The Dreaded Back to School Night

I’ve only been doing this parent-of-a-school-aged-kid thing for 7 years.  I want to be an involved parent, I really do.

I try (and nearly always succeed) in getting time off for field trips and school events.  I try to keep open and active lines of communication open with teachers.  I try to emphasize the importance of school with the kids.

But MAN, OH MAN how I loath Back to School Night.  I was all excited for it my first year. I remember going with my parents. You go to the kid’s class. The teacher talks about who they are and what to expect in the class.  I wanted THAT. I wanted to go and get a feel for who this lady was and what the expectations of my kids were.

That is NOT what it is.

When did Back to School Night become an hour-long presentation (ok, well 45minutes)? Why do I have to sit through 30 minutes of random school/education presentations first?
• Here’s how to drive through the parking lot
• Reading with your kids statistically shows they do better in school
• Attendance is important
• Monitor your child’s online activity

WHY do I have to sit through that? AND why do I have to sit through it for each of my kids’ classes? What a waste of time! And then the poor teacher.  She has only a few minutes left to cram in everything she wants to tell you (the stuff we all really care about anyway).

So, I hate it. I go because I want the kids to see that school is important. That THEY are important enough to go to these dumb meetings for.  Only 9 years left…

We Like Games

So, as I was prepping to write a rant about setting kids up for failure by putting an insane amount of pressure on them starting in elementary school, I realized something.

I've totally been super negative lately.

Or maybe I just feel negative because I'm tired and grumpy.

Instead, I forced myself to think...what were some highlights this week.  It was easy.

Games + Friends

Once a month we have a group of friends gather around our kitchen table and we board game it up.  I look forward to this night. I stole the idea from a friend from Highs School that was doing monthly game nights. Thanks Howard and Philicia (and gratz on the adorable new baby)!

I mean, board games are amazing and I'm glad we have a wall of them.  Some people buy book shelves for books, I feel sorry for those people. Obviously bookshelves are made for games. We need a wall of them...maybe we should start working on a 2nd wall.

We have card games, board games, dice games, strategy games, resource games, dungeon crawlers, fast games, long games, party games, kids games, competitive games, and co-op games.  We have video games too, but the lack of good multi-player games in the last few years is rather disappointing.

Do you like games? Cool, lets hang out.  Really.  It's an open invitation (if you don't mind the chaos of 3 kids running around in the background).  I will even occasionally cook for you.

Let’s Talk About Bugs

So much of my life the last couple of days has been impacted by creepy crawly things.  I’m totally over exaggerating, but still.

The most devastating news… my van is a death trap.  2 weeks ago, I got an awesome (new to me) van.  It’s silver, and shiny, and has about 100 buttons and comfy leather seats.  The best part is, because Justin and I live on an insanely tight budget we had enough money saved to pay for it in cash!

BUT things didn’t stay so pretty.  It started with an ant infestation. How does that even happen? One day I was taking groceries out of my car and found ants in the back. Just a few so I didn’t think anything of it.  But every day since, when getting in the car, I squish 2-3 ants that are walking across my steering wheel, or climbing up my leg, or crawling down the seat.  Ugh. How long before they die of starvation? It’s a brand-new car! There aren’t even crumbs for them to live off of.  That’s not even the worst! On the way to work on Tuesday I saw a HUGE spider web and right smack dab in the middle of it a large spider. Like 50 cent piece big.  And a Google search later I determined it must be a brown widow.  So, I’m pretty sure after it finishes eating all of the ants its going to find and attack me (I can’t find it – I tried).

Now I’m going to just complain so feel free to stop reading and end on the scary fact my van is trying to kill me.

Then there was the whole “we’re spraying your apartment for pests” letter.  Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate the fact that my complex is being pro-active and keeping AWAY the creepy crawlies, but their list of things to do is insane.  By 9am we had to …

•         empty our closets and put everything on our bed – this meant we wouldn’t be able to sleep on our beds if I did it early, so we had to wait until we woke up the morning of. Because getting the kids up, ready for school, and out the door in time in the morning isn’t hard enough as it is.
• 
  
•         empty all of our kitchen cabinets and place everything on our kitchen table – this meant our kitchen table (and kitchen really) were un-usable. Since I know from experience this takes a couple of hours to do I didn’t have the luxury of waiting until the morning of to do this. AND since we have church the night before it meant doing a lot of it during the day before which meant I had to eat dinner out (which we didn’t have money for because I already spent all of our budgeted food money for the week), nobody go breakfast this morning, and since I can’t re-enter my apartment until after 6PM it means dinner out again tonight.

