Attack of the Flying Squirrel

So I was reading through some of my MOPS posts again and found another one to share. I had forgotten about this event until I read this post and everything came flooding back to me. Now I can't get the image of those beady little eyes staring down at me out of my head. (the "mopping" I refer to is browsing the MOPS forums not actually mopping a floor)

May 17, 2006

First, I have to let you know that our basement ceiling isn't finished so there's duct work and wires and pipes and such all out in the open for all to see. Most everything else is finished and that's where the tv, computer and our bedroom is.

So I'm sitting at the computer checking email and mopping when I hear a scratching sound coming from the duct work overhead. I look up and catch a glimpse of a furry grey thing scurrying along. It stops then turns around and scurries back the way it came. It did this a few times and even stopped to look at me so I decided to call my parents to have my dad come over to help me get rid of it.

Nobody answered so I called my sister's cell phone (she lives with them) and was talking to her telling her what was going on and she relayed it to my mom and then I said it was on the pipe looking at me and then I screamed because it jumped off the pipe straight at me! My sister's poor ears! It landed about two feet from my feet and scurried off across the living room.

I heard it over by our storage room and then my sis was talking to my dad and he decided to come over to help me. My sis stayed on the phone with me until he got here (for moral support). He found it in the storage room and we watched it scurry over to the wood throw in place and I went out to the garage to move the stuff blocking it and he scurried out and up the wall and jumped from rafter to rafter until he was close to the door and scurried out the door and then I heard him scurrying across the rooftop. Crazy night! no wonder I am wide awake right now.

Kate

Activities when I was a kid

This is a MOPS post from March 31, 2006. Someone asked a question about the activities your parents had you participate in as a child and this was my response.

I come from a family of three. I am the oldest, my brother is two years younger than me and my sister is four years younger than me. My parents always encouraged us to try a variety of activities and stick with the things we were most interested in.

We all participated in choir through middle school, but I continued through college. Each of us was encouraged to try at least one year of band and my siblings quit after their year and I continued through college. We all were "forced" to take at least three years of piano lessons. Again, I continued through college and eventually became a music teacher. (and despite the fact they were "forced" my brother still plays his recital piece "Chariots of Fire" on occasion and my sister will pick out songs on the piano now and then so it couldn't have been that bad )

My sister and I both took dance for several years although mine were 11 in a row and she started and stopped. She is the one who was on danceline in high school and is now an assistant dance teacher in her "spare" time. My sister and I also did a lot of theater (mostly during the summers).

My brother played basketball beginning in elementary school and through his freshman year of college. My parents NEVER missed a game, even college when he mostly warmed the bench. My sister and I did some sports, but not as much as my brother. In the summer we all did t-ball/baseball/softball through middle school or junior high.

I always felt that if there was something out there my siblings or I really wanted to try when we were growing up my parents would make the extra effort to help us do it. Whether it was driving to rehearsals or finding the money for fees or lessons they made sure we were able to have the opportunity to try a variety of activities. They did hold true to the idea that we needed to finish was we started/committed to. Whether it was a sports season or a year of lessons we were never allowed to quit in the middle of something.

I also never felt pressured into doing activities that I wasn't interested in. I know sometimes parents try to relive their "glory days" through their kids or help their kids be successful in something they always wanted to do regardless of how the kid feels about it. My parents never did anything like that. I know my dad is definitely not a big fan of choral music, but he came to all my concerts from elementary school through college to support me in an activity I enjoyed. He probably would have enjoyed watching me play in a basketball game a lot more, but he never complained, always supported the interests I chose and never pressured me to be more interested in sports than just the occasional backyard football game or game of H-O-R-S-E on the basketball court.

I guess, now that I think of it, we were never in more than two activities outside of the school day at a time. For example, I was in band and choir in school and took dance and piano after school. Then in the summer I did t-ball/softball or theater. That way we still had time at home to do family things and school work and they weren't running from one thing to the next every day of the week.

I really appreciate what my parents did for us and I know I will make sure to let my kids participate in a variety of activities as well. I hope that helps!

Kate

The End of an Era

This Thursday the MOPS online forums will be shut down in preparation for a new and improved forum that is slated to open this September. Unfortunately in the process of creating this new forum, everything currently on the forums will be deleted. For some reason this news really bothered me. I guess I thought that those forums and everything that we posted there would be available to reference indefinitely. Obviously this is not the case.

I have been a member of the MOPS forums since March 2006. I had joined my local MOPS group after Mike got deployed and emailed MOPS International asking for resources for women in my situation. The person who responded to my email directed me to the forums.  The fact that there were no tangible resources for women with deployed spouses really bothered me at first, but I decided to give the forums a try since that seemed to be my only option.  That was one of the best decisions I ever made.

