Rachelle D. Alspaugh's Blog, page 58

Back to living frugally

It's been a fun season of birthdays, Christmas, visitors and vacation. A little bit of extra spending here, a little bit there. It all added up. Nothing like January than to tighten the reins and get back on a strict budget. Not only will it help us enjoy a fun summer later, but it also helps us focus on gratitude again. Gratitude for all of our new toys and gadgets. Gratitude for the memories we made. Gratitude for enough money to provide for our daily needs. Gratitude for each day we spend together, even if we can't spend more money to eat out, play, go to the movies or go on a trip.

I'm doing a really cool study on Proverbs right now, and it's funny how it seems to speak so directly to my thought pattern each day. If I'm struggling with avoiding gossip, that's the topic for the day. If I need wisdom with parenting and discipline, that's the topic I find for that day. So, you guessed it, when I started cringing this morning over the need to get back on track financially, I opened up to the topic of money!  God wants me to know He can read my mind, I guess. Lol.

I asked God to help us use the need to tighten up the budget as a good teaching tool for the boys.  Rather than just pay for their upcoming soccer registrations and Disciple Now registrations (both due within the next few weeks), I told them they'd need to sacrifice their allowance for the next two months to help us cover the costs from their second soccer team expenses (high school and indoor).  Neither one seemed to have any problem with that.  Rather than run to the store and use my debit card to buy the dish soap I forgot to get at the grocery store, I sent the boys walking to the store with not much more than a dollar in change to bring me back the cheapest one they could find. Rather than pay for David's choir skating party, I said I'd pay half and he'd have to come up with the other half.

It's the little things that add up, and it's a family effort to get back on track. Now that we have a year under our belt and can foresee more of our expenses with two teenage boys, I feel better prepared. I'm all about debt-free-living, and I look forward to planning wisely enough so we can enjoy several of those things on our wish list for the year. I'm also thankful for the Money Matters class that Juan David is taking at school this semester.  Maybe it will help solidify the things we're teaching him at home. Maybe by the time he finishes the course and has had two full years to be part of our family, he'll be ready to start working part-time. The mom in me keeps holding that part of life off for as long as possible, wanting to give him as many fun life experiences as we can before he has to "grow up".

We'll see. :)

Besides feeling better prepared to budget for the year financially, I also feel better prepared to budget my time and plan ahead for busy weeks. Here goes, since soccer goes into full-swing this week. Juan David has four games and David has one indoor game, plus both of them have a separate youth night at church, Mike has a men's night at church, I have  a writer's group meeting, and Mike and I have a couple's event at church.

Looks like blogging will have to go back to once each weekend. :(

Pics from our New Year celebration

My first attempt at making salpicon, a special fruit drink that our friend made us while in Colombia. We didn't have all the right fruits available at this particular time of the year, so I improvised with diced kiwis, pineapples, mangos, grapes, and pears. I added a special soda called Colombiana and mixed it all up together. We all really liked it.  One recipe I saw called for ice cream. Juan David told me it doesn't normally have ice cream on top, but I tried it, anyway, and loved it! We played Spin Uno while eating it.    We also played Mexican train dominoes and ate some good ol' chips and queso.    Later we had ice cream with arequipe/dulce de leche/(really good caramel treat from Colombia and Argentina) on top.     We ate our 12 grapes at midnight while silently making our wishes for the coming year. 
  I forced everybody to gather together for our first picture of the year. We didn't wear yellow underwear, have our pockets full of lentils, or run around the block with a suitcase. But I tried to make sure I added a Colombian twist to our celebration.

Voices playing in my head

I finished that final edit and sent it back to the editor last night. Besides killing adverbs and eliminating a bunch of to be verbs and helping verbs, I followed her main suggestion to add more dialogue.

"I would love to hear the kids' chatter." That's the way she put it.  So, I added bits and pieces of our actual conversations all throughout the book.  I took out some of my voice and added more of their voices.

That proved a more difficult exercise than I thought. I vividly remember those conversations, but rereading them after I wrote them out took me right back into the moment.  I could hear little "Viviana's" voice in every word she said.

