What Am I Doing Wrong?

A friend of mine posted on facebook yesterday about how her kids are tearing apart her house. She's tried everything and is as frustrated as the rest of us would rightfully be. Her very last statement caught me though, that she must be doing something terribly wrong for them to be acting this way.

I don't know if she really meant it, but don't we all feel like parenting failures when our children don't act like we want them to. I have my own list of terribly wrongs.

I am terrible at schedules and anything that has to be done consistently, like good bedtime routines. This must be why my children come out of their room 79 times every night. It's my fault.

My child continues to pee in her pants. It must be my lack of consistency with anything. I have too many ideas and I can't stick with any of them. I suck at potty training. I'm really beating myself up here.

The kids room is a disaster, along with the rest of my house. I pick up too much for them. I don't take the time to make them do it consistently. I'm seeing a theme here.

My kids act out in public. I'm doing a bad job.

They don't eat vegetables. It's because I didn't give them enough veggies when they were younger. I haven't put my foot down enough.

Let me ask you something.

What has God done wrong when we continue to make the same mistakes?

What has God done wrong in the process of training us that we just can't seem to get it right?

What has God done wrong when our bodies fail and we don't develop at the rate He designed us to?

God is the ultimate parent. He hasn't done anything wrong. He gives us grace and He isn't shaking His head and blaming Himself for our lack of obedience. He also doesn't force us to obey. It's our choice. He's most concerned about our hearts in the process and that's what I want to focus on in my own children. Forcing my hand will not create healthy adults who have a good view of God.

So, is it really my fault and am I really a bad mom when my kids mess up or don't develop at the rate I think they will? Haven't I told them the right way of doing things? Don't they know better? There are always improvements I can make. But, if God doesn't get it right the first time then I think I can cut myself (and my kids) some slack. After all, He's not the one getting it wrong. It's me.

A great resource, and what inspired some of this post is "Creative Corrections" by Lisa Whelchel.

You've Been Invited to my House

I've let you in and we're sitting in my kitchen together.
What are you going to say to me?

Are you going to tell me that my choice of sleep habits for my children
are detrimental to their health and emotional well-being?

Are you going to spark an angry debate with me over politics
or can we have a respectful conversation over our differences?

Will you solicit me?

Are you going to silently judge me
because my children watch too many hours of television?

Will you use a passive aggressive approach to try to tell me in code
that I should stop doing something offensive to you?

Will you tell me that I have murdered my innocent,
unborn child if I tell you had an abortion? (I have not).

Are you going to be so bold about your thoughts on marriage equality?

Will you passionately yell at me because I believe in the
right to conceal a weapon and protect yourself?

You're sitting in my kitchen and I'm in your living room, and your workplace,
and your bathroom (ew), in your bed. You invited me there or I asked you if I could come in.
We wanted to catch up with each other. Share our lives, encourage one another,
talk about our children and collaboratively help each other through life.

We have a good thing here. Let's don't run each other off. Let's speak to each other
in a manner we would if we were face to face. Don't take advantage of
my invitation to your home and I won't take advantage of yours.

Let's be nice on facebook.

Vancouver Day 2, Tandem Biking

After our return from Grouse Mountain (read about our trip here) we wandered around town for a bit trying to decide what to do next. Stanley Park had come highly recommended. We had our big day trip to Whistler planned for the next day and we weren't sure if we'd make it to Stanley then.
So I came up with a BRILLIANT idea. We were headed over to Stanley Park and TANDEM BIKE!! I know, you're wishing you had come up with this yourself aren't you?

Remember earlier on Day 2 I told you it was 4/20. Well, at this point in the day it
had become total chaos. It's probably a good thing we escaped to the mountain for the day.
Several streets were shut down, bus routes were extra confusing (over all it's a great public transit system). We waited a while for a bus that flew right by us to stay on schedule.
We ended up walking a bit to catch a bus at another stop and came across this police shop. I wish we had known and would have taken a patch! There were lots of local patches on the wall but not ours!

We made it to the bike shop and hopped right on to my (not so) brilliant idea.
Let's just say it was good for team building and we laughed our heads off (until we started arguing).
It was absolutely an experience I will never forget!

Here's the thing about tandem. The bigger guy goes up front. Do you see how much bigger he is than me? I didn't go to Stanley Park to stare at his ginormous backpack in my face! I was in tears laughing within minutes of getting on the bike. We both realized really fast it was a bad idea. Not to mention he tells me that the bike was awful. He rides a nice mountain bike at home though so I'm not sure our rental had any chance of holding up!

