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::we're all back to normal now, and just in time. it was a long week!, but look what we woke up to this morning. beautiful!

hope you have a very merry christmas!

stomach flu has hit our house.
we're hoping everyone is healthy for christmas, so we can spend time with our families.

Level 1::Day 3

 i didn't do jillian until after 4 p.m. i almost bailed, but i knew you'd be on the edge of your seat waiting to hear from me (ha ha!). i'm glad i got it done. it is starting to get a little easier. the cardio is no problem, but the weights and abs are tough.
looking forward to a week off from school this week. we'll be spending lots of time with friends and family, and we'll be making these. aren't they cute?!

 


















 

  photo from here.

Level 1::Day 2

:: after a busy morning of shoveling the driveway (wow, it's long!), i finished the shred for today. i am using 5 lb. weights.
yesterday after doing the shred, i ran 2 miles on the treadmill. it felt good to get moving again, but my abs are sore!

Level 1::Day 1

started using the shred again today. (the kids did it with me using soup cans again, so cute!) i've never been a fan of exercise videos, but i love this one. check out the reviews...

it's probably not the most ideal time to start this, but i need to get back on track. my short break from running turned into a longer-than-i wanted break, so i'll be checking in here to keep myself accountable.

the plan is to do each level for 10 days. i will plan on doing this for the next 30 days, with a couple days off for christmas.

if you've used it, what did you think??

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::had fun making snowflakes with the kids yesterday. not the best picture, but you can kind of see them above the sliding glass doors.

you can find instructions here, if you're like me and need to be reminded.
today we're planning on making these again.

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::ready for school on a cold winter day.

we're supposed to get our first snow this week. we decided not to buy a snow blower this year. we've never had one and it has been fine, but we've also never had a driveway this l-o-n-g. we decided to spend the money we would have spent, on other things we need for the inside of the house. the list is long of things that need to be done; including the basement that has no carpet, thanks to a summer with massive rain.

shoveling will be good for us though. after all, we want to teach our kids how to work hard.

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::came home from coffee with friends last night to find presents under the tree. bre wrapped up some of her toys to give to everyone for christmas. she is such a sweet girl!!

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::our door is up, just needs a few finishing touches.





• christmas cards are done and ready to be mailed. i think this is a record.
• it was great to see my sisters.
• i haven't run in 2 weeks. ugh! i need to make friends with my treadmill again. it's getting cold here.
• i caved...our christmas tree was up before thanksgiving. the funny thing is, it doesn't look like the same tree. our living room has really high vaulted ceilings (think giraffe), and it makes our 6 ft. tree look like a little charlie brown tree. i still love it, but we may have to be on the look out for a good clearance one this year.
• our door should be up this weekend. woo hoo!! (pictures to come).
  
• i haven't quite made the goal of 365 pictures this year, but i'm glad i tried. i took more pictures this year than i probably would have.
• i'm loving all the natural light we get in this house. maybe this winter won't be so dreary?!
• i read the other day that the average american spends $800 for christmas. wow!
• we're dealing with pink eye here. giving eye drops 3x's a day is no fun!
  

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::a beautiful sight off our back deck.

today i spent the day with my friend angela. we went shopping and to lunch and coffee with no kids. it was wonderful! i love love love my kids, but it was a much needed break for me. it had been one of those tough weeks - lots of complaining and bickering about school, and i was just feeling exhausted and worn out. angela was the perfect person to spend time with today. she has a way of seeing that opens my eyes to ordinary amazing grace. too often I miss it. i don’t see all the good things that He is giving me. i have been thinking about this, and have decided to join and possibly blog about it for 2011. i am indeed, showered with grace, and i want to recognize it more than i have been.

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i'm trying to wait until after thanksgiving to put up the tree, but christmas is still showing up a little early.
i can't help it. i love christmas!

when are you putting up your tree?

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we've been having some amazing sunsets lately!

we had an awesome time with our guests from peru! they were here for two weeks. i made breakfast and dinner every night, which doesn't normally happen around here. i was glad to do it though, and they loved trying new things. we were all sad to see them go. we're even thinking about going to visit them someday, but for now we'll have to skype.

tomorrow my boy will be 10! i really can't believe it. the time has gone so fast. people always say it does, but it's hard to comprehend until you're there. no school tomorrow. we're planning on having a picnic at the park w/cousins (a picnic in november!! the weather has been amazing lately!), and then celebrating at his favorite restaurant for dinner. should be a fun day!

can you believe we are still working on our new door! i can't believe how much work it has been, and how many coats of stain it has taken. hopefully we'll have it up by thanksgiving...

speaking of thanksgiving, my sister is coming back from california for that week. can't wait to be with all of my sisters! those moments are few and far between.

