No More Carbs!

GUEST  BLOGGER - Kimbre Christopher

Meet Kimbre! She is 27 years old. She has three boys and is expecting her fourth in May of 2016. Kimbre and her husband spend a lot of time not only raising their children in Christ, but help to raise other children to know Him through their church's Awana Club. Kimbre is starting a new chapter of her life as a "stay-at-home" mom. She is eager to share what she has been learning in this new part of her life.  

At my latest prenatal check-up, I had to do the glucose test, and as if drinking that stuff isn’t bad enough, they follow it up with an hour long wait in the waiting room and a blood draw. Of course, my nurse tells me about the blood draw while she’s taking my blood pressure. Ha! She looks at the numbers and comments on how high it is. Well, duh, did you expect anything else? She leaves the room and I wait for my doctor to come in.  

My doctor comes in and we listen to the baby’s heartbeat. He measures my stomach and then looks at my weight gain and my blood pressure. He was not pleased with either. Up until this point I had only gained 7 pounds total, until this this last month, when I gained 6 pounds alone. He looks at me and sadly tells me that if I do not want to deliver a 10 pound baby that I should probably give up carbs. “Give up carbs? I live on carbs; can’t I just drink more water and walk more?”

He smiles at me, “No. You can drink more water and walk more, but carbs go straight to the placenta and add pounds quickly to the baby.”

I sadly nod in understanding, “Okay.” I head out to the waiting room to wait to get my blood drawn. My husband arrives to sit with me and I tell him about the carbs and all he can do is laugh at me, knowing my diet that consists of nachos, quesadillas, pancakes, and enough pasta to end world hunger.

“Are you supposed to starve? The boys and I aren’t giving up carbs with you, sorry.” Thanks honey!  After the blood draw is done, we head for home to fix dinner…and what is on my menu for that night? Pasta!

Now as I look at my month long menu, I wonder how I am going to manage cutting carbs from my diet. So I think and think. I finally came to the conclusion that I cannot cut them out completely, so I try to cut them down to only one meal a day. If I know we are having some sort of carb for dinner, I try to steer clear of them throughout the rest of the day. So much easier said than done though, especially since my husband has decided that there needs to be a steady supply of cookies in the house! 

Oh I can’t wait for the baby to be born so I can eat carbs without worrying about having to birth a calf! 

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Bring it on!

It seems to be feast or famine in all aspects of life. Having teenagers, I am used to having busy days. I have adjusted. Now that one of them drives, it has taken a bit of pressure off of me and I have been able to semi-retire my Taxi Driver title.   However, I have filled that space with some of my own interests and, of course, my husband always has something going with his duties as a pastor.

Things can go smoothly with only a couple activities a day: school in the morning, Bible class for the kids in town at noon, practice at 3:00 and church function at 7:00. That has actually become the famine part of our schedule. It is pretty easy going, having time in between each scheduled stop. We try to fly under the radar, but then all of a sudden Life sees us and laughs.  She lies in wait for us to get comfortable with how things are going and then turns it up a notch.

We have had a couple of incidents recently that have made us shake our heads and say, "What...how...?" My husband had been invited to be the best man in a friend's wedding. He had not seen this man since high school. We were very excited to go and had resolved that it would just be the two of us going. Our youngest boy always seems to get the short end of the stick when it comes to planning our vacations around his sports schedule. He usually has to miss practices which means he can't play in games right away. That was our first dilemma. We didn't want to do that to him again. Where would our boys stay? With our older teen being close to 18, we decided they could stay home, the older could take the younger to his practices and games, they would be home to take care of the animals, we would have people from the church check in on them; it was a win/win. I talked my mama heart into being okay with that. I was looking forward to a road trip with my husband!

As I was taking my son to the doctor one day and running our trip through my mind, I exclaimed, "Oh no!" My son asked what was wrong. "My women's retreat is the same weekend as the wedding! Oh well, I will cancel the retreat." It was one that I had not attended before and was anxious to go, but decided I would bow out and not tell my husband as I didn't want him feeling badly about it.

That same afternoon, he said, "When is your retreat?"  I laughed and told him that I realized it was on the same day as the wedding but assured him it was no big deal and I could go next year.  Problem solved, trip still on.

