A month without FB

I can't believe it has been an entire month since I logged out of FB the last time.  A month of things missed by many friends, but a rich month full of life without Facebook.

As the weeks go on I have found I miss FB much less, but they do their best to lure me to their site by letting me about of my unread messages and notifications.  Oh how I hope that those writing will stumble upon my status about being off FB.  I am wondering if I should have deactivated my account.  I guess I don't really know how that works and I am afraid I will lose a friend or a group or something while it is deactivated.  Someone please email me if you know about this option.

I was hoping to write down FB status statements from throughout the weeks so I could put them all on here tonight.  I think I wrote down two.  Both of them were lame!    I have always been a better starter than finisher!

I am sure there is much that is left out, but here are some of the things that we have had going on.  If you know us well, you might notice a couple of bigger things are left out.  They are in a scheduled post coming soon.  These are all smaller things, so of like FB status statements!


Pinterest: No, I have not gone from a FB obsession to a Pinterest obsession.  I use it solely for recipes.  It is a perfect recipe search engine.  I usually only look until I find the one I want to make that day, pin it, and am done.  It is so nice to have all of the recipes in one spot and accessible from any computer, phone etc.  Before using it for recipes I was bookmarking them and coping and pasting into files or emailing them to myself.  I have had a Pinterest account for years, but just never got into it.  I might be one of the few that can declare that Pinterest is a time saver for me.

Crock Pot Sundays:  I am so thankful to have found so many great Pins for crock pot recipes.  I prep them quickly on Sunday mornings and then we have dinner under control for Sunday night.  Another not so novel idea that is novel to me and a bit life changing.

Conferences: We had conferences for both kids on a couple weeks ago.  Our amazing friends and neighbors agreed to watch our kids (and feed them amazing "Chinese" food) so we could attend sans kids!  It was lovely to be able to focus on the teachers/OT as they shared.  The amazing news is that no matter how much I probed, the kids are both doing well!  They are genuinely thriving at school.  BOTH of them!  T's incredible teacher to student ratio allows a teacher to be near her during center time to ensure safety of the other little girl and to help T learn about sharing.  M is doing well also.  His teachers have even noticed him treating other children with kindness and helping them without being told to AND when he doesn't realize he is being watched.  This is huge for M as he will do many kind things for other and pour on the charm, but it is often with a motive.  Such joy to celebrate these good reports!

Gymnastics: It is going went pretty well.  M catches on so quickly, focuses and wants to do well.  He is probably the oldest in his class, but he is by far the best athlete.  He even did the backwards roll last week.  His teachers were not super impressed, but I was! Sweet T LOVES being there and she sure is cute, but her teenage teachers often look like they are counting down the minutes until she is no longer their responsibility.  There are SO MANY distractions in the noisy gym that it meets in and T hears each of them.  She has a pretty impossible time focusing on the directions of the teacher, and hey, she just turned three... oh well, she cracks me up and makes me smile as she does her own thing the whole time.  She loves being there so it is worth it!


Gluten Free Oats: There are a thing friends!  I have known about them for a long time, but finally tried them a few weeks ago.  Wow do they taste good!  So very good.  Nuts cause me horrible rashes so finding recipes for things to make with them that don't include nuts (peanut/other nut butter mainly) is tricky, but I will keep the yummy trials coming!

Eye Exams: The kids had eye exams a few weeks ago and they both have pretty good vision.  M needs to go back in one year and T in two years.  It is pretty hard to tell the finer point of vision stuff at a young age, but we wanted a baseline exam to make sure there is nothing big going on.  It appears that when T frequently falls it has nothing to do with her vision.  Good news!

Therapy Transitions: While it isn't the easiest way to go about therapy, we found a system that just might work.  The kids each go by themselves (with me) on Mondays.  I have to drive there twice which isn't ideal, but I can already tell we are going to really be able to focus on thing and not be distracted by sibling stuff.

iPhoto Update: As you can see, we have a photo system working since I have been photo blogging away, but the old photos that we have recovered and gotten from Brandon's parents are a huge mess.  I think I have decided that this is not the season to worry about them.  Going forward things will be organized better.  The old photos are there and somewhat organized and that is good enough for me right now.

Experiencing God: I continue to be blown away by this book. I am so thankful that God pursues us! I am going to share a lovely paragraph with all of you that has deep richness for my huddle buddies and I.  It is seriously life changing if you live it.

"This intimate love relationship with God is both extremely personal and practical.  This is probably the most important factor in knowing and doing the will of God.  If you love relationship with God is not as it should be, nothing else will be in order."

Oh dear friends, this is so true.  I can exercise and eat right and be a great mom by the world's standards, but life will (and did/does at times) feel like chaos.  Once I get my order correct, things start to change.  Wow!

Walking:  I have been walking about 3-4 miles almost every day.  It feels so good to move my body and to be out in Sunshine!  Of course since I am not the young woman I once was (I am still young, but my metabolism has crossed over), the weight I hope to lose doesn't want to just come off.  I get that it is fine if I don't lose weight, but since trauma entered our home, the scale somehow started showing a number higher than before.  It happened almost over night and now a year later I have not lost the weight.  Maybe this summer it will happen.  If not, I guess I will need to do more wardrobe updating.

Dance Class: A dear friend told me about a dance class opportunity for T.  I wasn't going to consider it, but as I heard more I figured I could not pass it up.  The term is almost over, but T will get to go five total times.  It is held in a church and the dancer is an amazing Christian.  It reminds me of Miss Joni from my Fargo days.  Anyway, she often has a waiting list for her classes, but she had an opening in the little kids class so I jumped on it.  They dance to kid songs, classical music, and Christian music.  A big win for a mama who is not impressed with some of the dance moves I have seen young girls do.  An added bonus, the fee is donation based.  Everyone pays what they can.  Our first class went well and I met a new mom friend.  A win all around!

T-ball: M and his buddy L are officially registered for T-ball this summer.  Oh the drama this all caused.  M has never liked hitting off of a T and is almost perfect when Brandon or others pitch to him.  We looked into coach pitch leagues and they offer them for kids 6 and 7, but not 5 and not in our town, but the next town over.  They said he could play up, so he was sold.  Then he started to think about how big the other players would be and wanting to be on a team with his buddy L so we decided to do T-ball after all.  We will see how it goes!