He is Risen

Not much time to blog lately. We have had 2-4 live-in guests over the past few months and that, on top of my normal life, leaves me a bit strapped for time.

But I couldn't forget to say that we had a wonderful celebration of our RISEN LORD over here. It has been a truly beautiful season of Lent and our family really tried to embrace the whole season and especially holy week. As usual, when we strive to meet God, He finds us and meets us. I can't describe some of the joy we all felt worshiping God together. But we did and I am so grateful for those moments. And I must add that having our friends from Brazil with us, has helped me be so aware of the Kingdom of God, here and now, and just so grateful for God, for having been so gracious to my family in drawing us to him.

Of course, I am only sharing the highlights I want to remember. We are a normal family and had normal and often outbreaks of totally NOT God honoring moments as well. No need to go into details on those though.

Here we are enjoying Easter Cinnamon Rolls and Treats.

My HANDSOME boys before church.

Group Shot! I LOVE it!

Hope you all had a wonderful Resurrection Sunday as well!

I hope to keep the Easter spirit strong around here and have our first family Pentecost celebration in a few weeks.

If you have ever done that and have ideas - pass them on.

Oh and we didn't forget our kids birthdays...

I'm just waiting on some pictures before I share how fun it was.

Avery Taylor

I seriously am so in love with this girl! She is such a sweetheart! We took this picture today for a birthday invitation she is sending out this week. As I was looking at it tears filled my eyes. She is growing up so quickly and so beautifully! I can't believe she will be 8 in only one month from today! I'm not going to mention that the baby will be 3 on the same day because then I might fall apart. Can time stop now, please?

Stayin' Alive

Just wanted to let it be known that we are alive and well. With 9 people living under one roof I have been more aware of my weaknesses lately and more focused on managing my home in a God honoring way. We have been trying to put a new schedule into practice that doesn't leave much time for blogging. But it does leave time for a few cute pictures of random moments in our crazy but wonderful life.

Adison was playing a game on the computer and when we came to check on her she was dead asleep in this position

The class I teach at our Friday co-op. Adia assists me in there sometimes and Adison is in it.

There is always time for cookies!

Kaden fell asleep like this while watching his FAVORITE movie - Toy Story.

What do you do with annoying little brothers???

Daddy leading the family time devotions at co-op.

It snowed for like 5 minutes and then hailed like crazy!

Of course school was cancelled for 15 minutes to enjoy the weather.

Adison's drawing of Jesse riding Bullseye (the girl and horse from Toy Story).

Kaden has a bad habbit of taking all of the pillows off of the couch.

Of course, if he falls asleep on the job he avoids a punishment.

And there is always time for dinner around here.

This was a hit among the 6 and over crowd!

Here is the recipe - thank you Stacey!

I used the romaine hearts and added purple cabbage for looks.

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 2 teaspoons soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon sesame oil (optional)
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 3 tablespoons rice vinegar
• 1 (8 ounce) package dry chow mein noodles
• 1 head iceberg lettuce - rinsed, dried, and chopped
• 4 boneless chicken breast halves, cooked and shredded
• 3 green onions, chopped
• 1 tablespoon sesame seeds, toasted

Directions

1. Prepare the dressing 30 minutes ahead of time by combining the brown sugar, soy sauce, sesame oil, salad oil, and rice vinegar in a salad dressing carafe.
2. To prepare the Chinese rice noodles, heat a skillet with a few tablespoons of oil and break off a little bit of the noodles and add them to the skillet and fry them. They will puff up in the skillet, so only add a few at a time. As they begin to puff up, remove and drain them on paper towels. Be sure to cook long enough as the under cooked noodles will be like eating needles. Once cooked, add them to the salad mixture.
3. In a large bowl combine the iceberg lettuce, cooked and shredded chicken, green onions and toasted sesame seeds. Let chill about 10 minutes, and just before serving add the cooked rice noodles. Serve in salad bowls and offer the dressing in a pourable container so your family can add as much dressing as they want. You can also pour the dressing over the top of the salad, toss, and serve immediately.

Spring Semester

This semester our family joined a new Community of homeschoolers in something called Classical Conversations. Classical Conversations (CC) is an academic program that seeks to come alongside parents and assist with Christian Classical homeschooling. CC is growing like a weed all over the country as parents discover how helpful it can be to homeschooling - 6000 students were involved nationally last year - that number is up to 30,000 this year!

It truly is an answer to prayer for us and is helping us so much in our schooling. We have never learned so much and had so much fun doing it.

