New Month's Resolution

Sometimes New Year's Resolutions end up being a big flop. You either start out strong and burn out in a few weeks or you figure you have all year and never quite get started. If you are among the few that can set New Year's Resolutions and stick to them, Kudos to you. For the rest of us here is a simpler and hopefully more effective solution. 

New Month's Resolutions give you a month to accomplish your goal. At the end of the month you have a chance to make a new one or if you have failed miserably you can have a do over and try again at the same goal.  One or two resolutions should do it. You don't want to get overwhelmed and not do anything. I encourage you to have your children set New Month's Resolutions too. It doesn't matter their age, even a 2 year old can have a goal. It might be something simple like staying dry all day or not hitting the cat but goal setting is a good habit and the younger you teach your children to have goals and follow through the better.

Here are some examples of goals for children: (help children pick goals appropriate to their age)

1. Make bed daily
2. Complete homework in a timely fashion
3. Learn multiplication tables
4. Feed the dog
5. Keep bedroom clean
6. Read a chapter book
7. Use good manners daily
8. Better time running a mile
9. Learn 5 constellations
10. Lean to make cookies
11. Double number of pushups they can do
12. Memorize a poem
13. Learn the State and Capitals
14. Tell the truth every time
15. Learn to ride a bike
16. Keep hair brushed 
17. Get out of bed on time
18. Learn to tie 4 knots
19. Write in a journal daily
20. Do chores without whining
21. Help with the baby
22. Learn 1-10 in Spanish (or another language)
23. Learn to change a tire
24. Do 10 hours of community service
25. Make a new friend

The possibilities are endless. Teach your children good habits by setting a New Month's Resolution yourself, share that resolution with your children, then follow through. At the end of the month sit down and talk about how you all did and what could you have done differently. If you failed, don't make excuses. Take responsibility for your failures and try harder next month. It's a hard thing to do but if your children see you failing than making excuses as to why you failed you can't possibly get them to complete a goal. You will just get excuses.

My New Month's Resolution for Sept. is to lose 5 lbs. I will report at the end of Sept. Feel free to share yours and your children's New Month's Resolutions. It would be nice to do a post with what other people have chosen.

Our New Kitten

Saturday we got a baby kitten. We named her Juniper Rosetta Snow. We call her June for short. (Although she is so tiny I've been calling her June Bug.)

She is part of a litter of a cat I used to have. Her mother Lola used to be mine but I had to give her up a year ago. Now I have the opportunity to raise her daughter. She looks exactly like her mother did when she was a kitten. I love her. She is little ball of curiosity and is constantly getting into trouble. 

There will be more pictures later. These are just a few that I snapped with my phone.

Mom, Irene hit me!

As you East Coasters may have noticed, Irene has swept up the coast leaving power outages and destruction in her wake.

Last night around 7:45 PM I checked the weather on my phone and told my husband that the torrential rain warning was only in effect until 9:45 PM. Excellent! This is good news. It was warm and sunny out and there was pink on the horizon. (Pink sky at night is a sailor's delight) I guess Irene is going to miss us. We went to bed expecting the best. Around 12 AM I awoke to rain beating in the roof of our little 5th wheel. Darn! I woke Mike and we duck taped a trash bag to our ceiling over the skylight hoping it would keep it from leaking on us too much.

By 6 AM our trash bag was bowing, the sky light over the kids bed was leaking and we had put an empty trashcan under it to catch the water and the wind was picking up.

Around 9 AM we decided to pack it up and go to my mom's house to weather the storm. We packed up the dogs, kids and our new kitten. (Yes, we got a kitten yesterday. She is so cute. But that is another post.) On the way to my mom's we passed a power truck clearing a fallen tree and downed wire from across the road.

The rest of the day has been pretty good. We lost power twice but it wasn't for long either time. I was concerned a few times that we were going to lose some of the tall pines around the house, but so far so good.

I've been reading on Facebook all day of others in the area who have lost power and someone even lost the roof on their barn.

7:52 PM, by now Irene has been down graded to a Tropical Storm. There are still flood warning in effect and wind speeds of 50-65 miles per hour. It's been quiet and dry here for a few hours but I suspect we are in for more wind and rain before the night is over. I did take a few pictures today that I will add to the bottom of this post tomorrow. My prayers go out to all those who have been less fortunate than us.

Home Made Treasure Maps

Treasure Maps

White printer paper cut in ½

Pen or Marker

Tea or Coffee

Cake pan
Hot water

1. Pour about an inch of boiling water into a cake pan

2. Seep tea bags in water or dissolve coffee grounds in water until the water is dark brown or black.

3. While waiting for the water to cool off, rip the edges of the paper on all four sides.

4. Soak the paper in the cake pan for at least one hour.

5. Remove paper from the water and let dry.

6. Using pens or markers draw your very own treasure map.

Tip: I soaked our paper twice. The first time in herbal tea, which didn't make it dark enough brown. Than in Postum which did the trick. You may want to try black tea or coffee.

Lamentations of the Father By Ian Frazier

Love it! My dad read me a print out of this a few weeks ago and ever since I've really wanted to have it framed so I can hang it on the wall in our house when it's built. I looked it up on YouTube.com first but when my dad heard me listening to it he told me where he had found it online.

Ian Frazier does an amazing job reading this. (Why wouldn't he though? He's the one who wrote it.) He brings such life to the already very funny poem. I can  relate to a lot of the things it says too.






I will put the link to the text as well. It was featured in Atlantic Magazine in 1997.  The link will bring you right to the poem. The title of this piece is: Laws Concerning Food and Drink; Household Principles; Lamentations of the Father  By Ian Frazier. I hope you like this as much as I do. It's genius.

Creepy picture I wanted to share

I was helping my best friend a couple days ago at her land. We were weed whacking near the barn and ran out of gas. We decided to pick the weeds by hand until I saw this......

Creepy. I hate spiders. Does anyone know what kind of spider this is anyway? All I know is that I'm glad it didn't touch me.

September's Giveaway, Less then 3 weeks left to enter.

The deadline for September's giveaway is just around the corner. In a little less than 3 weeks we will be announcing the winners of two $50 gift cards to leapsandbounds.com. All you have to do to be eligible to win is "Like" us on Facebook, Follow this blog than shoot an e-mail to raisemestrong@yahoo.com to let us know that you have done those things. Remember to include your name in the e-mail. That's it! Winners will be announced on September 12, 2011.