Summer Schooling

I have been praying about what to do for the summer with the kids schooling and exactly how the "plan" should go. We started homeschooling in April 2008 and we finished our K curriculum around February 2009 so we haven't been in the first grade for all that long so taking a break seems ridiculous to me right now. I have 3 goals so far for the summer. Continue Josiah on his language arts and get him to read steadily. Introduce the kids to great children's classics and read a ton. And lastly, delve into a subject that the kids choose. So I asked the kids want they would want to study and Josiah came up with an answer I am not quite so ready to delve into.
His answer? "I want to learn how animals have their babies."
My answer? silence, mouth open.....remind myself to close mouth and act cool.....more silence...remind myself to answer him....and squeeze out an "OK" from my mouth.

Where does he come up with these things?

LATER THAT SAME DAY:
Josiah: Hey Mom! I was thinking. Why didn't God give women three breast? I think he should have given them three. One here, here and here (he motioned the extra one should be between the two already in place). That way they can feed three babies at a time.
My response?: see above response.

Renewal

Oh God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirst for more.
I am painfully conscious of my need for further grace.
I am ashamed of my lack of desire.
O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee;
I long to be filled with longing;
I thirst to be made more thirsty still.
Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, so that I may know Thee indeed.
Begin in mercy a new work of love within me.
Say to my soul, "Rise up my love, my fair one, and come away."
Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland
where I have wandered so long. - A.W. Tozer.

It has been one of those weekends that we have seen and tasted that the Lord is good. Our struggle to find a church body has been on the forefront of our struggles and we found ourselves weary and heavy laden. Yet within that our most Holy God met us in the stench of our selves and brought about repentance and hope. We are no closer to finding a new church home than we were at the beginning of the weekend but our focus has returned to the main thing which is Jesus. Oh how I love that name. The road to finding a church home has been more daunting and weary than we ever imagined it would be. We have questioned our motives, questioned our responses, questioned our desires and even questioned ourselves. How does one go about picking a church? You follow the direction of the Holy Spirit in obedience.

We may end up at a church that we never thought we would attend but as long as we keep the main thing the main thing, I am hopeful. It has been such a rewarding experience to watch my very mild husband, become passionate about his family and the spiritual growth of his children. To see him set aside his comforts to reach out to Josiah and Naomi and teach them about the awesome God we serve.

Dustin and I did not grow up with parents that esteemed the Bible or attended church regularly. We do not have parents that have a relationship with Christ. We have been perplexed in how to relate our love for God to our own children, how to teach them at home and how to raise them in the admonition of the Lord. Now we understand. It all comes down to purposeful discipleship- bringing our children alongside us in our own journey in the faith. Living out a Deuteronomy 6 life. We don't need programs, we don't need to be trained teachers, we simply need to point everything back to our God who is the Creator and Sustainer of us all. Will we do it right? Some. Will we mess up? Count on it. Is there grace in all of this? Absolutely!
Praise His Holy Name!

Cubbie Verses

During the last month of Cubbies, I began noticing a strange occurrence while Naomi was trying to memorize her verse. I would say them a couple of times and she would repeat the verse a couple of times and she would have it down pat. And when it came time to repeat the verse at Cubbies, she did extraordinarily well for not having worked too hard. I couldn't put my finger on it but I knew something was amiss.
It turns out that as Josiah has been working on his phonics and Naomi on her coloring, she has learned to read quite well. When we test the kids on their verses, we have their book open with the Bible verse showing so that we as the teachers get it right and besides, most kids that age don't read so it isn't a big deal. Except for my little Miss who would simply read the verse when it was her book time and not memorize the verse which is the point of going to Cubbies. I had to chuckle because reading has been an arduous task with Josiah and here is baby sister doing it all by herself. (In the picture above she is reading to Aunt Amanda and Josiah, a Scooby Doo book.)

Definition Changes

I am so aggravated with a friend right now that I had to write. We have been having an on-going "conversation" about marriage versus civil unions in regards to heterosexual and homosexual relations. Obviously I am against gay marriage and he is for it since he has decided to come out of the closet. We both claim to be followers of Christ and we have known each other for a very long time. In our "conversation" he was vehement that married couples have 1500 more "rights" than those in a civil union. I recently asked him to send me a list of those added rights and he sent me the court briefs which were about 75 pages long.

I read the first five pages but all it was was legal jargon detailing the rights of married couples but not necessarily the rights of civil unions...perhaps I haven't read enough yet. But I was thinking that isn't it like a liberal to try to paper log me rather than just name the differences. So I wrote back and requested the short list. If there really are that many differences in rights, I am sure there is a list like that out there somewhere. They would be lining the streets with it if it were really the case.

The point that I cannot get over is that a group of people should not be allowed to forcibly change a definition just because they want to. That would be like me demanding blue to be defined as the blending of two colors: red and yellow. No matter how hard I scream and cry and justify it, red and yellow will NEVER make blue. The same goes with marriage. It IS and WILL always be the union of a man and woman no matter what anyone says. Some things you cannot change, no matter how hard you rant and pout about it.

My fave organization: The UN

This was sent from Parental Right Org and I am sharing with everyone the need to be alert......

A parent’s right to raise their children as they see fit is a time-honored American tradition, but today it is being threatened. The Supreme Court’s Troxel v. Granville decision in 2000 undermined a 75-year heritage of Constitutionally-protected, fundamental parental rights, which 8 of the 9 justices abandoned. At the same time, a growing body of international law fuels activist judges to legislate foreign standards from the American bench, while treaties such as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child would subject parental decisions to government oversight and international review.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra (MI-2) has proposed HJR-42, the Parental Rights Amendment, to stop the erosion of parental rights in American courts while simultaneously defending our laws from international invasion. Please, visit parentalrights.org to learn more about the Amendment, and to join their email network by signing the petition to protect parental rights.

Dinner Talk #2

As we began to bow our heads to pray over our dinner, Josiah exclaimed, "I want to pray." This is a nightly request that we usually acknowledge but only after Daddy prays. Dustin provided the usual response that after he prays, Josiah may have a turn at which Josiah dropped his shoulders and began to make a face but changed his mind knowing full well that any sign of discontentment would result in the loss of praying at all as well as help with correcting the attitude. Naomi noticed the slight in fraction and says, "Daddy gets to pray because he is the pastor of our home." And she smiled a sweet, proud of herself smile and bowed her head. We both chuckled to ourselves and yet I couldn't resist having a sweet, proud of my girl smile on my face as well.

Dinner Talk #1

We always get in the most interesting conversations over dinner so I am going to try to keep a record of the things that come up. Tonight we were talking about Israel and God's chosen people and how they wandered in the desert for 40 years because of their disobedience to God. the conversation was primarily between Josiah, Dustin and I but as we talked about the long path the Israelites walked, Naomi piped up and said, "They even had to walk to Canada!"