Thinking on the New Year

I love the New Year! Typically, my sweet mother keeps the kiddos so that Don and I can have the evening together. We usually go out to dinner and talk about the up-coming year, look over our family plan and just talk about things we want to do differently. And I think this year we might go see Don's friend's band play at the P&H, but it doesn't start until 10 and that is so crazy late to me! Anyway, I wanted to share some of the questions that Don and I do together. We have been doing them for a few years and I not sure where Don got them, but they have been really helpful in looking at my spiritual life.

1. What's one thing you could do this year to increase your enjoyment of God
2. What's the most humanly impossible thing you will ask God to do this year
3. What's the single most important thing you could do to improve the quality of your family life
4. In which spiritual discipline do you most want to make progress and what will you so about it
5. What is the single biggest time-waster and what will you do about it
6. For whose salvation will you pray most fervently for
7. What's the most important way you will by God's grace, try to make this year different from last
8. What's the most important need you feel burdened to meet
9. What habit would you most like to establish this year
10. Who is the person you most want to encourage
11. What's one way you could be a blessing to your pastor
12. What single blessing from God do you want to seek most earnestly
13. What skill do you most want to learn
14. What one biblical doctrine do you most want to understand better
15. What area do you most need change

Do you have any questions you ask yourself about the new year? Happy New Year!!

Food!!!

This has been a great weekend! My mom came to my rescue and kept my sweet babies friday night and most of Saturday. And I got TONS of stuff done because I was starting to feel overwhelmed with my Christmas list. I finished the super hero capes for my niece and nephews, cooked, did some good cleaning and wrapped presents. I feel so much better! And tonight we just got back from a fun time with our sweet friends the Nelsons. Finally, got to hold their sweet new baby Jonathan, so handsome :) All that to say, my hubby and I went on a date Friday night to Le Chardonnay. And I wanted to share a quick review on it. Those that know my husband and I know that we enjoy food. We love to cook, we love to eat unique and interesting foods and we greatly enjoy the dining out experience. I have heard some people say that food is "just fuel" and I disagree. Food is an experience. Granted every now and then it is just fuel, but more often it should be an enjoyable memorable experience. Even everyday family meals.
We decided on Le Chardonnay because it was one of the places that we had a Groupon for and we had eaten there once before, but only for dessert. At that time it was at a different location and it had a very romantic feel. The new location doesn't have that same feel. While it is still dimly lit and there are candles on the table the T.Vs, open kitchen and the smoking countered the whole romantic atmosphere I remembered. And yes SMOKING! I didn't think you could smoke in restaurants anymore. I would have left if we hadn't already ordered. And typically, I do not mind if the kitchen is open and you can see the chefs cooking, but they were talking loudly and one guy was on break and just leaning on the counter smoking and swearing. It was annoying.
On to the food. It was nothing great. I ordered the grilled mahi mahi sandwich. The piece of fish was very flat and not impressive. However, the remoulade was very tasty, but the sandwich was on a huge sesame bun that completely overwhelmed the fish. I felt like I was eating more bread than anything. But the fries were nice and crispy. We will not be eating there again. My husband wrote a review of the restaurant here if you want to hear his comments.

Here are just a few of our favorite restaurants in Memphis
1. Sweet Grass (we would say it is the best restaurant in Memphis)
2. Elegant Farmer
3. Boscos
4. Trolley Stop
5. 3 Angels Diner
6. It isn't Don fav, but I love Bombay House. He prefers Mayuri
7. Majestic

We both really want to try
1. Andrew Michael
2. Iris
3. Felicia Suzanne's
So, if you have ever eaten at any of those places please let me know what you thought about it.
Goodnight.

My 3 year old and modesty

I didn't think a modesty talk would come so soon between Eden and I. (she is only 3 1/2) I thought that talk would come later on in her little life. Well, it happened when she came in the room with one of her dress up dresses falling off her shoulders. She is a small girl so I just pulled them up like I usually do until she protested and told me no that it was her "Belle dress" and it was suppose to be like that. She then pulls them back off her shoulders and pulls the front down making it lower. It took me off guard for a moment and then I put it together and could see Belle from Beauty and Beast in her flowing, yellow, off-the-shoulder, low-cut dress dancing with the Beast. I didn't know what to say at first. I sat down with her and talked about what is right for girls to wear and how we are to dress modestly. (and attempted to define that word for her) I reminded her that mommy doesn't wear her clothes like that and how some parts of our bodies are not meant for other people to see. Hopefully, it doesn't sound like I am making a bigger deal about this than I should, but I just saw it as a great teaching time for my little girl and myself. I learned a few things from it. 1. For more than just this reason, but it's a big one, I need to watch and be so careful about the clothes that I wear. How much time I spend in the mirror doing my hair and make-up because I have 2 sweet little eyes that are watching me ALL the time. 2. Don't be too busy to stop for teaching moments. 3. What she watches and reads effects her thinking and world-view. Don and I talked briefly if we should continue to let her watch that movie and we concluded that we thought it was still fine for her to watch, but that we needed to be more aware of those type of messages and images in movies. We don't believe in hiding everything from our children, but at the same time we are called to guard them and teach them along the way. Thankfully, after that talk she hasn't tried to make her dresses into "Belle dresses" anymore. That is another post if she does. Oh the joys of raising a little girl!

She loves her accessories!

Not a Christmas entry

So this not going to be anything about Christmas, although I love reading all the Christmas posts lately. My Christmas entry will come later. Today is a sick day for this mommy. I've actually been sick for going on 2 days now. It's nothing horrible just a faucet for a nose, headache, tired, little bit of body aches. I've heard this saying a million times and it's so true about how mom's don't get sick days. Whenever that goes through my head when I am sick I tend to fell sorry for myself. But the hardest thing for me when I am sick is how quickly I get frustrated at my children. I tend to be irritated easily and lose my patience oh so fast! On days like today I try to just take it easy and not be as concerned about housework. I am not as strict about movie time, but at the same time try to have them doing fun things since they are in the house all day. Like today we baked Christmas ornaments and then painted them and I finished my "winter" wreath. (pics will come soon!). (I have no idea how I had the energy to those things.) The biggest thing that struck me today is that even in my sickness I am still called to love and care for my family well. Thankfully there is grace for those frustrating moments, but I am want to try in those moments to not let my sickness and mood cause me to sin against my children. Hopefully, in the morning I will be a millions times better :)