You know once in awhile you read something that makes you laugh so hard you can hardly breathe….this is one of those things. 

I posted something serious yesterday…I think it’s worth reading…of course, i wrote it!  But today I wanted to share something that is just plain hilarious.  Grab a tissue…you’re gonna laugh so hard you might just cry.

Thinking of Having Kids?

Do this 11 step program first!

Lesson 1

1. Go to the grocery store.
2. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office.
3. Go home.
4. Pick up the paper.
5. Read it for the last time.

Lesson 2

Before you finally go ahead and have children, find a couple who
already are parents and berate them about their…

1. Methods of discipline.

2. Lack of patience.

3. Appallingly low tolerance levels.

4. Allowing their children to run wild.

5. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child’s breastfeeding, sleep habits, toilet training, table manners, and overall behavior. Enjoy it because it will be the last time in your life you will have all the answers.

Lesson 3

A really good way to discover how the nights might feel…

1. Get home from work and immediately begin walking around the living room from 5PM to 10PM carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 8-12pounds, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly. (Eat cold food with one hand for dinner)

2. At 10PM, put the bag gently down, set the alarm for midnight, and go to sleep.

3. Get up at 12 and walk around the living room again, with the bag, until 1AM.

4. Set the alarm for 3AM.

5. As you can’t get back to sleep, get up at 2AM and make a drink and watch an infomercial.

6. Go to bed at 2:45AM.

7. Get up at 3AM when the alarm goes off.

8. Sing songs quietly in the dark until 4AM.

9. Get up. Make breakfast. Get ready for work and go to work (work hard and be productive)

Repeat steps 1-9 each night. Keep this up for 3-5 years. Look cheerful and like you’ve got it all together.

Lesson 4

Can you stand the mess children make? T o find out…

1. Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains.

2. Hide a piece of raw chicken behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.

3. Stick your fingers in the flower bed.

4. Then rub them on the clean walls.

5. Take your favorite book, photo album, etc. Wreck it.

6. Spill milk on your new pillows. Cover the stains with crayons. How does that look?

Lesson 5

Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems.

1. Buy an octopus and a small bag made out of loose mesh.

2. Attempt to put the octopus into the bag so that none of the arms hang out. Time allowed for this – all morning.

Lesson 6

Forget the BMW and buy a mini-van. And don’t think that you can leave it out in the driveway spotless and shining. Family cars don’t look like that.

1. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment. Leave it there.

2. Get a dime. Stick it in the CD player.

3. Take a family size package of chocolate cookies. Mash them into the back seat. Sprinkle cheerios all over the floor, then smash them with your foot.

4. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.

Lesson 7

Go to the local grocery store. Take with you the closest thing you can find to a pre-school child. (A full-grown goat is an excellent choice). If you intend to have more than one child, then definitely take more than one goat. Buy your week’s groceries without letting the goats out of your sight. Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys. Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.

Lesson 8

1. Hollow out a melon.

2. Make a small hole in the side.

3. Suspend it from the ceiling and swing it from side to side.

4. Now get a bowl of soggy Cheerios and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon by pretending to be an airplane.

5. Continue until half the Cheerios are gone.

6. Tip half into your lap. The other half, just throw up in the air. You are now ready to feed a nine- month-old baby.

Lesson 9

Learn the names of every character from Sesame Street , Barney, Disney, the Teletubbies, and Pokemon. Watch nothing else on TV but PBS, the Disney channel or Noggin for at least five years. (I know, you’re thinking What’s ‘Noggin’?) Exactly the point.

Lesson 10

Make a recording of Fran Drescher saying ‘mommy’ repeatedly. (Important: no more than a four second delay between each ‘mommy’; occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet is required). Play this tape in your car everywhere you go for the next four years. You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.

Lesson 11

Start talking to an adult of your choice. Have someone else continually tug on your skirt hem, shirt- sleeve, or elbow while playing the ‘mommy’ tape made from Lesson 10 above. You are now ready
to have a conversation with an adult while there is a child in the room.

Still think you’re ready to have children?

Happy Friday!
– Logan

A few weeks ago I wrote a post on a day that it was just “one of those days.”  And today isn’t really “one of those days” but I’ve been doing some thinking on a specific topic the past few days.

Mothering is hard.  Parenting is hard.  Single parenting is grueling.

I’m happily married, so the single parenting thing for me just comes and goes in phases.  Right now The Hubs is working on a MAJOR project for work and so the kids and I have really only seen him in tiny spurts of time.  And the past couple of weeks, there have been several times that he hasn’t seen them at all for a couple of days.

He leaves for work at 5:30 am.  Long before we’re up.

My kids go to bed between 7 and 7:30pm….which lately has been long before he’s home.

