I'm Being Called Away...

I am hearing Him call my name...

I have a feeling He has been calling me for a while, but this past weekend I finally quieted myself long enough to clearly hear His voice.

My Shepherds voice.

He's calling me to Himself--into a season of greater simplicity and deeper commitment.

So, with great anticipation and joy, I'm taking a blogging break.

I don't know for how long...and I know my long-distance friends and family will be sad about this, but I hope you can understand...

I consider it an honor to obey my God in such a simple way because He is worthy of so much more than just my hobbies and my habits...but my entire life.

Matthew 6:33

"But seek first the kingdom of God 
and his righteousness, 
and all these things will be added to you."

I'll probably try to update with "big event" pictures as time allows and will check up on all your blogs as time allows as well!

Blessings!!!

See you all soon!

Announcing the Winner of the CSN Stores Giftcard!!!

I was so excited to see that there were 69 entries for this giveaway!!!

As always, I prayed before hitting that "Generate" button on Random.org that this giveaway would go to someone the Lord knew needed it...or just needed a little blessing from Him in this season of their lives!

So with that, I'm so happy to announce that the winner is...

# 28...Jill @ PathwayToPurpose!!!

I even decided to decorate the house for my Giveaway Reveal...

Well, okay, not really... it's actually for Trusten's birthday celebration , but the festiveness was too fun not to share!!!

So congrats Jill!  I'll e-mail you soon with more details!

I'd encourage everyone to go visit Jill...she is such a sweet woman who has had an emotional year with her son Brandon who had some medical issues that suddenly arose in the Spring.

She also recently started her own business called "Simple Delights".  She'll be donating a portion of all her profit to families in the process of adoption!  Pretty cool, huh?!

I know, I know...

I haven't been blogging much lately...it's a mixture between us being super busy, school starting and me being exhausted from it all!

I thought in lieu of a new post, I'd just send you to two really good posts I've read recently at my friend Amy's blog...

Her two latest entries have been too good NOT to share!

So I hope you take some time to head over and enjoy both of these:

The Hand That Rocks the Cradle Ain't Mama

Creating a Lifestyle of Learning

Good stuff!!!  Enjoy and if you want, leave your thoughts over here and over at Amy's!

Happy blogging!

Come Visit Me "At The Well" Today!

Today I am a guest over at... "At The Well: In Pursuit of Titus 2"

I'm talking about day-to-day worship in our homes, and how this looks for a busy momma!


And a WELCOME!!  
For those of you visiting from "At the Well", I'm excited your here!  Be sure to let me know where you blog so I can come 'visit' you!

While you're here, these are a few of my past posts I think you may enjoy!

Personal Growth Lessons:
"Happy Wife" vs "Spotless House"
Quiet Times: Learning To Adapt To a New Style of Listening
Quiet Times: With My Kids, for My Kids
Not the Mothers Day I Was Expecting It To Be 

Training Them Up:
Why Am I Looking At This?
Teaching Them To Be Doers of the Word, Not Mere Hearers
The Benefit Of Chores



**A note to my followers and friends:

If you're not familiar with At The Well, it is a wonderful place for women with endless encouragements on living out Titus 2.

There are hundreds of devotionals that will bless your spirit and spur you on!

So after you take a look at my article, look around at their other resources and become one of the 700+ followers who receive a good Word about pursing Titus 2 in their "reader" (or inbox) every day!!!

Hi, This is Grace. I'm Not Home Right Now...So Leave A Message...

Well, okay, literally, I am at home (come on, 4 little kids? Rarely am I anywhere else!) but "The Mommy On the Bus" had to SAY something!  :)

What I mean to say is, I'm not "home" at my blog today, because I've been invited to I Dream Of Clean as a guest poster!

So come visit me over there today!  I'm sharing how to set up a chore schedule for littles!

And If you are visiting from "I Dream Of Clean", WELCOME!!!

Glad you stopped in!

I hope you take a few minutes to look around, after all, I really do dream of clean!  Sometimes I even obsess about it (see HERE).

