A Quote

I came across this quote at thatmom.com and thought it was beautiful, so I wanted to share:

“The Christian gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me. This leads to deep humility and deep confidence at the same time. It undermines both swaggering and sniveling. I cannot feel superior to anyone, and yet I have nothing to prove to anyone. I do not think more of myself nor less of myself. Instead, I think of myself less.”

~ Tim Keller in The Reason For God

Treasures of June

Even though I was absent for most of the month of June, there were a few treasures that stood out to me and I wanted to share. Enjoy and be blessed!

Embrace Homemaking - Be Busy at Home at Raising Homemakers - this article really ministered to me, as laziness, as I have confessed before, is something I am always battling.

Why You Shouldn't "Try" to Have an Unmedicated Birth at San Diego Birth Network - great article!! Very well said!

All the Grace you Need to Overcome at David Wilkerson Today - this was very encouraging to me :-)

The Beauty of the House at Jordan Family Happenings - simple and short, but so sweet!

5 Secrets to Make a Marriage Last at holy experience - wonderful points! I have found that the main glue (other than the Lord Himself) that holds my marriage together (on my end, anyway) is not allowing bitterness or constant negative and critical thoughts toward Michael to rule my thinking. It is so, so important to "take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ" as well as "rejoice in all things" when thinking of my husband!

Is it OK for Moms to Have Jobs Outside the Home? at Desiring God Blog. John Piper has such a way with words, he's one of my absolute favorites! Short 3 minute video worth watching :-)

Giving Up on Sunday School at The Family Revised - Brenda's done a great series on the history of Sunday school and where it's headed. Good post!

Here I Am!

I am back from my month long blogging hiatus! I hope everyone had a wonderfully blessed June. The actual reason for my break was because we went on a family vacation to Lake Champlain, in upstate New York. Michael was able to work remote, but I am not allowed to use his work laptop for leisure web surfing (obviously!), so I was offline most of the time. I did access my email via his iPhone as necessary, which was good because I would have come home to WAAY too much email if I hadn't! But otherwise we wanted vacation to be as "unplugged" as possible.

We had a wonderful, relaxing time - it was quite a blessing to enjoy God's beautiful creation and the company of friends and family while we were there, too. Here are some um, lots of pictures!

There was fishing:

and that part that comes after fishing that I am all to glad to have a husband to handle:

And swimming (the water was cooooolllldddd! For further proof, see the videos my sister took!):And a little boating, too:Beautiful scenery:More than a few chilly nights and days (summer comes slowly when you're that far north):

Wildlife:Even the dogs had fun!Look, its the woman normally behind the camera!And all of us, on the back deck of the house:It was truly a blessed time we had making lifelong memories!

Now that we're back we're getting back into routine pretty quickly. We're going to finish up the last few weeks of My Father's World Exploring Countries and Cultures, and then dive right into Sonlight Core 3. I love schooling year round - last year we tried to take the summer off, and it just didn't work well for us. So the school fun will continue!

July holds some exciting things to look forward to! Next week I'll have a fun giveaway, so be sure to be on the lookout! Also, I begin my official reviews for the TOS Homeschool Crew, as well as reviewing a book called "Voices of the True Woman Movement" based on Revive Our Hearts' True Woman conferences. Hope you like to hear my opinions on things, because I'll be sharing them ;-)

I'm so happy to be back!

Treasures of May

Lots and lots of wonderful posts this month! Which is good, because for the month of June, I am taking a blogging break. So hopefully these will occupy your time for a little while! So, enjoy, be encouraged, and be blessed! See you in July - when the fun begins again!

From A Wise Woman Builds Her Home:

• A Wise Mother Guards Her Time
• She Does not Eat the Bread of Idleness
  

From Raising Arrows:

• Top Ten Reasons to Have a Large Family - I agree with all 10! I tried to pick a favorite, but I couldn't narrow it down!
• Difficult Words - Self Denial

From At the Well... In Pursuit of Titus 2:

• Parenting While Thinking Ahead
• Managing the Home... Practical Tips
• Husband on Wife-Imposed Rice Diet

Why I'm at Home at boundless.org (this was originally published in 2008, but was reposted at Ladies Against Feminism)

Busy Doing What? at In Word Adorning

From (in)courage:

• Why the Kids Really Need a Little Red Hen Mama - another incredible post by Ann Voskamp - beautiful, convicting, encouraging, and heartbreaking all at the same time
• For Married Women Only - the title is accurate, and the post is excellent!

From holy experience:

• A 10 Point Manifest for Joyful Mothering: A Mother's Day Gift- I need to print these out and put them up where I can see them and remind myself throughout the day!
• What the Real Witness of Christ Really Do
• Intimate Issues: The Making of a Marriage Bed
  

Exchanging the Truth for What Works for Us at Breathing Grace - Terry hit the nail on the head - great post!

Respectable at Large Family Mothering - sadly, this is all too true

From Passionate Homemaking:

• Cultivating Learning in Everyday Activities: Laundry & Other Rooms
• Cultivating Learning in Everyday Activities: Outdoors
• Living in SUB-mission, as a Mom - awesome post!!
  

From Raising Olives:

• God's Method for Education: Choosing Curriculum, Part 3
• Teaching Little Ones
• Teaching Big Kids
  

From I Take Joy:

• Happy Mother's Day 2010 - beautiful, touching, and rich with encouragement
• God's Design in Our Hearts
• Blessed are the Peacemakers - something I've been learning alot about through personal trials
• Perspective... Practicing Believing and Loving God
  

The Not-so-Golden Anniversary of the Pill at True Woman

Matthew 11:30 at Steppin' Heavenward - this is one of my "rule breakers" - it was not published this month, or even this year, but it is waaaay to good to leave out. My #1 favorite this month - maybe of all time. Lots of beautiful truths in it! HT to Jess at Making Home for bringing it to my awareness!

