Blast from the Past

Mya wanted to decorate the tree in her room and knew that I had a box full of mixed ornaments from my childhood downstairs in the basement.  I finally dug them out and brought them up for her to use.  It was so fun looking through the ornaments and remembering where each one came from.  But the best one we found was this:

In case you can't read it....it says "Darah."  That was the name I was born with and I legally changed it when I was six years old.  It was very sweet to hear my daughter tell me that the name Darah was beautiful.  She told me she wished I had named her Darah.  Then I showed the Christmas bulb to Dan and he had such a genuine, sweet smile on his face.  He thought it was very precious. 

And this is why I love Christmas time!  It is so full of unique experiences and special times with family. 

Beautiful Grace

Mya's middle name is Grace.  I am so glad we gave her that name.  Just saying her name reminds me to extend grace to her on a daily basis.  She is such a beautiful child and what comes with being the oldest is learning all the hard lessons first.  She is kind of paving the way for her younger siblings. 

Today we had some struggles and I had to practice grace, yet set good boundaries with her.  Today I was thankful to be home schooling her.  We had some character building experiences that made me appreciate being available to be around for the "teachable" moments.  One of the main reasons I wanted to home school was to work on socialization skills with the girls.  I think it sounds funny when I say that because the typical stigma for home schooling is that the kids aren't socialized very well.  But let me tell you...that is so far from the truth. 

One of the biggest things we have been concerned with for Mya is being true to herself.  She is easily influenced by those around her.  She does things to impress her friends or tries to make them laugh in a way that isn't funny.  We have spent a lot of time talking to her about how God has made her a certain way and how she needs to embrace that.  We pray that truth is sinking in and that she is believing it.  But the cool thing about being home with her is teaching truth and then finding so many opportunities to help her practice those skills.  Classical Conversations has been a great place for her to practice.  She is in a group of three boys.  She is the only girl.  This set up has made her very aware of being different, which has brought to light many skills that she needs to work on.  I am certain God had a particular design for the class that she is in this year. So after every class we come home and process how she acted and how she might do things differently. Her biggest struggle is just trying too hard to get people to like her.  To the point that it is a turn off to her friends.  It is hard to watch because I know her "true" self at home, which is a sweet, tenderhearted, playful little girl.  For some reason she feels like she must act goofy to get people to like her. Today a student finished a presentation and Mya raised her hand to ask him a question about the topic.  Well....she was supposed to ask about the topic, but instead told him a random fact about her presentation topic.  It was out of place and inappropriate and disrespectful to her classmate.  This experience lead her to feel embarrassed and allowed me to have a firm, yet truthful conversation about how to act around her peers.  She is a work in progress.  We are all a work in progress.  She needed grace.  We all need grace.  I thoroughly enjoyed the moments after we talked because they were full of tender hugs, kisses and loving words between a mother and a daughter. 

Date Night

Storm Chaser

When we lived in California I remember Mya NOT wanting to return to Ohio because she knew we had tornadoes.  In fact, the kids in our apartment complex would "play" tornado with my girls because they were fascinated by it....because they had never seen one.  It is kind of like us playing earthquake.  We did convince Mya to come home because we had a basement and could protect her. 

So last Sunday she experienced her first tornado warning and it freaked her out.  In fact, the whole next day she bombarded me with questions about tornadoes....to the point that I couldn't take it anymore.  The poor thing just wanted answers and I was annoyed with her questions.  I have learned from home schooling (i.e. being with my kids the majority of the days) that when I get frustrated with the kids I am the one that needs to switch gears.  I am the one that needs to get creative with managing my emotions and reactions.  I have had a lot of opportunities to practice how to reduce stress in the house.  I drew on that experience and thought of a nice solution for all of us. I decided to take Mya to the library and find all the books about tornadoes.  Every week the kids do oral presentations at Classical Conversations and next week Mya has to do one about being thankful for something.  Guess what?  We were all really thankful that the tornado didn't touch down in our town. What a great way for Mya to become an expert on tornadoes and present on it to her class.  It worked out perfect! 