And If you too, "Dream Of Clean", here are a few more posts of mine that you might be interested in...


Cleaning Tip: Let The Lights Lead You

The Benefit of Chores for Little Kids

What Chores For Kids Look Like Around Here

What Chores For Momma Look Like Around Here

My House Managing Binder

And one last, fun post giving you Just a Taste of Little Things I Do To Simplify My Day

Getting To Some Bloggin' Business

First order of business:

Several of my friends are hosting giveaways on their blogs:

Amy's is for a $25 gift certificate at "Next Day Flyers", a printing company, (click HERE for more details)

Lynnette's is for a "Champion Juicer" (click HERE for more details)


Jill's is for 4 different homemade pieces...each one is SO cute and made with love (click HERE for more details)

Shonda's is for a childrens book by Tara on her "teaching" blog (click HERE for more details)

Second order of business:

My blog friend Jenilee (who is a beautiful blogger herself) awarded me with this beautiful little thing...

So in lieu of that, here are 5 random things you may not know about me...

1. My husband and I are HUGE (no pun intended) fans of "The Biggest Loser"!  So even though we don't have TV channels, we watch it weekly via Hulu online!

2. I have trouble playing pretend...even as a little girl I could never get the hang of it.  It's just not my thing.  I try...but my boys usually end up saying "mooom, you're not doing it right!" But at least I try, right?!

3. My eyes water like crazy.  If I'm laughing, if the car's air conditioning is blowing in my face, if I'm squinting the in sun...they just water, water, water.  I'm often mistaken for crying when really, my eyes are just misting :)

4.Growing up I wanted to be a professional gift wrapper...you know, like the ladies you see in department stores during the holidays wrapping presents?  Yep, I wanted to do that.  I thought I had a special "gift" for taping, cutting and wrapping!

5. At first, I was a little scared to have a baby girl--I grew up a tom-boy and am still one at heart.  So how how was I going to raise a GIRL?  But I'm finding out more and more each day, that the pink, "prissy" girl I thought I lacked really is inside this momma after all!  Who woulda thunk it?  (check out her birth story HERE)

Third order of business:

I'm guest posting on I Dream Of Clean next week, so stay tuned for a link to that post!  I'll be talking about HOW TO set up a chore schedule for littles (where to start, what to include, how to decide on jobs, etc!)

Fourth order of business:

I recently designed a header and button for my good friend, Crystal's blog business!  It's not real professional, but I'm getting there!  It was my first design (besides my own site here) so that was exciting for me and fun for her too!  So be sure to check out my work and her hair bows at HairBowShop.blogspot.com!

MckLinky Monday! Blogging...the 5 W's

Who do you blog for?
When I first started my blog, it was mainly for my family members who live in other states.

Then I started finding blogs of my high school and college friends and added them to my "blogging motivation". I wanted them to see "see me now"...my kiddos, my life...and we could keep in touch via Blogger.

Still, I didn't blog often, but was inspired by my kindred spirit to start pick-up my blogging frequency, in order to make us both feel closer to one another.  She's far away in Guatemala and here I am in Kansas.  So Blogger connects us :)  It makes us feel like we're not quite so far away from each other and we are walking our mommy-hood roads hand in hand!

Nowadays, I still blog for all those people, but I've added an additional motivator: my family.  I think it's pretty neat that I have this blog as a "visual journal" for my kids to see someday.  I want them to know what we did together, why we did things the way we do, how I learned lessons through them, etc (Just in case I won't be able to remember someday!)

What do I blog about?
(in no particular order)

My family.  Being frugal.  Cloth diapering.  My sweet hubby.  Training my littles.  Loving my littles.  Being a wife to Mr Visionary.  Recipes.  Pregnancy.  Being "QuiverFull".  Surrender.  Encouragement to moms of many littles.  Beginning homeschooling.  My struggle with vanity.  Simplifying my life.  Cleaning.  Scheduling.  Organizing.  My "Martha" dysfunction (obsessing over my house).  Stuff I make.  Managing my home.  Tips on managing all my littles.  Our new dog Charlie.  Psalm 27:4.

