They are Dear to Me

Lydia and I are reading a great book on the missionary to India, Amy Carmichael.  A Chance to Die: The Life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael  It was written by Elisabeth Elliot - another great lady.  I love Amy's all-or-nothing abandonment to God's calling on her life.  I feel that, too.  God is so good - I want to do what it takes to be consistent and faithful to the calling He has placed on my life.

Amy wrote this on the inside cover of her Bible:

These children are dear to Me.  Be a mother to them, and more than a mother.  Watch over them tenderly, be just and kind.  If thy heart is not large enough to embrace them, I will enlarge it after a pattern of My own.  If these young children are docile and obedient, bless Me for it; if they are froward, call upon Me for help; if they weary thee, I will be thy consolation; if thou sink under thy burden, I will be thy Reward.

He will feed His flock like a shepherd; He will gather the lambs with His arm, And carry them in His bosom, And gently lead those who are with young. Isaiah 40:11

Summer Days

This summer we are being on-purpose.  The school year was so busy with stuff that we decided to commit to nothing this summer.  It was real hard for the kids at first, but a slam dunk for Darin and me ;-).  It's been so good to be busy at home.  If I were a better blogger, I would take pictures of all we're doing and post them for you, but it's just not going to happen right now.  We're having too much fun to take pictures!

The biggest temptation Darin and I face is entertaining our kids.  We are surrounded with many good opportunities for entertainment, but then that would interfere with our goals for our family.  We want our kids to enjoy being at home and being a family at home.  If we spent every minute watching movies, playing the Wii, running here and there - even as a family - is it real family time?  Maybe for some it is.  For Darin and me, it just isn't.  We're looking for something more simple.  Darin is teaching Ben to cook on the grill, the girls and I are learning to sprout our own wheat berries and hopefully mill them into flour this afternoon!  We've got a garden going - Jack is especially excited about the herbs we are about to plant.  Peppermint and thyme.  We're also growing potatoes, squash, green beans, lettuce and tomatoes and planted three blueberry bushes that Lydia has adopted as her own pets.  Ben, Henry and Darin have discovered Frisbee Golf.  I'm told it's technically Disc Golf, but I think Disc Golf is for those who didn't grow up with Frisbees in the 70's and 80's???  Let's just say that *I* was playing Frisbee Golf back when it was REALLY Frisbee Golf.  Sophia and Grace almost never leave the sandbox.  Ben, Lydia and Jack have a little mowing business together, and we've gotten in an "Uno" rut lately.  We sit down to play after Grace goes down for her morning nap.  Last week, we played at game, did a chore, played a game, ironed a few shirts, played a game, did another chore...no one should accuse us of being lazy just because it's summer vacation.  ;-)

My biggest personal project for the summer is preparing everything, and I mean EVERY LITTLE DETAIL of our upcoming school year.  I know.  I sound like the biggest control freak ever.  And I am.  But it kills me to not have a plan.  I understand THE plan may not work out and we might have to settle for Plan B.  I'm good with that.  But just starting with a plan makes me feel at peace.  Per my last post, I am consolidating our schooling into one school again.  We are headed back to Unit Studies using Tapestry of Grace.  There is a lot of upfront work to be put in with Tapestry of Grace, but man, I think it's going to be worth it.  As I go through the curriculum while making lesson plans I become more and more enchanted with it.  It's a good curriculum and I think we are all going to have fun with it this year.  We are going to go ahead and slowly start getting back into a school routine at the beginning of July.  We have taken off all of May and June so far.  It's too hot to go outside from 10 - 4, so why not do school.

Writing all this out makes me want to go take pictures and post them here.  I think I'll go get started.  The kids are swimming in the pool some friends gave us after ours gave up the ghost last year.  Pictures soon!

Just as if I Knew No Better...

So this past year with school has been a big beating for me.  With the younger crowd getting older - they are now 5, 3 and 16 months - the demands on my time grow with them.  Hard when I've also got an older crowd doing full-blown school.  With the new demands comes the need to flex and think further outside the box in order to get things done.  The tough thing for me is that I was so engrossed in the daily needs that I didn't realize my situation until this past month.  We've been homeschooling for 11 years now, but I think I pulled out every single rookie mistake in this past year.



Sophia - 2008
They don't stay in the ExerSaucer forever, do they?

