You might remember these posts with earlier Katie escapes.
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Monday, July 29, 2013
Ingleside 7/30/13
My friend Melanie does posts called "Around Here" where she just documents the regular stuff that's going on, and Clover Lane does the same sort of thing with "Ordinary Days". I like that idea. I always really enjoy those posts because they're so authentic. I'm going to try to do the same thing occasionally.
Jimmy is still napping in the swing. He likes to fall asleep while everyone is bustling around.
Matthew is setting up his drums today to get ready for a concert this weekend. Naps are happily happening even with all of the drumming.
Sometimes I get lazy and just dump a package of cookie onto the cake plate.
10 lb bags of seed ready to mail to KCIA.
Mondays are laundry days. I wash and dry it all and put it on the bed so that I have to fold it before I can go to sleep. Laundry is my favorite chore. I like it that the machines do 90% of the work for you, and the folding and the putting away is so soothing. From chaos to order, and you can watch TV at the same time!
Progress on Abby's blanket. 5 skeins down, 7 to go. I have about 3 weeks to finish before she leaves for college. Each stripe is a skein, and that takes about the length of a movie. MJL and Anna are really happy that I'll watch movies with them for once.
I put the Christmas Bells on Katie's door because she can get out of her bed now. If I hear the bells on the monitor, I know to run upstairs pronto. Before the bells, she "washed" her hair with an entire bottle of travel shampoo before I happened upstairs and found her in Anna's room.
Father's Day paintings 2013. Anna's is rain on crops and wild flowers, Katie's is all of our toes, and Jimmy's is what I could smoosh onto the canvas before he crawled away crying. He didn't like the paint at all.
We have just a little bit of summer left. I'm trying to balance relaxing and enjoying with the crazy urge to finish everything I didn't get done yet. Happy Summer!
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
NFP: Good for Couples
When I first heard about NFP, it was a few months after my Mom died and I was just barely alive, and doing a bad job of everything in the world. Including marriage. So when the girl presenting mentioned that the divorce rate for couples who use an NFP method is under 5%, that stuck in my head. It has been, hands down, the best thing we ever did for our marriage.
There are a couple of different statistics on the divorce rates. The best evidence I can find is a Family of the Americas study that found a divorce rate of .02%-3% There's an explanation of the statistical difference but I don't quite understand it. Either way, I'll take it. This page has some good explanation of why that might be true.
Here's what I think about it.
NFP works best when both people are on board, sharing the responsibility of keeping track of things and sharing the decision making about family planning. I make the observations and he keeps the chart. NFP requires communication, every day. It's a shared project, and it makes it hard to avoid things or hide things or hold onto resentments. It means that you are, naturally, talking all the time about what you want out of life, what you're worried about, what you think would be good for the family. All that communication has to help.
And that periodic abstinence (5-8 days/month on average) is really not that bad. Abstinence is a part of marriage. I don't know why we pretend like it isn't, like chastity is only a virtue until you get married, and then it's not a virtue anymore. Travel, sickness, depression, grief, childbirth, busy seasons... I'm sure you can think of examples. So NFP helps to build that self control little by little, so when those seasons of life hit, it's not such a surprise. We all find it shocking to hear stories about someone being unfaithful or leaving while their spouse is terribly sick or something, but it's hard to rely on virtues you've never exercised when everything else is falling apart. And the engagement/honeymoon cycle is pretty fun.
Sacrifice is a powerful way to show love. Marriage is all about sacrifice. This is just another way to lay down your life for your family.
Last night on the twitter party, the hashtag #MenLikeNFP was pretty funny. And then the #WomenLikeNFP played along too.
And there are lots of other (much better) bloggers celebrating NFP Awareness week, here, and here, and here!
There are a couple of different statistics on the divorce rates. The best evidence I can find is a Family of the Americas study that found a divorce rate of .02%-3% There's an explanation of the statistical difference but I don't quite understand it. Either way, I'll take it. This page has some good explanation of why that might be true.
Here's what I think about it.
NFP works best when both people are on board, sharing the responsibility of keeping track of things and sharing the decision making about family planning. I make the observations and he keeps the chart. NFP requires communication, every day. It's a shared project, and it makes it hard to avoid things or hide things or hold onto resentments. It means that you are, naturally, talking all the time about what you want out of life, what you're worried about, what you think would be good for the family. All that communication has to help.
And that periodic abstinence (5-8 days/month on average) is really not that bad. Abstinence is a part of marriage. I don't know why we pretend like it isn't, like chastity is only a virtue until you get married, and then it's not a virtue anymore. Travel, sickness, depression, grief, childbirth, busy seasons... I'm sure you can think of examples. So NFP helps to build that self control little by little, so when those seasons of life hit, it's not such a surprise. We all find it shocking to hear stories about someone being unfaithful or leaving while their spouse is terribly sick or something, but it's hard to rely on virtues you've never exercised when everything else is falling apart. And the engagement/honeymoon cycle is pretty fun.
Sacrifice is a powerful way to show love. Marriage is all about sacrifice. This is just another way to lay down your life for your family.
Last night on the twitter party, the hashtag #MenLikeNFP was pretty funny. And then the #WomenLikeNFP played along too.
And there are lots of other (much better) bloggers celebrating NFP Awareness week, here, and here, and here!
Monday, July 01, 2013
JEO's quilt
I made this for JEO for Christmas, but then I thought maybe it would get done for his birthday in January, and then I ended up sending it in May.
It's a Jelly Roll Race Quilt-here are some instructions, it's simple and really fast and fun. And now JEO is here for a visit! That's loads of fun. :)
It's a Jelly Roll Race Quilt-here are some instructions, it's simple and really fast and fun. And now JEO is here for a visit! That's loads of fun. :)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)