Hi-yah!

So, it's a new day with a new president. Not quite the outcome I had hoped for, but it is what it is. I'm thankful I have a God who is ultimately in control. He knew long before today that Barak Obama would be president and I'm glad He knows better than me what is best for His people. I was encouraged this morning as I got together with a group of friends and we studied some of the Psalms. Particularly, Psalm 8 helps put some perspective on all of this..


When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?
If God cares for us individually that much, this little thing called the election just doesn't seem like that big of a deal.

Annywhooo... Enough about politics. Moving on.

Micah started taking Karate last week. Let's just say.. that didn't last long. He told me last night he didn't want to do it anymore. In his words "All that running makes me tired". (The instructor makes the kids run about 1/4 of a mile each class). Hmm. Normally I don't think I'd let my kid quit that easily. But, considering it was going to cost about $700 for 6 months worth of classes (that was the cheapest I could find), I think I'm gonna let my kid be a quitter. :)

And I promised some pics... Here we go!

No, the sky is not falling...

I went up to the Town Center this afternoon and saw something very interesting. Lots and LOTS of people. People everywhere, walking around with their shopping bags and their lattes from Starbucks. If it weren't for the news telling me otherwise, I would never have known we were in the midst of "the worst time since the Great Depression". Seeing that today leaves me with two possible explanations - either people are in denial OR maybe things really aren't that bad. Hmm.

Lest I sound insenstive, I know there are a lot of people out there struggling right now. Just last week, several people we know lost their jobs and I'm sure we'll see more in the weeks to come. I'm not suggesting that things are peachy keen. It's just that I think a lot of what we're hearing is a little blown out of proportion. Yes, the stock market it had it's worst one month decline in it's history (14% loss). But, it's ONE MONTH people! It's not the end of the world! The news has a difficult time reporting anything but the hear and now. They fail to put things into perspective most of the time. So, here's one nuggest for some perspective - Did you know that since 1994, the stock market is up nearly 57%? And that's as of the close of our "worst month ever".

All this to say... Based on what I saw today at the mall and the basic numbers I mentioned above, I don't think we're anywhere close to being able to compare this to the Great Depression. But, hey, it makes for some great political soap box's for our Presidential candidates.

Anywhoooo... I doubt anyone cares about my rants on the economy. So, I promise -next post will be back to "A Day in the Life of a Mom" and some new family pics!

Quick, let's get out of here!

News Flash: My kids have very different personalities!

This was made very apparent today in a situation we encountered at Chick-fil-a when I took Katie and Micah to the bathroom. As Katie was in the midst of doing her business, the electronic sensored paper towel dispenser suddenly started dispensing all by itself. Katie's reaction was "wow, cool!" and she laughed very excitedly. Micah's reaction was complete opposite. He got very nervous and tried to get Katie to hurry up so we could get out. I tried to tell him it was okay as I got Katie's pants pulled up, but I looked over to find his lip quivering. I asked him why he was getting upset and he hesitantly asked me "Is the whole bathroom going to fill up??". It was kind of funny, but I knew it was very distressing for him. I couldn't help but hurry us all out of the bathroom to relieve his fears.

My friend recently lent me a book called Nurture by Nature which goes through the Myers-Briggs personality types and helps you identify the personality type of your kids. I'm finding this extremely helpful in parenting them. I hate to say it this way, but Micah has been much easier for me to interact with than Katie so far. After reading the personaility profiles, I now realize that it's because we are very close to the same personality types. Micah is ISTJ and I'm INTJ, but I think the N is boarderline S for me. It's always easy to understand someone who is just like you! :) Katie on the other hand... I've had a hard time figuring out what makes her tick. But, after reading the book, I've determined her to be INFP. INFP's can be pretty emotional - An emotional INFP doesn't always fit well with a level headed INTJ. But, there are SO many positive things in her personality profile as well. Now that I know what to be looking for, it has been so fun to focus on her strengths and see how it makes her light up with delight when she gets that praise. She is certainly very loving and concerned for other people's well being. And I think slowly but surely, she will teach me how to lighten up a bit and enjoy the little things as much as she does.

So, 2 kids down. 1 to go! And, after today, I doubt Micah will want to use the Chick-fil-a bathroom anymroe.

Everyone has their opinion.

I know everyone has an opinion on this topic, but hey.. it's my blog, so I get to write what I want, right? :)

Since high school, one of my passions has been Economics. So much so that I minored in it in college and have considered many times going back to get a Master's degree in it. So, the last few weeks in the US economy has certainly peaked my interest. This past week in particular has been pretty fascinating. Banks failing, goverment bailing company's out, huge gains and losses in the stock market, and a $700 billion plan announced by the government on Friday to try to salvage the economy. Even the most level headed of us have got to be at least wondering what in the world is going on.

