Crazy Kids!

Are these babies, beautiful or what?! They are to me anyway! Plus they make me smile! I have been thinking for a few weeks that I would really like to do something to remind myself daily how much of an encouragement my five arrows are! One thing I say often to Will is how consitently these little people remind me of His love. Often security doesn't do it (as there is no security apart from the gospel), our curcumstances WILL NOT do it (believe you me!), our feelings CANNOT do it (especially if you are a woman--like me and basically have a hard time-most days-figuring your own emotions out!), but one thing that always consistently reminds me about His love and goodness (apart from the word and my husband and the spirit) are these five nuts! And yes even when they are crazy and looking like train wrecks, when I haven't slept or the house looks like a bomb exploded, they are disobedient and they aren't what I envisioned children to be; they are ALWAYS a blessing and I have a premonition that even if they choose to defy the Lord and live their lives away from the Savior, they will be (even while making us very burdened for their eternity and their life) such a HUGE blessing to us! I don't think my kids can do anything that will make me look at them, and who He has made me by using them, and say anything less than "there is a BLESSING! PROOF of His lovingkindness!" So it has me thinking Tattoos. Something that will daily remind me that He is Great, and Wise and Good, and They are proof daily of that reality! Because, let's face it, I am a very weak vessel, who struggles to remember how great He is in the midst of trials and struggles and burdens of a fallen world! I don't think it is wrong to do a thing to remind yourself how Good something (or in this case Someone!) is. I need the reminding! I truly do! So here's to trying (probably not in the near future, but sometime) to get a tattoo, which I have no idea where to put and I am afraid to get and I don't know what it will look like! But I def think it will happen....right after I get a Kindle fire! :D

You Know You Have Five Crazies....

.....when a shower in the middle of the day (much less the morning) seems like a luxery!

.....when you really (and I mean REALLY) feel thankful for disposable diapers!

.....when staying up late is only a treat because you get some time alone.

......when your children really are the greatest blessing in your life (aside from salvation and my husband)! And you actually can see it as such!

......when you don't even think about yourself most of the day.

.....when doing something for someone else is simply natural and not forced.

....when doing something for someone else is forced....but hey you still have to do it!

...when you can honestly say "what would they do without me?"

.....when you can honestly say "who would I be without them?"

.....when your house is always a mess, but your arms and time are always full!

.....when you cannot even really remember what being without five crazies would be like and the thought of it truly makes you lonely!

....when you watch the duggars to feel less freaky! and to get ideas for organization! :D

....when all the preconcieved notions you had when a parent-to-one or a parent-to-be make you laugh so ard you cannot breath.

...when three children seem easy or two children seem laughable and one child seems almost like you are still on your honeymoon! haha!!

...when six doesn't seem so crazy afterall....don't go freaky on me mom!!

Already?

Silas telling Libbers a story! :D

Where did 4 months go?

Along the Road....

Why do baby days go by so fast along the road of life?

I guess in part because we are meant to appreciate every moment along that stretch of road......

Pum'kin Patch

Are we ready for a ......

Hay ride and....

Pum'kin pickin' ....

A Maze......

Lots of hay....

lots and lots and lots of hay.....

feeding goats.....

or donkeys if you are Kace.....

Playin' on tractor tires......

climbing GIANT trees....

And having an all around great time?

What Do you Do?

Will and I are often asked this question. "Well, what do you do?!" and though I don't usually say it I always think to myself "What can I do?" and I really mean it! When God causes certain things to happen when I make choices that follow the gospel what can I do, but bear up under the cost of that choice! I don't do anything. I try hard to trust and I pray and I often beg for relief, but I cannot do anything! And sometimes not being able to do anything is really one of the hardest things for me to do. Bearing up under the pressure of the cost, realizing how weak and frail I really am, how depraved my human self is in reality, and how much I really do want to DO something! But often, there isn't much to do save hope and wait and trust. Faith in effect has become a part of your life when you are bearing. His yoke is light, but the world would love to make you believe otherwise and even though it is light it is costly! I know this because my life is a testimony to the costliness of His grace! But the next time you think someone or you yourself needs to do something.....maybe you are not really looking at things the right way....maybe He is doing something and calling you to witness His majesty?! Maybe He is growing and sanctifying you and changing you into the image of Christ. Bearing isn't bad, it is another testament that Christ lives in you and you are known by Him. Christ bore and if we are called to be like Him we too must bear up under the trails and side-effects of living in this fallen world!

