Wordless Wednesday - 7

1st Ever Picture Perfect Party Linky.

(This is a blog hop.)

Today’s theme is "books."

Are you looking for new friends and followers? Do you post a Wordless Wednesday or something like that on a weekly basis? Do you sometimes wonder what picture to post?

If you said yes to any of these questions, then come and join me, your host, in this very first Picture Perfect Party Linky! Here you can make new friends and find new followers by linking up your Wordless Wednesday or any day of the week that you use for posting a picture. This is a picture party link-up, because here we will follow a theme for the picture that we post. It’s going to be a lot of fun!

Here are my easy rules:

1. Please link-up a photo that has something to do with today’s theme.
2. Grab my button below and add it on your post or on your side-bar, so that we can spread the word and get more people to the party.
3. Follow your host, that’s me, and if you leave a message with your blog URL, I will follow back (so long as your blog is family friendly).
4. Follow as many new blogs as you like. Make sure you let them know that you’re following through this hop, tell them how you are following them and add your URL to the message so that, if they want to, they can follow back.
5. Come back on Monday and see if your picture made it into my top 3 list. That means that I will visit everyone who has linked up by Sunday and I will pick my 3 favorites, which I will then mention on my Monday post.

Next week’s theme is "friends."

My Blog Hop Button

<div align="center"> <a href="http:// abooksandmore.blogspot.com" target="_blank"><img alt=" Amanda’s Books and More" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitS14XLc-z2uSUW00dIvyZc7lEfLP2tkPgO3qmU3NWi_UObDs_d7XqpYhjp0BBeROyZot-8YlEFU9rguELrZYu3arN1qHHNpB4_ezrb-TlBlfHRSOvP7pBA0VI-j1RkUkF77wJxUc7M7ye/s150/Picture%2520Perfect%2520Party%2520Linky.jpg"/></a>

This is a blog hop.

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My Husband is a Martian – Part 1

In honor of our recent 17th anniversary, I’m doing a series on personality types, learning styles and culture and how this has been a challenge for us in our communication. I hope by sharing from our experiences and from what we've learned (and are still learning) that your relationships will grow and flourish.

The truth is I’m married to a Martian. At times, I was convinced that God must have a made a mistake when He put the two of us together. For one, I’m a verbal communicator, processing while I speak. There would be times when the things I said to my Martian husband were misunderstood and then, just like in a court of law, were used against me. I could say the exact same things to other people and get the response and understanding that I was expecting, but not with my Martian. In fact, he used to say that I was the only person on this planet who communicates like I do.

We were fortunate to discover that our differences were not that uncommon to mankind. One of the courses that we did together twice was very helpful in making sense of all the confusion, which was the DISC Model of Human Behavior. You can’t put people in boxes, but you can learn to understand them better.

The D stands for Dominant type people. The I stands for Inspiring type people. The S stands for Supportive type people. The C stands for Cautious type people.

From the courses we took and this free online test, we learned that I am a blend of I and D with my I style being slightly stronger. Some of my strengths are that I am enthusiastic, outgoing, personable, decisive and independent, while some of my weaknesses can be that I am excitable, reacting, talkative, harsh and dominating.

My husband is a blend of C and S with C being his dominant style. Some of his strengths are that he is thorough, orderly, serious, supportive and dependable, while some of his weaknesses can be that he is critical, indecisive, picky, dependent and slow.

As you can see, in many ways hubby and I are complete opposites. This means we often rub each other up the wrong way. In one area where we are similar is that we both tend to be task-oriented and not always enough people-oriented. If we are too task-oriented then we can push people aside, which is hurtful. Because of my husband’s culture, he has been good at reminding me to mind my manners when I’m with others. I’ll discuss our cultures in a later post.

Here is part 2 at My Husband is a Martian - Part 2.

Further resources:

• Wikipedia
• Changing Minds

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Wordless Wednesday - 6

Before the Church

Inside the Church

Leaving the Church

Sorry for the quality of these photos. I scanned them in from my wedding album and this is how they turned out. I think it would have worked better if I could have removed the photos from the album, but they are stuck in... kind of like married life! Hahaha!

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Married for 17 Years!

Yesterday was our anniversary and as the title states, we’ve been married for 17 years! We had a great day with my in-laws coming over and bringing along with them good food, gifts and a happy time. Later in the afternoon, our kids’ fantastic godparents visited along with their two adorable children and stayed until after dinner. It was truly a day of eating and making merry.

