and broth. Season with salt, pepper, Cook until potatoes are tender.

*This is a great recipe to make the day after you have the deli chicken because you can shred up the leftovers and use in this stew.*

This is a real crowd pleaser, my girls even liked it. My husband also liked it so much he requested me to make it he called it that chicken pot pie soup that you made last week!

Ali

After having surgery in September for removing my gall bladder I can say I’m back to normal. I am self-employed so any work I missed while recuperating was easily rescheduled. What could not have been so easy were the many (can I say MANY) bills that came after surgery. Remember, I’m self-employed. No company health insurance. We as a family are on our own.

Total cost after sixteen or so bills later: $21,000+  !!  All that money just to get a stinking diseased GB out of me. I give God all the praise for watching over me.

Now, rather than us being stuck with paying $21,000, we are only responsible for $300!  And that’s with us being considered one of Oklahoma’s uninsured families.

We have been lead to a great organization that we joined many years ago. Samaritan Ministries was created as a way for individuals to help families that have medical needs by using a health share newsletter.  It is not insurance, but it is assurance. SM has gone back to doing business the way insurance companies used to when they were first created many years ago, helping people with medical needs.

As I write today, we have paid all the bills and have heard from over 65 families sending their “share”, notes of encouragement, and prayers for my well-being. We have just experienced the fulfilling of Malachi 3:10-12 in our lives. This, though, is not the best part. The best part is when we get to send our share to help someone else, people that really need help in these uncertain times.

Do you have insurance?

Is it 80% or 70% coverage for medical bills, after a deductible?

Do you have fears about medical emergencies and what happens afterwards?

Let me know of any experiences you have had with the systems you now have.

Next, I will share how to maneuver through your medical bills.

Dirk

The Simms family is so thankful to have Jon back well and safe with us this holiday season.  Last year just wasn’t the same without him.  This has been a year of blessings after a year of sacrifice.  There are many material things that we have been blessed with this year, but overall the closeness we have in our family is what we are most grateful for.

 Erin

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 Ali

 =================================================================================I’m thankful for health, joy, laughter, and imagination. I am thankful to be marrying a man who loves me for me and comes from a godly family that loves spending time together. I’m thankful for friends who push me to be exactly who I desire to be. I’m thankful to daily (re)discover who I am and Whose I am.

 Abbi

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 I am thankful for all of God’s blessing in my life.

My family, they are always there for me.

From my husband, offering me love and support everyday and encouragement to press on in the hard days. to my mom and dad and brothers and sisters, any of them I can go to for an ear to listen, to my neices and nephews who make me laugh and remind me to really experience life, not just live it.

I’m thankful for my friends who are as close to me as family.

My school, which most of the time I do not act thankful for is really a blessing in my life. It is teaching me what I need to know to fulfill my purpose in life. It is close by so I can walk to school. And even though I complain about it all the time and say it is too hard, I am thankful for my clinicals and the children that I get even just the slightest chance to be a good influence on (when they are not pulling my hair or calling me bad names

I am thankful for my work whereI get to practice compassion and love on every person that comes through the door (some are more difficult than others). And I get to share with others why I love people like I do, no matter what they have done or what they smell like ;).

Wow, mine is sappy. That’s not like me

 Katie

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This year, more than ever, I can honestly say I’m most thankful for my family and friend relationships. I’m beginning to see that at this time in my life, they are the only things that matter. Working with students, who have no positive family unit to which they belong, has opened my eyes to how truly special my family unit is (special and weird! But in a good way…) I’m also so blessed with amazing life-long friendships. Two people (Besides Cody who is my best friend) come to mind when I think about life-long friendships. Mike Hodnett and Jeremy Baldwin. I love those guys as if they were my very own brothers. What was my life like before I knew them? I can’t express in words how thankful I am for these rich relationships. My heart threatens to burst every time I think of it. Thank you God, for my family and friends.

Anna

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I am thankful for the response to God that my family has, from my dad all the way to my youngest son. 

 Dirk

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I am so thankful for the love of my family and the love they have for one another.  And I am also blessed by the new relationships that I have found this year, many coming from the on-line world!  Are you one of them?  

 Robin

Add your thoughts to ours.  What are you thankful for this year?

I have an addiction.

I love shoes.

It started when my oldest sister Erin worked at Dillard’s in the shoe department. She would bring me home tons of free shoes of all different types, thus birthing my shoe addiction.

My husband is not too fond of my shoe addiction because my sister does not work at Dillard’s anymore so shoes are no longer free.

Except for my last pair:

This weekend while working in the Edmond Medical Center ER I took care of a lady who fell down ten steps, broke her nose and hit her head pretty bad. The ambulance brought her in from a wedding reception with her up-do disheveled and her panty hose torn. We fixed up her nose, gave her a pain pill and started giving her the discharge instructions when her husband came up to me, her high heels in his hands and said,

“She says she will never wear these again, and wants you to have them. If they fit you, they’re yours.”