and a post script from my favorite theologian:

Today we in the church know far too little about the unique blessing of enduring and bearing--to bear, not to cast off, to bear, but neither to collapse, to bear as Christ bore the cross, to endure beneth it, and there, underneath, to find Christ. When God imposes a burden, those who are patient bend their heads and believe it is good to be humbled thus--to endure beneath this burden. But to endure beneath it! To remain firm, to remain strong as well--that is what the word means, not anemic, giving in, shrinking back, enamored of suffering--but rather to gain strength under the burden as under God's grace, to preserve God's peace with unshakable constancy. God's peace is found among the patient.



-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Treasures of Suffering p. 43

I Have Only Conquered 30...

Where do you fall in the list? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here.


Look at the list and put an * after those you have read.


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen *

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien *

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling *

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee *

6 The Bible (The entire thing!) *

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwel*

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

Total: 6



11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott *

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller*

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier*

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien*

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

Total so far: 9



21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck *

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll *

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame *

Total so far: 12



31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis *

34 Emma-Jane Austen *

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen *

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis *

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne *

Total so far: 17



41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meany

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery*

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood*

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding *

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

Total so far: 20



51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen *

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley*

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Total so far: 22



61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck *

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding *

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

Total so far: 24



71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett *

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Inferno – Dante *

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

Total so far: 26



81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens *

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White *

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle *

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

Total so far: 29



91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad *

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Eupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute*

97 The Three Musketeers - Aleandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare *

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl *

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo


Total: 33

.I hope that if you decide to take the challenge of answering this please link here so I can read your progress along BBC's list (I say that like it really was a standard of excellence, which it's not--but it's interesting!).

I will say this for a totally secular and in some ways irrelevant list! Some of my most favorite books are found here:

Harry Potter Series
Anne of Green Gables
Pride and Prejudice
Persuasion
Narnia
The Lord of the Rings
The Hobbit
A Christmas Carol
Sherlock Holmes
The Secret Garden
The Bible...obviously!

And some I wish I had never come into contact with:
Heart of Darkness
Rebecca
Lord of the Flies

So even though many of the books I will never read:
His dark Materials
Atonement
The Davinci Code
The five People You meet in Heaven

I am still looking forward to reading many on this list:
The three Musketeers
Crime and Punishment
Catcher in the Rye
Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
Gone with The Wind
Watership Down

But as much as I would love the bragging rights (more proof of the distance I have before I am sanctified) I am not going to read a book on this list unless it suits my fancy. And maybe that will turn out good or it may bomb...either way I will have read some great creative works from God's creatures and will probably learn even more about human nature and depravity and the need for the gospel...because Like it or not most of these authors have impacted the culture and when we meet people and befriend them and start sharing our lives, I want to know this world I live in and why I follow Christ alone.

 I truly believe we must live fully in this world in a redemptive sense if we are honestly to convey the amazing truths of the gospel to our neighbors--we cannot do this if we hold ourselves and our heart apart. If we are becoming the image of Christ then we are becoming what He was, what creation was meant to be before the fall. In our redemption from sin God is working many miracles, one of which is making us to look like what He intended us to be at creation, through our redemption and our daily sanctification into the image of Christ. Just some thoughts that really affect the way I read today. I am not one of those people who only reads "christian" books,  but I do read them some. I want to be widely read and more familiar with the realities of redemption because of that reading. So Why not make some reading goals and enjoy a look at humanity which you may not have had before and then see what happens to your heart as it expands with a burden for your own nation and the lost who reside within her boarders.

Homeschooling Reminders...Not Just for The Homeschooler!

I was reading our pastor's blog recently (he isn't our current pastor, but one who has seriously encouraged and ministered to Will and I through times of great trial and is a shepherd we would both willingly follow!) and he linked an article, which Will and I both read together.

Why did we like it?

-It make us both pause.

-It made us both take inventory  of our motives in parenting.

-It made us value more dearly the precious gifts our children are to us.

-It made us remember the gospel!