In honor of our anniversary, I will be writing a post about our marriage. I’ll touch briefly on personality types, learning styles, and warm and cold climate cultures, so keep a look-out for it in the near future. It hasn’t always been easy, but working through our differences has been worth it. And, believe me, we still have our differences! But, we have our similarities too! Here’s part of a poem I wrote to my husband in 1997:

I know we’ve had some struggles

Struggles in every way

But God is so much bigger

He seems bigger everyday

So, I just wanted to tell you

That I love you anyway

Even through all the hurt…

Read the full poem on my poetry blog Consider the Lilies.

17 years and 4 kids later... Here we are standing next to Samantha, our third child.

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Learning Good Behavior from a 4-Year-Old

When writing posts about parenting, I usually try to put my best foot forward. Sometimes I allow my readers glimpses of my weaknesses, but mostly the topics give me the opportunity to share from years of experience. This is one of those posts where I let my readers know that I’m far from perfect, because today’s two lessons on good behavior I have learned from a 4-year-old. My daughter, Amanda, is that 4-year-old.

The first lesson I learned is on sharing. I have a sweet tooth. In the first years of married life, if I bought a soft-serve ice-cream and my husband wanted to share it, I’d tell him to buy his own one. If I had a candy bar, oh baby, I wanted that thing all for myself! For some reason, my husband loves sharing my sweet indulgences. It works with him the other way too. If he has something that looks really good, he will never not share it with me. Over time, I loosened up in the area of sharing.

So, what has Amanda taught me on that subject? She has taught me about the joy of sharing. She would rather share her few Smarties (M&Ms) than keep them for herself. You should see the smile on her face when she goes around to every member of our family with candy in her hand. I have tried to stop her from sharing in the past. That’s because we don’t allow her a whole kid’s size box (with M&Ms it would be a small packet) at once. We limit the amount that she’s allowed to eat just like we did with our other kids.

I would reason with her whenever I suggested that she shouldn’t share. My reasoning was that there are six members in our family, and if she shared her few treats with everyone, she’d have hardly any left for herself. Once, I even put my foot down, but you should have seen how sad that made her. I felt really bad. She wasn’t uncomprehending what I was trying to say, she was just finding more joy in sharing than having those extra sweets for herself. Now, I’ve learned that there is a greater joy in sharing than in self-indulging.

The second lesson I learned from her is on having a gracious attitude. Yesterday, she demonstrated it so well for hubby and me. Every Thursday she’s allowed to take her little Disney Princesses bicycle to school with her. It’s part of her teacher’s preschool program for the kids, and she loves taking her bike, but sometimes we forget.

Amanda said to her daddy this time, “Daddy, it’s okay if you forget. Teacher also has bikes that we can use.” Her words were like a healing balm to my soul. If someone forgets to do something that I’ve asked them to do, then I throw a small fit. I need to be more gracious toward the people in my life.

Related post: Learning Doesn’t Only Happen in School

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Wordless Wednesday - 5

The previous post was about my bedroom make-over. Since the pictures weren't that great, I took some more to share with you today. The painting was made by Amanda at preschool in 2010. Her hand print she made this year, 2012. I hope you like my collage. I did it for free using PicMonkey. You can learn how to make a collage on my photography blog 1camera1mom. While you're there, have a look around for more photo editing tips.

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My Bedroom Make-Over on a Tight Budget

Today I want to share with you my bedroom make-over. It’s not really a make-over, but that sounds better than the alternative title that I had in mind: Adding a Few Touches. With our tight budget, we had to make a little go a long way. It was my husband who got the ball rolling while we were at the grocery store where there were different vases and decorative pieces that caught his eye.

When we first moved into this house, our cupboards had a space for a TV. We are a one TV kind of family and since our TV is in the family room, we never knew what to do with the big open space in our cupboard. In the before picture you can see that we temporarily put a white continental pillow in the space. In the after picture you can see the three new center pieces that we bought in silver and purple. The two silver pieces were from the grocery store. The painting was made by Amanda at preschool and there is a bit of purple in her picture, so we put that up too.

In the before picture you can also see a small bit of our extra storage bags on the top shelf. This never created ambiance and was a problem. My husband came up with a solution. He grabbed three cushions off our couches from the family room and placed them in front of our bags.

We also bought two silver continental pillow cases, two purple pillow cases, and two purple and silver bed-side lamps from an inexpensive home store. The colors that were already in the room were browns, grays, white, gold and silver. Adding the purple color worked surprisingly well. I’m sorry the pictures aren’t so clear, but there are silver sequins edging the silver pillow cases and a band of rhinestones around the purple lamps, which match well with the rhinestones around the purple candle holder.

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