Monday, April 23, 2012

A Wife and Mother's Role

In the Family Proclamation, it talks about a mother's role.  A mother is primarily responsible for the nurture of her children.  Loosely speaking a wife and mother is primarily responsible to make sure things in the household run smoothly, and that household needs are taken care of first.  Does this mean that she cannot take care of things outside the home and spend time outside the home?  Not at all.  It just means that is her primary responsibility, and that is what she should be spending time and energy focusing on.
Recently, I've had the "opportunity" to spend quite a bit of time working (8 hours a day for about a week straight), doing lots of hard labor at this job.  It hasn't been my ideal job.  Something that hit me while I've been doing all this working is, I miss the time I could be spending at home taking care of our needs there.  I come home after work so exhausted that I have no energy to take care of our needs at home.
Today is the first day I've had in a long time that I can take care of some much needed business at home, and attending to our needs here.  And it feels amazing.  I like the feeling I have when I can take time and take care of our needs here.  To be that wife that God intends and would like me to become.  It feels good to have the energy to make a fairly nutritious dinner for us, not just throw something together because it sounds easy, or to leave it to Drew to make, because I hurt too much.
As much as I do enjoy working, and enjoy feeling like I can contribute in that way to our lives right now, I also enjoy knowing that when we have children, and I need to stay at home to take care of them, I will be able to enjoy that as well.  It is an AMAZING feeling!

Saturday, April 14, 2012

When growing up watching "This old House" isn't a good thing

Somehow, we got it in our heads to take up the linoleum in our kitchen and restore what looks like beautiful hardwood floors underneath.  And all was going well, except for one thing...we're having the hardest time getting all the linoleum up.  We got most of it off, but where the epoxy or whatever it was went down to hold the linoleum down, it has been absolutely horrible.  Well, We'll just use a stripper to get it all off.  That's what they do in the home fix it shows.  It should work, right?  And it does..... almost.  We put it down, but just barely had enough, so it didn't go as far as anticipated.  We should have gotten more (this was at like 1 in the morning, so no where is open to get more).  Well... we'll make it work.  The next day, scraping it up (high on fumes from the stripper), it works great where the stripper was started.  But at the end?  Mmmm... we might get more stripper to help us out.  So where does "This old House" and other fix it up shows come in to play?  I don't think we would have actually done more than just talk about restoring the hardwood floors if we didn't both grow up watching those shows and have a good idea of what we were doing.  We probably wouldn't have even considered more than just talking about it.  Did it help us to know what we were doing?  Yes.  Did it tell us how much work would be involved?  No.  I don't think we expected it to be this much work.  They do make it look so easy on the shows.  But then, they are professionals, and have a whole team working on it... not just two people.  Would I consider doing this project again in the future?  Probably.  Despite how hard it is, the finished product should look good. however, I wouldn't do this in another apartment.  I wouldn't consider doing it until I know i'm in the place we're going to live for the next 10-15+ years.  So those who have grown up watching home fix it shows, beware the strong desires to make improvements to your house.  It probably isn't as easy as it seems.