In deciding how to update people I have been confused. There is too much to say, right? So much has happened in the last week. I have been praying about how to encourage others and glorify God with our blog during this time. So, I guess first, I'm going to give a short update and then I will encourage.
Tender is still working at McDonalds. She washes her hands so much during a shift that they are dreadfully dry and I am so proud of her. I make her change and wash her hands again when she gets home. Sometimes she showers too because we are both worried about what she could have been exposed to. Robert is still working as well. His clinic is separate from the main hospital building, but he does have to do testing there sometimes. They are checking everyone's temp upon any entry to any building associated with the hospital and Robert's clinic has had many cancelations because they mainly see elderly people. The boys have been no where public since last Thursday and I am continuing that for the foreseeable future. I go to the grocery store alone when someone is home to watch them. I am not an anxious person by nature, but shopping has caused anxiety in me for the last week. I'm not really freaked out by the germs but I guess just the energy in the store feels frantic and the shelves are so empty. We have only bought what we need. If I get creative our supplies are enough. Beyond all of this our life has not changed that much, to be honest. It's not nearly as drastic as some of you. Here is my practical encouragement to our friends who are with children all of the time and trying to do school at home. This is me speaking, not the Lord, and definitely not your school board. If your child is 8 or below, work for about 15 minutes and then take a break for 15 minutes. Only work on desk type work with this age range for no more than an accumulation of an hour and then put it away even if it the day's work is not nearly complete. Your relationship with the child and their relationship with learning is more important than completing a day's work. If your child is between 9 and 12, same thing except they can handle more like 2 hours of desk type work. Then put it away. For kiddos 13 and up, 3-4 hours of desk work. I beg you, don't make them pretend they are at school. Let them play abcya.com or starfall.com or ask them what they've always wanted to learn and then look up a youtube video on it! You would not believe how fun it is to learn together without feeling like you have to complete something. My amazing sister said that our kids are going to remember these few weeks for the rest of their lives! What do we want them to remember? A mom who is freaking out because she can't complete what the school sent home? Just put it away and learn something together. Read good books aloud together! Pick up Narnia or Lord of the Rings or a biography and live the story together! Neither of you will ever forget it, I promise! And you will be floored by what they learned.
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O Lord, because you are my shepherd, I need nothing else. You fill my heart with every need and desire I could ever have. You make me rest in the safety of my home, with you. You bring me perfect peace in your presence. You lead me beside still waters for continual refreshment. My soul is restored. What more could I need? Father, You lead me in righteousness in every circumstance for YOUR glory! Even when you lead me, as my loving shepherd, through the valley of the shadow of death, I will not fear. I will be strong and courageous. Not because I am able but because you are with me! I am comforted because your rod will keep me from running away and will protect me from danger and your staff will guide me so I won't be lost.
You invite me to feast with you and there is no one and nothing that can prevent me. Every day you anoint me with sufficient grace to serve you. I will continue to return for grace. You have dealt bountifully with me. I have no fear in your lack of faithfulness. You will care for me perfectly and shower me with grace every day of my life, no matter the circumstance, you are steadfast. Because of Christ's finished work, I have the ever present help of the Holy Spirit. I am never alone. I am with my savior for all eternity, safe and loved. Amen. I am in sore need of updating our loved ones on what is going on around here. So that is what this is. First, weebly (the website we use for this blog) has been messing up a lot. It seems like the main source of difficulty is the app that I used to uploading pictures. Which made things really easy. It just has never been great but in the last few months has really been messing up. So after several weeks of trying to find an easy solution without success I just decided to delete the app and not use it again. This makes posting pictures more difficult and time consuming for me. That is what has gone on there. Here is an update on everyone.
