Love and Logic?

This is not something new, it just has a new name. This stuff has been around forever and is popular again. The reason it has come back around is because it works. Just like natural and logical consequences it makes sense to the adult and the child. Isn't that what we all want? When things make sense we do them, when we don't understand the reason why we are doing something we will fight doing it, especially if we don't want to do it in the first place.
Raising children is challenging today because they see so many different standards on TV and with their friends. Seldom are they told "no". I mean the kind of "no" that does not quickly become a "yes" because the parent or teacher is worn down by the child's arguments or reasoning. Do not try to reason with a child. Tell them the reason that they need to do something, like behaving might keep them from getting into trouble or that a sweater will help to keep them warm, but reasoning does not compute in their world.
Love is what we are all about. First a child needs to know that you love them. You do this by telling them and then acting like you care about what happens to them. What's that old saying? "They don't care about what you know until they know how much you care." We take care of children and help them when they need it or ask for assistance. Some children act sick to get attention. You do not need to take them to the doctor all of the time, sometimes just give them a little extra time and tenderness and a drink of water and they will get better.
Logic is shown when we use "I statements". "I will listen to you when you are talking quietly like me" or, I want you to eat here in the dining room with us so please speak kindly so you don't have to eat alone at the kitchen table". These types of statements let the child know your expectations and what the consequences are for following your directions.
For more good one line statements follow this link http://www.loveandlogic.com/articles.html#all
I love learning about parenting. Wish that I had known all of this when my children were young. Oh yeah, some of this I did use with my children, it just didn't have a title, or a CD, or a book to follow. Happy parenting!!!

Natural & Logical Parenting

I am not an expert on much in this world but I certainly am having a lot of experience in parenting and I am learning useful things in the process.
One truth that has been revealed to me is how much children want to be nourished and to feel respected. They need to know that someone loves them and cares about their thoughts and feelings. They also need to learn what is appropriate behavior and what is not for any situation. It has also become obvious to me that some methods of discipline accomplish the opposite reaction for self discipline and self reliance. The method that has consistently produced outstanding results is natural and logical consequences.
While raising my 3 biological children I made several mistakes. (Most new parents do because children do not come with an explicit set of instructions.) All children are different and react to situations with their own unique set of characteristics. They need to exercise their free agency to make wrong choices and learn from their experiences. That is what natural consequences are. Once a child (or adult) learns that the consequences of good behavior are much more comfortable than the consequences for wrong choices they govern themselves and make more good choices. If you go outside in the cold and do not wear a jacket you will get cold. If you walk across the floor with muddy feet you will have to clean up the mud from the floor. It is our responsibility to point these consequences out to our children and follow through with each uncomfortable consequence no matter how much we dislike seeing our precious young ones suffering because of their choices.

Some articles I have read suggest that consequences should not be used for children under 3 years of age. I have seen them used in the baby cottage at the Home where I work for children as young as 14 months. The crazy couple who works there and takes care of 6-8 children under 6 years old has a good grasp on how this works. Those little ones will sit fairly quiet and still in church for 45 minutes without the use of food or crayons. I do not know their secrets but I will find out how they do it and include that in another post. My 16 year old girls are fairly quiet and well behaved during church because they know that we will have a family meeting after church and they want to be able to add to our discussion on what the preacher talked about and what parts they agreed or disagreed with.

I have included links to some sites that may have ideas you can use. You will have to copy and paste them into your browser because I have not learned how to attach them as links.

Please ask any questions that arise from your reading and I will furnish examples of natural and logical consequences to use in a variety of situations. Many of my best consequences have been presented by my girls when I asked them what would be a logical consequence for their bad choice.


