Operation Rescue Stuffed Bulldog

It's Not Me! Monday (a blog carnival created by MckMama; you can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have NOT been doing - but really have!).

Around here:

I did NOT display extremely poor parental judgment skills and allow my toddler to take his large, stuffed bulldog (aka. "Big Duke") security item into the place where my older kids have swim lessons.

Somehow in the craziness of drying off 2 kids, helping them get dressed, talking with one swim teacher about the next month's lessons, keeping the certificate of 1 child for a swim level completed absolutely dry, taking 2 kids to the restroom, and supervising 3 on the playground, we did NOT leave Big Duke behind at swim lessons!

Big Duke was NOT discovered missing at bedtime.

I did NOT make a phone call the next morning that went something like this, "Do you have our stuffed bulldog?"

I was NOT really having to work to keep from giggling and thinking of this book (Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity) the whole time!

My husband did NOT suggest I just wait until next Thursday when my kids have swim lessons again to get Big Duke since the place is not real close to our house.

When my 2 year old looked at me and said, "But I LOVE Big Duke!" I did NOT completely cave and drive over there in the rain Friday morning.

I did NOT return to my car and text my husband, "Operation Rescue Stuffed Bulldog = Success"!

And after all that. . .

There is absolutely, positively NO WAY at our very next errand 15 minutes later, I let my toddler take Big Duke into the Sam's store!

And into my older son's basketball game the next day!

Seriously, what's wrong with me?!!!

Maybe it's this. Just look at that smile on my little guy's face, so happy to be with his buddy Big Duke in the Sam's Club!
Reunited and it feels so good!! (Don't ever say the 70s didn't bring us any good music when you've got a song like that)

To see other tackles (that probably don't involve stuffed bulldogs) check out Tackle it Tuesday.

He shouldn't be an orphan in Haiti!

I don't usually post over the weekends, but this is important!

I've been following the story of Debra (who I actually met a couple weeks ago at a blogger dinner) who was in the process of adopting a boy from Haiti and after the earthquake it at first appeared her adopted son, Ronel, would come home to the US with a group of orphans to be united with their adoptive families in the US, but just before the plane left last week, it was discovered that Ronel was missing one piece of paperwork, so he could not go. A missionary who happened to be with Ronel the night after he was left behind wrote about the experience and to say it is heartbreaking is an extreme understatement.

Debra's husband flew to Haiti last week and is currently sleeping in the American embassy in Haiti with Ronel, trying his hardest to get clearance to fly back home with his adopted son. But each day it doesn't happen. Debra says her husband is determined not to leave Haiti without his son.

So what can we do to help? Read an overview of the story here and you'll also get some addresses and phone numbers for key officials you can contact to voice your concern.

If enough people speak up and pray; there could be a miracle and Ronel could be home in the U.S. holding his new baby brother. Yes, Debra and her husband had a baby just 6 weeks ago!

Our God is bigger than government red tape!

If only a worry a day kept lice away!

God had a message for me this week. Has that ever happened to you? You know where every devotional you look at, blog you read, conversation you have seems to have the same theme/ Bible verse?

This is what it was for me this week: Do not worry

1.

So by the end of the day on Monday I was like, "Okay, God, I'm seeing a recurring theme here. But really I don't have a big worry problem, so I'm a little confused. Oh! I know there's somebody in my life with a worry problem that I need to pass this on to. Please reveal that person to me."

2.

Tuesday morning I'm dropping my daughter off at preschool and I hear a couple of the other moms from her class talking, their kids and whole families have just recovered from a bad stomach virus. And instantly the worry hits. We have not had this stomach virus. It has actually been a couple years since we've had a bad one run through our whole family of 5, but I remember it well enough to fear getting another! I begin feeling nauseous just thinking about it and barking at my kids to sing the entire ABC song while they wash their hands! But God says to trust Him and not to worry. . .

3.

A few hours later I talk to my mom who tells me that she's now "driving all over the place". She'd been restricted from driving since her seizure and that was supposed to last a couple more months. She claims her doctor is okay with her driving now. But my mom is having a lot of short-term memory issues. When I take her to run errands I have to remind her to lock the front door to her house when we leave and close her car door after she gets out at the grocery or she wouldn't do those things!! So the idea of her driving worries me! I can do nothing to stop her. Every time my cell phone rings, my heart skips a beat as I fear it will be news that my mom has been in an accident. But God says to trust Him and not to worry . . .