And Blogging :)

But I think my main theme on this blog is how I handle being a mom to 4 little kids...from cooking to how we structure our day.  I think in a way, my blog answers the #1 question I get from strangers: How do you do it?!

When do you blog?
I blog mostly at nap-time.  Usually it is with a cup of yogurt or a cup of coffee.  I usually work on one post (sometimes two) during nap-time, but rarely do I start and finish a post in one sitting.

I also blog at the dining room table in the mornings while my boys have "quiet time" at the table (coloring, looking at books, playing with lego's...)

I will sometimes "schedule" a post to automatically post during a random time on a certain day.

With the Spring weather beckoning me and my kiddos outside every morning, sometimes I blog outside while I watch my boys being boys!  (With a few necessary interruptions here and there like: tossing a ball, watching a bike trick, playing freeze tag, demonstrating a cartwheel, studying a bug that was discovered in the bushes...I LOVE SPRING!)

Where do you blog?
At the computer in our dining room...

Or with my husbands oooold laptopSitting on the couch in my living room (or laying on the floor by the plug-in...in this old house three prong adapters are hard to come by!)

On my front porch.

Every once in the while in the kitchen while I'm waiting for the oven to "ding"!

Why do you blog?
One selfish but true answer, is that I do it for me. I know that's shallow, but I just love to write...especially when it involves a computer!  I'm one of those nerds in high school who loved writing research papers and looked forward to creative writing assignments.  I think I just like the look of black words on a white background.  It makes me feel complete :)

  

Plus, for me, blogging is kinda "my thing"...my way to relax, my way to connect with other women, other Christians, other mommas, it's my indulgence I look forward to (beside chocolate).  Because, blogging makes me feel happy...I just enjoy typing and sharing  my life!

Another true but humbling answer is that I do it for my readers.  I mean, this sounds obvious, sure.  But there are certain ones of you (you know who you are!) that bless my socks off with e-mails, comments and letters about how me (little me) is spurring them on or giving them fresh ideas.  It's your stories of how God is using me that make me want to keep writing and sharing.

My last true and surprising answer is that I do it for the blogs I follow.  They inspire me.  They give me new ways of looking at things.  They encourage me as a mom.  They comfort me.  They relate with me.  And in all this, they make me want to write things that will make others feel these things from me!

Share with us your 5 W's of blogging!  Write a post about your 5 W's this week and come back here to link up below...

The Lights In The House Go Off And On, Off And On, Off And On...

But it's not the kids fault! So whose fault is it?

Mine. Yep, that's right, it's my fault.

However, there IS a method to this madness! It's a little cleaning tip that I've always used in my house.

To start off though, one thing you gotta know about me is that I struggle with not obsessing over the cleanliness of my house. So I have to be careful how much time and attention I devote to cleaning and picking up.

But that's why a "10 minutes tidy" works great around here for me and the kids! Our twist to the 10 minute tidy is turning the lights on in every room...

Because the only thing I loathe more than a messy room, is a light left on in an empty room!

Here's how it goes...

All the lights in the house go on. Once the room has been picked up (and/or cleaned) after 10 minutes of being at it, the light goes off and we move to another room in the house. And the light STAYS off.

Here's an example: In the mornings, the boys know that they turn off their bedroom light once their beds are made and their clothes are off the floor.  Then and only then, do they turn off their light.  Even if they chose to eat breakfast first, they know their bedroom light needs to be turned out quickly afterwards...but still, they know what a turned out light means...and I'll be checking with them to make sure 1)beds are made 2)clothes are in the hamper.


What helps me with the whole "Light On, Light Off" thing, is if I start to get overwhelmed by the messiness of the current room we're playing in, I can look around, see all the lights off in other rooms and know all is clean (or at least a few rooms are clean)...with the exception our one current room we're in.

