The semester is fixing to start back up with Robert while the kids only got about 5 days off. So unfair! But we are thankful that we had Daddy home so much this season. He took a J Term and had school work with that but because of his back he couldn't sit at the library to work on it, he had to lay flat on the bed while doing the reading assignments. He is much better now and headed back to the seminary to work on his assignments, which will likely help his focus. : ) I am coordinating the local spelling bee for homeschoolers in the Louisville area. And that is happening next Saturday. So I have been pretty busy getting ready for that. But next week will be quite busy. Hurricane is competing in it as well. So you could pray that everything goes smoothly, that she does well, and that it is a blessing to all the students that are involved. Other than those things, we have been pretty chill around here. Having some big struggles with behavior from little boys and that is a challenge to my endurance but having Robert close has helped me to not give up. I fight daily to remember God's promises in the face of unbelief. To remember that no matter how hard things are with parenting that nothing can separate me from my Savior and if that is true then why despair at all? "For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else (insert: children's behavior, losing my temper, children's poor opinion of my decisions, my poor opinion of me, etc) in ALL creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8:38-39 If what is most important to me is being with my Savior, then I'm set! So why do I keep putting my hope in other things? My weaknesses are very frustrating but they only glorify the Lord more because He loves me right where I'm at but loves me too much to allow me to stay in that wretched state. He has promised to make me better and I strive forward with that promise in mind. Well, we are going to do our formal learning early today so that we can relax the rest of the day and make a special dinner (sliders!). I pray all of you are resting in the FINISHED work of Jesus and seeking Him more earnestly today than yesterday.
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This week Daddy brought home about 15 pounds of wild apricots from the farm he works at. They are about the size of quarters and very sweet! The kids loved eating them fresh but they were all gonna go bad before we could finish them all so we made Apricot Crisp Bars, apricot fruit spread, and the girls halved and pitted 4 pounds of apricots to dehydrate. They are quite a bit more tart after you cook them but that doesn't stop the kids! They loved them!
We were invited to three different parties for the 4th but we ended up going to our church's get together. It was at our Sunday School teacher's house. He's a horticulturist and grows lots of yummy things! He had his blueberry patch ready for anyone to pick as much as they wanted! The bushes are 20 years old! And we had watermelon (currently my favorite craving) and shot fireworks and the kids ran and ran and played and played. We headed home and our neighbors invited us over to shoot fire works with them so we went over there and ended up getting to bed by 11:30! Quite a rare experience for our children! This week is my 33 week prenatal and then in two more weeks will be our Home Visit! Which means that I will officially be far enough along that I'm cleared to have a home birth and the midwife will come over and learn the ropes of our home so that she can clean up after the birth and do laundry and get around in our kitchen and such. It's an exciting prenatal appt because we have to officially have all of our all of our supplies ready. In other words Robert and I have 2 1/2 weeks to organize all of our birth supplies and put the cradle together and then we will just be waiting for God's timing and this baby's unknown birthday! It's been very busy for Robert in the last few weeks. He is rarely getting home before 7:00 and sometimes not until 9:00. But that should pass soon as they finish harvesting. Me and the kids are enjoying the summer. We've been swimming and we go to the library. I go to the chiropractor every other week and I'm seeing a counselor at a local church once a week (as long as I can get a babysitter). Tender won an I Spy contest at the library a couple weeks ago! We are slowly trying to get the freezers stocked for the post-partum period so that I have much less to do for preparing meals. This week we did breakfast burritos and two meals of Red Beans and Rice. Next week I am hoping to get some pizza crust made and maybe some homemade cinnamon rolls! : ) So Monday night I went hunting with Robert! We sat in the tree stand for a few hours and I read a book and Robert