The root cause of all of this chaos is basically debt. The definition of debt is: "something owed, the state of owing". Beginning about 5-7 years ago, people became delirious with the notion of owning a home. And lenders became delirious with the notion of big time profits. Not having the cash on hand to purchase these homes, people took out mortgages. Prior to this big housing boom, banks were typically careful about who they lent to by doing a lot of research on their income, their outflow, and their debts, many times done by what's called manual underwriting of a loan. But, banks and Wall Street began seeing an opportunity to make big time money by making these loans to basically anyone who walked in off the street regardless of their income. Most of these now failed loans were Adjustable Rate Mortgages, Interest only, and Sub Prime (high interest rate) for a period of 3-5 years. To increase the profit, banks began packaging and reselling these mortgages to other companies for a profit basically causing more and more layers of institutions to become caked onto these mortgages. About 1-2 years ago, a lot of these sub prime loans came up for intrest rate adjustments. And the people who were lent more money than they could afford began defaulting. And the rest has been a domino effect throughout many of the layers of financial institions entangled in these loans.

In the end, we'll all get through this. A basic economic principal is "what goes up, must come down". We experienced a huge "up" over the past several 5-7 years, which means we should have been expecting a big "down" as well. I'm still not sure how I feel about the govenment taking part in trying to soften the blow of the "down", but that may be a post for another day. But, if America hasn't seen the basic lesson in all of this yet, I hope this past week has been a wake up call - "Debt is dumb, cash is king."

Mommy, it smells like delicious eggs!

This was Micah's comment today as we drove with the windows down through a rather soggy area of town. The things kids say are just too hilarious sometimes.

Tough decisions.

I'm starting to find that as kids get older, the tougher the decisions get. I'm so thankful that God already knows their lives from start to finish and has a plan much bigger than me. But, I at least feel a duty to make wise, well thought out, and prayerful decisions about the things in their lives.

Micah turns 4 next month, and the need to make a decision about school is staring us right in the face. There are so many choices - public school, private school, montissory education, classical education, co-ops, home schooling, unschooling, etc. It makes my head hurt just thinking about it.

Meanwhile, Micah is so super eager to learn things. And Katie is a little sponge right now, too. To take advantage of this fertile time, I've tried to start being delibrate in our plans each day. Here are some of the things we're trying (key word being trying)...

• Each morning we go for a walk. I try to plan something for the walk such as counting how many houses their are in our neighborhood or naming all the animals/insects we can find. The other morning, we got into a discussion about leaves falling from the tree. Micah wanted to know why they turned brown once they fell off. I explained how the leaf needs the tree for food and life.
• We're trying a book series called "The Code" by Nancy Hall. She has a book for preschoolers called "Get Ready for the Code" that helps learn letter sounds and how to write them.
• Target has these incredible $1 bargin bins that have flash cards and books for learning numbers and letters. I even found a Spiderman number book the other day. Micah thinks it's the coolest thing ever.

This education thing is a whole new world for me. So, I'm open to any suggestions for those of you who have been through this already! And I'm sure there will be plenty of posts in the coming years that reflect my many failures and few successes in the realm of education.

If you'd like to see one of our other learning adventures, check out Chris' You Tube video. This happened in our front yard on Friday:

Back to "normal".

A couple weeks ago, Katie was crawling up onto my lap on the couch and accidentally pushed my laptop crashing onto the floor. I tried to recusitate it, but it breathed it's last. It was a tough couple weeks, but after some diligent e-bay-ing, I'm back in business! :)

Micah and Katie have both had some pretty big milestones these past few weeks. Micah took his training wheels off two weeks ago. Go Micah! It was a rainy afternoon and we were on our way inside when Chris came walking out and non-challantly said, "Hey, Micah.. Wanna take your training wheels off?". He immediately said "No way, daddy!" Chris gently prodded him "What, are you a scardey cat??" And that's all it took. He immediately decided he had something to prove. Now, I'm not so sure that's the best way to get your kids to do something, so I'm certainly not condoning that approach. But, once Micah decided he wanted to do it, he was certainly determined. Within minutes, he was riding all by himself with little or no help. And for the past two weeks, he has been riding circles around the girls and I as we go for our morning walk.

And Katie has certainly made us proud these past few weeks. Having gone through this with two kids now, I think I'm beginning to realize that potty training is as much of a training for the kids as it is for the parents. I was personally a little scared of potty training a girl. Boys are easy; they can pretty much go anywhere. But, girls can't exactly do that and with my personal aversion to public restrooms, the thought of needing Katie to sit on one of those seats was beyond me. My other issue is that I'm always hesitant to draw that line in the sand and say "we are done with diapers". I try to dilly dally with not wearing diapers at home, but then putting them on if we go out, or putting them on when they go to bed. And it just doesn't work. It's too confusing for them. Once we quit trying to change the rules on Katie and we solved my aversion to public restrooms by bringing a toilet chair in the van, she easily took the reins and finished up the training. And now we're going on 4 weeks now with no diapers. She has been so proud of herself - she is officially a big girl! :)

In between bike riding and going potty, I've been busy doing some web design work. One for the infamous Rae Davies (http://www.thebirthcompany.com) and one for Med-Equip Solutions (this one will be online at http://www.med-equipsolutions.com next week).