Happy Birthday! You know I was asked about ten or so times “ What are you doing for your birthday?” I always have to answer the same way “nothing that is what I always do.” The most I really ever do is eat and maybe spend time with family. Sometimes that is not a bad thing but one of these days I would really like to have a party.

I don’t really know if I would like it to be a surprise party or not. I am a planner so I would worry about things going right. Not to mention I don’t know if anyone would show up. I am also rather good at figuring things out which makes it really hard to get the surprise part in as well.

Because of the type of background or personality I have I guess I find it really hard to be the center of attention. I really kind of like being in the background and just making things work. I am a problem solver so when there is a problem I immediately start looking for solutions. Notice I said “solutions” that is because I believe there could be more than one answer or way to solve the problem.

Well I thought I was going to be able to post more often but it is just so busy right now. Last week was really hard for me for some reason. I was down a lot and figured I was just grieving. I realized that I miss my grandmother much more than I thought I would.

I mean I thought I was ready for her departure. She had complained about living for so many years and then with her rather rapid debilitation illness I just thought I have grieved along the way. But I guess living in her house with all of her things and having spent so much time with her over the years it just hit me harder than I expected. Of course, there may be some hormone influences in there as well but that is another story all together too common for most women any way.

I am learning that my mother and step father are planning to buy the properties and would in turn be our landlords. I don’t know what there plans are exactly where we are concerned or for that matter exactly what ours are going to be. I don’t know if I am ready or willing to be answering to my mother again on any level really. She has a really hard time letting things go and I would like a little freedom in how I live. I know my husband is not going to like being or trying to be controlled by my family any more than I will. So I will keep praying and asking for prayer for grace and mercy for our family and our living situations.

Of course, after “Our Grand Adventures” over the last year we feel like we are right back in the same emotional, spiritual and physical state we were in when we left here. My husband is once again in the same job in the same place and in the same condition as when we left, as well as we are once again feeling trapped in our living conditions. Finances are a little better but I am still working to decrease debt and I am spending much more time away from home and my children, which makes it increasingly difficult to home school. But we are desperately trying to make it work.

I don’t know is there anyone else out there that works outside the home and still manages to home school? I am not working full time but I am gone most of the morning and then home in the afternoons but then I am a Math tutor so two to three days a week my afternoons are filled with other students who pay me to help them. I am really torn about what to do. On the one hand, I feel like my children are getting the short end of the deal but on the other we really need the money right now. I am trying to look into being able to put the time that my 16 yo spends in household and childcare duties into her transcript as credit for life skills or home economics or something. There has been so much thrust upon her this year but I am so proud of her in all that she has overcome and how she has risen to the challenge and done such a great job in handling all the things that have come her way. Even if she is behind in the curriculum. Sometimes life just doesn’t go by the book. Who am I kidding? It most often doesn’t.

I used tell my moms, when I was a craft coordinator, that creativity is not necessarily in what you come up with but in how you make the mistakes look beautiful. I used to watch as these women would make goofs and oops’ and see the beautiful and creative ways they would incorporate them into their works. To me that is what life is all about. Not necessarily in not making mistakes, because we all make them but in how we incorporate them into the rest of our lives and show others how God can make beautiful what we consider ugly and sometimes tragic.

“Beauty for Ashes” I am thankful everyday that God can still use and make the mess I call my life a beautiful testimony for others.