Every Tuesday the day begins at 9:00. Everyone gathers together for a family presentation, review of our timeline cards, review of the Bible Memory work and announcements.

Then the kids break into their own classes. Each class is taught by a trained mom/tutor. There is no more than 8 kids to a "tutor". Adison is with all 4&5 year olds. Kenyon is with all 6&7 year old boys, Avery is with 7 year old girls and so on. While in class we learn a new History sentence (for example - "Watt's steam engine, Cartwrights powerloom and Whitney's cotton gin spurred the Industrial Revolution), a new science fact (ex-Newton's 1st law of motion), Latin Grammar (1st conjugation Present Tense), Grammar (ex - Adverbs), Math Fact (ex- The Area of a square = side squared) and a new part of the World Map (ex- Baltic European contries). We also learn 8 new timeline cards so that by the end of the year we can say a timeline spanning from creation to modern America, do an art project and a science lab and the kids give a short oral presentation on an assigned topic. It's a long morning but so rich in content!

Here is Kenyon presenting on his family.

Here is one week's art project. Avery's art always looks so advanced compared with her peers. Her's is the bottom right. They were instructed to use water color to paint a landscape like the famous Artist they had just studied (I don't remember who it was).


Here is Avery's class participating in a science lab.

Then in the afternoon all of my kids are in a playroom while the 3rd - 6th graders and their moms, take an intense 2 1/2 hour grammar & writing course. It's pretty intense! The teacher was an English major and says it's every bit as difficult as some of her college material.


Then we go home and for the rest of the week we practice all of our facts and get them memorized well. As well as do our regular math, phonics, and other subjects. The truth is I am shocked how much the kids are retaining and although I already was leaning to the classical education model - I am fully convinced now and look forward to being completely converted.

Here is what my whiteboard looks like each week.

And of course, we are still in our Friday (For His Children) Co-op. That is, all of us besides Adia, who is now too old to join in on the fun. She has too much going on between regular school, CC, volleyball and her Bright Lights group. On Friday mornings she joins dad at the office and gets her school done there.

Kenyon's new classes are - PE & Oddball History

Kaden's new classes are _ Preschool Playhouse & Bible Stories & Nursery Rhymes

Adison is taking Espanol 101 & Fruit of the Spirit FUN! (taught by mom)

Avery's classes for this semester are Sewing & Around the World Geography

We are super busy but we are Learning tons!!!

Daddy Can Dream

Somebody is joining in the volleyball action around here!

Avery is joining a 16 week training team for girls to prepare for club. Practice starts tonight. She is so young to try volleyball already but we think it's in her blood. She is such a great athlete and so far she does really good at everything she tries. So, why not.

It was so cute listening to the girls get ready together and hearing Adia give her tips. Adia even ended up letting her borrow a matching shirt. I have a feeling Kyle is in heaven right about now and dreaming up some pretty big dreams.

to be honest though - so am i!

(don't forget to look at the post below for video of Adia)

Adia in Action

Here are a few clips of our little SUPER STAR!

She really has matured a lot and her level of play has really been uped a few notches. She is still a solid server as well as a super setter this year too. She works really hard - practicing 3 nights a week and having 2-3 tournaments a month. She also plays open gym weekly with adults and it has all clearly brought her game to the next level. We LOVE watching her.

I really need to get more video of her in action on the court - not just her serves. She is a great setter and #19 is an AWESOME hitter (especially for a 12's team) and it is so fun to watch them work together.

Oh and don't be confused. She couldn't get her number 10 this year (dad's old number) so she converted to mine (#22). I keep getting reminded not to get attached because as soon as she can she is switching back.

Here she gets 2 aces for the game!

You will notice in this one how close she is to my camera. She looks down at Kenyon who is being a goof ball on the floor and it messes her up on the last one. Oh well.

These are clips from thier first tournament playing together. I can't wait to show the newer clips against some great teams. I will work on it at the next one. :)

Passport 2 Purity

Recently Adia and I went away for a little Passport 2 Purity weekend. She has given me permission to share how it went so that other moms and daughters (or fathers/sons) could learn from our experience and hopefully do something similar. Many have asked me to share more details and so with her permission that is what I am going to do.

