Half-Pint House

St. Augustine Party, Dunham Style

Craig decided to celebrate the birthday of St. Augustine of Hippo with his Ethics classes today. He asked me on Tuesday if I might be interested in catering the party. I asked him what the budget was. He said, "Budget?"

Just kidding. He actually asked me what we could afford to spend. "Not much," I said. So, we went to Sam's and bought two trays of cookies and a whole bunch of soda - just like they had in ancient times.

The girls and I showed up for the third class and we partied like rock stars, which is to say that we colored in the back of the room for the 30-minute lecture portion of class, and then stood in the back eating cookies for the last 20 minutes. It was great fun.

On the way home, the girls all agreed they love going to school with Daddy. But then one of them said, "I like going, except when all the highschoolers start talking about how cute we are. It makes me feel dumb." "Yeah," another daughter said, "it makes me feel like a baby in a duckie suit."

A baby in a duckie suit. I laughed so hard I almost had to call OnStar for assistance (and just because I can for another two hours before I go give the car back).

I told them I would make it up to them by showing them the movie Up! when we got home, as I picked it from Redbox this morning when I ran to the store for carrots for a science experiment (because we've never seen carrots turn into a science experiment before...ahem).

So my girls, who don't want to be called cute, are wrapping up their celebration of this important church father with a little dose of Pixar.

Seems fitting, no?

No?

Okay, so when does anything we do ever really make sense around here?

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Better Late Than Never. Right?

Yep. Here is is, November 12 and I finally got around to making a daily school schedule that fits our needs this year. Just in time for all our weekly extras to come to a halt in a month. That's the way I roll.

We've been doing most of this stuff, but more in a, "Hmmm, what should we do next?" kind of way. Not only are we not the most efficient with that method, but there are several things we just accidentally forget to to.

Believe it or not, we've done everything on the schedule this week and it hasn't felt hard or too much. Moving the girls' read alone time to the last school activity of the day was my brilliant homeschool idea of the week. (I wish I had some kind of brilliant homeschool idea of the week every week). It comes at a time everyone is really ready for a break anyway. So they get a break, but they are also getting some schooling done. It's a win-win.

And I'm using my window board again. For a while it was just cute kitchen/office decoration. It needed to have a purpose in our family again.

Got Compassion?

Unless you've been hiding under a rock, you know they are up to it again. They being Compassion; it being a blogging trip to an impoverished country.

I followed the first trip pretty closely - I added all the bloggers into my Google reader, cried with their stories, and at the end of it all, sponsored another child.

But like everything else, I just get so used to seeing stuff that I fail to be moved by it anymore. The subsequent trips didn't really make that much of an impact on me. You know how you see a commercial so many times you just don't even notice it anymore? That's kind of what happened with me and this whole Compassion thing.

Honestly, sometimes I wonder if Compassion has over-saturated the market.

There. I said it.

Sometimes I have to work at having compassion; sometimes it simply doesn't come as easily as I want it to come; sometimes I have to make myself read the stories.

Sometimes I have to care even when I don't feel like it. 

Are you like me at all? I really hope not; that is, I hope compassion comes more easily to you than it does to me. But if you are, could I just ask you to consider reading these stories one more time? Would you subscribe to the blogs (you can undo this later, you know; people do it to me all the time), read their stories, and allow yourself to see what they see?

And then, would you consider if God is asking you to think a little more about this than you are typically prone to do? That's all I'm asking - try to see it...to try to hear it.

Maybe compassion will come to you.

Psst

I have another string of lonely, commentless posts over here at the Chevy site that could really use some love from some of you.

In all your free time, of course. :)

Our House, In the Middle of Our Street...

We have now lived in our house for 16 months. I don't know if you have followed our housing track record or not, but 16 months in Dunham-ese means it's time to move.

And I'm feeling the itch.

Craig looked at me at dinner last night with laser eyes and made me repeat after him: "We are not moving. We are NOT moving. WE ARE NOT MOVING."

Okay. We're not moving. But something in me really wants to. I don't know why that is. Is it just because that's what I've grown accustomed to over the past 13 years? Is it my almost-insatiable desire for change? Is it just a discontent I've allowed to fester inside me for just about forever? I don't know.

I do know this: We're going to paint the dining room over Christmas and I'm almost giddy with the thought of it. While this house shows all signs of us living here as our stuff is everywhere (and I do mean EVERYWHERE), the decor of the inside still doesn't really match who I think we are.

I realize that every time I announce that our dining room is a screaming throw-back to 1986, I'm blaring my discontent for the peach walls with country blue border and teal granny curtains to the whole world. When I was making videos for Chevy over the past few weeks, you have no idea how hard it was for me not to mention that I didn't choose the decor whenever I happened to catch my dining room on film.