watched for deer. The next morning he wanted to go back out and invited me but I wanted to sleep in! Before the sun even came up he had two deer he had gotten with his bow! Above is where Robert and I packaged the ground venison! Our freezer runeth over. : ) If anyone is looking to sale a second hand freezer let us know! Sunday morning I woke up and was struggling and knew I needed to start the morning in the Word before the kids got up to distract me. I always know that is when I need to read but rarely do! I did Sunday morning only to be disrupted a few minutes later by The Boy waking up and coming to cuddle with me. He watched me read silently for a few minutes and then said he was going to get his bible and read with me. So I ended up side by side with The Boy reading the Word! It was so sweet I had to get a picture! Fun Tender story! We wrote a big family tree of Jacob's (or at that time, Israel) kids, grandkids, and great grandkids at the time of moving to Goshen! We are almost done with Genesis and so excited! Anyway, Tender was reading to me (to the best of her ability cuz there are some crazy names!) chapter 46 where it shares all the names while I wrote them down. Later we color coded the different generations! When we got to the list of Benjamin's sons' names there were two named Huppin and Muppin. So we stopped to giggle a little at those names and Tender sang off the top of her head, "Do you know the Muppin man, the muppin man, the muppin man? Do you know the Muppin man, who lives in Israel?" Oh we laughed! I like this family tree because it is literally the first Israelites! They started with these 66! The Boy has a busted up eye! He asked to play a game on Robert's phone and Robert tossed it to him and it accidentally hit him in the eye! Ouch! So then The Boy was saying that his daddy threw a phone and hit him in the face! Which sounded awful. So I kept explaining to him that it was an accident and that he needed to remember to explain that, as well. So when we were getting ready for his speech therapy I asked him what he would tell his speech therapist when she asked what happened he said, "I'll tell her it was an accident." Which of course sounds even worse! Like we trained him to say that! Which we did. Oh well! The kids are making a movie and The Boy will be a cowboy in it. So Hurricane made this horse for him to ride! I thought it was pretty impressive! Also, speaking of impressive, she has already finished her first grade math book. So now I gotta order her harder math curriculum! She's so excited!
Tomorrow we are having a "sort of" science fair with a couple other homeschool families and both girls are so excited! We officially started easing into our school year this week! Here's what it looked like, what I learned, and what the kids learned! Monday we did our Bible lesson after breakfast and chores. Then we went to the library to stock up on our Science and History books for the next three weeks' lessons. Mainly Revolutionary war and Living things. I decided we need to graduate from our library book bag to the wagon because my shoulder can only carry so much weight and still keep up with Wild Man! The wagon was perfection!! Not only did Wild Man stick close to it but it carried our 20-some books with ease! After the library our van needed a bath and vacuuming so I pulled the wagon onto the grass for the kids to read while I cleaned the van. Because of those errands we only got two subjects done on Monday. When we got home we rushed to eat lunch, get the boys down for nap and then me and girls did our Reading lesson. Tuesday we succeeded by starting the day with Bible again. We used to do Bible during breakfast but with Daddy heading back to work we are going to be more rushed at breakfast and I have developed different lessons for the school year. So we moved it to be after breakfast and chores. Here are the kiddos at the table practicing their weekly Bible verse Tuesday morning. We didn't have any big errands to run on Tuesday so we got to three subjects! Bible, Science, and Math! I learned a lesson with Science that I shouldn't try to get quite so much done in one day. I have prepared a Living Things lapbook and we did the first mini book for that called 7 Characteristics of Living Things. Then we made our grass heads. It doesn't sound like much but it took us well over an hour and a half to finish all of it. Then we rushed into lunch again and did Math afterward. Tender enjoyed her Math curriculum very much! Hurricane was unhappy with the book I chose for her. She said it's too easy. I promised her that if she buzzed through the book and completed it quickly then I would buy her a curriculum like Tender's only it will be at a 2nd grade level. We'll see what happens there.