Two days later, I was crawling into bed and looking over our calendar. A gasp escaped my lips. My husband asked what was wrong. "Chris (our 17 year old) will be on his Mexico mission trip that same week we are leaving." Now, I didn't want to sway my husband's decision, but my mama heart went into total panic mode! I could not possibly go to Wyoming while one of my son's was out of the country and another home in Idaho with someone who would have to alter their schedule to run him all over! I couldn't do it! So I prayed.  I did not want to show my husband how torn I was about this. I did not want to tell him I didn't want to go. I certainly didn't want him missing his friend's wedding. I know my God and I also know He can be the God of the last minute. I begged Him not to let me wait til the last minute to hear how He was going to fix this glitch.

The very next day, my husband says, "I think I'm going to have to call my buddy and let him know that we won't be coming to the wedding." Thank you, Jesus! We discussed how we could still get him there, but he does not like to travel without me and it was discussed with his friend and all was good.

Things were calm again and Life got busy meddling in the plans of others, but she must have just went around the block. I pulled out my calendar to mark down some schedules the boys had handed me. Why was it that everything was saying March 19th? That couldn't be right. "Oh, yes it could!" Life said. My husband leaves the 18th for his men's retreat and won't be home until the night of the 19th. I have a writing conference that I am helping to facilitate the 19th which has been scheduled for months.  Thank goodness my 17 year old can drive because our youngest has a baseball invitational in another town that day. Oh, but wait, of course that's not all. That is also the night of prom.

So you know what I did? I laughed in Life's face. "Ha! I've got this! This ain't my first rodeo!" I assured Chris that his dad and I would both be home early evening and that Eli's game was supposed to be over by four and that while his brother was at the game, he could run down the road and get his flowers for his prom date and since his dance didn't start until 9:00 p.m., he would still have time to come home and clean up and take his date to dinner at 7:00. Booyah!

Life knew she had been beat. She hung her head and slowly walked down the road, but with a renewed energy, straightened and looked over her shoulder and said with a smirk on her face (and NOT in a Arnold Schwarzenegger accent), "I'll be back."

I confidently responded with, "I know and I'll be here. Bring it on!"

Yes, life will throw those little scheduling glitches into the mix, just to keep you on your toes and keep things interesting. Don't lose heart, just get into your fighting stance!

B-L-E-S-S-E-D!

Do you know why I love my family? Because they are always so helpful when I am in a tough spot. My husband was thoughtful enough to ask how my blogging was coming tonight and I admitted it had been a few days since I wrote anything for it and was going to tonight but could not think of anything to write. He offered the suggestion of writing about how cool he was to which my 17 year old said, "You could write about how cool all three of us are." That was simple. I am always telling people to write, it doesn't matter what you write, just write. So I sat down and my fingers are a-flyin'.

I am blessed. I can never deny that.  My husband is super cool. He is the spiritual leader of our home, he is a good dad and a good husband. He is always looking for joining in on the interests of me and the kids, so needless to say he stays quite busy. But it doesn't stop there for him. He is a pastor which means he also has to zone in on the interests of others in the congregation, be perceptive to their needs physically and spiritually.  We also have a good sized group of kids at the church that he enjoys supporting their interests of sports and activities. Between all of that, he works side jobs. Many times he will take us with him.  He calls it bonding time. It may not be our first choice to spend the day in that form, but we know it helps him and he goes above and beyond for us and we actually do end up having a lot of laughs.

My husband is very much into "bonding time". Yard work becomes bonding time along with working on the car. He balances it out, though, and has gotten us all obsessed with jigsaw puzzles. Anything that gets us all in a group together qualifies as bonding. My husband has a special way of drawing information out of each of us and getting rich conversations started.  Some of our deepest conversations have occurred in our backyard around the fire pit which have become known as....you guessed it..."bond fires". Break out the wienies and the marshmellows and the philosophical discussions and we all go to bed richly blessed!

