2012 Year in Review

Well, it's obvious I haven't been keeping up to date around here! After my laptop took a spill off the couch, and because my primary web surfing tools are my phone and iPad, blogging has been nonexistent. I tried the Blog Press App several times and every time I would write a post, it would say it could not be published!! (I actually still have many a post saved in the worthless app) A handful of pointless updates and I stopped trying.

But here I am! And with the update of all updates!
I purchased a Groupon for a Shutterfly photo book a couple months ago and with the expiration looming I jimmy-rigged my laptop to the tv, just like I do any time I ever need to use it, and for about 5 days filled 20 pages with as many photos as I could.

This is the result, our family 'Yearbook'. I love it and want to keep with the tradition each year! It's a great way to be able to use cell phone pics, instagrams, photos we were tagged in on Facebook, and regular old pictures taken with a camera, of course :)

Here is the Strecker Family Year in Review, 2012!

Click here to view this photo book larger

Shutterfly photo books are the new way to preserve your memories. Create your own today.

 

A quiz

According to Colby (2.5 years old), what is going on outside?

A. Clouds

B. Our house is being painted

C. Spider Web

Great. Now how do I get all these spider webs off my house?!?

Resolution

Maybe this is more of a (personal) reminder than a resolution, but who would I be if I started my first post of the year without using the word resolution??

This comes straight out of my notes from a book study I was going through last summer:

July 29, 2011
Notes on Service

The two 'heart-beats' of serving:
1. Learn to really see the needs of people encountered daily and/or respond to the Holy Spirits nudgings.
*Be sensitive to the Spirit's work in our lives.

2. Developing a willingness to take the initiative and ACT.
- overcoming feelings of shyness, inadequacy and laziness.
- actually setting aside time.
- definitely means learning to reach past natural inclinations and serve whether or not we feel like it.

Explanation:
Yes- it is natural to be selfish or self absorbed. Everybody is naturally like that. It is supernatural to see the needs and desires of others and seek their best through your actions.

* Effective and loving service is less a matter of qualifications and more a matter of willingness.

Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. This is my command: Love each other. (John 15:13-17 NIV)

Typical

Overheard while riding in the car today:

Colby: Hey, Kyla, do you like pink?

Kyla: yeah, I love pink. Pink's my favorite color.

Colby: I like blue.

The End.

Painful

This is

Number Girl

Kyla is definitely a numbers girl. When she is quiet, she is thinking, and when she is thinking, 7 times out of 10, she is running numbers!

This morning while chewing her waffle she was thinking. And when she spoke:

5+1 is 6. 4+2 is 6. 3+3 is 6. Isn't that so crazy!!

...

60+1 is 61. 60+2 is 62. 60+3 is 63.

Me: What is 60+10?

Kyla: ... Sixty-ten.

Me: That's not a number.

Kyla: 60+9 is 69.

Me: yeah, and 10 is one more than 9, so what is 60 plus 10?

Kyla: SEVENTY!!

Me: What is 60 plus 20?

Kyla: Eighty!

Me: What is 400+400?

K: Hmmmm, I don't know.

Me: What is 4+4?

K: 8

Me: What is 400+ 400?

K: 800!

Then she goes back to thinking. And this type of conversation is not uncommon.

It is so fun to see her grow and learn, get glimpses of the person she is becoming. I feel privileged to be the person to know her the best. Even though others see that she is left handed and say she will be creative, perhaps an artist or a musician, you know, due to her long fingers ; ) I know that there is so much more to her. And that is part of my job as her mom, to know her and then to inspire her and motivate her. I tell her that she is special and God has a plan for her, just her, because He has created her just so. My perspective on being a mom and my calling as a mom, has been changed after reading the book The Mission of Motherhood

Raising kids is so much more than crossing your fingers and hoping they graduate high school without getting into major trouble. It's about parenting with a purpose and it's about raising individuals that were made for eternity. What a huge undertaking. Sometimes even overwhelming. Funny how something so big is so often downplayed by others. As a stay at home mom, there is no other job as important as this. There are not enough hours in a day for me to not feel this way. There is no other person on earth who should know my child better than I do.

*Stepping off soapbox... Now.*

So then we made this ; )

One Minute 9.26.11

What is this child doing? 

A. Directing music 

B. Shoo-ing flies 

C. Playing Bejeweled using the tiles on the wall 

 The answer is C and the reason is because she's a Bejeweled playing addict and is now finding alternate sources to play the 'shape/color-sorting into rows-of-three-or-more' game.

And she's seriously good, too... and competitive.  The other night Stephen was playing on his phone, Kyla was playing on the iPad and I was playing on my phone.  Just a little family quality time :)

Oh, who won?  Well, I did, of course!

OK.  Stephen did, but it was pure luck ; D

Aww Coconuts!

Kyla: how do coconuts grow?

Me: They grow on coconut trees.

Kyla: ummm... Maybe I'll ask someone that actually knows...

Me: I *do* know, I just told you! They grow on trees, just like apples grow on apple trees and bananas grow on banana trees...