2011

considering running this again next fall:



who's with me?
kate? keri? amanda?

cards

i read on a friend's blog last week that Shutterfly is giving away free Christmas Cards to bloggers. how awesome!

they have some really cute photo cards that can either be printed on card stock or on photo paper.

They are also offering gift tags

have you ordered your christmas cards yet?

"If you don't read the Word and memorize the Word and meditate on the Word daily and delight in the Word and savor it and have your mind and emotions shaped by the Word, you will be a weak Christian at best. You will be fragile and easily deceived and easily paralyzed by trouble and stuck in many mediocre ruts. But if you read the Word and memorize important parts of it and meditate on it and savor it and steep your mind in it, then you will be like a strong tree planted by streams of water that brings forth fruit. Your leaf won't wither in the drought and you will be productive in your life for Christ (see Psalm 1). Christian living means living on the written Word of God, the Bible. In true Christian living, our relation to the Word is intentional, not haphazard. It's active not passive. We pursue it and don't just wait for it to happen." - John Piper

^{psalm 1:2} But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
       and on his law he meditates day and night. 

O, how I love thy law! it is my meditation all the day.
How sweet are thy words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! psalm 119:97, 103

this is something i've been thinking a lot about lately. even though i know all of this to be true, i often need to be reminded. it's easy to get caught up in the busyness of life - crossing things off the to-do list and running from place to place, without really meditating on God's Word daily.

book

David Platt has a burden—a burden to see believers in America acting like New Testament Christians. But for the most part, he says we're not. Instead, we are pursuing the "American dream" rather than Jesus. Jesus told his disciples not to lay up treasures on earth. They were to take up their crosses. They were to live for others. They were to be willing to die for others. But we live for ourselves. We live for security, for comfort, for ease, for entertainment, and for retirement.

i'm intrigued. 
just started reading this...
i'll share more soon.

check this out - what an amazing deal! if you're a runner, you really need one of these! i really can't imagine my life without one now. i think they are great to have for biking and walking too. a great christmas present idea!

latest

• hosting three leaders from honduras for the next 2 weeks at our house. we're so thankful for the space to be able to do it.
• bre qualified for the state gymnastics meet. she's so excited!
• our front door is getting close to being done. the frame is in, and we're almost finished staining. hope to have pictures soon.
• it has been such a beautiful october! we are really enjoying living by all the trees, especially with no raking!

i better get back to preparing for our guests.
hope you are having a great week!

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::gotta love race photos. i'm usually looking down, or look like i'm ready to keel over.

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sherri finished in 6:56!!
i waited for her to finish, so i could be there to capture the moment and congratulate her. it was pretty exciting! a year and a half ago, she had a hard time running even one mile.

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yesterday was a great day!
the weather was absolutely perfect for running. high's in the mid 60's, and low 40's for the start.

here's sherri and i at the start of the race. i wasn't quite awake, or that excited for my race. running 13.1 miles when you haven't trained much at all, just isn't that appealing. i was feeding off her excitement though, and i was just so happy for her and how hard she has worked this year to get to the starting line of a full marathon!

we took some pictures, and went our seperate ways at the starting line.

the 1/2 went pretty well for me, especially considering how unprepared i was. i did a lot of talking to myself throughout the race: "ok, wendy you can do this." and, i tried to distract myself by looking for runners ahead of me that i wanted to pass, that worked pretty well. at mile 11, the winner of the full marathon blew past me. he was amazing! that gave me the little boost i needed to get to the finish line. i kept thinking about how he had just run 25 miles in the time it took me to run 11. wow!

i ended up finishing in 2:18 - definitely not a p.r., but i enjoyed the race, and felt good about it.

next up: sherri's finish....

new recipe

trying this tonight, and i am hopeful. it was the perfect option for a busy night. let's hope it's worthy of making again sometime.

two more football games, and then we have a little break before basketball begins.

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::a quiet morning before the school day begins. i've been getting back into the habit of having everything set out the night before. everyone gets a checklist of what needs to be done for the day.

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::a peak at our new door. we'll be staining it this week, and hope to get it installed on saturday.

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::it's raining leaves here.

