OCC - Thinking of others at Christmas

This week was collection week for Operation Christmas Child. So we packed two shoeboxes, one for a girl and one for a boy.  We also bought stuff a few weeks ago for our church to use in the shoeboxes. Then, we spent 4 afternoons this week helping at our church which is a drop off location. So far our church has collected over 200 boxes!

If you haven't packed a shoebox and would like to, there's still a bit of time.  Or start now for next year, we're going to start collecting stuff throughout the year for OCC shoeboxes. Maybe next year we will pack more!  It's a great way to get the kids involved in thinking of others at Christmas!

We also used this time to teach our kids about other cultures and parts of the world.  You can explain things like, if you give them a coloring book, you also need to give some crayons or colored pencils because they probably don't have any and a nightlight probably isn't a good idea. You can also track the shoeboxes that you give so you'll get an email when they're delivered, letting you know where they went.  And last but not least, you can talk about the importance of sharing the word of Jesus with others.

Promoting Thankfulness

One of the things we constantly struggle with is getting our kids to understand just how blessed they are.

At Thanksgiving time, I like to do something to make them think about some of the things that they're thankful for.  Last year I got a few branches from our tree and cut out some paper leaves. We then wrote things that we were thankful for on the leaves and hung them from the branch.  The girls enjoyed it and this year one of them asked if we could do it again.  We replaced our tree though (the old one died) and I didn't want to risk hurting the new one.  So instead we started the wall of thankfulness.

I was going to do it in the kitchen where we would see it during dinner, but I was afraid it wouldn't stand out well against the wall paper.  So, I used a wall in our entry way.  I just printed a sign and taped it up along with a few of the bigger more obvious ones. (Last year we ended up with a whole bunch of leaves naming individuals because they were friends, so I tried to head that off a bit with Family and Friends).  I was trying to decide if I wanted to buy some poster tack for the thankful items or if I wanted to use tape, when I remembered the shaped post-it notes I bought a while back.  They're working great, they stay up and I don't need to worry about the paint getting messed up!

I'm linking this up with the Works for Me Wednesday post at We Are THAT Family.

Words...

There's a book The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman which outlines 5 primary ways people express and receive love.

1. Words of affirmation
2. Acts of kindness
3. Quality time
4. Gifts
5. Physical touch

The idea is, that most people have a primary love language and that's the way they tend to feel and express love. So someone who's Love Language is Gifts, likes to get gifts, it makes them feel loved.  Similarly, since that's how they feel loved, they tend to give gifts as a way of showing love.

So, as part of my family goal, a few weeks ago, I had my oldest daughter take the quiz on their site for kids.  I was totally surprised by the results from it.  It turns out that Words of Affirmation is her love language.

Since she's taken the quiz, I've really been trying to watch what it is that I say to her (and to everyone really). Instead of showing her love, we were often doing just the opposite with what we were saying.  Don't get me wrong, we don't call names, do insults, etc, but we were yelling a lot, this was ending in a lot of tears.  I think I'm seeing an improvement.

In the end, I'd like her to feel like she can come to us with anything she has to say, without fear of us criticizing her, but I also want her to learn to express herself with words better than she has been.  So hopefully going forward, I'll be setting a better example and she'll learn.

As the Hawk Nelson song goes:

Words can build you up

Words can break you down

Start a fire in your heart or

Put it out

Are your words building people up? or breaking them down? Are they putting a fire in someone's heart? or putting it out?

Praying...

We incorporate prayer into our family life by praying before the girls leave in the mornings, before meals, and before bed. The girls usually do the before meal prayers and the bedtime prayers. When they were younger, we taught them some of the more common kids prayers.  But as they got older, I tried to get them to make it and pray more from their heart.  That ended up in either a fight, or them repeating a made up prayer over and over.

Recently, it dawned on me that since they're always the ones that pray before meals and before bed, they don't have anything to model after other than the standard "Now I lay me down to sleep" and "God is good, God is great" prayers.  So, I've been trying to make a better effort to model prayer for them.  There's no reason for THEM to always be the one to say the prayer before dinner now.  So, this week I'm going to try to say the prayer at least once before a meal and I've been trying to pray with each of them before bed time where I say the prayer (usually in addition to their own prayer).

How do you teach your kids to pray from their hearts?

I'm still here...

It's been a while since I've posted I know.  I've been keeping up with MOST of the goals though...

Physical goal (Weight loss)
At one point, I was down to 214, but I've gained some of that back.  I've been struggling with fitting exercise in with work. I really need to get back to working out.  However, when you consider that I'd planned on loosing 2 lbs a month and we're just going in to April, I'm still on track, just barely though.

Spiritual Goal (Read the whole Bible this year)
I've been keeping up with this one, I still have a few chapters of Matthew to catch up on, but otherwise, I've been sticking with the goal and reading every day.

