Parenting and Teaching Virtue: My Goals as a Mom

Jezu Ufam Tobie (2002-Polish for ‘Jesus I trust in you’) by Stephen B. Whatley



Okay, so here's my list of most important goals in parenting my 6 kiddos. The first of these goals has always been there as have many of these. Our list is pretty much written in cement at this point with tiny bits of tweaking every now and again. I feel strongly about my vocation as a mother and Catholic homeschooler. Virtue has always been very central in our parenting even before I came back to my faith and Chris converted. I truly feel that is better to have strength of character through virtue than any material wealth (although, it'd always be nice to have both ;) )

1.) That my children learn to trust, rely on, and be generous and caring towards each other. All of their words and actions must be these 4 things: Kind, Loving, Protective, and Encouraging/Supportive. If you ask any of them what the 4 things are that that every action and word should be based in towards each other, they can all tell you this list. Do they do it all the time? No. Is it our goal? Yes.

2.) That they strive not so much for happiness, but for acting joyful in most all things. Joy is a choice and a gift we give back to God. They can begrudgingly do something or choose to turn their hearts to God and His absolute love for them in even the most dreary of tasks and sufferings. I don't want them to ever succumb to a victim's mentality, but to see everything even the bad as something that they can learn from and become holier through.

3.) That my children are naturally curious and seekers of knowledge and know how to use any knowledge with wisdom. That they go on giant rabbit trails of seeking answers and are not content with the first answer they come to, but continue to ask questions about this world we live in.

4.) That they seek a strong relationship with their faith and God. That they truly understand that their greatest goal should always be to know, love, and serve God first. What's important in their lives will fall into place if they keep this as a central focus. That they pray and read the Bible and see the saints as examples of how to serve Our Lord.

5.) That they will be wonderful spouses and friends to others. That they look constantly for ways of serving their family, friends and the outside world through Corporal Works of Mercy. That they understand that love is a verb not a noun. They can not give someone love. They can show love and be loving and be charitable which is the purest form of love. (seeking to do for another without any need of anything to come back in return)

6.) That they know that they can always rely on Mom and Dad to help them in all things in any way we can. That they feel comfortable to bring any problems or successes to us.

7.) That they do not get sucked into the world's view of what's "right". That they realize that what is popular is seldom right and what is right is seldom popular and that they are courageous enough to always seek to do what is right in the sight of God rather than in the sight of the world. That they learn to choose good and shun evil and understand how cunning the devil is

8.) That they can find creative ways of using their talents to earn money to support their families through industriousness and innovation. Nothing comes easy in the life, but it can be a bit easier to provide income by seeing the talents they have and how these talents can be used to find or create jobs.

9.) That they focus on growing in virtue by choosing a few virtues at a time to grow spiritually towards greater holiness and better relationships with family and others. That they understand that we are all hopefully, with work, in a constant state of conversion- of turning our hearts to God. That if they fall down in their faith, that they know that the surest way back is through prayer and humility. Humility, I feel, is the greatest of all the virtues.

10.)That in their memories of their life with their dad and me that we may have made bad desicions and had bad moments, but that overall, we did the best we could with what we had and what we knew and where we were. That they judge our parenting with a gentle and forgiving spirit and know that we always completely loved them and wanted always the best for them. That we humbly know that we are not the best but that we are what God chose for them and they for us. That they are even better parents to their own children than we were to them and can take the best of our parenting and use it with their own children.

May God bless and lead our family always.
Amen
Darlene

Mondays in Our House

Well, it's Monday, and I thought, hey, why not tell y'all what our Mondays are like.

We love Mondays. When most people cringe at the thought of a Monday, I get excited!

Monday is for books!
Monday is the day that I assign-- with recommendations coming from the kids many times-- the book for the week for each child.

This week??

Sara is finishing up Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" and then, will be starting "Jacob I have Loved", by Katherine Paterson.
Cameron is finishing up "A Wrinkle in Time", by Madeleine L'Engle and then will be starting. "The Black Pearl", by Scott O'Dell.
Evelynn just started "Peter and the Starcatchers", by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson.
Sonia is reading "Old Mother West Wind" by Thornton Burgess, and I am reading "Little Birds and Lilies", by Mary Callahan to her.

