Saturday, February 22, 2014
We are loving our new microwave! Last one didn’t have the express cook feature and this one has it from 30 seconds to 6 minutes. and it is so. quiet. Best of all, it doesn’t continue to beep nag us when the cook time is complete.
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You know what I LOVE about reading Philip Yancey? He’s not afraid to barrel headlong into the hard questions even when it could make his readers ask “uhhhh. Is this guy even a CHRISTIAN?!”
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Only one thing missing from today. A tin roof.
#torrentialdownpour
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More photos of #thehomeprojectthatneverends: the living room makeover. the library.
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The view out my back porch today. It’s raining so hard even a turtle is looking for shelter.
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CLICK HERE to see the latest photos of the 2014 home makeover project. My very own mini LIBRARY.
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FavoriteHusband and Bob have been fighting over this chair all day. FavoriteHusband just left the house.
You got about an hour and a half, Bob.
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I know. that in a home improvement project, the house will go from bad to terrible to chaos before even coming close to better. But at this very moment, we have so many things happening at the same time, it feels like the light at the end of the tunnel is being carried in the opposite direction.
#thehomeprojectthatneverends
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Sunday, February 23, 2014
Although we are hours behind our hoped for schedule, the game room baseboards are finished, every piece of furniture is back in place with felt on the bottom and the electronics are all hooked back up. Unfortunately, because of all the rain yesterday, we created a dependent task by using wood cutting power tools on the back porch. EVERY. THING. is covered in sawdust, which I have NO intention of cleaning up today. Next up. Laying the new flooring in the kitchen.
#thehomeprojectthatneverends
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My husband just pulled the oven into the middle of the kitchen floor.
that. is. dis. gusting.
#ewww
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The kitchen floor will not be finished by the time we go to bed. At this point, both the fridge and the oven are in the middle of my kitchen. We just broke for dinner. Takeout from Gino’s. We’ve lived here since 1996 and we’ve only eaten there once. Four thumbs up. And the portion sizes are HUGE. Who can eat this much in one sitting? All four of us will be getting two meals out of our orders. Which is good. Because our fridge and stove are in the middle of the kitchen right now.
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Monday, February 24, 2014
2:40am.
The fridge, stove and dishwasher are all where they should be. With new flooring under each. The room we thought would be the easiest has turned out to be the hardest. The kitchen is…1/4 – 1/3 finished.
We. are. tired.
#thehomeprojectthatneverends
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You know what people don’t say enough? “dagnabbit.”
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dagnabbit. No water comes out of the sink when I turn on hot and no water comes out of the fridge door when I try to get ice water. obviously, we’ve done something to break something. twice. or maybe just once with double consequences. But the floor under the fridge and dishwasher look excellent. Have I mentioned that I HATE dependent tasks? Especially when we actually CREATE them.
#thehomeprojectthatneverends
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And two more dominoes fall in #thehomeprojectthatneverends. Both involving shopping. I hate shopping.
(1) Putting the loveseat back into the living room and we noticed it was actually THREADBARE. Not sure I’ve ever seen threadbare before, but this is definitely it. Found a new one I actually LOVE yesterday on accident when I was returning shelving to Big Lots. and it’s a floor model on clearance! FavoriteHusband is taking his truck this afternoon. REALLY hope it’s still there.
(2) 2nd domino is replacing the rolling office chairs we have around our kitchen table. Floor manufacturer’s instructions warn against the casters. Casters that meet specs are a minimum of $50 a set. $50+ each to make chairs that already have “cosmetic issues” more functional. no. I’ll be shopping for new kitchen chairs. Comfortable. Cheap.
CLICK HERE to see 2009 photos of our chair preference progression AND the threadbare loveseat before it was threadbare and the flooring we will be covering up this weekend.
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That lizard Bob the cat presented to me and then set free in the house on Valentine’s Day?
Found him.
And it’s clear that Bob found him first.
#ewww
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FavoriteHusband is picking up my new reading spot right now. Then we need to feed my old reading spot to the Whale POD (charity storage unit.) Hoping to lay more flooring in the kitchen tonight.
#thehomeprojectthatneverends
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(10:30pm)
FavoriteHusband and I spent the last hour and a half laying only FOUR rows of flooring in the kitchen. He went into the garage to get tools to switch out the water filter on the back of the fridge.
Me, to FavoriteSon: “I tire of this game. I don’t want to play anymore.”
FavoriteSon: “Then quit. Make dad do it.”
Me: “That wouldn’t be very nice.”
FS: “Well, then stop complaining.”
Me: “yeah. That’s not gonna happen.”
#thehomeprojectthatneverends
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Tuesday, February 25, 2014
It is February 25th. Who knows why my daughter is ECSTATICALLY HAPPY it is FINALLY February 25th?
(digital HD release of Disney’s Frozen)
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If you know me, you probably already know this. In the context of my everyday interactions with people, I am very open about my faith. Because I’ve learned that if I hide the thing that is most important in my life from the people I interact with in an effort to make them more comfortable, we will never be true friends. They will never know who I really am. I will be a big fake. The hiding would be deceitful. I tell people about my faith in Christ because it is such a integral part of my life that to hide it from people would be to hide myself. It would keep people at a distance.
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The rest of the flooring is going to go down SLOWLY. The reason? We are working BACKwards. Up until the kitchen, we were working north to south, which meant we were laying flooring on TOP of the last laid row. In order to match up with the connecting room, we have to lay the kitchen south to north, which means that every. single. plank. has to be tucked UNDER the previous row. The adhesive is STRONG. If we let any part of the planks touch before they are positioned, it is a struggle to readjust.