 When we started homeschooling our oldest, who is now 15, I made the rookie mistake of trying to cordon him off for homeschooling.  It was frustrating because I kept trying to occupy the younger two in order to keep them away from Ben and me so we could get school done.  I was frustrated, Lydia and Jack were frustrated, and I noticed a frustrated tone creep into Ben's voice when speaking to his brother and sister.  Something had to give, and I stopped trying to do public school at home, and became a KONOS user.  It was just what we needed!  We four studied together (they were 7, 4 and 2 when we started) using the great unit studies found within KONOS.  We had a lot of fun, went on a lot of field trips and the frustration level was way down.  We wound down with KONOS when I discovered we were becoming more interested in the reading than the activities.  From there I moved into the Guerber histories from Nothing New Press that have GREAT reading lists in the back which we faithfully followed.  For Language Arts we used Sonlight, and misc. for math.  It too, was great.  We had a daily plan that we all knew and followed.  Everything worked like clockwork. 

Then we had Henry, Sophia and Grace.  And this year Ben was off doing his own high school curriculum - with Darin and me trying to facilitate that with him, but not doing such a great job of keeping up because of all the stuff we had to keep up with.  I tried to continue with the ol' "daily plan" that was so cozy and comfortable, but with three littles running lose, it wasn't working.



Ben & Lydia - 2004.  Love them.

 ROOKIE MISTAKE #1: I panicked and decided to put Jack and Lydia into their own individual curricula.  My reasoning was that they are now old enough to do most of the heavy work themselves.  They're certainly not total slackers, but it didn't work the way I thought it would.  First of all, they were used to us all spending a lot of time reading together, so they would both bring me books from their curriculum (Sonlight) and ask me if I would read them with them.  I wasn't about to say no.  I love spending time with them and reading good books has been such a bonding time for us.  So there I was, reading to two kids three or four different books each day on top of what I was trying to accomplish with Ben, on top of what I was trying to accomplish with Henry, Sophia and Grace, mealtimes, and laundry (forget the rest of the house).
RECAP: I had three different kids in three different curricula.  Only a complete crazy woman would do something like that.  Sigh.

More later.  It's my bedtime now (related to my rookie mistakes of the past year ;-)

Changes

So many changes this year.  First, our family went "no dairy."  I instigated this on the advice of an acquaintance who said her son's allergies improved when he cut out dairy from his diet.  It works.  We are allergy-free!  It's so nice to be able to make it through spring without resenting the budding trees and the yellow pollen that covers everything here in Dallas.  We just never understood WHY it helps.  We are not lactose intolerant because we can drink raw milk without any issues.  I was reading an article on the best diet for an athlete (Ben plays lacrosse) and came across these two sentences:

Dairy foods, especially commercial dairy (as opposed to raw dairy) are also highly inflammatory. Dairy contains a lot of histamines, which will add to the inflammation already present in the body.

So.  There's a beginning to knowledge.  I hope to eventually find more info on this topic.

We are also now practically gluten-free.  This came about because our son, Jack, was covered in hives.  We had already cut-out dairy, so that couldn't have been the problem.  Jack suggested that it might be wheat causing the problem, so he immediately went cold turkey.  The rest of us are not completely wheat/gluten free, but for logistics sake, we have cut down on wheat quite a bit.  I cannot physically make two different dinners.  Here's another interesting excerpt from the article I mentioned above:

Many athletes are switching to a gluten-free training diet, even if they do not have gluten issues. It has been found that gluten is an inflammatory agent in most people to some degree. Athletes who avoid gluten feel more energetic, less sluggish, lose a little weight, sleep better, have better digestion and generally feel better all around.

We are all carb addicts around here, so it has been hard to go without The Good Gluten.  I found this recipe for Buckwheat Pancakes (buckwheat is not a "wheat"...go figure) that has been heartily approved of by all.  It is quadrupled for my crew, and I added the bananas cause we like some fruit in our pancakes.  The interesting thing is that these taste more like blueberry pancakes than banana pancakes.  I'm guessing it's the flavor of the buckwheat. 

Banana Buckwheat Pancakes

4 c. buckwheat
4 t. baking powder
1/2 c. sugar
2 t. salt
4 eggs

4 c. kefir (or milk)

1/2 c. coconut oil (or butter), melted

6 pureed bananas

We eat our pancakes with maple syrup.  Yum.  But only organic maple syrup.  I recently found out that non-organic maple syrup is processed with formaldehyde.  Bleh.  After a lot of searching for the best price, I finallly subscribed to Amazon's "Subscribe and Save" Coombs Family Farms Organic Maple Syrup.  It's delievered to our house once each month.  I love that I don't have to do anything to get it.  It's automatically shipped (no shipping!) without me having to think about it.