For Bridget?
Well, today, these are the books she pulled out of the library basket to be read to her by me or various older siblings:
"One Red Apple", "Birdhouse For Rent", and "The Little Red Hen", by Harriet Ziefert- I'm on a bit of a Ziefert kick lately. LOVE her books!
"Free Fall", by David Wiesner
"Who Loves the Fall?", by Bob Raczka
"Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf" by Lois Ehlert
"Mrs. Katz and Tush", by Patricia Polacco, who also wrote one of my all-time favorite kids' books, "Thunder Cake".

Yes, they'll all get read. :)

Monday is for movies!

We're going to stay in our jammies, which is kinda normal for us on Mondays, and watch the first season of "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman". It was recommended to us by a friend of Sara's, so I added it to the mammoth list of library holds, and we'll see if we can make it through Season 1 today.
I also got the movie of "Mrs. Katz and Tush" for Bridget to watch.

Monday is for music!

I promised Cameron a keyboard for his birthday in January if he can learn how to play some basic piano, so off he went that day and every day since to find videos on YouTube to learn how to play different songs on the piano. All of the kiddos are finding this a great way to learn to play piano. Viva La Vida, by Coldplay is the latest song he has mastered. No lie. It sounds amazing in my house!!!
Here is the video that he and Sara both learned with:



We love YouTube for music lessons of all kind for free. Cameron has become pretty good on the guitar learning this way too.

Sara's favorite site for learning piano is Online Pianist. She and Evelynn both love that you can slow the lesson down as much as you need to. Technology is pretty amazing! I would have LOVED to learn this way!

Monday is for math games!
We'll be playing Hot Potato with a ball today while doing times tables. We even include 5yr old Bridget. I'll say, " 5 times zero" or some such other easy problem while throwing the ball to her. When she catches it, I say, "Say zero!" or whatever the answer is, and she yells out the answer. She likes being included. We stand in a circle when we do this, and they toss it back to me as fast as they can with the answer. IF they get it wrong or don't say it quickly enough, they have to sit in the middle of the circle until someone else makes a mistake and takes their place. We have a great deal of fun doing this and it helps get those facts in there solidly.


Soooooooo, off I go to watch movies and read with the kiddos. Hope you're having a fabulous Monday!

Light at the End of the Financial Tunnel

Sooooooo.... THAT was cathartic!

Telling the story of what happened to us regarding our house, credit, family, etc. starting in May of 2007 and ending with the bankruptcy in 2008 was easier to tell than I had thought it would be. Thank-you to everyone for the wonderful out-pouring of support and similar shared stories. I know we are not alone. It is a club I never thought I'd be a part of, but there are some pretty amazingly, faith-filled people in there with us. Everyone seems to be finding their way out of it or through it stronger. God is good.

We are recovering nicely, and budgeted insanely, but all in all in a better place now than we were 4 years ago, a year ago, a month ago, even a day ago. In fact, our bankruptcy, foreclosure fun is finally starting to not cause as many issues and day by day, our credit number is creeping in the right direction.

Maybe the reason that I can so freely tell all of this now is that 2 days ago, we found out that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. We've been pre-qualified for a home loan. YES! Can I just tell you how absolutely full of despair some moments and days of this last 4 years have been!? I felt we would never be able to own a home again, and even if we could, what we've been through has made me more than a little gun-shy.

The worst part of the last 4 years has been the renting with 6 kiddos. Every time a wall gets dinged or penned-up by the latest graffiti artist or a curtain rod bent or a window blind broken, I have felt near ulcer-like pains. I have felt such anxiety. I am not a good mom in a rental situation. My kids are not crazy or out of control. They are spirited like their parents, but for the most part they are normal, creative, wonderful kids.

I still remember the rental house we had before the house we built and lived in and lost. Cameron was a little guy of 6. He was trying to be like Daddy and fix things. He figured that meant hammers were good and put a hole straight into a bathroom door. I vowed in that moment to never rent again. I would have loved to have had a parenting moment that didn't include my stress about a landlord. I would have loved for that moment to have been just about the damage and the good intent gone wrong. I would have liked to have put a frame around that hole with the words, "Cameron's 6yr old attempt to fix the house". I would have left it as a constant reminder that even when we want to do our best we can foul it all up.