Bug: Bug has regressed with this move a lot. Every night he comes to our room scared. I put an old crib mattress under our bed and I pull it out every night for him to sleep on when he comes to our room. He loves this. But then when I get up about 5:45 in the morning I pick him up and take him back to bed so that he can easily sleep until 7 (which is our kid wake-up time). Bug and Hulk love playing outside in our creek while we do school work. He is talking a lot and he is playing more with his older brothers in wrestling and such showing that he is getting older. Hulk: You wouldn't even know that all these changes have happened if you saw Hulk. He goes with the flow so well. If you ask him he says that he misses Indiana but he has new friends here. Hulk is so cute and such a joy. He simply lives life in joy. Although he is starting to occasionally be annoyed or put out by his little brother, in general, they are besties. Wild Man: Wild Man hasn't made any solid friends yet although he is very friendly and I'm sure that will change. There are lots of girls at our new church his own age, not as many boys. But he is great with girls being friends too. He says he misses some things from our old home. But he hasn't complained much. He finished his formal reading lessons in homeschooling a couple of weeks ago. Now he is reading Boxcar Children on his own every day just getting help from me occasionally. The Boy: There isn't much to share about The Boy. He is a lot like Hulk in that he goes with the flow and is generally pretty happy. He is a lot more thoughtful though. I know he is considering many things but he doesn't share a lot. He reads hours every day. He loves reading and exploring our property. Hurricane: Hurricane is making friends fast. This is attributed to an amazingly friendly youth group at our new church. Our girls are so happy with this youth group, they've never felt more accepted and appreciated! It is made up of young believers and sweet kids that are just happy to be loved by a church body so that overflows out in their own love and acceptance of other kids. The culture of the youth group is more wild than they are used to but so sweet. Hurricane is researching hard core of farming and is chomping at the bit to have cows and chickens and a duck! Tender: Tender has made several friends at church as well and is constantly talking about how much she loves the youth group. She is the oldest girl that attends. After we moved here she immediately started searching for a job. We were too late for dual enrollment this semester so we directed our focus toward driving and a job. A couple weeks ago she finally found a job at McDonald's and started there. And a few weeks before that she passed her permit test and has since been learning to drive. We bought a used little car for her to learn on since our vehicles are so big. Robert: Robert's job is great so far. He is doing well and making progress in resurrecting some of his old knowledge. The clinic he works at has great coworkers. It's been a hard transition for him but he is doing well. Lindsey: What is true about the youth group is true of the whole church. We have never, as a family, felt more accepted and welcomed at a church. The culture is amazing. We were invited over to people's homes for meals more times in our first few weeks here than we have been in the last several years! So getting to know other women has been great. I am attending a bible study on Friday mornings at the church and inviting women and kids over for playdates often. The last few weeks I have been focusing on getting back into meal planning for our home. And I'm working on getting the kids and I into a good routine in the home in general. I have also been sewing a quilt made of all of our favorite baby clothes. And I altered about a dozen of Robert's dress shirts for work. Most shocking of all, I'm ironing on a regular basis. : ) I have not been able to get back into running since we moved. I've gone on a few runs but I typically run at 6am and here, without street lights on a country road, its pitch black and I had to wear a head lamp. And, honestly, it was scary. I could see eyes watching me and hear wild animals and horses would run beside me in the fields I ran by. So, I've settled on waiting until the sun comes up earlier. Ha! Today I surprised the kids with a trip to the Discovery Center in Springfield. It was lots of fun. Okay, I can't think of much else to say. Thanks for your prayers. And we miss our Louisville area friends. Here are some pictures... I have been working really hard to figure out how to tailor Robert's dress shirts. We have accumulated most of these from goodwill or for free from the Southern Exchange and before that The Attic (SBTS lingo there). And Robert does not have an average male body type so they have never fit well. At this job he really needs to dress nice so he has been asking me for a while to figure out how to tailor his shirts. Taking in the sides to make the torso thinner is easy but there were several that he said the shoulders were too broad and he really wanted them brought in. I had no idea how to do that and looked around on line without much help either. Anyway, long story short I figured out a way to do it, correct or not. And then I forgot every time some detail and had to remind myself so eventually I took pictures of the process to help me remember and decided to document it here for future purposes. I cannot stress enough that I have no idea what I'm doing here. It is just a sincere effort with, what my limited experience says, seems like a sucess. Almost five years ago we were in Ikea (most of our furniture is Ikea) and Robert saw these mats. He bought two thinking that maybe the kids would get a kick out of them. They are, by far, the most played with objects in our home. It is amazing how many things our kids have come up with to do with these mats. They are slides, tents, punching pads, a floor for gymnastics, foam bats for hitting each other up side the head, boundary fence, fencing floor, car ramps, and much more that I can't even remember. We are grateful for these mats! So simple and so abundant in fun. A quick overview of the last ten years.