Links to natural & logical websites.

http://wik.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/Natural_Consequences

http://www.rpeurifoy.com/parentng/logiccon.htm

http://www.extension.iastate.edu/Publications/PM1547A.pdf

http://www3.extension.umn.edu/distribution/familydevelopment/W00019.html

http://childparenting.about.com/library/weekly/aa102703a.htm

http://www1.dshs.wa.gov/CA/fosterparents/training/natlog/nat01.htm

http://www.ces.purdue.edu/providerparent/PDF%20Links/NaturalLogicalConsequences.pdf

Natural & Logical

What is a natural and logical consequence for not saving enough money for retirement? You are so right - it's working until you die.

Bill and I never thought we would still be employed well into our sixties. We had hoped that life would somehow, magically, create enough funds for us to eventually stop working. Yes, we have enjoyed ourselves throughout all of our adventures. Yes, there have been some wonderful years of togetherness since we turned 60. Our employment was in the same school for 2 years and then almost 4 years together here at the Home. Amazingly we are still speaking to each other. In fact we love working together.

For our next adventure we would like to work together from our home in Florida. If not, then we will continue to be employed here and do our best to teach our teen age girls that:
all choices have natural and logical consequences.

Our New Home

We are beginning to accept the fact that we now own another home. Actually we own 2 homes and when we go "off" tomorrow it will be a challenge to move from 1 home to another in 9 short days. After a plane ride to Dundee and a good night's sleep tomorrow we will arise early Wed. and drive to Lehigh Acres and meet with our tile man to decide how much tile Bill and I will buy later in the day. We will also meet with a locksmith and a handyman to get things moving while we are back in Dundee packing the "stuff" that is lying around that house. It just makes sense to tile the great room area and the bathrooms before we move everything into the house. Hopefully we will get it all arranged and get back to Dundee so we can pack on Thurs., Fri, & Sat. Sunday we will attend church and rest. Monday the movers come at 9:00am and shift all of our junk into a truck and transport it to Lehigh Acres and put it in our beautiful new home. Mon., Tues. & Wed. nights we will sleep in our new home and then on Thurs. we will drive back to Dundee and set things up to stage that house for selling and catch our plane back to NC by 3:00pm. We come back on duty at noon on Fri. the 17th. This schedule should keep us busy and out of trouble but does not provide much resting time. We are just so thankful to have a well constructed home at a price that we can afford while we ponder upon retiring with a much smaller income. We have gone from "poverty" to "plenty" and are not wanting to be too poverty prone. I am sure that we will always have some type of income producing activity so that we can afford to travel a bit and eat (basic necessities). Life is very good and we are blessed with health and with each other at least for a little while longer. So many of our ancestors died younger than we are which is not all that bad since they missed out on bodies that grow old and trying to live on a too small income when you are way too old to earn much money. Faith keeps us going and laughter keeps us smiling. We love all of you out there who read this and hope you enjoy our ramblings.

How To Almost Buy A House!!!

It has been an exciting ride. We've dodged a few pot holes. It is almost a done deal. The money was wired this morning (we had to drive all of the way to Virginia to a Wachovia). The papers never arrived by Fed Ex (oops on the part of the closer who did not get them to her local Kinkos early enough on Sat.). Did you know there is a national company that will send a notary to your home for an emergency document signing party? They will even deliver it to Fed Ex and send it back to the inept closer for you. The closer does have my sympathy though. She has a cold and it is the end of the month and they are super busy and she had to work late on Fri. and most of Sat. Not a job that I would ever want again. It was also partly the fault of the lender because they did not get the documents to the closer until Fri. The lender was still bugging us on Thursday for more information (like the actual name of the owner of the house-as if we would know). It turned out to be Deutsch Bank. Who would guess? So now we will sleep peacefully and see what tomorrow will bring. It might be the dawn of a new chapter in our lives with our beautiful new home and all of it's challenges. (I am going to buy a garage door opener) Good Night!

My Zazzle Gallery!

create & buy custom products at Zazzle

Here We Go Again or How To Buy A House In Lehigh Acres.

With our Realtor, Stel.
Checking out one of 26 homes.

