Tiny Dragons

Jacob and I have talked about possibly starting to do children's books and educational toys and stuff like that. I know a decent amount about children's learning and he's a great artist. Chances are we won't do it but we've talked about it. If someday we do, we want to name it "Tiny Dragons" because we think it sounds cool. We're dorks.

So today while Liam is napping I felt restless. I wanted to do something but didn't really want to do anything. So I decided to play and make some "business cards" for our not real business.

HAHAHAHA. I am not an artist. But this was too funny to not share. It looks like my children drew those dragons... But they didn't. It was me :)

I think we'll leave the artwork to the hubby. 

Hopefully everyone at least gets a good laugh out of it! 

Another week...

Here we go again! Today started off pretty rough. But I feel fairly in good spirits now... Let's hope it lasts! My meeting with the school was cancelled today because Jack's teacher is out (again!) today so hopefully we'll reschedule for next week. This may work to my favor being that our new tutoring company is starting up this week so maybe they'll be able to tag along and give me some pointers? We'll see! I must admit I'm a little glad it was cancelled, as much as I want to get these meetings over and get a plan in place I'm excited to spend the afternoon bumming around the house :) It's dreary and overcast here today and it's incredibly hard for me to find motivation on days like these!


So far the reading of the New Testament is going really well! It hasn't even been quite a week yet but I haven't missed a day! I can fairly confidently say that reading the Bible has become routine at this point. I decided to do my reading around noon each day which works out perfectly for two reasons. One, it kind of breathes fresh air into my day, I feel refreshed and accomplished when I finish, even though it's only a few chapters each day I'm sticking to it! Two, it offers me an absolutely legitimate "excuse" to take a break in the middle of the day. Jacob's home for lunch and so I leave him and Liam to themselves to have lunch together and watch some cartoons. It works out perfectly!


I've read the book of Matthew a few times before, I can honestly say it's one of the very few books of the Bible I've read in it's entirety more than once. It's interesting to see all the verses I underlined on previous reads, and to reflect on what they mean to me now. It's kind of a bonus to re-reading the one chapter I've already covered before!


So in today's reading there were several verses that stood out to me (which is pretty common, my Bible is going to be just straight underlined before long :)) but the one that really hit me was Matthew 16:24-25:


Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.
For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.


If there is one thing I cannot deny it's my lack of denying myself. I'm entirely selfish and self-indulgent. But I guess I've always kind of chocked it up to "the human condition." In the end, that's just a cop-out. I'm not 100% perfectly sure how to do this. But I know that I need to... That I want to... 


And so with that I'm going to make baby-steps too. My goal for this week is to attend church regularly. I know, I know, it's terrible that I have to make a goal of this. It's become kind of a Sunday tradition for me to get out of going and Jacob taking the boys by himself. Which, not gonna lie, is awesome! It allows me a few hours at home, by myself, to do whatever I want. But where's the trade off? Is that few hours of alone time worth my salvation? Now don't get me wrong, I do not believe that going to church necessarily reflects whether or not you're going to Heaven. But for me, in order to become the person I need to be, to become Christ-like, I must submerge myself in His word. And the easiest and best way to do that is attending Church. For awhile we had been attending a class at the Orthodox Church on Tuesdays, a class at the Baptist Church Wednesdays, Saturday nights and Sunday mornings were at the Orthodox Church, and Sunday evenings were at the Baptist Church. I would be lying if I were to deny the fact that I was feeling pretty darn good spiritually then. 


Although many of the beliefs I hold aren't quite in line with the Baptist Church their classes and fellowship are AMAZING. And it spurred many a good conversation between the hubby and I about our faith. So we're going to go back. I actually received a phone call from the Associate Pastor over there this morning "checking in" with us to invite us back. That's one thing that I really appreciate about them, although it's literally been TWO months since we've been there our boys receive post cards from the Sunday school class every couple weeks and we've received several letters from the Pastors. It's nice to feel like you're missed! And I miss them too!


So that's my goal this week, attend Church! It feels a little ridiculous to even write that but it's true, and I absolutely need that to be a priority in my life!! 

A New Day

I woke up this morning with a "new day" kinda attitude which was much appreciated. Sometimes I get so caught up in EVERYTHING that each day is just a continuation of the day before and quite frankly that's exhausting. Thanks in part to a phone call from a dear friend last night and having a good heart-to-heart with the hubby, I went to sleep last night with a kind of peace I hadn't felt in awhile.


I refuse to make new year's resolutions, I never stick to them and they always just feel like a defeat in the end. So I've decided that each week I'm going to make a goal, whether it be to start doing something, stop doing something, etc. I've got a lot of things I want to fix in my life that require basically a whole new lifestyle. But those quick fix, fast change plans never seem to stick with me. 


