Yesterday we had a great father’s day, complete with my wonderful husband grilling his own celebratory dinner.  (In case you’re wondering, we had steak, grilled parmesan veggies, and grilled potatoes.)  He is a good man who tries to do the right thing.  He is a great father, reading and playing with the kids.

My son had been waiting for the tooth fairy to come for the last few days.  Luckily the tooth fairy finally remembered to come.  She wrote an extra-special note on a piece of toilet paper that explained why she’d been held up. (In a melee between the trolls and dwarves.)  He quite enjoyed that this morning along with the $1 bill.

Today was busy mainly because of sick kids.  4 year old started it off with croup and fever on Sunday and the 2 year old and 7 year old had symptoms today but didn’t get as sick as he did.  The 4 year old enjoyed a full day of cartoons, and the other kids helped him watch whenever I wasn’t reminding them not to.  What’s up with croup in the middle of June?

I tried to be extra patient with my patients, but I’ve gotta admit I wasn’t as kind as I would’ve liked.  I did try, though, and I did do better than usual.

Are you patient with those who need your patience the most?

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We’ve been busy with the book sale the last two days!  I taught a couple of classes during the book sale.  My favorite one is Raising Heroes: Use Your Super Powers.  I love sharing that message.  One thing I teach is that I’ve discovered we have (at least) 5 major problems with our brains.  We were designed this way so I’m certainly not knocking God’s creation!  But it’s good if we can be aware of these problems so we can choose to overcome them.

Brain Problem #1: Forgetfulness
I’m not talking about putting the leftover baked beans in the cupboard instead of the fridge (yeah, we found them there…) I’m talking about how our brain tends to forget who we really are. When we forget, we experience fear and anxiety.

Brain Problem #2: Path of Least Resistance
Our brains are inherently lazy.  We don’t like change and we think our comfort zone feels, well, comfortable.  Your comfort zone is defined by how you normally think. That’s why getting out of your comfort zone is so difficult, you have to force your brain to take a different path.  Our brains are so good at coming up with reasons why we shouldn’t do things.

Brain Problem #3: Worst Case scenario
Our brains tend to think of the worst case scenario.  We worry and have fears that really aren’t even that logical if we’d stop and think about it. “My child can’t read, he’s going to be an absolute failure! He’ll never get into college!” (and the kid is 4 years old!)

Brain Problem #4: It is always right
Our brains tend to think that it is always right. Whatever we think, must be correct because we see evidence to prove it!  But what we don’t realize is that our brain LOOKS for evidence to support whatever we are thinking.  If we can consciously change our thinking about any given situation, our brains will start looking for new evidence.  It is very difficult to change your thinking when you think you are right, but if you are not happy – well, then– you are not right.

Brain Problem #5: It knows everything already
Our brains are pretty sure that it already has all the information it needs.  Our brain would be perfectly satisfied to stay where it is and yet we will feel frustrated because we things just aren’t working like we think it should.

Instead of just letting our brains run our lives, we need to start running our brains.  Look at what happens (see above) when we are on autopilot!

When I got home today, I told the 5 youngest I would take them to the pet store.  I rarely do spontaneous fun stuff like that.  You should’ve seen how excited they were!  My brain was telling me “Why would you even think of such a dumb idea as taking five kids to the pet store?  It’s such a hassle.  You have other things to do.”  I told my brain “Because they will love it.  And it’s not even really that big of a deal.  Get over it!”

What kindness are you allowing yourself to do?

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We are getting ready to hold a community book sale!  All the craziness involved with the preparations makes for a rather unstructured day, with dinner at 8pm consisting of a pre-dinner snack of doritos and then reheated leftovers that no one was too keen to eat.  Ah well.

This morning the girls and I were trying to price all of our books.  The two little ones were bopping around, rearranging things as little ones will do.  The 12 year old didn’t want to help, so instead he annoyed the little ones.  I was already feeling under pressure because we had more things to price than time in which to do it.  And I admit it, I lost my cool with him.  I got mad at him!