Wednesday was playdate day. I was busy all morning doing chores, cleaning, making breakfast, and packing a picnic lunch. So we didn't get to any lessons. After naptime I let the kids watch tv but they had to choose from the educational films I got from the library or are on netflix that go along with our lessons. So we squeezed that in at least! Thursday we were planning on going to a water park but it was too rainy and cold. So we stayed home for the morning. We got our Bible and History lessons completed. During the morning I learned that our normal cleaning list for Thursdays was not going to work for the school year. Will probably have to move some chores to Saturday instead. Then, to make up for missing the water park we took the kids to a movie that afternoon. Friday we had all day to work. Robert is still working hard in the yard so the kids wanted to help him. I promised they would get to in between our lessons. I'm trying to allow 15 minutes of play in between each. We started the day with Bible again and that went well. A small break followed by Science. Which was mainly just reading library books about the characteristics of living things. Then the girls took worksheets outside for finding and listing Living and Non-Living things. After some more outside play we did Math and then ate lunch. Tender did her Typing game on the computer after lunch and then they all went outside to play....I mean work with Daddy. ; ) That's all! Next week will be another easy week and then we will start working really hard on staying on our schedule! Robert has put in a drainage system for our yard. It was all pooling in our driveway causing the possibility of flooding our garage if too much rain came at once. So he dug out all the dirt and put down liner and little rocks. It's draining lovely now! Today he is working on the children's play area. Adding some swings, a rope ladder and putting down more lining and pebbles there too. So exciting! Meet Esau. Him and Jacob look very alike but Esau has a longer face and a tiny bit more white around his eyes. Jacob's face is smaller and cuter. A couple weeks ago the dog and the kitties were due for their flea treatment so I hurried up and did it before bed. I was halving the kitten's dosage because they aren't full grown. So I put some on Jacob and then when I figured half was left I put the rest on Esau, only to discover that Esau probably got more like 75%. Oh well.
The next day after our play date I was talking to Daddy and Hurricane came to tell me that Esau was shaking and his ears were laying down. I said okay and finished my conversation thinking that she was worried about nothing. When I went to check on him I saw that she was not worried over nothing. Esau was twitching and shaking so much he was practically vibrating! He couldn't even walk and was crying in a most pitiful way. I picked him up and held him cuddled up to me tight and that seemed to calm him somewhat. We couldn't find Jacob so I just cuddle Esau and started reading on line about what over dosage of flea medicine would look like. I found several stories of people mixing up dog and cat flea medicine but just knew that I couldn't've done anything that silly. So I kept reading. Finally I thought I should at least double check myself. So I went and looked closer at the flea medicine. My heart dropped when I saw that I had in fact been that stupid. I had put Advantax for an 80 lb dog on our little baby kitties! And really put most on poor Esau! I ran back to the stories on line of testimonies about this very thing and found awful outcomes mainly on grown cats. So Robert started calling around to local vets asking questions after we washed both of the kitties in Dawn. Jacob had been hiding under the couch but wasn't really twitching yet. We found a vet that we could run to and I set off with both in a pet carrier. I prayed the whole way for a vet that would be gracious to me. I was already feeling like the worst pet owner and mom in the world! I was a total emotional wreck. Praise the Lord for delivering because the vet that was working was overly kind and gentle. She was very honest as well, though. She said the best help we could give them would be to send them to Kansas State in Manhattan for their ICU. Around the clock IV fluids might help flush the poison out quicker. We couldn't afford that so she said the next best thing would be to hook them up to an IV there during the day and I take them home at night to doctor them there. That too, was pretty steep for two kittens. So she called in an order for liquid muscle relaxer for the kittens and gave them the first dose intravenously there before I took them home. I was to keep a close eye on them, keep them in a dark and quiet place. Check on them often and give them the medicine every 8 hours. The muscle relaxer was to help with the twitching so that they were able to eat and drink. By the time we got to the vet Jacob had started twitching too. Neither of them were when we left because the medicine helped