Keepin' it Simple

Today, December 27, I have taken all my Christmas decorations down, packed them all away and hucked the tree out the front door.  A bit Grinch-ish, perhaps?  Yes.  Probably more than a bit but I'm OK with that.  I love the feel of the house after we take everything down:  open, airy, clean...simple.  Simple is my own personal montra.  It's my style.  It's my sanity.  When the rest of my life is overwhelming and work is piling up, it helps to have a house that is clutter-free, pretty well organized and SIMPLE.

See, I'm the type of person that really can't sit down and relax until the sink is empty and the washer is running.  I like having a basket of laundry to fold or a quilt to stitch while we watch TV.  I set the kitchen table before I go to bed because it helps me relax knowing I'm prepared for the morning.  I know, I know...you should try living me.  It drives my husband batty sometimes.  So, simplicity keeps me sane and allows me to relax, because without it...well, I'm sure I would be wound about 3 clicks too tight all day long. 

But my simplicity thought process goes far beyond my house.  I've always been a t-shirt and jeans kind of girl so it's safe to say that my fashion sense is, well, simple.  There are times that I think I should try new things, wear something I normally wouldn't, but usually, I just feel like I'm acting when I do that.  I'm not going to re-invent myself at age 37.  Keep it simple and simple can be beautiful.

One area I'm trying to work simplicity into is fitness.  I will admit to being a sucker for exercise equipment & techy things.  I have the nike+ system for my iPhone to track my mileage and pace (when I get out and run), I have the wii Fitness Plus game & balance board  (side note:  I don't appreciate the sound the the board makes when I step on it:   a condescending "Oohh..."  But I digress....), we have the Active 2 sensors for the wii and all kinds of resistance bands, weights and gadgets.  But I've come to realize that all I need are my shoes.  Keep it simple, Amy!  Go out and walk or run.  I make it harder than it needs to be and it's not rocket surgery.  It's not about training for a flippin' marathon, it's about getting outside and moving my body.   I don't have to throw out sugar and red meat...just find moderation.  Simple.

There's another part of keeping things simple...being able to say No.  I don't have to serve on every Parent's Club committee or sit on the soccer club's board of directors to be an awesome parent.  There was a time when every volunteer activity I did looked like this:  volunteer (to look like a good mom), forget about it with all the other activities going on, remember it 2 days before it's deadline, work thru every spare moment to get it done, hating every minute of it.  Ugh.  When my husband asked me why I kept volunteering for things I didn't even like doing, I thought to myself: 'Huh...he's kinda smart'.  To be honest, I was just doing it to keep up appearances and look like what I had mistakenly thought a good mom looked like.  When I decided to only pick one or two activities or committees to be involved in per year, life got much better and much easier.  Sometimes, simplicity means not caring what other people may think of you or your choices.

So, as I look at 2011 looming ahead of me, my goals all revolve around simplifying my life as much as possible.  Because when 'stuff' isn't in the way, it's alot easier to see the things that are important and that's where my focus should be.  Plus, I figure life is gonna happen whether we are ready for what the Lord throws at us or not.  If we're all amped up about things, it's not going to help us get through it or see what it is we're supposed to be learning from the situation.  Keep it simple, roll with the punches, admit your mistakes and move on....

Fearfully & Wonderfully Made

"When she stopped conforming to the conventional picture of femininity she finally began to enjoy being a woman."  Betty Friedan

This quote caught my attention the other day and has been stuck in my head ever since.  When I read it, I said, "Ah hah!  I can totally understand that!"  Then I looked up the woman who said it because I didn't have any idea who Betty Friedan was.  A shame, I know. 

Seeing that she was a pioneer in the feminist movement gave me a momentary pause.  I'm not the militant feminist type.  I don't believe the two sexes are the same but I also don't believe that either sex should be held above the other.  I believe that we are individuals first, genders second.

Mind you, I will be the first one to put you in your place if you tell me I can't do something because I'm female, but then again, I don't like to be told I can't do something for any reason.   I enjoy being a mom and I'm very happy making our home run smoothly, something that some modern feminists can't understand.  And, I like to hang out with guys because they are usually pretty straight forward, don't have alot of drama and don't mind that I yell alot at sporting events.  But, that's just my personality, not my gender, and I'm pretty sure there are other women out there just like me.  Scratch that...other personalities out there just like me.  I don't think life is as simple as men v. women or gender roles...I think we need to look at individuals, not genders. 