Family Goal (Do one thing a week with the kids to help them come closer to God)
This is one that has been slipping.  We went to Winter Jam a few weeks ago and saw my daughter's favorite singer, Toby Mac and introduced her to a few new artists.  She got to learn the inspiration behind some of Matthew West's songs, which I really like.  Now that Easter is upon us, I made resurrection rolls with my oldest daughter this morning and I read part of Luke to her.

Personal Goal (Learn Java so I can write an app)
This one I've really fallen behind in.  But I really want the app I have in mind.  I spent several hours doing work that I could've used the app for today.  So hopefully I can learn what I need to write it.

Financial Goal
The new job is going well. I feel like I'm really helping out there. Hopefully they're feeling the same way!

So, wish me luck, I'm hoping we'll be able to settle into a routine once Easter's over and I'll be able to take some time for the other goals.

Financial Goal: Met!

I'm very happy to announce that I've met my financial goal for the year!  Today, I start my new job!  I'm still going to be testing software.  I'm actually hoping that I can help them automate the testing too, so that way I'll get a little bit of experience in that area, while I share my experience with adding Quality Assurance to the software development process.

I'm really looking forward to working for this company, although the commute has me a little hesitant.  I'm going to be going 40 mins each way.  So that means less time with my family.  I'm a little nervous, it's been 15 years since I've started a new job!

My husband and I have set some long term goals for our family financially, so hopefully this will help us get there.

Please pray that this works out.

New week, New verse

Our new Bible verse for the week is:

I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. (Psalm 119:11) 

This week, I'm giving my girls a "Heart Attack".  I'm putting a different heart shaped post it on their bead room door every night with something I love about them written on it. That way, they'll see it when they get up in the morning.  Things like: "I love your smile", "I love the way you play with your sister", etc.

Too often, we focus on what needs to change in our kids, and not on the happy things.  It's hard to get our kids to focus on happy thoughts, when we're not doing it ourselves.  I also think it's healthy to build our kids up.

It's not fair

Yesterday's entry in Made to Crave talked about "It's not fair".  A very timely entry seeing how my husband has lost more weight than I have, despite us doing similar amounts of exercise and my eating a salad every day in place of his sandwich and chips.

I've known for a while now that we have significantly different metabolisms.  It just makes loosing weight together really difficult.  Not to say though that I don't want to do it with him, it makes it easier when there's an accountability partner there.  It just makes it a bit frustrating.  I really need to find a way to channel that frustration into my exercise.

How do you cope with the difference in your husband's eating and your own?

Fitness Goal: Made to Crave

Have you read the book Made to Crave?

I picked up a copy last year and it has sat on the shelf unread for a long time. But with my Fitness Goal this year, I knew I would need more than just trying to stick to a diet and exercising.  Don't get me wrong, those are both important and helpful, I've already started to loose weight. However, I think it's important to think about WHY you eat.

In looking at how I eat, I realize, I rarely eat out of hunger.  Instead, stress and my brain get in the way. For example last night, I opened a box of cookies.  I cannot get those cookies out of my head, now that the box is open and I know it, I'm probably going to finish it.  I'm craving them. Made to crave talks about how to use God to overcome those cravings.  It's divided into 21 days and is designed as something you can do with a group, since there are discussion questions at the end of each day's reading.  But I'm reading it on my own.

Stress is another trigger that I have for eating.  The other day, I ate 3-4 pieces of candy before I realized what I was doing!  It's really more mindless eating.  So I need to start being more intentional with what I am doing and watch so that I don't get to those 4 pieces of candy without realizing it.  So, going forward, I'm going to try to stop and think about what I eat.  Am I eating for the right reasons?  Am I really hungry? or is it just that the food is on my mind?  If it's not for the right reason, I'm going to try to not eat it.  If I can't get it out of my mind, I'm going to turn to God for help.

I love Lysa's book because she's really upfront about it.  She starts out by saying that she still doesn't crave carrots.  The realism helps me realize just how much I DO need God's help.

Now I realize that some people are wired differently and they need to eat even when they're not hungry, just so that their bodies have the necessary nutrition.  I'm NOT one of those people.

Why do you eat? Any other tips to get past the cravings? Have you read Lysa's book?  Check out their website.

Family Goal update

The girls really liked the idea of the jar and proceeded to add two or three slips of paper each to it.  They've slowed down now that it's been around for a few days though.

So my next step in the goal was to introduce Bible verses, the girls know some verses and that's great, but they don't know many of them, and frankly neither do I. So my next step is to help us learn (memorize) more verses.  It's easier for their young brains than my older one, but I'm trying.  To help with it, I've asked my husband to pick a different verse each week for us.  And then I'm posting it on the sliding door in our kitchen, which is right next to the table.  I picked the first verse, just to get us started, but my husband has picked one for next week.