2010: -First duty station at Fort Gordon. -Tender started school. -Got Jack, our boxer. -Jasper's pregnancy and short life. Born and died in July. -Got pregnant with Wild Man. 2011: -Robert's residency at Fort Gordon. -Wild Man born in August. -Moved to Kansas, Fort Riley, at the end of the year. 2012: -Got pregnant in the spring, miscarried. -Robert deployed to Afghanistan. -First year homeschooling. 2013: -Robert returns home. -Two more pregnancies and two more early losses. -We get two kittens: Jacob and Esau. -Robert gets out of the military. -Robert has a breakdown resulting in his inability to work in psychology. -I got pregnant with Hulk. -Have to sell house. 2014: -Live in a borrowed camper for three months. -Move into a rental house. -Hulk born in August. -I got pregnant with Bug. 2015: -Robert got accepted to SBTS. -Student loans got forgiven as a disabled vet. -Moved to Southern Indiana. -Bug born in October. 2016-2018: -Student at SBTS. -Jack died. -Got Marmee, our bloodhound. 2019: -Search for pastorate. -Found job as neuropsychologist. -Moved to Bolivar, MO. And you're up to date. : ) As for more recently, we have been in our new home for 3 weeks. Tender got here 2 weeks ago. We still don't have much of a predictable schedule because of unpacking. Last night we finished the inside of the house. I need to hang up two more things in the homeschool room and we are still short a lot of furniture but that can all wait until we find a good deal. On Thursday we started a sugar detox for the whole family because of how unhealthy we had been eating during the move and the holidays. That has given us some structure without the ability to run out of time for a meal and go get fast food. We are hoping to go without any sugar (also severly limiting natural sugars) until later this week and then we will start back on fruits and natural sweeteners like honey. Here is the video I made of a tour of the house a couple weeks ago. www.facebook.com/lindsey.coffman.98/videos/10162606205615065/ Okay, dear ones! We are officially moved to Bolivar. We are temporarily in a house while we wait to close on the home we are buying but all of our belongings are in the home already. We plan on closing on Friday the 13th and then starting to live there on Saturday the 14th. Things have gone remarkably smoothly and we praise God for the undeserved care of his children! Tender is still in Indiana finishing up her Ivy Tech English course. Some of her dearest friends will be driving her here on the 20th of December. She has not seen the house we bought. We are hoping to have it set up pretty well by the time she arrives with her friends. Right now I am posting this on our desktop which is set up in this house that we are staying at! I am listening to Robert wrestle and pummel the boys in the other room and Bryse is likely emailing friends on her phone, arguing about Marvel movies! ; ) We are attending a church here that we hope to join soon and we are loving it. I think that I have cried at least once a day since we left in grief over leaving friends and brothers and sisters in Christ back in the Louisville area. This, I think, may be our most difficult move yet, emotionally speaking. For the drive here Robert drove his truck with the two cats and Wild Man and The Boy. And I drove the van with Hulk, Hurricane, Bug, and the dog. The drive was great! It went remarkably smooth when you are traveling in such a way, except for one cat pooping on a truck seat. One big casualty in this move has been Moose-y. He was lost in mid-October. I don't know how many hours I spent searching for him. So many. We knew that he was somewhere at the house. We ordered a new one for him that is identical except it has been loved on by Bug four years less time. He loves "New Moose-y" but still grieves "Old Moose-y". With us having moved officially there is no more searching for Old Moose-y. I left a picture of him for the new owners just in case he is found outside in the spring by them (even though I searched every inch outside over and over). But it is definitely a closed door that feels final. I have been really emotional about it as we haven't lost ANY of the other kids' baby lovies. : ( So you will notice in pictures below him holding a decidedly cleaner and perkier, new Moose-y. The other night he asked me out of no where (very near tears), "Is God