We stopped to snap a few pics along the way. But, it was getting cold and rainy.
Stanley Park is huge and we didn't want to get stuck on the wrong side or in the middle of it
when it was time to turn the bike back in. We didn't have a lot of time.

We rode along the coastline and stopped for some awesome pictures.
This is one of my favorites by far.

In an effort to save time The Officer decided to cut through the middle of the park.
Aka: the trails. It would have been a whole lot more fun on two bikes. For two people
who are relatively the same size it would probably be more enjoyable.

(Did I mention that every time we went down a hill I started to panic and
beg him to slow down? I don't like hills on a bike when I'm in control,
much less behind the big black backpack with no frontal view!)

Luckily the trails we went on were nice and flat. It was serene and peaceful
(other than our two bad moods that had started to set in, we were getting tired and frustrated).
At this point we were pretty much walking the bike so I had time to take some pictures.

I really wish we had more time in Stanley Park. Back in the park was just beautiful and relaxing.
I loved it. I know why it was so highly recommended.
We saw an owl up close and some amazing trees. There I am, tiny at the bottom.

I wandered off for a few minutes to try to find some seashells but I didn't have much luck. Shortly after hopping back on the bike we saw a biker get hit by a car. Ok, to be fair, the biker really hit the car and not the other way around. Nobody was hurt, but it was scary still! I felt so bad for the little old man she hit. He must have been 90 years old and it took him quite some time to get back down the street to her. We hung around for a few minutes to make sure everything was under control.
I wasn't super excited about navigating the roads on our bike after that! But, The Officer was done at this point and found the quickest route back to the bike shop.

After turning in our awesome bike we started to look for a place to eat.
We walked, and walked, and walked. We just kept walking. We weren't all that close to
our place but we ended up just a few blocks away! We kept looking for the perfect place
to eat but couldn't decide on anything. We finally ended up at Earl's Steakhouse.
We were in such a daze at this point we just picked a place that looked interesting!

It had been an expensive day so we agreed upon sharing a meal. I think we had a burger. It was kind of a forgettable place. It was a nice restaurant and we enjoyed the food. However, there are too many amazing places in Vancouver to eat for me to recommend this over some of the other ones.

Overall, Day 2 was a success. We enjoyed beautiful scenery and made memories we'll never forget. Isn't that what vacation is all about?

Day 3 was our best day yet. I have lots of beautiful pictures to share with you from our drive to Whistler! Keep looking!

Vancouver - Day 2 Grouse Mountain

We woke up to more sunshine and another great view! The apartment was floor to ceiling windows with little shade. The blinds were for privacy only. I woke up really early every morning we were there. In a place like Vancouver you're doing great if you wake up to sunshine. In fact, after the first rainy day we saw very little rain. By the time we left the clouds were completely gone. It's like Seattle, rain is the norm

We figured since we could see the mountains through the clouds that we would make a trip up to Grouse.

It took us some time to figure out how to get all the way up to the top, we pretty much figured it out as we went. Part of the problem was that it was 4/20. In a liberal city. Aka: my drug dog, I mean my husband, had his nose up in the air and a lot of the streets were beginning to close down for the festivities.

We didn't get out of the room in time to make the first bus, so we walked around the corner to this amazing Crepe place.

I'm kind of in love with crepes. I'd been eyeballing it since the moment we got into town. I ordered the Nutella and Banana crepes. They were not cheap on the Nutella either, I almost had to take some of it off!

We took our best guess at the first bus to get on and headed out to the mountain. We walked over to the bus stop we needed but it was closed thanks to "let's smoke weed" day. It was very windy and cold. We waited around at the closest stop and tried to figure out where to go. A very nice gentlemen could tell we were clueless and stopped to help us out. We made it on the bus and got off at the appropriate stop. We had been wondering what time the next bus would arrive when we took note of this right in front of our faces. A bus schedule. Well, that's helpful.

Here's the part I wasn't expecting. I thought we were going to take a bus all the way to the top of Grouse Mountain and find a little shopping, eat lunch and have a nice view. Well, that's more of a Whistler type thing. Apparently, to get to the top of Grouse you get to ride on this (which isn't particularly cheap). I'm not sure I would have gone if I'd realized it would be $40 a head just to get to the top, but we'd come this far. I'm glad we went!

If you know me at all, you know that a few years ago my fear would have kept me completely off of this thing. I'm not going to say I loved it, but the views were nice on the way down. Remember how I told you we could see the mountain through the clouds? Key word being "through." From the top you could not see the city through the clouds! We rode up to the top, through the clouds. I stood next to the nicest man and his daughter. We talked all about Vancouver and Texas, the weather and where to eat. I'm telling you, the people were great!

