Breaking Free - Facebook

 I just did something truely amazing for myself.

I was just in a chat at scrapgirls.com when the person i was chatting with mentioned something. It kinda hit me, that what she said applied to me in a way. I have spent most of this year trying to Break Free from all those things that hold me captive.... and guess what?.... Facebook was holding me WAY captive. The addiction i felt towards the games is so powerful.

So suddenly, without thinking about it i said "im deleting all thsoe games." Sure that sounded so brave, assure of myself... but as i went in to delete them... oh dear! the hardship!

I worked so hard on that one
I have so many recipes...
My pooor pet... she has all those great rooms
my high score....
That one was so fun once...

Thsoe thoughts kept entering my brain and I couldnt hit that X no matter how i tried.

Finally i took a deep breath and called on my superhero to come and release me. "God" I called out from deep in my soul "Help me hit that X"

An amazing peace, a breath of fresh air, a feeling of lightness came over me and i hit those X's and over 200 more!

I am now game free from facebook. but.... im not silly to think i wont be tempted in the future. A new prayer is added to my prayer list. "God, help me to resist and ignore, delete or hide those temptations. God help me to love facebook in a way that is healthy for me, and honoring to you."

Was that drastic? Possibly, but i highly suggest you give it a try! God is so liberating! Go... go delete 2 or 3... see how it feels!

Now.... to make a list of things i want to do with my time!!! Any suggestions? :)

See! only a couple apps left... only ones like status update (very neat religious themes there) 

and a few others. NO games!

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Summer Reading - An exciting family activity

Growing up, i watched my mom read. ALOT. It instilled such a love for reading in me!

When i lived in Lousiana, i was stunned that the children there had "required" summer reading lists. Books they MUST read before coming back to school. Pleasently stunned is a better way of saying that, i thought it was an awesome idea and looked forward to my children one day bringing home their lists.

Now though, where we live there are no lists for them.

So i created my own summer reading program.... that works perfectly with our libraries summer event!
First I look up the HAISLN (http://www.haisln.org/recommendedreadinglists.html) site and print out their lists for my girls. The lists include short descriptions of the books, i have the girls highlight some of the books they are interested in.

Then i log onto our local library website and either put one or two on hold, or request some transfers!

Then throughout the summer we have a personal reading time, and just before bed I read aloud to them from a novel. Even Zoey who is 4 can sit and listen to the novel!!! Right now we are reading a Harry Potter book.

I also have myself a reading list. I pull books from The Modern Library Top 100 Lists. Ive slowly made my way through the lists. I think its important for them to see mom ALSO sitting and enjoying reading!!

Another fun thing we do for the reading program is to go on reading adventures. We will pick places to go read at. The park, the lake, monument rock, coffee shop... anywhere we can think of. We tried McDonalds once, but that was tooooo distracting! LOL.

Its amazing! So i suggest, if your school does not have a reading list for summer.... get excited with your children and create your own!!!

If you do have your own, im curious, what do you do to encourage your kids to read over the summer???

Angela

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Its the end...

Im still stunned that today is the last day of the school year. What am I to do with these kids for 3 months?

The girls had a blast on their field days yesterday and i got a chance to take an end of the year class photo. I love seeing how the kids have changed over the whole year!

Angeliques Class

Sabryna's Class

And i cant leave my little Zoey. She did a FULL day of activities and crashed at one point.

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