We had a great time, learned a lot and had some really good conversations to help her prepare for the tough years ahead of her. Passport 2 Purity is a kit that comes with 5 CD sessions, a parent manual and a student manual. It is meant for a father/son or mother/daughter to do together during a child’s 6th grade year. It covers topics like peer pressure, puberty, sex, dating and PURITY from a Christ-centered perspective! I doubted the timing many times but found out as we went through it together how perfect this age actually is for the retreat. Here is our Passport story…

Before I tell you about the journey we took I have to tell you about the prep work. The parent is meant to listen to all of the session ahead of time as well as prepare a little hands on experiment to help reinforce the point of each one. Weeks before I started listening to the CD’s, planned when and where we would go, gathered the needed supplies for the activities and PRAYED hard that God would meet us when we finally went away together.

One more thing before I go into the details is that going over this information with Kyle (my hubby) ahead of time was such a good experience. I wasn't for sure we would be on the same page with all of this and to be honest I was nervous that we were going to have to come to her with shared convictions and thought they might have to be forced. The truth is though that when Kyle and I spend a day preparing for this God totally met us. We had some great conversations in regards to the standards we want to hold in our home and also about some of the pain that came from our past mistakes. I know a few others who felt the same. The gift this program was to our whole family caught me completely off guard.

Okay, back to the point - Monday morning we headed out. Her dad and I had both written her a letter telling her how much we love her, appreciate her and look forward to watching her grow up. We told her we believe in her and that we know with God (and our) help she will be able to look back at her teen years as ones she can be proud of. After she read the letters we put the first CD on. Adia had a little guide book that it has her fill in the blanks to be sure she is following along. Each session ends with a memory verse and they are all put to music. The songs are cheesy but we had fun singing them and trying to memorize them.

We stopped and got some lunch as well as a couple treats to take back to the hotel with us.

Once we got to the hotel we got busy listening to the lessons, having great conversations and doing the suggested activities. I had kind of doubted this part of the program. I thought she was a bit old for some of them but once we got into the lessons I found them to be a great way to visualize the point and we enjoyed every one.

Here we are all setup at the hotel and ready to dive in. I actually laid the stuff all out like that and we both thought it looked staged so we decided to take a picture of her in the middle of it.

Enjoying her chocolate teacup.

Day 2 - Filling in her journal as she listened to the CD session.

And here is an example of the project we did on gaurding relationships. If you double click this to see it bigger you will see the lessons learned. Heart #1 represents a guy/girl friendship that has all the necessary safe guards in place to keep it totally pure and God honorhing. #2 is more of a guy/girl friendship that went too far. And I don't mean sexually - more of just getting exclusive/attached and the pain that might follow that. Then #3 was a long term exclusive relationship. Not even necessarily sexually speaking but more just major attachments made and the damage that can cause when the 2 weren't mature enough to begin with.
Adia, pretending to cry over the loss of innocence.After breakfast, we finished our last lesson and got ready to go out and have some fun. I had planned to have one of her best friends and her mom meet us at the mall where they could get their ears pierced together. Both of the girls have wanted to do this for years but both of their dads have been saying NO. It was so cute to see them do this together. They had to wait in line behind some 6 year olds but hey - no big deal!

After a fun visit with them Adia and I enjoyed a bit more one on one time. She knew we would be going out to a nice dinner that night. What she didn’t know is that her dad would be there also. Kyle had spent much of his last couple days searching for the perfect promise ring to give her. He had also worked hard coming up with a Purity Covenant for them to sign together. That dinner was such a precious time. I got to watch Adia squirm a bit as her dad shared his love for her and desire to always be there for her. Then they both entered into a purity covenant together. To top off the evening she was given a ring to wear that symbolizes our promise to her, her promise to us and all of our promises to God in regards to her staying pure and our role in helping her in that. She was pretty excited and so were we.

Here is our Purity Covenant (actually we revised this a little but I can’t find that document so I will share the almost final draft). I share this so you can use it to help you in writing your own. We loved reading other families to help us come up with this. The program comes with a Wait to Date contract but we didn't feel it captured our hearts/desires for this area.


Purity Covenant

To my parents:
I recognize that God holds you accountable to raise me in the
admonition of His ways.
I recognize that I am under your authority as your daughter.
I believe that you love me unconditionally and are committed
to my well-being.

I commit to God, my parents and my family:
To put Christ first and guard my heart to protect the gift
entrusted to me by the Lord.
To joyfully await the man the Lord will bring for me to marry.
To save all of my innocence and purity for my future husband.
To wait to until my parents believe I am ready to develop a loving relationship with a man.
To submit to my father's authority over my courting and marital intentions.

I joyfully and intentionally promise myself to these things.

__________________________________________
(your signature)

__________________________________________
(dad's signature)