What I learned in April

Today I am linking up with Emily’s Let’s Share What We Learned in April.

• If you never sit down to write a post on what you learned, you may think you didn’t learn anything at all to write. So sit down and try anyway because you most certainly did learn something.

• I would have to work hard cleaning my home daily (like a 40+ work week) to actually keep it perfectly spick and span, so it’s only moderately clean on an average day.

• I really love having dinner parties at my home. I hosted Easter dinner for my family and my neighbors and was blessed by the joy it gave me to have them in my house and to spend time enjoying their company.

• I bought a new patio table from Sear’s. I learned that they are behind the times on their software and abilities, and that’s why they are as Daniel says, “a dying company.” However, because they are behind the times, I saved $80, and that’s no small thing.

• It only took me 10 years to make the patio area my own, and now we eat dinner out there. Table life is richer as a result, because we are happier outside listening to the birds and hooting to the barred owl. “Who, who, who cooks for you?” we hoot back to the owls and watch the pair when we get to glimpse them.

• I love stringed colorful patio lights.

• I am going through something that as Emily’s says in this post is really hard to write about. I desperately want change. It seems like any change will do, and while I love my new patio table, it is really heart change I am longing for. I feel a sense of being in limbo as a result.

• Having people preread the posts you are uncertain about is invaluable. I need to be in a group of people who aid each other in the craft of writing.

• We actually can park two vehicles in our garage despite all the stuff stored there.

• I love reading old posts from Happy Harper Stories and hope to begin resurrecting them over here in this space soon.

• I need to rewrite my “About” page because currently this blog is more a hodge podge of writings than posts that follow the mission of this blog.

• My kids still love to dress up.

• Girl scouts camp fires are fun, and I’m not the only one having a mid-life crisis. 🙂

• Sometimes God opens opportunities when we open our heart for them and Him.

• My husband is a storm preparedness ninja, and despite the fact that year 11 of marriage is hard right now – he’s the best around.

• It does not pay to be clumsy in the kitchen. I dropped a pan of rolls on both my arms on Easter and got a first degree burn on my left and a second degree burn on my right.

• Lavender essential oil is the most soothing burn medicine around, and I will not ever be without it again.

• I am allergic to medical tape which I did not know and, this did not help my burn heal.

• When an air compressor burns out on your van, it will drain the battery, and you will have to spend an exorbitant amount of money to get it fixed.

• I am ready for shmita to be over at the end of May, and conversely, I am tired of school. (The irony is the I am ready for my rest period to be over, and yet I am ready to rest from school.)

• I am ready to be back in a community of women again.

• I learned how to podcast.

• Receiving this much candy or anything for a holiday makes me mad. Mad because I don’t know what to do with it other than eat it or throw it away, which is wasteful, and mad because there are starving children and the money used to buy all this stuff could have gone to them instead.

• Field day is just as fun and exhausting for the parents as it is for the kids.

• Joining Amazon Prime can suck one into countless hours of catching up on TV series, like Parenthood, or movies that you’ve never seen. And viewing Parenthood on your kindle makes cleaning a whole lot more fun even when you cry every episode.

So, what did you learn in April?