Rose Colored Glasses - repost

This post was originally posted in Nov. 09, but I've been thinking quite a bit lately about the truth that God showed me and I thought you might like to see again (or for the first time). :) Enjoy and have a wonderful week glorifying God in your life (which will not look like anyone else's life - it's not meant to). :) Here's a thought to share with you. (I've actually been meaning to post this for a month now.) If you're like me, I tend to look at people through rose colored glasses and think that everyone else has it together. People I admire surely never fuss at their kids, their kids must always treat each other sweetly and the parents respectfully, and, oh yes, surely their house is always clean and orderly. Now in my head, I know that's not right. We're all sinners and (believers) are being sanctified. But, I sure fall into the rose colored glasses trap. Here's a picture that my 3rd daughter took last month. The flowers were a birthday gift for my grandmother. When I saw the picture, I was amazed at how pretty it looked and wondered where she took it. You must understand that, by default - not choice, our house tends to be decorated with clutter. I'd love to be orderly and organized but fall far short of that goal. In the picture above, I thought it looked so nice and decluttered, I wondered where she took the photo. Here's the other half of the story:

If you, like me, tend to look at other people and think they have it all together, you may be seeing a close up shot of the flowers and not a total picture (as above). God is good and He is perfect - people aren't and we should never let ourselves think they are. :)

Have a great day!

Catch Up

Thought you might like a few photos to highlight a couple things we've been up to since the New Year began.

We started 2011 with a New Year Day dinner at my mom & dad's. R made a cake. Cake decorating is a hobby of hers and this was the first time she got to try fondant and gum paste. (Something I'd never even heard of until we watched Cake Boss. R was aware of it though.) I love the daisies. :)



To be honest, I love history but tend to be hit and miss with it. This year we're using Diana Waring's History Alive (published by Answers in Genesis). While I love it, I sometimes have a hard time putting it into motion. That being said, we finished the unit on the Medes and Persians and I took a few photos of their end of the unit projects. (They were so much fun to watch!)

L researched and told us about Purim - the history of it and how and when it's celebrated now. Lots of fun to hear the details. It's something she suggested we try to celebrate one year. :)


One of the things I love about this curriculum is the variety of project ideas so that each student can do something along their bend. K's bend is recently most decidedly toward drama and writing. So we were treated to a wonderful humorous skit about Haman having to honor Mordecai. (I really wish I'd gotten it on video, but someone's hair wasn't quite photo/video ready.) :)



This is Haman talking with the king.

Haman and Mordecai.

J treated us to a story of a lamb on his way from Babylon back to Jerusalem during the repatriation period. The name of the story (thank you Diana Waring - love her humor) is Baa- Hum-Bug. :)

Don't you just see the shyness in these "unsocialized" homeschool kids. ;)

I absolutely loved this one. R decided to make a replica (so to speak) of the statue in Nebuchadnezzar's dream - Daniel 2. She explained it to us and told us what each part represented. Take note of the gold head (Babylon), chest & arms of silver (Persia), middle and thighs of bronze (Greece), legs of iron (Romans), and feet partly of iron and partly of clay.

Here's the "stone that struck the image". :) (Dan. 2:35 - Jesus)

To be honest we don't have these great projects going on everyday, but they're great fun when we do. Thought you might enjoy. :)

Other than this, we've had life going along at a quick pace. We've been blessed to enjoy having friends stay with us while their parents are out of country working on an adoption. (These girls are so sweet; it's always a joy to have them with us.) We're also gearing up for a speech and debate tournament next week. (We participate in speech only.) This all makes for time flying past quickly.

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! I hope you've had an advent/Christmas season full of the wonder that God chose to come down to dwell with us - Emanuel/God with us!

Here's a quick recap for us: life's been busy but good. We've been blessed to be able to enjoy camping at Stone Mountain, participating in a Christmas drama/ballet, making various Christmas treats, and visiting with wonderful friends.

While camping, we discovered a wonderful idea. Apparently in the 1700's parents sometimes tied the end of a skein of yarn to the children's gifts and then make a web of the yarn. The children had to follow the yarn (winding it up) to find their gift. We loved the idea and decided to use it!

Here's how the girls' search began:

Here's the web (that went through our den, dining room, kitchen, and laundry room).

We had so much fun laying the web out!

The had lots of fun following the web to their gifts. They said that was definitely a highlight of the morning for them!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Update & Food for Thought

Thank you for the prayers for my oldest daughter. She's doing well. (I don't think having her wisdom teeth out was as bad as she had feared.) :)



We were blessed last week by a trip to the beach. (Thanks to some wonderfully generous friends of ours who allowed us to use their condo.) It was a wonderful time of refreshment. While there it was such a blessing spending time together, enjoying God's creation, & special times with the Lord. I was not looking forward to coming home to reality but had to keep reminding myself that reality is why God put me on this earth - to glorify His name in the midst of reality. :) (Mind you, I have a wonderful life and am extremely blessed. Just who would want to leave the beauty of the beach?) :)




While there, I was blessed to read some great books. One of my new favorite books is The One Thing You Can't Do in Heaven by Mark Cahill.
By the way, do you know what that one thing is? Witnessing. When we breathe our last this side of heaven, we'll have no more opportunities to share Christ with the lost. We need to redeem our time well. One of the points that I really appreciated in the book was the perspective on witnessing. He said that, while a counselor at a Christian summer camp, he felt God lay on his heart that he needed to discuss witnessing with the teenagers. They discussed it and decided that when they witnessed, they would either win someone to Christ (win), plant a seed (win), or be rejected (lose). (Your odds are pretty good.) The next day during his quiet time with the Lord, the Lord led him to verse after verse saying that when we're rejected for Christ's sake, we're earning rewards in heaven. That means that when we share Christ with others we will either win them to Christ (win), plant a seed (win), or be rejected (still winning rewards for ourselves in heaven). That means that sharing Christ with others is a win, win, win situation. Those are odds that can't be beat. The only way to lose is to not do it. The book was a very easy to read book, full of great wisdom, and quite a few ouches for me. :) Witnessing is something that I want to do, but haven't really had a lot of background or practice with. I know that God's working on me. I love Him and should be sharing Him with others. How can I love them without sharing this all important new with them?