quickly. The doctor said that usually cats pull through this poison but since they were so tiny and Esau got so much she was very fearful they wouldn't make it. She said if they did live it would probably take 3-7 days for the poison to fully get through their system. She estimated on the longer side, again because of their size and how high the dosage was that they got. I got them home and settled and fed them tuna which they didn't eat well. Five hours later Esau was twitching awful again! We bathed them again (as we were told to do) and I went ahead and gave another dose three hours too early. Esau couldn't lay down or walk or anything, he just stood wide stanced twitching viciously! After the kids went to bed (and Tender had prayed over Esau several times) I just brought him out to the living room and held him securely to make him more comfortable. For two hours I held him while the medicine didn't work and he twitched and jerked in my arms. When Robert went to bed I moved to the couch and held Esau like a baby thinking any minute he might die in my arms. I fell asleep. About an hour later I woke and Esau wasn't twitching anymore. He was sleeping calmly. I heard his brother crying for him from the laundry room and decided to try to move Esau back in there. I laid him down in there and left them both acting normal. I set my phone alarm for two hours because I needed to keep an eye on them. Every two hours throughout the night I ran downstairs to check on them so that I would know if they needed more medicine. And every time they were acting normal. The next morning you would not have guessed they had ever been sick! They were eating and playing and pushing their little paws out the bottom of the door wanting to get out of that little room! I was shocked! I waited half the day before letting them out and when I did they ran wild having fun! I believe the Lord blessed us with a little miracle. I was so relieved that I didn't kill my children's baby kitties! And Esau and I tight after that episode! He loves cuddling with me, where as Jacob runs right past me! http://marshill.com/music/albums/the-good-king Please go listen to Where Were You from this album. So good. I was driving home from the garden the other day and there was a storm going by the town. Something so beautiful about Kansas is that you can see weather miles and miles away. I saw the storm in my rearview mirror and had to take a picture at the next stop sign. A friend told me that the baby you have after a stillborn is called your "Rainbow Baby" because they are the rainbow after a storm. While I don't want to associate Jasper with negativity, I happen to love watching storms and Rainbow Baby pretty much describes Deakin. The storm that was our experience with Jasper is now in the rearview mirror and has been for a long while. But every now and then I want to pull over and look back at the storm. I want to sit on the side of the road and cry. I sometimes even wish I could go back to that storm and hold my baby's body again. I have been sitting by the side of the road for a couple months now. I can't pinpoint why his third birthday has so effected me, but it has. Every time I think I about it burst into tears! Which can be awkward when you're sitting with your husband talking about something non-related and all of the sudden your crying and your husband is saying, "What? What did I say?! I'm sorry!"
I have my four year old son and my almost two year old son but where is my three year old son? Likely, watching me cry from the arms of the Lord saying, "Get over it, Mama! I'm good! Get back to work!" And I would say, "Not yet. Just let me cry a little longer." We've had two miscarriages since Robert got back from Afghanistan. The last one was just ten days ago Jasper's birthday. We did not tell very many people because I felt a need for privacy. For whatever reason I associate him with these losses. I don't understand 100% but he will always be the baby I don't have, even though these were different babies and lost at an earlier age. When I picture the babies I'm missing on earth, his is the face I see. When I was grieving over the last miscarriage it was his stuffed elephant lovie that I slept with. But I will get back up and keep moving away from that storm toward whatever else the Lord has planned for me. I will get back to work and enjoy my four living children and amazing husband. I will praise the Lord with every breath, amen. I know He is always good and in control even when it does not feel like it. I have to keep preaching to myself. "The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord." Job 1:21 Happy Birthday, Sweet Boy! You're brothers and sisters sure do love eating your dirt and worm cupcakes every year! I've decided to make a small change to the blog. I am using psudounems for the kiddos from now on. I went back and edited some of the older entries but not all. And if you are having a hard time keeping straight who is who just head on over to The Kiddos page to keep them straight.
