School

For the most part, we will finish school this Friday!! Hooray!! We still have plans for some activities, projects, and such, but we will not have any more sit down at the table kind of instruction. HOORAY!!!

Last night I decided that I was not sure that I wanted to use our same curriculum next year. A few hours later, I had convinced myself that I really wanted to do a complete overhaul. This morning I've been stealing away to the computer here and there to look at some options. As of now, I'm seriously considering changing to Sonlight. Of course Wesley will have a very BIG say in all this, but I think he will like Sonlight a lot. Guess we shall see!!

I think the seed for all of this began at a recent Mom's meeting where one of my besties, Heather spoke about different teaching methods. Thanks a lot, Heather!!! :) You should know that I went into that meeting not expecting to learn anything new!! HA!

Another factor in this decision is that this current school year turned out way different that I expected. Circumstances forced me out of my comfort zone, and I began doing things a little different. Turned out that I liked it. I was very, very much a traditional approach kind of teacher, but to my surprise I've liked some of the other approaches!

So for those of you who homeschool, what do you know about Sonlight? Do you love it? Hate it? Tell me everything!

More about all this later, I'm all out of time for now!

Sidebar: I've started several blog post and not finished them. Maybe I can get to them sometime.

Quote

Read this quote today. Liked and appreciated it...

"You are as much serving God in looking after your own children, and training them up in God's fear, and minding the house, and making your household a church for God, as you would be if you had been called to lead an army to battle for the Lord of hosts."

Charles Spurgeon

Happy Birthday, Papa!!!

Sure wish I was not singing so loud. I'm a terrible singer! Oh well, just shows how much we love you, Papa!! :)

My GOD is BIG!!!!

So the plan was to get our house on the market this coming week. Hopefully Monday, but for sure this week! Last week we worked really, really hard to get it ready. We are almost there. For quite a while I've been praying prayers like these..."Lord, please send us a buyer. Please send someone to buy our house even before we put it on the market. Please send someone to our door who wants to buy our house." Care to guess what happened this afternoon?!!!! Yep, someone interested in buying our home came to our door today, and our house is not even on the market yet!! There's a lot that has to occur for this to actually happen. The family interested lives across the street from us in a home that they are renting. They heard that we were planning to sell. They came over to talk to us today. They said that they are very interested and that they plan to pursue getting financing right away. Obviously that is a long way from the house being sold, but I'm so very excited!!! Even if for some reason this doesn't work out, I'm so encouraged!! The market is so bad right now, and I've been concerned about whether or not we would find a buyer. I'm totally believing that God did this!!!

Please, please join us in praying for God's will in this situation! I will keep you all posted!!! Also please pray for God to show us the next home He wants us in and to bless the details in that purchase.

Dear Heavenly Father,

You are so BIG and so GOOD!! Thank you for this encouragement. Please move in such a way that we will be able to say, the Lord did this. Only the Lord, Himself could have done this! I think this precious family wants our home as badly as we want to move to a different home. Please give us both the desires of our hearts. Please use our family to minister and bless this other family. Please help us to make You known. Lord, whether in this house or another, I promise to continue to seek You and serve You. I commit myself and any home we are in to You for Your service. Thank you for Your continued faithfulness and loving kindness in my life. YOU are Good, all the time!!

Totally Opposite

Does the man in this picture look like he's totally overwhelmed by a HUGE things to do list?


Does it appear as though he has 2 days left to completely finish a whole bunch of projects so that we can get our house on the market?

Does it look like he's a father to 5 young ones, he works 2 jobs, barely sleeps?


Do these pictures scream List Maker, Intense, Type A, OCD, High Strung?


Nope. I don't think you see any of that in these pictures, or in most pictures for that matter. No, these are pictures of My Sweet Hubby who prefers to cruise through life one day at at time, one thing at a time, with a smile, and leave the lists to ME.


Yes, his TOTALLY OPPOSITE wife is rather jealous. I mean, come on, just look at the way he's standing on that latter so relaxed like he's painting for fun!!!!



Me, the TOTAL OPPOSITE Wifey sees this and thinks, "Come on, Boys!! Move it!! Move it!! We still got 5 more list of projects to go!!"