The Circa Joan and David shoes just happened to be my size. I accepted them, laughing at the surprised looks on my co-workers faces.

Don’t worry she didn’t go home barefoot. In return I gave her some of our comfy red  hospital socks, with extra slip guard!

I guess it pays to work in health care.

Although I don’t have much of a chance to dress up, I am very excited about my new fancy shoes.

Maybe next time someone will trip on her cute boots! 

Have you ever been given something under unusual circumstances?

Katie

After my last blog done on unit studies I had a few people ask me exactly how I went about planning and carrying out the theme.  In this look at our Thanksgiving unit I will go into a little more detail about how I planned it.

First I picked a theme - hmm . . . Thanksgiving (don’t ask me how I decided on that one!)  ;-)  This unit was particularly fun because I had a friend that was doing the same study so we bounced ideas off of each other.

I started with reserving books at the library on that theme.

Next I opened a new folder on my internet “my favorites” menu under “school” and called it  “Thanksgiving”.

I typed in several different searches such as, “Thanksgiving crafts, Indian crafts, Thanksgiving activities, Mayflower online games, Thanksgiving songs, Thanksgiving video clips, pilgrim coloring pages, Thanksgiving snacks . . . you get the drift.

I selected activities, crafts and online work that is appropriate for the ages of my boys - and of course things I feel comfortable doing.  (I’m not real artsy so I need easy crafts that have lots of pictures showing me how to do it.)

I remain flexible with each of our school days and don’t push too much at once.  If we never end up doing something I had planned that’s totally OK!  My main intent on doing things with my kids is to develop a love of learning in them and if they (or myself) aren’t having fun, then it’s just not worth doing. 

Here is how our unit went:

We read books about the Mayflower journey and the first Thanksgiving.

We watched this video clip (thanks Donna!)

We made Indian headdresses and vests

We went on a field trip to the Museum of the Great Plains with our friends

We made a map of the Mayflower and a mini Mayflower

We still plan to make turkey pine cones 

And will take these yummy snacks to our Thanksgiving Day Dinner (thanks Donna!)

Hope this gives you some great last-minute ideas to do with your kiddos, or gets you on your way to doing your own unit study.

What Thanksgiving craft do you most remember making when you were a child?

Erin

I’m gonna need some help.

Okay, so tell me. How am I going to explain to my little ones (2,4,6,&9–mostly the 4 &6year old) how their aunt (my 19 year old sister) is going to have a baby, when she is not married. She just found out today so I have about 6 weeks before I plan to tell the girls, but I’m guessing they are going to have questions! So… what are the answers??

So? 

How about practicing your parental skills (even if you’re not a parent).  Do you have some answers for this perplexed mom?  What would you tell a logical thinking 6 year old?

Robin

This is super easy crockpot recipe. It tastes just like those deli chickens you can buy in the store.

1 whole chicken
Lawry’s season salt
Foil

Take your foil and wad into balls and place in the bottom of your crockpot. Clean chicken and place breast side up. Season with salt. Cook on high(won’t turn out on low) 4-6 hours.

Enjoy your meal!

Next I’ll show you a recipe that I make using the leftover chicken.

What’s your favorite way to cook chicken?

Do you use your crock-pot?

Ali

I mark up my Bible . . .  A LOT.  There’s nothing better (for me) than looking back at passages that stuck out to me at one time, or to easily find something on a particular subject that I marked before.  I have a method to my madness though.  Through the years of Bible studies, reading Christian authors and just plain experimenting with a method that works for me, I have come up with some codes to keep things right at my fingertips when trying to find something in the Bible.  Unfortunately I don’t remember where some of these came from, so I can’t give the right credit, but many of these I adapted myself.  Here is some of my coding:

On a new Bible I highlight the chapter number after I have read it.  Ahh . . .  the feeling of completing a new Bible and seeing all those pretty markings on all the chapters throughout the Bible. 

When a particular passage sticks out to me I either highlight, underline or put brackets around it.  Don’t ask me my method there.

There are certain words like faith and hope that I circle.

When it talks about love I put a heart.

When it talks about Jesus on the cross I draw a cross with a heart in the middle.

When it’s a direct promise about life I put BP, for “Bible Promise”.

When it talks about something to do with children or generations I put a little stick figure by it.

When it’s something about a wife it gets the “special” pink highlighter.

When it’s about a husband or marriage in general it gets the double wedding rings.

Sometimes I cross out the word “you” and put “Erin”.

Sometimes I circle and put “For Me”.  I like to put the date on stuff like that so I can look back and think about what I was going through in that time of my life.

Other times I journal about what’s going on in my life, of course with the date.

Ok, that’s the art that I give my Bible. 

What graffiti do you leave in your Bible?

Erin

“Beware of making a habit of consistency to your convictions instead of being devoted to God.”  –Oswald Chambers

What does this quote mean to you?

 How has this played out in your own life?

Robin