Thanksgiving

Looking forward to this first holiday with family after a four year absence. I intend to absorb it all...the chaos and commotion, the squabbles and the laughter, the memories made together. As I have said before, I don't know how long we will be this close to family before we ship out again to another destination in this great country of ours. We could be here for another year or two, or we could be celebrating next Thanksgiving in another state. You just never know what the future holds. This is why I am planning on enjoying the heck out of this one.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

Glimpses of Grace

I am a recovering perfectionist.

Funny as that sounds, anyone who struggles with perfectionism knows how much of a negative thing perfectionism can be. To those who do not struggle with this character flaw may think that having perfectionist tendencies would be a good thing. In my life anyway, I have seen it too many times and too often be a huge detriment to me. I very much have an all or nothing mentality and while many people might think that this kind of gusto is how life should be lived I am learning that it is not how my life should be lived.

I am the type of person that won't try/do/make something unless I am sure I can do it perfectly. If I even think I have a small chance of not being able to do something perfectly then I won't even attempt to try/do/make said thing because the risk of failure is too much for me to mentally handle.

For years my house was either so clean that you could eat off of the floor or looked like a bomb went off in it and I wouldn't have recommended eating at the table. My kids birthday parties were either amazing with cool homemade themed cakes or just so-so with a cake thrown together last minute or store bought. I was eating either super healthy and never, ever cheating or I was eating the most unhealthy diet my body could handle. I was either the best creative homeschool teacher or I was completely boring and not thinking outside the box at all. My friendships tend to me kept at arms length because I am afraid of letting down those I know and of exposing 'who I really am'  - the unperfect parts of me. The parts of me that will let these people down, make them made, or be dissappointed with me. Because I cannot be the perfect friend I would rather keep everyone at bay than "fail" at friendship. On and on these examples could go.

There was no middle ground with me.  Mentally and spiritually this lifestyle was killing me. I have known for a while that my perfectionism was really unhealthy for me. I just didn't know what to do about it or how to fix it. So I began to do the only thing I know how to do: started reading about the topic. Sometimes these books would overwhelm me because the pages were a reflection of exactly how I lived my life - and their truths made me feel raw on the inside. Their words exposed me and gave me no place to hide. They forced me to face my demons.

Perfectionism, for me, is about control and fear of failure. It is about what others think of me. And in the grand scheme of life control is an illusion, failure is necessary to grow,  and it really, really doesn't matter what anyone else thinks of me. The only person's opinion of myself that should matter is my own.

Since moving to Indiana I have been doing some hard work on and within myself. I have been reading, praying, writing, exploring a variety of topics that will help me to heal myself. Like those women I feel closest too spiritually, I am a Seeker. You will often find me working on myself. This is not the first time I have gone down the path of self improvement, but this is the first time I have tried to tackle my perfectionism. As a Seeker I will always be working on myself. Finding out more about me, discovering (or rediscovering) the secret places of myself that I have kept hidden for one reason or another. Seeking isn't something that you do and then are done. It is a life long journey. It is something that if you don't understand you may roll your eyes about, but other Seekers completely understand the journey I am talking about.

 If I am being honest, I really should thank my Portland experience on this journey I am on because it was there the seed was planted that I had some changing to do. Some self work. Some peeling back of layers that I didn't want to own anymore - mainly because they were never mine to begin with. I wrote about a fire raging inside of me in one blog post - that was the most powerful and real post I have ever written. I was so scared to hit the publish button on that post because it was an open and honest post about how I was feeling. I was exposing myself in a way that I never have before. I made myself vulnerable to everyone's comments and criticisms (which never came - all feedback was immensely positive). But I did that because for that one moment I didn't care about anyone else's opinion of the piece. I just needed to write it and post it. I knew then that I was at a critical point in my life where I knew I needed to do some hard work and that the journey within would be difficult because I would have to face a lot of my worst feared demons. 

Since moving here I have been introduced to something called grace. Grace is the voice that overrules the inner critic right now. She is the voice that tells me that it is okay to not be perfect. She is the voice that allows me to forgive myself for slipping back into the perfectionist tendencies that I have (which I believe I will always have to be aware of). She is a forgiver and a lover. She is the voice that tells me that the inner critic is a liar. That those things about myself that I believe - that list of negative, horrible things I believe about myself - the things that drive me to be a perfectionist - are not true. She quietly whispers to me that it is okay to not be perfect. To make mistakes. It is okay to not have things go according to plan and that I can always try again tomorrow, but that what matters today is that I make the most of what I have before me.

Grace is my angel. I believe that she has always been with me I just wasn't ready to hear her voice. She waited patiently for me to be open to receiving her loving words. I don't know what took me so long to be open to her wisdom. I cannot dwell on that too long because that would mean that I would have to examine the past and critique all of the times when I could have opened myself to receiving her which would cause regret. I cannot go back in time. I can only move forward something that I struggle with and something I have been working on for the past few years when my eyes were opened up by the unexpected and untimely deaths of those I know.