He sees me, knows what I'm thinking, finds it entertaining, and smiles. Don't you love how perfect matches are made from TOTALLY OPPOSITE personalities!


OK, gotta go, you know, work, work, 5 lists, 2 days!!!!!!

There's Something New...

...at our house. You can just barely see it in the background of one of the recent pictures posted. Can you find what it is? Here's some hints...

1. It's something we've never had.

2. Something Wesley has always wanted.

3. Something that the whole family will enjoy.

Happy Guessing! I will post what it is, you know whenever I get free time in front of the computer again. Ha!

Grace Turns 7

Here she is on her "birth" day.


And her she is today on her 7th birthday.


Stay with me because I've recapped Grace's last 7 years in photos at the end!! OR just skip straight to the pictures. That's the fun part, anyway!!

The house is quiet. Everyone asleep but Mama. I'm suppose to be ironing our clothes for church tomorrow, but instead I'm thinking about this day. Today Grace turned 7 years old. Earlier today we watched some video taken the day she was born. It's so hard to believe that it's been 7 years!!

I could never, ever have dreamed how special it would be to have a daughter. Crazy me use to think I only wanted boys!

I'm so proud of Grace and of the young lady she's becoming.

Grace is so much like me. Some times I find that endearing and other times it frustrates me.

Grace is such a big helper. I would be lost without her. Truly I could not manage to do what I do without her.

Grace,

I love you so very much, Sweet Daughter!! I love your passion. I love your smile. I love that you want to be like me. I wish you did not imitate the bad, but at least it keeps me humble and helps me to recognize my weak spots. You are such a special girl. You light up the room and bring joy to everyone you meet. Words cannot express how proud I am to be your Mommy. You are growing up way, way to fast!! Slow down just a little will ya? :)

Love you, Gracie!!

Mommy

Here's a walk through the past "Grace-full" years!! There's not a lot here from the first couple of years, because most of those pictures are not digital and it's just too much work to scan and add them tonight! :(

This is one of my all time favorite baby pictures of Grace!! She was 5 weeks old in this picture. I remember the day like it was yesterday!!






Who can forget how Grace use to suck her fingers, hold an ear (anyone's ear), and tuck her special "color" blanket under her arm. Her blanket is in there, but it's a little hard to see.














Grace has such a green thumb. She is very gifted when it comes to flowers, plants, and gardening. She loves to plant 'em, grow 'em, and arrange 'em, but she doesn't like to break a sweat! Ha! This picture was taken early, early one morning like at 7:00 AM. How precious is this?! Wesley had trimmed our shrubs the day before, and we had not finished cleaning up all the left over debris. She got out there and started arranging the limbs like flowers. She gets this from my Mom! Definitely not from me!! Oh, and she was singing as she worked!










I told you she's a good gardener!


I think the biggest thing that Grace and I have in common is that from very little girls we had (for Grace still has) dreams of being a wife and mommy. My dream came true!!

This is how we do it...

Often people ask me how we get school done with the little ones.

Well enter Exhibit A:


Doesn't she look pitiful! I promise she was playing and having a good time even though this picture doesn't show it!!

Of course this is a joke!! When I was looking for a recent picture of Bella Peace to add to the last post I came across this one and had a good laugh. She actually ask me to handcuff her to the chair. Whether or not I let her linger in that situation is nothing more than speculation, and I refuse to testify for fear that I might incriminate myself. ;)

Grace

One day a long time ago my SIL said, you know "grace" is not a blond hair, blue eyed girl. Well actually in our case Grace is a blond hair, blue eyed girl. But I knew what she meant.

I read this on another blog today and I just had to share:

We have done nothing, nor will we ever do anything, worthy of God's grace. That's why its called grace. Defined, grace is "unmerited Divine assistance given to humans;" or "special favor from God." My favorite is "a temporary exemption." Think about it. On a daily basis our sin should demand nothing less than hell. But yet God chooses to allow grace to provide such pardon that we can enjoy this earthly life and eventually have eternal life. I feel rather unworthy and very humbled when I stop to think about it.

That's good stuff!

Today I encouraged someone else to apply the grace she would give to a friend to herself. Te be a friend to herself.

