plastic cup and a green straw

While we were on vacation, we stayed in a little RV "Resort" close to the beach and close to family, friends, and our favorite restaurants in Huntington Beach. The "Resort" was more of a bunch of parking spots with full hookups for our trailer. It served our basic purposes, but we didn't spend much time there. The showers at the "Resort" left a lot to be desired and our little shower in the trailer is just big enough to soap up the walls and spin around to get clean. Needless to say, we opted to shower at my bro-in-law's place. 

The kids and I would typically go in the evenings but my husband would go each morning to shower while I stayed back and made breakfast in my huge kitchen:

That's right, hash browns and cheesy ham and eggs! 

Now you might think breakfast was the best part of the morning. (I, personally, am a huge fan of breakfast.) 

But it wasn't. 

The best part was when my husband would come back from taking his shower and he'd walk in carrying my love language: 

The Salted Caramel Mocha Frappuccino. Pure heaven in a plastic cup through a green straw! 

*If you have no idea what a love language is, I recommend Dr. Gary Chapman's book: The Five Love Languages. Great book for relationships of any kind!*

(I have to digress here for just a moment for those of you who know my favorite drink is a Treinta Black Iced Tea with Strawberry added, no water, heavy on the strawberry juice, with only 3.5 pumps of Classic Syrup. As much as I love the tea, if I could order the Salted Caramel Mocha Frappe everyday and not get fat from it, I would. Plus, this was easier for my husband to order without worrying about the drink being made wrong. I'm pretty particular about my tea. Now back to the regularly scheduled program...)

Not only did he bring me a taste of heaven in a plastic cup with a green straw, but he would surprise me with it! I love surprises! I love to know that he's thinking of me and doing something special to make my day. 

That guy, speaking my love language, just set the tone for the rest of each day: wonderful! 

It's amazing what a little bit of effort can do in a relationship...

KC

i like my family

Well, we are well into our #CraginAdventures2015 and we are having a great time and no one has bitten any one else's head off, yet... I mean, seriously, we are living in an itty-bitty trailer together with pretty close quarters. However, we've been gone most of the day enjoying our time at Disneyland together as a family for the first time EVER!

Can I just tell you how great it is to have time together that is not school/work/chore focused? I even enjoy making breakfast and dinner for my family. And the kids complain very little about the schoolwork that we do. And the husband, well he's not at work so that alone makes him a happier person.

We need good times together as a family. Yes, it is important to teach our kids to be responsible and to get on them about their chores. And it is important to go to work to support the family. And of course education is valuable. But enjoyable times together, having fun, making memories, just being together as a family unit where everyone is happy - that is priceless!

Now granted, this doesn't have to be at Disneyland and I'll tell you, this might be the only time we experience the Happiest Place on Earth as a family (because wowsers on the cost.) These moments can happen anywhere! Camping (my personal favorite) or a day at the beach, a ball game (did I mention that there is an Angels' game in our very near future?) or even just a couple hours at the neighborhood park. This investment of time is invaluable to the family.

I'd love to show you some of the pictures of our time together on the blog, but unfortunately the internet here at this particular campground has not been my friend on my ipad, which is where I usually post from. So I'll just keep posting on Facebook and on Instagram, where most of you are friends with/following me anyway!

Meanwhile, go find those people that God gave you who mean the world to you and spend some happy time with them. Maybe you'll end up liking them even more!!

KC

memories

Our family is on what I am hashtagging #CraginAdventures2015. My husband planned this awesome 10 day trip down to Southern California and we are finally on our way. It might sound silly, but our first stop is Bakersfield. If you know anything about traffic in SoCal, then you know it is important to strategize your arrival in that region of crazy freeways. This stop in Bakersfield is part of the strategy.

We are currently in an RV resort/park/sort of campground. (Oh! Did I fail to mention that we are camping our way down? Even MORE super fun!) Now this RV resort place is full of those gigantic motorhomes that the owners never come out of except to walk their dogs and we pull in with our teeny-tiny little hybrid trailer and you can hardly see us in between all these behemoths! The kids and I are just itching to see the insides of these RVs because that's the way we are wired: please show us the inside of your RV so we can see how they created all the comforts of home (and even some comforts that we don't own in our home) on a set of wheels! But nobody came outside to invite us in for a tour. 

But that's okay because as I climbed into our little trailer to make dinner, I was at home. Sure we all bump into each other passing through the "kitchen" and we have to take turns brushing our teeth and changing our clothes in the teeny bathroom, but it's home.

Cute lil kitchen

I'm going to go ahead and enjoy the next 10 days in this trailer. It's had lots of memories created in it and a ton more to be made on this trip alone. It might not rival our neighbors in this RV resort place, but it's a lot less to clean, right?! 

