The love of a dandelion..

A long time ago I committed my days to teaching my children. I prep, test, teach, love and sometimes.... learn. Today was one of the days my heart learned. And it was a simple as a little girl and a dandelion.

I always try to make sure my kids are educated, polite, kind and well behaved. I make sure to tell them how much our actions and words affect other people. How when we're down or in need of a friend, we want a kind hand held out to us.  But in all my educating, I never applied their behavior to me.

I see my child as perfect (although *spunky*) gifts from God. In my eyes, they do no wrong. Even during times where correction is needed; they aren't wrong, they just need redirection. :)  So you see, they are always wonder to me, in my eyes.

But today, I was having a somewhat difficult day, and mt patience was waning with everyone and everything. I braved the craziness of the Saturday-before-the-perfect-storm hurricane, to get craft supplies for the kids.  When I got home, they rather play outside than do the craft. With a frustrated, deep, defeated sigh, I let them do what kids do and head out to play.

A minute later, I saw the sweet face of my 4 year old daughter smiling the best smile. She said to me, "God made a craft for me to give you, because we both love you!" And from behind her back, she pulled a single dandelion. It was the most perfect dandelion I had ever seen, simply because it was given in love.

Today my heart learned that crafts can be made for the hands of children, and not necessarily by them. 

Big Family Remodel Continues

The remodeling of our home continues.  We have worked on the bathroom, painted the living room, upstairs hall and bathroom, replaced lights, striped and stained the wood work in the living room, ripped out and hung new kitchen cabinets, added an island in the kitchen (and and prior to that, took out a closet and knocked down a wall - which opened the kitchen up to the dining room. Making room for the kitchen island.), put in a new dining room/kitchen ceiling, we did outside work as well. But now, we've pulled up all the flooring throughout the dining room and kitchen and have exposed the original hard wood floors. We have a lot more work to do on the floor to get it finished - removing adhesive from the previous floor, sanding, staining and applying the polyurethane.

We have 1 bathroom, and have decided to redo it again. To make it look larger, and give us more space to move around, we are replacing the vanity and sink with a pedestal sink, replacing the toilet with a smaller, more efficient one and adding a jacuzzi tub. Of course, all of this will take much time to do. Since we buy the materials when we have cash on hand. I am hoping to have the above items finished by the end of August. 

We plan to replace all the radiators with baseboard radiators as well. I would like to have the downstairs one's transferred over before Christmas. The new radiators are fairly inexpensive, so that shouldn't be a problem. 

Once all the work is done (months from now I'm sure), I'll post pictures!