Miss that sweet girl. Can't believe she's almost thirteen already. I sure do hope to find her again someday.

Lost...and found

I looked at this recent picture and remembered something I wrote about Juan David and his sister in Part two of my first book.  While working on my final edit of the book today, I came across the exact paragraph that came to my mind the other day.


"Grief traveled more levels than I knew. We mourned the loss of the kids’ presence in our lives, along with the loss of an assumed reality. We also grieved for them, knowing only a fraction of their loss. They lost a set of parents, a new brother, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins . They ultimately lost the security of a forever family, now for the second time."   Look at that. There he stands with those parents, brother, grandparents, aunt, uncle and cousins that he lost. And this pic only represents one side of his new family, plus even more on this side that aren't pictured.  Couldn't resist sharing. Now back to that final edit. 

First Scripture memory verse of the year

1 Corinthians 4:2 NIV--Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.

Time to look ahead: My goal for the coming year

Today's entry should be short. I don't like to make concrete plans because God usually has something completely different planned for me than I expect. I think my goals and my wishes from yesterday kind-of coincide, anyway.

My true goal, though, is deeper and not so circumstantial.

Last year I felt God saying two words to me. "Embrace life." So I did. I lived more. I spent more. I lived more on the edge rather than according to a plan. Maybe a little too much in all areas. But as much as I'd like to see a little more money saved or invested in a few areas, I can't deny the blessings that came out of embracing all that life had to offer. 

Letting money sit securely in a savings account would not have given us the cool RV story that we have. No way could our savings multiply like the size of the camper did. Planning a simple vacation over spring break rather than trying to see as many people as possible in ten days would not have given me the opportunity to see my grandfather one more time in his earthly life. Staying home when I felt drained would not have given me the opportunity to meet Stormie Omartian, someone who's had a profound effect on my life. Deciding to forego a writing conference because I already had one too many things on my calendar would not have connected me with a friend starting a publishing company with her husband.

This year I hear God saying two new words to me. "Give more." I don't mean just giving to God what is already His. I mean giving to others. Out of fear and anxiety, I can clutch my belongings and my bank account a little too much.  My pastor called it "white-knuckling" in a recent sermon. I received an abundance of blessings over the last year and ended up hoarding them. This year my goal is to give more out of gratitude to God for what He's given me.

Happy New Year!

Time to dream: My 12 wishes for the next year (A Colombian tradition)

Dinner and all the fixings are made for the evening, including a special Colombian fruit drink and our little cups of 12 grapes to eat at midnight. According to Colombian tradition, we are supposed to make a wish for every grape. David and I sat down to write out our twelve wishes this morning so we are ready for tonight. All I said was that they have to be realistic.  They are not necessarily plans or even goals, just wishes of things we'd like to see happen in the coming year if money, time (and God) permit.

To see my sons grow closer to God. They are both at completely different levels spiritually, so  I just hope to see growth in each of them.To connect more deeply with my husband. To travel back to Colombia for a week or so to see Julian, Mercedes and Zayde's family. (You can read all about them when the second book comes out.)To take advantage of our RV to camp several times in different Texas locations, including once to San Antonio and at least once to a beach. David has never been to a beach before.To travel to Pennsylvania to see my brother's family for the first time in over five years, as well as to show Juan David where I came from.To teach another Bible study if my schedule will allow it.To see both books published.To memorize 24 verses for Beth Moore's Living Proof challenge. Two verses a month, starting tomorrow! (Those who complete the challenge are invited to a special retreat in Houston in January of 2016.  So thankful for a Bible study friend sharing her experience doing this before and encouraging us to join in this year.)To stay active and continue eating healthy--eating foods that love you back! To give back/pay it forward out of gratefulness for how others have blessed me.To see and stay more connected with my family. My parents. My brothers. My in-laws. My nieces and nephews. My cousins. My aunts and uncles. My Grandmas.To live with gratitude instead of constant comparison or anxiety. (This one is big for me because I can let anxiety eat me alive if I am not careful.)