All week we have been learning about thunderstorms and tornadoes.  I know WAY too much about them now.  I know about updrafts, downdrafts, super cell thunderstorms, cumulus clouds, condensation and meteorologists. We have watched documentaries and read books and talked and talked and talked about them.  We know how to stay safe and we know all about storm chasers.  In fact, Mya has decided to become a storm chaser some day.  I don't think that is exactly the result I was going for.  But at least she isn't obsessed about the fear anymore.  She is pretty fascinated and so am I.

Surgery

Yesterday I had my second leg surgery for varicose veins.  I did not take the muscle relaxer medication...I have a hard time taking the meds that make me feel loopy.  I don't like how they make me feel.  I don't get nervous about the surgery so I decided I didn't need the medication.  I am glad!  I had lovely conversation with the surgeon and his staff during the three hour surgery.  I got to see what a real vein looks like...after he pulled it out of my leg and I was awake enough to find out that he made 48 incisions on my leg when it was all said and done.  My veins were pretty stubborn and it took him a long time to get them all out.  Overall, it was a very positive experience.  Mya came with us.  She has had some anxiety with being away from us so she chose to come to the surgery with me and Dan.  I think she enjoyed being an only child for the day.  Smart girl!  Maybe once my leg is all healed and looking nice I will post a picture.  I wish I had a before/after picture.  My leg was pretty ugly looking.  I am very thankful to have a normal leg again.  It has been many, many years. 

I had the opportunity on Monday to talk with a homeschooling mom and get some perspective on how her first year went.  I asked if she was back and forth on whether or not to homeschool.  She said she spent the first two years wondering what was the best decision for her and her kids.  It was so encouraging to hear that I am not the only one.  And that she stuck with it and is thankful.  That doesn't mean that it will work out that way for us, but it was nice to have someone confirm things that I have been feeling.  I feel like that conversation gave me permission to continue to wrestle with my thoughts and feelings and let it be okay.  I don't have to make a decision any time soon.  I will just continue to pray about it, ask advice and trust in the Lord's direction.

Struggles

I have been learning so much about myself recently.  God is revealing some heart issues that I am trying to learn about and work on.  I am so grateful for His wisdom and conviction in my life.  One of the biggest things that I struggle with is second guessing myself.  I over apologize for things that I say and do....I worry about what people are thinking of me....I am fearful of making mistakes....and I lack an inner confidence that I am just plain tired of !  I think I am finally to the point that I am ready to let God do a work in me.  It sounds funny to say that I am letting God work on me when he probably wanted to do it a long time ago.  I probably could have avoided some heartache if I would have let him in on this one.  But giving up control and trusting is what must be done.  I am meditating daily on Psalm 139:14, "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well."  This verse has really spoken to me and continues to teach me that I am so loved and that God is proud of who I am despite my flaws.  I think that accepting my flaws is quite a challenge for me.  I don't like appearing weak and I don't like making mistakes.  I think I try to protect myself so I won't get hurt in this world.  But God loves me despite all of that.  How amazing is that!  One of my eye opening experiences to all of this came about when I was doing my devotions and read Matthew 3:17.  John the Baptist had just finished with Jesus' baptism and the heavens were opened.  A voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased."  I thought about that scripture a lot and realized that although these words were being spoken to Jesus, I know that God feels the same about me.  If he took the time to create me and design everything about me, then He is pleased with me.  How comforting!  I have known these truths for a long time, but I am finally accepting them and embracing them as truth.  I am finally believing that I please God, despite my sin.  I look back on my life and think about the journey that I have been on so far.  Ups and downs, hurts and failures....but without those things, God can't work.  He needs a heart that recognizes sole reliance on Him.  He needs a sinner who embraces creation.  So the next time I tell myself that I am silly for saying something or that someone might not like me because of an action....I will tell myself that I am fearfully and wonderfully made.  The next time I go to over apologize for something, I will stop myself and remember that I am NOT in control of every moment of life.  I have to let things go and trust that God is the one in control.  It is time to make some changes in my life!