For me, this quote was about more than gender roles though. It spoke to how I feel about my physical appearance as well.  I don't feel that I fit the mold of what society considers beautiful...I'm not tall and thin, my hair isn't bouncy and shiny, I don't have perfect skin.  I am curvy and could stand to lose 10 pounds, I have cankles, a good hair day is cause for celebration and I have more pimples at 37 than I did as a teenager.  I have a c-section scar from 3 kids who just had to use the emergency exit, stretch marks and my boobs have retired and moved south.  I have been heavy and I have been thin and I have seen people treat me differently at each weight.  All of this has made me doubt my own beauty and self confidence. 

On the flip side of this, I have seen what my body can do.  I have run 5ks and 10ks, I have given birth to and nursed 3 healthy children, I can buck hay and halter break steers, I can run & play with my kids and, after 15 years, my husband still calls me beautiful.  Perhaps most importantly, I am healthy!  All of these things are what I should be using to see the true beauty in my body and myself.

So, for me, this quote was saying 'stop looking at yourself through society's lense', focus on the good instead.  We are all 'fearfully and wonderfully made'.  Not in redundant mirror images of each other but in uniquely crafted individuals.  Ah, individuals...not women or men, fat or thin, but individual people who have specific traits, characteristics, personalities and appearances.  How novel...

I will take this quote with me and enjoy being the woman and person that I am.

The Patrick Family's "12 Days of Christmas"

The kids & I made up our own "12 Days of Christmas" on the way to school today:

"On the 12th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me....
12 Beautiful presents (each adds Abby)
11 Hours spent driving
10 Christmas wreaths
9   Gingerbread houses
8   Sets of lights
7   Hours of wrapping
6   Cups of eggnog
5   CANNNDY CAAAANES
4   Ornaments
3   Anxious kids
2   Shopping parents
and
1   Giant Christmas Tree!!!

I think we have created a new Patrick Family tradition...  :)

The Great Basketball Game

Last night I watched a great game!  It was exciting, the lead changed almost constantly and in the end, victory was decided by one point.  It wasn't a game of college football or professional soccer....it was my daughter's middle school girls basketball game. 

My daughter is in 5th grade...she goes to a very small country school where we didn't have enough older girls to make up the team so half the basketball team is 5th graders and we even borrow a few players from another, even smaller, school.  The other schools we play are the same way...small country schools that don't have alot of potential players to draw from.  But we are definitely the youngest, and shortest, team in the 'league'. 

In the stands were parents from both teams, most of whom already know each other from other sports their kids play or community events they've helped out with.  We were nice when we cheered...which, was a little hard, I'll be honest.  If you have ever been to a sporting event with me, you'll know what I mean.  I love sports.  All sports.  Whether my kids are playing or not.  And I'm loud...often.  Doubt me?  I embarrassed my husband at a hockey game....he asked me to sit down and stop yelling at the refs for stopping the fights.  I'm notorious at my son's wrestling tournaments for how well my voice can carry from the stands down to the mats.  Now you know.   Consider yourself warned if we ever find ourselves at a game together...

Now, back to the game...what made this game great is that our coach, a young man who is a student teacher at the school, plays all of our girls.  Not just the good ones and the ones who understand the game, but all the girls.  Every one of the girls can say that they had a hand in last night's victory and that, in my mind, is pretty awesome. 

A few standout moments that I must point out: 
1.  One of the 5th grade girls, we'll call her A, is the sweetest, mildest tempered girl who's friend's with everyone.  She likes to play the game but she just doesn't want the ball.  At all.  In the mix of shooting & rebounds, she ended up with the ball in her hands.  After a momentary look of shock, she shot the ball....and made it!  The entire stands went crazy for that one basket and the look on her face was absolutely priceless.

2.  The stand out player on our team, S, is a player who you can tell will be an athlete in high school, maybe even beyond.  She is the definite leader on the team and has some serious skills.  After a few attempts to drive the ball through the center, she pulled up short and took a shot from the three point line.  Not just a basket...a swish!  Again, the stands went crazy.  From then on all she had to do was pause at the three point line and people were calling for her to make the shot.

Aaaahhh....the fun of sports at all ages and skill levels.  I can't wait till tomorrow's game!

Shopping Cart Games

I wrote this several years ago when my kids were younger and making it through the store was my biggest hurdle of the day.  It's not my best writing but I hesitate to go back and edit it for sentimental reasons. 
Posted especially for Jody :)

The Shopping Cart Games were born after several shopping trips through "mart" style shopping stores.  Put which ever prefix you would like in front of it, I've been there and I've dragged my three kids along with me.  I'm not sure what college-educated store manager decided that their aisles were too wide and too spacious for their customers and that this should be solved by placing large displays in the middle of them.  Obviously, they have never had the joy of shopping with children.  For this reason, they have inadvertently created what I have dubbed as the "Shopping Cart Games"; a series of events and feats only to be tried by those who have put in hard hours of training.  Only those who can simultaneously write a check, keep a child from straying by wedging them against the check-out stand with her body and stop a candy heist with her foot may be chosen to run these games. 

