Photography and Homeschooling (Roadschooling as often as we can)
At some points spot on, at some points the stereotypical view of a homeschooling family. All in all I. love. it.
This is by Tim Hawkins. Do this guy a favor (actually do yourself the favor) and stick around on YouTube for as long as you need to watch his other videos. Dude is hilarious.
Check out the Delilah Song, Imagine, Kids’ Rock, Things You Don’t Say To Your Wife, Smells Like Birthday Cake, Chick-fil-A and whatever else you have time for.
Happy Saturday.
To be an heiress can’t be all that bad. I mean your days are cake while personal assistants do everything for you. Shop, dine, socialize, entertain, workout with a personal trainer for six hours a day…oh wait…I’m getting off track. You’ve got to admit, the lack of responsibility and overload of pleasure sounds nice.
In fact, I’m living the life right now. Kind of like a low-class Paris Hilton.
Well, economical shall we say. Right now I live in a hotel. From what I know she grew up in a fancy schmancy hotel in New York. So what if hers was several thousand square feet and opulently decorated. I have personal maid service and she has personal maid service. So what if mine only comes once a week to change the cigarette-hole-burned bed sheets. We both get fresh towels. She has nothing to do with her days but shop and play. I have nothing to do with my days except (window) shop and (watch my kids) play.
She has a personal chef. . . well, this is where the comparison begins to break down. Whatever. You get the idea.
I’m leading a dichotometic life right now. Or whatever the adjective form of dichotomy is. I’m living in the lap of luxury (and we’ve established what kind of lap that is) yet I’m also living The Simple Life. Oh how my literary genius is rockin’ tonight. Get it? Her “reality” show “The Simple Life”? Let’s move on. mmk?
I have about seven shirts hanging in the closet, four skirts, two capris, two jeans and four shorts. How am I surviving? I DON’T KNOW. AND to add insult to injury I only have six pairs of shoes, of which I only wear two regularly. I packed light for the six weeks that I’d be living out of a suitcase. After typing it all out it kinda sounds like a lot, but believe me, it all (even the unmentionables) fits into one suitcase. That I can pick up. For two seconds. And it’s not even the largest suitcase that we own. I’ll let you figure out just who took that one. Ahem.
I’m cooking in a kitchen, well, really a corner of the hotel room, with a stove and a microwave. Two burners on the stove, no oven. One pot and one skillet. One colander. Oh, and a toaster. That is it. Oh, and I’ve run out of olive oil, so until I get to the store I’m cooking with butter, which I’m learning has a lower smoking point than even olive oil does. I may have to switch to vegetable oil while I’m in a kitchen that has the smoke detector located within five feet of the stove. (Humming and shuffling feet here…)
We’re all sleeping within the confines of a smallish living room. This poses several issues…like how can Du escape out the door in the morning without waking up the girls? Like, how do we stay asleep when nocturnal cats are using our pillows and heads as spring boards while they get all the energy out that they stored up all day sleeping? Like, how do we stay up late blogging and internetting without keeping the younger generation awake. And on and on…
We’re living in a room with walls cardboard thin. In fact, I believe we’ve alienated both sides with all the noise we make. I’m pretty sure the hotel is going to charge us for two extra rooms since those are unrentable once people hear the racket going on in here. Wait, we should be using those.
I’m actually beginning to appreciate the simpler life though. Simpler is better (especially if you don’t live like a rich heiress). Less things to focus on equals more ability to focus on what matters. Less material and more meaningful. I don’t have to worry about cleaning a big house, cooking a big, fancy meal (although my cooking has been pretty good I must say. I know. It’s shocking) or washing loads and loads of laundry. Tending a garden, cleaning windows, scrubbing sinks and vacuuming. I’ve been able to focus more on the family and making sure that we enjoy our first month in a new city. We’re getting out, exploring, going places and seeing things we never would have had I been cooped up with the responsibilities that more brings.
I’m sure I’ll be reminding myself of all this when we do move into our house. Although, it’s not going to be much bigger than what we’re living in right now. 1500 square feet can be considered small. But I’m going to consider it just right for the priorities that I want to have during this season in life. Now all I need is a tiny chihuahua and a tiny Chanel bag and everything will be fine. Paris says so.
Or in this case, you say what you know.
We have instituted family prayer time since we’ve been imprisoned cooped up together in this hotel room. Reagan reads and prays for a country out of Operation World (a book that details every country, its demographics and its religious affiliations/struggles, and how we could pray for the country). The rest of us take turns as well saying our own prayers out of our hearts.
We’re also giving Ashlyn a chance to pray. Since she doesn’t quite get the concept of praying for what’s on your heart she prays the only prayer she knows:
Deauh Jesus,
Tank u fuh dis day and fuh dis food, hep it to nuwish ow bodies and keep us helfy. Amen.
Is that not the cutest! She is saying our meal-time prayer. I’ll take one Ashlyn please with a side of syrup. It’s so sweet.
No matter what has gone on during the day or how testy she has been during the bedtime routine, this always makes me smile. It’s also a reminder to me, if not a warning, that our children do watch us and listen to us closely. They mimic what they see and hear. The words we speak, the music we listen to, the things we say on the phone, the prayers we utter–all of these are soaked up by little minds that are learning how to be…
And now I must go and remind myself that God does give them individual personalities and that every little rotten thing she does is not in direct correlation to something she has seen me do or say. Like when she’d rather beat up her sister than give her a hug. Or when she’d rather lay down on the ground and scream than walk to the next aisle with me. Ahem. I wonder if I could institute a prayer time during those moments…
We had a relaxing Independence Day. It actually didn’t pick up steam until about 5:30 pm. We rode the metro into the city, got off at Farragut West and walked past the White House on our way to my cousin’s place. She lives on Pennsylvania Avenue and we were heading there to watch the fireworks from her rooftop.