Time to celebrate: Fourteen blessings of 2014

When you start focusing on gratitude, your whole mentality changes. You start each day feeling blessed. I will have to say that as I look back over this last year, I feel overwhelmingly blessed.  Here are just a few reasons why:

Juan David seems more attached to this family every day. He feels at home here. He respects the limits more than we thought he would. He stopped trying to "be" his age and seems more content to just experience life. He still makes some odd and extremely immature decisions on a daily basis, but I've seen so much progress over the last six months. Our boys are fully active and engaged in the youth program at church. Our new youth pastor came in with a completely different vision and has a huge heart to develop spiritual leaders within the youth.  He's a country kind-of guy, so Mike relates to him quite well, too. He separated the middle school and high school programs in order to focus more on what each group needs, and he started a new program called Elevate just for the high school kids on Sunday evenings (once a month in a corporate setting, once a month in a small home group just for their gender) that Juan David really looks forward to.  David said he likes the middle school group a lot better now, too, since it is not mixed. They both still go to class together, though, on Saturday evenings, which I love. David participated in a local summer mission trip last year, Juan David went on a high school retreat that really tugged on his heart spiritually, and both boys attended camp for a week. It is a blessing to see both boys develop such a neat relationship with their youth pastor.I am working with a publisher to get both my books out, one who is also a good friend and has a heart to publish books as a ministry. I have been able to work with an editor to polish up my writing, and I got to attend their first annual Christmas party for their staff and their authors. I consider it an honor to work with them, and I look forward to ways I can give back to their ministry. Though I've taken a step back from Bible study, God reminded me that my writing is my ministry for right now. I want both books to point the reader straight to Christ in a more intimate way.We were blessed financially through the Adoption Tax Credit. Once we finally got Juan David's certificate of citizenship so we could complete our taxes, we received enough of a refund to make a lot of needed home repairs, take a few needed camping trips, redo both boys' rooms, and start a small college fund for Juan David.  God gave us an RV. After buying a small RV from a previous coworker of Mike's, we returned home from our second trip absolutely devastated after watching an uninsured driver run into us from behind and destroy our little dream.  After a month of struggling through the emotions of the loss, the insurance company surprised us by covering all of the damages and giving us a check for double what we paid for it.  With that money, we found a newer RV that provides twice as much space inside.  Now we can take friends and family with us camping, plus we have the extra space for people to sleep in when guests come to visit our little home. We love our home group (growth group). Though our group is down to just two couples now (us and them), we are so blessed by this relationship. They love on us and our boys like we are family, they pray for us, and they are always there in a time of need. We are much younger than them and in a completely different stage of life, so we benefit greatly from their wisdom and experience. I honestly don't know where we'd be without them in our lives. I absolutely love teaching PreK. Every weekend and week night, I am constantly reminded of the blessing that a PreK classroom brought to my home life. I don't take school home. I don't grade papers at home. I don't work on lesson plans at home. Every once in a while, I might work on something at home because my time is too cramped at school, but for the most part, I am able to completely separate my work and home life. Plus, those sweet faces light up my world every day and bring me incredible joy. Now that I'm in my second year in this grade, I am able to plan my time and my lessons more wisely in order to prepare them better for kindergarten. We got to spend a week connecting with lots of friends and family over spring break. It was expensive and came before Mike's bonus check even hit our bank, but it was so worth it.  