From Elizabeth Esther:

• Because an Ultrasound (not an Abortion) is "Cruel and Unusual Punishment" - absolutely unbelievable! And heartbreaking.
• Cultivating a Kind, Gentle Tone of Voice
  

6 Reasons to Homeschool Year-Round at Molding Minds Homeschool - we've tried the traditional school calendar and the year-round calendar, and we'll be sticking with year-round from now on!

Building a House of Prayer at Internet Cafe Devotions

Dawn, a Work-at-Home Mom at The High Calling - what a sweet, beautiful testimony!

Love Metabolism at Femina

A Collection of Breastfeeding Cartoons at The Motherwear Breastfeeding Blog - ok, this one is way old, but I love Baby Blues and these were so funny!

Songs for Saturday

Just for fun, here are two videos that have been passed around the social media world. Both are pretty cute and funny. Just for the record, I love my role as a wife and mom, and wouldn't trade it for the world. But to keep it real, I definitely have days like these!

Mommy Rhapsody from Church on the Move on Vimeo.

Just for Fun Friday - Like Father, Like Son

I hear so often how much Nathan resembles Michael, to which I've always agreed. However, it wasn't until I was going through some old pictures and came across these two that I realized just how much Nathan looks like him!

(This picture was taken on Michael's 24th birthday - which was, ummm... a little while back!)



There are definitely some similarities, you think?!

Sometimes it's Good to be Opinionated

I'm thrilled to announce that I've been selected to be part of The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew! Starting sometime in July and continuing through the 2010-2011 school year, I will be privileged to be trying out various homeschool products and reviewing them for you here on my blog. Be on the lookout... I can't wait! (And that is just one of the many fun things happening here starting in July - including a giveaway and other excitement! So stay tuned!)

We Interrupt this Regularly Scheduled Homeschooling Day...

What, you may ask, has these boys so captivated?

Perhaps this will explain better than words:


A pipe broke in our neighborhood, so a crew was sent out to fix it.





We took the morning off of our regular school schedule and had a "mini field trip" to watch the progress!

Needless to say, they loved it! For some reason, they especially liked when the muddy water overflowed:

That's boys for you, I guess!

A Song for Saturday

In celebration of our study of Australia - we all loved this and listened to it several times over the past two weeks! Have a fun and blessed Saturday!

WFMW - The Artwork Clutter Solution

My boys love to draw. And when you have 4 boys over 9 years making lots of drawings, that adds up to ALOT of paper. Some drawings are delightful and unique, and worth holding on to, while others are just silly doodles or failed attempts at... no one really remembers what anymore. I have read so many ideas on how to organize, cull, preserve and otherwise keep up with the large amount of children's artwork we've amassed. And no matter what, it still gets overwhelming. I won't even go into the amount of print/copy paper I've had to buy to keep them supplied.

My first method of organizing was a tall dresser, a normal 5-drawer type that was handed down to us. The drawers were organized - one for art supplies, one for blank paper, one for coloring books, and the last two for completed artwork. When the bottom drawers got full, I'd do the dreaded toss - going through all of the artwork and trying to determine what was keepsake and what was, well, not. I could only do this once the kids were sleeping because it invariably ended up in tears and hurt feelings... no fun for anyone. Not to mention it was really hard for me, as I am a natural packrat and have trouble throwing away old receipts much less my child's precious time and effort displayed as a big brownish-black mass of fingerpainting without determinable shape.

So, then I tried to put the resonsibility more on them - I bought Sterilite drawers specifically for paper, like such:
one labeled for each boy. They were to put their artwork into their drawer, and when it got full, it was THEIR jobs to determine which creations were their favorites and which could be tossed.

Ummm... yeah. THAT never happened. Failure #2.

Then Joel got this for his birthday:
Did you hear the same angelic chorus that I did when I looked at it and got my super duper idea? Self-contained paper?! What genius came up with this?! Obviously, its not the first time I've seen a sketch pad, but all of the sudden that proverbial light bulb came on when I realized I was looking at the perfect solution to my artwork woes.

So off I went to the store to get 3 more for the other boys. At about $4 a piece, $16 total for replacements won't hurt us too badly. At first I thought they'd fill one up fast (each one has 70 pages, or 140 front and back) - my one concern was that I'd be buying new ones each month - that's 48 sketch books a year filling our house! But its been 3 months since we first got them and only Joel has needed a replacement (he's our resident artist).

Some awesome benefits to using sketchpads to keep artwork contained:

1. The artwork is contained, no more skattered loose sheets everywhere.
2. No more running out of printer paper because little artists steal it
3. An easy and fun way to see how each child's artwork has progressed - Nathan's scribbles which have now turned into his first impressions of people are all captured for posterity
4. The paper is thick, so they can use pencil, crayon, marker and even paint, without worry about it ruining the pages below. Unless they go too crazy with their rinsing water while painting, which has happened.
   
5. Easy for me to keep and store - each child has a storage file box for each school year - the sketch pads are labeled with the year and put into the file box with their other school work memorabilia
6. If they want to give someone a picture, the pages have the serrated edge to make them easy to tear out, not to mention they'll be giving a picture on higher quality paper
   
7. No more organizing needed - trying to guess who drew what, what it might be, if its a preschool version of a Picasso and unknowingly incredibly valuable...
   
8. I no longer have to do the dreaded "sort and toss". A big hurray! from everyone!

Sketchpads. They Work For Me! Check out some other great ideas over at We Are THAT Family!