I'll leave you with a Charles Spurgeon quote from the book (food for thought), "Every Christian is either a missionary or an imposter."



Have a wonderful week living for Him.

Our Week - Fun & Not So Fun Events

Our family celebrated another birthday last Monday – my sweet second daughter celebrated her 14th birthday. Boy, time flies by in a heart beat. My girls are growing up. Although I’m often making a pouty face, telling my girls they’re growing up too quickly; in reality it’s such a blessing to see God leading them and to see them growing closer to Him as they are growing. I love being their mom. Happy Birthday my sweet girl!

So our week began with a birthday milestone and ended with a not so fun rite of passage – my oldest daughter had all four of her wisdom teeth removed today. Not fun. She did really well, but is not feeling very well this evening. I appreciate your prayers for her recovery.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Try Try Again

Our youngest daughter just celebrated her 8th birthday last Monday. It's so hard to believe our baby is 8!

In lieu of a party she decided she'd like to have a fun family night of go-karting. We planned to do that for a week or two and, finally, the big night arrived. The Saturday before her birthday we had a busy day and planned to celebrate with her that night; so we went be-bopping up to our local go-kart/mini-golf location to find that, according to the size of the weeds, we were a couple months too late. Ooops! We didn't have a plan B that night, so we had to go home to think of one.

We came up with two options, a local roller skating rink that also has inflatables or a hands on science museum in another town. She told us that she was "stressed out" trying to make a decision (she'd decide one way and then change her mind to the other), but finally she decided on the roller skating rink because she wanted to play on the inflatables. So, plan B, after church on Sunday we waited for the rink to open and went over for the skating and, mainly, the inflatables. We arrive to find that she's grown to tall to play on the inflatables! :0 Strike two.

I believe the lesson she/we were learning is flexibility!!! :)

Meanwhile, she had a great birthday last Monday. She and her sisters made and decorated her cake (their own design, including the diving board) . She enjoyed having two friends (and siblings) over to swim that afternoon.

Finally we went to the science museum yesterday to celebrate as a family. We had a great time. (It hadn't closed down and she wasn't too tall!) It was a great family day! :)

Daddy & K waiting patiently while sisters play. :)

Some brave souls tried this bicycle type activity. Check out how high it is! :)

The other brave soul.

The birthday girl decided that was just a bit too high for her. This was a far as she got! :)

Hope you're all having a great holiday weekend.

Summer Recap

Since today is our first declared "school day" of the year, I thought I'd take a chance to really quickly share with you a recap of our summer. It was great. I can't believe it's flown by so quickly! (I must admit that a couple of my girls told me that they're looking forward to the break the school year will give them compared to this summer.) :)

One of the events that kicked off our summer was attending a Tim Hawkins concert. (If you're not familiar with him, I'd recommend looking him up. He's got a lot of material on YouTube. He's a Christian comedian and I've never known anyone to hear him without bursting up laughing.) What a great way to begin the summer!



Our summer began with the closing out of a number of last years activities: ballet, Awana, & a piano recital.

We were blessed to attend a family reunion with my grandma, aunt, uncle, & cousin that I hadn't seen in far too long.

I also had the treat of a visit from a dear friend of mind who moved away (as in across the country) a few years ago. What a sweet time of fellowship we shared.

L & K had a great summer serving with Child Evangelism Fellowship. They were privileged to present the gospel all summer long, were able to discuss their faith with a number of children, and had the opportunity to lead a number of children to Christ.

We had fun celebrating Father's Day.

Ra & J enjoyed ballet lessons over the summer:

We enjoyed our annual Chickfila Day (also known as "dress like a cow and eat for free - gotta love it" day). :) My sweet sister-in-law and nephews and niece faithfully come visit, dress up, and go out to eat with the girls and me. (My brother comes too and, while we enjoy his company, we just never seem to be able to get him or R to don any type of cow attire. Is it a man thing?) :) We had a great visit with their family and enjoyed playing a Minute to Win It afterward.

We were blessed to enjoy a wonderful family vacation this summer. We attended the Answers in Genesis Family Apologetics Conference. (It was wonderful! I highly recommend it.) The speakers were incredible and we enjoyed the Gatlinburg area while we were there. We then went to the Creation Museum and had a great time there also.

We had lots of fun at Dollywood and Splash Country.

The Smokies were beautiful! We loved getting to see a lot of wildlife, esp. 3 black bears (from the safety of our air conditioned car)! :)

We had a great time at the Creation Museum. Highly recommend it!

A highlight for K, she got to see a close friend of hers who moved away last summer. We really enjoyed visiting with her family.

As we were leaving the museum, R happend to see Ken Ham, so we got to visit with him, tell him how much we enjoyed the conference and the museum. (By the way, L is holding our friend's baby. She and the baby bonded and she loved getting to hold her so much.) :)

That's about it on a recap for our summer. God has blessed us so much!

Guess I need to go wake up my kiddos for bfast and to get started once again with a normal routine (that includes "school"). :)

Have a great week!