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Overcoming the Fear of Letting My Kids Play Outside

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Allstate. All opinions are 100% mine.

I really dislike watching the news. In the news world, the saying goes if it bleeds it leads and honestly that truth depresses and scares me. I don’t want to hear about kids getting kidnapped, raped and killed. I don’t want to hear about gun shootings and burglaries even though I know it happens.

As a mom, hearing those stories scared me to the point that I didn’t want to let my kids do anything by themselves especially play outside. I know that we live in a different day and age, but I can remember riding my bicycle from dusk to dawn and not having a care in the world. I'd hang out at my neighbor's house, we'd play outside all day and we weren't glued to our televisions. I want that for my kids.

With our first child, we would constantly buy toys and gadgets just to keep her entertained. She rare;y played outside in our neighborhood. Then I got to thinking that the reality of something bad happening is rare. I had some tough choices to make, but I wanted to give my kids the opportunity to go outside, play ball, ride their bikes and enjoy our beautiful neighborhood.

I started by creating rules that they needed to have their sibling with them at all times and were required to check-in every 30 mins. We also created boundaries of where it was acceptable to play. We also got our children accustomed to our whistle. We'd whistle for them, letting them know it was time to come home.

It took a while but I finally got over my fear of letting my kids go outside and play. I still get worried now and then, but I don’t let the fear control my life.

My kids are enjoying life. They are getting plenty of exercise, they aren't attached to their television and gadgets and they've made some great friends in the neighborhood.

Allstate Good Life is also taking a stance of a good life, be sure to check out the following video:

I'd love to hear your story about something in your life that you were once fearful of, but overcame that. Comment below if you are willing to share. In the meantime let's all enjoy a good life!

Dealing With Disappointments in Life

Dealing with disappointment is hard and often times you’ll hear the saying…. things happen for a reason? Do you believe it?

If you are saying yes, how do you feel when it happens to your children? As parents we want to encourage our children and shield them from any type of disappointment they may receive in their lives and it gets even harder when you find yourself as disappointed than they are.

For the past few months, our family has been praying for our daughter to pass her tests. Today we found out that she didn’t pass the test and God hasn’t answered our prayer and to be honest I’m mad. In Matthew 7:7 it states “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”

What I have to remember is that I’m not on God’s timeline. Jeremiah 29:11 says “For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.”

Dealing with disappointment is hard on any level and it’s not an easy pill to swallow. Sometimes it takes a painful disappointment to teach us how to strengthen our faith and skills. For we don’t know God’s will, we just have to trust in his promise.

Dealing with disappointment is easier if you try to follow these 4 tips:

1. Continue to Pray. Remember that God is true to his word.

2. Turn the negative into a positive. This event can be a life changer or make a difference in yours or someone else’s lives. You can also ask yourself if you could have done something different?

3. Be Patient. We are on God’s time not our own. He will answer our prayers when he is ready to and sometimes his answer may be no.

4. Let it out. It’s OK to be upset and angry and talking with someone can help. Just be sure that the person you are talking with is positive.

What suggestions do you have when dealing with disappointment?

I Almost Resigned being a Stay at Home Mom

I’ve been a stay at home mom for 3 years and right now I hate it. I’m exhausted! I feel like I’m so far underwater with everything and the tide just keeps raging in and I can’t come up for air. I enjoy being home for my family, but I don’t enjoy the duties that come along with it. When I’m working – I feel more adapted to deal with all of the crap that is handed to me, because I’m getting paid for it. At home I don’t. I just try to take it and smile as if I enjoy it and that’s really hard to do.

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Tell Me To Stop Comparing Myself

I got this t-shirt a few weeks ago from Hallmark that said, Tell Me.. and had a big quote that I was to write in. I really thought about this and wanted it to be meaningful.. so I came up with “To stop comparing myself”.

I compare myself way too much to others! Whether it’s my faith, my mothering skills, my blog, my looks, my cooking and I can probably list a thousand more things, I’ve compared myself to someone.

Do you find that you do that as well?

Then I realized that comparing yourself can be an evil thing, and honestly I think this is one way the devil tempts us to fill our heart with envy.

I recently had the opportunity to hear Jon Acuff speak and he said something that I constantly keep playing over and over in my head. Jon Acuff said, “Don’t compare your beginning to someone else’s middle.” Isn’t that a fabulous saying?

We all have our own natural gifts and abilities and no one is alike, so really who am I comparing myself to? Then I asked myself who do I want to look up to? I know their is one person I look up to, that I want to make proud. As long as I’m doing the things in my life that he’s guiding me in, that’s all I can really ask for and I hope that one day when I see my father above. He will tell me, good job!