We spent time with Mike's parents, Mike's brothers and their families, his grandma and his aunt and uncle (an uncle we sadly and unexpectedly lost on Thanksgiving Day).  We reconnected with old friends, spent a day with my parents, and got to visit my Grandpa for his 90th birthday (who we also lost the day before Thanksgiving). Plus the boys got to play in a ton of snow.  That trip marks a big highlight to our year, one that we are so thankful we took. No regrets.Soccer. Yes, I did say soccer. I am so glad that both boys share the same interest and passion for the sport (though Juan David is a bit more of a fanatic). The sport keeps me running around like a chicken with my head cut off, but it's so good for both of them. They have had a consistent coach in their life that they look up to, plus they've had consistent relationships with their teammates. We, too, have developed some positive relationships with other parents on both teams. The exercise and teamwork is an added benefit, as well. Now Juan David is playing for his high school, too, so that helps keep him disciplined and focused.Gratitude. It changed my whole outlook. There is always something to complain about or be negative about, everywhere you go. At work. At home. At church. At the soccer field. At the grocery store. In traffic. Etc. But there's always way more to be thankful for if we just take the time to count our blessings. My gratitude journal started 137 days ago with one blessing a day. I turned it into three a day, which led to four or five a day, which now can be up to a half a page a day or more of things I am thankful for. My anxiety level lowered drastically and I actually sleep better now, too. A summer Bible study on prayer. I pulled back during the school year, but I poured all my energy into a study in the summer. What an absolute blessing those ladies became to me.  I am absolutely passionate about prayer, and it touched my heart to see their eyes light up when they started praying God's Word over their lives. A writer's group. They inspire me and challenge me. They encourage me. I love writing, and I love growing as a writer. They are also my guinea pigs when I write about deeper spiritual issues, and I am extra blessed when my writing touches them on a deep level. A finished product. So, this one is more for Mike than for me. He took a whole bunch of "junk trucks", piece by piece, to build his own masterpiece to play in the mud with. I give him a hard time about his hobby way too often because it's so foreign to me, but I have to say that I am quite impressed with his mechanical and creative abilities. My goal is to tell him that more.Two special road trips with Mike.  One for a wedding in Mexico and one for my grandfather's funeral. Neither of which we could have pulled off without the help and support of our friends and family to help with the boys.  We don't have grandparents living nearby to keep them when we're in a bind, but we're so thankful that we have a "family" at church that is always willing to help out. (Plus we're thankful to have Matt and Angie living close by.) Both trips meant a lot to Mike and I to have some quality time together. I could go on and on.  As I look back over the year, I see over and over how much God blessed us. Sometimes with material things, sometimes financially, sometimes with new opportunities, but more often than not, through relationships that He's put into our lives. They are what matter most.