•         empty out all of the bathroom cabinets (no complaints about this one)
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•         move all furniture a foot away from the wall.  You know, all the massive bookshelves we have full of games and books, and bunk beds, and other furniture all anchored to the wall.  After a long conversation with the apartment manager she said I didn’t have to this one (yay)

BUT at least the crawling beasts infesting my car won’t be in my house. So that’s a bonus.  AND after venting (let’s be honest, totally complaining) to a coworker he blessed us with a gift card to cover dinner.

Prayer

Prayer is this super important thing. I know it is. But for me, prayer isn’t easy.  It’s hard.  Really hard.

Praying out loud causes me such extreme anxiety. People listening to me talk…judging the words I’m using, or that 10 times I stumbled over a word (caused by the anxiety).  I spend almost the entire prayer focusing on those around me instead of on the God I’m praying to.  Which I guess means I’m not even really praying…

Praying alone is much less stress filled, buy I am SO easily distracted.  I openly admit I usually have a busy mind. I don’t like “nothing”. I like having something to do or think about. I like having to think through things. So, when I sit in prayer I have the best intentions that soon are overtaken with what I’m going to make for dinner, or trying to remember if I set that appointment, or thinking about how many hours of sleep I’ll have if I fall asleep now. God totally deserves better than that.

Because I’m not feeling beat up enough by the convicting message from Francis Chan I also like to listen to Chuck Swindoll on the way to work in the morning.

Chuck Swindoll called us out on our lack of honesty in prayer. How often do you tell somebody you’ll pray for them…then don’t? So, Pastor Swindoll says in some manner or another that if you told somebody you’d pray for them and then DON’T then next time you see them, tell them you didn’t.  You’ll fix that bad habit really quick if you’re being honest and admitting your failures to people you had “failed”.

That hit me pretty hard this last week so I’m challenging myself in my prayer.  I’d like your help!  Can you text me, or call me, or email me, or message me, or even comment on this post with a prayer request for you?  Tell me, how can I pray for you!  Every day I will choose one of you to pray for. All day. When I wake up, throughout my day whenever I find myself with a few free minutes, while I’m driving, and before bed.  I want to focus my day in prayer for friends and family (and maybe the random stranger that comes across this). 

I’ll let you know the day that I am praying for you (for accountability) AND if I fail you, I’ll be honest and admit it to you and seek your forgiveness.

Why I Gave Up

Funny story… so in January 2017 I shared with you all we were wanting to adopt. I was excited about adding a young school aged boy to our home. We prepped Eli’s room with bunk beds and got “brother’s bed” ready.

Then the paperwork.

50+ pages of information and questions.

And rules.

The rules freaked me out.

I was all for adopting until I started reading the pages and pages of “rules” it takes (foster to adopt) that would very much disrupt our lives. I KNOW that is selfish. Even typing it is super embarrassing, but I’m just being honest and sharing my crap with you all – because why not?

I can’t leave my kids with several family members due to past legal issues. I can’t travel to see my parents on a whim (because they are out of county and that takes prior court approval). I can’t use our trusted Youth Group peeps to babysit anymore. And so on.

I didn’t like that. Not to mention the amount of “all-up-in-yo-business” questions that range from how often do you and your spouse fight (and how do you fight) to how “sexually compatible” me and Justin are.

So… I gave up. This was too much work. Causing too much “unknown” for my overly-planned out heart.

THEN, we started listening to some stuff by Francis Chan. If you don’t know him, watch and read all his things. I’m pretty sure it is completely impossible to walk away from anything he presents and not feel some sort of conviction.

He was talking about marriage and how people say things like “We could never do XYZ like you”.  And he said neither can he! It’s by the Grace of God he gets through things. It is our job to make the leap and let God fit together the pieces.

I don’t like that. I like knowing what’s coming. I like some semblance of control. YES I know this is NOT the right attitude.  Hence the conviction.

So here we are, app in hand (making Justin refill the whole thing out since I threw away the first one) and we’re going to go for it.  So, pray for us (me) please.  If God wants us to welcome anther kiddo into our family, then pray for peace for me to go with the flow and take it all one manageable chunk at a time. If it isn’t His plan, pray we find out soon so I don’t have this looming uncertainty that I super-duper hate (but that’s probably the lesson I need to learn regardless of the outcome).