Hannigan's Shenanigans

It is that time of year again! Our favorite Elf on the Shelf, Hannigan, is back. The girls are so super excited. He zipped into our lives yesterday, the day after Thanksgiving. We arrived home after being at my parents' house to find this....

My oldest had written him a letter before we left. She told him that he went "crazy" last year dating all of our Barbies. You can see his response.

Then this morning we awoke to these shenanigans:


Our comfort in this mess is that he appears to be an Alabama fan. Which is good on this Iron Bowl Day of rivalaries! Roll Tide Roll!

I will keep you up to date on Hannigan's Shenanigans throughout this holiday season.

Take Control of Your Life

Last night I had the privilege of being able to speak to members of Off Broad Street Centre of the Dance Arts' members of the The F.I.R.M. dance company.

Why me? Well, because the motivational speaker canceled and Mrs. Dana was desperate. I jokingly told her, " I could do my 'Are you stupid class' where I talk about all of the stupid things teenagers do to mess up their lives." I was not serious at all. When I get frustrated with the stupid things kids do, I always say that I should teach a class about HOW stupid the stupid things teenagers do are!

Well, the joke was on me, because that was exactly what Mrs. D. wanted she wanted someone to talk to them about self-respect and always representing your family and the dance company to the best of your ability.

So I toned it down a little and called it "Take Control of Your Life". It focused on the 1st two Habits of Sean Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teenagers:

1. Be Proactive- Be in control of yourself and your choices. You can not control what happens to       yourself but you can control how you react to it. It is the habit of choice.

2. Begin with the End in Mind- Think about how you want things to end up: be it at the end of a test, at the end of a semester, at the end of high school...at the end of your life. What do you want to accomplish? What kind of person do you want to be? How do you want to be remembered? Now, what do you need to do to accomplish these endings?

Here is the PowerPoint Presentation I used:
(Beware: It is not for the faint of heart. It was meant to honestly communicate with teenagers when they need it the most. I did not sugar coat anything. I honestly spoke with them in hopes of maybe getting through to one or two of their pretty little heads!)

Take Control of Your Life

More PowerPoint presentations from Elizabeth

As I went through the presentation, I talked to them about being in control of their own lives. It doesn't feel like you have a lot of control when you are a teenager, but you do. It is about what you do with the control you have that determines how much control you get. So what did I say to them about these topics that most of us don't want to talk to our children about?

1. Drinking: (paraphrased) I know you are going to drink. I am not going to tell you not to. I wish you wouldn't but I am being realistic. I just want to explain to you why it is a bad idea and why you need to be safe if you choose to drink. There is a reason why the drinking age is 21. It is because the human body is not equipped to deal with the effects of alcohol until it is developed completely. That is why evertime I drank in high school I spent the next day throwing up and feeling like I wanted to die. I told them about the only time I ever drove after drinking and how I prayed to God the entire time to help make it. I discussed horrible decisions that I made because of alcohol.


2. Stunts: This was pretty simple. Are you stupid? Do you not value yourself more than to try to be cool to the point that you are endangering your life? Think about everything you do and how it could go wrong. Is it really worth it?

I spoke to them about drugs (all kinds) and sex (how to understand that everytime you do something you are losing a special piece of yourself that you can't get back.) We talked about reckless driving and how you need to slow down and how that text can wait.


Choosing to Love Yourself: This part focused on changing the way you think about yourself, boys, bullies, and friends. We did an activity where they sat in front of the mirror and for every negative things they thought about themselves they had to write something positive. It was amazing to see a whole wall of mirrors full of turning the negative thoughts they thinking about themselves into positive ones.

  Near the end, we focused on Beginning with the End in Mind. I asked them to think about what would happen if on the way home they were killed in a car accident. What would one of your team members say for your eulogy? Then they spread out around the room and wrote the eulogies that they would hope someone would read at their funeral. They were asked to think about whether or not they needed to change to be that person.

For our final activity, the students lined up along the wall with a piece of paper. They wrote their name in the center of the paper. They left the papers in a line and then they rotated down the line of papers until they had wrote one positive thing about each person. When they returned to their paper, they had a positive comment from every person in the group. It was awesome to see their faces as they read the good things their teammates said about them.


  Here are the videos I showed them:

It Hurts to Give

I am the first to admit that I do not tithe the way I should. You are supposed to tithe 10% of your income and the thought of doing that makes me cringe. It would be like 2 car payments if we tithed the amount my husband and I both bring in each month. We feel like we are barely making ends meet now, even though we make way more than most households, I am sure.

Yet, we give every month. It is not what we should give, and every month I try to give a little more and a little more. We are not where we should be but we are trying. I am so glad that God is not just "trying". I am so glad that He doesn't just give me 10%. I am so glad that He gives me 100%, and I am so very unworthy.

What I have found is that when I tithe like I should, amazing things happen. Amazing things are not the reason why you should tithe, but they sure make you see how much God loves you and they serve as a witness to others.

My husband is our financial GURU. He is the one who determines what we can give each month. I have even seen the clenching of his jaw when I tithe a little more than he thinks we can afford. I am glad he is the way he is otherwise we would be in some major trouble in these uncertain economic times.

With that said, I wanted to share a recent tithing experience. Anyone following my blog, knows that I have started a new business venture. I am selling the items I create for my classroom on the site Teachers Pay Teachers.  I have my own Tricks of the Trade store on the site and have started another blog called Tricks of the Teaching Trade.

I have done really well with this  business. As of September 4, I had earned about $875. I was feeling really good about myself until I saw in a TpT newsletter that one seller had earned $100,000 in the three months of June-August. 100,000!! I started looking at what I could do to improve sales. I "Pinned" my products, posted on Facebook, shared on Google +, and Tweeted nonstop. Then it hit me...I had not once said a prayer asking for God's blessing!

So I stopped right then and prayed. I prayed that God would bless my business, help teachers find my products helpful in teaching, and grant me the creativeness to create quality products. I then heard God speak...well, He sounded a lot like me...but I still know it was Him. He asked, "Have you tithed any of the money you have earned?"

So at church that Wednesday night, I did one last check of my total sales and tithed exactly 10% of my earnings so far. When I told my husband about it later, I got a very skeptical look complete with some intense jaw clenching.

Up to that point, it had been 7 months since I started selling and I had earned a total of $900 in those 7 months. That averages out to about $130 a month. The night I told my husband, I prayed that God would help me prove to  my husband that I wasn't crazy.

It is now almost 2 weeks later, and my total sales are at 1,315! That is an increase of almost $500 in just 2 weeks. Not months...WEEKS! In fact, September has been a banner month for my little business so far bringing in $440 and there are still 2 more weeks left.

So yes, sometimes It Hurts to Give. Yes, you can always think of somewhere else that money needs to go. Yes, there will never be enough money. But as much as It Hurts to Give, it feel 10,000 times better to give to God. No you should not tithe because you hope you will gain financially. You should tithe because God is good. He is good in all things and in all things He is good.