MISTY'S MORNINGS

As  Murphy's Law would have it, I had a cell phone crisis while reading Chapter One of The Hands Free Mama by Rachel Mary Stafford . I reached my cell data limit a full week prior to the turnover to a blank data page. A full week early.  This has never happened before. Not even close. At first I thought it was my kids.  Surely they had been streaming Netflix on my phone at basketball games all month. "Those little guys are racking up all my data!" I thought. "They really have a problem with screen time and it must be stopped. Time to tighten the reigns!" I checked the data usage. Nope. It was me. All me. Does it make it any better that I was live streaming lots of Joyce Meyer podcasts while driving alone  to and from millions of appointments and errands over the past few weeks? They're Christian and uplifting, right? Oh, and I must admit to watching a fair amount of The Blaze TV while preparing several freezer meals for my family. I must stay on...

How can it be February already?  The past two weeks of snow day drama made January evaporate as quickly as the frost on the tree branches. Now here I stand looking into February with these tasks on my mind: ~ Prepare for my mother's arrival on February 13 (she is staying for two months which requires intense bedroom/closet/drawer/bathroom preparations) ~Valentine's Day prep for school parties and a dance for our middle schooler ~ Plan two birthday parties for my boys turning 11 and 12 this month (send invitations, buy gifts, cakes, make arrangements etc...) ~Prepare my own accommodations as I will move into the downstairs guest room for a while post knee-surgery ~Continue the "Great Purge" of closets and drawers to clear my mental clutter and make the family run smoothly without much help from me ~Stock up on groceries and freeze ahead meals to assist my mother ~Finish my ...

~ 1 ~ It was Catholic Schools week this past week. Our boys attend the local parish school and participated in collecting tuition donations after Mass last Sunday (not for their own tuition, but money to provide assistance to families who may want to send their children to Catholic school but cannot afford it).  My favorite part of Mass was when Father R. asked people to stand if they were a product of Catholic schools.  There must have been 75% of the congregation that stood.  Clearly, Catholic education (whether in a parish school or a homeschool) fosters life-long Catholics. ~ 2 ~   This boys has had a drippy nose and cough all week.  He is learning how to blow and wipe his own proboscis but we have to work on conserving tissues.  He is a one wipe and done Kleenex user.  I guess I can't blame him when I think about it but we really cannot go through an entire box of tissues per sneeze.   ~ 3 ~ ...

Unlike last Wednesday when we awoke to a snow day glistening in the sun , today's snow day is the very image of winter, smokey gray sky and everything else draped in starkly white snowdrifts.  I can tell the boys had enough of the snow last week because they went out once and came back in quickly.  Their teachers sent them home with homework this time in anticipation of missing several days and it looks like they'll have plenty of time to get it all done. Our dear neighbor had to make it in to work and promptly wound up stuck in front of our house.  With a little shove from my husband he managed to make it out of the neighborhood. Hopefully he is safe and sound on his ship by now. Our beach town is ill equipped for snow this deep.  They declared a state of emergency last night and have brought in snowplows from elsewhere to help clear the roads. In the rush of excitement for this snow storm I stocked up on goodies. I plan to make a M...

It must seem like overkill to our relatives up north that we make such a big deal of a few inches of snow falling in one night. Having grown up in snow country and raised my boys in Chicago during their younger years, we are more than comfortable with a little snow. I think that's why we notice its absence all winter long here by the sea. We have been praying (literally) for at least one snow day this year and now we are on day two of no school!  What a treat! We pulled out the snow pants, boots and mittens and had a good laugh at how much the older two have grown.  RW's pants are at least three inches too short but they still fit around his slim waist so they worked just fine. They first headed outside at 7:00am yesterday.  Then again at 10:00, 1:00, and 4:00.  By that time I found myself silently grateful that we only do this once a year.  What a pain it is helping these boys out of muddy bo...

Looking up (and dreaming of Springtime) Listening to The boys are off from school today in honor of MLK Jr.  so right now I am hearing dangerous sounds of wrestling and rough-housing from the upstairs playroom.  Sadly, I have a general rule that the three boys are not allowed to play in there at the same time.  It just gets too rough and always ends in crying and more than once a trip to the ER for stitches. Today I am letting it go a bit but will soon have to put the kibosh on their "fun".  The kibosh is always followed by my instructions for them to "take it outside".  Somehow the wide open outdoors keeps the hand-to-hand combat from happening like it does in a confined space. Will I ever get used to being a mother of boys? Reading Stacks are piling up around here as my eyes once again get to big for my ability to read all these wonderful books.  I blame Amazon for my over-abundant bookshelves. It is just too easy to pop over and order a...

“A balanced life has a rhythm. But we live in a time, and in a culture, that encourages everyone to just move faster. I'm learning that if I don't take the time to tune in to my own more deliberate pace, I end up moving to someone else's , the speed of events around me setting a tempo that leaves me feeling scattered and out of touch with myself. I know now that I can't write fast; that words, my own thoughts and ideas, come to the surface slowly and in silence. A close relationship with myself requires slowness. Intimacy with my husband and guarded teenage sons requires slowness. A good conversation can't be hurried, it needs time in which to meander its way to revelation and insight. Even cooking dinner with care and attention is slow work. A thoughtful life is not rushed.”  Katrina Kenison   The Gift of an Ordinary Day: A Mother's Memoir I used to really dislike January. It was such a let down following the glittering...