If you have ever read Nehemiah you know how inspiring it is. How the Lord called this guy to rebuild the wall around Jerusalem, awakening in him a passion for the job, even an aggression. The whole book chronicles the difficulties and opposition he faced in a journal type format. Chapter 6 is my favorite part, mainly verses 1-14. I truly believe this group of scriptures is SO applicable for moms of wee ones. No matter their choices or preferences in how to feed their babies, how to educate their older children, how to discipline, love, or train their children before the Lord, this group of scriptures are a much needed reminder. Let me explain. There is something at SBTS called Seminary Wives Institute. It is a certification where wives can take classes that are similar to what their husbands are taking, along with classes to prepare wives to know how to help their husbands with ministry. So once a week the kids will stay home with Robert and I will go to my class. This term I am taking Old and New Testament Survey and we are planning on me not attending next term because of having a newborn. So this week I went to my first class. It was soo good! I love learning from an Old testament professor. Because in the last few years I have developed such a love for the often neglected Old Testament!
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Monday was Robert and I's 13th anniversary, Tuesday was Robert's first day of school, Thursday was Hulk and Wild Man's birthdays, and Saturday is their party! We went to The Cheesecake Factory for dinner for our anniversary. I didn't get any pictures. Below are some pictures to document this school year. I kinda think most of these "back to school" pictures are cheesy but the kids really wanted to take them. Something we started implementing last year is "Daddy time". They get Mommy time every minute of every day! But carving out one on one time with Dad is harder. So we put it in our schedule. Each day of the week a different child gets to do whatever they want with daddy for about 30-45 minutes in the evening between dinner and family worship. The boys usually choose playing outside or video games or "little tackle", which is something Wild Man made up after Daddy hurt his back so they could still wrestle, just gently. The girls typically just want to talk or go on a walk and talk or sip hot tea and talk. In the above picture Daddy and Hurricane are talking and drinking hot tea on our bed. We got back into the swing of doing "Daddy time" just last week and everyone is so happy about that!
I will post pictures of the birthday party next week. God Bless! This week was a busy one. It was our last week before seminary classes start! Robert came down with a raging bad case of swimmers ear. Both of the girls had struggled with that too but I was able to handle their cases naturally. Daddy ended up needing to go to the doc. He's doing better now but he didn't get to finish some of his projects outside that he wanted to because of his illness.
Also me and the girls have been getting caught up on dentist appointments and I scheduled ALL the kids' 6 month cleanings for October 7th. Which is 7 days before my due(guess) date (with most of my babies I have gone into labor 6 days before my guess date). So I'm hoping that we are able to get that done before this sweet baby makes an appearance. And then yesterday we had New Student Orientation at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS). It was an all day thing. The night before I woke with a wicked calf cramp that I couldn't work out completely. I'm still sore from it. I cut my finger trying to hand wash a few dishes before we walked out the door and new immediately it was a bad cut. Robert wrapped it in gauze and we were thankful we were going to the seminary because they have a super cheap clinic. When we got there we found out that it didn't open until chapel was starting for orientation and I really didn't want to miss that. So I rebandaged it and decided to wait. We got to meet all the other new students and we won a prize for the most kids in the new class. We got a free lunch from Chick-fil-a and got to watch a panel with Don Whitney and Tom Schriener and a couple of other guys I didn't know. I'll bet they spent more time on exhorting the male students in caring for their wives/families than they did talking about academics! They just kept coming back to it. Then we went home and went back later that night for an ice cream social. I got to meet Mary Mohler briefly there. And we spoke for hours with a couple who is living in student housing and they have been married for 31 years! : ) Oh! And I did go to the clinic. They said the cut easily could use stitches considering how busy I am with the kids. I asked if they could do steri strips instead if I promised to do as little as possible all weekend. They agreed and so I'm all bandaged up and not allowed to get it wet at all! Which is a bummer because our AC went out yesterday and it is hot! Also while we were at SBTS a new roof was put on the house. It had several major leaks and blessedly, insurance is covering it. I have two more months until we add another human being to this house! My every other week prenatals start this Friday! We are going to get serious about making freezer meals soon and I gotta get my birthing kit ready. I already have child care and photography figured out. But we gotta transfer Hulk's clothes into the boys' closet and bring in the cradle and baby clothes to our room! And here in a couple of weeks we are going to a local orchard and load up with apples!!! Apple pie, raw apple sauce, apple butter, dried apple rings. I am literally shaking with excitement!! We will call off homeschool for a few days to process everything!! EEK!! I am far more excited than the kids. They look at me weird when I talk about it. Shortly before we moved we bought a bread maker because we found out that Wild Man was allergic to soy as well as dairy. Finding dairy free bread is a little tricky but finding bread without soy lecithin is a miracle and usually costs about $4-5 a loaf. I spent several months trying different recipes and finally found one on line that I tweaked until it worked for our family. It's a honey whole wheat bread so no sugar and we use coconut oil because, get this, vegetable oil is just soy bean oil!!! I know! My world was turned upside down, too. Plus, coconut oil is awesome, that too. And, yes, that jar is our coconut oil! It stays melted because I'm storing it above the fridge and that cabinet stays toasty. Any who, Hurricane is working on learning how to use the bread machine so that when this sweet babe is born she can take over baking our sandwich bread for a little while.
