7 Quick Takes

If you haven’t filled my survey out yet, I’d love for you to do so. I have to admit you have had me laughing over here. Here is an example: early in the week, to the question “I wish you would write more about” someone answered “your goats.” I don’t write much during these couple weeks of festivities as a general rule, but my first thought was, “Hey, that’s something my brain can do right now! And I’d enjoy it, too!” So, I wrote a post on goats. You know what happened the next day? I read some new survey answers and, to the question “I wish you would write less about…” someone answered, “your goats.”

Ha!

I think in 2014 I shall write neither more often, nor less often, about my beloved flock than I have in the past.

Q-Age-Six became Q-Age-Seven this week. I won’t go on and on about how heartbroken I am about my little girl growing up because then I’ll have to hear it from Mystie. The family party is tomorrow, but our tradition is that, on your birthday, you get to choose your dinner. In Daughter Q.’s case, however, it is lunch, because she is a New Year’s Eve baby and her father and I go out to dinner that night, while she parties it up with her siblings at Granddad’s house.

So, what did she choose? Sandwiches. Turkey with swiss on sourdough with only mayo {no veggies except onions!} and please, oh please, can there be sauerkraut next to the sandwich, but not on it? I love this girl. She has already mastered her Starbucks order {kids’ vanilla steamer, please} because she’s comfortable with her own bossiness. So while the other children in the family spend hours of gut-wrenching soul searching, trying to decide on what’s for dinner, Daughter Q. took about two seconds to make her call.

I’m making an owl cake for this year’s family celebration. Photos will be forthcoming, and in the meantime you all can pray for me. It is very…elaborate. Ahem.

This year, I taught E-Age-Eleven how to make his own New Year’s resolutions. I’ll be honest: the child was driving me nuts, and I thought some goals might help. Plus, I’ve been making mothering resolutions every year for a long time now, and it dawned on me that even though I may still “resolve” certain things for him, he really is old enough to do it himself. And there is no time like the present for learning to accomplish something with your time rather than frittering it away, right?

I have always used that passage from the New Testament, where is says that Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man. It has served as a sort of outline for me. So I took a piece of paper and folded it in thirds and wrote “wisdom,” “knowledge,” and “stature” at the top. I told him that “wisdom” can be spiritual goals {like reading through certain books of the Bible or praying certain things or whatever} or it could also be a place to put spiritual growth in ideas — basically an understanding of something that would come from reading and thinking. “Knowledge” would be more of a skills category. “Stature” would be the place to put goals for our body.

And of course there is “other” on the back, in case we think of something that doesn’t seem to fit.

We also talked a bit about making goals specific rather than general, so that we can really know what we want to do and, in the end, whether we actually did it or not. So, say, the difference between, “Learn more Spanish” and “Pass 12 sections on DuoLingo.”

He was really excited about the knowledge category and started chattering all about getting himself to Bach’s Two-Part Inventions in piano and mastering certain exercises in Latin and Spanish. My second child likely won’t be ready for this sort of thing at his age {though she may surprise me}, but this was the perfect thing to pass off to him this year and start off with a little more independence than he had last year.

I have a lot of posts in my head right now. Most of them probably ought to have been published this past week, being the week of New Year’s, but I figure the entire month of January is fair game for all things fresh and new, right?

Do you make New Year’s Resolutions? My pastor told us that about half of people make them, but less than 10% keep them. So, if you make them, are you able to keep them?

Windows 8 freaks me out. A benevolent donor gifted our school with a new laptop {thanks, benevolent donor!!} and it runs Windows 8 and has a touch screen. I figure the only reason I even half knew what I was doing when I first turned it on was because I have a Kindle Fire and have therefore seen an app before. But still! Goodness. I feel like an old lady. I mean, I know how to open an app, but not how to close one. I can’t figure out how to turn the computer off. I was offered a copy of Windows 8 for Dummies free when I registered the computer {no joke}, but didn’t download it because Microsoft wanted to know too much about me. I mean, why don’t I just hand them my social security number and mother’s maiden name and call it a day?

I figure it gets better, right?