thoughts on life
5 Things to Do Every. Single. Day.
In the grand scheme of things, I suppose I’m really not that old yet, but I have to admit, sometimes I look at the world around me and I feel old. What happened to the “good old days,” that time before every moment of our life was consumed by the need to do something or go somewhere, before e-mail and texting and Facebook took the place of actual conversations, before a culture of overspending and celebrity worship and instant gratification? I don’t actually know if it has existed in my lifetime, but I long for a time when life was slower, safer, and just a little simpler, when a person’s word ... read more
6 Things No One Told Us About Being a Caregiver
It is incredible to me how one blink-of-an-eye moment can drastically impact your life. Since our car accident two weeks ago we have found ourselves dealing daily with the aftermath. Beyond the physical pain, there have been claims to file, insurance adjusters to talk to, paperwork to fill out, statements to make, prescriptions to fill, doctor visits to attend, and many, many conversations with our girls about what happened. My husband has led the charge, navigating this sometimes sticky process with wisdom and kindness and compassion. He is taking care of his girls, and we are all recovering well. While my disability at this point is pretty minor, it has ... read more
In the Blink of an Eye
Life, for the most part, is full of the mundane, the obvious, the expected. We go about our daily routines, get up, get dressed, eat breakfast, go to work or school, take care of the kids, make dinner, clean up, go to bed. Repeat. It is easy to become complacent, to take it for granted, to complain about the little things without realizing what a blessing ordinary really is. And then, in the blink of an eye, everything changes. We are jolted out of our reverie, forced to reevaluate, well, everything, and sometimes just get down on our knees and thank God we are still alive. Our wake up call ... read more
Why We Won’t Let a Village Raise Our Kids
Earlier this week MSNBC released the following Lean Forward promo : Did you catch that? Here is what she said: We have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families and recognize that kids belong to whole communities. Once it’s everybody’s responsibility, and not just the households’, then we start making better investments. Say what?!! When did it become someone else’s responsibility to raise my kids? This clip terrifies me because I see the ramifications of it everywhere I look, not just in the world at large, but in my own community, my own church, myself. I see ... read more
Always In Pursuit {7 Ways to Be More Content}
A few months ago I shared that our family’s theme word for the year is contentment. After an entire lifetime of wanting to trying to fill my life with beautiful things in the hope that it would bring fulfillment, learning to simply be content with what I have is a huge shift in paradigm. I backslide sometimes–too often, really–and I find myself getting caught up in the pursuit of wanting something new, in the trap of thinking that there is better than here, of telling myself the reason I’m not satisfied is because I don’t have X or because I haven’t achieved Y. They are the familiar lies that keep ... read more
How I Get My Kids to Clean Their Room
I haven’t talked about it much but for the past year or so an epic struggle has been waging in the Soukup household. It is Mommy versus Kids in the War of the Tidy Room, and while there are still small battles being fought now and then, I can finally say with confidence that I am winning. I am not exaggerating when I tell you it has been a long and arduous and, at times, downright painful campaign. It has involved tears, threats, bribes, rewards, games, countless trips to the naughty stool, and more reorganizing, reevaluating, relabeling, and retraining than I would care to admit. At one point it even ... read more
Just Call Me Superwoman {4 Simple Rules for Managing Your Time}
I woke up this past Monday ready to start my week with a bang. I had spent the weekend getting caught up after last week’s trip, and by 8am I had already finished my work for the day, returned several neglected emails, handed in a writing assignment, tidied my house, put in a load of laundry, set our schedule and made our lesson plans for the day. We had a lot to get done and I was READY. And then I got a text message from a Very Important Person asking if I would be available for a phone call in about an hour. I don’t know how it works ... read more
The Process is The Point
It is always a little rough coming back down to reality after such a fun & motivating getaway. It’s not that I don’t love my family or my life in general, but getting to connect with amazing women and be completely inspired while other people fed me delicious food, made my bed, and took care of my kids was pretty nice. Of course the whole point of being inspired is to go and do something with that inspiration, so while it is all fresh in my mind, there are a few key nuggets I gleaned from She Speaks that I hope to apply, not just to my writing, but to my ... read more
