Wait, stop. This momma isn’t gonna buy anything. or at least not a string of things to keep you feeling happy if one thing breaks.

We have sung this song a zillion times with our boys. Well, mainly with Jackson when he was younger. But sometime around the time that Jackson hit his toddler prime I became very disenchanted with it. He was totally self-absorbed, as he should have been as a 2 something and spent every ounce of his energy to get what he wanted. And somehow, at some point I sang that song and it hit me that I was feeding him a message I wasn’t sure I wanted him to have. Don’t worry if this doesn’t work because we will buy you something else, and if that doesn’t work, don’t worry…we will just find something better. The other message is if you are quiet I will get you what you want.

Now just to clarify, I am not against a good bribe. There are times and places when bribes are a NECESSITY. You may not agree and that is okay. But I find there are times when a distraction, i.e. a piece of candy or something unexpected, can be both pacifying and motivating. And yes, at least in our home there are times when certain members of the family need encouragement to be quiet or motivated to obedience, whichever the case may be.

The truth is we do love to give our children gifts. And gifts are fun and satisfying. But they aren’t going to fulfill us. There is comfort for a child in knowing that their parents can provide for them. But I think we are doing our children a disservice if we let them think we can fix anything and provide everything.  Because the truth is we can’t. And I am sort of a perfectionist so this is hard to say. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t mind my kids being proud of their mom and thinking she is superwoman…but I am not. As Jackson has grown I have been talking to him about how the things we have are blessings. I don’t hesitate to say, Daddy has been working extra hard at work to make money for us to use and we have decided we will use some of our money to buy such and such. I don’t want him to think he can get anything he wants. Sure I want him to be happy and as a parent I do want to give him things he will enjoy but that doesn’t always mean it’s the best thing for him. I want him to see a correlation between work and earning, and I want him to see the joy in unexpected blessings.

And if you sing this song, sing away. But for now while my kids are in the “me”, “mine”, “all my own”, “more”, “it’s just not fair” phase of life I think I am going to look for some other tunes! Because this momma is too tired to go hunting for a mocking bird that sings, shiny diamond ring, a looking glass, a billy goat and a horse and cart.

This morning at breakfast I told Seth it was a great day for a language waiver, sure enough he called about an hour later to say he had gotten the waiver!!! Seth has worked so hard and it is such a relief now for him to be able to take the test and get moving! So we are leaving for Texas on Friday. We will spend about a week and a half there and head to Switzerland. The good byes are sad but we have been preparing for this for a while now.I think being in an empty house has made us more than ready to get settled again sooner rather than later.

On a totally unrelated note, we met the O’Leary’s in Annapolis on Sunday night and had a wonderful evening catching up with them and introducing them to Owen. For those of you that don’t remember the O’Leary’s they are the family I met in Houston and babysat for for yrs. We spent some time with them on our homeleave and we afraid we would have to move before seeing them and them meeting Owen. It worked out with our delay that they were in Baltimore  while we were still in VA. Here are a few pictures.

Here are some pictures from our summer…friends, farmer’s market and all that stuff!

Although we didn’t plan on being in VA for most of our summer we have enjoyed the American summer! We have seen the fruit of our labor in our little garden. Our parsley, sunflowers and tomatoes have made us proud! And watching Jackson sit barefoot on the front step with popsicle juice dripping down to his elbows is just priceless. We wish we had a community pool to cool off in but overall we have found ways to keep cool and have fun!

We go into this new week hoping that we will be leaving on Friday but not knowing much for certain. We are still waiting on Seth’s language waiver and another language exam. Hoping for the best!! We will keep you posted!

This yr we decided to lay low on the 4th of July. Last yr we spent the evening with 5500 others. You all may remember that Seth was responsible for the big shindig.  He did an amazing job. But the stress began in Oct and ended with the fireworks on the 4th! It was a ton of work. This year we decided to spend an evening at home with the 4 of us.

We made a yummy dinner and lit a few sparklers!

this was Jackson’s all American meal…farmer’s market tomatoes, hot dog with fixin’s, corn cut off the cobb and strawberries and blueberries! It was delicious!

the porch audience was quite enthusiastic during the sparkler show

The day after the 4th Seth had a federal holiday so we got to have him home. We originally thought we were going to be packing out the next day so hadn’t really made any plans. But, since our lives changed drastically the Thursday before the 4th, we were invited to spend the afternoon with friends and were able to accept because we weren’t moving. We drove out to Bluemont where our friend’s parents own a home in the country. We had time to just decompress with friends and enjoy a meal and the handful of sparklers we had left over from the night before. Here are a few pictures!

Owen and Rowyn reunited again! These two are hysterical together. They are both into kisses and tackling these days!