Recently we have been struggling with our oldest.  She manipulates with her behavior....she likes to get her own way...she likes to control her environment and schedule.  Gee....I wonder where she got that from?  But it has gotten to the point that she is struggling with some heart issues.  And it is up to us as parents to help her recognize truth and work through some things.  We have a new book we are reading called Give Them Grace that talks about teaching about our grace-giving God.  It challenges us to think about how we teach so much about "good behavior" instead of teaching the gospel.  This not only changes the way the kids respond, but changes the way we parent. Just tonight we had to give Mya a consequence of going to bed early because she threw a fit during school time today.  I was tired of giving her so many "chances" and decided to follow through with giving a consequence right away. We have noticed how much she can manipulate us so we decided to get more firm.  But while processing things with her tonight, it made sense to her when we talked about how she can't obey or respect us on her own.  She is powerless with that.  But when she understands how Jesus died on the cross for her sins, then she can grasp the concept of needing a Rescuer.  This is a heart issue, not a behavior issue.  I think as parents it is so hard to remember that because we feel so much when our kids let us down.  We are frustrated, angry, hurt, etc. and we just want to point out what they are doing wrong.  But it makes sense to bring it all back around to the gospel.  She told me tonight before going to sleep, "Mommy, I think that book you are reading really helped me tonight."  I sure hope so!

Go Oils!

I can't believe we are almost three months into the school year already.  It has been quite a journey for us already.  Most days go smoothly, but some days are tough.  The days when the kids are tired and cranky or whiny about school work or struggling with a subject...those are the days that I have to remind myself that it is okay to take breaks and just sit down and snuggle with them.  Or stop schooling and play a game to bring laughter back in the house.  Or let the kids play outside in the snow (yes!....we had our first snowfall yesterday).  At 7 am the kids were begging to go outside and make snow angels.  It was fun to have the flexibility to allow them to do that.  Then they came inside and had hot chocolate and did their school work.  I do enjoy making my own schedule each day....depending on how we are all feeling.  Classical Conversations is fun and rewarding.  The kids love to go there each week.  They are learning so much memory work and I am learning things that I completely forgot about from grade school.  Sometimes I come home from class on Monday feeling a little sad that I didn't retain a lot of academic information from my younger years.  I know nothing about geography and now I am having to locate all the continents, mountains, rivers, oceans, and major cities.  I will tell you what....those home schooling moms that have been doing this for a while are very smart.  They have challenged me to really study the information that I am teaching my kids.

Some days I can really see how homeschooling is benefitting us and other days I struggle to see all the good things.  But a lot of that is correlated with my emotions that day.  Depending on how successful the kids are with their work and how productive I feel.  So I try pretty hard to keep a good perspective on how things are going and not let my feelings dictate how I process the job I am doing.  Overall, I certainly can see how much my kids are benefitting from home education.  And no matter how many years I might do this, I will always be grateful for the time that I am given at home with them. It truly is a blessing!  And the things that I have learned from my children are priceless.  Just the other day we were studying a history timeline card and I was explaining to them about persecution.  I told the girls that even today, in other countries, people die because they believe in God.  Mya looked at me with such seriousness and said, "Mommy, I would still believe in God even if it meant I would have to be killed." What an awesome moment for a mom!

Here is my little Classical Conversation class (four kids) and I am so lucky to have parents assisting me throughout the morning.

This is our weekly memory work board.  We cover seven subjects each week full of memory work.

 We had the honor of doing a family presentation to all the CC families.  The girls really wanted to teach them how to make green smoothies so that is exactly what we did.

A few weeks ago Dan was flown to Oklahoma to look at a new job opportunity.  He came back on a Friday night and by Monday morning we had an official job offer. I am beyond excited for him.  I feel like I can clearly see how God has laid a path for him over the years with the jobs he has done to get him to this point.  He will step into administration and I can already tell that this will be a job that will grow him personally and professionally.  I couldn't be more proud.  He starts December 2nd and will work out of our home to begin with.  As his business grows then he will eventually have a home office somewhere close by.  He will do travelling during the day but will be home in the evenings.  This is a great Christmas present for us all. 

I am still in love with my oils.  Just the other day I discovered that a drop of peppermint in water takes away hiccups immediately.  That was fun to discover.  All five of us have had the start of a cold this Fall and I "kicked" all of the colds with my oils.  The most anyone had cold symptoms was two days maximum.  It never went into a full cold.  Sweet!  The best part about the business is helping other people heal their families and work on conditions and see results.  My brother in law sent me a picture the other day of my niece.  He did a before and after picture.  When she was at my house she fell off Mya's bike and banged her face up.  My brother in law and sister in law applied oils for a week to her face and within a week it was all cleared up.  The before and after picture is stunning.  Go oils!