I began to think to myself, “He deserves it, my goodness is he being annoying!  He should know better when we’re trying to get things done.  Why does he have to bug the little kids?… ” and so on and so forth.  I was totally justifying my anger.  And then I began to wonder what it was that he needed and how I could change my thinking that he was an annoying person, when he was clearly being annoying.  I realized some things: (1) he needed something to do (2) He needed to feel valued and (3) I needed to apologize.   I apologized for getting angry with him.  And then I gave him some tasks to do that were useful and helpful and I thanked him for it.  It was amazing how he calmed down after that.

The bigger thing that was amazing to me was that later, I actually heard him apologize to his sister when he got mad at her!

Do you justify your unkind behavior?

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Did you miss me?  On Tuesday, I opted to get off the computer early as my kindness!  And on Wednesday, I spent the afternoon getting our budget up to speed so that in the evening my husband and I could have a quick budget meeting.  (That was my kindness to him, I did more prep work than I usually do!)

Today we had my 2 year old niece and 4 year old nephew over for the day.  Fun to have two sets of little twins around the house! My brother and his wife both work right now so my big kids get to babysit their kids every week.  As part of the deal, the kids are supposed to help clean up after the little messy kids.  My son got to run off to a pool party and ran out of time to clean up before he left.  I helped him out and cleaned up half the playroom.  He’ll be happy to see that his job isn’t as big as he thought when he goes to clean it tomorrow morning.

What kindness have you done today?

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My 12 year old son really wanted some new running shoes.  He knew exactly which ones he wanted and he picked them out a couple weeks ago.  They were at Kohl’s for $50.  Since he has to buy his own clothing, I told him that if we waited, we would find a much better deal on them.

Yup.  We waited and I found a bunch of good coupons to use.  I decided I could be kind enough to squeeze in a quick trip over to Kohl’s to get the shoes today, even though the day was already rather packed.  Unfortunately, our Kohl’s store only had 3 pairs left, and of course not his size.  We found out that the store 20 minutes away had his size.  Of course we needed more gas on the way.  So our quick little trip wasn’t so quick.  But, he got his shoes and only had to pay $27 for them. He was happy!

Do you make time to do kindnesses for others?

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Another beautiful Sunday!  We have lots of those here.  Beautiful AND busy.  Last night, my husband, 17 year old daughter and 12 year old son returned from Mexico for their 9 day service trip!  They had a great time, although they did battle the stomach bug a bit.  They finished building a small home, drywalled/insulated and visited an orphanage. The younger kids (all but the baby) stayed up to see them, they were excited!  But of course that meant they stayed up way too late.  I’m just glad we had 11am church, and not 9am.

After church, I prepped dinner, ran over to the a board meeting, finished making dinner, ate dinner, had our planning session, then put the two little ones to bed.  All the while, my 7 year old daughter kept asking if I’d have time to look at a bag of clothes a neighbor dropped by for our girls.  Even though it was later than I wanted, I made the time to help her look.  And it made us both happy.

Are you making time to be kind?

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My missionary! Disclaimer: This pic has nothing to do with the story.

We went to my nephew’s baptism today.  Unfortunately my sister was throwing up all night and couldn’t go to her own son’s baptism.  She not only felt totally yucky, but she was so sad that she couldn’t be there for his special day.    My mom usually takes notes, but she was watching my brother’s little girl who was fussy so she couldn’t.  I got the thought that I should take notes during one part of it, and I realized that I actually could do it without any extra trouble at all – my 2 year old had just been coloring in my notepad but was done with it so I was ready to go.  At least now I could give my sister a little summary!

Afterwards we headed to her house for a lunch with both sides of the family.  She was, of course, still sick in bed!  That’s so frustrating to have stressed out about prepping a luncheon and cleaning up your house and then not being able to follow through with it all.  But it all went very smoothly and everyone pitched in to help.  It was a delicious lunch, too!  Sorry she had to miss it, but like my dad said, “in a way, being sick in bed is the way to throw a family lunch – you can just lie in bed!”  ha!

What kindnesses have you been able to do because God has made it so simple for you?

Wanna join the kindness challenge of doing 1 kindness a day?  No need to post daily if you don’t want to.  Just like the facebook page, or subscribe to the emails (at the right) for daily updates/reminders and you’re in!