Entering another home.

And another home.

Garage door with class.


Here we go into 408 Parkdale.
This is the one!!!

This is my new kitchen.
LOOK!! It even has appliances.


Master bathroom bathtub.

Great room with a wood burning fireplace.

Bill's media room for his TV and surround sound.

Third time is a charm. After 3 months of looking and 3 offers it is about time.

At 2:00pm today we put in an offer and by 4:45pm the bank accepted it. Now we will get a home inspection done - but this house looks good. It has air conditioning, doors, sinks and a fireplace. What more could we ask for?

HOW DO YOU BUY A HOUSE IN LEHIGH ACRES?

Getting a GOOD Realtor is sooooo important. (Our Realtor is Stel Vodev with Century 21 and she is the best. Call her at 239-246-4023.) Looking at dozens of homes is also a part of the process. Looking at homes on the same day that President Obama is touring the area where you are buying your home (because it has more foreclosed homes than anywhere else in the USA) is also a must. Finding a home that you love that does not already have a contract on it is kind of nice, too.

All of the homes that we looked at were damaged by people who stole parts of them to sell. If a house has a water system for the well then you can bet that it doesn't have the AC condenser. From interior doors, to kitchen cabinet knobs, to the kitchen sink, parts of that home are just gone. When you find one that you like and it is close to being complete then you make an offer FAST. If you are not fast enough someone else will be making an offer on that house.

Having a GOOD loan officer is also important. (Our loan officer is Michael Gottlieb at Wells Fargo and he is good. You can call him at (239) 297-6868.) You will be pre-approved and sellers will want you to buy their house. However, if you go to the Wachovia Bank in Lehigh acres and ask them to make a copy of your savings account - so you can prove to your loan officer that you are a saver - be prepared that they may print it on bright red paper that will not fax well to your loan officer.

You also need a smart home inspector. We are using Dan Smart from JD Inspections because he was recommended from those we trust. You can reach him at 239-573-3246.
Most of all, one should have fun when buying a new home. Do it with someone that you love, and that GOOD Realtor, loan officer, and home inspector, and all will eventually fall into place and life will go on.

Check out my squidoo lens at
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmaster/new_workshop/strawbalegardening

What's In A Lens?

That which we call a blog by any other name would read as sweet.

Have you ever heard of Squidoo?

Please read the following description of how to get started with squidoo.

"What's this all about?

Squidoo is a hand-built collection of nearly 900,000 pages built by people just like you.

Squidoo is about finding people when you care what they know instead of who they know.

And Squidoo raises big money for charity every single day by donating money from the ads and links you see on every page."

http://www.squidoo.com/squidoo

Last night I completed my first "real" lens. (The first practice one didn't count because it just didn't cut it.)
The subject is Straw bale Gardening. Bill did the research and helped write the modules but I put it all together and figured out how to make all of the parts fit into the template. Of course, I was up half of the night doing this but it was all worth it when I published it and looked at my masterpiece of information.
Now I will keep updating it and working on making some money with it so I can retire to warm, sunny Florida and live in the house that I will someday actually buy in Lehigh Acres.
You can view my great lens (which is kind of like a blog or webpage or maybe even a hub) at http://www.squidoo.com/strawbalegardening
Let me know what you think. Constructive criticism is appreciated because I want to make this a quality lens.

The Real Victor William Szot.

Will the real Victor William Szot please stand up? Okay, so maybe he can just lay there all wrapped up and look precious, that will be fine. This is the real picture that goes with the impressive name. His mom sent me another picture on my cell phone and I learned how to send the picture to my email and then add it to this post. Oh yes, I am getting to be quite the techy. I even wrote a Squidoo, a HUB and put a post on Facebook. When Bill can't get his TV and sound system to work I even know which buttons to push on his remote thingy and he is soooo amazed.

I'm A Granny Again!

Congratulations to my daughter, Katie, and her husband, Mike.