After a delicious dinner we headed up to the rooftop (almost to be denied, but we found a different entrance). At about 200 feet above the street you get a great view of monuments and museums. I would live here if the apartments weren’t as small as our hotel room (but very well appointed, which makes a big difference)…and if the rent/mortgage weren’t as expensive as a year’s wages.
I didn’t take many pictures that night. We were reveling in the fact that we were celebrating the birth of our nation, and its independence from Mother England, from a view that was almost literally breathtaking.
The Capitol
The Washington Monument behind the National Museum of Natural History
The rooftop view
Pedestrian traffic after the fireworks
It’s difficult to make anything out in that last picture but it’s the hoards who watched the fireworks on the National Mall. I didn’t even get the most crowded part. Gobs and gobs of people came streaming down the street trying to be some of the first to catch the trains back out to the suburbs. We did not partake in this. We waited about half an hour (while watching the same fireworks show put to music on PBS) and by then everything was clear and there were no masses in the metro stations.
Thank you Kate for allowing us to invade your apartment and your evening! It was most memorable and I look forward to doing it again (please!).
These are mainly for my Christian readers, but really, they could apply to anyone’s life.
Whatever there may be in life; be it relationships, friendships, habits, pleasures, indulgences, whatever things those are, if they hinder your walk with God, if they make the reading of the Bible more dull, and your prayer life more dead, and the reality of eternity more dim, they should be cut loose. Greg Laurie in The Next Step: A Message on Discipleship
Everything we do and say is in the presence of God and everything we do and say may shape other’s perceptions of God. Pastor Shawn of Morningview Baptist Church
To deny oneself means to give up your will and desires to accept Jesus’ lordship. Jesus has lordship over us because He purchased us. We are no longer our own. It means not to settle for just being yourself (as in, “well, that’s just who I am”). Pastor Shawn of Morningview Baptist Church
I’ve been thinking about these quotes a lot lately. I know I definitely need to work on these things in my life (the plank in my own eye), but I think they could benefit other Christians as well (the speck in theirs). As a Christian, can you say that everything you do and say is exemplary and an honor to God? Your actions and words, written and spoken, bear a lot of weight for those who see, hear and read them. We should always be thinking about the Kingdom and the work that needs to be done. We should always be conscious of the discipleship we’re doing, whether it’s for the good and for the good of the Kingdom, or the bad and the detriment of the Kingdom. Because, face it, we’re always influencing people. We will never do this perfectly but we should strive to make it easier and easier each day. Convicted, I am. And I hope that if you are a Christian these quotes are morsels you can take and ponder over the next couple of days.
Who are we trying to serve? Ourselves or Christ?
With the downturn in the economy it seems like it’s cool now to save money and budget. Or at least to talk about it. For months I’ve been noticing articles in fashion magazines about how bad rich women feel about going out and spending extravagant amounts on frivolous things. Things like, “I just feel bad spending $15,000 on a dress when my husband’s trust fund could get slashed by, like, 50% making us only millionaires instead of billionaires.” I seriously read something like that in Harper’s Bazaar a couple months ago and wanted to comment on it, but life got in the way. Something those ladies rarely ever have to worry about.
But anyway. We have made budgeting a part of our marriage from the beginning. We’re both savers at heart, but I do tend to have a little spend-love in me, and if the mood hits I could blow, say $60 in Ulta on makeup for one night at a ball. Yep. Totally not like the normal me. I’m so cheap that my watch battery went dead in Missouri, that’s 15 months ago, and I just haven’t replaced it yet because I haven’t found a good time where I want to pay $7 for a new battery. Wait. That’s not cheap, that’s just illogical. Whatever.
The fact is we’re budgeters and we stick to our budget. We’re so anal we’ve broken down our budget into great detail and we itemize everything at the end of the month and know exactly what we spent in each category. This is why I began hyperventilating yesterday when I was doing the bills for July and accounting for what was spent in June.
We’ve only been in DC since the 16th of June and have already spent several hundred dollars eating out. I almost puked up all of that food, delicious as it was…the first time around. Granted it’s a little harder to cook in the hotel room, and if we’re out anytime around dinner we usually just grab something, because to drive back to the hotel room and then wait for me to make something would be torturous. Also, there are hundreds if not thousands of restaurants around here just waiting to be eaten at, and even the June issue of Washingtonian was all about 100 cheap restaurants that are still good. I just looked and we haven’t eaten at one of them yet.
I do see a light at the end of the tunnel though and we may reach the end of that tunnel on 01 August. My husband’s job gives him a housing allowance based on the cost of living of this area. We are free to find any house we want to live in, but if the rent/mortgage is above that allowance then we have to pay “out of pocket” for the balance of said rent/mortgage. It’s always been our goal to be at or under that allowance. And thank You, God (seriously) the house that we will be renting falls well below that allowance.
This was one of our goals when looking for a house because we knew the cost of living in DC would be astronomical (compared to say, Alabama or Missouri). We also knew that we would want to eat out and do a lot of the cool things around here. There are a lot of free things in the area, but we haven’t found a free restaurant yet, and kids’ activities (gymnastics, dance, etc) are only going to be more expensive here. Not to mention parking meters and the metro both cost and it ads up week by week. Our plan was to rent a house under the allowance so we would have more money in our budget to go towards outings and other things.
The hotel we’re at is right at the housing allowance so all of the extras we’ve been doing and eating are having to come out of pocket. This hurts when it’s above what we’ve budgeted for. I’m thankful that come August 1st we’ll be paying our rent and getting a little bit extra for all of the extra things we want to do.
So, I’m about to crack open that Washingtonian magazine and underline all of those cheap, delicious restaurants we need to try while we’re here.
Not So SAHM 