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it's race week! i am running the 1/2 on sunday. i had a training plan, but never really followed it.
moving on top of an already full life made it extra hard.

however, i'm still getting excited. the weather is going to be awesome...low 50's at the start. i plan to enjoy the day, and be thankful i am able to run.
oh, and i can't wait to see sherri finish! i'll be sure to take pictures.

saturday, we're having a family party for
my two oldest. bre wants a gymnastics cake. i'm going to try to replicate something kind of like this. bryce wants an ice cream cake, so that will be easy.

really hard to believe i'll have one in double digits.

cake idea found here.

another good read...

i loved this article.


How to Raise Boys Who Read
Hint: Not with gross-out books and video-game bribes
The Wall Street Journal

Education was once understood as training for freedom. Not merely the transmission of information, education entailed the formation of manners and taste. Aristotle thought we should be raised "so as both to delight in and to be pained by the things that we ought; this is the right education."

"Plato before him," writes C. S. Lewis, "had said the same. The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likeable, disgusting, and hateful."

This kind of training goes against the grain, and who has time for that? How much easier to meet children where they are....

One obvious problem with the SweetFarts philosophy of education is that it is more suited to producing a generation of barbarians and morons than to raising the sort of men who make good husbands, fathers and professionals. If you keep meeting a boy where he is, he doesn't go very far.

a good read

i thought this was really interesting, and so true.

last week, i went to the grocery store and spent almost $200.
i felt sick to my stomach. so much money sucked out of our bank account. even with my menus carefully planned out, list in-hand, i still spent way more than i anticipated.

i know groceries are a necessity. it's not like i'm getting my nails done. we must have groceries. but still. i'm still spending too much.
driving home, i began to think how nice it would be if I could just take one week off from grocery shopping.

it's not like my cupboards are bare except for the things i'm putting in each week. they are still stocked with rice and beans and cans of soup and pastas and..... there are the odd cuts of meat in my freezer. i have flour. and sugar. and yeast. and butter.
it's just that i often ignore those things in my pantry for what i feel like making that week.
i'm not using what i have.
so my challenge: i'm not going to the grocery store next week (except for milk). i'm going to make do with what i have in my cupboards and freezer. i'm going to get creative. i'm going to do my best to put together some meals with what i have on hand. i'm going to save a little money this week.
sometimes my best meals are the ones created when i think "I have nothing to make for dinner".

anyone brave enough to join me?

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::the beginnings of a fun fort the kids are making.

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::thank you for your list*, craig...
Bre has been taking piano lessons for about a year and a half. she's been practicing on a keyboard that we found at a garage sale, until now. yesterday we found this piano. it is old and has some scratches, but it sounds beautiful and will work well for us.

thankful for friends from church who helped us pick this up; no easy task!

this weekend i ran 6. i actually paid attention to my training schedule, and did what it said! i started running with a lady i met through bre's gymnastics. she is much faster than me and has run several ultra marathons (we're definitely not on the same level), but we're planning to run together on her slower days. i got up this morning and ran 4 miles with her at 6:30 a.m. we kept our pace at 9:20. it felt pretty good. i'm going to try to run a couple times a week in the morning, even though it is so hard to get out of bed!

i'm supposed to run 9 miles for my long run this weekend, 10 the following week, and the next week will be the 1/2!

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::my $2 garage sale find this week; made it worth getting up and going in the rain.

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::it's looking like fall in our backyard.

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::went to the zoo today with my friend jenny and her kids. meg fell in love with one of her boys. they held hands most of the day, and told us they were going to get married and live in a golden house.

to celebrate the first day of fall, i made this. if you haven't tried the recipe, you really should. it makes 3 loaves, so we're going to share some with neighbors, even though i think we could eat all 3 in one day.
i'm making this tonight. a new recipe. the house smells so good today. ahh, i love fall!

update

remember my friend sherri? i wrote about her here and here.
she has been training all spring and summer, and is running her first marathon in less than 4 weeks!! she has  lost 90lbs. and is doing great.
i am so proud of her! i'll be running the 1/2, and then sticking around to cheer her on to the finish for the full. what an amazing moment that will be in her life! not just because she will have finished a marathon, but because of what that represents in her life. she has overcome so many things. most of all, i love that all her running has been chasing after the Lord and seeking to live a life that glorifies Him.