So for me, that’s a long day of single parenting.  When you do the day shift with the kiddos, the dinner shift, the bathtime shift, and the bedtime shift…and because he’s working so hard, I’m on the middle-of-the-night shift too….exhausting.  It is HARD.

Don’t get me wrong…I love being a mommy.  And I wouldn’t trade this season of staying at home with my kids for anything either, but these past couple of weeks, and looking ahead 6 weeks to the finish date of this project…I get tired just thinking about it.

And here’s where I’ve been thinking and why I want to give MASSIVE kudos to single moms, and dads for that matter…

Your job doesn’t have the promise of a once again shared load in 6 weeks from now. 

However you ended up in this place of raising kids without a spouse, I can’t begin to understand and won’t try to…but I want to tell you that YOU have the hardest job in the world.

I’m sure I’ve said in the past that I think stay-at-home parents have the hardest job in the world …but really, that’s just not true.  So here I go…admitting ONCE again that I’ve stuck my foot in my mouth.

I’d like to change that statement. We all have it hard in different ways because life is hard, but I think that single parents may very well have the hardest job in the world.  You have to be mom and dad, lone breadwinner, chef, launderer, boo-boo-kisser, the “heavy”, the appointment maker, the grocery getter, the athletic supporter (I mean this in a more encouraging way…less of a jock strap type idea here.)  You are the beginning and the end and all that’s in between for your kids in the role of parent here on earth.  And I want to tell you from the bottom of my heart…

I had a meltdown on the phone with my mom a couple of hours ago about scheduling a surgery for Little Bit (adenoids, ear tubes thing,) but having to do it when The Hubs has a major project due and won’t be around much, and mom can’t be around because my sister is moving into a new house and she’s going to help her.  And I thought to myself…how am I going to take care of a pitifully drugged up baby and a rambunctious almost 5 year old at the same time…BY MYSELF?!  And then I just cried and cried because that’s just hard.

But you single parents…that is your reality, and you don’t need me here reminding you of it.  My goal here is to confess to you that I don’t get it.  But right now, I am tasting part of it, and it is a bitter mouthful sometimes….it is hard.  And here I am complaining about the hardness….you just pull yourself up by your bootstraps and make it happen…and I for one want to say that I am proud of you.

James 1:27 says “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress”…and single parents, I think that includes you too.   Part of the job of “the church” (and by that I mean, believers in Christ) is to help out those of you who find yourself in this tough place.  And I will tell you that I think in general our world is falling woefully short in this arena.  You probably already know this firsthand.  There are orphans out the wazoo all over the globe, and I’m willing to put money on it that more times than you care to count, you’ve felt let down by “the church”…which really just amounts to a bunch of human people too.

So my question to those of you who live this reality…is how can I, how can “the church,” really…really serve and love on you?  Be honest now…this is your chance to comment below and I hope be heard well. (you will be by me for sure.)

I don’t really know what else to say….and I hope in my effort to give you the kudos you deserve that I haven’t unknowingly stuck my foot in my mouth somehow.  Point is…you are amazing…and you deserve….

 
A STANDING OVATION!

**I really would like to hear your comments on this subject.  Would some of you be willing to share below for us to all know how to truly serve you well?  And if you don’t find yourself in this place, I’m sure there are pieces that we can each relate to…so your comments are equally welcome here!

I have a confession about myself that I really have to share today.  A tale of foolish speech, if you will.

On occasion, I come down with a serious case of …

verbal diarrhea.  

 Hopefully you all know what I’m talking about.  Maybe it’s even happened to you.

I did it bad the other night.  And I’m not going to explain specifics here, but I have to tell you….I have spent 2 full days and 3 nights still feeling mortified over it myself!

MORTIFIED!

In my efforts to bring up a real valid point the other day, I ended up completely embarrassing myself and I think mortifying the poor recipient of my loose tongue as well. In the midst of sharing a legitimate thought, I was caught off guard by an additional thought and then blurted out the next thing that came through my mind!  AWFUL…truly awful.  (Anytime you can use the word “blurt” in relaying a story, you can be sure that it’s generally not going to lead to a moment of utter wisdom.)

Since sadly, I’m not a stranger to this phenomenon, I always hope that I haven’t done permanent damage to how the other person feels about me or to a relationship.  In this instance, I don’t think I have, but maybe… I just don’t know for sure.  So I do the only thing that I know how to do and ask for forgiveness for my complete stupidity.  After that I am left with no other choice but to move on and hope they can truly forgive and move on too…and also that I don’t make the same mistake again….EVER!  (So now I’m going to take my own advice and move on…let it go!  Deep breath…let go!)

Anyways, I just had to tell you…it seems I will spend my life with no shortage of “Tales of a Lesser Woman.”

“Many words mark the speech of a fool.” – Ecc 5:3

Less words next time Logan….Less words!

Hope today that you keep your mouth shut better than me!

– Logan

Saturday!  Hello love!

