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Hannah and her new basketball.

“What is Haiku?”

Well, I’m glad you asked!

Actually, I have had quite a few people ask me that very question since I decided to teach about it in my latest Creative Writing class at our Homeschool Co-op.

Merriam-Webster defines Haiku as  “noun: a verse form of Japanese origin having three lines containing five, seven, and five syllables respectively; also : a poem written in this form.“

Basically to write Haiku you think of what you want to say and say it in 3 lines of 5 syllables, 7 syllables, and 5 syllables.

For example, here is one I’m just coming up with right now.

To write a Hai-ku
You must count each syll-a-ble
And ex-press your thoughts.

 Helping me teach Haiku this week was my friend and fellow Tribe Writer, Sylvia Jones.

Sylvia posts a Haiku on her blog The Haiku Corner every Sunday.

I am always amazed at how much emotion Sylvia can get across in such few words. I am excited to hear that Sylvia is currently working on partnering with some artists in her area to sell her Haiku online. She is also planning to eventually compile her Haiku into a book along with some of her photography.

In my classes after reading some of the examples of Haiku from Sylvia’s blog, we tried our hands at writing our own Haiku.

A haiku by one of my younger students about her brother’s new chairs.

Here are some we came up with:
This first haiku is by Shannon from my older class.

A pen and black ink,
writing expressions smoothly,
while the day goes on.

Shannon has a real knack for Haiku. She even gave me some pointers.

Here is one I wrote in class that just about everyone can relate too.

Computer glaring
Waiting for it to finish
I pick up a pen.

My younger class did really well too.
I helped the younger students keep count of their syllables on my fingers.

Haiku about basketball written by Hannah.

This is one my 8 year old, Hannah, wrote:

Basketball is fun
I am wishing I could play
I have a new one.

Haiku is pretty addicting. Once you get started, you find yourself counting on your fingers wondering if what your thinking about will fit into Haiku.

Now it’s your turn.

A challenge for you
Will you write me a Haiku?
Please share in comments.

Alright there’s your challenge, I’m curious what y’all will come up with.

It’s Friday! Which means… Another Five Minute Friday link up at Lisa Jo’s blog!

I love Five Minute Fridays because I don’t have to do a lot of thinking. Lisa Jo gives us a word prompt and bloggers from all over the world set their timers and write for 5 minutes. No overthinking. No editing. Just free write, link up, and visit your neighbor on the link up page.

Today’s word prompt is “Jump“.

Alright my timer is set.

(I wonder if it counts if I were to pause the timer every time my children interrupt. Hmm…)

Okay. I passed the baby off again. Maybe I can actually start now.

GO!

Sometimes it’s good to jump. But there are time… PAUSE…Grrr… My 8 year old just came in asking me questions. I thought I explained the “just 5 minutes” to all of them just now. *sigh*

Okay trying this again.

Resetting my timer because too much went by answering her question and asking her for another 5 minutes.

GO!

Sometimes it is good to jump. But there are times when you shouldn’t jump. Sometimes when the going gets tough we just need to stick it out and not jump ship. There have been many times in my life where I think that everything is too much. There must be an easier way. During those times I’ve wanted to hide. That’s the times when it’s important to remember that those problems are only for a season. Don’t jump!

If you jump too soon you may land in a worse situation than you started out in. It reminds me of jumping out of a frying pan and into the fire. You don’t want that. If you stick it out, the fire will eventually be turned off. Maybe even a little water will be added to cool your feet. But whatever you do don’t quit. Don’t jump!

STOP

That 5 minutes passed rather quickly. It’s a good thing because my 5 year old just came in the room wanting my attention.

So how about you? Can you think of a time it’s better to stay put and stick it out rather than jump ship and run away? Please share with us in the comments.

Let me know if you are linking up for Five Minute Friday. Oh and please share your link name. I want to visit your post as well. Thanks!

Yes. They can stand still for at least one picture. You just got to keep the camera snapping to actually catch the perfect shot.

Me procrastinate? Surely not!

I know y’all find that hard to believe. Yes,I am a preacher’s wife and I procrastinate.

Aren’t my children beautiful all dressed up in their Easter clothes?

Let me tell you what all it took to get that picture.

It all began on my husband’s payday in the month of March.

“Sweetheart, how much money can I spend this month to buy the kids new clothes for Easter?” 

“However much you need. We should have enough.” He replied.

So you see, I did think about buying the kids’ new clothes.

Fast forward to the Saturday before Easter Sunday.

I had been talking all week about needing to pick a day to go shopping with the kids. Saturday morning my husband decided he could take the boys to go clothes shopping. 

That sounded great to me. Divide and conquer!

He take half the children and I take the other half.  So they left in his van to buy clothes. They had been gone several hours, when I decided to call and check on them. My husband’s phone doesn’t always work in the store so I called my son’s phone. 

