Love Brightly

So as you know from my previous post , my Kindergartener has had a rough start. Today she said, "I liked school a little bit better today...but not a lot better." Then she said, "I feel like I'm dreaming. Whenever I walk past a mirror or some glass at school, I look at myself and think, 'I can't believe I'm already in school.'" [ ok, is it just because I'm her mother that I find not only her self-reflection but also her ability to articulate it pretty incredible? ] Then she looked me square in the eye and said, "What if I AM dreaming? Maybe you should pinch me." I smiled in wonder at her and said, "Baby Girl, you aren't dreaming." "How do you know?" [ What? Has she seen the movie Inception? My 5-year-old is contemplating whether her current reality is in fact reality? Again, I'm amazed by her. ] I replied, "Because I know that I am not asleep. I am not dreaming, and this is really happening, and...

Our "Baby Girl" started Kindergarten this week. She is all smiles in this picture. But pictures can be deceiving. Actually, she's been dreading the start of Kindergarten. She's cried at the thought of going. She had a wonderful school-like experience this summer, and she's missing her friends and teachers from there. She doesn't want to make a new start with all new people. She's afraid of learning her way around in new buildings and learning new rules. She doesn't want to leave mommy and her brother and sister during the day. All these things legitimately cause anxiety for us grown-ups when we are transitioning. We thought, "Once she has her first day, she will have so much fun, and that will ease her transition anxiety." But we were wrong. Her first day was terrible. All of the fears in her little mind came to fruition: she got lost in the hallway, she didn't make a new best friend "as good as Ivy, or Abby or Emma." Sh...

Summer is always an adventure for us because we pack up our life for 2 months and move our family into various housing situations. The challenge always makes for a perspective-refresher, and usually a story to look back on and laugh (many of you have mentioned to us personally our Summer at the Peter Pan ). We lived in the Silver Slipper motel in Branson, which before our arrival failed multiple city inspections and probably housed only cockroaches. The Slipper had a gigantic light-up high heel for a sign which turned in the moonlight. It was the type of motel that upon sight, you would assume that the glowing slipper was not the only thing that had been turned in the moonlight there, if you know what I mean. Since that summer, the city bulldozed the place to the ground. We've lived in a community-bath, non-air-conditioned dorm room in 95 degree heat while I was 6 months pregnant. I never had to endure community-bath while in college, but while married and pregnant, I walked down...

I don't know why Jim's rules allow for 5 movies and only 3 books on the Deserted Island. (I don't really understand how we get to watch the movies either--did a portable device with limitless battery float ashore?). No matter. Not my rules, so we played along. Karl and I both immediately said, "#1: The Bible," and he replied, "That's a given. Let's each pick 3 in addition to that." [And this is where one bent rule led to us making up our own game...but I'll get to that in another post]. While I selected my movies based on criteria of enjoyment and inspiration, the printed word can have so many more functions than that, so we made our choices based on which books would prove most advantageous to us in a deserted island environment. At first I thought about grabbing a medical-self-diagnosis book and an encyclopedia of tropical plants, but then I thought that in isolation, my MIND would need more protecting than my physical body (even though my ...

Remember the episode of The Office, Season 2 "The Fire?" Everyone's hanging out in the parking lot waiting for the fire department to do their thing, so they play "Desert Island" to pass the time. On our 14 hour drive home from Colorado, we used this game to pass the time/stay awake between the hours of 1AM and 3AM while our kids slept in the backseat. We attempted to stick with Jim's rules: 3 books, 5 movies that you could bring with you if you were stranded on a deserted island--apparently stranded permanently or at least indefinitely because he said, "These are the movies you will watch FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE." I don't know why, but I took this assignment very seriously. I determined to make my choices with the wisest precision. I needed criteria for narrowing the candidates, and landed on these components that, for me, make up my favorite movies: A.) Character growth B.) Good vs. evil struggle with good triumphing C.) Based on actual ev...

I've been wanting to change the name of this blog for a while. A facebook friend mentioned a while back that blogs are "self-promoting." While I can't deny that blogs are in part: read what I have to say; I hope that no one would ever get the impression that I am trying to promote myself through what I am saying. The purpose of this blog is to promote someOne greater. I hope that the stories I share here will be pieces of the Bigger Story that is going on in this world, and I and my family play just one little part--no more important than anyone else's part. Average, if you will. Hmm...but the name of the blog is: Not Your Average Armentrouts. Well, I've always meant "average" to mean "typical", but that doesn't have any fun alliteration. Upon discussing this with my mom, she suggested, "Atypical Armentrouts", but I felt like that made it sound like we were from outer-space or something. So here's the new name (probably no...