Summertime

WOW, June is flying by! I love summertime. Although I have never had the sought after golden tan I still enjoy many summer activities! Also, my birthday is in the summer, so who wouldn't like that??? Last week we had VBS...........so fun. We attend a smaller church than we used to and it was very special for the children and I to be involved with our new church family. The girls absolutely LOVED every minute of it and we actually didn't have too much trouble arriving at 7:45 a.m. every morning! The children rotated through various fun activities learning about Jonah and his adventures. I learned a lot myself! We have a very special, loving church.

On Tuesday we all went to a friend's house to enjoy their wonderful swimming pool. The children really had a BLAST. Gabe and Hannah both jumped off the diving board. We stayed about 4 hours so of course we all got a little burnt with a side of freckles! Our friend had a pack-in-play for Gabe to take a nap. The room was in their bonus room above the garage which was easily accessible to the pool door. He of course cried at first when I laid him down, but then got quiet and I was watching from the door. I thought he was asleep so I went back out. After a few minutes I thought it wise to check on him again and when I came in I found him sitting innocently at the top of the stairs. I figured I would try one more time to lay him down and he did go to sleep, yeah more pool time!! Well.............the next morning at VBS we discovered that our sweet little, almost two year old had destroyed a 1500 piece puzzle that the family had been working on......GREAT, I should have known that a two year old doesn't escape the pack-in-play and then sit quietly and innocently on the stairs waiting for mommy....ugh! They still want us to come swimming again; they are a very forgiving and gracious family!!!

Gabriel, our soon to be two year old, will really turn TWO on the 21st. It is an adventure having a little boy. I am thankful to have him, very thankful. He adds a lot of spunk to our little family.

That is all for now...........I made the mistake of telling the children last night that we are going to the Y with a friend to go swimming today and lo and behold the rain we have so desperately been needing is falling today. Hopefully we will be okay by this afternoon or it is going to be a very disappointing day for the Jeter's.

OH, one more thing. The scripture verse we learned this week is from Psalms 48:14. "For this God is our God forever and ever. He will be our guide even to the end." I can not even put into the words the joy that fills my heart to hear our children hiding the word of the Lord in their hearts. That is what it is all about.

PMS and Bee Stings!!??

Years ago I made this really dumb statement to my husband, are you ready for this one?......"I don't think PMS really exists, I think it is all in a woman's mind." Can you believe I would say something so insensitive?? You must also know my husband pretty well and know that his mind is like a steel trap to know how much that statement has come back to haunt me as of late. Well, four children later, I am singing a new tune; I don't know anything more about PMS now than I did then except that right around that time of the month I get down right mean, mean, MEAN!!!


This morning (Sunday) of all mornings to wake up feeling grumpy...............as soon as I open my eyes I hear my sweet princesses fighting, whining and fighting some more in their bedroom. I make some grunting noises and hope that Daddy is feeling up to the call this morning. He doesn't make a peep. Now I hear them picking on our poor, sweet chocolate lab-mix Lexie who has been FORCED by my eldest to sleep with her. Last straw...........that's it I am up and watch out because Mommy is grumpy............."girls, pleassssseee go downstairs and quit fighting!" I send them off as I stomp back into my room and huff down heavily onto the bed..........GUILT sets in and now I am really getting mad at myself, mad at EVERYONE! I glance at the clock and figure out, okay maybe 15 more minutes to pretend to sleep (while stewing) and then get up and get ready for Sunday School and Church. I know deep down I really need to be on my knees asking the Lord to forgive my horrible childish display........but NO I justify my actions because well, I
didn't sleep well and so on...............

That's pretty much our morning until we whisk off to church, with hair bows and smiles plastered on all our faces..........especially MINE! Pretty much through out our drive to church, while at church and our drive home I am continuing my pity party to which Andy asks if everything is okay, "I'm fine" I say with a little smile. This happened to be the kind of day that I was quiet grumpy instead of complaining grumpy, poor Andy and children, hmmphh!