To honor my teen's suggestion, I want to say how blessed I am to be a mom of seven kids. We have the beauty of the blended family with his, hers and ours but we have left the labels outside.  With five boys and two girls in the mix, there was NEVER a dull moment. It has been quite the journey watching them grow up and become productive members of society, making grown-up decisions, setting grown-up boundaries and starting their own families. I have been blessed by the fact that all of the kids have always been extremely polite. I don't remember teaching them that so think some of it was knit into them. Also, our kids have always been very respectful to us as parents. They are helpful and no matter what meal I make for them, whether it is steak and potatoes or macaroni and cheese I ALWAYS hear, "Good dinner, Mom!"

We are down to two at home now and I am wanting to stretch it out as long as I possibly can. All of the kids have provided so many precious precious memories for me. I love seeing my kids smile and interact with each other now that they are older.  But the fun doesn't end there...because now I have the grandbabies and feel like I get to start all over again!!

So there, I can now let my family know that I wrote about how cool they all are!  B-L-E-S-S-E-D!

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I did it!

I don't sew. My mother was a seamstress. I knew I didn't have to sew...because my mother was a seamstress. She tried to teach me, but I did not have the patience or the perfection gene that it takes to do a sewing project. I am in awe of people who can make beautiful clothes  and quilts. It just has not been my thing.

Because of the persistence of my mother-in-law, however, I have been able to taste the accomplishment that comes from finishing a creative task. I can definitely understand why people get the craft bug under their skin. We were called to go back to our hometown one summer for several weeks.   We stayed at my in-laws and almost immediately my mother-in-law took me to the craft closet stuffed with fleece and jeans and yarn.  She was bound and determine to help me make as many Christmas gifts as I could while I was there.   She did tell me at one point, "Okay, I got you started on the project, you know what to do so you take that home and finish it."  I had to inform her that it had to be completed while I was at her house because I know myself well enough to admit that as soon as I would walk into my own house, the project would be stuffed into the closet and there it would stay.

So I learned how to crochet a stocking and I made blankets for all the grandbabies and my sons.   Then she set me on task to do something for me, a ragged jean
I spent hours cutting out squares and then hours laying the blocks out on the floor to get just the right pattern and then weeks putting it all together. My mother-in-law loves going out on the patio first thing in the morning to sit in the sun so we would take our projects out there every morning and pin them together.   I would come back in the house and sew for an endless amount of time.   My father-in-law would approach me and ask how many needles I had broken that particular day.

I was determined to finish that quilt. Surprisingly, there were not as many tears shed through the frustrating effort as I thought there would be...until the end.   All the rows were sewed together, the backing was attached and all the ragged seams were clipped. I was told it was time to put it into the washing machine. I carried the heavy covering into the laundry room and placed it in the machine and chose the proper settings. I turned around and my mother-in-law was standing in front of me. She said, "You did it...how do you feel?" I wanted to burst into tears.   I did it! I started something AND I followed through with it. I have several projects started, but I had actually finished the whole project and it was beautiful, it was warm, it was mine...and it was worth it.

I love having people in my life that push me out of my comfort zone and that encourage and teach me along the way.  As much as I wanted her to at times, my mother-in-law never took the project over. She would talk me through the steps of changing the needles or piecing things together but would not do it for me.   I appreciated her heart to want me to experience that feeling of a finished project! How rewarding!

Many Ways to Teach!

As a Sunday School teacher, I am always trying to think of different and creative ways to help the kids remember Bible verses.  It is interesting to see what the children respond to.  For my toddlers at church, we yell out the verse or clap our hands to each word.  Our vacation Bible school last year had a great CD with verses put to music.  Music definitely stimulates the brain and attaching the verses to catchy tunes was a great hit! It didn't matter to the kids that it was just the one verse over and over...and over again. They loved the beat of the music and we would do actions to the words as well as use different dynamics in the volume.  I have gotten the comment from kids, "Miss Jo, that song was in my head all day. I couldn't stop singing it."  Good!!

I tried a new tactic a couple of weeks ago.   I had a verse that the kids had to memorize. I couldn't think of a tune to put it to and it was for the older kids so didn't think they would be interested in hopping up and down and clapping their hands to learn it.   I thought we could draw the verse out on paper and I would allow THEM to come up with the symbols that we would use.   This is what they came up with for II Timothy 1:7. Because the kids came up with the symbols and I had each of them copy it down for themselves, they have had no problem remembering the verse. They not only can do it from the symbols, but can do it from memory because they can picture the symbols in their minds.  

