Five Things for Friday, Super Busy Summer Edition

Jon snapped a shot of me stewing over a final draft of the book

This week the final draft was sent off to the printing house. In a few weeks we should have the first “proof” to look over and then it will be sent off for its first printing and should be in stores (and online) by Thanksgiving!

The reality of this book still  hasn’t hit me yet. I don’t know if it will until I have a real copy in my hands.

Then I might cry.

Because really…. this book is amazing. I know I am biased… but really it is a-m-a-z-i-n-g. A few days ago, when I finally stopped searching for all the errors, I just sat back and marveled at what the book was.

Let me just give you a taste.

And there is 300 pages of this,  with over 80 women included! But don’t worry there are LOTS of pictures, so it doesn’t feel that long.

It is beautiful, powerful book and I can’t help but feel that it might be life changing for some women. To open this book and meet all these New Testament women– women whose lives bear testimony to the divinity of womanhood and of God’s love for ALL women. Looking in their eyes, reading their stories, imagining their lives, and relating them to yours is a powerful journey and one I am SO excited for more people to take.

So thank you for hanging in there with me as I’ve neglected my blog to work on this project.

It was worth it… trust me.

Finishing up the book this last month has been harder because we’ve been on vacation for the last few weeks. We took a long trip to visit my family in Idaho and Jon’s family in Utah. It has been so wonderful to spend time with some many people that I love. I also got to meet my first (and only) nephew for the first time, and “gooshed” his fat little cheeks to my hearts content.

Cousin attack!

Blessing day! I love his little Marine hair style.

We are headed home this weekend and it is kind of bitter sweet. Bitter because as soon as I get home I know I will miss my family again, but Sweet because we will be headed HOME. And the one thing I’ve realized this trip is that Iowa really is our home. I love Utah and Idaho, but we aren’t suppose to be there right now. Iowa is where we are suppose to be and there are so many things I love about it. When I think about our beautiful home, our wonderful ward, and our amazing friends there I really feel so blessed.  It will be nice to get home and back to my garden, which hopefully is overflowing with zucchini and cucumbers right about now!

Look what Tabitha learned to do on our trip!

A friend introduced to me to Dressing your Truth a few weeks ago ( if you aren’t familiar with it this link might help you make a bit more sense out of the rest of my post). At first I was skeptical. I signed up for her emails and watched the energy profiling videos she sent, but wasn’t really convinced. I had a hard time figuring out which one I was, and actually thought I had to be unique and be a mix of all of them (if you know the system, you can probably guess which type I am by now :). After watching the videos I was talking with my friend about them and told her how I didn’t know which type I was.

She told me she thought I was a Type 1, to which I despairingly blurted out, “I know! But I don’t want to be a  Type 1.” In my mind I had judged Type 1 energy as ditsy, childlike and silly. I judged Type 1 women to be everything that I didn’t want to be.

We went through my closet and I realized that I mostly had black (which is a Type 4 color). I didn’t realize I owned so many black things! In Carol Tuttle’s book she talks about how many Type 1 people start wearing more black as they get older because they want to me taken more seriously. Seeing my closet  full of black was a powerful realization that what I saw as my weaknesses– my enthusiasm, my excitement, my random nature and even my inability to get through a church meeting without commenting more than once– were really my strengths. In my desire to be taken seriously– to convince people that what I had to say was important– I was trying to suppress my light and was holding back the love and joy that wanted to bubble out of me. When I realized that I didn’t have to hold that back, I bawled. Maybe it sounds silly, but it was powerful for me.

My friend challenged me to just try dressing my truth for a few days and see how I felt. I gave it a try and found that when I got dressed in bright colors, with dangly jewelry I felt REALLY good. I looked in the mirror and just smiled, and smiled, and smiled. I felt like I could conquer the world. I also felt so cute and I noticed that people were giving ME compliments, not my clothes. Instead of, “oh that is cute shirt” I got, “wow, you just look so cute” and ” you look so good today.” Over the next few days I  felt parts of me surface that I hadn’t allowed to come out for years and it felt incredible. After a few days I took all my Type 2, 3 and 4 clothes down the basement. Then I went to the Goodwill and for $65 got a whole new bright, happy wardrobe.

Just as an example. Here is me the week before I started the Dressing Your Truth. I look nice and happy, and felt good about myself. But as you can see I was wearing dark colors (which would look awesome on a Type 4) and this is what most of my wardrobe consisted of.

But here is me two weeks later (with my friend Lani) after doing Dressing Your Truth. I don’t know if you can see it, but I can see a huge change. There is joy, energy and light in me that wasn’t being expressed before. 

Realizing that is is okay to be me– and it will always be okay to be light, happy and fun no matter how old I get– has really be a life changing realization for me. If you aren’t familiar with Dressing Your Truth I’d highly recommend it. I don’t know that everyone needs it– or is ready for it– but I know for me it has been incredible. It is like someone took down the wall around my heart and gave me permission to be myself… and I am a bright, animated, optimistic woman; full of sunshine and joy that bubbles out of my heart.

And it feels so wonderful to be me.

I have been wanting to write a post about our homeschool year in review, but it hasn’t happened. Maybe sometime I will get around to telling you about all the things that went well for us this year… and the things that didn’t. Mostly though, I just want to share with you that our first year of homeschool went REALLY well. It wasn’t perfect, and there were days (lots of days) I wanted to quit and send the kids on the bus– or to Timbuktu forever– but overall we had a lot of fun.

We really had some wonderful times together and every once in awhile we would have a stellar learning experience. Like the time when, right in the middle of a lesson on birds, we looked out the window and saw a Cooper hawk sitting in our driveway— which had caught and was in the process of eating Rose’s favorite Bantam chicken. After the tears stopped, it  was a lesson on predators and birds the kids will never forget. Or the the day we read “The Secret Cave”, all about boys who discover pre-historic cave paintings in France, and made a cave under our dinning room table and spent the whole morning taping cave drawings to the underside of the table. Or the day when Asher realized he could read and write words and spent a whole week writing the words “fat bat” on everything, only to end up in tears later when he wanted to write his Dad a birthday card but only knew how to write “the fat bat sat” and nothing else.

Those are moments I wouldn’t pass up for anything.

So even though I don’t think we’d pass for the model homeschool family, I think we are going to keep at it. It has been so good for my kids, for me and for our family. It is a life style that works well for us, and brings a lot of joy into our home… most of the time.

I have some new plans and ideas buzzing around in my head for this next year… and I am starting to get really excited about starting school back up in a few weeks for both Asher and Rose (first grade and Kindergarten). I feel more experienced already and am okay knowing that at least half of what I plan will be a total flop… but that it is totally fine.

I am starting to trust the process much more and trust them… they really have inquisitive little souls and I am finding all I have to do is provide the wood and the tinder and they can get a fire going fairly easily. Keeping that fire going can be a challenge… but I hope that I will get better at that part as we go along.

Love you all and I hope you have a most a wonderful weekend!

I am including a linky list this time because I have REALLY missed making new blog friends through my Five Things for Friday posts. So, if you’d like to write your own Five Things for Friday (or even Saturday, Sunday or Monday) PLEASE link up below. I love reading your posts.