No Need

It’s the most wonderful time of the year…unless you’re heading to ridiculously packed malls to do your Christmas Shopping. Can I just say how much I love Amazon Prime?!? (Side note, do you use Amazon Smile to support a charity? International Justice Mission is a great charity if you don’t know of one to choose.)

wrappingAnyway…I know a lot of folks have started doing the the whole 4 gifts, “want, need, wear, read” thing, which I think is awesome.  We’ve been doing it for years now, after our first baby’s first Christmas when we went a little ridiculously crazy with gifts, even though she was 6 months old and literally thought the wrapping was the best part. 😉

But this year I decided to tweak it a little.

When I asked Artist to write a wish list for the four categories she replied, “But I don’t need  anything.”

Wow. As a Mom, that was one of those, “Thank goodness we’re doing something right” moments, know what I mean? She realizes that she already has everything she truly  needs. I made myself a second fifth cup of coffee to celebrate!

And then I started to wonder whether I’m not doing my kids any favors by perpetuating the idea that one of the gifts we give them at Christmas is an actual NEED.

What we’ve typically given to fill the “need” spot is a school related item.

I threw back a few (more) cups of coffee for good measure, and brainstormed about how I could change the wording for us. Here’s what I came up with.

With "Want Need Wear Read" that has become popular, I'm giving my kids the idea that they NEED a pair of new boots or whatever. So I've come up with a different four gifts that sits better with me. :) | Running With Spears #christmas #gifts

Like I said, this doesn’t really change what gifts we give, just how we label them. And I feel a lot happier about these categories than calling something a need that isn’t.

What do you think? If you do the “want, need, wear, read” what do you give as the need? Of course if they were for me you could totally give me coffee for the need category…I’m a Mom, the coffee need is legit. 😀

Christmas Angel!

It’s December, you guys!!!! That means my love of all things Christmas is now acceptable to display! I won’t tell you how long I’ve been playing Christmas music, though. (Artist would claim it’s been since our first really cold day in like September or something, this may or may not be is totally true.)

angelAnyhoo…I know you guys have heard of Elf on the Shelf. But I want to tell you about The Christmas Angel!

The Christmas Angel arrived at our house three years ago, and it’s such a beautiful part of our advent season!

The Angel is kind of like the Elf in that she moves to a new, fun spot each night. But the beautiful thing about her is that she points to the real meaning of Christmas, and leaves a note each day prompting us to do something for others.

Soooo, honestly the first year I started out too gung-ho about doing really awesome things every single day, and it was too much for me. I’ve since learned to be more strategic about purposefully choosing days that I know I can handle doing something bigger, and days we need to do things that take very little effort from me. At The Christmas Angel website they have all kinds of ideas for messages the angel can leave, from smiling at everyone to baking cookies to take up the your local fire station.

Last year I was super lame most days and the Angel left messages like “Send an encouraging text!” But the girls still loved it. 😀

This year I was thinking of just doing the twelve days before Christmas, but since our church is doing a food drive this Sunday I think we’ll start that morning with a message to donate food. 😉

angel2Oh and lets not forget Christmas morning with the Angel! Last year our Angel was set up with a Happy Birthday Jesus card and a super cute play cake! The girls loved it and it was fun to focus on the real meaning of Christmas for a bit before they opened stockings or anything. I haven’t decided exactly how I’ll do that this year….pulling back out the same cake that has been boxed up since February, or baking a real cake, or what…but I definitely want to make it part of our Christmas morning tradition!

 

“Winner”

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I did it! I “won” National Novel Writing Month, also known as “NaNoWriMo.”

By “won” I mean, I wrote 50,000 words, the requirement to make it to the winners page. I also succeeded in getting down on paper the entire story of my novel from start to finish. 😀

Of course most of it is pretty awful right now, and I even have places where I literally wrote (insert character’s name here) because I couldn’t think of a name at the moment.

I’m now going to bore you with a recap of my month.

By about mid-way through, I was slightly behind and considered not bothering with it. I told myself I could write at some point when I’m less busy. And then my baby bro, who is five but in college (and who has had many Birthday’s since his fifth, I just refuse to allow him to turn a year older each year 😉 ), texted me a link to an article about a handful of bestselling novels that began during NaNoWriMo. It was a turning point for me, reigniting my determination to do this thing right now, no excuses.

Side note…never hesitate to encourage someone, you have no idea what impact your words could have!

And then it happened….I had a day where all of a sudden I felt like an actual author! I was writing a scene I’d imagined for a long time, when all of a sudden one of my characters did a 180 on me, pulled out a dagger and turned from a good guy into a traitor. The entire scene took on a life of it’s own, and it was absolutely thrilling!

I also had days when I felt like I had no inspiration and every word was garbage. In hindsight, those were good days too because I showed myself I could do it even when it wasn’t fun.

I’m super blessed that Misteris has been 100% behind me this entire time, telling me he loves my idea and I have to do this because he wants to read my story, picking up the slack around the house without a single complaint, and in general being completely awesome-sauce. One day he came home from work with a laptop for me, so I could take the girls to Chick-fil-A or the park or whatever and write while we’re there.

Being able to get a change of scenery when writing was awesome. And I felt very official pulling out my laptop and hammering out words while my kids played!  I also felt all the more determined to live up to the potential Misteris saw in me when he showed me he completely believes in me by putting his money where his mouth is.

But the day I entered my 50,000 words for validation and completed this monumental task I felt…not much.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m sooo glad I did it! But I think knowing that this was really just one small step in the process of actually writing a great novel and getting it published put a damper on being able to treat this step as even kind of a big deal.

But at this very moment the first ever copy of my story, rough and messy as it is, is on Misteris’ desk, so he can be the very first to read this story that has been floating around in my head for years, begging me to write it. That’s actually pretty cool.

And maybe this one step in and of itself isn’t a huge deal. But I’m excited. I’m doing this! I’m writing a book which I will painstakingly revise over and over till I get it right, and then I’ll figure out what the next step I’m supposed to take is, so that one day you, dear reader, can go to the bookstore and pick up a copy of my book.

I hope you love it! 😀

Not Blogging

So I’ve decided to stop blogging.

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For a month. 😉

I’m going to attempt to write my entire novel in November.

12641140093_24586a1aec_oBecause it’s National Novel Writing Month…and because I need to stop procrastinating, researching, and being way too picky about every word in every sentence and just get something written.

In order to do that, I think I need to focus *just* on that when I have a chance to write, thus blog posts will have to wait till December!

If you have a novel to write, join me over at NaNoWriMo! And wish me luck! 🙂

Awesomer School

A friend is thinking about homeschooling and mentioned that she wished there were videos of homeschooled kids talking about whether or not they like it. When I mentioned this to Artist, she said she would love to make a video about it, so that other people could know that homeschool is awesomer.  (Let’s not to pick apart the use of “awesomer right now) 😉

Here’s what she has to say:

To clarify about non-educational shows…she’s able to finish her schoolwork much earlier in the day than 3:00, and often when she’s finished all her lessons for the day she has time to watch a little TV. She also sometimes watches educational shows as part of school.

She mentioned the computer as well. She plays a variety of computer games for fun (many of which happen to be educational), and also does her math lessons on the computer.

She didn’t mention it in the video, but has expressed before that she loves getting to go to the park a lot, and take walks. She also really dislikes whenever we have to be out the door early in the morning, so she’s very happy that most days we’re able to make our own schedule.

Alright, well without me getting into all the things I love about homeschool, or writing about the ways I know homeschool is best for her right now, I suppose that’s it. 🙂

Fellow homeschool Mom’s, want to chime in with what your kids love about it?