#thehomeprojectthatneverends
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“I’ve found my bliss.” and/or “I need to find my bliss.”
#thingsIwillneversay
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Wednesday, February 26, 2014
To continue from yesterday…Here’s what evangelism looks like in my life: When I interact with people, the first thing I want to do is get to know more about them as an individual. I ask questions. I listen. I ask more questions. and I listen. Sometimes, the other person shares something about their own life or experiences or goals or dreams or obstacles or fears that calls to my mind something in my own life and experience – something which relates in some way to what they’ve shared with me. Since Christ is such an integral part of my life, it’s only natural that those experiences would be saturated by His presence and influence.
I don’t filter God out of my life stories to make other people more comfortable.
What about you? Do you filter out what Christ has done and is doing in your life in an effort to make people more comfortable? To make yourself easier to like? Are you hiding the most important part of yourself and in the process, sabotaging the potential for authentic friendships? Are you keeping people at a distance? Settling for another acquaintance when you could have a true friend? What happens if you give the other person more credit than that? What happens if you trust them accept you for who you are even if they are different than you?
(this is an excerpt from one of my February 2013 blog posts – CLICK HERE to read the full post)
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Would this count as a Rick Roll?
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PinkGirl, on the ride home from school: “Mom! Did you know there’s a gorilla that can communicate using sign language?”
Me: “Yes.”
PinkGirl: “Her name is Koko.”
Me: “I know.”
PinkGirl: “I want a gor…”
Me: “Noooooo.”
PinkGirl: “But she’s so swe…”
Me: “No. You may NOT have a gorilla.”
#ilovemydaughter
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PinkGirl, trying to pack her lunch in our construction zone kitchen: (spoken wistfully): “Mom. Do you remember…when we used to have a counter?”
Me: “yes. smart alec kid.”
PinkGirl, point waving at all the painting and flooring supplies: “and I didn’t make this mess.”
#thehomeprojectthatneverends
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LONG overdue catharsis. no holds barred. (my latest blog post): The lying tempter would persuade.
(click the link above or the Jim Carrey photos below to read the full post)
Thursday, February 27, 2014
We put the game room back together last weekend.
FavoriteSon: “It’s not really a man cave.”
Me: “You use this room more than anyone else. It’s a man cave.”
FavoriteSon: “There’s a quote by Henry David Thoreau on the wall. It’s not a man cave.”
touché
#ilovemyson
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Me, to FavoriteSon: “Part of me says (excited voice) ‘Your Dad is coming home today!!’ and part of me says (depressed voice) ‘Your Dad is coming home today.'”
FavoriteSon: “Because you have to get back to work on the house?”
yes. I did miss him. But it was a wonderful two days off.
#thehomeprojectthatneverends
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Seriously affirmed in my reasoning to create and publish facebook compilation blog posts. Working on one now and there’s so much stuff I flat out can NOT find on facebook that I know I posted less than a week ago. It’s like it disappeared. If you think facebook is a great way to chronicle your everyday life, it’s not. I’m going to try and do these compilation posts from here on out – and post on my own blog. Where I have control of content.
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I LOVE my daughter’s school and the middle school teachers. She just called me in uncontrollable happy tears to tell me how much she loves me because she just came out of drama class where her classmates (PinkGirl included) just “poured their hearts out about everything they were all going through and how we’re all so thankful and blessed that we have Christ in our lives to help us and…” Her next class was Bible and she asked to go to the office to call me and ask me to come up to school so she could hug me. I’m outta here. #ilovemydaughter
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Just got back from going to PinkGirl’s school to give her a requested mid-day bear hug. One of the kids involved in that heart-wrenching discussion was sharing really, really hard things and everyone was telling him it would be okay. PinkGirl said: “I can’t promise you everything will be okay. At least not the way we see our life. But it will be okay the way God sees it. I think God is using the things in our lives to mold us into the people we’re going to be. It’s like a blacksmith. Sometimes, a blacksmith has to heat stuff up and hit it really hard with a hammer to mold it into something beautiful. The blacksmith knows what he’s making.”
#ilovemydaughter #seepeople #reachout
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EVERY day matters. EVERY conversation matters. Don’t settle for conversations about nothing. Platitudes can be lies. Ask questions that let your friends and family KNOW you care about them and talk about things really that matter, even if it makes them uncomfortable. Even if it makes them back away. Even if people think you’re too serious. It doesn’t mean you are wrong. It means they aren’t ready. #lessonsfrommydaughter
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HOW have I never seen this? I LOVE smart fast funny! so. good.
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I add “read books” to my to-do list every day so I know I’ll get at least one thing done.
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Here’s another facebook compilation blog post. Everything I posted on facebook between February 15th thru 21st, all on one page. Because sometimes stuff on facebook doesn’t show up in my newsfeed. or disappears.
facebook fragments: 02/15/14 – 02/21/14 (EPCOT, fb hacks & a dead microwave)
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Whenever I see something arrogantly or sarcastically hateful on facebook, I can’t help but wonder what is going on in that person’s life that would prompt them to take time and effort out of their probably otherwise demanding day to be openly and intentionally hurtful to strangers. or friends. #seepeople #edify
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To see more previous facebook update and compilation blog posts, CLICK HERE.