My Ebenezer

I've lived in Florida for over 6 years now. The first couple of years here I was still too busy thawing out to care about missing the Fall season. "Endless summer? Bring it on!" Now, 6 years later, I have rosy memories of Fall in New England and I miss it. For the record: I do not now, nor do I think I will EVER miss the kind of winters we endured. No sir. ;But Autumn stirs up in me a wish for crisp, cool mornings and vibrant colors. I took this picture a few weeks ago, thrilled to see some kind of color on a tree. But it got better. Look what happened a few weeks later: I don't know if that is some kind of flower on those trees or what, but it is so pretty, don't you think? It's giving me my Autumn fix for the moment.

I've noticed that once you move into a house, all those little projects that were left unfinished....stay unfinished. Or at least it takes a very very very long time to get around to doing them. Very. Who can blame you? Unpacking and making things look like home is challenge enough, without adding extra projects on top of it all. Not to mention that life has to keep going. Laundry, work, cooking, cleaning, child-rearing, shopping, etc etc etc. Who has time to spackle? I still have high hopes for our patio room, which at present houses our Christmas decorations, various odd construction materials, and some pretty depressing wall studs. High hopes, yes, but not for tomorrow. For "sometime." And now, I have more hope that "sometime" will actually come! Over the past few weeks, we've been trying to tackle the remaining last few things that needed to be done, and it feels so good to have accomplished them! Take the under-the-microwave area for example. When w...

I've been sort of AWOL from the couponing world lately. I don't know what to call it; whether I was suffering from Coupon Jadedness, a Time Shortage, or a Deal Drought, but it seems all three combined to make a perfect storm of paying full price. :) But why waste time focusing on the months I've spent buying things at full price? Why not look at what I got today? I went to CVS and spent about $5 for all you see here. This puts a smile on my face! Here's the breakdown: ReNu contact lens solution, 12 oz size. $7.99 with $7.99 in Extra Bucks (this is spendable cash at CVS) coming back to me. I used a $4.00 off coupon, bringing my out-of-pocket expense to $4.55 after sales tax. Today I went back and bought the rest of the items, using my $7.99 in Extra Bucks. Dove deodorant, $3.29 (plus $.75 off one coupon) Herbal Essences shampoo, $2.88, (plus $1 off of 2 coupon) Herbal Essences conditioner, $2.88 Skintimate shave gel, $3.99 (but FREE since I had a coupon to try it fo...

We are 2 days into "H" week here. Noah's memory verses have been going pretty well, and so we keep plugging away at them. Here is a video of him saying this week's verse, Joshua 1:9. I was thinking on this verse while I was teaching it to Noah, and the first part reminds, "Have I not commanded you?....." God didn't just suggest that we should be strong and courageous, that we should not tremble or be dismayed; He commanded it! This leaves no place for worry! Did I step on any toes out there? I know I stepped on mine. Stop worrying and fearing, because God is with me! Don't mind me, I'm just preaching to myself.

We were playing in the yard today when a gust of wind wafted past and gently moved Noah's red plastic baseball bat that was lying in the grass. Noah said, "Look, Mommy, the wind remote-controlled my bat!" Indeed. Imaginative little guy, wouldn't you say?

Since you already know how I feel about letting a week pass without blogging, I'm not even going to mention how it nags at me every day. How I think of all these interesting things to write about, and then I finally get a moment to sit down and let it all out, and I experience an unparalleled blockage of thoughts. What did we do all week? (mind goes blank) Well, there's... And then there was the day we..... Oh and you can't forget about... Nothing. So I'm not even going to mention how frustrated it makes me to go a week without blogging. Okay? Okay. I feel better now. When I can't think of what to write, I add pictures. Here is an example of how hard it is to get multiple kids looking the same direction for a photo with pleasant expressions on their faces. Hi Noah! Great smile! Brianne? Titus? Over here! HEY!!! And we lost Noah. At least we got Brianne. Titus has an excuse; he can't even sit up all by himself. He's propped up against his sister...

The check-out lady at Walmart a few weeks ago gave me the strangest look when I began unloading my groceries onto her conveyor belt. "Back already?" she asked. Um... no. I try to only go into Walmart at most once every 2 weeks. I then must have given her the strangest look ever, because she recovered herself and said, "Oh, sorry. You look just like a customer who just checked out in this line about an hour ago." This happens to me all the time . I can't tell you how often someone comes up to me and says, "I know you from somewhere." Or "You look familiar to me." Or "You look JUST like someone I knew back in such-and-such place." But the worst was today. I went to a yard sale in our neighborhood and was minding my own business looking around, getting ready to leave when this woman looks up at me and says, "Oh, HI ! How ARE you?" This was more than the typical stranger greeting, but I had never seen this woman in my life b...

Confession: I have let Noah win almost every game we have ever played. This is bad, I discovered today, because now he has no idea how to lose gracefully. Neither does he have the desire to. He thinks he should win all the time. Oops. Today we were racing to the car after some time at the park, and I decided to really run. Noah about had a fit when he realized I was about to leave him in my dust and beat him to the car. To avoid a scene, I let him win once again. But I think in the privacy of our own home I'm going to start to do some winning and then teach him how to lose like a winner. :) We all have to learn this at some point.