KC

#praisingGodforthehybrid 

pity party of 1

Every once in a while I get in a funk where all my brain can focus on is the things that are just sucky right now. Imagine a pre-teen girl: "It's not fair! Why do all the bad things have to happen to me? I hate cleaning my room (house)! Why can't I go shopping and spend a bunch of money on a great new pair of jeans? Why do they have to be so mean to me? Why won't my hair do what it's supposed to do? It's just. not. fair!!" Feet stomping, threats of running away, door slamming....

Okay, so maybe my "unfair things in life" look a little different than that of a pre-teen, but you get a pretty good image of what goes on in my head when I have a pity party. It's not cute, which is typically why I try to keep it in my own head! 

Sometimes I let these pity parties go on too long. They affect my entire day and the people involved in my day. There are times when I will avoid seeing people because it is just too difficult to leave my pity party. 

But I hate being at the pity party so I've been trying to develop a few habits so that I can leave it and get on with life. 

- Pray for perspective - God's got a better outlook on life than I do, maybe He'll share it with me.

- Look for the good - blessings abound, you just have to seek them (this morning, while still in their pjs, my kids cleaned every window on my truck - little blessings!) Focusing on the good tends to push the negative away. 

(Looks pretty good, eh?!)

- Think about how I can change the bad - bad things often won't change unless you make a plan to change them.

- Do something - although sitting under a blanket watching Netflix sounds great right now, it won't get me out of the funk. I have to get busy with something that will take my focus off of myself, something that will make the day better. 

- Get on with life - the kids and I gathered in the freshly cleaned truck, drove to go purchase my favorite tea, listened to some of our favorite songs on the radio and beebopped (yes, I said beebopped) the rest of the way home. 

(This girl always brightens my day as do the people who work there!)

So I've left the pity party. I've got too much to do to waste my time wallowing! 

KC

PS: What things do you do to help you escape your pity parties? 

at the right time

Blessed. 

I can't think of a better word to describe how I feel about the friends that God has placed in my life. 

Over the past few weeks I have dealt with a few very stressful situations, moments that I struggled to swim through. Times when breathing felt difficult. When running away sounded like a great idea. 

But God saw fit to place a few friends and their words of encouragement and uplifting into my life right when I needed it AND THEY DIDN'T EVEN KNOW!!

So my lesson from this: invest in people for they will invest in you.

My other lesson to you: give a good word to a friend when you feel a prompting to do so. Chances are they need it!

I know I did. 

The words of a few good friends saved me from drowning. 

KC

And a word from Pinterest: 

becoming less weak

You know what's overwhelming? Seeing all my weaknesses, shortcomings, and failures. Some weeks it seems like every one of them pops up in a 7 day span. And believe me, there are a lot of them, so when they all start to show up at once, I get pretty overwhelmed. 

Usually at that point I'm ready to give up on all the things in my life: 

Homeschooling (because seriously, how do my kids not have all their math facts memorized yet?!) 

Teaching piano (if the kids aren't practicing, it's because the teacher's horrible, right?)

Exercise (time! Where is the time for such things?!)

Writing (there's a thousand other bloggers out there; why read mine?)

Eating healthy (I don't feel like eating carrots! Spaghettios are easy to make...)

Keeping the house clean (see excuse for exercising.)

Mommying (yeah, I'm making that word up and yeah, sometimes I send my kids to voicemail: "Mom's not here, find someone else who wants to listen to you whine.")

Relationships in general (do you know how many birthdays I have missed?!)

And 75 other things that if I sit and think about them too long, I'll get depressed. 

So

Many

Failures!

I must segway now into what brought this topic up in the first place. My 10 year old daughter came downstairs last night after a tough day, completely frustrated with herself and her behavior. "I try so hard to change, but I'm a bad person and I just keep doing the bad things!"  So we had a conversation about how she was a good person who had weaknesses that she could work on. But instead of trying to change all of them at once, we set a goal for her to work on one weakness at a time. She asked to work on two (because at this point, she was feeling pretty terrible about how she had treated her brother earlier in the day.) 

We wrote out her two goals on 3x5 cards and set them throughout the house as constant reminders for her. And we will leave them in noticeable places for the next couple of weeks until the positive behaviors have become habits for her. 

(Maybe this is a good method, maybe not. But it's something to try and I'll let you know how it turns out. Today was great! But it's only been one day soooo.....)

This little exercise with my girl helped me realize that I often want to fix all my struggles all at once. That's a lot to work on all in one week! And perhaps I need to focus on one or two things at a time. Honestly, trying to fix everything is just going to make me give up and fail even more. So I'll pick a couple of my shortcomings and focus on making them strengths before I bite off anymore.

I guess I can't become perfect in just one week anyway... 

😝

KC