I've owned a home and lost a home and lived in two rental homes since that hammer in the door. Cameron is 13 now. That's a lot of moving, and I've grown weary of moving. My kids are weary of moving.

I think about how much my husband, Chris wanted that house for me and for our family. He wanted to do everything right. I had always told him that I wanted a little Cape Cod style house with just enough room for us to live in, a big kitchen for cooking, tons of books around me, and a giant garden. For him, he wanted to give me "big". 5 bedrooms on one level, an acre lot, a morning room, theater-sound-system in the family room, and my 2 person soaking tub. I do miss that tub. I loved that house, but never once did I need it. I think about the financial decisions that we have made with good intention that ended poorly. We're way more cautious and cash-based and careful now.

So, there's a light at the end of our financial tunnel. I'm more gun-shy than my husband who still so wants to do things right for his family and what he sees as "right" is a house where his wife doesn't have anxiety about potential hammers through bathroom doors. I can understand and appreciate that. I want that too. I just don't want to rush this. I want to make sure that we do things right- or as right as we can, this time.

I am praying and waiting and dreaming about it all. It is shiny and perfect in the planning and the intention. I pray that it is our final move. I'm tired of moving and feeling transitory and unable to fully unpack my life and stay. I want to know where I'll be buried and where my grandkids will come to see me. I want to plant a garden and be able to plan for the next year with what I learn from the current year. I want land more than a fancy house. I want a future and permanence and space just for us that I can call home and not have anxiety about it not being mine. I want to have friends that I can grow old with and remain goofy with while we drink alcohol and laugh loudly and share deeply at each-others' homes.

I pray and pray and pray and my list is long. But when I come to my prayers for me, they are simple. I just want a home, a permanent, lasting home.

Why I Took a Four Year Hiatus!

Okay, so here I am yet again. Did anyone miss me? Probably not, but that is my own doing. This blog was always my private little spot for random musings on my garden, and even those weren't very many or very often.

I never needed any followers. I mean, to have followers sounds a bit vain, doesn't it? I'd be afraid if I had people hanging on my every blogged word. I might have a bit of performance anxiety and not be able to put down all the randomness I had set out to immortalize in my own little way.

I stopped blogging about my garden and on this blog in general- even though it was never supposed to be JUST about my garden- because as that summer of 2007 wore on and my garden became more prolific and amazing and time-consuming, it became more and more apparent that we were going to be unable to get the re-financing for our house. My garden went from being mine to being temporary. All my hard work would be short-lived and thrown to the fates of the very uncertain future in our home.

We had built the house two years earlier. It was a good house for us with lots of room to grow. I finally had a huge hall wall that was completely painted with chalk-board paint-- this being the true sign that the house was ours. I have always said that my goal was to own a home and be able to paint a wall purple if I so chose with no one to tell me otherwise, but when I finally got the house and the walls, I wanted it all in chalkboard paint with baskets of colored chalk for the kids to make life-sized drawings on whenever they wanted to. We LOVED that wall! We did school and played games and were totally silly on that wall. We did Waldorfy, form-drawing exercises on that wall. I made lists and wrote out Bible verses and decorated for every holiday on that wall.

We had Bridget while we lived in that house.
We had plans for that house.

Our credit was impeccable, beyond reproach. 17 lenders all said, "Oh, Mr. and Mrs. White, of course we can re-finance you!" Our credit score was a pass to the best mortgage lender phone voices, voices dripping with optimism for us and for them. The voices always changed when the appraisal would inevitably come in too low. All because some person at the front of our development had sold his house for far less than it was worth- probably still making good money off of the sale as his had been one of the first houses in the development, unlike ours which was one of the biggest and last houses in the development. We had paid more and financed more and were more vulnerable as the housing market and trends all of a sudden took us for a very scary ride. A ride that gave our house, our mortgage the term upside-down and underwater.

We weren't stupid. We never intended to let the variable rate go up. It would go up in September and we had started to look at refinancing way ahead of time in May. All summer long, we got our hopes up and then dashed by 17 different lenders.

We begged the mortgage company to work with us, but they wouldn't because our credit was too good and our payments had never been late. How backwards is that!? How incredibly messed-up is that!!??

And then? Yes, there's more. They sold our mortgage to another lender-- it was a great package-- never late, etc. However, now, our $20,000 second mortgage was at one lender and our main mortgage was at another and neither would work with us.

