Today my husband moved out and I am so happy!

That is right. My husband told me he can't take the yelling, fighting and screaming anymore. He needed to leave me; he needed some time alone. He knew that it would only get worse when the kids were home over the summer, and he had to get out before that happened. I couldn't agree with him more. It was time for him to go and give me some peace too.

You didn't think I was talking about him leaving ME did you? He finally got a new office space and has left our small home office to work out of the house!!! That yelling and fighting- we do have two kids remember. I can now practice my yoga in private. Do you know how hard it is to explain a reverse triangle when you are trying to balance on one hand and one foot??? I can now look something up on the Internet without telling him why I am on the Lowe's page for the second time that day! I can mop the floor without him walking through the kitchen with dirty shoes on the still wet (and once clean) floor. I can answer the phone again without explaining that it was just another automated call. I could go on, but this blog does need to end at some point. Yes, I too can have peace!

In all seriousness, I need to give God the credit. He must have given us each supernatural grace. It was hard to have my privacy invaded every day, 24 hours a day; and I know it was hard for my husband to have so many interruptions. His departure from our home really did help him NOT to leave our home for good... In the last seven months, we have seen God provide for us. We were always able to make our mortgage payments, feed our kids, and even laugh along the way. God has provided us (yes, I am including myself in that us because I now have my house back) with a really great office space that met some very particular needs. We were able to hire one employee back just days before he got an offer from someone else. God took care of every detail. It is not always easy trusting God because he has an uncanny way of providing what you need at the VERY last minute. But one thing is for certain- he will always provide what you need today.

Today my kids are acting like Dr. Seuss characters.

Today my kids dressed up like Dr. Seuss characters. My daughter is a "wocket in your pocket" and my son is "pup". Now I believe that this dress up contest is a pretty good fit for my kids considering the kind of Dr. Seuss-like behavior I have seem from them lately.

For instance, my son decided that he wanted to make an enormous slingshot just like the one he saw on a cartoon. Oh my! I walked into MY bedroom only to find that my son had taken my exercise band, tied the ends to my weights, and dropped one weight behind my dresser and one behind the foot board of my bed. This in turn made a great slingshot to launch a TENNIS BALL across my room!!! Yes, his idea did technically work but that doesn't mean it was a good idea. Don't tell me that isn't something the cat in the hat wouldn't have done. Someday he may just take over the world. And believe me, I know that my daughter wasn't just "innocently" standing by- I got her number now.

OK, I may not be overly enthusiastic with my kid's engineering skills to launch solid objects around a room, but I am proud of something else. My daughter was very excited about dressing up like a Dr. Seuss character today. I warned her that she is now in third grade and most of the kids were not going to dress up this year. She decided that she didn't care if other people weren't doing it- she wanted to do it anyway. Wow! A wave a relief rolled over me when I realized how much she has grown up. I was so excited that she wanted to stand on her own that I even paid $10.00 for that orange wig. (Remember I am Dutch, so $10.00 is a lot of money for me!) My daughter said that she wanted to do something fun, even if other students weren't going to participate.

That made me think. There are so many things in this world that God has made for us to ENJOY. I'm getting on my soap box again, but God really does want us to be happy. Sometimes it may take a little courage to stand up for what we believe in, but it will be worth it. Perhaps, it may mean saying no to the play date so you can have some family time. Maybe, you may need to choose a corny movie instead of one that will fill your mind with things God doesn't want us to think about. It could be something as simple as choosing not to spend money you don't need to in order to have the freedom to live without money worries later on. The truth we need to remember is that God makes suggestions for how we live in order to guide us to lasting happiness. It may take courage to make the choice which causes us to stand out, but it will be worth the enjoyment we will get from it later. Go ahead, get crazy, read a Dr. Seuss book today and have a laugh on me.

Today my son cut his own hair!!!

Today my son has a new hair cut- one he did himself! I know "they" say that every child does this at some point. However, does every child do this just before the class picture is scheduled???

You see it happened last night. My husband left to drive 500 miles to look at a truck he saw on-line (everyone does this right???). In order to convince my son it was time to go to bed, I started getting ready for bed myself. I was washing my face when I notice my son at the other sink in our bathroom putting water on his face. Of course I asked him what he was doing. *** please note that I really, truly wasn't being an unobservant mother*** My son sweetly (oh, how sweetly) replied that he was washing his face just like me. He then came back into the bathroom and started pouring water on his hair. Umm....

OK, so in hind sight, I realize now that I should have asked a few more questions. I mean, why was he putting water on his hair and not just his face??? He then asked me where daddy's black combs were. Yeah, I admit it- I gave him a comb. At that point I contentedly sighed and started thinking about how James Dobson wrote that boys would want to imitate their father and this was proper psychological development. I was really happy that we are on the right track. Oops, don't I know by now that pride comes before a fall??? Let me tell you that James Dobson did NOT write about what happened next.

