Put on the brakes, it is fall time!

Fall break is here and we have a full 11 days off, this counts the weekends, the full week, and the extra monday off from school. We are excited about spending time with the kids by doing some fun adventures. Last year for our anniversary Jerry bought two tickets to go to The Baltimore Estates in Ashville and we then used that price and applied it to a year season pass.

This allowed us to take the kids for FREE! With 5 of those little sweeties I love a good deal and free is about as good as it gets.
The trouble with this season pass is the 5 hour distance it is from our home. This is the reason we are almost back around to our anniversary (nov 1) and have yet to use it......until now. This week is our week to dream of a 1,000 acre farm, a pool and bowling alley in our home, and fireplaces so big we could stand up in them. The kids will learn some history and see things that our pictures from last year did little to show the amazement of this place.

In my perfect world I would own lots of land that had a creek running through it and lots of trees to climb. I would have a large kitchen with a full window seat and sitting area for friends to chat with while cooking them an amazing meal. I would have a huge stone fireplace and brick walls and an old farm table that was the perfect height for little ones to help make bread. I would learn to make bread and never need a recipe book.
In my perfect home I would still have the kids share rooms but the rooms would be a little bit bigger with Jack and Jill bathrooms. I would have big closets and little hidden nooks to play in. I would have my own art room that never got used for storage and I would paint and sew and create new things often. In my art room there would also be space for a photography studio.

My perfect world looks very different from my real world. There are times that I get super frustrated that I am a grown woman and have the ability to change my surroundings and yet my two worlds still look so different.
It is during those times that I have to be very purposeful about my words and my thoughts.
I can wake up and see a pile of papers that have been sitting there for a week and it just makes me mad......even though yesterday I was totally fine with it.
I can walk out into my small yard and just be so bummed that it doesnt have trees for climbing and building tree houses.
I walk into the kids rooms and get physically angry at how messy they got it again and that it is too small or that the closets are so tiny b/c its an old house.
I could look at my real life and my real world and hate everything about it because it doesn't match up to the beautiful art I have painted in my head. 

Or, I could thank God for the amazing location of my home and the amazing price we got it for years ago though a miracle of God. I could thank God for the small rooms being big enough for bunk beds and dressers and precious children playing. I could thank God that my yard is big enough for a perfect size garden that my kids and I have truly enjoyed taking care of this year.

There will always be things in our lives that we would like to change. Some things will be able to look different as we work on them and somethings may never happen. If we live our lives in angry about all the things we can't have or can't change we will be miserable people to hang out with. If all you do is complain than you might not be someone that people want to be friends with.  Constant complaining smells like poop and no one wants to sit and listen to poop talk. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
Changing your mind set may be hard and feel super foolish at first but when we choose to be thankful it opens our hearts up to peace.

I look back at the last few years and see things done in my home now that were just dreams back then. I have dreams and goals and they seem so far fetch but I have learned that baby steps to any goal is so much better then the complainers on the side lines taking no steps at all.

Are you a thankful person or a complainer. Do your words smell sweet as your talk or more like poop? What are some things in your life that you can choose to be thankful today that maybe you were a bit ungrateful for yesterday? Try putting on some praise music and start thanking God for the very thing that drives you nuts. Ask God for wisdom on how to change it but to have peace while you are in that waiting stage. God is always faithful to help us when we ask.


I shall leave you today with this pic of my twin and I with our daddy. It was prob our first time in the mountains.