“Hi, Joshua!”

“Hi!”

“I’m just calling to check on y’all. How are things going?”

“Fine. Dad doesn’t like shopping for clothes.” 

“I understand. Are y’all almost done?’

“Almost.”

My husband called me and informed me that he had been in the store too long. “Let me out of here!”

At some point in talking with him, I realized that I didn’t have to wait for them to get back. The girls and I have our own vehicle!

The boys got back and I took the girls.

I knew that it was going to be hard to find dresses that meet our dress code.

• Our rule is dresses have to come below the knees.
• Shirts can’t show the belly when arms are raised. We call that the belly test. Any time a shirt gets too small one of us will comment, “I don’t think that shirt will pass the belly test.” 
• I require that shirts have sleeves. Not just straps. So if they buy a dress with straps they must have a shirt over or under it.
• I do allow shorts and pants but the same rule applies. They must come below the knees and not be too tight.

That may sound strict but in this world of vastly decaying morals it is good to hold yourself and your family to a higher level. I set up the rules along time ago when my oldest daughter was very young. It met my husband’s approval and my children understand that these are the rules. 

So Saturday afternoon, the day before Easter I have to find 3 dresses that meet those requirements and still look nice. 

I took the girls to a clothing store in our little town.  After several trips to the dressing room, they found what they wanted. 

The boys were color coordinated with purple and grays. The girls…pink and white.

“Mom, you should find a dress to match us!”

Okay…. I should just end this story right here… You do not want to know my experience with dress shopping, do you?

You do? Okay… Some do some don’t. If you don’t want to know, let’s just suffice it to say that it’s not the same when your in your late 30’s and not as skinny as you used to be.

Now that’s the short story. My feelings won’t be hurt if you can imagine it and want to stop right there.

Still reading?

I made the mistake of agreeing to try on clothes. My daughters had the baby in her stroller and were walking laps inside the store while I tried clothes on.

I don’t think clothing designers had me at all in mind when they made those clothes. The clothes that came close to fitting me showed my knobby knees.  The clothes that were long enough to hide those same knees I couldn’t even get pulled up over my thighs.  

I tried on the same shirt my older daughter is wearing in the picture. It looks very pretty on her. I chose the largest size available in that shirt. Now I know why women wear shirts so tight. They don’t make shirts bigger!

After several failed attempts with different styles, I had to start pep talking myself to calm my emotions.

I told myself that it was okay. Maybe there are so many other women with my dimensions that my sizes were sold out.  If I had gone shopping sooner I would have found something. I’ll start exercising and my reward for all the weight I will lose will be a new dress. 

We stopped at another store for accessories. I like to look at clearance racks. I found a shirt in my normal style on the clearance rack for $2. I didn’t even bother to try it on. And that was my beautiful Easter shirt in our family picture. 

Have you ever waited until the last minute to do something and it still worked out okay? Maybe not as well as you would have liked but you were at least happy with the end result. 

You may have noticed (if you pay attention to those details) that my two younger sons were not wearing dress shoes in the above picture.  They outgrow their shoes so fast that they wind up wearing their tennis shoes to church. Since I procrastinated, I ran out of time to buy them dress shoes.

Okay, maybe procrastinating isn’t such a good thing after all. 

Today, I’m trying something new. I am joining other writers and linking up with Lisa Jo Baker for her Five Minute Friday link up. Lisa Jo gives us a word prompt and we set our timers and write for only 5 minutes without over thinking and no editing.

Now if my kids will just give me 5 minutes today’s word prompt is Broken.

Alright timer is set… On my mark… Get Set… Go…

Ha Ha okay so this is my first time to do this and it wasn’t as easy as it looks. LOL I only had one paragraph and it was terrible. So I know. I know… But I’m going to try that again. LOL I guess my brain was broken. 😉

Here we go again. Timer is set.  Ready… Set… Go…

Hannah is using the hammer she got for her birthday to fix our broken chair with Jonathan’s help.

If it’s not broken don’t fix it. However in our world today we need to be aware of things that are broken. If we don’t realize we have an area in our life that is broken we will never fix it. We need to know when we are broken.

It’s like a chair that has a broken leg. If we don’t realize that chair is broken then we won’t fix it. We might sit down in it and wind up broken ourselves. On the other hand if we saw that it is broken but don’t fix it and just turn a blind eye to the problem then someone else might be hurt by our lack of caring.

We need to see those things in our lives too. We need to know the areas that are broken in our lives. It reminds me of the verse where Jesus taught we need to remove the beam from our own eye before we can remove the speck that is in our brother’s eye.

Before we can help other broken people we need to realize where we are broken. It is good to help others but we first need to work on our own broken areas.

Stop.

Okay, I’m leaving that one. LOL I don’t think it was too bad for my first time.