I'm hoping to find a frame or chalkboard that I can hang on the wall but for now, this is working. The girls have almost got this one memorized and it has only been two days.

I'm interested in hearing ideas on how you help your family get to know God better.

Family Goal

The last of the five goals is a family goal.  My goal is to do something with my girls, once a week that will help them become closer to God.  This week, I'm going to start a jar like this.  And allow each person in the family to put in papers with happy or good things that happen this year.

At the beginning of next year, we will open the jar and read all the slips of paper.  For now the jar is going to sit in the middle of our table.

Two down, 22 to go!

If you read my side bar, you might notice that I adjusted my weight loss goal a bit.  I'd really like to be 200 lbs or less by the end of the year.  Since when I weighed myself I was 224 lbs, I decided to adjust my goal to loose 24 lbs this year, which makes it an even 2 lbs a month.  Still reasonable.  Will I be done after that? No, I'll still have more to loose, but I don't want to over aim nor do I want to loose it in an unhealthy way.  So, I'll stick with the 24 lbs this year.

I've got an interview today in a few hours.  Please pray that God will make it clear if this is the job He wants me to have or if He's got something else in mind.  I really would like to do what He wants but, I'm struggling with knowing what exactly that is.

Financial Goal

I've set my Physical goal, and my Spiritual goal, and now I'm going to talk Finances.

This is a difficult subject right now, since I'm unemployed. So, the obvious goal is to get a job.  Which is actually going to be my goal.  I know a lot of women are happy being stay at home moms.  Don't get me wrong, I can see that, but I don't think it's right for me.  I would feel guilty then with every dollar I spend, especially since both of my kids are in school, so we're not paying child care.  If it made sense financially for me to stay home, I'd consider it, but it doesn't.

So with that in mind, I'm going to continue my job search and see if I can find my Dream Job (those do exist right?).  I've worked for about 15 years testing computer software.  So, clearly that's an option for me.  I've worked on everything from mainframes the size of a refrigerator to mobile devices like the iPhone.  But, I've also done work in food service in the past and I have a degree in Mathematics. So, is now the time for a career change? or should I continue down the software path?

So, my financial goal is to decide on a career and go get it!

Personal Goal

Next up, Personal Goal!

This one I struggled with.  I thought about just doing the Iron Craft Challenge every two weeks, but I'm hoping to do that anyway and I don't think it's that much of a stretch for me to do.  So I thought about finishing some of the projects I've got laying around. But, would that take all year?  Maybe? But some I've decided that I'm not going to do.

So I decided to choose something that will stretch me a bit and will maybe help me with one of the other goals, getting a job.  What did I pick?  I want to learn Java, so that I can write an application that will run on my Android phone.

To start this, I need an idea for an app.  There are a lot out there already.  I'm going to think on it a bit while I learn the basics, maybe I'll start with "Hello World".

If you have a suggestion, feel free to comment below!

Spiritual Goal

So, yesterday I told you my Fitness Goal. Today, we're going to talk about my Spiritual Goal.

In 2013, I want to read the entire Bible.  I've read bits and pieces of it, and whole books, but I don't think I've covered the entire thing. So, I'm going to follow a reading plan and read a little bit each day.  However, you might've noticed, that it's not January 1 anymore, we're more than 15 days into January, so I've got some catching up to do!

The reading plan that I am following is actually in the daily devotional Our Daily Bread, that I do.  I can just click the link after I've read the devotional and go to my daily reading.

However, if you don't want to use their's there is this site which has a number of different reading plans (including the same one that Our Daily Bread uses).  You can even start on today and just end this time next year instead of the end of 2013, it shifts the verses for you.  Lots of different translations too!

Have you read the Bible cover to cover?

Five Goals

At church on Sunday pastor suggested setting five types of goals for the year.

1. personal goals
2. family goals
3. financial goals
4. fitness goals
5. spiritual goals

I think that part of what makes us meet the goals that we set is accountability.  So in that spirit, I'm going to set five goals (one of each type) and then blog (hopefully the whole year) on my progress of meeting those goals.

I'm starting this as a new blog so that those who are interested in my progress can follow that separate from my craft blog.  The concept of a blog that's got a defined end to it is a bit odd to me and I'm always sad when the end comes for the blogs like that that I read.  So, I'm uncertain if I'll continue this beyond the end of the year, I'll revisit that when the time comes.

So, for today, I'm going to introduce you to my Fitness Goal.  My goal for the year is to loose 20 pounds.  That's less than two pounds a month, but I REALLY love food!  It will also mean more exercise.  Right now, since it's cold in my neck of the woods, that will probably mean Wii Fit. Have you tried it?  I've used it before and it did help me to get moving.  What other types of exercise do you like to do inside?

Stay tuned for more on the rest of my goals!