The variable rate hit in September and jumped our mortgage up an additional $1100 a month. I wish I was exaggerating. I'm not. Short of selling a child or major organ, there was no way we could swing this. We were sinking fast and could find no help.

We were advised to put the house on the market and attempt a short sale. We were advised to stop paying our mortgage in the hopes that then, then, maybe they'd work with us. It all felt dishonest. We felt sick to our stomaches as the guilt of all the things that you think will never happen to you if you just work hard and budget harder and pay your bills started to happen.

We begged the second mortgage company to release the lien and let us just pay it as a line of credit. They said, no. The stress in our house was palpable and real and affecting everyone.

We finally moved into a rental home in November because I could no longer deal with the stress of trying to keep the house tidy while schooling the kids. We also knew that we were going to lose the house and wanted to get a rental before the loss affected our credit score.

The mortgage company freaked out when they realized that the house would be a short sale if anyone bought it, so they took it off the market making it impossible for us to do anything other than desert our home, our house that we built and painted and lived in and loved in. My garden was gone. It was a small thing compared to everything else, but it had been important to me. It was gone.

In January, the house was foreclosed on. What made me the saddest was seeing it empty and uncared for. I didn't care so much that it wasn't mine as that it wasn't anyone's. When we formally lost our house, I was dealt the shock of finding out that we were pregnant with our sixth little one. I wish I could say that I immediately saw that pregnancy as a blessing, but with how incredibly, terrifyingly ill I had gotten with Toxemia with Bridget, all I felt was fear and despair. Chris was the one who looked at me and said, "I think this is all going to work out." I begged God's forgiveness and prayed, "Jesus, I am sorry, I do, I do trust in You!"

I had a miraculous healing at the beginning of that pregnancy. I was healed in a way that would take more words than I can muster at this late, or should I say early hour.

We kept breathing and doing and parenting and schooling little people and loving just in a different house, a house that I couldn't pain a wall purple or pink or plaid or anything. It worked though.

In June, Sara broke her leg horribly. She got a painful ride to the hospital in an ambulance, and shaved a few years off of my life.

I was very pregnant and in a skimpy preggers nighty attempting to help her get to the bathroom before her leg was casted. This was hard work having to support her broken leg and keep it elevated while helping her to hop along the hall without jarring it all while 6+ months pregnant.

I was startled by loud banging on the kitchen door. There was no way I could get there. i was halfway between Sara's makeshift bed on the sofa and the bathroom! Evelynn called to me and said it was the sheriff. I remember feeling upset because we had had the sheriff visit once before looking for a person who did not live there.

There was more impatient pounding. I got Sara back on the sofa. She was in tears and I was sweating from the exertion. When I got to the door, the look on his face showed what he thought of me. I was lower than dirt at that moment. Nothing is so humiliating as being served papers saying that you are being sued. SUED!!!!

We were sued by the second mortgage company, the same company that we had begged to work with us to remove the lien so we could continue paying them as a line of credit rather than a mortgage! Not only were we sued, but they had nearly doubled the amount, adding in lawyers fees, appraisals on a home I no longer owned, and various other fees.

We talked to a lawyer and our only course of action was to claim bankruptcy. Part of me is embarrassed to tell our tale, but part of me, or maybe more of me is so detached from it. We just kept going as best we could.

Claiming bankruptcy was not easy. We had to sell Chris car back to the dealership and buy him a used car and make sure we only had a certain monetary value of assets. It was incredibly humiliating for Chris.

In September, we had our sixth little one, Sean Kenneth, and just a few days later, were sitting in bankruptcy court in Alexandria, VA.

We knew we were effectively killing all of our good credit and potential for a good credit score for some time. All we had worked so hard for, gone. But then, what remains? That, we found out, as we'd told ourselves all along, but never had to test so strongly, was our family, these six beautiful treasures and the love I share with my husband.

If you had told me in 2006 what would happen to our lives beginning in 2007, I would have thought you were off your meds, had hit your head, or had an incredibly sick sense of humor.

So, no, there are no more garden musings. I expect now that I've gotten this out, I can get back to a bit of blogging. maybe I'll eventually see if anyone wants to read my musings and mumblings and manic moments.

The hiatus is done. Where to from here? Well it's always an adventure!