If you’re interested in reading other bloggers’ Five Minute Friday posts click on the link and check it out. If you decide to join in please leave me a comment and let me know and I’ll be sure to check out your post as well.

Have you ever come to the realization in your life that there was something broken and took the steps necessary to fix it? As always feel free to share with me in the comments.

“And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.” (Matthew 7:3-5)

Monday morning, I checked my messages as part of my normal morning routine. Someone had mentioned that Sunday was St. Patrick’s day. Okay, I missed that. However that post jogged my memory. I immediately sent my husband a text message that read, “Tomorrow is Elijah’s birthday!!!!!!!!!! I forgot!!!” 

Yes, I know. I forgot my son’s 3rd birthday until the day before. If it had not been for that post about St. Patricks’ day I would have probably forgotten it all together until the day after. But that is the beauty of being 3. He didn’t know it was his birthday either. At least until I announced it was the next day on Monday morning. Then he was really excited.

Monday night as we got the kids to bed I gave Elijah his last 2 year old hug. That is a fun tradition we have on Birthday Eves. We give them their last hug for that year of life and the next morning we give them their first hug for the new birth year.

I wanted to write a blog post but had been having problems with my blog not posting to Facebook properly. Monday evening, I showed my tech savvy husband all of my blog problems. He came to my rescue and found the root of my problem.

It was in the beautiful theme I had picked out. He changed it to a simple theme for me. He didn’t have time to fix it much. He has to get up early for work in the mornings. So I thanked him for his help.

But then I made a mistake… I looked at my blog.

I should have waited until morning but I didn’t, I had to fix it right then. I stayed up until 3 a.m. on Elijah’s birthday trying to figure out what the best, most practical yet most beautiful theme for my blog would be. I looked through a lot of themes.

Did I find one? No. But I decided I would work on that later. So I left my poor ugly blog like it was and went on to bed. That was the beginning of Elijah’s birthday. I was determined I wasn’t going to let an ugly blog worry me anymore that day.

Monday morning, I couldn’t remember my husband leaving for work. It’s my normal habit to wake up and tell him good bye before he leaves. Sometimes we may even have a little time to chat a bit before he has to rush out the door.

But not Monday morning. I woke up once when my older daughter, Ruth brought me Elisabeth. Then I fell asleep for a little bit and woke up to a phone ring. No they didn’t call too early. I slept too late. But there was a problem on the farm my son works as an apprentice and they were wondering if they could pick both Joshua and Ruth up to help them deworm goats. I was fine with that.

I immediately started making plans for the rest of Elijah’s day. Here is how my imagined day looked.

1. Record a video of Elijah talking on his 3rd birthday.
2. Decorate Birthday eggs. We had been given an Easter egg kit but we don’t celebrate Resurrection Sunday with Easter eggs nor Easter bunnies. Why is another blog post in itself.
3. Bake a birthday cake. Elijah had picked Chocolate cake with chocolate icing. I even planned to let him help ice it.
4. Scott gets off work, picks up some toys for presents, and picks up the kids from their work. Then we eat cake.
5. We go to the Library and check out books
6. We go to a restaurant and have burgers and ice cream.

So that was my original plan. Anyone that knows me will realize that I hardly have any of my plans go as planned.

I am a firm believer in the verse that says.

 “For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.” James 4:15

Because if I don’t say that I’d be in trouble. My plans rarely work out.

Here is how the day actually went. I came into the kitchen once all the younger kids woke up.

1. I got the video recorded after about 10 takes of him being goofy. He finally answered my questions while riding on the top of the chair like it were a horse. I posted the video on YouTube. —> Elijah’s 3rd Birthday Interview
2. Went to the refrigerator… No eggs!
3. I couldn’t bake a cake without eggs. So I thought we might go to the store.
4. No time to go to the store before Scott got off work. So I texted him to pick up eggs and snack cakes to cover for the lack of my not having baked a cake.
5. The library closed at 6. My husband had only been home 30 minutes.
6. We did go out for burgers!

We ate the snack cakes and gave Elijah his present first but we did go to the restaurant.

Elijah was very proud of himself. He went up into the play place without any fear and came down announcing “I did it! I did it!” All the pictures I took of him in the play place were blurry.  But we had a great time and they were able to have refills on the slushees.

That night everyone was ready for bed… Except me.

I wanted to blog about all the deep and wonderful thoughts I had going around in my mind. I ended the night typing and looking at my screen as it blurred from my eyes crossing. Then I decided at 3 a.m. it was time for bed and my blog could wait.

And is this the blog post I wrote in the middle of the night? No. I just now typed this in about 30 minutes after accomplishing the one task I was determined to conquer. I had everyone to bed before 10 so I could sit here and type a quick 15 minute blog post. Yes it took 30 minutes but I feel really good about it right now. I am going to bed early tonight!

