The kids and I spent Spring Break in Houston with my dear college roommate’s family. We took advantage of a few days together, and the Hills were gracious to host our crew. But somehow, squeezed between his own work schedule and the chaos of movies and charades and rainy-day walks, Eric took time out for Bran. To listen, laugh, and get smeared at XBOX. And to play Bran’s favorite songs (already on E’s ipod) while dancing like a crazy man around the kitchen island before and after meals.
Several times a day.
Clearly, being with Eric was one of Bran’s absolute highlights of our time with the Hills. When not attached at the hip to ten-year-old Adeline, he hung with Mr. Eric and soaked up all the coolness he could. After our last breakfast, Eric looked Bran in the eye and paid him a genuine compliment. And guess what – my boy’s eyes teared up.
So did Mommy’s.
Oh come on, I can’t let anyone cry by themselves.

Wilson and Hill kiddos

Eric & Kristin with their charming girls

So we returned from Houston to our home full with the Wolfes – seven, to be exact. That plus our six – do the math – transforms the Wilson home into a par-tay.
And yet the same thing happened. Even with FIVE of his own boys running around, Chris (several times) initiated throwing the baseball with Bran in the front yard. And the timing was perfect. Bran was on the cusp of his first game, more than a little nervous about pitching, and Chris stepped in to coach and encourage and build him up. A tremendous lift.
Branson is named after “Uncle” Chris

Corbin and Chris with the four older Wolfe boys
Chris & Sarah with their handsome crew

I can’t tell you what it does to my heart to see these great men take a genuine interest and initiate spending time with my boys.
So to Eric and Chris, a sincere thank you.
Thankful for our village, and that for the last couple of decades you have been such a part of ours.

What I’ve loved the most about our year at home:
- Relaxed, easy mornings.
- Short school days. We are typically finished by 1:30, if not earlier. It makes it a lot more fun to then head out for afternoon/evening practices or activities.
- Absence of homework. I cannot emphasize this benefit enough!
- Time with our Tuesday friends – science and pizza and Spanish. It’s such a relaxed, fun environment with loads of kids to play and learn with.
- Time for “margin” things: playing cards and board games, watching a movie on a school night…
- The Fort Worth zoo and the Museum of Science and History. Both AMAZING. I’ve renewed our season passes to both – and actually use them – and we’re enjoying them so much.
- Traveling outside of peak season. Also cannot emphasize this benefit enough.
- My girls sharing their days with their brothers. Actually, I guess it’s little Essie who’s benefiting the most – she would have all three siblings at school this year! I love having three days a week with just the boys, but twice a week all four kids get to interact. There are less “I’m-going-to-pull-my-hair-out” moments than I thought there would be. And as I’ve heard several homeschool moms claim, my kids’ relationships with each other have improved from simply being together more.

What I miss about school:
- Seeing school friends and families on a regular basis.
- Knowing that my kids are learning enough. I know, I know, this is what I hear from anyone who teaches their kids at home, and I used to roll my eyes a bit, thinking, “Of course they’re learning enough.” But now that I’m the teacher and I know the ins and outs of our days, it’s something I think about often.
- The classroom experience. This year has been a great reprieve from that, and the benefits of being home have been fully enjoyed. But Corbin and I both envision our kids in school, in classrooms. It might be habit or familiar, so I’m prayerful about an open mind…

With the future unknown (really, it’s always unknown, right?) my sights are set on enjoying these moments we have right now. And while there are a lot of things I’m not great at, savoring this year is something I’m doing well.

Basden and I attended a mother-daughter retreat earlier this year and learned a simple song that she asks me to sing with her regularly. It’s a rather simple song about wisdom, but one stanza’s lyrics ring in my mind an encouragement from the Lord for our schooling this year. The words perfectly illustrate the way I feel about this year with the kids home:

There’s a treasure you can’t measure
You can’t hold it in your hands
But if you will seek this jewel
Someday you will understand.

Someday, someday I’ll understand. I’m already grateful for the TIME with my children this year. Thankful the Lord stopped me in my tracks and got my attention and asked me to try something a little different. Grateful for the gratification that comes with seeing my children learn something new or difficult. Grateful for the faith walk this has been and continues to be.