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::her favorite thing to wear for school!

well, here it is wednesday and i've been able to run 2 days this week already. woo hoo! it has been so nice. yesterday i ran 6 miles, which is amazing for me to get time to run that long on a weeknight. tonight, i ran 4.5 with a friend. we both agreed that it's harder to bounce back now that we're 35!

i don't think i've mentioned it, but school is going really well! this time last year i was already feeling burnout.

this year the kids are complaining less, and they have been motivated to get things done so they have time for other things in the afternoon. they also seem more excited about learning in general. i know God has been teaching me too. i have more patience, and i've figured out some of the things that work and don't work for us. i still have a lot to learn, of course, but i really love the changes we've made. some of the changes have been simple little things. for example, i started giving each child a checklist of what needs to be done for the day (their chores and their school work is on the list). i have been amazed at how motivating it has been for them to get everything checked off for the day! hopefully that will continue...

we're looking forward to a trip to the apple orchard this week.

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weekends go so fast!
i got in a good 6 miles on saturday. i even conquered the big hill.
bryce got a touchdown and interception during his football game saturday morning!
saturday night we sat by our fire pit and made smores. it was such a good night.

it's going to be a challenge to get much running in this week. i'm hoping for 3-4 days this week.
i should probably think about running around 5:30 a.m. to get it done, but that's not likely. i wish i had a running
partner.

New Album!

My friend, Eric Schumacher, in collaboration with David Ward (and others) just released their latest album, Merciful to Me. It was co-produced by David Ward and Steve Cook (of Sovereign Grace Music). It contains the vocals of Devon Kauflin, Shannon Harris, Jake Armerding, Lucia Newell, and others, as well as a host of great instrumentalists from around the country. The 13 tracks are an eclectic mix of styles, including bluegrass, pop, classic jazz, driving rock, and orchestral arrangements.

I love that all of these songs are theologically rich and have gospel-saturated lyrics. I especially liked the song, Merciful to Me.

For more information about the project and song samples visit their website.

1/2

i did it! i registered for the 1/2 today, so i guess it's official.

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the wall is slowly taking shape.
not the best picture, but you get the idea.

it was a good long weekend.
friday i ran 5 miles.
saturday i ran 5 miles.
sunday i ran 6 miles.
monday i ran 5 miles.
today was my best run in awhile. i even had positive thoughts about running the 1/2 next month.
i still haven't registered. i still haven't really trained either. oops!
i have 2 more weeks to register before the price increases. hmmm...

saturday i slept in until almost 9! it made me thankful that i'm not training for a marathon this year; getting up for those early morning long runs.

some things we (myself included) are working on as we go about our school days:

getting the day started right - greeting each other with a smile in the morning

A cheerful heart is good medicine,

but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. Proverbs 17:22

gentle answers to each other
building each other up
laughing together
encouraging each other
working hard and doing our best
remembering good manners
if someone is talking, remember to look them in the eye

this is going to be one of our key verses to memorize and put into practice this year:
Romans 12:10
Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves.

^{Isaiah 43:18-19
18} "Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.

¹⁹ See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the desert
and streams in the wasteland.

i am not going to dwell on the past- on the heartache of what has been. He is going (and has already) to do something new. nothing is too great for Him to accomplish. i am reminded of His power and His ability to do just that.

and hope is here.

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::i love this picture so much! i put it in a frame right away.

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can't stop thinking about decorating lately.
i'd like to try to replicate this. love that wreath too!
picture from here.

i ran 4 miles yesterday. planning on some kind of longer run this weekend.
we'll see what i have time for.

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this picture pretty much sums up my dream kitchen. love those floors!

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i'm working on a photo wall. i've been enlarging pictures, and trying to figure out the best layout.
i'm planning on using black and white photos with black frames.

here are some ideas that i like so far:
photo from here.not sure where this one came from?photo from here.

do you have a wall like this? if so, i'd love to hear about it. did you stick with one color for the frames, or did you mix it up?

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::fall is my favorite season. we've had a few days lately in the 70's, and it has been just cool enough to make me think of fall.

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this was a fun project for the kids. we have since found more trees to add to the collection.

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::taken 4 years ago.
i can't believe he'll be 10 soon.
i am so thankful to be his mom.

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::the end of summer is near.

we're starting school on monday. i'm ready to get back into a routine, and really looking forward to beginning our new curriculum. our shelves are full of good books that i am excited to read with the kids. fall is my favorite time of year. we just bought a fire pit, so it will be fun to sit by and make smores with the kids on cool evenings.

i took bre to the eye doctor today, and she needs glasses. she is excited about it because she knows several girls that have them. also, they make some really cute ones now. she picked out a simple purple frame, and they look good on her.