Life At The Circus

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  This weekend our family tackled the leaves in our yard.  And really when I say our family, I mean, my husband.  The rest of us came out to hold rakes, snap pictures, and jump in huge piles.  Daddy was the one still raking in the cold all by himself when everyone else when inside to warm up and take naps.  Yea, I know my husband rocks.

Here’s a picture of what it looked like before he got to work.

Then the work crew came out.

Check out this pile of leaves.  You know it is just begging to be jumped in!

The kids truly enjoyed this part the best.  (check back tomorrow for some great aerial shots of them being tossed into the piles)

By the time it came to the backyard, it was just poor old Dad all by his lonesome.  He tried out using the lawn mower on the back yard. 

Doesn’t the yard look so much better?  Now we are ready for snow to fall and to put up Christmas lights next week.

Scott bagged up 38 bags of leaves this weekend!! 

For more great tackles, check out 5 Minutes for Mom.

I came into the kitchen the other day to find my son lining up cups of water.  I asked what he was doing and he informed me he was setting up a “Water Stand” in our house.   I asked how much he was charging for a cup of luke warm tap water.

$14.00, he replied.

Any takers?

My son was playing in the backyard swinging his stick like an ax into the mound of dirt when he announced in an overly dramatic voice, “I am working like a slave!”   I am sure it’s not hard for you to guess what we’ve been studying this year in Bible Study Fellowship.   

That’s right…the life of Moses. 

I was recently reading in Exodus 16 about the Israelites wandering in the desert.  After the Lord had freed them from captivity and led them through the Red Sea, and provided them with drinkable water, they found themselves again without food and water.  And even though God had provided for them every step of the journey, they again found themselves grumbling and complaining.  For 400 years they had been held captives as slaves in Egypt.  Yet here they are “on the 15th day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt,” (Exodus 16:1) and they are already saying that they wish they had died in Egypt as slaves because there they sat around pots of meat and ate all they wanted unlike here in the desert where they wander for days without food. 

Really?

Had they forgotten so quickly what it was like to be bound as a slave?  Did they really forget all the horrors of it that quickly and think back to it as a time where they all just laid around and ate food? 

I found myself asking, What is wrong with these people?  How can they forget that quickly?  Why would they chose slavery of the unknown?  How can they forget that God is leading them?  He has given them a pillar of fire by night and a cloud by day visibly leading them through the desert.  He parted the Red Sea for them for crying out loud, what is their problem?

As I sat there in my self-righteous state judging those Israelites the Lord placed a thought on my heart.

When do I prefer slavery to sin to trusting in God?

Yea, it is really easy for me to sit in my comfortable home reading my Bible (which has the big picture all spelled out for me) and judge the Israelites for their lack of faith.  But what about me? 

God has set me free from my bondage to sin.  It no longer rules my life.  Christ’s death on the cross and the Holy Spirit living in my heart means that through Christ’s power, I now have victory over sin. 

But, how often do I cling to my sin because it is comfortable and something I know, rather then step out in faith, trusting the Lord to lead me?

See, really, I am no better than the Israelites.  Thankfully God was patient with them, showing them again and again His love and His faithfulness by calming their doubts and fears and providing for their needs.  Thankfully He does the same with me.

Weekend Thoughts:
My posts typically relate funny anecdotes about the happenings here at the circus  but, I use my last post of the week to highlight something a little more “thoughtful” and significant. If you had a thoughtful post from this last week, or choose to make a new one, please feel free to add a link in the comments section below. I’d love to hear what you are thinking.

My daughter loves to play school.  She asks me to play All.The.Time.

But, my daughter has never been to school.

And everything she knows about school, she learned from watching her big brother.

So when we “play school” it goes something like this…

My daughter takes her booster seat down from the table and sets it up in the hall to be her “car seat”.  She then has me strap her in and drive her to school.  I then unstrap her and she sits beside me while we wait for her teacher to come to the car and get her.  She grabs her folder and bag, kisses me goodbye and smiles widely as she waves goodbye.  A few minutes later she announces it is time for me to come and pick her up.  I pretend to drive, I wait for her pretend teacher to bring her to the car, she gives me a huge hug, sits back in her seat and tells me about her day.  She shows me her “school papers” in her folder.  She tells me about running around on the playground and what she ate for snack.  And then the routine begins again.  I’ve played school lots of times over the years, but never quite like this. 

The kids and I took a nature walk last week.  As we walked along the path, I realized we had necessary elements for some great pictures.

1.  Happy Kids

2.  Setting sun

3.  Fall leaves

However, we forgot the photographer.

After frolicking along the path gathering leaves and sticks, I noticed that the suns rays were really quite beautiful.  I remembered Scott saying that one of the best times of days to get pictures is before sunset.  “Perfect, I thought.”

