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Read the rest of my absolute unbelief that my daughter is growing up today at MOD Squad blog.

As the back to school ads roll out, the kids’ baseball and softball seasons come to a close and the corn here in the midwest is as tall as the sky, I can feel summer slipping away.  I wait all year long for these few months of heat and humidity, of barefeet and tank tops, and of swimming pools and ballgames.  And here we are.  I can see its end from here.  Part of me wants to be sad and sulk.  The smarter part of me wants to be intentional and make the most of the days of summer we have left.

So, we will swim.

We will run through the sprinklers.

We will eat popsicles in the driveway.

We will go on sunset bike rides.

We will grill almost every meal outside.

We will go to the zoo and the park.

We will have fun and enjoy being a family.

Summers are fleeting.  So are the days with our family.  I will make the most of them.

A Good Foundation

My husband is a home builder. Before he picks out the cabinets or the lighting and before he even starts to frame up the walls and floors, great care is taken to create a good foundation. The soil is tested to see if it can support a house. Ground work is done. The correct type of rock and cement are laid down. Even though no one will see it, a lot of work goes into the foundation. It has to be unshakable or the house will be unstable. It will not stand against weather and time.

How Strong Your Foundation?

I have heard people say that their mom or their best friend or their husband was their “rock” or their “foundation”. While I am happy that they have such a good support in their life, I have to question if people really make the best foundation. What happen when those people don’t agree with you? What if they don’t have the same views and values that you have? What if they die? When those things happen, there goes your foundation. What do you do then?

Other people build their lives on the foundation of education, status, family, name. These might not be bad things, but are they rock solid? Are they unshakable?

The Wise Man vs. The Foolish Man

As I finished my walk last night, I was amazed what a difference stability made in my foot. It totally took away my pain. The stress on my foot was gone. I was able to finish my walk. On my way home, I walked past one of my husband’s building sites where they had just poured the foundation that afternoon. The song that goes with the Bible story that we all learned in Sunday School kept going through my head. “The wise man builds his house upon the rock…” If you remember the story, the wise man built his house on a good, strong foundation and it stood firm. No matter what storms came, the house did not crumble. On the other hand, the foolish man built his house on unstable ground and when the storms clouds gathered his house fell flat.

Our lives need to be built on something strong, immovable, unshakable. Something greater than people or institutions. How else will we weather life’s storms? How else can we discern truth? It’s hard to figure out right from wrong when what you’ve based your life on keeps changing.

God’s word never changes. God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. He loves you and cares for you. He created you. He is the solid rock you can build your life on. He will give you stability in your everyday life. Life is better when you know you can trust what you have built it on. I encourage you that if you are building your life on something less than the Lord of all creation, that you examine your foundation.

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.” Matthew 7:24

As you spend the day with family and friends at your picnics and barbecues, take time to remember the meaning of this holiday.  It’s not to celebrate the beginning of summer or the end of school.  It’s to honor men and women throughout the history of our nation who believed in the cause of freedom so greatly that they gave their lives.  Thank God for the bravery and valor of the few so that the many could live free.

Freedom Isn’t Free by Kelly Strong

I watched the flag pass by one day.

It fluttered in the breeze.

A young Marine saluted it,

And then he stood at ease.

I looked at him in uniform

So young, so tall, so proud,

With hair cut square and eyes alert

He’d stand out in any crowd.

I thought how many men like him

Had fallen through the years.

How many died on foreign soil?

How many mothers’ tears?

How many pilots’ planes shot down?

How many died at sea?

How many foxholes were soldiers’ graves?

No, freedom isn’t free.

I heard the sound of taps one night,

When everything was still

I listened to the bugler play

And felt a sudden chill.

I wondered just how many times

That taps had meant “Amen,”

When a flag had draped a coffin

Of a brother or a friend.

I thought of all the children,

Of the mothers and the wives,

Of fathers, sons and husbands

With interrupted lives.

I thought about a graveyard

At the bottom of the sea

Of unmarked graves in Arlington.

No, freedom isn’t free.

Well, I am having one of those days.  I got up early to type out a post I had already written in my notebook (I’m a pen and paper girl) and all I wanted to do was scroll down my reader and see what I could find from other bloggers.  So, my posting time came and went.  I don’t even want to post what I had prepared.  The kids are off playing somewhere, evidently avoiding me and school.   Just one of those days.

How do you handle these unproductive days?  The way I see it, I have two options.  One, I could get all mad and beat myself up over being lazy and procrastinating.  Or, two, I could just go with it.  Write a post about it.  Go do something that I want to do.  Get this out of my system and then come back to the to-do list when my head is clear.

