Setting Goals

For an assignment yesterday, Dawn had to set long term and short term goals for herself. Her long term goals are:

Get degrees in nursing and geography
Become a missionary
Have a family

Now, her short term goals are supposed to be things that will help her reach her long term goals. Here are her short term goals:

Ice skate (as in take lessons)
Learn Spanish
Get caught up in math
Learn how to cook, from scratch

I asked her how ice skating would help her reach her long term goal. Her reply, "It will keep me healthy so I don't die!" :-) Good answer - maybe she should be a politician! (Lord help us, not that.)

SNOW!!

Yes, you see it correctly: SNOW. We have seen the first snow fly already this year. WOW! Not sure I'm ready for a real winter! Yikes!

Beardy Jumpy Cricket

When our oldest, Dawn, was turning 5, she was obsessed with The Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin and all animals. We told her she could get a pet for her 5th birthday. Daddy and Dawn head to the pet store and end up coming home with a reptile - a Bearded Dragon to be exact. My reaction was not so positive - no fur, don't want it. Needless to say, my lack of interest in this lizard mattered little to Dawn. She quickly named him Beardy Jumpy Cricket - the last part of his name due to what he ate - live crickets. GAG.

Fast forward 5 years. Since I prefer things with fur, I'm not much help with taking care of a lizard. I have no experience here! Beardy was obviously not in good health. We knew there was a good chance we were moving, so we asked Dawn to consider giving him to a better home. She sadly, but sweetly agreed that if Beardy stayed with us his life expectancy was not good. My friend, Debbie, was wanting to get a Bearded Dragon and LOVES animals (maybe a little too much), so she happily took him in.

We got word between moving into the house and having the baby (so between 37 and 40 weeks of pregnancy) that Beardy had died. I could not tell Dawn. Could not. The emotions in the house were already overwhelming. I just couldn't do it. Yep, bad mom alert! Well, last night, Dawn finally asked "How is Beardy?" after we got off the phone with Miss Debbie. After my husband's deer in the headlight look (wimp), I pulled her aside and told her about Beardy. We had some tears and lots of sadness today, but overall, she is doing ok.

Here is a picture of Beardy, with our cat (much more to my liking), Cami.

An Awareness of Sin

We like to teach our kids about some Jewish holidays. Yom Kippur just passed, so we were talking to the kids about what it represents. One part of this holiday is remembering your sins for the year and "casting them into the sea" (a verse in Micah talks about God casting our sins into the sea). Our version is to write a sin or some sins on a piece of paper and we burn them up. It's just a symbolic way to remind us that God forgives us and forgets our sin.

Last night, we did our annual sin burning. :-) Joseph, our 5 year old, saw the small piece of paper (2"x2") and said, "that's not big enough for my sin, maybe if I write on the back too and then you can get me a BIG piece of paper." At least he is well aware of his sin! Now, if only there were some remorse ...