A time to reflect: Fourteen struggles of 2014

This year divided itself in half, as the first half marked the end of our first year as a new family while the second half marked the beginning of our second year. We had a year of firsts and now we are experiencing a year of seconds. For the record, the year of seconds has been much more enjoyable and fulfilling.

Here were some of our defining struggles over the last year, though we experienced many more:

Spreading ourselves too thin. We never had a second child before, so we learned through trial and error about what activities we could handle and what we couldn't. We had to learn how to be intentional with our time, knowing what mattered most and what had to go. The calendar became my best friend (time management) and my worst enemy (not enough margin at times).Getting through the wall of arrogance. I thought it was a typical teenage thing. What sixteen year old boy is not arrogant? Until we finally started to see that little boy trapped on the other side of the wall. He wore all that arrogance as a mask to keep from looking or feeling vulnerable.  He didn't want to admit he had things to learn. All the changes in language and culture (and daily life in a family) completely overwhelmed him, so he acted like he already knew everything he needed to know and refused to let anyone know he needed help. Thankfully, time passed and the wall did eventually start to come down. Patience. Patience. Patience.Truck theft. Talk about a scary, vulnerable experience! I'll never forget reading that text from Mike around 3:00 in the afternoon saying, "Call me. My truck just got stolen!" A huge red F350 pick-up stolen in broad daylight in a busy parking lot. Thankfully, we got the truck back, but not without a fair share of damage and loss.Trying to manage a budget well. Like I said, we never had a second child before, nor have we ever had a teenager. Now we have two. We had to learn how to budget for two (double soccer uniforms, shoes, clothes, birthdays, registrations, camps, events). Not to mention that my grocery bill about doubled by just adding one person who could eat forever and still not feel full. When I thought I got a better handle on projecting an actual budget, unexpected youth events or soccer events seemed to come out of nowhere that threw my carefully planned budget out of whack. Stuff that we didn't foresee because even David entered into a new age group.  Thankfully we have still maintained a debt free lifestyle and have faithfully tithed and saved at least some for college. I haven't left much of a margin in the rest of our spending, though. I hope to be able to plan better financially this coming year now that I know what expenses loom ahead.Taking a step back from teaching Bible study. Okay, so this one is my own personal struggle. I absolutely love teaching Bible study. I love connecting with other women, sharing with them on a deep level, digging into the Word together, and inspiring others to take their relationship with Christ to a deeper level. This year held so much change and extra responsibility for me that I had to take a step back during the school year. I miss it. A lot. But I know that I couldn't give it the time or energy (or passion) that I needed to if I didn't take time to rest and recover from all the stress that our entire adoption journey created in me. I am so thankful for the two ladies who stepped up to lead studies this year, showing me that God prepared them for such a time as this.Getting through the language barrier. I always wanted a bilingual home for as long as I can remember. But having a child who refused to speak English really took a toll on all of us. I am more than thankful for the opportunity to send that child to camp in Colorado for a week in June. He came home speaking a ton of English and hasn't stopped since! What a difference it made in our home.  Teaching a sixteen/seventeen-year-old the concept of dependence on a parent. That boy wanted nothing more than to be trusted and given the same independence as his peers. He lived under so much structure in an orphanage that he could only dream of being independent some day. We held back, and we still hold back. We knew that he needed the security of a family first. He needed to learn how to depend on a parent to take care of his needs, whether he was old enough to take care of himself or not.  We met a lot of resistance for the entire first year. Now we are finally seeing the benefits of holding back that independence he so desired.  Losing our new home on wheels.  I finally started to relax by our second camping trip this summer.  I still could hardly believe we actually owned a small RV. I looked forward to many more family trips and even weekends away with my husband. I felt so blessed, until the car behind us plowed right into the back of the camper, scattering my slippers and bedding all over the highway. A totaled mess, an uninsured driver, and no coverage of our own for the camper. I struggled immensely over the loss, angry at God for letting it happen and not understanding why He took it away.  When I finally learned to say, "I trust You, Jesus, to work Your good into this situation," we ended up doubly blessed with more than we could have imagined.Watching my little boy turn into a teenager. Enough said.Lots and lots of house repairs. New floor. New ceiling in one room. New laundry room. New washer and dryer. New gate. AC issues. Leakage issues. Plus lots of other issues we didn't even touch yet. Finding time to stay connected as a couple. This goes with the first struggle listed about stretching ourselves too thin at times, not knowing how to plan a life we're not quite accustomed to yet. Since I took a step back from Bible study for this semester, we will aim to reconnect through a ReEngage program offered at church that I've heard so many wonderful things about from friends at the Rockwall campus. Taking back control of our health. This, too, may apply more to me. Too much stress caused my body and hormones to go haywire.  Just six months ago, a personal trainer from the gym asked me how I wanted to gauge my success. I said when I don't feel so tired anymore. Between changing my eating habits, getting more active, taking Plexus, and refocusing my thoughts on gratitude rather than on negativity, I truly feel like a different person now six months later.  I still have a lot to work on, but now I have the energy and motivation to keep going.  Missing my parents at Thanksgving. So thankful to be able to spend time with them for Christmas, though. Losing my Grandpa and one of Mike's uncles within a day of each other. We are so blessed to know without a doubt that they are both in Heaven today.All struggles, but many of them turned into blessings. However, tomorrow I will share fourteen specific blessings that may or may not stem from these hardships.

Reflect, Celebrate, Dream and Look ahead

I'm going to break the next three or four blogs into categories over the next few days to end the year and start a new one.  I just read a short e-book on the importance of reflecting and celebrating the last year before making goals for the coming year.  So my blog posts will be the following: Fourteen struggles of 2014 (Reflect), Fourteen blessings of 2014 (Celebrate), 12 wishes for next year/A Colombian tradition (Dream), A goal for the new year (Look ahead). I am looking forward to a week off with the boys to just hang out and to actually have time to write!

Almost every blog will be adoption related somehow because I really want this blog to be an encouragement to other adoptive moms and families.

Stay tuned....