Thoughts on Thankfulness

The Pilgrims celebrated their first Thanksgiving in 1621 as a feast in giving thanks to God for His provision through the help of the Wampanoag Indians and an abundant harvest after a year that was filled with more death than life, more disease than health and more burdens than blessings.  Despite this hard year, the Pilgrims were ever firm in their faithfulness to God and their beliefs that coming to America in pursuit of religious freedom was God's providence.  From the time of the Pilgrims, various presidents would set aside days periodically for givng thanks to God.  Each state, had their own days set aside throughout history as well.  A national day set aside to give thanks to God has been the underlying theme of Thanksgiving right from the start.  In fact, Thanksgiving became a recognized annual holiday during the height of the Civil War.  

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. 

They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

~Abraham Lincoln in his Thanksgiving Proclamation~

Giving thanks to God for His mercy, our salvation and the good gifts that He has provided for us abundantly is what Thanksgiving is about, not Pilgrims and Indians.  

Today, I am thankful for my husband, and my children.  I am thankful for a warm home to live in, even if it isn't "mine."  I am thankful that God provided my husband with a job so that he can support his family.  I am thankful for the freedom to educate my children at home and instill in them my values and beliefs.  I am thankful for life in Christ, salvation and that through a daily walk with Christ, I can be made closer and closer into His image.

Stop It

I just spent the most engaging 10 minutes with my youngest son (21 months old) laughing our heads off.  He kept grabbing the mouse, and I said stop it, and now he can say stop it, and won't stop saying it!  I'm in for it now.
What are ways that you engage with your children in fun lighthearted ways that are still teachable moments?

Beauty from Ashes

It's taken me a long time to process the past two months and the ordeal that my family went through.  I haven't necessarily been avoiding posting here, but couldn't rightly post about new things going on in our lives without first grieving and then healing from the hurt of what we went through.  I'm still not ready to share the whole tale, but suffice it to say, I've been wounded, I've been changed, and God has brought forth beauty from ashes.
God has not only brought forth beauty, but He's moved us yet again.  We've relocated one more time from Atlanta, GA up to cold yet beautiful New England.  In fact, God brought my husband and I back to our hometown, a place neither of us have lived in almost a decade.  There are family relationships that are blooming where there were barely sprouts before.  I think some of this mending, meshing and growth is God's way of helping me heal from the heartache of the relationships we left in Georgia.  It's His gift to me, and I cherish it.
Not only are we back in our hometown, but now we're experimenting with one of those really cool multigenerational home living situations.  In the simplest terminology, I've moved back home, but I brought my husband and six kids with me.  The kids love living with their grandparents, and it's taken us this long just to assimilate to the new environment, new house, neighborhood and getting used to sharing our home space with people who've been doing things their way for a looong time; but we're all adjusting and we're all meshing well.
Finally, dear friends, an answer to prayer.  After 11 months of no income and moving from place to place in search of jobs, my husband was blessed with a job.  He's not only blessed with a job, but it is one that utilizes his unique people skills coupled with his experience of having special needs children.  It is an amazing job, and a wonderful blessing to our family.
Now that I've at least opened the door to coming back into the world a bit, I will hopefully be updating this site more often, so please feel free to keep checking in and please continue to keep our family in your prayers as we adjust once again to our new "old" home.

We Missed the Bus

Today was the second day of school in our new town, the first day (according to facebook) in our old town.    I guess, it was a quiet day, or would have been if my kids had been on those buses.  Instead, the house was loud and crazy from 6 am on.  There was the usual Lily, reading books out loud from the top of her lungs, and Shiloh kicking his sisters under the table while the girls loudly issued their protests.  And of course we had a tantrum, or two, or twenty from our resident toddler who refuses to take a nap in the new house.  Then, there was the preteens versus the elementaries, fighting over desk space, teasing over wrong answers and the occasional fits of unexplainable giggling.  

School starts again

Some days, when the noise is never below a dull roar, I am tempted to throw the towel in and send them all to public school, and this is after only a week of homeschooling all 4 of my school-aged kids.  I guess, I could wonder:  if all this stuff is going wrong now, doesn't that mean I should just put them in school and make everything easier for me?  But the reality is, even though there was fighting, and even though I'm exhausted by 6 pm most days and even though I'm pretty sure that my ear drums are permenantly damaged by the horrid high pitched screams, I truly do love this.  I love playing board games at 2 and knowing my kids have no homework.  I love tea parties in the afternoon, just because.  I love silly face contests, and creative science experiments, and even when they decide that disecting the baby might be a good idea, because it means that they are free thinkers.  It means they are enjoying some of this too, and that they're actually learning something to know what disect means.  

Today, Lily told me that I couldn't wear a kilt on my head it goes on my waist, and Jubilee explained that it wouldn't be nice to give a dog an ingot since it's made of metal and dogs don't eat metal.  And Shiloh wants to build the great pyramid out of legos, and Cali, well she's so excited to realize that she's understanding Algebra now.  These are the things I wouldn't see in school, and the reason why we'll continue to miss the bus.

  

Sticks and Stones

We've all heard the saying, in fact as kids we probably were taught to say it back to the bully who was picking on us at school.  But, how do we teach this principle to our children?  How do we help them to learn that words can't hurt them?  Is that even true?  The bible says:

"The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell."

~James 3:6~

In fact, the entire first 12 verses of James 3 pertain to the tongue and the damage that it can do.  

The things that we say to others can be truly damaging, and as parents, the words that we speak to our children really have so much power.  With our words, we can destroy a child's self-esteem, we can harm them, hurt them, turn them away from the security of our love and towards such things as addiction, domestic violence, sexual sin, anger and violence, and even to a life of criminal activity.  But with our words we also can uplift, encourage, teach, train and instruct.  We can mold these amazing people that God has entrusted us with, into God-fearing, loving and positive members of society, God's kingdom and the world.  All this with that one little tongue.  Have you trained your tongue in the way you speak to your children?  For the rest of this week, practice using your words to encourage your little ones and build them up and see how they shine in the positive reinforcement.

Welcome to Atlanta

We've relocated!  I will be posting a series over the next few days regarding our move and relocation.  We've spent our whole lives in New England, and God moved, so off we went.  The decision to move was God inspired and thus far He's shown us that it's been His will.  It hasn't always been smooth, but it's always been following Him, so it's been good.  We arrived in Georgia on Monday, August 1st.  In one week, we registered the kids for school, got unpacked and started settling into a new routine.  Today, is the kids first day of school.  They wear uniforms down here, so I'll have to post pictures later, but the kids looked very cute.  This year, we are doing things differently; Cali is being homeschooled, but for now, Shiloh, Jubilee and Elianna will be attending the local public school.  If we find that things are not working out there, then we will bring them home.  Sorry, I've been off for a while, but now we're settled and into a routine, I am hoping to post a lot more often again.

B is for Bible

Today is week Two of the ABC's of Homeschooling.  And we're on the letter B.  For our family, B is for the Bible.
The Bible is a huge part of our curriculum.  It defines our faith, our family and our lifestyle, but it also determines how we view other subjects like science and history.  I love utilizing sites like Answers in Genesis that use the Bible to define our history.  Another site that our family loves is The Institute for Creation Research.  This site really goes deep into the science of our world and shows how it PROVES the Bible's accuracy.  The intricacies are amazing and wonderful, and it's teaching our children about apologetics even at a young age.  How do you incorporate the Bible into your curriculum?