Sugar Mama?

We are praying for some good news at our house. Yesterday at work we found out that the grant money we applied for could be available to us within 72 hours!!! It's a good chunk of change for the ministry to work with. But with more money comes more work. Please pray with us that I can begin to work full-time and be paid enough so that Mr. Man can quit his job, or at least go down to 2 shifts a week.

With how things have been the past few years it would be such a blessing for this to happen. I'll be giving updates on how things are going.

Other news:

Eli is now 4 months old and as cute as can be. He is a huge baby at 19 pounds 4 ounces, and 26 inches long!!! Ari wasn't 19 pounds until she was 6 months old. He had his first taste of rice cereal yesterday too.

We are dying from the heat here in TN. I felt a cool breeze yesterday for the 1st time in weeks and it was wonderful. Very short lived, but wonderful. I can't wait for fall, sweaters, and needing to turn on the heat instead of AC. Right now I would go for some snow too.

Next week we will have basic cable and cable Internet in our house!! Charter had a deal and we took it. I can't wait for fast Internet again especially since there is a ton of stuff I want to sell in our house to make some extra $$ for things we need.

Mr. Man went on a super-cleaning spree yesterday and the house is starting to look nice again. Now it's my turn to clean up all of my junk.

If anyone knows of a good place to get small chalkboards let me know.

That's all for now. Time to do some work.

Have You Polished Your Sink Today?

Thanks to my friend Jenn I have found the most AMAZING website known to man! Ok, well maybe it's not the #1 site out there, but it is one of the best for my life right now. Flylady is a site that helps scatterbrained people like me get a handle on cleaning and organizing their house. The first step is to clean and polish the kitchen sink and keep it clean. Then there are baby steps to help you keep going.

I needed this so badly. Now I have someone telling me what area to work every day/week. After awhile I will be able to make my own schedule once I get the house in order. It's easier having someone else give me the baby step to work on rather than looking at the whole mess.

Anyhoo, that's it for now. Gotta get work done so I can get home.

What Brings You Joy?

The main reason for this post is to enter a contest to win a filing/organizational system, but at the same time I think it will turn into good personal reflection time. The contest is being hosted by Kerflop. A wonderful blog that I love, and she is also the brains behind Very Baby cloth diapers. One of these days I will show what I've been working on with the new sewing machine. Anyway onto my point as best as my brain will allow.

What brings me joy? I have been asking myself that very question for a while now. For those of you who know me you know how crazy life has been for a while now. For those of you who don't here's a short background of me.

I'm a 25-year-old wife and mom to 2 wonderful kids. Ari is 21 1/2 months and Eli is 3 1/2 months. I work part-time for a local ministry, Mr. Man goes to school full time and works just about full time. To make life even crazier we just bought our first house! Needless to say life is crazy.

Now back to joy. After Eli was born I started to have postpartum depression. I had some with Ari but it wasn't any worse that what I've dealt with since high school so for her I didn't need to do anything. Not this time. I was getting to the point of not being able to function so I'm now on a very low dose of Zoloft and it has made a world of difference. I am slowly starting to feel like a real person again.

Though the Zoloft helps, I am still in a funk. Part of it has to do with the disaster that is our house. Granted some of the disorganization is from moving, but let's just be real and the majority of it is because of me. I am not good at cleaning. I am not good at organizing. I like having things clean and organized but I cannot get my brain to begin the process.

I tend to look at the whole picture instead of breaking things up. I see the whole house in shambles and get so overwhelmed that I can't get anything done. My thought process is, "If I can't clean the whole thing how/why should I start?" Not logical I know, but that's my mind. I am also very good at starting a million projects at once and never getting any of them done. All of this drives my semi-OCD husband crazy.

So, what brings me joy? Spending quality time with my husband, spending quality time with the kids, spending time with God, doing craft projects, spending time with friends, sleep, exercise, baking, blogging, reading, journaling, watching the sunset, spending time outside, and I know the list can go on. Sadly hardly any of these things happen in my life. Many of them do to some degree but not to a point where I would like. Part of the reason is life circumstances, but another is that everything here is a mess and it takes 3 times longer to get things done because nothing has a home and things don't stay organized.

I would love to get this house, my work office, the cars, and anywhere else I am regularly neat and organized. I'm slowly learning more about how to get this done and any tool that is proven to work I would be happy to try.

This is how I "organize". Please help!!

Our House

Here are some updated pictures of the house. More to come.

There's really not much to talk about today, so it's just the pictures.

Looking for Opinions

One ministry area that my job focuses on is education. We have slowly been developing our Master's Institute of Ministry and are brainstorming how we can expand. We have almost finished putting together our first lesson series and are looking for more ideas. One of my ideas was to put together a series for women. This idea came from my Wednesday class at church. Last week's lesson was "A Woman and Her Emotions."

So here's what I'm looking for:

*Read the explanation of the lesson series idea
*Read the questions
*Comment on your ideas

I would really appreciate any feedback you can give on this one. Feel free to link this site to your friends.

Series Explanation
The format will be a 5-7 week lesson plan with a different topic being covered each week. One person will be asked to write a chapter on a particular topic to even out the workload. We will create a leaders guide, student worksheets, DVD, and possibly a supplemental book.

It will be geared toward women from ages 18+ and taught for lay people with practical life applications. It could be used as a Sunday/Wednesday class at church, or used as a 2 day conference.

The focus will be about a woman's faith, but not necessarily just prayer, devotions, etc. Topics could include health, nutrition, parenting, life stages, marriage, the single life, the ideas are completely open.

Questions
1. What topics would you be interested in learning about regarding women and faith?
2. What what would be the #1 thing you would not like to see?

Please take some time to think and pray about this. No rush, just let me know what you think.

Thanks in advance!!

2 Wonderful Books

Here are two books that I have been reading through in my "spare time" a.k.a. bathroom time.

Now if I can just apply what I'm reading life will be good. I'll try and post some of the good tips soon.

By the way...do any of you Clevelanders know where/if you can recycle in this town? Let me know.