Which option do you usually choose?

I want to say thanks to all of you who have given such positive feedback on Overcoming Busy’s new look.  I really appreciate it!  I love the new look, too.  I have wanted to make some changes for months.  It just took me a while to finally figure out what I wanted, and then I couldn’t get the look that was in my head on to paper.  I am design challenged.  There is also the little detail of me not knowing code from pig latin.  Needless to say, I was a little stuck for a while.

Enter Gretchen and Trina from Thyme For Design.  I have know these wonderful girls for years and they were the only ones I trusted with my project and with my sanity.  Between Gretchen’s techie/coding expertise and Trina’s design/mind-reading capabilities, they made it all happen!  I kid you not.  I emailed them a rambling, nonsense email about color, vectors, natural something-or-another and magazine layout – fully expecting either a request for a little more detail or something far, far from where I was wanting to go.  Within a week, they sent me a header Trina designed that was almost identical to what was in my head!  I almost fell off my chair.  It was kind of scary.  I, then, sent Gretchen a wish list of features I wanted for the blog.  A few days after that, the entire layout was complete!  They made it so easy!

I am so pleased with the final design.  I am still learning how to use some of the features and tweaking it here and there.  Its exciting to think of where Overcoming Busy got started and where it’s going.  This new layout gives more opportunity for this community to grow and for me to share lots more ways to overcome busy.

Thanks to Gretchen and Trina for creating such a great layout and design.  Check out their other great projects at Thyme For Design.com. Let them cook something up for your next project!

This article was on a friend’s facebook page today.  I just had to share.

TELL ME ABOUT IT ®

By Carolyn Hax
Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Carolyn:

Best friend has child. Her: exhausted, busy, no time for self, no time for me, etc. Me (no kids): Wow. Sorry. What’d you do today? Her: Park, play group . . .

Okay. I’ve done Internet searches, I’ve talked to parents. I don’t get it. What do stay-at-home moms do all day? Please no lists of library, grocery store, dry cleaners . . . I do all those things, too, and I don’t do them EVERY DAY. I guess what I’m asking is: What is a typical day and why don’t moms have time for a call or e-mail? I work and am away from home nine hours a day (plus a few late work events) and I manage to get it all done. I’m feeling like the kid is an excuse to relax and enjoy — not a bad thing at all — but if so, why won’t my friend tell me the truth? Is this a peeing contest (“My life is so much harder than yours”)? What’s the deal? I’ve got friends with and without kids and all us child-free folks get the same story and have the same questions.

Tacoma, Wash.

Relax and enjoy. You’re funny.

Or you’re lying about having friends with kids.

Or you’re taking them at their word that they actually have kids, because you haven’t personally been in the same room with them.

Internet searches?

I keep wavering between giving you a straight answer and giving my forehead some keyboard. To claim you want to understand, while in the same breath implying that the only logical conclusions are that your mom-friends are either lying or competing with you, is disingenuous indeed.

So, since it’s validation you seem to want, the real answer is what you get. In list form. When you have young kids, your typical day is: constant attention, from getting them out of bed, fed, clean, dressed; to keeping them out of harm’s way; to answering their coos, cries, questions; to having two arms and carrying one kid, one set of car keys, and supplies for even the quickest trips, including the latest-to-be-declared-essential piece of molded plastic gear; to keeping them from unshelving books at the library; to enforcing rest times; to staying one step ahead of them lest they get too hungry, tired or bored, any one of which produces the kind of checkout-line screaming that gets the checkout line shaking its head.

It’s needing 45 minutes to do what takes others 15.

It’s constant vigilance, constant touch, constant use of your voice, constant relegation of your needs to the second tier.

It’s constant scrutiny and second-guessing from family and friends, well-meaning and otherwise. It’s resisting constant temptation to seek short-term relief at everyone’s long-term expense.

It’s doing all this while concurrently teaching virtually everything — language, manners, safety, resourcefulness, discipline, curiosity, creativity. Empathy. Everything.

It’s also a choice, yes. And a joy. But if you spent all day, every day, with this brand of joy, and then, when you got your first 10 minutes to yourself, wanted to be alone with your thoughts instead of calling a good friend, a good friend wouldn’t judge you, complain about you to mutual friends, or marvel how much more productively she uses her time. Either make a sincere effort to understand or keep your snit to yourself.

Write to Tell Me About It, Style, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071, ortellme@washpost.com.

Anyone out there still working on their New Year’s Resolutions?

Still striving to meet those goals?

