Monday, June 15, 2009

SUMMER DAY 16 & 17 -- Sun & Mon June 14 & 15

The past 2 days have flown by with very swift timing.

At about 2am on Sunday morning, Larry got a phone call from work. He had to leave & go take care of some clients in the middle of the night. We knew when he took this job that the chance was always there, but boy did it mess with my sleep. I couldn't doze back off after he left for nearly an hour. About 3am I got back to sleep & then the alarm went off to get ready for church. I ended up deciding to sleep a little longer & just get to church in time for service. I was working in the nursery, so I took Savannah in with me. With Larry having just arrived home as we were putting on our shoes to head out the door, I knew he wasn't going to be awake enough for Sunday AM church and Savannah isn't comfortable with sitting in church alone just yet, so she got to help me instead.

We came home & made a carrot cake (for small group last night) & then rested a bit before getting up & going again. I'm so glad we did get up & go. We began a marriage discussion study last night. While Larry & I tend to groan and roll our eyes when a new marriage study is suggested, the truth is that it never hurts to be reminded of the basics now & then. With our group being small, it's easy to become close to the people in the group & share very personal stories to help the others (or to ask for help!). Larry and I are remarkably compatible so we very rarely have big issues to conquer these days. (ha ha...we handled all that in the early days of our marriage!) That's not to say that our marriage is perfect, but if I had to rate our relationship on a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give us a 9. It's always fun for me to see these studies & recognize areas that we've dealt with in the past. It's encouraging to see how far we've come and it gives me another reason to praise God!

Just to share one little piece of our study. This is for the ladies! We were given this list at the end of our night's study. It is 25 Ways to Show Respect (to your husband), from the book Becoming the Woman of His Dreams. I hope you see something in the list that you didn't already know. We were challenged to pick out 1 or 2 things that we could work on in the coming weeks (until our next meeting) and then we'll report back on how it went. And so, here is the list:

1. Do not talk down to him.
2. Do not talk badly about him to others.
*3. Do not check behind him to make sure he did something to your standards.
4. Do not disregard his wishes.
5. Do not ignore his requests.
6. Do not laugh at his mistakes.
7. Do not make him the brunt of your jokes.
8. Do not compare him to other men.
9. Do not complain about your finances or his ability as a provider.
10. Do not speak sarcastically or with verbal jabs.
11. Do not roll your eyes when he makes a comment you don't agree with.
12. Do not continually "have a better idea".
13. Do talk to him in a pleasant tone.
14. Do speak highly or compliment him in front of others.
*15. Do allow him to do tasks his own way & then thank him when he is finished.
16. Do value his opinions.
17. Do try to fulfill his requests.
18. Do support his decisions.
19. Do thank him for providing for your family.
20. Do allow him to make final decisions.
21. Do support him in his decisions, regardless of the outcome.
22. Do avoid the words "I told you so".
23. Do take care of your appearance.
24. Do ask his opinion about your clothes or hairstyle.
25. Do tell him you are proud of him.

You'll see where the *s are.....those are the 2 I selected to work on. I think he & I both do pretty well at all the others, but I know I need to work on those! (and yes, I showed him this list when we got home last night & he knows that I'm going to work on those 2!!)

Today, Samuel attended his first day of basketball day camp at the high school. Yes, this is the 2nd week in a row that he's gone to a day camp of some kind. And yes, I have a very short & tiny child....but he loves basketball! It's only 3 hours in the morning for 4 days. He had so much fun today!!

When he got home, we had lunch & hung out at the house til some friends of mine called. We were expecting the call! You see, we met online through a mutual friend & have hit it off well. They live a couple hours from here and went on vacation this past week. In coming home from their trip, they passed through town & called to meet us at McDonald's. You may remember them from pictures that I posted last year about this time when they did the same thing. It was fun to spend some time with Mark & Terry Finley and their kids Carl & April. What a sweet family!

Last June:

Today:

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Liz, I didn't realize that I had changed that much in a year! Oh my! Thank you for meeting with us. I guess you figured which shirt is Mark's favorite to wear to Tyler! LOL :)

Terry

Lisa@BlessedwithGrace said...

Sounds like the "girl talk" was good and this list is something in need to remember. Hope you are having a great week.

Amanda said...

That's a good list. Hard to do sometimes....but good!

Darcy said...

It's cool to compare pics like that!

What's funny is that the gentleman is wearing the EXACT same shirt on!