Kyla: [afraid to speak]

Me: ... It's in their genetic code. Coconut trees have a code that tell them to grow coconuts. Kyla has a code to grow blue eyes and blonde hair.

Kyla: [thinking]

Now, she's either trying to figure out who else she can ask, or my answer was good enough.

He's smart...

But not that smart :)

Well if That Ain't...

The weirdest thing...


I've ever done...


On accident...


I don't know what is...


And its totally stuck too.


Crap.

The Help

I am about 3/4 the way through reading The Help. The voice in my head (you know when you're thinking to yourself... Not like crazy voices- I've never had those, oookay.) now speaks with the accent of a southern black woman from the early 1960's. It's in my dreams now too.

It's like this:
"Im used to working for young couples, but I spec this is the smallest house I ever worked in. It's just one story. Her and Mister Leefolt's room in the back be a fair size, but Baby Girl's room be tiny. The dining room and the regular living room kind a join up. Only two bathrooms, which is a relief cause I worked in houses where they was five or six. Take a whole day just to clean toilets. Miss Lefolt don't pay but ninety-five cents a hour, less than I been paid in years." - The Help, pg 4.

Funny how a few days ago when I started the book I had to read real slow just to understand it and get the words in the right order, my brain wanting to autocorrect. Now I can talk it in my dreams!

Oh the Irony!!

Last Sunday Morning, Stephen took the kids on a walk to Starbucks and I stayed home to... Okay do you want a rabbit trail? Because I can give you a rabbit trail!

 The previous weekend we had gone up to Vail as a little this-is-our-only-'vacay'-this-summer getaway and Colby, Kyla and even Stephen wound up with a bad head cold. The kind NyQuill, Sudafed 'severe cold' and Triminic couldn't handle. There was very little sleeping and much booger sucking to be had. But guess who didn't get sick?? That's right, me! Maybe this is my reward for catching a cold every. time. my kids have in the past 4.5 years, or maybe it was the garlic. Okay, long story shorter. I started feeling like I was catching the bug, so I started eating vitamin C like candy - okay about 2-3000 mg/day (I'm not giving advice, I'm just saying what I did in my frantic state of not wanting to get sick) and each day I ate about two cloves of garlic. Raw. I used my garlic press and mixed it into about 1/4 cup applesauce, and it burned, and it tasted like I ate garlic bread AND P.F. Chang's Mongolian Beef for breakfast, but I didn't get sick! I had the 'uuhhhhg-no' I feel like I'm getting sick scratchy throat, headache and swollen glands thing for a couple days, but it never developed into the fierce head cold of congestion that it did for everyone else. Team Garlic here!! Okay, so I stayed home while Stephen took the kids on a walk, I decided to make myself some coffee and watch our Sunday morning church service live on my laptop. As I settled in I stared feeling much better, go team Garlic, team Coffee and team God!! So good that I took a picture:



I'm not sure if I've ever intentionally taken a picture of my laptop, but this was to be my last, well, last picture of my properly functioning laptop. If you were to zoom in on the pic you would notice there was only 12 minutes battery time left, and you would notice the children's book it is resting on. Can you see where this story is going? Well, I moved the laptop to the back of the other side of the couch (the side that is not up against a wall) to plug it in to the power cord, after the sermon was over there was worship music playing so I left it open to play while I got busy cleaning up and putting laundry away, all while having the nagging feeling that I should put it away. Well, sure enough, Stephen and the kids come home, Colby climbs on the couch, reaches for the book under the laptop and knocks it right off the back of the couch. Funny how even if you've never heard the sound of a laptop falling to it's death, you still know what the sound is when you hear it. Wahhh! I had a little predicament in trying to decide whether or not to fix my screen, get a new laptop or just get an iPad. Several reasons for each option but this is what I wound up with, I like to call this: The Solution, as taken from my iPad.


I can still use my laptop if need be, for photos, Word, writing contracts for the townhouse.... which I should be doing right now... etc. But for every day convenience, read: web browsing -  read: facebooking, blog reading, Pinteresting and recipe gathering, the iPad is the perfect tool for that job :) As for my start-up disk on my (almost) four-year old laptop, I need to step into 2011 and get a separate external hard drive for my photos (not just backing them up on Time Capsule), then figure out how to resize my photos (if need be) and definitely figure out what size they are importing off from my DSLR camera. Meh. But after doing that my trusty OLD (yeah, OLD, every one at Apple made sure to remind me how OLD it is and that they don't even make the white laptops anymore, blah blah. YEAH. I KNOW. You came out with the new ones FIVE days after I bought mine, almost 4 years ago!! I'm only a little bitter, this happened both times we purchased macs) ...laptop should be fine for awhile.

 Oh, even Kyla is iPad savvy. Stephen says to Kyla, "guess what? Mom got kind of like a new computer, it like a phone, but bigger."

Kyla (blankly): "Like an iPad?"

LOL! Duh, dad!  She whipped this up for me yesterday:


Fancy, huh? :)