When we got to the top I was pretty disappointed. See all the white stuff behind me? That ain't snow. Pure fog right there. You should be able to see a beautiful view of the city and the water behind me.

To be honest, there isn't much at all to do at the top of Grouse unless you're going up for snow sports. They do have a free sleigh ride which we did. It was neat, but alone it definitely wasn't worth the trip up the mountain. I also wore tennis shoes so I wasn't prepared for traipsing through the snow. They do have a small habitat of bears that had just come out for the season. We wanted to walk over, but like I said I wasn't in the right shoes for a ten minute walk in the snow.

The Officer on the sleigh ride. He looks so good in show. I swear I look completely awkward in all of our pictures and he's perfectly in his element! That pretty much reflects how we each feel about the cold.

There were several carvings along the sleigh ride.

We killed some time after the sleigh ride in the gift shop. Here's the anchor for the tram we rode up on! I'm glad it's solid!

We had drinks and nachos at the top. The good thing about clouds in the mountains is that they pass fast. At this point I was still pretty disappointed with Grouse for our purposes. The Officer was perfectly happy in this snowy environment.

However, I will say it was nice and relaxing up at the top. We sat in the restaurant by the fire and jumped up like tourists with our cameras every time a cloud passed by.

Slowly, but surely, the clouds began to fade and we could catch a glimpse of the view below.

We would get a few minutes like this and then the clouds would come right back.

I did get manage to get this awesome picture of my husband.

And another nice gentlemen snapped a shot of us.

We took a few more pictures and headed back down the mountain.

The view going down was much more interesting than on the way up.

Looking over the river was beautiful.

There's my Eagle Scout doing some outdoorsy.

I tried to get him to put his nose up in the air and howl like the wolf. He would have no part in it. Come on dude, I picked a nose for you on Day 1. They also had a habitat that contained two wolves. We could see the white one sunbathing.

See what I mean? Awkward!

We decided to take the water bus back to the city. It was a neat experience and offered some different scenery from the bus trip we took up there (which was well worth the ride alone).

We meandered around the city a little while trying to decide what to do next. The Officer stopped for a JAPADOG. These stands were everywhere. I was not that brave.

This was about half of our day on Day 2! Read about the rest of our day here,
we went tandem biking in the beautiful Stanley Park.

Is There Money in the Mail?

"Maybe there's money in it." I hopefully joked to myself as I checked the mail Wednesday afternoon. There wasn't any money, but I saw something that piqued my interest. A letter from the mineral rights company.

You see, as a stay at home mom, I can always use a little extra income. The mouths are eating more, the gas is costing more, everything health related seems to come out of pocket. We could all use a few extra bucks right?

It's been a couple of years since we caved and signed over our mineral rights to the people knocking on our doors. In fact, I pretty much forgot about it. I never expected to see another dime after our initial payment.

But He didn't forget. He knew those years ago that the well would be dug and start producing oil at just the right time.

He knew 11 months ago when I first submitted my claim for Beemer's anesthesia that I needed that first check to arrive two days before I had to pay my homeowners taxes. I called back this week to work out the rest of the details. They informed me that they found a pre-approval the doctor had sent to the insurance so they would be able to cover the rest. I don't see any way that this is even possible being that neither the dentist nor the anesthesiologist would file anything for me. I have no doubt God worked out some serious details on my behalf.

He knew when I quit my full time job that one week later I would be offered additional classes to teach through the college. He told me He would take care of me.

He knew that would come to a screeching halt and I'd be sitting next to a lady in Bible study who was good friends with my current employer. He knew her current graphic designer would be leaving shortly. He knew I could never find a job on my own that paid me well, let me set my own hours and work with someone so thoroughly enjoyable.

I've been troubled and worried by money lately. (Did you read my last post, What's Troubling You?) The truth is money is an ongoing angst for me. It tries to run my life. When the account is overflowing I'm in a great mood, when it's slim I'm stressed and cranky. It affects many of my decisions. I'm learning that I have to find my hope and comfort in God and not in my bank account.

Five days ago, I scribbled out some pages of prayers in my journal. I poured out my heart to God. I knew that I needed a new system for our budget. We have a lot of unknowns though. The money will be there, I'm just not always sure when. But He knows. I gave Him my tiny little mustard seed worth of faith and in five days He has sent one surprise after the next my way. My heart is overflowing tonight in amazement for how He is taking care of us.

I'm still not expecting to see much over a dime from the royalties. But, who knows? Maybe God has one more perfectly timed surprise up his sleeve.