Thank you, Father, for believing in me, and for the gift of this year…

Putting the phone to my ear, I listened for Corbin’s reassuring voice. He answered to my choking sobs.
“Corbin, I don’t think I can do this.”
“Hey, what’s going on?”
“I can’t do this day. I can’t handle these three children. And (voice cracking- sobbing) there’s another one coming…”

In his wisdom, he sat silent and let my cries subside.
Then his quiet, calm words came through the earpiece.
“Ton, of course you can’t do four. You don’t have four yet. We’ve just got these three, and you do this well. You’ll be able to handle four when this little gal comes.”

The tension in my shoulders began to ease.
I knew he was right. But the scene right inside the back door scared me. Toys littering the house, bickering toddlers, a fussy baby who had been sick for a week… Did I have what it took to carry the weight of these days with patience and kindness and self control? (All the things I was trying to teach my children?!) I honestly didn’t think I could. And what scared me the most was my lack of gentleness with the kids. One minute I felt just fine and genuinely grateful for my growing family, and then all of the sudden – boom! One spill or one fight or one poopy mess and I spewed out (loud!) words of anger towards my children.

Enter Julie Ann Barnhill’s book, “She’s Gonna Blow – Real Help for Moms Dealing with Anger.” The title intrigued me, and I was desperate for encouragement in handling my anger. I needed some practical advice to level my charged emotions, as they were too often explosive and out of control in dealing with my infant and toddler children.
I needed to read that I wasn’t the only mom that yelled at her children. That I wasn’t the only one who had to retreat outside periodically and take a few deep breaths to keep from exploding over the latest spilled (very full!) gallon of milk that somehow reached from the kitchen counter to the television across the den, splattering the windows and carpet along the way. But I also needed her encouragement that it was possible NOT to erupt even in the midst of stress and fatigue.

“She’s Gonna Blow” is chock full of practical ways to recognize and dispel anger before it hurts our children. And us. I related to Barnhill’s comparison of explosive mothers under pressure to erupting volcanoes:

A volcano, in essence, is a natural thing that explodes under pressure. And that’s exactly what can happen to us when motherhood gets to be just too much for us. In an instant we can change from the peaceful, nourishing women we want to be into Mount Momma – spitting fire and brimstone at all who cross our path. (pg 33)

Barnhill describes four types of volcanoes that align with anger patterns:
1. Strombolian – eruptions and relatively short, happen at predictable times (not terribly destructive, “normal” outbursts)
2. Hawaiian – characterized by lakes and rivers of constantly flowing lava (chronic, simmering anger)
3. Vulcanian – explosion that is loud, scary and dangerous (on-going, willfull and increasingly harder-to-stop behavior)
4. Plinian – an eruption with huge volume and power, able to destroy a vast area (these are the women we see on the evening news)

What I liked about this book –
- It actually helped me control angry outbursts. I credit “She’s Gonna Blow” as a stopping point for my “mommy anger” (which, by the way, I didn’t even know I had until I was a Mom!). After having prayed about this issue for a couple of years, I still felt out of control periodically in angry responses to my children. Something about Barnhill’s message clicked and altered my perception of my little ones. It turned my eyes outward and into their tender hearts (and how my anger could hurt them) rather than looking inward at my own frustration or fatigue.
- Besides providing information for understanding and recognizing anger, Barnhill also includes practical, practical ideas to control and minimize angry reactions. She includes “time out/tamers” (box quotes) throughout the chapters, and then offers some great discussion questions at the end of each chapter – making it ideal for a group study.
- Anger aside, this book is simply a great resource for parenting. Some of my favorite random reminders:
1. Choose laughter. (pg 88)
2. Intentionally forgive children. (pg 95)
3. Children are for our sanctification. (pg. 101) Yikes! So true!
4. Look your child in the eye, hold their hands, and say, “I love you just the way you are.” pg. 109

When he was about five, Branson saw this book on our coffee table and asked, “Mom, what in the world is this book?”
I explained that it was helping me to make good choices and not get angry so easily.
“OK, Mom, let’s make a deal. Anytime you start to get mad, I’ll yell out, ‘She’s gonna blow!’ and remind you not to get angry.”
And so he did. “
And so I laughed.
I’ve found it’s impossible to stay frustrated in the face of a five-year-old, blond-headed kid falling backwards and bellowing, “She’s gonna blow!”