Whatever
A couple of weeks ago Princess proudly announced that she already knew what she was going to ask Santa for Christmas next year. “I’m going to ask for a magic wand.” Trying very hard not to spit out my coffee–an American Girl doll bed was one thing, after all, but this Santa momma was going to have a very hard time coming up with a magic wand–I asked what she was planning to do with it. “Oh Mommy, I would wave it around every morning and then the house would clean itself and we wouldn’t have to do it anymore!” Wouldn’t that be nice? How many times have I wished ... read more
And Then I Realized I Was Doing It All Wrong… {Lessons in Homeschooling}
Last spring, as I prepared to take on this crazy adventure called homeschooling, I read countless books and articles and websites, most of them helpful, a few of them scary, but almost all containing phrases like this: Every homeschool family is unique. You’ll start out doing one thing and end up someplace completely different. You won’t know what works until you start. What works for other families won’t necessarily work for you. Or something to that effect. Blah. Blah. Blah. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe the books or even that I thought I had it all figured out. But after reading extensively about all the different methods of homeschool ... read more
A Season of Hope {Experiencing a Joy-Filled Christmas in an Imperfect World}
I’m fighting hard to stay joyful this Christmas. To be perfectly honest, there are a lot of things weighing me down. Our schedule–normally busy even on a slow week–has been packed to the gills with Christmas programs and commitments and events and parties, and while most of it is self-inflicted, it sometimes makes my head spin trying to keep it all straight. I keep telling myself I will not, under any circumstances, add one. more. thing. And then something comes up and and I can’t say no and so I find myself with lots of balls in the air. Sometimes I drop them. Where is the joy in running around ... read more
What I Won’t Give My Kids For Christmas This Year
A couple of months ago I wrote about taking all my kids’ toys away, and how that experience has fundamentally changed our family and the way we look at stuff. The response from that post–both positive and negative–was completely overwhelming, like nothing I have every experienced before while writing this blog. Who knew I could be so controversial? While the vast majority of readers applauded the decision and a few even said they were inspired to follow suit, there were also many others who passionately disagreed. They argued that I wasn’t teaching my kids any personal responsibility, that I was taking away their childhoods, that they would probably become hoarders, ... read more
In Search of Financial Peace {5 Things I’ve Learned So Far}
When I started this blog 2 years ago, it was not because I was some slick money guru or finance major who wanted to pass on my certified wisdom to the world. Far from it, actually. I started this blog because my spending was out of control. I was unhappy and bored, and my husband and I were on the brink of both divorce and financial ruin. I started this blog to save my marriage, my family, myself. My goal was simply to figure out how to stretch my budget so that I could buy all the things I wanted. It was pretty simple math, actually: the less I spent ... read more
I’m a Blogger, Not a Saint {Confessions of an Imperfect Life}
This was not the post I was supposed to write. Today’s post was supposed to be an inspiring collection of charming and poignant photographs telling the triumphant-yet-funny story of my harrowing Highlander 3 Mud Run saga over the weekend. In my mind I had it all planned out; all I needed was the pictures. Oh, and to actually participate in the run. But it was not to be. I’l spare you the details of my excuses because at the end of the day, there is only one reason I dropped out: I am a big fat chicken. The ups and downs of this thing called “blogging” never cease to amaze ... read more
Why I took my kids’ toys away {& why they won’t get them back}
If you follow Project Simplify 365, you already know that I’ve been on a mission this year to simplify my family’s life and rid ourselves of excess. Over the course of this past year I have probably given away about 75 percent of their toys, keeping only the items that I felt encouraged their imagination and that they actually played with. I thought I was doing pretty good. Even so, there were warning signs that my kids still had too much stuff. In June, we took a field trip to Reptile World in Orlando. Afterwards we decided it would be fun to take the girls to dinner at a dinosaur-themed ... read more
