The Accidental Pastor's Wife

Just a quick note to let you know! Now I need to find a treadmill somewhere. Our hotel's exercise room is circa 1990.

Oh, and I've lost a total of 13 pounds!!!!

So I know the floors in hotel rooms are filthy, so are the bedspreads. You've got people sleeping above you and below you and next to you. You're all in the room together--and my baby WON'T sleep.

It's 6:30 a.m. and she's crawling around on the floor getting into everything and yawning...how in the world is she going to nap? I wish the bathroom was big enough to fit the pack and play!!!

Meh. Just had to whine a bit.

My family goes through copious amounts of milk in a week. And milk in our small, remote town is $3.79 a gallon!

But, I have found a way to beat the system. *cackling laughter*

I keep an eye on the expiration dates of the gallons. When it's the day before, I ask, "If I come in first thing tomorrow morning, will you give me that milk for free since you're just going to throw it out?"

To which our managers have said, "Sure-take as much as you want."

Last week I got 6 gallons for free! We used every last drop and it didn't go bad, even though we were still using it 6 days past the date. I keep it nice and cold in the back of the fridge. Yesterday I got 2 (since we're going out of town this week).

In total, since I've started this diabolical plan, I've received 18 gallons of FREE MILK (saving me $62.00!!!).


HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!

I was reminded of a favorite passage of scripture that deals with my fear of man: Luke 12:4-5

I say to you, my friends, do not be afriad of those who kill the body and after that have no more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear: fear the One who, after He has killed, has authority to cast into hell; yes, I tell you, fear Him!

This might seem a strange passage to find comforting. Here's what I'm thinking-

1. Man truly has no ultimate power over me. I must live to please God alone.

2. God is loving, but He is also holy and just. His love and his justice are two sides of the same coin and in my mind, encompass His whole character. Further on in the verses, in 6 and 7 Jesus tells me that I am more valuable to Him than sparrows. See, justice and love?

3. Judgement is real and it should be our motivation to evangelize the lost and to pray that God would save those who don't know Him as Lord and Savior.

4. While God is like my Daddy, there is also a necessary reverence I must feel toward him, an AWE.

Just some stuff I've been thinking about...

What am I? Am I classical? Am I a unit study gal? Am I a Charlotte Mason person? Do I use a combination like My Father's World? Should I stick with what's easy and familiar like a workbook type program like Abeka? Do I start Latin? Should I do Shurley Grammar instead of Abeka language?

I almost wish I had NO options and just had someone tell me what to do!!!

TWO MILES WITHOUT STOPPING!!!!

This is huge for the anti-athlete that I am. I couldn't run a mile when I was young and a bean pole. Yippee!

That's all I wanted to tell you...

We hosted a family for dinner last night for the first time. We all had a wonderful time, except when I pulled out the two pans of that delicious cannoloni--they were burned on the bottom, completely, to where you'd have to just scoop out the filling and top layer of noodle and cheese and sauce. I discovered this at 6 o'clock, when they were scheduled to arrive. I also made a vegetable risotto, but let the veggies cook too long so they turned this ugly green/brown color. Nice.

So I called the local Italian restaurant in town and asked them how fast I could buy a pan of lasagna (at $50!) they said a half hour, so I JUST DID IT!

We ate bruschetta and I made uncomfortable, nervous small talk because I'd burned and ruined everything.

This family is super nice and didn't really care what we ate, but I did, because there are few things I actually do well and I suppose it was God's way of humbling me...

For a few years now I've been making italian favorites like manicotti and canoloni with egg roll wrappers instead of dried pasta tubes. I cannot tell you the difference it makes! All those egg roll wrappers are are sheets of fresh pasta, which I don't have time to make from scratch. So I just roll the filling inside, make some sauce, top with mozzarella and fancy parmesan cheese and I've got a restaurant-worthy dinner.

Everyone eats it up! So try it!

You know I'm trying to make an effort to spice things up with our homeschooling, so today since we were learning about the Franks and how their chieftans had long flowing hair, we decided to make yarn wigs as directed in the Story of the World Middle Ages Activity book. Sounds easy enough: wrap two skeins of yarn around the kitchen chairs, cut one end, take the long hair sew a strip of felt down the middle-instant wig! Well, I'm a sewing loser and my bobbin ran out, I tried and tried to refill it to no avail. The yarn is so THICK I almost can't get it under the foot of the machine. So now I have all these pieces of yarn and can't figure out how to attach them to the felt. I also have one chair still wrapped in the yarn.

I tried making a castle out of cocoa puffs last year, with walls made out of the cereal and marshmallows and butter and held together with toothpicks. That was one big flop, a mess of cereal and stickiness. From the same book, too.

I just want to quit. I feel like everything I try is a failure. I'm suppose to get beyond the textbooks and workbooks and DO stuff with my children but that never works out well either. Mine is not the perfect family doing projects together and learning and growing. Mine is mom trying to read the directions, screwing it up, the kids getting impatient and bored with whatever she has planned.

I can't win. I feel the darkness closing in on me again. I'm fighting the daily battle of "I wanna play video games." My 4 year old just spilled all the straight pins all over the kitchen floor. My friend who put her daughter back in school just invited my 4 year old to come play because her second child is bored now that the oldest sister is off at school. Nice. Yeah. My house is a huge mess: toys, clean laundry, thread, yarn...

My pet peeve is projects that dont't give you enough information. I need homeschooling for dummies or something.

I also need to do "everything without grumbling and complaining", another impossible task.