And today's the first day! I've talked for some time about doing a Bible reading plan but never seem to get around to doing it. Honestly, with all that I'm juggling these days to jump on one of these "Bible in 90 days" bandwagons is completely daunting. I want to do this, not attempt to do this and quit because it's frustrating. So last night I found a New Testament in 90 days plan and that's what I'm doing. It's significantly less scary, it's about 4 chapters each day which is totally 100% manageable. 


I just finished reading the first 4 chapters of Matthew. It's quite appropriate that the beginning of the book talks about the birth of Christ. As most of the world has just finished celebrating Christmas (and us too!) the church we are joining operates on the "Old Calendar" meaning they're behind the calendar most people use. Tonight is Christmas Eve in the Orthodox Church and we're going to attend Liturgy preparing us for the birth of Christ tomorrow. It's all kind of weird really, but in a way it's kind of cool for us still because this year we get TWO Christmases! The first was your All-American standard Christmas with decorations and gifts and the second is "the real Christmas" where we exchange no gifts and truly just marvel in the miracle of Christ's birth- the reason for the season if you will. I'm really looking forward to experiencing Christmas in the Orthodox Church for the first time.


So I've done it! I've successfully committed to day 1! It feels pretty good. I think that by doing this all slowly and gradually I'm going to have a higher chance of actually succeeding. I'm not even worrying about plotting out what the goals will be each week at this point, I figure I'll decide when I get there (preferably at least the day before of course). Today's been pretty darn productive otherwise too. I managed to go grocery shopping, clean a little, do a little laundry, and even pack Jack's lunches up to next Friday!


Today was indeed a new day. And tomorrow will be too. And that's what I need to keep focusing on- one day at a time... 

Getting back on the horse...

Back in May & June my family and I went super healthy. We're talking no gluten (wheat, oats, barley, or rye), no casein (milk products), no preservatives, no artificial flavorings, no food coloring. It was insanely difficult but we all got super healthy. We ate 90% fruits and veggies. It was wonderful. Jacob and I both lost a ton of weight and have honestly never felt better. The reason why we did it was because children with Autism sometimes improve on a GF/CF (gluten/casein free) diet. Everyone was incredibly skeptical that it would make a difference. Our behavioral consultant at the time said she had seen at least 50 families try it and only saw improvement in 3 at best. Tough news to hear when you're about to embark on a difficult and expensive journey but we figured it was worth a shot. And it worked. After about a month on the diet she looked at me and said "I can hardly believe it, but I think it's working." The tantrums subsided and his attention span improved drastically. But somehow we still fell off the bandwagon. It sounds terrible. How could we quit doing something that was improving everyone's lives so drastically? But it was incredibly expensive and at the time we were really struggling with our finances. And it was so much work. I was having to drive across the island to get the things I needed which meant if I was missing 1 ingredient to a meal we were out of luck. Anyone who knows me well knows that I am NOT an organized person at all. So it was tough. And I failed. After a couple months of doing so well it all fell apart. Quite frankly I don't even know what specifically happened. It was a slow fade... "Oh we'll get McDonald's just this once... what will it hurt?" turned into "Oh we can eat Hamburger Helper once in awhile" and soon became just eating trash all over again.


But we're going to try it again. We're not going to go as crazy as last time. We're going to do no preservatives, artificial anything, and as much organic as we possibly can. I'm really excited to get healthy again. I feel so sluggish and tired these days it's insane. Plus I've probably packed on another 15 pounds yet again. Now that my foot will (hopefully) soon be all better it's about time to try to get back on track. Eating right and exercising! So come Thursday when we get paid again I will be off to do a great big shopping excursion, stocking up on all the healthy alternatives to the crap we've been buying the last few months. Which means I've only got a few days to dig out and dust off all my old recipes and start making lists. I'm nervous but very excited!!


On another note, Jacob and I have decided to finally take the step to try to become catechumens in the Orthodox Church. We've been looking into Orthodoxy for over two years now and have yet to take the plunge. But I feel ready. We've finally found a church we feel like we can call home and fit in at. Our only real problem at this point is our boys. Two and three year olds don't hold up well in quiet church settings- at least not ours. But we're working on making them coloring books made of Icons (Icons are images of Christ and other important people in the church that are a super big part of Orthodoxy) and coming up with other appropriate activities for them to do in a church setting. So that's another big thing on our to-do list this week. We're hoping to try again this Sunday. It's been several months since we last tried bringing them to Liturgy so maybe this will be the time we have success!! As for Jacob and I, we have been attending catechumen classes at the church for a few weeks now although we aren't yet catechumens. We're hoping to speak with Father Paul tomorrow evening after class to see what we need to do to cement ourselves on the path to become catechumens. I'm very excited to finally be moving in the right direction.


Well I'm going to end with a video of a song I heard while I was typing this up tonight. This song really spoke to my heart. Definitely going to be picking up her CD on iTunes!!