Smells trigger memories for me. Each winter I pull out the little space heater that my mom gave me for Christmas when I was 15 (Best Gift Ever for a cold-natured soul like myself living in New England). The first time I turn it on each winter, I smell ballet. I promise, I do. (What does that smell like? I can't describe it. Wanna smell my space heater?) I can remember coming home on icy Friday afternoons to quickly get ready for my weekly ballet class. I'd turn on that heater and huddle beside it as I put on my tights and leotard, and then stuff my toe shoes, skirt, and hair clips into my bag. Even now, fifteen years later, the ritual is the same: Turn on heater, remember ballet class. It's that simple. There are other examples, of course, not all quite so pleasant. Lysol is one of those. I cannot smell Lysol without thinking: sickness. Perhaps that is because my mother used to spray Lysol on everything, even my hands (!), when there was illness floating around. There's...

Well, maybe "ditched" is a strong word, but whatever you call it, I'm officially done with my 3-month trial. I began the summer on a new regimen for me: eating as naturally and organically as possible, with nothing artificial, no refined sugar or flour, and vegetables, vegetables, vegetables. It was a wonderful time of year to be on such a diet, with gardens in full swing and produce in abundance. My goal was to see if eating all-natural foods as close to the way God made them as possible would help me with my Issues. While I will say I think I felt better than before (especially noticed when I would eat something "forbidden" and then feel horrible as a result), I did not notice any improvement in my Issues. It's possible that we didn't give it enough time--ideally I probably should have given it 6 months or a year. But the reason we didn't is that, we noticed a substantial increase in our grocery spending. "Increase" is putting it mildly...

This was the end of E week here at the Rowley household. Today Noah and I made Elephant Ears, which ended up being very large cinnamon-sugar cookies, kind of like flat cinnamon rolls. YUMMY! Our favorite weekly letter activity is definitely baking. If I can let go of my OCD tendencies and relax and let us make a mess, we have a fabulous time! That's what happened today. Noah did *almost* all of this project all by himself. "Smile!" (this is what he does when I say, "smile!" I guess it counts.) As my mom used to say, you've got to hold your mouth right! Rolling dough is his favorite part Again with the mouth. It must have worked! This was a harder task; sprinkling the cinnamon-sugar. Takes coordination. I took a deep breath and let him get sugar everywhere. It was good for me. :) The finished product! And a real smile! He was actually trying to hide the fact that he was worried about burning his hands on the elephant ears. Can you see the flour ...

* Note to the men: This post could make you a little squeamish. You've been warned .* This past Monday I went in to the doctor for an appointment to hopefully get some answers to some Issues I had been having. Without going into too much detail, these were "women's troubles" and very perplexing (think: the woman in Luke 8:43, but not as long-term). Now let me back up and put in a request to any doctor who may read this: Dear Doctor, Please read my chart BEFORE you enter the exam room. You do not instill much confidence when you're reading my chart in front of me, trying to figure out who I am and why I'm here. This will greatly help you and me, and will also eliminate your embarrassing moment when I have to remind you that Yes, I have had prior surgery, and that YOU'RE the one who performed it. Thank you. I consider myself a reasonable person, but when I have to say, "Actually yes, I have had a laparoscopy before. Two, in fact, and you were the ...

Noah is all about helping. Sidenote: I have noticed the extreme irony in how extremely helpful preschoolers are compared with their skill levels. Then, when some fine motor skills have been developed by the time they are 7 or 8, out the window goes the helpful spirit. I have determined that I'm going to try to set a pattern and let Noah help me now when he wants to, but doesn't necessarily do a good job, and hopefully ( hopefully ) when he is older a habit will have been made to be helpful. Laugh if you want to. Just don't tell me if this is a dumb idea. I'd rather just do this anyway, and believe that children can be trained to be helpful for the long haul. Anyway. Helping...I'm already starting to notice that Noah is getting pickier about the ways he can be a help. The other day I was making dinner and Noah came up and asked if he could help me. I immediately thought of things he can do: throw a few pieces of trash away, set the table, get me the scissors. I menti...

I cannot stand when I let this much time go between blogs. I know you know why I couldn't blog. I'm the mother of a three-year-old, and wife to a thirty-year-old, and friend, and church member, and life just sometimes doesn't allow for blog posting. Someday it might. But then, when I have all the time in the world, what would I blog about? Exactly. So I bring you a summary titled, This Past Week. Here goes. This past week: Noah got his first ever bee sting. Poor guy didn't know what hit him. Stung him right behind his left ear. I went to the Doctor and came out more confused than I went in. I may or may not write about that visit in an entire post of its own. Josh had a very large sewage backup in one of his rentals. Gross. No, gross doesn't go quite far enough. Better him than me, though. I'd a'been gaggin'. Noah was given a helium-filled balloon at Publix. I warned him several times what would happen should he let it go. I informed him ...

I have spent parts of five days (five days !!) trying to get our alphabet video from Monday to load, with no success. I was thankful earlier in the week to get Psalm 34:14 to load, but that alphabet one must be tricky. Or too long or something. You'll just have to trust me that Noah knows his letters from A-D very well, and the rest of them pretty well. So instead, on a mission for another video to quench my mom's Noah-pinings, today I videoed Noah singing "Count Your Blessings." And, if nothing else, this video will demonstrate the fact which I have tried to convey countless times on this blog: NOAH CANNOT SIT STILL! Well? Are you counting your blessings yet?