The Hubs has a huge project at work right now and so is having to work from 6am-noon today.  Bummer!  The boys and I got out of the house at about 8:15 and walked all around my neighborhood for over an hour.  Glory glory!  Loving this amazing weather…hope it sticks!

I’m so new to this whole blogging thing as most of you know.  And over the past few days I’ve ended up sort of dancing around a whole bunch of blogs of people I don’t know at all, but really think it’d be fun to get to know.  Now, I’m really big on relationships and by no means do I want to take time away from people in my here and now, but I love that this avenue connects people with similar interests and because of that really offers some fun inspiration.  I’ve heard in church over the years that true community is born from shared interests or activities, so I think it’s neat to see how this avenue seems to offer that, even spanning time and distance.  And I can’t help but think as I’ve surfed around several people’s sites, that I’ve been surprised at what I’m seeing, displayed in the flesh and shared all around, so much of this :

A good woman is hard to find,         
   and worth far more than diamonds.
Her husband trusts her without reserve,
   and never has reason to regret it.
Never spiteful, she treats him generously
   all her life long.
She shops around for the best yarns and cottons,
   and enjoys knitting and sewing.
She’s like a trading ship that sails to faraway places
   and brings back exotic surprises.
She’s up before dawn, preparing breakfast
   for her family and organizing her day.
She looks over a field and buys it,
   then, with money she’s put aside, plants a garden.
First thing in the morning, she dresses for work,
   rolls up her sleeves, eager to get started.
She senses the worth of her work,
   is in no hurry to call it quits for the day.
She’s skilled in the crafts of home and hearth,
   diligent in homemaking.
She’s quick to assist anyone in need,
   reaches out to help the poor.
She doesn’t worry about her family when it snows;
   their winter clothes are all mended and ready to wear.
She makes her own clothing,
   and dresses in colorful linens and silks.
Her husband is greatly respected
   when he deliberates with the city fathers.
She designs gowns and sells them,
   brings the sweaters she knits to the dress shops.
Her clothes are well-made and elegant,
   and she always faces tomorrow with a smile.
When she speaks she has something worthwhile to say,
   and she always says it kindly.
She keeps an eye on everyone in her household,
   and keeps them all busy and productive.
Her children respect and bless her;
   her husband joins in with words of praise:
“Many women have done wonderful things,
   but you’ve outclassed them all!”
Charm can mislead and beauty soon fades.
   The woman to be admired and praised
   is the woman who lives in the Fear-of-God.
Give her everything she deserves!
   Festoon her life with praises!

Kinda cool huh?  Biblical model of womanhood…displayed on the internet!

Bring it ladies!

– Logan

I took the day off from writing yesterday. 

Our church sent a team to Haiti this past week (the 3rd in a year…the Hubs went last September) and several of my friends’ hubbies have been gone (the team gets home late tonight.)  Anyways, my friend A came yesterday and spent the night with us last night.  We made jewelry last night and a carrot cake today (I’ll post that recipe sometime too…it’s amazing.) It was a blast, and I figured noone would hold it against me to skip a day of writing in order to be a better friend than a blogger.  Sorry if your’e disappointed…just the way it’s gonna be around here.

And, yesterday I’d decided if I did get a chance to write that I was going to do a write-up on steam mops.  I have one and know lots of people who are interested, and I did loads of research before I bought mine, so I figured I’d pass along the info…which I will soon, but not today afterall.

You know I told you the other day that I have spring fever?!  Well, if the other day started it, then the sunny 70’s today have solidified it.  I’ve got it bad.  And the picnic outside today at lunch, and watching my boys get dirty in our yard having a blast…oh man, makes my heart happy as a lark (whatever that means…I really don’t personally know the happiness level of a lark, but it must be high.)  It was great!  And you know the Rainbows I was dying to pull out the other day…YES!  Today was the day…and my feet really do look like something from caveman days!  Whatever…..

So, today instead I have to just share with you a few pictures that speak a thousand words to me!

LOVE me some dirty feet…well, maybe I just love those particular feet.

This looks like Little Bit is petting our dog so gently, but really Redd (the dog) was actually just gobbling up the rest of Little Bit’s ham sandwich.

Below, Tid Bit was having a blast blowing bubbles for his little brother.  I just LOVE to see them actually starting to play together!  And then he was having me announce “the races” in which he magically won every single one!  Amazing how that happens often when you’re 4…

I promise I’ll post soon about the steam mops.  I even had Tid Bit give it a really good test around the kitchen again at our house yesterday.  It definitely works great, even if the user happens to be a really cute 4 year-old.  More to come on this subject soon…the steam mop reviews, not the cute 4 year-old….ok, so maybe the cute 4 year-old some too.

If you live in the south, get off your computer as soon as you can and head outside to enjoy the GLORIOUS DAY!!!

– Logan