The latest name in our family is Victor William Szot, named after his grandpa Bill. He came into this world on January 12th in Reno, Nevada. He is joining his family of 2 brothers and a sister and, of course, his very excited mommy and daddy.

Actually, this is not a picture of Victor (or Little Bill, as we may call him). Victor has lots of beautiful brown hair. This is a picture of his brother, Duncan, but they look so much alike (and I don't have a picture to upload yet of the new little one) so I am using this one. Hopefully his mom will read this and send me a "real" picture of the right brother to announce his arrival. All of the Szot boy babies look similar but they are usually kind of bald - like this picture. I have a picture of Victor on my cell phone but I do not have a cord that will enable me to download it to my computer. So, I am stuck with this picture, but isn't he cute? Take my word that Victor is just as adorable.

I Own a Garage Door Opener

It has always been my dream to have a two car garage with a fine garage door opener. You know, one of those homes where you push the button on the ceiling of your car and drive right inside to unload your clumsy bags of groceries. There have been homes that we have owned that had garages and we even owned a garage door opener once but we never had the door and the opener at the same time, so I am quite excited that the bank accepted our ridiculously low offer for a brand, spanking, new home. Yes, that gorgeous home in my last blog will be all ours - and the banks - next month.
Now all we have to do is pack, move, and sell our mobile home.

Be sure to check out the "Chicken Feet" story by Bill in our Rockbridge Roots blog. http://blimes-intothepast.blogspot.com/. We will be putting many more family stories on this site in the next few weeks.

Our Latest House!

The sun shines on our happy home.

The view from the back yard.

The view from the lanai.

The master bath with a garden tub and separate shower.

Looking from the living room to the back of the house.

The front porch with columns.

My kitchen sink. Isn't it lovely?

This is Bill's media room. It is a unique floor plan with this room jutting out into the large living area.

This is the view from the front door looking towards the kitchen.

God is in His heaven and all is right with the world. Bill found his external hard drive and hid it in my chair. He misplaced it when he unpacked his computer and was so discouraged to think that he had lost all of his stuff. So, here are the pictures of what we hope will be our new home.

Our New House?

This post was supposed to have pictures of the house that we put an offer on yesterday but I can only tell you how beautiful it is. I know that won't convey what I want you to see but I have no choice. When we packed up at our hotel in Ft. Myers this morning and happily went off to church we left our external hard drive sitting on the bed in the hotel room. Yes, it has all of our house pictures on it. It contains ALL of our pictures and lots more. It is how Bill keeps his computer from getting too much stuff crammed on it so he put everything that he could on his external hard drive and now it is gone. I called the nice lady at the hotel and she checked the lost and found and she found-nothing. Someone found a few clothes in a room but no one turned in anything technical so it looks like it may really be lost. Anyway, it is a really cool house and we will know by tomorrow night whether it is ours or not. So, for those of you to whom I promised pictures, sorry, I have none. I do have them in my memory but that only helps me, not you. Now I need to go and try to cheer my honey. He is rather bumbed out from losing so much of his recorded details and so many irreplaceable pictures. If our offer is accepted tomorrow we will go back down next month and take new pictures and transfer them to a CD.

A Week Without the Internet!!!

It seems like forever since I was able to access the internet from my own compaq computer. What a pain. When I wanted to check my email I had to wait until Bill was not on his dell and then go and hardwire it into the cable modem. Our router would not work no matter who we called or what we did or how frustrated we got. Thanks to the help of our friend, Harvey, we are now up and running again with WIFI. We go off duty tomorrow and back to Florida- so there may be a smidgen of time during our break when I can actually compose something worth reading. Thanks for hanging in there with me while I took this unexpected pause. Thanks also to those who wrote to Dillon in South Korea. I know that it means a lot to him to hear from those he is serving, (and the encouragement for doing something so useful is good for him, too). So, adieu, for a day or two.