Okay so fast forward to the afternoon, children sleeping and Andy and I head outside. He decides to mow the grass and I sheepishly follow him because he has just told me he has had about ENOUGH of my bad attitude, which I totally do not blame him, I am surprised he put up with me for so long.


I sit down to feel the warm sunshine and look out to watch my sweet, loving , patient man push the mower around! I stand up to put Lexie on her lead and "owww, oww, oh my goodness, AAHHH" something has STUNG me through my crocs (Tracey another reason NOT to wear them, ha, ha)..............I jerk my shoe off and pull out the stinger, which my sweet neighbor tells me later you aren't supposed to do and sit down on the steps and cry and cry..........it HURT. Now I've been stung before, but not in a very long time. This time though this stinger pierced my heart and conviction seeped through to me as quickly and as hard as the pain throbbed through my foot. I told the Lord right there how sorry I was for acting like the biggest baby ever and please, please forgive me AGAIN for acting this way and treating my family so horribly.


I don't know if the Lord "allowed" that bee to HOP into my shoe and STING the fire out of my foot or if it was just a coincidence, but in my little pee-brain head it seemed like a pretty obvious lesson to me, one I don't want to repeat anytime soon.


I found myself thanking the Lord more often the rest of today and finding the joy in things He has given me:


a loving, supportive husband who always challenges me to just BE


four healthy children;


a daughter who challenges me to be STRONG


a daughter who challenges me to LOVE


a daughter who challenges me to LAUGH


a son who shows me how to fall down and get right back up with a SMILE


I am so THANKFUL that I have the family I have always "dreamed" of having and the kind of life that many would love to have!!!


Thank you JESUS!

Love Your Neighbor

We have lived at our new address for about 9 months. I guess I have realized now in our second house that it takes some time for your house to really feel like home. We moved to a great neighborhood MUCH closer to Andy's workplace and that in itself is such a major blessing. We have the BEST neighbor's too. I grew up in a great neighborhood and had friends and neighbors that were like family to us and I feel like our neighbors here are just the same. We feel really blessed and thankful that the Lord planted us right here for a time with such great love in giving us sweet neighbors! Also, we have done some major painting and some updating in our home and it has been tiring at times, but overall very rewarding. I have learned a lot about painting and de-wallpapering that HGTV just doesn't tell you about, but it has been fun and the girls have been able to help me with a few projects! Sometimes I feel bad for Andy because he works very hard and it seems like there is a never-ending project list awaiting him at home. However, he never complains, unlike me, and he really does a very good job. He has so far in the nine months tiled, repaired the drywall ceiling, hung bead-board (that was tough), built new front porch rails, replaced a toilet, sink and lighting in the bathroom, and various other little projects. I think he really likes learning new things and it has been fun and bonding to work together. Anyways, to sum it all up, I just feel thankful and restful today in our home, thankful to our awesome Lord who loves us so much He never leaves out any of the little details in our lives.
The entire law is summed up in a single command:
"Love your neighbor as yourself."
Galatians 5:14

p.s. Thank you to all my friends that have told me they read my blogs.....sorry for pouting about that one!

One Hopeless Romantic

I am a romantic. I have recently discovered that my "ideas" about/of/for this world are based on very idealistic and fantasy-like notions of the world around me and how I think it should be. Webster's definition of romantic is this.......full of or dominated by thoughts, feelings, and attitudes of or suitable for romance; passionate, adventurous, idealistic. Yeah, yeah.......that sums me up pretty well. So my question in all of this is.......do I live this way? What does the Lord think of the "romantic" notions in my head, did He plant them there, create me this way or is this fleshly? See........I try and write these light-hearted blogs and now I am getting deep.....too deep even for myself to understand. Okay so is this why I feel so restless sometimes, kind of bored or something, is there something inside of me, some inner-quality that I am too afraid to expand on or that I am holding back for some reason? Or maybe this is discontentment at it's best. Why am I filled with weird thoughts and desires that seem great for a moment, but then I realize they are leading to no where in particular??