Most people have forgotten all about their goals by this time of the year.  Life has gotten in the way and the goals have taken a back seat.  So, there’s always next year.   How many times have we shrugged our shoulders and just given up? Why do we do that?  If the goal was that important to make in the first place, why are we giving up without a fight?

Here is my theory, however flawed it may be.  There are several reasons why we give up on our goals.

1. We make goals for the wrong reasons. Sometimes we make goals that our friends make or goals that we think we should make.  When it comes right down to it, we don’t care whether we attain that goal or not.  We might make the goal of working out 3 times a week because a friend is doing it.  We agree to make that goal with them because of the friendship not because we really feel the need to make the goal of working out.  Or, we might make the goal of reading a book a week because we want to be more well read.  Intellectually, we know that is a good goal.  But, is it realistic and are we doing it for the right reasons?  Who really cares if we have read more books than the next person?  If your heart doesn’t hurt when you give up on a goal, that goal really wasn’t that important to you.

2.  The goal was too big. I don’t believe any goal is too big.  Anything is attainable.  But, I do think trying to attain a huge final goal without breaking it up into smaller pieces is setting  yourself up for failure.  For instance, if your goal is to run a marathon and you haven’t worked out in years.  You probably don’t want to run that marathon your first day out.   Break it down into smaller goals that eventually lead up to the final goal.  That will set up up for success and keep you motivated in the process.

3.  We are just weak. I hate to say it, but some of us just give up too soon.  Things get hard and we just throw in the towel.  Even if our heart is breaking.  We can’t take the negative comments from others who don’t understand our dreams.  We can’t take the pressure and the hard work.  We let life get in the way and control us.  We rationalize our failures by telling ourselves that we don’t really need or deserve to realize that goal.  We tell ourselves that it is just not worth it, but then feel miserable inside.  Sometimes we need to suck it up to get what we really want.

Instead of making huge New Year’s Resolutions this year, I decided to make smaller monthly goals.  I know how life is and how priorities might change.  Setting new goals each month seemed like a way to make my goals more attainable.  Right now, I am working on February goals.  My goals for this month were to work on a new blog layout, get to bed by 10pm and cut down on my online time. How’s is it going?

My blog is now in the hands of my friends and web designers, Gretchen and Trina, at Thyme For Design.  They are going to be working their magic in the very near future.

My new early bedtime was going great until the Olympics!  I am missing sleep again, but it’s worth it!  I’ll get to bed by 10 again in March.

For the most part, I have not been spending tons of time online.  I just check my email and facebook a couple times a day.  Reading blogs is my relaxation so I usually read a couple while having my morning coffee and then again in the afternoon.  There are days when I have some time to spend a little extra time online, but I really try not to spend time online when I need to be with my family.

I feel good about my goals for this month.  They are helping me reach my larger goals.  The success I feel now will help me be confident to make more goals next month.  What goals are you ready to make?

I’m linking up to Goal Gathering Monday at The Bona Fide Life.

Thanks to all the feedback yesterday.  I received comments and emails regarding whether to go with a blog or Facebook page to promote Dallas Designs.  Dallas and I decided to go with the  Facebook fan page! We did discover there is another Dallas Designs on Facebook with a “group” page.  My Dallas has a fan page with her little picture on it.  Be a Facebook fan and then check out her artfire shop.  She has raised over $50 so far for St. Jude Children’s Hospital this month through Dallas Designs!  Spread the word so that she can raise more!

photo from marthastewart.com

There is a story my dad used to tell about one of his aunts.  In the 1940’s in the rural area where they lived, it was a luxury to have nice china and linens.  Aunt Freida was one of the blessed ones.  She had a china cabinet full of china and glassware.  She had drawers of nice linens.  All of this just waiting for that special occasion to use them.  Years went by and those precious treasures stayed packed away.  Just waiting.

One spring day, a midwestern thunderstorm spawned a tornado that destroyed Aunt Freida’s family farmhouse.  The family was blessed.  Their lives were spared.  But, their home and most of their belongings were gone.  The china, glassware and linens never saw that long awaited special occasion.

My dad told that Aunt Freida was so happy that her family was saved during the tornado that from that day on “nothing was too good for Aunt Freida”.  She bought new china and glassware and linens, but this time she used them everyday!  To her, each day was now a special occasion.

The lesson I learned from that family story is that each day is a gift. A special occasion worth celebrating, worth breaking out the good china for.  If your own family isn’t worth the good stuff, who is?  So, go ahead.  Set the table.  Use the good stuff.  Even if it’s for mac n cheese.  Light the candles in that silver candle holder you got as a wedding gift, but have never used.  Let your family know how special they are and that nothing is too good for them.

Do you do anything to make your family feel special?  Give us some ideas!