In the Good Ole Summertime

School has been out two weeks and I can't believe what a little rest, relaxation, time to work on projects, time to read, and time to sleep in can make in my life!  I have even spent two days at the school organizing my room and making room for 100s of new books!  It's like Christmas for me!  I love books!!  My first week started out with a surprise visit from Whitney and Sue!  I was so excited to see them!  Sue brought me a new muu-muu with cats all over it.  It is pink with pockets and zips up the front!  These kind are hard to find, I tell you!  I immediately put it on and stayed in it the rest of the day while we visited and laughed together!  Evan spoiled us all by making crepes for breakfast, flammkuchen for lunch (German pizza), and Hawaiian burgers for dinner.  It was a perfect day!  They stayed the night and we had more time the next day to visit.  I think gifts of time are my very favorite kind of surprises!!!

Last weekend we drove over the mountain down Highway 89 to Kanab, UT.  It is so beautiful there with the vermillion cliffs surrounding the area!  Abby and her friends played in a softball tournament.  They won all of their games until the last one, taking 2nd place again Enterprise.  They played with heart and I wonder how they did it in the 106 degree heat!  Ugh!  I couldn't wait to get back to the Crazy Horse Campground and jump in the pool!  It was so refreshing!  So this week I have been working on organizing files, bins, my closet, and working on a budget spreadsheet to get us on track and out of debt!! 

Tomorrow we will be swimming at Veyo Pool for a get together with my side of the family.  I love going to Veyo, another beautiful setting around a refreshing pool of water.  A perfect way to spend a hot summer day!  Next week the girls will be at Girls Camp, so I plan on scrapbooking.  It has been such a long time since I've done anything with my scrapbooks.  Whitney will be coming out for a few days too.  Evan has been weeding and adding pretty flowers to our front yard.  My favorite flower is the daisy.  They are such a simple and happy little flower!  I love that he has always kept a variety of flowers in our yard and that they don't die within a few days.  We have daisies, petunias, lillies, coreopsis, and more that I have no idea of their names.  Anyway, here's a sample:

Natural Man/Woman Tendencies

As I sit here at the keyboard sipping my first ever green smoothie, my "natural man/woman" would much rather be sipping a Coke and biting into a fresh donut!  Ugh!  This is what I am talking about....and I think some of you know very well what I am talking about today.  Mosiah 3:19...a well known scripture in the Book of Mormon that I first learned about in my beloved Seminary days.  The thing is, I had no clue what it meant back then when I was so "perfect". LOL!!  Fast forward 30 years to the present.  This scripture continuously lurks in my mind; it is staulking me! 

"For the natural man is an emeny to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father."

SUBMISSIVE? I want to call all the shots around here!  No one is going to try to control me!  (Something my mother taught me at a young age!)
MEEK?  I am beyond meek....I am pathetic and weak when challenges overtake me!  I want to give up.
HUMBLE?  I am beyond humble....I have self-defeating thoughts, behaviors, and actions....my mother has told me this since I was young.  I am my own worst enemy.  I have to pick myself up after brutal beatings often.
PATIENT?  Hardly.  I used to think of myself as patient, but I am a 2nd grade teacher.  I think through the years, certain students have sucked the patience right out of me.  The last ounce of it was sucked dry this past school year while attempting to teach one of my own relatives.  I am stilll recovering.
FULL OF LOVE?  I am full of love for my own immediate family and close friends, however, I have little tolerance for others who neglect their own family and have screwed up priorities.  I am becoming jaded by people that I encounter.  I don't trust as much.  I don't socialize as much.  I don't love as much as I once did.
WILLING TO SUBMIT TO THE LORD? I am proud in that I think I can handle whatever comes my way on my own.  After turmoil, stress, insomnia, tears, and frustration.....then I turn it over to the Lord.  Why not sooner?  I don't know.  I am proud of being self-driven and independant most of the time.  It is extremely humbling to have to ask for help, even to my Father in Heaven.  But without a doubt, I know when I finally get to this point, He is always there for me and will get me through whatever it is I am facing.

To further explain:
I'd rather go back to bed, but I need to clean the house!
I'd rather sit and watch a movie, but I need to go exercise!
I'd rather read a good book, but I should be reading more scriptures.
I'd rather write in my journal, blog or go on Pinterest, but I need to pay bills and run errands.
I'd rather stay at home and not work, but I have to work to help provide for my family.
I'd rather live in a warm climate, but this is where our family is and where we have good jobs.
I'd rather wake up skinny, but my clothes continue shrinking in my closet.
I'd rather spend money on fun things like vacations, clothes, and my girls, but I have a mortgage, insurance, vehicles, and utilities to pay instead.

Well.....this natural woman (who is sitting all too natural in my nightgown with no make up, bed head hair-do, cactus legs & pits, Coke-bottle thick glasses on, no bra, and almost done with her green smoothie (which now looks like baby poop) is going to go muster up some energy to get showered and move on with this day.  Thanks for stopping by.

And now you see why this scripture is a blessing and a curse to me right now. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

WOW! Where did 2012 go to?  It has been a year since I have blogged.  Life got crazy, our computer died, and I kind of lost interest in blogging for a while.  I don't know that many people even read my ramblings on besides my sister, Sue, but what the heck....here's a new post!!

It is 3:55 am and this is the second time this week that I have had insomnia!  Only this time I have not slept even a wink ALL NIGHT!!! Those who know me will understand that I value my sleep very much, even more than food!!  This is so annoying since I have to be to work in three hours and there is an inservice today that I cannot miss!  My eyes are burning; they are bloodshot and puffy!  All my usual strategies have not worked either....prayer, music, writing, oils, melatonin, warm herbal tea, more music...so why not blog while I have this quiet time!?  I can't even figure out how to insert a picture here.

It has been an amazing year for the Schimbecks!!  Whitney & Trent were married in the St. George Temple and just celebrated their one year anniversary!  They are doing well.  Whit is teaching at the school I taught at while Trent is attending Dixie State College.  Taylor had another successful year in dance, academics, and her Foo-Foo business.  She started her first job at the pharmacy this past Fall.  She is quite the saver, too!Abby had another successful year in sports; she played basketball, volleyball, and softball.  She is such a sporty spice!  She is quite the little baker too!  All her desserts certainly don't help with our weight issues!  Evan is busy with City Council, Beautification Committee, CCW classes, woodworking class, golfing and coaching whenever he can fit it in.  As for me, I am trying to keep myself from going completely insane with school and keeping up on the house.  Teaching is getting more difficult as the standards continue going up for the teachers while the behavior and family dynamics seem to be declining more each year.  It is heartbreaking and very frustrating.

We were able to take the trip of a life time and fly to Germany to visit our Freeman and Hoh families there.  We were able to spend two weeks with them and traveled to Munich, Bitche, and Paris.  It was a fabulous trip and we are planning to go again in the future!  We all had a wonderful time seeing another part of this beautiful planet we live on!  Evan and I made it to our 25th Anniversary date!  We were able to take another family trip to Disneyland in October making it Trent's first trip!  What a blast it was!  Christmas came and went way too quickly and here we are halfway through the first month of a new year!  I'll post photos when I figure this out.  Stay tuned.....