We have a horrible time loving one another biblically. All of us. It's just more obvious in children because they don't have the self control to hide it yet. When they "insist on their own way" if comes about with shouts and crying and maybe even hitting. Adults have learned how to quietly manipulate to get exactly what they want. Either way, you are loving yourself more than others. So, in our home, we are memorizing 1 Cor 13:4-7: "Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." Wait! Go back and read it again. The odds are you've seen this passage all over kitchens and on throw pillows and heard it repeatedly at weddings and because of that you skim over it. Or you view it as soo pretty and poetic, and so you read it like it's an entertaining song. If you really pay attention to it that is when you will realize that you are TOTALLY unable to love that way. Every night during family worship we have been looking up key words in the passage in the dictionary and thesaurus. Did you know that patience is defined as enduring trials and hardships without complaining? And that is more than sitting in the van waiting on your wife to finish her hair so that you can officially be late to church. It means you are patient, enduring ALL things, and bear with her for YEARS while she works on her sin of nagging you. It means that you don't complain even though it's the 50th time you have had to remind your son to sit properly at the table. Despite what the world, tv, and movies tell us, love is not something that comes naturally and out of no where. We do not "fall in love" and then are able to do these things because love happened to us. Love is a verb and it is a choice. So when you choose to keep loving your unbelieving husband and you seek to love him the way Christ loves us, this list is what you aspire to. No wonder we fail at it. This passage, in my opinion, is one of the hardest most convicting in the Bible. It is a laundry list of all the ways you WILL fail your loved ones. So we pray with one another everyday for the grace to be able to love one another the way Jesus loves us. And so we come to the Love Jar. Robert will be in seminary full time so eating out will be a thing of the past. Right when we moved here we went to Sweet Frog which is a yogurt bar and so good! In my opinion, it is better than others because it has marshmallow cream sauce AND hot fudge (note: hot fudge is different and far superior to chocolate sauce i.e. hershey syrup). Also it's christian owned. Anyway, we decided we would start a jar for saving up money to go to Sweet Frog. It costs our family about $35 to go to any yogurt bar so that is our goal. Each time we witness someone loving biblically (in a way that is not easy for them) then we put 50 cents in the jar. So for instance, Tender is naturally kind but may struggle with other characteristics of love. So she doesn't get 50 cents for what she already does so well, she has to be stretching herself. A good example of someone stretching himself is Wild Man not insisting on his own way. He has actually gotten quite a bit of money in our jar for agreeing to something without screaming. The Boy got some money for making his little brother's bed without complaining and with a joyful attitude. This is also great because no one is allowed to boast(love does not boast)! They can't come to Robert or I and announce how loving they just were. Someone else has to report it about them. So the kids are now looking at one another to find good things to brag about instead of tattling for bad things. (ahem, love covers a multitude of sins, love does not rejoice in wrongdoing) It's so fun! So there is the update. And on a lesser important note if you are not pregnant: the gas station that is closest to us has a fountain drink machine with an ice dispenser that has a button for you to choose between cubed ice and shaved ice!! I think I gasped audibly when I discovered it one day about a month ago. AND, if I bring my own cup they let me have a whole cup of ice (I cover it with some water, but at this point in my pregnancies drinking water is just a means to getting to the ice) for free! So basically when we go anywhere I run in there and get ice water! I think they will regret allowing me to have it for free... I mean, really, I'm going in there often. I wonder if they will wonder what happened when I seem to drop off the face of the earth in a couple of months. Because truly, when this baby exits my body I will care for ice about as much as I care for grass. OH!! And Silas is gaining weight again! He eats table food like a trucker and is still nursing a few times a day. He hasn't gained an ounce since he was five months old, so this is a big deal and we are very happy. |
LindseyI'm the mama and wife. Updating you on our life! Archives
January 2022
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