What I have been learing latley

So much has been going on at my house lately. A week worth of nonstop work getting the basement ready for Thanksgiving, which we hosted for the first time. It went well and the basement looks great. I have also been going through the study Breaking Free by Beth Moore. It has been good to be in the word and study something that is very beneficial.

Anyway...I had a very emotional day a few days ago. My little E is an emotional guy, and I don't deal well with that....because I guess I am a pretty emotional mommy:) I really wanted to take a picture of the kids outside on our porch for our Christmas cards because this is our first Christmas at this house, OUR house. It took me like an hour to convince E that this was a good idea-I finally retreated to bribing with candy. I then asked him to go get my camera from the table in the basement, which he did and proceeded to take a bunch of pictures and then headed back downstairs to take a picture of his beloved cats. I told him NOT to a few times yet he insisted on disobeying. On his way back up he tripped on the steps and dropped my camera, causing the lens to get jammed and not work anymore and also bashed his sheen up pretty good. Did I mention this is the camera that replaced the one that died 2 days after the extended warranty ended??? And that I have had this camera for, OH...just shy of 2 months...granted it is a cheap point and shoot (well $120 cheap, but better than a $500 one). I thought about returning it to the store since it has been less than 90 days...and I really wanted to. My gut told me NO, and after Josh assured me this was the wrong things to do I regressed. I tried to call Casio hoping they'd be understanding, but apparently cameras should never be dropped, because they aren't meant to be. Out of luck. But I did have a peace that I needed to suck it up and be done with it.

Through all this I was super calm with Ethan (I really surprised myself), I was able to hold him and love him through his pain, and explain to him that our disobedience doesn't just effect us but others around us and although I was VERY SAD not to have a camera anymore, I still loved him and valued him way more than my camera. He saw me cry, he saw that I was really sad, but also saw my love of him was much more than the love of THINGS.
It was a proud day in my parenting!

Later that day when I saw the cats scratched up our brand new (floor model) couch -the base and arms are leather the rest is not...needless to say I was not so calm with them;)
Baby steps, right?