I love it when I see kids learning God's Word, whether it is through song, object lessons, or verse memorization! It will impact them for the rest of their lives!

Share your teaching ideas in the comments section!

Make an impact!

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We're hooked!

We are always trying to find ways to connect with our kids. We feel it is important to spend as much time with them as possible. We learned with our first son that 18 years can FLY by! I mentioned before that we do civil war re-enacting. Our oldest boy got us into that.   We don't necessarily do it because it is fun. It is actually a lot of hard work, and can be a very hot and uncomfortable weekend. We do it because it was quality time we could spend with not only our kids but other kids whose lives we wanted to impact.  We do have fun with it and have built a lot of great memories through it.

Football games, wrestling tournaments, and baseball games fill up our fall, winter and spring. Movies are great fun but super expensive if you have more than one child.   Going to the movie theater is a treat in our house. There is a new activity we look forward to in the summer now.  

A couple of years ago, we let our second to youngest boy stay in Wyoming for the summer. We headed back with only our youngest in tow.  He had developed a love for baseball and even though our hometown in Wyoming had a minor league team, our timing of going there was always wrong as far as home games.  As we headed into Montana, we discovered that Billings had a team and lo and behold they were having a home game the very night we were passing through.  Since it was just the three of us we figured we could possibly afford to attend. Can you imagine our excitement when we got up to the ticket gate and was told the tickets were only $7.00 a piece?!

We stayed for the game and we were hooked!  The first thing we did when we got home was look up the Boise Hawks baseball schedule for the summer. So this has become an activity we can afford, one we can enjoy with our boys, and one with which we can entertain other kids and company.

I am going to tattle on my husband here. We took my husband's truck to the game one night, the kids were in the extended cab. My husband was giving them a lesson on how you are allowed a few miles over the speed limit. I don't think he even got the last word out of his mouth when the red and blue lights started flashing behind us.  Priceless. The officer shows up at the window with the typical, "Do you know why you are being pulled over?" My husband explained that we were coming back from a Boise Hawks game and that he was just giving the kids a lesson on the rules of the road. To our surprise, the five-mile-over rule does not apply to the back roads.   The officer politely asks, "Have you had anything to drink tonight?" My husband proudly stated his last drink had been 15 years earlier and not a drop since.  Completing his thorough line of questioning, "Do you have any illegal drugs in the car?"  My husband pointed to the back seat and said, "Nah, I have teenagers. The Boise Hawks IS our drug." The officer chatted with the kids for a few minutes and let us off with a warning.

Yes, baseball is our drug now. We get antsy as spring approaches and we get to get a gradual start with high school ball and just as the "ball gets rolling" the Hawks start their games and the calendar fills up. We put money aside for when the home games start and down the road we go!

Find out what your family is interested in and get involved. Spend time with each other hanging out outside of the house.  Not everything has to cost an arm and a leg. There are some very inexpensive, family friendly activities available.  Have fun and make the most of the those opportunities!

Building Relationships!

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Refrigerator of Memories

I LOVE the person who created the refrigerator! Oh, yes, those of you who know me know that I love to eat. However, that is not the reason I adore my fridge. I think the person who invented the refrigerator was a mom and/or a grandma. They intentionally made it magnetic so that all sorts of nonperishable items could be attached on the outside of it. These items are not things that will make your belly full, but things that will make your heart full!

My piles of papers tend to get completely out of control. I know if I put certain things in a pile, we will never see them again. I like to have them right under my nose,so I hang them on the refrigerator. I approach that appliance several times a day so it only makes sense to have that as my reminder zone. The youth group schedule  is hung there so that every week we can quickly see what the boys will be doing. Our sports schedule is definitely to be posted there since we have several events a week involving that with practice and games and meetings.

We add the fun little magnets with special sayings, but they serve an even more important purpose: holding our memories in place.   They secure the pictures of our children, our grandbabies, our church "kids", and of course the masterpieces that our grandchildren make for us.  We have a 9 year old granddaughter and when she is turned loose with the magnetic letters, we always have a special message in place to surprise us.

Every time I go to the refrigerator I am met with smiling faces, beautiful memories, and works of art that touch my soul!

Building Memories!

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