Hope and victory

Last Thursday, my father-in-law,Bill, fell and broke his neck. Over the last several days my husband and his siblings talked to doctors to determine the extent of the damage to his spinal cord. They discovered that he was paralyzed from the neck down, unable to move anything other than his face and neck muscles.

It was incredibly difficult for my husband and his siblings to see their dad in this condition. However, being able to see their dad and communicate their love to him was a gift the Lord gave them before taking their father home this morning. Dave's dad passed from this life to the next with his four children at his bedside.

Dave commented that the Lord has been so sweet to him and his family throughout this ordeal. How much hope we have at the end of our days when we know the Author of life, the One who has victory over death!

"O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?"
ICorinthians 15:55

"How we thank God, who gives us victory over sin and death through Jesus Christ our Lord!"
ICorinthians 15:57

Just For Fun

You Are an Espresso

At your best, you are: straight shooting, ambitious, and energetic At your worst, you are: anxious and high strung You drink coffee when: anytime you're not sleeping Your caffeine addiction level: high

What Kind of Coffee Are You?

Co-op

Today our homeschool co-op met and in our Five In A Row class we read Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans. Even though most of the kids were familiar with the story, they seemed to really enjoy hearing it read and a few couldn't help finishing some of the lines with me. :-) After we read the story and discussed Paris, the Eiffel tower, what an appendix is, etc., we took a walk around the church in "two straight lines" and "smiled at the good, frowned at the bad," etc., just like the girls in the story. After learning some French words and painting a picture in a similar style to the pictures in the book, the kids had to head off to their next class. The time went by quickly and we had a lot of fun! :-)

March

Wow, I can't believe it is March already! We have just been clicking along with our normal routines and February just flew by! Grant and Katie have each recently gone to a friend's birthday party and Katie is going to another one on Sunday. It's just one party after another around here! :-)

Valentine's Day

The kids certainly got their fair share of sugar and fun on Valentine's Day! Our homeschool co-op hosted a potluck lunch and Valentine's Day party yesterday. The kids each had to sign over 60 valentines for the valentine exchange, which took up most of our writing time during school the day before! At the party they got to decorate a bag for their valentines and frost and decorate heart-shaped cookies. The moms got to visit while the kids played games and that was the highlight for me! :-)

We came home from the party all sugared up and then had to turn around a few hours later and head back to church for AWANA. I am Katie's Sparky group leader, so I couldn't very well stay home. It was a great night, though. I always think I want to stay home instead of going out to AWANA in the evening, but once I get there, I end up really enjoying the kids and am glad I went.

Dave and I usually celebrate Valentine's Day with a late, quiet dinner at home once the kids have gone to bed. Since we had AWANA last night, we will have our candlelit dinner tonight! :-)

More Birthday Party Fun

Dave made a castle for the princesses to play in out of refrigerator boxes. It takes up half of our basement! The girls had so much fun peeking out of the windows and lowering and raising the "drawbridge"! :-)

Royal Celebration

This is what greeted quests at our front door for Katie's birthday princess party on Saturday! Katie has been talking about having a princess party for over a year, so it was fun to finally have all the little princesses to our castle to celebrate her 6th birthday. :-)

Visit from Arthur

We've had a friend visiting since Friday. Arthur was my husband's roommate in college and he was the best man in our wedding thirteen years ago. The guys have gone ice fishing and played some basketball at the Y. Last night they looked at pictures from a bike trip they took after graduating from college. I'm glad they've stayed good friends all these years. It's good to have friends who know you well.

A year and a half ago, Arthur stopped by for a couple days with his kids while they were on a long road trip vacation. Our kids and Arthur's kids played continually the entire time. They hit it off amazingly well! Because of those great memories, I guess, Grant and Katie have been practically glued to Arthur the entire time he has been here! They are just ga-ga over him! :-) He has been very patient and kind to them as they have fought over sitting next to him, holding his hand, etc. He even babysat them for Dave and I for awhile one afternoon.

But, all good things must come to an end and Arthur heads back home this evening. Hopefully, we will be able to visit him and his family sometime even though he lives all the way up in Walla Walla, Washington! Maybe a long road trip is in our future...

End Of The Spear

When I was a new Christian, someone gave me a copy of the book, "Through Gates Of Splendor" by Elisabeth Elliot. I flipped through it and saw a picture of a man's body floating in a river with a spear sticking out of his hip and thought there was no way I wanted to read that book.

Well, it sat on a table for awhile and one day I picked it up and finally read a bit of it. I couldn't put it down and ended up reading the whole book. Wow! The lives of Jim Elliot and the other missionaries killed by the Auca Indians in Equador in 1956 really challenged me to live fully for Christ. After that I read everything I could find about the mission to the Aucas and all the books by Elisabeth Elliot I could get my hands on.

My life was changed by reading about those missionaries and their complete surrender to Christ's will for their lives. I know that I am not the only one. I have heard many stories of people going to the mission field because of these men who gave their lives for what they believed in.

Their sacrifice influenced the future direction of my life and Elisabeth Elliot's writings and speaking challenged me (and continue to challenge and encourage me)along the way. I even named my daughter after Elisabeth Elliot ~ her middle name is Elisabeth. With an "s." :-)

Now a movie has been made about this incredible story, told from the perspective of the pilot, Nate Saint's son. It's called: End Of The Spear. I hope that God will again use this story to challenge people to live for Him and take the gospel to those who do not know Him yet.