My son left the bathroom and I just knew he was getting into bed. Oh no! How wrong I was. He came running back and told me "I cut my hair". I didn't have my glasses on yet and couldn't quite see if he was kidding. I kept asking him over, and over, and over again "are you serious?" Yes, he was serious. He had gotten scissors out of daddy's fly fishing stuff (guess I'll have to explain that to my husband later...) and cut two large pieces out of his bangs! After laughing so hard I cried, I then told my son that he is very talented in many, many things but cutting hair isn't one of them and that only adults can cut hair. He was so proud of his actions that he had no concept of the disastrous results. I asked him two questions: did you look in the mirror when you did this? "Yes, mommy!" Why did you do this? "So I could look good." I didn't have the heart to tell him that he didn't actually accomplish his goal.

After I laughed at him, my daughter laughed at him, and I called my husband barely able to get the story out, my son realized that he might have messed up. He asked me to fix his bangs and (being the mother of the year that I am) I told him NO- daddy is the one who needs to fix it. Come on, I had to let my husband see this! We all need some comic relief right now!

This morning as we were leaving for school, my son realized that he still had two chunks of hair missing. Since we were waiting for daddy to fix it, my son was left to come up with a solution. He went upstairs to get some of "daddy's jello" (hair gel) and promptly spiked his hair. To be honest, this was a pretty good solution and it shouldn't be too obvious today what happened in our house last night.

Sometimes I think our adult lives a little like my son's. Sometimes our lives seem pretty messed up. It looks to us that there are chunks of the plan for our lives missing. We can't understand why bad things happen and we don't know how to fix them. Even though it feels like we are all alone, let me assure you that God does have the entire plan. Don't be discouraged by missing pieces, God WILL take care of you. I think that all too often we hear the message that God really isn't there but please be encouraged that He is. It may mean a change in style (for your hair or they way you are trying to fix what is wrong) but there is a way out of your problems. God won't tell you NO and that someone else needs to fix it- He WILL do that Himself.

Today I need to tell you about our squeaky Christmas.

Now that the kids are back in school, I finally have a moment to catch up on the blog. We had a pretty quiet Christmas outside of one very squeaky night. Yes, I meant to write squeaky and no things were NOT squeaky clean!

You see it all started with our traditional trip to view Christmas lights. Each year we like to go to Starbucks, get our favorite Christmas drinks (I like the peppermint white mocha myself), and drive around our subdivision looking at all of the beautiful Christmas lights. We told the kids to get ready to go and soon my son walked into the kitchen with his travel backpack. At the time it seemed perfectly normal. He said that he wanted to bring the backpack because he had packed some toys for the car. OK, I'll admit it- I thought to myself "what a great thing for him to do- taking responsibility for himself". Oh, yes, pride does come before a fall.

We situated my son in the car and my daughter came running with her backpack. Also filled with "toys". The kids were whispering and laughing with each other quite a bit. You would have thought that at this point my mom radar would have been alerted but it wasn't. I thought that there were just really excited to look at Christmas lights (do you know any kids THAT excited to drive around on a sight-seeing trip???) Hey don't be too hard on me, our kids do seem to get along pretty well so all of the chumminess wasn't too out of the ordinary (really). We drove to Starbucks and were in the process of ordering our drinks when it happened.

My husband was speaking to the kind teenager manning the drive thru speaker when suddenly I heard this strange squeak. Um, wait a minute, it wasn't a strange sounding squeak- it was a rather familiar sounding squeak. And then I heard it again! This time is was a little more like a squeal. Suddenly it dawned on me and I turned around to ask with incredulity "DO YOU HAVE THE GUINEA PIGS IN THE CAR????" I'm not quite sure what the teenager in the drive thru thought hearing that statement in the middle of our order but to be honest, I didn't really care. My petrified daughter responded "yes". That is right, all of the whispering, laughing, sharing of secrets was due to the secret each child held in their own backpacks- a guinea pig.

My thoughts ran wild: what if they get out? is there a small hole they can get through? would they drop onto the road and get run over? how are we supposed to explain another dead guinea pig? Now I know these things wouldn't really happen but I never expected that my children would take the guinea pigs for a ride to happen either. We talked about how this was not the wisest decision and the possible (OK, not likely but possible) consequences. We removed the guinea pig from my 5 year old son's lap and put them both together in my daughter's bag; we returned them home; we then went on our traditional viewing of Christmas lights- without the guinea pigs.

I think sometimes we hide things in our bags too. My kids never thought through any of the consequences of bringing the guinea pigs into a car in just backpacks. They were not trying to do something wrong, but they weren't making wise decisions either. Sometimes I do unwise things myself (like sharing my opinions when it really isn't necessary, watching something on TV that wasn't the best choice for me to spend my time thinking about, or just being short with my family not thinking about how it would affect their feelings). When I get tired, I don't want to think about making the wisest choices, but that is what God wants. It is time for me to think about the unintended consequences of my actions and make the wise choice. How about you?