How about you? Have you ever had all your plans for a day unravel right before your eyes? Do you wing “plan B” when you get to it? Or are you well prepared before hand?

I’d love for you to share you experiences with me in the comments. Maybe you have some advice that might help me get my plans better laid out.

If you are one of my subscribers and are reading this in your email you can just hit reply. I’d like hearing from you that way as well.

A few of our children have a fear of animals. Anything furry with four legs causes Elijah to scream terribly. 

One day while we were waiting for Joshua to get done with his work on a nearby farm, the rest of the children and I decided to help by giving hay to the horses.

Hannah was pretty proud that she could climb up to the feed trough with her arms full of hay.

Jonathan declared himself a real cowboy. He also said that he was a real farmer because he was wearing overalls.

 

Then there was Elijah. The closer we got to the barn the more planted his feet became. 

I offered to hold him. He agreed. I put him on my hip and carried him into the barn. 

Then it happened…

A horse looked at him! 

He started hollering and screaming. You’d have thought I was about to feed him to the horse how he was carrying on.

Until his sweet big sister, Ruth, came to his rescue. She offered him her back. He was okay as long as his sister was between him and the horse. 

He would even take hay and throw it into the stall from her back. 

By the end, she had him standing on the ground throwing hay into the stall without anyone even holding his hand. Now that’s pretty good!

And what did Elisabeth think of it all?

Well, she didn’t seem to mind his hollering. And was pretty happy to watch the others feeding the animals. 



Maybe we’ll get Elijah over his fears before Elisabeth is swayed by them.

You know two year olds are not the only ones to be afraid of something.

Even grown ups have fears. 

I am afraid of hurting people. I worry sometimes that if I say or write the wrong thing someone might get upset. I fear conflict.

I fear the time that someone will disagree with me and turn me into the “bad” guy. I’ve had that happen before. 

Once I was trying to help someone in a Christian chat room many years ago. (This was before Facebook and Twitter.) Chat rooms were an exciting place back then.

A person asked for help and I tried to give them what they needed.
Somehow they turned what I was saying to help them into my not caring. 

Then someone else came into the chat room and backed them. I looked like a terrible person. When I was honestly trying to help.

 The real problem was they didn’t want the help. I tried to explain that I was only trying to help. They told me they forgave me. Forgave me for what? I hadn’t said or done anything against them. 

That one experience had me so upset that I never went back to that chat room for fear that it would happen again. 

Is that any different than Elijah being afraid of the horse that looked at him? 

I’ve been working on facing my fears. I have slowly started reaching back out to try to help people. 

Maybe a bit cautiously at first. Like Elijah hiding behind his big sister. But I’m finally sharing that bite of hay. 

I am setting a goal to conquer my fears. I am going to do my best to  help people even when I’m afraid.

How about you? What fears do you have to conquer?

Feel free to share in the comments. I’d love to hear how you are working to conquer your fears.

What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee. In God I will praise his word, in God I have put my trust; I will not fear what flesh can do unto me. (Psalms 56:3-4)

Every night our family gathers together to pray before the children climb in their beds. My husband and I use this time to not only pray with our children but for discussion as well. 

I decided to volunteer myself as well as the older kids for the job. To measure the space that my mom wanted to put the bed in I brought in one of the mattress frames that was already put together. I told my mom it was easier than finding a tape measure. You can probably already see where this is going. 

Finally, it was time to put the final rail on the bed. The holes were in the wrong place. In fact, they were in the wrong place on the other side of the bed as well. That’s when it dawned on us. We had put the top bunk on the bottom and the bottom bunk on the top. Then we managed to lose some of the screws that were made for the bed and put some bolts in backwards. We had a mess on our hands.

We called in the cavalry. My dad and Scott came in the room to try to sort it all out.  

Thankfully, they didn’t have to take the whole bed apart again.  They did wind up rigging it a bit. 

Dad helped pop out the bolts. Scott screwed in the screws and rigged the areas that didn’t have screws.
I don’t know how they managed to sort it all out but they did. 

We did get one thing out of this.  A lot of laughs! We were laughing so hard at the problems we were having putting the bed together. That’s when I decided to take out my camera. This much laughter needed to be recorded. We didn’t get mad about it. We just laughed. 

Did you know that laughing is very good for you? The Bible says that “a merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.”  Proverbs 17:22

Have you ever had a failed attempt at team work? When was the last time you tried to put something together and it turned out all wrong? Do you have a funny story you want to share?

Tell us about it in the comments below. 

I have 8 more posts to write before the New Year and a Christmas Present to give my readers in about a week. Don’t miss any of the upcoming gifts and updates by signing up for our free email updates. You can also “like” our RockSolidFamily Facebook Page.

I’m not going to say they were all easy years. Some were very difficult. However there is a feeling of accomplishment with each obstacle we overcome.