Before I describe the games, let me tell you how they came to be.  I have a rule for my three children when we go shopping.  It's called the 'hands on the cart' rule.  If you have ever been in a store at the same time as myself and my brood, you may have heard me repeating the phrase over and over and over and over and.....so on.  It's relatively simple:  the children must keep one hand on the cart at all times.  The purpose, of course, is to keep them from running off through the store wreaking havoc.  Does it work?  Yes.  And no.  My children seem to take an all or nothing approach to this particular rule.  Either they ignore the rule in its entirety, causing me to annoy my fellow shoppers with the phrase "hands on the cart please", repeated at 15 second intervals.  Or, they obey it with intensity, draping their bodies over the various sides of the cart.    I have received many a frown from other shoppers as they turn down my current aisle only to find their way blocked by an overloaded cart with bodies hanging from it.  Seeing no way around our rolling roadblock, they must retreat to another aisle.  While the children's extreme obedience keeps them from running off, it does make navigation difficult.  This is how The Games were born.  Numerous trips through store aisles had me trying desperately not to scrape off the children clinging to the cart for dear life while still trying to leave the aisle displays intact.  Finally, I made it into a mental game.  This does not speak well of my mental stability, however that is another story entirely. 

The Aisle Display leg of the Shopping Cart Games gauntlet is simple.  A mother must use her own knowledge and judgment to decide which is stronger:  the aisle display or the child's grip on the cart.  You must carefully discern whether the display is strong enough to allow your child to push past it without it collapsing or if the display will, in fact, give way, causing a truly unwanted scene.  If the display is strong enough, will your child be able to hold on or will they be scraped off the side of the cart, undoubtedly voicing opposition.  The goal is to navigate your cart full of children through the maze of aisle displays without causing a scene and being the recipient of the "pity" looks...you know the ones I'm talking about.  The ones that make you wish you had put cleaner clothes on the kids before you left the house, made that one brush her hair, and wish the other hadn't chosen that particular time to pick her nose.  Yep, you know the look and the feelings that come with it.  The key here is to learn your aisle displays.  For instance, a metal bin full of throw pillows or rugs isn't likely to move when your child squeaks by.  A cardboard display of cold medicines however, will topple under the pressure.  Any mother worth her salt learns to judge these things after only a few trips.

The next event is the Toy Aisle Dash.  This takes finesse, quick wit and lightning reflexes.  The goal is to make it through the toy section without a tantrum in which the other customers learn that you are a mean mommy who never ever buys them anything (which would explain why their rooms are OVERFLOWING with toys).  Knowing where you are in the store is extremely important.  If you know you’re close to the toy aisle, you better believe those little blood hounds running around your cart do; they can smell that molded plastic from the across the store.  Distraction is the first tactic to employ.  Start talking about school, the weather, what they might want for dinner, anything to keep them from realizing how close you are to those expensive miniatures of their favorite cartoons.  You must carefully steer all conversation away from birthday parties, Christmas lists, major holidays, or anything that may remind them of toys.  Once you are committed to passing the toy section, choose your approach carefully.  You must remember what you have learned in the Aisle Display event.  All bets are off if you scrape the kid off the cart by a display of life-size G.I. Joes.  And finally, once inside, you must maneuver and move as fast as possible.  Keeping your child from being drawn down an aisle by the hypnotic stare of Barbie is paramount.  I will share a trick I have learned, which admittedly only works in the cold weather months:  coats with hoods.  They are like a handle on the back of your child when you can't quite reach that little hand.  The key thing to remember about the hood grab is whether or not the coat is zipped.  A quick grab of the hood on a coat that isn't zipped may only leave you standing in the aisle with a small coat dangling from your hand as your escape artist runs into childhood nirvana. 

Now that you have made your way past the toy aisle and run the gauntlet of aisle displays, you are ready for the last event in the Shopping Cart Games: The Check-Out Line.  The check-out line was created by a truly demented person.  Most likely the same person who always puts the maternity clothing next to the lingerie section in department stores so you can remember what you used to look like.  Here, all the temptations are at eye level.  Candy bars, bubble gum and breath mints, oh my!  But, they’ve added another level of distraction:  Magazines.  These are not aimed at distracting the young ones, but the moms themselves.  They lull you into a daydream world of walking off those last 15 pounds and then making the wonderful looking triple-decker fudge cake on the cover.  Only the sharpest wits can remain coherent through the barrage of get-skinny-quick-organize-your-clutter-bake-like-your-mother-in-law headlines.  And remain coherent you must!  Your children cannot keep their little hands from reaching out toward those brightly colors wrappers.  Their brains have become singly focused on getting…that…candy!  And when you decline to buy your sweet angel that wonderful piece of sugar, that’s when the real challenge starts.  You must dodge the disapproving glances of other shoppers as your child wails from the floor, write a legible check for your purchases, and stop your other child from bolting by squishing them against the side of the check-out line with your hip (that’s why God gave us those!), all while appearing to have some semblance of sanity. 