Last big change is cloth diapering.  Not something I ever imagined doing, but diapers have been dramatically increasing in price.  Darin and I did the math, and of course cloth diapering is the cheaper route, so here we go!  Trial run starts tomorrow.  I'm a little nervous.  I don't imagine it's going to be any fun to rinse a "stinky" out in the toilet, but I've got rubber gloves on stand-by. 

Dishrags

There's not much free time in my daily schedule for me to incorporate hobbies into the routine, but there are some things I hate to do without.  Knitting dishrags is one of those things. 

Dishrags, I know, are a very personal thing.  We all have a rag that we swear by, and I absolutely swear by my knitted rags.  I'm a "tight" knitter.  I pull my stitches tight - most knitters would cringe if they saw me.  I know this because I have had a couple of knitting-mamas cringe when they saw me give my stitch a good yank.  But I'm an all-or-nothing personality...heavy on the "all."  It is the predetermined fate of my dishrags to be pulled tight.  I can't bear to have a loosely knitted rag. 

I know from experience that a tightly-stitched rag lasts longest.  My Mom is the better knitter and gives her creations a little more breathing room than I do, but her rags, although pretty, don't last as long as mine.  Right now the oldest rag I have in my kitchen drawer is about four years old.  Not bad when one considers that our family of 8 just went 1 1/2 years without a dishwasher.  That's a lot of hand-washed dishes!

I love sitting down on the couch with my daughter to knit.  We have a lot of fun just sitting and knitting.  It's been a great activity for her to flex her patience.  She does not enjoy having to work as long as it takes to knit a dishrag, and we have some interesting rags in the drawer because of that.  But with every rag she works on, she gets more patient and careful and interested in what she's doing.

I am a member of a yahoogroup called Monthly Dishcloths.  It's fun!  For the first 10 days of the month, 10 rows of a dishrag pattern are sent to my inbox each day.  At the end of 10 days, voila!  A new rag.  These are called "knitalongs."  In the middle of the month, another pattern is sent which is used to teach a new technique.  One month I had a cable knit dishrag - I sweated over that one!

A few years ago, I knitted my heart out for my neighbors.  I knitted each of them three dishrags for Christmas, and I think they're probably about ready for more.  ;-)  Darin is one of those wonderful Renaissance Men and can do just about anything I challenge him with.  He wrote this poem for me to include with our dishrags those few Christmases ago:

Christmas is a time for giving,
So it must mean the neighbors are coming.
So get the milk ready,
The chances are steady
That cookies are forthcoming.

But what else is this they are giving?
Something made by knitting.
It seems a bit small
For a blanket or shawl.
We just don’t know what we are getting.

So let me explain what you have received.
There is no reason to be grieved.
It’s a rag for dishes,
With soap and swishes.
Your plates will certainly be cleaned.

It was knitted with care and love
And thoughts of you to be sure of.
Too pretty to use,
Oh, but please do!
And Merry Christmas from Heaven above.

Movie Night at the Beard's

We host a movie night with our neighborhood friends every now and then.  We have a lot of fun, and it's a great way for Darin and me to get to know the kids our kids play with a little better.  They're a fun bunch of kids and we really enjoy them. 

We made brownies and popcorn, but these crazy boys ended up filling up on my beef stew. 
Warms a mother's heart, I tell ya.

Dare I say it? 

Girls, they wanna have fu-un. Oh, girls! They wanna have fun!
(my 80's roots are showing)

Boys....they just wanna wrestle. 

ChickaChickaBirthday

I'm turning 43 on Saturday and can't wait. I've found myself slipping over the last couple of months and telling people that I am already 43. Whoops! ONLY 42. ;-)

It's been a blessing to grow old...er. Older. I feel like every year that goes by I am shedding the ignorance and silliness of youth. Oh, to go back and do it again with what I know now. But I can't, so I look forward to moving "onward and upward." God is good.

One of my favorite things about age is that I feel like now I know how to properly read my kids their books. Back in my 20s, I read with feeling. Reading with feeling is good. A lot better than monotone. But now....NOW I have let go my inhibitions and can really slam dunk a read-through of those books that I used to try to skirt around when my kids would bring them to me because REALLY. How does an author think to put the phrase "ChickaChickaBoomBoom" in the middle of a story about the lowercase alphabet that climbs a tree together? Well....ChickaCHIckaBOOMBOOM! My kids don't care. They just think it's fun to hear me read it with ChickaChickaBoomBOOM-Pizazz, and I enjoy giggling with, and snuggling them in my arms as we "read it again!"  God is REALLY ChickaChickaBoomBoom-GOOD!