The 30 Day Giving Challeng – Hear Someones Need

On Halloween, my neighbors stopped by. We have lived next to each other for the past 7 years and we’re really “Hey” Neighbors. We just have short conversations and go on about our business. We’ll the reason they stopped by was to drop off some candy for our kids. My neighbor told me how exhausted him and his wife were and how they weren’t going to hand out candy this year but thought of my kids and wanted to make sure they had something for them.

This was so sweet that they thought of my children even though they were exhausted from all the events happening in their life, they still took the time to give.

This made me think of the 30 Day Giving Challenge. All I can remember is hearing my neighbor say how exhausted they were and thought about how I could help.

While I’m cooking dinner this week I plan on making an extra serving and bringing it over to them when they come home from work. It’s a way for me to give and take some pressure off of their exhaustion.

So my challenge for you this week is to “hear” someone’s need and to give within that need.

I’d love to hear your giving stories this week or a story about someone who gave to you.

The 30-Day Giving Challenge – Giving to your spouse

I’m so excited this year to participate in the 30-Day Giving Challenge and I hope you will be too. Let me ask you when it comes to giving what do you think of? Do you think you have to donate, volunteer or give money? We’ll giving can be done in various ways and for this first post, I’m going to focus on giving to your spouse.

This post is inspired by my husband who recognizes that I’m often drowning.

Let me back up to explain how I’m drowning.

As a stay at home mom, active church member, wife, blogger and student I have a tendency to take on multiple tasks without a thought involved in it. Sure I can do it is my mentality and often times I can do it. We’ll over the past few weeks, I have to sadly admit that I couldn’t do it. Being stubborn as I am, I won’t admit to it. Which is crazy because if I were truly drowning, I’d yell for help!

We took a short vacation, I had several projects due, a few cakes to make for my boys birthday and many more things on my plate. Well during this time of being extremely busy, I fell sick. Being out of commission for a few days, you start to see the house fall apart and when I finally started feeling better, I just couldn’t get back on track of things. I’d tackle one thing to fall behind in the other. This became extremely frustrating and instead of asking for help, I become angry. Every little thing starts to bother me. BTW… did I mention.. I still haven’t asked for helped.

Why don’t I ask for help? I don’t ask for help because I don’t feel he should help, he worked his 50+ hours this week and I’m the stay at home mom and these are my tasks.

My husband recognized that I was drowning and he threw me a life vest and saved me! He helped me cleaned, did laundry and just helped me get back to normalcy. Afterwards he tells me, why didn’t you just ask me for help? I don’t always recognize that you need help and unless you tell me, how can I help! Don’t you know that I would gladly help you?

So my inspiration for giving this week is to give to your spouse. Take a look to see what your spouse may be drowning with and lend a helping hand (life vest).

Our Life – Online School, Public School and Home School

Tomorrow, is the big day for Back to School.

We’ve had a great summer, I was able to have some fun with my kids, re-design my blog and get a few things back on track, however I still wish summer wouldn’t end.

I can’t believe that I have a Junior – 2, 2nd graders and a preschooler.

We’ve got a whole lot going on and various different types of school in our house.

My ‘Junior’ attends online school. We removed her from the public school system at the end of her 9th grade. I can’t tell you how blessed I feel making this decision. Online school isn’t for everyone but for her it is. She is learning at her own pace and doing extremely well in school, I’ll be anxious to see how this year works out, she is striving for all A’s!

my ‘2nd graders’ attend public school. What more can I really saw about this, except they enjoy it and don’t want to be home or online schooled, so I’m not forcing it at this time.

my ‘preschooler’ who is 3, will be 4 soon. I’m homeschooling. I’m so excited this is our first year. I’ve always wanted to home school, but didn’t have the confidence in myself. Questions that would pop through my head were: Do I have the patience? Would I have the knowledge? What in the world am I going to teach? Would it cost me a fortune? I really didn’t want to spend a lot of money on a curriculum if I couldn’t follow through, but after hours of research I finally found a website that is pointing me in the right direction.

www.letteroftheweek.com

Now, I don’t have a clue on whether or not this outlined curriculum will work for my child. I haven’t tried it yet and have no opinion. However, the thing I wanted to share with you was the curriculum. By looking this over, it gives me the exact direction I need and steps on how I can work with my child. So if you are looking for a preschool – elementary curriculum check out this site. I plan on using this as a basis and tweaking this to suit our life.

Do you home school? If so I’d love to hear the types of curriculum you use.

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MomsLifeboat ~ Las Vegas, NV
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