I sat the kids down on a bench at one of the “exercise stops” on the walking path.  You were supposed to do sit ups here.  My son saw the curved bar and thought he knew what to do.  Before I could even think about stopping him, he had flipped over the bar and landed hard on his poor little noggin.  But, I had just set the girls down for the phot opp at the same instant and I knew time was of the essence.

Poor guy didn’t even have time to recover before Mom started snapping pictures.  And the girls weren’t exactly ready either.

OK…I am not exaggerating when I tell you that I proceeded to snap 28 pictures of them sitting in this pose.  They were pretty agreeable and not bouncing all over the place, which is rare for a photo opp, so I went a little over board.  (check out the shell shocked look on my baby girl’s face)!

I then started second guessing myself…was this the right spot?  Where do I want the sun?  At my back?  On my side?  “Oh, how I wish Scott was here…”

I tried switching angles…

No, this is def not right… having the subjects face the sun is def a bad idea… poor kids!

Hmm, what about this way?

Might have worked, but Momma pushed her luck.  They were done with the sitting patiently on the bench routine.

Guess I better get a few pointers before my next attempt at amateur photography.  Check out THAT Family for more photographic laughs!

I have to tell myself this quite often at the circus.  “It’s just milk, no use crying over it or making anyone else cry over it.”  This time, the spill was my fault as I dropped the full gallon of milk over myself and my floor…

No use crying over it, so I snapped a picture.  Check out 5 Minutes for Mom for more Wordess Wednesdays!

Crafty, I am not.  But, I was an elementary education major, so I do know how to use scissors and glue.   And, I have found that I really enjoy doing simple arts and crafts projects with my children. 

But, the circus life can get rather busy.  And as with most things, if I am not intentional, the opportunities and the moments pass me by. 

So, this year I have designated Tuesday as “Crafty Tuesday.”

I have found that having one day a week set aside for crafts allows me a week to plan ahead and get everything together.  I picked Tuesday because it is the one day a week we don’t have a morning commitment.  We typically have a leisurely start to the day, take care of errands mid day and after nap time we work on our “special projects.”   

I try to make dinner something easy on this night, either a crock pot meal, something I prepped earlier in the day, or something which requires minimal effort.  This way we can work on our projects without worrying about stopping early for dinner. 

So far the kids and I have enjoyed several, fun, fall projects such as leaf rubbings, window art, painted pumpkins, and our most recent a thanksgiving collage.    This last one was a two parter as we took a nature walk last week to gather our  materials and this week we glued them down to make letters spelling “Give Thanks,” which we then hung on the wall behind our dinner table. 

Crafty Tuesday works for me, as it provides me with a way to enjoy some quality time with my children each week.  Check out Rocks in My Dryer for more great Works for me Wednesday advice.

Sunday my husband and I had plans during the Steelers games.  Thankfully we have a DVR, so we just recorded the game to watch when we got home.  This has happened before, and we have devised a sort of routine for situations like this, because it would be AWFUL to accidentally find out the results of the game before we watched it.  So, we typically race into the house (because what if we see a neighbor and they casually mention the game)  we then unplug the phone (because what if a friend or family member calls to talk about it) and we don’t turn on the computer (because what if someone e-mailed about it or we saw something on our “igoogle headline”  (since we have Steelers websites in our favorites on our home page.   Yes, we live in a sort of state of paranoia.

We’ve settled into this crazy routine only after learning from the past.  Yes, we have actually sat in our living room with our hands over our ears much like Jimmy Fallon in Fever Pitch while someone left a message on our machine congratulating us on a win.  My husband has even hung up on his mom before for this reason.   As I unplug the phone line and ignore the blinking messages on my answering machine I often fear, “what if something horrible happened to a family member and they are trying to get a hold of us…we always check those messages AFTER the game, in case that is the case.”

Sadly when my husband and I got home on Sunday and sat down to watch the game, I had a horrible migraine and felt sick.  I managed to barely watch the first half of the game before finally realizing I had to just go to bed early.  My dear husband said he would not tell me what happened and was even willing to watch it with me again on Monday night.  This  meant that all day Monday I walked around with my hands in my ears.  I literally held my breath as I entered social situations and was so relieved when I got in my car and knew I wasn’t going to see or talk to anyone the rest of the day. 

Yes, I am crazy like that…but this paranoia proved well worth it this time as it was a down to the last second, win by only one point, kind of finish, and I was literally on the edge of my seat waiting to see what happened.   It would not have been nearly as fun to watch if I had known the score already. 

Last week the kids were having a jam session in the living room with their play guitar and drums.  As we looked at my son’s pose, with his tongue out, and his fingers holding the “chords” on the guitar, I couldn’t help but think he had a startling resemblance to KISS (minus the face paint)!