taking care of Old Moose-y?". To which I started trying to cry! I told him that God new just where Moose-y was and cared. He said, "He has arms and picked him up?" I told him that God doesn't have a body like us but he said "He has arms, and picked him up." and I said, "Yes, sure he did!" and then I left the room and had a good cry. Some stuff has happened kind of fast around here and we need to update everyone. In September Robert decided to stop applying to churches. We were emotionally tired from the process and after prayer he was feeling like maybe the Lord didn't have a church for him at this time and he should redirect his efforts into finding a more permanent job to provide for the family. A couple weeks of us talking, meeting with elders at our church, and praying, lead him to believe that he needed to seek a job that utilized his doctorate in psychology but he would also feel good about. In grad school he really enjoyed neuropsychology and (before pursuing pastoral studies and ministry) had desired to become a board certified neuropsychologist. Within a two week time he had found and applied to a position at a hospital in Bolivar, MO needing a neuropsychologist who would work in the department of neurology and the memory clinic. Robert would provide neuropsychological testing and evaluation for patients with dementia, TBI, and other cognitive problems. He would also work with his former neuropsychology professor and mentor. This man and the hospital would support Robert in becoming board certified in the next three to four years. The hospital flew Robert and I there for an interview in mid October. By the beginning of November we had signed a contract with them and put the house up for sale. Friends and Family, we are moving to Bolivar, MO and we leave tomorrow with the whole family to house hunt for, what we hope to be, the home we will die of old age in. I cannot put into words how wonderful that is to say! Robert and I hope to become members of a solid church that desires pastorally trained members who can help the church in a lay capacity.
sharingjoyphotography.shootproof.com/gallery/Coffman/home That is a link to see all of the professional pictures of the family that we got done two weeks ago. Thankful to Christe at Sharing Joy Photography for her hard work making us look so good! I have failed to update every Friday, I know! Blah. Robert has been sick. Just a prolonged sinus thing and then he threw his back out and had to have a root canal. He's almost 100% now though. I've just been busier than usual. But homeschooling this year continues to go well. We finished all of our yearly apple processing as seen in the pictures below. We are in the middle of learning more about the Civil War and so we went on a field trip to Abraham Lincoln's birthplace last week. The kids are also working on memorizing the Periodic Table of Elements. For literature I am reading them Pilgrim's Progress for the first time, unabridged. I also found a young adult version on Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by the original author Laura Hillenbrand! Unbroken is one of the most amazing books/biographies that I have ever read. I highly recommend it. Anyway, both of the girls are reading that now and it's so fun to discuss it with them.
I forgot to share how we organize our day in the last post. In years past, when the kids were younger and needed more hands-on help I conducted a schedule that allowed me to control when the the kids did what subjects down to 10 to 15 minute increments. They were intensely choreographed days. At the end of last year, I tried just giving them the list of what they were supposed to do every day and they had to check it off. It went really well and we are doing it this year again. I basically do everything with Wild Man still, but the older three have quite a bit that they do on their own with me just managing and checking in. Aside from our group learning like Bible and read alouds. Since I got a laminator I was able to laminate each day so that we could use dry erase markers on them. There are separate ones for each day. Last week was the seminary's Fall Festival so we had a blast at that!
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LindseyI'm the mama and wife. Updating you on our life! Archives
January 2022
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