I know that my family has seen changes in me. I laugh more. I am more relaxed. I don't stress about things as much (but still get stressed), and I am taking better care of my body and mind. I think what is really happening is that grace is allowing me to strip off all of the parts of me (slowly) that were never really mine to begin with - they were just roles that I thought I was supposed to carry. All of that extra baggage through the years really weighed me down and made me miserable. It turned me into a person I could no longer recognize. And I didn't like what I saw, but I felt powerless to change.

With graces help, I am beginning to learn that I will always have the power to slough off what isn't mine. I have a feeling that I will always have the tendency to want to slip on roles and characteristics that aren't authentic to me, but are things I feel others want me to carry because that would make me more likable - more perfect.  As long as I am aware of my doing this I know that I can remove the pieces that don't make me Me.  The critic would like me to believe that I am alone in these struggles. That no one else has them. Grace makes me feel otherwise. I am not alone. I never have been.

It is okay to not be perfect. It is okay to not be liked by others. It is okay to make mistakes.

I will always have to be aware of perfection and my desire to seek is shallow and fake feelings of worthiness and praise. As time goes on I feel that I am arming myself with the tools to see its ugliness more quickly,  to see it for what it is, and to gently let it go.

Organizational Tools I Use To Stay On Top Of Things

I love peeking into other people's organizational systems. Maybe I am weird, but that kind of stuff makes me giddy with excitement. Seeing how "put together" people (and I know that even put together people aren't perfect, fall of the wagon, etc...) organize their lives brings me inspiration. I love seeing how someone stays on top of her daily tasks and the system she uses to do in hopes that I can pull something from what she shares and implement it in my own way.

Just typing about this topic puts a smile on my face.

The reality is that I have lived my life both extremely unorganized and extremely organized with varying degrees of organization in-between. When I am unorganized my house tends to be messy, we eat out a lot, I feel like I am running in a hamster wheel. On the other hand, when I am organized we out less, my house is clean, and I find that I have more time to get stuff done and still have time to relax as well.

With everyone running in what seems a million different directions in my house (As a homeschooling mom of 4 I was very late to the game in this chaos, but have now joined the rest of America in this harried pace of life with Josh in public school/soccer, Andy working/homeschooling, Sarah homeschooling/receiving services from the local public school for her service plan/volunteering at the horse ranch, and Elizabeth homeschooling/soccer/volunteering at the horse ranch too.) I knew that if I did not become super organized that I would definitely drown in the busyness and would bring everyone else down with me. I didn't want that kind of responsibility, so I took an inventory of what I would need to accomplish super organized status and began (re)implementing systems I have used in the past that really work for our family. I thought I would share these with you in case there are any organizational crazies out there like myself.

On a side note - I truly feel 100% better after having put these systems back in place (I have used all of them in the past), but it does take planning time which at first seems like it takes forever, but after several weeks things speed up a bit and it doesn't seem to take so long. So for a little while, I was doing (what seemed like) double the work because I will still wasting time living my semi-organized life while taking the added time to get these systems in place. That small time period where I felt like I was doing double the work really has paid off. So, if you are thinking of implementing your own organizational systems I would totally recommend it, but please be aware that it may seem like you are doing more work rather than less while you are getting everything into place. Once all systems are a go life really does look so much differently.


I will go into more detail of each system a different post of two, for now I just want to give you an overview.

In the above photo I have: my daily game plan (bottom left book), my family management book (upper left notebook), school planner (upper right hand book), my daily school plan (bottom right clipboard), and the kids' chores for that day (bottom middle), along with my colored pencils/pens. 

I have already written a blog about how I plan my day, so no further explanation should be necessary. 

This is my Family Management Book. I created one in Las Cruces after reading a book about a woman who created on for her family. I love that I brought this back into my life after not really using it in Portland. This baby is a lifesaver and will definitely need its down post.  I keep track of our family meeting notes, menus, grocer lists, daily chores that need to be done, and a few other things. This is the main way I run my household efficiently. 

This is my Erin Condren school planner. I love this planner. (I also bought a day planner for myself by her, and I use it, but not as much as I use the school planner. I don't think I will purchase another day planner, but I definitely will purchase her school planner next year.) Anyway, this is where I keep track of what gets done this week school wise. As you can see everything is color coded because I like things in different colors rather than all one color. 

This is my daily school plan. I use this every day that we do school work and cross things off as they get completed. This allows me to keep track of who should be doing what. If I didn't use this there would be at least one subject (but probably more) that I would forget to follow up with the kids on and check their work.  

And finally, this is the kids' chore list. I just implemented this because we all like a sparkly clean house, but I don't have the time to do all that I do and also get the house scrubbed down on a regular basis. (It is picked up on a regular basis, but I am talking about being scrubbed down.) This is where my kiddos come in. They each pick around 1-3 items per day depending on what I need to get done (and I get that information from my Family Management book). They are old enough that I do not need to assign them chores. They can pick for themselves and I just go around at the end of the day with this list to make sure that everything got done. If something isn't done I will just ask them who was supposed to do said chore and then make that child redo the chore if it was done in a half-assed way or complete it if it hasn't been done at all.

So, this is how I keep everything running smoothly in the Gregg household. If you are looking for an organizational system in your life, or just love reading about them like I do I hope you have found this post somewhat helpful.