And when you have finished this race and crossed that wonderful finish line at the automatic doors, what do you do?  You load those groceries, strap those kids into their seats, put on a VeggieTales CD and take a moment to congratulate yourself.  No one else, except maybe that mom in the car a few parking spaces down, knows that you have just conquered one of the toughest endurance races on the planet.  But that’s ok, because we mom’s know and we salute you.

Sweet Success

The Kids in the Kitchen experiment was a great success!  The girls were more than thrilled to help out and ended up making the pumpkin pies almost completely by themselves.  I did a few teaching examples of how to roll dough and lifted it into the pie plates but they did the rest themselves.  And how proud were they on Thanksgiving when we cut into the pies that they made?!?!?  

And it may have started something...when it came time to make the dishes for the Thanksgiving meal, they were right there, wanting to cut up fruit for the fruit salad, help with the devilled eggs, even peel potatoes.  We even got the boy into the kitchen to chop celery & onions for the stuffing. 

All in all, the whole thing turned out great and I think I will have extra hands in my kitchen quite often now....

The girl's pumpkin pies....

Kids in the Kitchen

I'm about to enter my kitchen with the express purpose of baking Thanksgiving goodies:  pumpkin pies, cookies, biscotti...who knows, maybe even the Pumpkin Bread Pudding from the Pioneer Woman's Throwdown with Bobby Flay. 

 I love baking and cooking so this is my idea of a good time.  The only hitch is that I'm going to try to teach my kids how to make alot of this as well and I'm not the best teacher in the world.  I'm also a control freak.  This means I have a tendency to do things myself because I want them done a certain way and I don't want to take the time to re-do it after the kids.  It saves me time but I know, in the back of my muddled mind, that this is not doing the kids any favors.  They need to learn and I need to let them.  So much easier said than done.

But, with that thought in mind, I will plunge forth into the kitchen and hopefully come out the other side with wonderfully imperfect pies and good memories for both the kids & me. 

That's the plan anway....

What we have lost and what we have gained

Last Sunday we lost Uncle Jerry.  We lost a mentor, a second father, a wise counselor, a wealth of knowledge, a family man.  We lost an example of how to live our faith without apology and with boldness tempered with compassion and grace.  We lost a little bit of the preservation of tradition, in both the fire service and our family history.  We each lost a little piece of ourselves.

Over this last week we gained a reminder that life is short and can end at any time.  We gained a new found urge to renew family ties and friendships.  We gained even more respect for the immense strength, both emotionally and spiritually, of his wife and daughters.  We gained a new perspective on how we want our life to be lived and, therefore, remembered.  We each gained a little piece of him.

Jerry Heater
1944-2010

Our Little Farm

My husband & I have been blessed with our little 20 acre farm.  It's not big, it's not fancy, but it's ours.  Over the last 14 years we have invested our energy, time, sweat, and even some blood, to build it into the place it is today.  And, we're not done yet.  We always have a plan...our "Ten Year Plan" is what we call it and it's always a 10 year plan, no matter what year we're on...it just keeps perpetuating. 

At the moment, we have 18 chickens living here.  We have a run for them but let them out to 'graze' whenever we can.  Getting chickens was a 3 year long conversation between myself and my husband and, although I know he likes that we have our own eggs, I don't think he cares for the chickens themselves.  Actually, I know he doesn't care for them but he puts up with 'em.  We give the extras eggs to family members and teachers at school.  It's good to share.

The barn only has 2 steers in it right now;  our oldest children's 4-H projects.  They will winter over and be shown at the county fair next July.  We'll purchase more steers in the spring when the pasture comes in and raise them to sell as natural beef.  Those steers will be slaughtered the following September.  It's nice to know where your food comes from and ours comes right from the back pasture.  We've developed a small clientele to market to and may start a second cycle of steers to winter over for a spring slaughter just to meet the demand.

I love that our kids are growing up here.  They are learning to be good stewards of the land and the animals, making sure that we treat them humanely even though they are destined for the freezer.  The kids aren't afraid of work or getting dirty or being around large animals and when they play, they play hard.  Like, ER visit hard....which isn't always a good thing but makes them very resilient.  And we make lots of noise....the kids holler and laugh and, truth be told, I've been known to be a bit loud as well.  So I'm told anyway...

Although we always have plans and dreams about improving this place, we are, in one simple word, content.  And wonderfully so.