This Week

God has definitely prepared our hearts for this wait and the upcoming answer we have been waiting months to hear. This last week since our Missions interview has been filled with peace and calm, over the impending decision any way.

We have been busily spring cleaning the house, something we had planned on anyway. The rooms of our home are getting a deep cleaning. I am talking scrubbed walls, floors, doors, ect. We have cleaned out a lot of clutter as well. There have been several bags of garbage, baskets sent to the thrift store and boxes to be donated. Some things are going back to their original homes and some are going to new homes to bless other families with things we are no longer using. This all makes great prep work if we are going to be selling our house and leaving and if we aren't then it means a beautiful clean home to live in.

We have also started fleshing out some of our plans for our potential trip. This weekend we are talking a lot about what items would be on our prayer list and what our first missions newsletter will be like. I have also been visualizing our new blog. Should we get a yes, we will be switching to wordpress as it will be our missions hub and we want our updates and projects to be easy to access.

Today I am prepping for the new homeschool year. Since we have chosen to school year round, our school year starts in 1 week. It is a good reminder that even in the midst of big life changes we need to keep our everyday routine going. It also reminds me how wonderful it is to homeschool. Should we move, school will not change and we can get back into our routine gradually if needed. God has certainly blessed us and we pray He is blessing all of you as well!

Cleaning Day

Saturday is cleaning day at our house and last week was an extra fun one for me. Every time I turned around Little Guy was doing a job I never even asked him to do. Yes, it did take me a whole week to share...perhaps you have not read the post on the quantity of missions forms we have to fill out? Most of them are done and sent off now, but on to cleaning day...

I asked him to clean the sink, but he volunteered to do the bathtub too! I am noticing how tall he is in this pic , guess we don't need the step stool in there anymore.

Then he dusted the TV stand without suggestion, followed by dust mopping the house. A mom could get used to this!

I surprised him with some Octonauts magnets too. Just printed pics and put sticky magnet pieces on the back. They were a big hit and is one of his favorite shows.

Cleaning House: a Book Review

First off I want to thank Blogging For Books for giving me a copy of this book to review!

Cleaning house has an interesting premise. Kay Wills Wyma realized that her children had become quite entitled over the years. They were under the assumption that someone will always come along and do their work for them, clean up after them, and attend to their every whim. Sound like any of your own kiddos? Kay came up with a 1 year plan to break this cycle and help them become self sufficient by raising the bar of expectations and cutting back on her own enabling tendencies.

Each month She added a new task to the list of duties her children would take on. From simply cleaning their rooms, to cooking, to learning to serve. The narratives were wonderful! While my own Little Guy is still much to young to do many of the things in the book, it did get my brain cranking out ideas for my 5 year-old.

While I enjoyed the the narratives and the overall theme of the book, it did get a little long for me. Excerpts from other moms dot the chapters like a commercial break in the middle of the narrative  I am not a fan of this, but it may look better in print over the Kindle version I read. It gets a little repetitious as well as she gets into the research on youth entitlement.

Over all, I really liked the book. I really think more women should try doing this. Imagine what our future would look like if every home cracked down on entitlement...that is a world I would love to see!