4.

Then I pick up my 1st grader at elementary school and he whips out a little note on yellow paper from the school informing parents that there were several cases of head lice discovered in the Kinder/First Grade hallway. . . We have never had lice and I FEAR IT! But God says to trust Him and not to worry. . .

5.

I check my son's hair and don't see anything. The next morning I go to the Whole Foods store to buy the mint spray the school note claimed wards off lice when sprayed in hair, but of course they are sold out. All the other moms from our elementary school got there first! I Google "How to keep away lice" and debate ordering expensive shampoo & conditioner or going to buy some tea tree oil. Then I read something that says these products are not tested well on children and may do more harm than actually catching the lice would! I worry about not buying stuff, I worry about buying stuff. But God says to trust Him and not to worry. . .

6.

I completely freak out my 4 year old daughter checking everyone's hair for lice that she cries out after we've put her to bed at night. I go up to see what's wrong and she whispers, "I think I have lice!" I assure her she does not and head down the stairs worrying that I've ruined her, my neurosis is spilling over and now she's as big of a nut as I am! But God says to trust Him and not to worry. . .

7.

Then there is the adoption paperwork. The dossier paperwork that I naively expected we'd be done with by the end of January. We got 2 different documents sent back to us from the lady who is helping us compile it all. They were not done right and have to be redone. Then our agency makes a mistake and sends us some very important papers with some required signatures missing; I have to call to get the correct versions sent to us. The FBI clearance we've been expecting to come in the mail any day now for 2 weeks still doesn't come. And my husband and I begin to worry. Worry that this paperwork will never be complete, and we'll be stuck in an endless nightmare of exact wording and signatures and dates matching and notaries and authentication and trips to FedEx FOREVER. But God says to trust Him and not to worry.

So stomach virus threat, my mom driving, head lice threat, lice preventative that injures my child's head, causing my daughter's potential neurosis, adoption paperwork that never ends all had me just about undone this week. And do you know what? None of them were actual problems. Just potential problems. Yet I made them problems by worrying about them!

Matthew 6:34, "Therefore do not be anxious for tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

I'm working on it!!!

And in the mean time, if anyone has a super secret way of warding off stomach bugs, stopping their mom from driving, keeping away lice, or gaining FBI clearance for an international adoption, please lay it on me!

Find more Friday Funnies at Homesteader's Heart, Finer Things Friday at The Finer Things in Life, 7 Quick Takes Friday at Conversion Diary.

The First 28 Minutes of My Day

13 Snippets from my morning:

7:00 am - (It is a non-Shred work-out day because I plan to run later in the morning with the jogging stroller.) I wake-up to the sounds of feet pounding down the stairs. I hear my 2 year old telling my husband who is already in the kitchen, "There's dirt in my bed! Somebody need get dirt out!" I instantly know it is not "dirt" in the toddler's bed, but likely poop from an overflowing diaper. Pull covers up to my chin. Do I have to get up?

7:03 am - Realize no other mom is showing up today, so I must do the job. I get up, put on running clothes and begin working on packing 6 year old's lunchbox with all his favorite things, just like the day before

7:10 am - Husband tells me, "He didn't eat any of his lunch yesterday. I unpacked it all last night and just some of the bread was eaten, nothing else."

7:13 am - I'm feeling the joy of packing a lunch that may return to me uneaten. Instead of writing, "Have a SUPER day. Love, Mom" on the napkin for the lunchbox, I write, "EAT YOUR LUNCH! Love, Mom"

7:14 am - Pour myself some cereal and coffee and head into dining room where my 3 children and husband are already happily eating breakfast.

7:15 am - Am OVERWHELMED by the smell of poop! And amazed that everyone is eating and nobody seems at all bothered by the smell! "Does Toddler have a dirty diaper?" I ask (Toddler still wears a diaper for sleeping). "Don't you smell that?!!"

7:16 am - Husband does not, in fact, smell that, but does manage to lean over to check the diaper status of the toddler sitting next to him. "He's not wearing a diaper!"