January

The new year is well under way and we've been trying to get back into a more regular routine with our days. The kids are finally getting back in the habit of doing school work every morning and I'm finally getting back in the habit of not eating candy or drinking eggnog every day~ha-ha! :-)

Last week our homeschool co-op met. In the class I teach, Five In A Row, we enjoyed reading A Pair Of Red Clogs by Masako Matsuno. It was fun to show the class some of the things I had brought home from a mission trip to Japan 15 years ago. I had some Japanese coins which we let the kids look at and do crayon rubbings with and I brought a little cookie-like snack to share with them. (I found them in the Asian foods section of the grocery store.) When I gave them each one, they had to say please and thank you in Japanese, which they really enjoyed doing.

Katie's birthday is coming up and she will be having a princess party to celebrate with her friends. She is VERY excited and is always suggesting ideas of things we can do at the party. :-) Dave and I are going to attempt to put together some type of castle out of refrigerator boxes for the little princesses to play in. We'll see how that actually turns out...

So that is how our January days are going! :-)

Winter Days

It snowed a little bit last night ~ just a light dusting. Now the sun is shining and it looks like someone sprinkled sugar all over our yard! :-) This picture is from another day, which was overcast, but this is what the kids will be doing this afternoon! :-)

Christmas Recap

Every year I want to slow down and really enjoy the Christmas season and I want our celebration to be about the fact that God sent His Son to the world. And every year the busyness comes rushing in and we get caught up in the frenzy of going to and hosting parties, buying gifts, sending out cards and eating an inordinate amount of sweets. This year was a little better. We did slow down a bit.

And I realized that part of the problem is my idealized vision of what Christmas is supposed to look like. To make it meaningful and give my kids wonderful memories of family Christmases. I think that is already happening. So, I can let go of the phantom "perfect Christmas" and just enjoy the real Christmas we have. :-)

Dance Class

Last fall Katie won a free year of dance classes at a local dance studio! She is learning ballet, tap and jazz in her class. Since boys dance free at this studio, Grant decided he would like to be in a hip hop class. It has been a good experience and great exercise so far! Just before Christmas the classes put on a little presentation for the parents. Dave and I enjoyed watching the fruits of their labors! We thought they both did great and more importantly, they had a blast! :-)

Thirteen Years!

Today is Dave's and my thirteenth wedding anniversary. This is the first year we haven't actually celebrated on our anniversary, but our babysitter wasn't available and I didn't get around to trying to find someone else to watch the kids. So, we will go out for a special date to celebrate in a couple of days.

I couldn't imagine sharing life with anyone other than the wonderful husband that God gave me. I am so blessed!

Family Christmas Picture

I guess we got caught up in Christmas preparations...and then Christmas...and then the Christmas conference we put on for high school students...so I got behind in posting! Anyway, this is the picture we sent out with our Christmas cards this year. We decided to do the cards, had a friend take the picture, went to Dave's office to create the card and email it to the printer all in a couple of hours! We picked them up from the printer and mailed them the next day. It was kind of a relief to just have it done!

More on Christmas later~

A Toothy Tale

The Tooth Fairy is going to have to fork over a bunch of dough tonight! Little Grant had to have his two eye teeth pulled at the dentist today. He was such a trooper as they numbed up his gums with "sleepy juice." The dentist did an excellent job of making Grant feel comfortable. He is really good with kids.

Grant did not feel much other than a little pinch when they gave him the shot of novacaine. He left the dental office with two big wads of gauze in his mouth and a puffy, numb lip. I let him watch videos and eat mashed potatoes and chocolate pudding for dinner. He is feeling much better now. :-)

Narnia Personality Quiz

As Susan, you are mature and respectable, yet with your 'motherly' role you can be quite bossy. Still, you can always be trusted to be loyal and faithful.

Ha~ha! Well, I guess there is a quiz for everything! :-)

Narnia

Oh, we LOVED the Narnia movie!

One of our family's favorite Christmas gifts last year was a volume of all The Chronicles Of Narnia. We began reading it together on Saturday and Sunday afternoons and soon the kids were begging for "Narnia time"! We finished The Last Battle about a week ago and could hardly wait to see the movie, The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe!

Last night our whole staff team, kids included, went to see the movie together. Afterward, we all went to one family's home for our Christmas party. It was fun seeing the movie with a big group, but it was really special to see it with our kids after reading the books and anticipating it for so long!

I thought the movie represented the story really well. The times that the children went into and out of Narnia through the wardrobe were just exactly like I imagined it when reading the book. When Aslan first appeared on the scene, I thought that he could have been a little more fierce, but other than that I loved everything about the movie. I'm so glad that the money and time were put into telling this story well and I hope that the other stories in The Chronicles of Narnia will be made into movies, also!

The first thing Katie said when the movie ended was, "I want to watch it again!" :-) I couldn't agree more! I don't think we can wait too long before we go back to see the movie and step into Narnia again!

Tigger is back

My little Tigger is bouncing and chatting again. :-) It is good to see him acting like himself once more. Tonight at dinner he confided that he thinks he should be a secret agent when he grows up because, "I just like being secret and sneaking around." Okay...well, I think everyone would know what he's up to because he also likes to talk and talk about every little thought he has! :-)

This is the weekend of parties! We have our homeschool co-op classes tomorrow and a little party afterward. On Saturday the kids are going to a birthday party and then we are all going to our staff team's family Christmas party. It's a good thing Tigger is back in action for all these parties, because socializing is what he lives for! :-)

Tigger

My little Tigger-like son is down with a headache and fever. He is always so full of energy and non-stop chatter, that it is strange to see him lying around and being so quiet. :-( I'm praying he will be his old bouncy self again soon.