Because really, who cares? Only me. And I know that my over-caring is a sign of discontent.

Tonight, when the three fire trucks and two police cars surrounded the apartment complex across the street, my first thought wasn't, "Wow, I should probably pray for the people inside." My first thought was, "Yep. It's time to move."

That's how sinful I am inside.

Smack dab in the middle of Philippians 4 I find this:

"...I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation..."

Oh, how I wish I could honestly say that. I really don't know what it means to be content in any and every situation. I don't know contentment with peach walls. I don't know contentment with probable drug busts across my street. I don't know contentment with an unfinished attic and basement. I don't know contentment.

As I think it could very well be that God will have us stay in this house for the rest of our days, I need to learn that secret of contentment. I agreed we are NOT moving, and I need to be okay with that.

And I need to learn soon.

WFMW: No, Really, Thank YOU!

Acting on a tip from The Frugal Girls, I took advantage of this free postcard deal to make some cute personalized thank you note postcards. They have our return address already printed on the back and are ready for any one of the six of us to just pick up and initiate our thanks to the world.

All for the price of shipping (100 postcards were free, shipping was about $7) and a postcard stamp.

Now, where is my favorite pen?

This installation of Works for Me Wednesday is brought to you by the Letter G for "got nothing else today" and the number 2 (number of times I've participated in WFMW in the past two years).

To hear from people who obviously have their collective acts together way more than I do, go here.

One Thousand Gifts

If you've hung around here long enough, you know I'm prone to begin things and not finish them. There's a certain book I started reading through with two blog friends that I totally dropped the ball on several months ago. The book continues to sit on my nightstand, collecting dust. One of these days...

One of these days. It's my life mantra. One I'm not proud of. I keep saying I'll get that together one of these days. I'll get my life figured out one of these days. I'll match up that entire pile of socks one of these days.

I'm pretty new to Ann Voskamp's blog, Holy Experience, but apparently she's been at it for quite a while. Where have I been?

This idea, to keep record of one thousand gifts, is hers. I think I'm going to try keeping track for a while. I don't know if I'll do it once a week, or once a month, or what. I will finish the list. One of these days...

So, with no prior thought given, a beginning to my list of one thousand gifts:

1. Tuesdays. Mondays are very long days around here. Tuesdays are home days. I love them and wish I had a week full of them.

2. A 6-year-old who has the physical capacity to draw on her hands with Sharpie marker. Her hands work and she can think and create. Thank you, God, for her.

3. Three cats whom my children love with all their hearts.

4. A working sewing machine

5. My desktop iMac

6. Owl City

7. Coke Zero

8. A super great community of friends with my Classical Conversations group

9. A nice long break that is only two weeks away now. It is so close I can taste it.

10. The flower bouquet made from pipe cleaners by my almost 11-year-old. It really is lovely.

There. That wasn't so hard. Only 990 to go.

The Saturday Evening Blog Post

For October's post from my primary blog (this one), I'm choosing the one in which I was given $100 worth of Pumpkin Land money to buy fun things for a great cause called Joe's Place here in St. Louis. If you have time, please watch the video. The Reeves' are doing some amazing things with these boys and their lives will be changed forever.

From my WORLDMag.com October archives, I'm choosing this one: Where's Your Joy?

And because he would never do this on his own, I'm linking one of Craig's posts for October. In honor of Elizabeth and the baseball banter we exchanged on Twitter last month, this post was written the night the Cardinals were officially ousted from baseball for this season. 

Thanks, Elizabeth, for this easy monthly link-up! To see the highlights from others for the month of October, go to ElizabethEsther.com.

Missing: Tooth

If you've seen one lost tooth, you've seen a hundred. Until it's your first one. Honestly? I wasn't thinking too much about this, but it is E6's first lost tooth and to her, it's a Very Big Deal. All night long she kept saying things like, "This will be my first dinner without that tooth!" and "This will be my first piece of candy without that tooth!"

It would be a shame for the Tooth Fairy Mama to forget to visit tonight, wouldn't it? Because while it may be the 30th lost tooth I've had to deal with, for E6, it's #1.

And I need to treat it like it's #1 for me too.

On Editing Life

...Ah, the edit function. It isn’t that I don’t want to portray an accurate picture of life as we know it, it’s just that I don’t particularly want to showcase my own sin (or the sin of my children) for the world to see. It is a really great thing to draw the edit box around the 30 seconds of someone’s squabble and just hit delete. Presto! Sin gone!...

The rest of it is here at WORLDMag.com.