10 Good Decisions of 2010

I realize we are nearly a month into 2011, but this post has been rolling around in my brain for a few weeks and I figured I better punch it out before I forget a few of the decisions we made this past year in the Teach and Tickle home.  Feel free to stop reading right here because this is one of those posts that I am writing simply for posterity sake.  Someday, I want the kids to be able to look back, see and learn from their parents.  That's all.  Plus, some of this stuff is private stuff for our family to know and there is no need for the rest of you to even care about.

We regularly pray for Jonah and Hannah to "make wise choices" in their day to day lives.  Right now, this might mean choosing to sit still or be quiet even when their classmates are disobediently being rowdy.  Or it might mean choosing to be the peacemaker in an argument.  Or it could mean deciding to save money on a Christmas gift card rather than spend it just for the sake of spending it.  These are the choices our children are facing today.  Tomorrow they may face bigger choices.  We want them to be discerning and confident in their decision-making as they grow, so we pray about it.  They hear us pray about it regularly.  They've even begun praying it for themselves and others.

So in an effort to show the kids we practice what we pray, I've compiled a list of 10 wise choices/good decisions that we as parents have made this past year.  They are in no particular order.

1.  Getting a job. 

When I taught school before having kids, I loved it.  But I found myself teaching all day and planning and grading all evening.  When I quit that job 7+ years ago to stay home with Jonah, I told my principal that I couldn't be 100% teacher and 100% mom at the same time.  I needed to stay home once Jonah was born.  But this year marked the first year that both Jonah and Hannah would be attending school full time.  I knew I would have a lot of free time on my hands with both of them gone for so many hours of the day, so I began to pursue my options.  I could either spend my days shopping and spending way to much money or I could spend my days teaching earning way too little money.  Long story short, I got a dream job.  I teach one section of world history each day to eighth graders at the school where Jonah and Hannah attend.  Creating and developing a curriculum for that class is a ton of work that pretty much requires most of my "off" time while Jonah and Hannah are at school, but I love learning and teaching again.  Here's the best part:  Jonah and Hannah seem to think their mom is the coolest mom on the planet because she works at their school!  (We'll see if they still think that way when they get to 8th grade!)

2. Praying on the way to school each day

Speaking of school, one tradition my parents started with me and my siblings that I have carried on with my kids is daily prayers on the way to school.  To hear Jonah and Hannah's prayers each morning as we drive just makes my heart sing.  It is something we will never quit doing for as long as we drive to school together.  

3.  Writing our "Only One" love story.

I never thought it could be such fun to re-live Joey and my love story.   The other day I told Joey that I was nearly positive that none of our friends or family had even read past chapter 10 or so, but it didn't matter so much.  I was having a blast writing it.  Then just yesterday, I got a text from my friend Starr, telling me that she wants a copy of it when I'm finished writing so she can read it to her daughter someday.  That was sweet.   I've had two other moms tell me the same thing.  Such sweet encouragement.  I've planned all along for my own kids to someday read it, but what a blessing that other mom's think their kids could benefit from it as well.  I'll keep writing and hopefully get it finished this year.

4.  Blogging less

About a year or so ago, I was playing upstairs with Hannah and she suddenly stopped playing, looked me straight in the eyes and said "You can go downstairs and do something on the computer now."  Ouch.  I needed to limit my computer/blogging a bit, it seemed.  You may have noticed a slow down on this blog over the past year.  Obviously, teaching school again has taken a chunk of my time, but some of the blogging slowdown has been due to the fact that I am trying to be more interesting in making memories instead of just writing about them.  I seem to get that reversed sometimes.  (Another thing that I have virtually stopped checking is my google analytics.  It feels good to not care about that anymore.)

5.  Giving more

This is nobody's business but ours.  But I want the kids to someday look back and see that God has been and will always be faithful to provide.  He blesses us to be a blessing.  We often pray as a family that God would continue to bless us (we are already blessed beyond what we deserve) and that we would in turn choose to be a blessing to others.  Sometimes, even in a poor economy were collections are slow, God still asks us to give more.  So we did.  What a blessing it has been to add a few additional missionaries this year to our list of missionaries we support.  A few others, we've had the privilege of helping with one-time gifts.  I love sending missionaries.  I always wanted to be a goer, but being a sender has turned out to be a ton of fun too.

6.  Signing up for the Perspectives class

We wanted to take the Perspectives class ever since the first time we heard about it ages ago, but it never worked out.  So this year when it was offered at our church, we signed up.  We've only had two classes so far, but we can already tell it is going to be amazing. (As long as the homework doesn't kill us!)

7.  Not buying a house

We fell in love with a new house this past year.  It was one of those new houses that is open all the time, so we literally went to it about 20 times and walked through it, planning out where we could put furniture and all that jazz.  It was crazy, but Joey and I both LOVED it and we nearly talked ourselves into buying it.   We didn't and we know for positive that was a good decision.  It wasn't the Lord's timing and it wouldn't have been wise.   (We did, however, find the perfect floor plan if we ever do happen to build a house. Ha!)

8. Allowing Hannah to pray to ask Jesus to be her Savior

What a sweet moment this was.  We never want to push our kids into praying a prayer just so we can have peace of mind that they have "Jesus in their heart."  But when a child comes to you as a parent and tells you they are ready to do just that, you begin to understand that "great rejoicing in heaven" thing that the Bible talks about.  Hannah answered all our questions and really seemed to understand what it meant to have Jesus as her Savior.  Letting her pray and do just that led to great rejoicing in our hearts.

9.  Saying "no" more

It's easy to say "yes" to a lot of things and overcommit.  I've begun to say "no" to more things this year and it feels good.  Some things are genuinely good things, but I just have to say no in order to guard my time or our family time.  It's been a very good thing for our family.

10. Buying an XBOX 360 Kinect

Joey has been pushing for our family to buy a gaming system for a few years now.  I had a number of very well drawn out reasons for not wanting one in our house, but Joey won me over with the XBOX Kinect.   I didn't want our kids to become video game junkies and sit in front of a TV with a controller regularly all the time.  The Kinect sensor that comes with this XBOX actually works by looking at your body movements so the kids are constantly moving while playing.  There's no sitting on the couch involved.  We purposely didn't buy any games that require a controller so they won't be able to play from the couch.  Sneaky, I know.  All the games are active, fun and surprisingly tiring.  Another concern I had was storing all the extra controller components and games in our already overcrowded living room.   The Kinect requires nothing but a human body in motion.  That's my kind of controller.  We're having fun with it as a family.

There you have it.  A ridiculously long post chronicling 10 good decisions of 2010.  If you made it to the end of this post, bless you.  It was a long one.