7:17 am - The realization hits. Toddler got his bath early last night and was put in jammies without a diaper since he'd still be awake for a while. Then when we put him to bed we didn't think to put the diaper on since he usually gets the diaper with the jammies. Suddenly the "dirt" in his bed makes perfect sense to me. My husband still doesn't get it. "Yeah, I didn't know what he meant about the 'dirt'"

7:18 am - Because I have already poured the milk on my cereal and not had even one swallow of coffee, I opt to try to finish a few bites of breakfast before dealing with the situation.

7:19 am - Toddler is done eating, gets out of his chair, and comes over to me. Toddler wants to sit on my lap! Smell is overwhelming! Breakfast is over!

7:21 am - Toddler gets hosed off in the bathtub.

7:25 am - I head into Toddler's room in total fear of what I'll find.

7:28 am - Thankfully not too bad, as poop hunts go anyway (yes, having 3 children it is not my 1st experience with such things). Fairly easily cleaned up, all the while explaining to my 4 year old daughter why there was poop on the floor. Sheets and jammies in the washer on hot with the color-safe bleach. Bathtub needs a bleach treatment, too!

What can I say? It's a glamorous job!


Find more Thankful Thursday & Thursday Thirteen

I never know what I'll find in my washer!

I'm guessing that should be a delicate load!

Find more Wordless or Wordful Wednesday.

This Forces Me to Exercise!

I'm not a morning person, but doing my Jillian Michaels - 30 Day Shred workout video first thing, before my kids wake up, logistically works best for my day.

However, the will-power it takes to climb out of bed and actually do the exercise rather than hitting snooze for the 30 minutes until my toddler-sized alarm clock (that doesn't have a snooze-button) goes off, is huge.

So, I've come up with a little extra motivation for myself.

Before I go to bed at night, when I am in my right mind with all the desire to work exercise into my schedule, I set out my weights, my mat, my shoes & socks.

This serves two purposes. One, things are easier in the morning when I'm barely awake. But the second is more important, it motivates me to get out of bed to do the exercise because otherwise I'll have the disheartening task of putting away the exercise gear later in the morning knowing I didn't actually do the workout!

Seriously, it works! My sleepy, comfy-in-bed mind actually tells itself, "You already have the stuff set out, you have to get up!"

Find more Works for Me Wednesday.

**This post contains affiliate links. However, my product suggestions are unbiased. I do acutally use the Shred exercise video and would recommend it to even my closest girlfriends!**

Just don't look at the other side!

Despite my uncraftiness, occasionally I get the bug to create something. The end-result usually ends up far from perfect, but presentable. But the process? Y'all it is not pretty!

This past weeekend I was inspired by this dress at Ruffles & Stuff. And I had a cream-colored t-shirt of my daughter's that for the life of me I could not get the stains out on the front of the shirt towards the bottom. I liked the shirt, it had sequins spelling out "semi-sweet" and was a soft long-sleeve.

I also had a lot of cupcake material leftover from a birthday banner I made for her last party. (Why did I have so much extra? Because an uncrafty person like me is incapable of correctly estimating the amount of material she'll need for a project!)

So with my inspiration, I got out my sewing machine, breathed a sigh of relief that there was still thread on the bobbin because winding new thread on is probably out of my league, sent my 2 little kids for a nap and my oldest to play at a friend's house.

Then I followed this tutorial from my friend The Internet who also doubles as my sewing instructor and turned the stained t-shirt and extra material into this dress for my daughter:

It looks pretty much okay on the outside and I think it won't fall apart when she wears it (the test will come tomorrow when she wears it to school), so I consider it a huge sewing success!

But if you turn the dress inside out and look at the seam holding the t-shirt part to the cupcake skirt part you'll see this . . .
Count them up -- 5 attempts at sewing those babies together! Five extremely wavy stitches, some of which start and stop!

But the outside of the dress looks mostly fine. You wouldn't really guess what was underneath, would you?

This messy process reminds me of a Bible verse I love, "And we who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit." 2 Cor. 3:18

When God is working to create something beautiful in our lives the process is often long, hard, and not fun. There may be stops and starts, redos, even, as He sews the fabric of our lives together. But if we hang in there and let Him work, He'll transform us into something more beautiful than we could ever imagine -- His likeness!

This post is part of the Moms' 30-Minute Blog Challenge.

Check out Gratituesday, Tuesdays Unwrapped, and Tackle it Tuesday and Try and Tell.