"God's laws of order and beauty and quietness"

I've been thinking about what makes for a peaceful home lately and trying to end some very poor habits (my lack of self-denial~can you say 'ebay'?) and instill some new positive habits. I am working on a good routine for our family that include a time for everything and way to make sure everyone's needs are being met and my house is clean and orderly as well. One characteristic that is preventing that all-important peace in our home is self-denial. And if it is not present in me, how can I possibly expect to see it from my children very often? I love simplicity and I just adore the days where we play with classic toys and enjoy our time together without much of the glitz and glam that comes with media-type toys etc. Yet here I am buying more leapster games. So I am planning on working on that. I was encouraged tonite through my reading of Keep a Quiet Heart by Elisabeth Elliott and this really hit me...

"The earlier that parents begin to make God's laws of order and beauty and quietness comprehensible to their children, the sooner they will acquire good strong notions of what is so basic to real Godliness ~ self-denial. A Christian home should be a place of peace, and there can be no peace where there is no self-denial."

Breathe in, breathe out...

It's been awhile since I posted. We've had plenty keeping us busy. Yesterday was my wonderful husbands 36th birthday. Would you believe we enjoyed a quiet meal of seafood and delicious cheescake? We have great friends. It only took two babysitters to makes sure all six of our kids were well cared for (yes, five-year old cutie pie Dylan makes six currently). My friend Shirlena actually called me to see if I had a babysitter for the girls. So nice! Then my friend Dacyl watched the boys and Dylan. Chad was so surprised!

One of the six is having a moment of quiet time while I decide what the best way would be to clean the three eggs smashed into my bedroom carpet. Ethan, Dylan and Ryland went out to let the ducks and chickens out and came back proudly carrying the eggs in. Of course push came to shove and the eggs ended up on my floor, narrowly missing my basket full of clean laundry. One of them walked in the whole mess while trying to hide the evidence of disobedience (we've already dropped eggs while coming up the stairs before and have promised to NEVER gather the eggs without my help). I think this combined with the incident where Ethan threw up Dark Chocolate Ice Cream all over my closet carpet warrants professional cleaners. Nice post huh? Isn't this beautiful? It's one of about five large eggs smushings. Sometimes taking a picture and writing about it helps me realize that this is just a part of life and not really *that* big of a deal, right?

They're currently onto more productive activities.

My two sweet babies should be waking up soon and need to eat and be changed. I need to get dinner started, sweep the hardwoods and do the lunch dishes after I get Aidan off the bus. Before 8 am I had some quiet time with my Bible and Oswald Champer's My Utmost for His Highest and enjoyed my coffee with coconut creamer; got all the groceries put away (which I shopped for from 9-10pm last night) and attempted to clean out the pantry; got two boys fed, dressed, teeth brushed, backpacks ready, prayed with, hugged and loved and on the bus at 8:20. After feeding four more and doing the oatmeal dishes so they wouldn't stick, I HAD to attack the 3 bathrooms (can anyone tell me why boys cannot make it in the HUGE opening of the toilet?), folded 4 loads of laundry, changed sheets on 4 of the 7 beds, read no less than than 10 books, colored and built an enormous castles of blocks. I still need to make a treat and check that we have enough coffee creamer. Bible study is here tonite! Ahhhhhh. I'm going a hundred miles an hour but there aren't enough hours in the day recently. I have a social worker to call, dentist appts to make, over-due library books to find, flu shots to schedule and homework to help the boys with. I'm not thinking about Saturday's birthday party yet or the growing mound of bills to pay (another thing on my to do list~add more of these to my online bill-pay). I must get the guest room in order because my sweet friend Kara is staying the night tonite. Yet I am having a ball, really, and as soon as this chest cold is gone I will be much happier. Until then taking pics of my joys gets me through...