9 year old girl = Tender 6 year old girl = Hurricane 4 year old boy = The Boy 1 (almost 2) year old boy = Wild Man This year we have a 4th grader and a 1st grader!!! Can you believe it?! So exciting! I have, literally, been on my knees for the last 8 months praying for this year of learning! I have prayed for the Lord to give me a passion for teaching my girls, I've prayed for Him to show me what HE wants my kids to learn first and for most, and I've prayed for endurance to stay steadfast throughout the whole year! And He has been soooo good! I haven't shared much about our educating up until this point because I feel weak and embarassed of how short I will fall in my attempts to obey the Lord in this area. More than anyone I am aware of how poorly equipped I am to do this. Which only keeps me falling at the Lord's feet begging for help, so I'm counting my weakness as good! I will boast in my weakness instead of pridefully trying to hide it. So, one of the ways I hope to stay steadfast is by doing a weekly posting about what we did in educating each week. If I know I will have family and friends reading about our progress and projects then it will keep me accountable to keep begging the Lord and working hard with the Holy Spirits power! So here, in this post, I will outline a few goals and our plans for this year of learning! Curriculum: I bought two this year. One for writing and one for Math. The girls have a real interest in writing so we are going to lean further toward learning how to write proper stories and essays and such than a language subject. Just for this year to see how it goes. For Math I chose a thorough workbook for Hurricane and Teaching Textbooks for Tender. Teaching Textbooks is a computer program where Tender will do everything! It's easier for Mama and more educational for her. Reading: I am writing lessons from a book called A Basket of Flowers by Christoph von Schmidt. http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/1442167122 It is very old and written in Old English language. It will be challenging! I have pulled out vocab/spelling words for each girl from each chapter and they are doosies! Along with extra learning from the Word concerning whatever trial the characters are facing. While the book is a children's book it was written at a time when children were just better educated and well read so it's harder to read similar to how it's harder for the average woman to read Jane Austen as opposed to Nicholas Sparks! The Lord really lead me to this book as Robert and I were praying about how to prepare our children to be able to read deeper books as adults. Robert has his doctorate but still has a really hard time reading Johnathan Edwards! We want our girls to be able to read the puritans and other classics with ease! Everything else: The Bible will be our starting point with every other subject. Each morning we will have our Bible lessons (this will be the only lessons I will require The Boy to be present for). We are starting in Genesis and working our way through. We will hustle through Genesis though because we have studied it a lot lately and I don't want to bore the girls. I will incorporate free lessons, lap books, reading books, videos, films, and informational websites along with whatever we are studying that particular day. I'm breaking things up into (roughly) six week unit studies. The first unit will carry us all the way to the story of Joseph. A couple weeks into unit two will put us into Exodus. At the end of each unit Tender will chose one person and event and do a study on each while Hurricane gets a breather before we start the next unit.
Geography, History, and Science will all come out of the Bible. For instance, when we get to the Tower of Babel we will start our History unit on Ancient Civilizations. We will study the Egyptians further(mainly their gods) when we get to the Passover story. We were going to start our Solar System unit with creation but I wanted to be able to do star gazing with a borrowed telescope and so we will wait until later in the year when the sun goes down earlier to do that unit. But we will do our Living Things unit for Science during the creation story. Basically these three subjects will spider web out of the the core source of the Bible. For each of these subjects there will be lap books, lessons I find online, websites, videos, songs, books from the library and anything else I can get my hands on for free! We will also incorporate copy work and diction from these subjects occasionally. Tender will do Typing twice a week, time allowing! This I will just be using websites that help teach typing for free! I read about something for the Littles called Morning Room Time. I latched onto the idea and just two weeks ago Robert and I finished up the video for the boys' Morning Room Time. We are using the concept a little differently. I went on YouTube and found several short videos that my kids love that also help them learn/memorize important things. Shapes, counting, abcs, books of the bible, fruit of the spirit, ten commandments, that sort of thing. Each morning after Bible, chores, and breakfast, I will put the boys in the guest bedroom with some