-It helped us learn to remember our children aren't projects or tools for acheivement. They aren't ways we prove our fabulous skills, they aren't experiments....they are fallen people just like us who need a chance to just be themselves and live their livesfor Him, not our life. And we should give them the independence/trust/chance-even-if-they-don't-deserve-it to do so without us trying to force them into a mold that is imagined and not real.

So if you think any of these reasons for our enjoying this article are things you might identify with or if you are just curious go and check it out now.

Click HERE.

You know You have Five crazies When......Another Addition

You know you have five crazies when....

....The thought of a pet sends you into a cold sweat imagining the extra things you will be forced to do to care for the pet!

....You can understand why people homeschool when they have big families after you have forgotten something for the children for school for the third day in a row and know that the librarian thinks you cannot possibly remember a library book to save your life!


....Your car looks like a cookie box blew up literally....and your kids manage to get dirty just by riding in your car....Okay that may just be us!

.....You wash three loads of laundry a day....that doesn't mean you actually fold and put them away though....Hey we all have flaws!

....You have sticky notes stuck to your furniture that say "I love momom and dady" and you cannot remember how they got there, but you would rather cut your arm off then move the sticky note...

...You realize your calendar is upside down and on april...when it's october!

....You get excited when you find a crock pot alternative to your planned dinner menu!

...You try really hard to remember things...but honestly you are lucky if you remember your name....seriously! I don't know how the Duggars do it....I mean I really don't! And I only have FIVE!

Daddy and His Big Boys

Daddy and the three big boys in 2007.

For nearly a month our family has been having a new experience.....christian school! WoW! Who would have thought our fam would ever get a chance to enjoy the blessings of a private school experience, but we have because He is provisional! We would never have stopped homeschooling had we not been given a great opportunity  and we are nothing but thankful for it! Will also began teaching Bible at this same school. It is a good chance for them all to spend time together and also learn! They are loving the time, although the early mornings are wearing on us all...but not our littlest family members.

Daddy and these crazy fellas in 2008.

Will is Teaching High School Bible and currently educating the kids on reading the word correctly. Rightly dividing isn't simply a natural thing, it is a learned concept and the kids are really taking to the new information. He will be starting a new bible study once a week with some of the boys and is excited to be  involved in openly teaching the Word again.

Fall 2008.

Silas has begun 2nd grade. The experience has been one of discipline for him, especially coming from a homeschooling back ground where our school lasts only 3 to 4 hours max! So an all day thing, taking notes, and being organized without mom's help has been hard, but he's getting the knack. He and I are reading the Snow Queen together at night and He is doing a fab job, considering many of the words need to be sounded out!

April 2010.

Kace was made for a school environment! He just loves having a ton of busy work to do, directions to follow constantly, and a teacher to help out consistently. We have struggled a little in loving our family through out this transition for him. He has tended to love his school familt better than is real family and so we are working toward getting out priorities straight.

This summer, 2011. They are HUGE!

Momma, G-man, Pie Pie, and Lulu have been getting into a groove a bit slower than we had hoped. G-man has been working on writing his letters, Pie Pie is learning how NOT to pick on her older brother, and Lulu is getting better at sleeping consistently! We have seen  how much we enjoy a little more quiet in the house, but the little kids get so excited when their "big" brothers get home! G-man and Dodio hole up in their room to play "camping trip" or cars and Pie D tags along while trying to be a momma at the same time! I have enjoyed only having three at home during the day, not because I like having a break from the big boys, but because the lil'uns have been able to have more one on one attention and in some ways it has brought out more uglies than one would expect, but it is good for Pie D and G-man to be able to be the trouble makers for a bit. I would hate for them to feel that they are without the need of a Savior and seeing their flaws helps me to guide them and know them better, also address them more effectively!

lil'bit! Do you want to kiss this face a million times too?
Okay maybe thats just me! :D

So we have had a busy month in september; 2 birthdays, first days of school, countless loads of laundry, homework, homework, homework, Read alouds, hugs, cupcakes, packed lunches, art, coloring, big family dinners, visits to Fredericksburg Virginia, hundreds of smiles, laughs, tears, early mornings, lots of petrol (I would say gas - and we've had that too- but thats not exactly they way I would prefer to put it!), and hopefully a new home this month. I hope you have enjoyed our recap of this last month--I hope even more the kiddos enjoy reading about themselves one day!

The Original Crazy Doug Girl ...diggin' those dimples!
Aren't you jealous I get to see this face EVERY DAY?!