Today is Mother's Day and we had a very sweet day. Andy headed to work after church and I was pretty cheerful about that, suprising enough, just thankful that we were able to go to church together. Anyways.......the children gave me a Tim McGraw CD, not the newest one, but his newest Greatest Hits and it is real good.......okay back to the point and connection to all this.......one of the songs that I have heard before a few times on the radio, but never really "heard" if you know what I mean is called The Cowboy in Me.........great song and probably one of the main reasons I have typed this rabbit trail of a blog.........here are some of the words that keep going through my head .....
The urge to run, the restlessness; The heart of stone I sometimes get;
The things I've done for foolish pride; The me that's never satisfied; The face that's in the mirror when I don't like what I see; I guess that's just the cowboy in me.

That is the "jist" of the song........of course to hear it with music is better........I don't know it just struck a chord with me, but I can be kind of odd like that sometimes and of course that yearning I've had since I was a child (that I think all girls have) it's just mine never went away.......to have a horse and live on a ranch.......I guess that's why one of my favorite movies of all time is National Velvet.......young Elizabeth Taylor!!

My final thoughts are this.......Lord, help me to decipher this...........what is this strange "restless" stirring for adventure that I feel all the time.........what does it mean and what do you want me to do........whatever it is, please Lord, help me find peace in it, the patience to wait on you for the answers and the courage to stand still or to go wherever it is You want me to go!

Maybe instead of titling this blog One Hopeless Romantic I could rename it One Hopeful Romantic (in Christ)!

What if No One Reads Your Blogs, Then What??

To one of my best friends Christy. Thank you for tagging me, I feel very honored. I would LOVE to list random facts about myself and then go on to "tag" seven of my blogger friends. Since you are one of my only friends who blogs and who reads mine (other than Ang and Tracey who I also love very much) AND because you pretty much already know EVERYTHING about me past and present, I guess there wouldn't be anything exciting to share.......
(This could be just an excuse to get out of participating, but I'm really not doing that......okay maybe a little bit...............)

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY to all my friends who are the BEST mother's hand picked by our Awesome God to walk with their children! Thank you for sharing your lives with me and allowing me to learn from some of the greatest mother's I know.

A Day in the Life

Wake up: 6:30 a.m., maybe 7:00 am if we are really fortunate!
And that is about all that I am sure about; pretty much all the hours from there until around 8:00 p.m. (bedtime) are somewhat of a blur really. I guess we usually get a little bit of a rest stop from 2-4:00 for nap (any awake time before 4:00 doesn't qualify as a nap).
Okay, I am really exagerating and really exhibiting a poor attempt at trying to write funny blogs like my friend Tracey who has been blessed with the true gift of "storytelling". Right now as I sit here typing I am realizing just how poor my attitude so quickly gets and really over analyzing all that that means. We are so blessed with happy, healthy children, great job, home, cars, we are happily married and working at it and still my discontentment can be so BIG sometimes, it is really embarassing to confess. I guess I just really am ready to live more on purpose, to choose to be happy instead of grumpy, to choose to follow Christ, to face my fears, and not allow this great life I have to just pass me by. I really hope something more exciting happens tommorrow so I can write about a funny story or event in our home or maybe something happened today and I was just too busy to notice!

Ecclesiastes

Have you ever done a study on the book of Ecclesiastes? I sure haven't, but after today I am really interested. I found some great nuggets in there during some reading and am looking forward to reading more tonight, hopefully. This one spoke to my heart because I tend to get real bent out of shape based on others reactions. Judgement at the heart, I know, but I have a real hard time stopping myself sometimes, okay, most of the time.
"Do not pay attention to every word people say, or you may hear your servant cursing you-- for you know in your heart that many times you yourself have cursed others."
Ecc. 7:21-22
OUCH! This one stings!