We recently read this book in my Mom’s group. In a circle of a dozen women with varying personalities and stress levels, the only constant is that everyone has young children. And yet everyone related to this book’s message in some form or another. Our conversations produced tears and honest confessions, but also revealed hope and deep yearnings to keep our mommy-emotions in control.

Published in ’05, “She’s Gonna Blow” served as an invaluable resource to me in a season of very young children and significant fatigue. I’m grateful to Barnhill for putting these words into print and getting them into our homes. Definitely made a difference in this one!

So this was the introduction to our very fun, very eventful trip. My friend Courtney and I just took our (seven!) kids on a week-long ski trip. We successfully got our kids to Angel Fire, NM, got them on the mountain with all the necessary gear, and enjoyed a week of skiing and snowboarding. We enrolled the kids in ski and snowboard school and ended up with all-day private lessons because NO ONE was on the mountain. Literally, our kids had two-on-one, all-day lessons with snowboard and ski instructors for a fraction of the cost because they were the only ones in ski and snowboard school.

By the end of our week, our first-time skiers Basden and Caroline cruised down blues, and all of our first-time snowboarding boys looked like they’d been on boards for years. Even after consecutive full days on the mountain, none of the kids were ready to stop. I told Courtney I felt like it was such a GIFT to have this week, pivotal for all of our children in regards to learning skiing and snowboarding skills.

Corbin, Todd, Mama and Papa got there half-way through our week, and then the real fun began. Yummy meals, a home brimming with family and friends, and sunny days on the slopes with our families.

My favorites from our week:
- Down time with the Breedings, long-time friends from church. Our kids were such compliments to each other; everyone but Esther had a perfectly-matched playmate (and even then Essie made her way in to play with whomever she wanted.)
- Simply spending time at Papa’s Mountains – lounging in the lodge with a hot cup of coffee while the kids whisked down sleds from the road to the pond.
- Cameron keeping Esther ALL WEEK while we skied. And then convincing me that she loved every minute of it.
- Corbin and Uncle Alan pulling kids and sleds up the hill on snowmobiles for hours on end.
- Watching Bran and Hud (and Ashton and Sawyer and Foster) scoot down the mountain on snowboards, gliding left and right and jumping like experts. I was amazed at their ability in such a short amount of time.
- Basden’s cautious manner of wanting to ski “pizza-style” and not go too fast with “french fries.” But as she grew more comfortable skiing, her wedge gradually turned parallel without much effort. And she LOVED every minute of it.
- Mama and Papa’s sacrificial love, giving up their bedroom all week for Corbin and me. They flew in from Seattle after keeping River and Nera for a week, and then came “home” to camp out at Cam’s for the rest of the week. As always, they made us feel like a very welcomed disturbance to their quiet and accommodating lodge.

This bragging Mommy must end with a few (very short!) videos. Here’s Bran, Hud & Basden (with Daddy) on the slopes:

These situations lessen my concerns of coordinating Christmas gift wrap, a cluttered garage, and closets that need a catharsis.

We tend to detach from sights and situations that make us feel badly about ourselves – especially when we feel powerless. If we think we can’t do anything about a bad situation, we’d just as soon not have to see it. Here’s the trap, however: If we distance ourselves long enough from real needs, we replace them with those that aren’t. Pretense becomes the new real and suddenly a delay of our new couch becomes a terrible upset. We are wise to force ourselves to keep differentiating between simple inconveniences and authentic tribulations. The more detached and self-absorbed we become, the more we mistake annoyances for agonies. – Beth Moore (Esther study)

I don’t want to lose perspective. At some point I’m going to be the one needing meals, babysitters, prayers, and a listening ear. I’ll need someone to come and and walk a difficult road with me. And I want my family and friends to view me through eternal, grace-filled eyes, to differentiate between inconveniences and tribulations, and to choose me over closets.

Lord, open my eyes to the real needs around me, to where my time and energies might go today. My natural bent is to get side-railed by interruptions and minor disappointments. Help me to see through grateful eyes. I trust you with these families and my own.