What I found waiting for me was a group of women from all over the world sharing their lives with each other.  They encouraged, laughed, cried, prayed, shared, mentored, and essentially mothered each other in a way I had never experienced before. I was very blessed to be a part of it.

During Mike's deployment I knew that if I logged on at 1:00am needing a friend to talk to I was certain to find Cheryl in Japan, Megan in Australia, Ilse in South Africa or any number of other international moms. During the day I connected with many moms here in the states and in Canada. It amazed me that no matter the time of day and no matter the issue I was concerned about, if I posted a thread asking for prayer I was guaranteed to have someone praying for me within minutes.

When I discovered everything from the last five years would be deleted, I spent some time sifting through the 81 pages of posts I found when I did a search for myself. I copied and pasted anything I wanted to save into a word document. I have to admit reading some of those posts was a bit more difficult than I had anticipated. To have the knowledge of how things worked out for the deployment and still read the hopefulness of an early return brought tears to my eyes.

I guess you could say that the MOPS forums were like my blog during the deployment. Anything worth sharing was recorded there for my online family. Now the question is what to do with all those posts. I am considering taking some time to organize them and post them here to share what life was like for our family during that time in our history. The kids were too little to remember much about when daddy was away at "army man camp driving a hummer."

Since Daisy was born I haven't been on the forums as much as I was while Mike was gone and I am thankful I decided to check in earlier this week as opposed to later. It would have been difficult to discover that all that history had been lost.

Loads of Laundry

In a family our size it seems that laundry is the one chore that will never be completed. I have found that it is indeed possible for every dish in the house to be washed. It is a very rare occasion that this occurs, but it is possible. Laundry is another story entirely.

Just when I think I have done every possible piece of dirty clothing in the house, I will stumble upon a stray article that somehow conveniently slipped behind the girls' bed just enough to be missed the first time through the room and happily rears its ugly head upon my return to put away its clean associates. It never fails. Laundry is a task that simply never gets completed.

I think this is the reason I have such difficulty forcing myself to attempt to keep up with it. My personality is such that I like to finish things. Please don't interrupt me in the middle of a piano piece I am playing to ask some trivial question about something I really don't feel like dealing with because there is no way I can leave the keyboard until the piece is completed. Most often when I start a book that I really enjoy it will be completed within a day (or two, depending on the length).

I can handle vacuuming and mopping because once those tasks are completed the floors are nice for a while. Yes, I will eventually have to clean them again, but it just isn't as daunting as laundry. Give me windows any day of the week. Once they are sparkling it takes weeks (or even months) to get nasty enough to need cleaning again.

Laundry is a task I simply loathe. This is of course why I am teaching my children how to do laundry at such early ages. My Caleb (9) has done an entire basket of his dirty clothes from start to finish... on more than one occasion! He even folded them (as best a nine-year-old can) and put them away. Brady and Amelia aren't that far behind and Daisy loves to help me load the washer and dryer. It's just a matter of time before she's doing her own laundry, too.

You would think that with help like that, laundry would be a breeze. It is not. It is a never-ending chore that simply sucks the life out of me. Regardless of how it makes me feel, laundry is a task that needs to be done whether I like it or not. And on that wonderful note, I shall depart to tackle Mt. Washmore and attempt to chisel it down to a small ant hill. I am certain that there are children available somewhere in this house to give me some welcome assistance.

Acts of Service

We have quiet time every day where the kids are expected to do something quiet while Daisy takes her nap. The other day Mike was off from work and I decided to take a short nap in our room so that I wouldn't be completely worn out for rehearsal that evening.

We had been working on cleaning up the entry/piano room before quiet time.  All the kids were asked to get their belongings out of that space and put them away before heading to their rooms. They all did a pretty good job of it and then headed off to their rooms.

Since Daisy and Amelia share a room we usually have Amelia do quiet time on the couch in the basement or up in our bedroom. On that day we asked her to go down to the basement since I wanted to nap in our room.

I had been laying down for a little while when I heard Mike coming up the stairs. He sat down on the bed next to me a whispered "Guess what Amelia is doing." I had no idea what she might be up to and I said so. "She's cleaning up downstairs, but she wants to surprise you.  She even asked me if she could run the vacuum."

It turns out that rather than going to the basement, Amelia had decided to continue working in the room we had started on.  She is definitely a child who shows love through acts of service.  She is the first to want to help out and she seldom complains when asked to pick up after herself.  I love that about her.  I definitely appreciated the work she did for me that day and it amazes me that she thought to do it all on her own.

I continue to be amazed by how well the names we chose for the kids fit their personalities. Amelia means "industrious, strong worker." The was no way we could have known that our sweet baby girl would grow up to fit her name so perfectly.