Plus, I know at our next 10 minute tidy, which rooms need attention!

The other side of this is, if I sit down at the computer to waste time blog, e-mail or surf, but I see a light on, I know that I should probably give that room a little love before I settle in to computer time!

It works for me!!!  And helps me not to be distracted by messes in other rooms...because sooner or later it will get a 10 minute tidy...if the light is on!  :)


This post is also linked to Real Clean Wednesday.

I lied...

Well actually, I wouldn't call it a "lie" per say.  After all, I did title my last post "Finished At Last?" (Did you notice the strategically placed question mark at the end?)


I wasn't crazy about the old colors, so I took a few minutes and changed them around today...


But now I can say it with confidence...I'm Finished At Last!  


...Well, finished for now at least!  :)


(Celebration GIVEAWAY still to come!)

Finished At Last?

After 20 minutes here and 20 minutes there (over the past week)...I think my new blog design is finally complete! Thanks to my PR degree, I now love working with Publisher-type programs, so this was really fun for me!

I just didn't expect it to take almost a week to get a new format up! I should have known though, because...

#1~ I'm a perfectionist and I'm a little obsessive when it comes to projects like this.

#2~ I have 4 sweet children who give no gaurentee that nap-time will mean quiet time for me!

So when everyone cooperated at nap times, I went to work! Nap time is usually when I blog anyways, and most of the time I split up one blog entry over 2-3 days because of my need to multi-task! (Except for the nights Ryan is at board meetings or basketball games when I have lots of quiet time to blog--hence all the entries from February!)

But never-the-less, (slowly but surely) I got my blog renovation done!

When I first started the project, I wanted to simplify things. I like things that are practical and simple, like I've said before, so I knew wanted to make it look clean and fresh.

I also wanted to re-think my tag line. "More Excitement Than a Themepark" was fun, but I wanted to stick with the "wheel" theme rather than the themepark theme. Make sense?

So I joked with my husband about using "Jesus Take the Wheel-ers" and then I started teasing I'd just call it "This Is How We Roll"...

But after a long car-ride, listening to Samuel's favorite CD (Fisher Prices, "Things That Go") and answering his request to listen to "The Wheels On the Bus" a billion times, it just made sense to use...
"The Mommy On The Bus Says..."

After all, that's the boys favorite part of the song because I turn around and in a jokingly harsh voice (with a stern face and pointing finger to match) say "SHH, SHH, SHH!!!!" and they laugh and laugh and laugh!

To which Ryan usually follows up with "OKAY EVERYBODY...Whoops! I woke the baby!" In true Veggie Tales style!

As for the colors, those were easily decided...pink and blue for my boys and girls and a little brown to bring it together. Plus the combo is unique which I like!

And last, I just had to decide on the pattern...I had poka dots last time, so decided stripes would be a nice change!

So here it is, the debut of my new, improved blog.

Hope you enjoy the new look!

AND stay tuned for an UPCOMING GIVEAWAY in celebration of my new blog!!!

Spring Cleaning My Blog

One reason (among many) why I love this time of year is spring cleaning!  There's something wonderful about sitting on the floor, with the windows open, in front of the contents from a messy drawer and sorting!  And I tend to find joy in things like removing any and every object on a given surface in order to spread the love of a Lysol wipe on it!

Cleaning, scrubbing, organizing, filing, sorting, and trashing just makes me giddy!  It puts a smile on my face and pep in my step!

I'm almost done with all my spring cleaning projects inside and so I thought I should spring clean my blog and let it reflect the joy of SPRING.  (And yes, I'm in complete denial that tomorrow we're supposed to get hit with a snow storm that will leave us with a 6-8 inches of cold, mushy snow...)

Because today it is a lovely 64* in South East Kansas! So as I sit on my porch waiting for my sleeping babes to wake, I'm gonna give my blog a facelift...

So hang in there while I experiment!  I'm gonna give myself a new "tag-line" too!

(It's the little things in life that excitement me!)  :)