I'm not usually a very good friend to myself. Often I talk myself into things I should not do. Talk myself out of things I should do. And fail to forgive myself either way. And when I am just blow it, I really, really get upset with myself.

I had a moment today when I was thinking about the advice that I had given my friend and I thought, oh I so don't do that myself.

I'm so thankful for my Grace and for His grace. It's only by His grace that I survive each day. Oh, people think I have it all together, but I so don't. I really, really don't!! I pray that His grace and mercy and great love will change and transform me into the person that He wants me to be, the person I desire to be. I pray that His grace and mercy and great love will cover the multitude of my sins and that my children will grow up to love, honor, serve, worship, praise, glorify, seek, and follow after The One and Only, The Giver of Grace.

For smiles here's a little of the blond hair, blue eye kind of Grace and some of her siblings. Bella Peace was napping when we made these, so she's not in any of them.

The Impressive, Cool Rash

**Edited to add: The two doctors that saw Luke today thought that this is most likely an allergic reaction to penicillin. They can't say for sure. They said it definitely presents more like a reaction that anything else. In addition to impressive and cool, one of them also called it an angry rash. Hahahaha. That's funny.

Just for reference, this is what a reaction to penicillin looks like.


Here's a little background info. A few days after I got strep throat, Luke also got it. I think we both got it from the same source. I was sitting at Luke's baseball practice listening to another mom talk about how sick their family had been with strep throat when it occurred to me that I wasn't feeling so great. That was our second practice of the week. I kind of think that we may have picked it up from someone in their family earlier in that same week. By the next day I was really, really sick. A couple days later Luke was also sick. No one else got it...Thank you, Lord!!!!


I was soooooo careful not to spread it. I even wore a hospital face mask to try to contain it. Wesley and I did a good job of keeping the kids away from me when I was sick, and I wash and used hand sanitizer constantly. Strep can take 5 days to show up so I suspect that it's possible that he got it from his baseball friend. Not that any of that matters at all. I've just been so troubled at how often we've been sick lately, but we are doing new things, meeting new people, out more, and well there's just more of us to pick up the crud.


Anyway, yesterday was day 8 on a ten day RX of amoxicillin. The doc today said a reaction usually shows up sooner, but that it does take this long sometimes. Yesterday, Luke looked fine all day. At dinner time last night he still looked fine. Then we told him to go and get his bath and he came back saying, "awwwww I'm itching all over!!!!"


We use to be a very, very healthy family. In fact when Luke began the antibiotic for strep, it was only his 2nd antibiotic in his life. He had his first this past December. Personally I find it "cool and impressive" that this is only his 2nd antibiotic in his life!


Grace has a penicillin allergy and I remembered her reaction and thought that was what was going on with him. It was too late to go to our pediatrician, and we did not want to go to the ER. So we watched him for a couple of hours to make sure he was OK, and then decided to wait until morning to take him to the pediatrician. He was fine except for itching. Grace's reaction was nearly 6 years ago, but I'm pretty sure that hers showed up late too.


So off we went this morning. The doc agreed that it is most likely an allergic reaction to penicillin, but it did require a couple of docs consulting with each other to reach that conclusion. As we were leaving, Dr. D shook Luke's hand and said, "Thank for sharing your very impressive rash with us. That's cool man!" Hahahahaha Luke beamed with pride.


Unfortunately for Luke others that we've encountered today have also found it impressive. I watched several mom's in the waiting room direct their children far from him. Hahahaha. It will probably take a few days for the rash to clear up. I suspect that will be the reaction as we are out for the rest of the week. Luke was originally embarrassed by it, but now he thinks it's cool too! He's looking forward to showing it off to his friends at ball and church.

Our lives are soooooo full of adventure, but it beats it being boring!!

Going Out

My Honey is taking me out tonight!! YAAAAAAAY!!!!

Here's what my hair looks like when I fix it myself. You know it never looks the same as it does when you get it done at the salon, but I'm very pleased with how this looks. :)


Can you tell that I'm happy to be going out tonight!!

Please don't look at my cluttered mantle in the background. Someone should really clean it up. Hummmmmm....wonder who can do that? Maybe I should. Hee hee