toys and my laptop so they can watch/ listen to the short video and play so I can only concentrate on the girls. It will give us a for sure 30 minutes a day without them under foot. And they play pretty well anyway and I will have preschoolish stuff out for them the rest of the day. I will likely start this routine a week before we start school so that I can stay in there and supervise them so they know the rules and what to expect. That way when we start the girls' lessons I will be able to leave them alone (kinda). How I'm staying organized: About 6 months ago I looked up what 4th and 1st graders need to learn. I made tabs for each goal in a big three ring binder with plenty of paper in each section for idea writing. I then put a page protector in each section. When I print off a lesson or whatever from the computer I slip it into the page protector for that lesson. I have two page protectors in the Bible lesson section because I am furthest in my planning in that subject and they are filling up fast. I'm also using Pinterest for organizing ideas and websites. It's is a huge time and space saver!! I'm currently organizing my big "Homeschooing" board into several smaller boards, "Math lessons", "Ancient Civilizations", "Solar System", and so on and so forth! Well! That about covers it! I mean, without going into a huge amount of detail! Right now we are planning on starting up all this learning on August 5th! Pray for me to boast in my weaknesses and lean on the Lord! So yesterday we were doing our Family Worship time before bedtime. Robert has been trying to remind the kids to listen to the Bible reading and pay attention! So he got especially passionate last night talking about how important it is to read our Bible and pay attention to teaching on it. This is how it went down:
Robert: (this the shortened version of his speech) It is the MOST important thing! You must pay attention and learn about God and His Word! If you learn nothing else from Daddy, please learn that this is the MOST important thing! You must learn about Jesus and the Gospel and the Bible! (Kids are all starring at him, sitting in a circle, quiet for about a minute) Robert: Cal, what is the most important thing in the world? The Boy: (very matter of fact) The Dinosaur Restaurant....... Me: HA!! (muffled under my arm and hidden from Robert and Cal) The Boy: (His face totally lights up and you can literally see the correct answer explode in his head) OH!! No! Jesus!! Jesus is the most important thing!! At that point we all exploded in laughter and gave Cal a pat on the back for paying attention! Ha! AND, speaking of Jesus, there is a song called Son of David that Robert and I have been listening to sooo much! It is amazing and makes me cry every time! Go check it out! http://marshill.com/music/albums/the-good-king It's the fifth song down! Also, I'm wearing out Where Were You by them and Robert digs Lion Man. Last week was awful!!! So busy and exhausting. Robert barely slept at all Saturday and Sunday night so both of us started the week off on slow feet. We had a late dinner at someone's house Monday night. (Can I just say, I love fellowship, but there is nothing easy about taking all four kids and several cooked dishes over to someone else's house), Tuesday morning, Robert wrecked his truck. Which is a long story that I won't get into on here but I will say no one was injured and we have full coverage. Wednesday night was AWANAS, Thursday night was a military ball....see below... The girls were unhappy with my choice in dress. Being as it was the same dress I wore to the ball in Georgia. They were cheering for an old prom dress that I labeled as "too prom-y for a homeschooling mom of four". On to Friday, was Bible study but not just your average bible study night! Darby was getting baptized! This is the only still I got of the baptism because our video camera ran out of battery so I had to video it with my phone. : 6 I will attempt to get the video on her eventually. That will have to be a post all it's own. : ) And then Saturday night Bryse had an award dinner to attend at the local library. The girls entered a bookmark designing contest this winter. They have winners in each grade level. Bryse won for kindergarten! Which means that she got what she is holding in the picture (her bookmark framed and a medal) and her bookmark will be published in order to be given out to library patrons for the summer reading program! : ) Yeay Bryse-y!! And, not only that, but they had gift baskets that you could enter to win. I bought ten entries and the kids chose which baskets to put their entry in for. Both Bryse and Darby's names were drawn! They were so excited! We had left the boys at home with a babysitter and they were asleep when we got home but the girls set the baskets out so that the boys would be surprised to find out that we actually won TWO! Darby's basket was filled with a lot of garage type(trust me, she had chosen it and was excited) stuff and Bryse's was a toy basket!
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LindseyI'm the mama and wife. Updating you on our life! Archives
January 2022
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