How I Plan My Day

I am the type of person that the more time I have the less I seem to get done. I wander aimlessly through my day forgetting to do this or that, and inevitably those forgotten items get backed up. Like just about all of you, I cannot have my life get backed up. There just isn't enough time in my day to get caught back up once I get behind on something without stopping everything to do so.


In order to combat getting behind I have been using a customized daily schedule. Originally, the idea came from trying out the Bullet Journal system, but after many attempts I realized that that just wasn't for me. I would always compare my journal to the really artistic ones on Pinterest and get majorly discouraged.

So, I decided to use some of the ideas of the bullet journal system that I found most useful and create my own daily schedule. I really like using this system because it allows me to sit down for about 30 minutes each night and intentionally plan my day. It also gives me some direction when I am feeling aimless.  I use my system in tandem with my Erin Condren planners (which I love!).

Here is a look at how I build out my day:

I use Staedtler pens and colored pencils. The pens/markers don't bleed through my next page and I love the fine points of them. The colored pencils are nice also. They are easy to sharpen and the tips don't break off very easily. 

This is what a finished day looks like. 

Building out a new day. 

I don't always create my right hand pages in the same way, but I usually have the same headings. 

I use the next day notes section to jot down anything that I come across during the day that I will need to include in my next day's planning.  Otherwise everything else is pretty self explanatory. 

Another completed day. 

Sometimes I will add a sticky note if I am not by my planner when an idea comes up. 

*I tried to turn all of the pictures, but I was having trouble getting them to copy into blogger after turning them in Paint. I am out of time to try and figure out why this is so. Even though the pictures are not exactly as I would want them to be for you I think you still get the idea I am trying to convey.

A Walk In Solaris Park With My Favorite People

I am trying to carve out more and more intentional time spent as a family. As the kids are growing they are each seeking their own lives outside of our family which is how it should be, but it makes me want to savor these last couple of years as a whole family unit that much more. I want to reinforce the foundation that Bob and I have dedicated the past 19 years of our lives creating for these four human souls on loan to us.

 I cherish these moments greatly and am trying very hard to not take this time for granted. After all, it really does seem like just yesterday that the kids were 8, 6, 4, and 2.  In less than a month, Sarah will turn 14. The ghosts of those little kids that I thought would never get old have sometimes come back to haunt me as I stare into the faces of my 18, 16, (almost) 14, and 12 year old children. It is hard to take heed to the words spoken by those in my current place when you are in the thick of parenting littles. And while I feel that I did my best at appreciating the kids at all of the ages they were I still wish I could go back in time and do it all over again.

I would breathe in those moments long gone and savor them so much more. I would take more intentional time with my kids just to be with them and be together. But, as Mother Time so acutely reminds me, I cannot go back. I can only enjoy the present moment and its ever beating march forward. And so I am.

The leaves here are beautiful. I knew that  the Midwest was my favorite part of the country to celebrate  my favorite season, but I am blown away by its beauty. Less than 10 minutes from our home is park called Solaris Park. I fell in love with it the moment I saw its name because of its reference to the sun (Solaris means 'of the sun'.) I feel such a peace when I walking through the trails of the park. It reminds me a bit of walking the amazing trails of the MetroParks in Ohio. It reminds me of my life with littles. It reminds of where I have been and makes me appreciate being here before I am off again living in another city in another state. I love, love, love this park.

Bob and I decided to take the kiddos for a hike before the Browns game yesterday. We had so much fun. The leaves did not disappoint. I am so thankful that we are living in Indiana right now. I am thankful for the fall season and my family. I feel content and happy.

The trees here are a bit weird in the fact that there are places like this where it seems as if almost all of the trees have lost their leaves, but then there will be places where it seems like the majority of trees haven't lost their leaves. 

I was "pulling a Nana" as my kids say and making them take a ton of pictures. (A side note: my mom, from the moment Andy was born, became an avid photographer of our extended family's life. Every event - large and small - there are pictures of which my mom has dates and puts into photo albums. While we all kvetch when my mom takes out her camera every time we visit those photo albums are pulled out so that we can look through all of those memories. Bob especially loves looking at all of the memories of the past. So, while we kvetch we are really secretly happy she takes out that camera.)

I thought this mushroom family looked cool. 

I am surprised at how green this part of our walk still was. 

For Midwest standards this tree stood out from the rest. There was something regal about it that I loved. 

Love the bright orange leaves of that little tree in the middle. 

Yes! Elizabeth found a Woolly Bear Caterpillar. I love these guys. 

This tree looks like it has a face on it. Can you see the nose and pouting lip facing away from the camera? I stopped in my tracks when I saw it because it reminded me of 'The Kissing Tree'  - two trees that grew together and looked like they were kissing that was located in my favorite childhood spot: 272 Washburn Rd. 

The three kids were playing a game together at this point of our walk...

...while Bob was listening to Andy kvetch about how cruddy Midwest nature is and how much he wishes he could be in the West climbing mountains.  Andy really misses being out West.

Leaves!!! 

This trail was to peaceful. So peaceful. 

She was looking for a big leaf and she found one. 

Pine needles - a reminder of life PNW. 

My crew.