B#9

Happy Valentines Day

For God so LOVED the world that He gave His only Begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life. John 3:16

Our girls love to decorate for holidays. It is amazing how you can take items from around your house and make a room look very festive. We always end up raiding B#2's hopechest to find special decorations. For Valentines Day, we try to focus on the Lord's love for us. We do give the children a little candy, usually a Reeses peanutbutter heart along with a Scripture that is chosen especially for them. We also try to help them to understand that it is a special day for mommy and daddy because we are married. We want them to grow up knowing that our relationship is strong and committed and how important it is for parents to spend time together.

Hope ya'll all have a great Valentines Day!

College?

Now that our oldest daughter has finished High School (at home) we get alot of "what's she going to do now, is she going to college?" questions. As of now she has no plans to go to a formal college for a degree but I can tell you that this is one girl that never stops learning. I think she is way busier now than she was during her homeschool years. Whenever we go to the library there usually is nary a fiction book to be seen in her "bookbag on wheels". Some of the things she has been learning about are herbs and herbal medicine, using herbs for animals, animal husbandry, raising cows and goats, gardening, heirloom seed saving, rabbits, chickens, spinning fiber and knitting. I love that when children love to learn they can branch out into so many different areas as opposed to going to college for just one thing. I really encourage my girls to find areas that can be useful if the Lord leads them into marriage. I can confidently say that the things she is learning and doing will all be very useful to her whether she marries or not. I even find myself going to ask her advice when one of the little ones has an illness to see what herbs she thinks will be beneficial before going to the doctor.

She actually had the priviledge of teaching our pediatrician to spin fiber for several weeks which brought about a relationship where our pediatrician was eager to hear and learn more about using herbal things in her practice.

What will the Lord have for the rest of our children regarding college? We will take it one child at a time. I do see the need for Christians in the workplace. Where would our country be without Christian doctors, lawyers, nurses, EMTs, Paramedics and policemen?

When We Walk with the Lord

That is the title to one of my favorite hymns.

When we walk with the Lord,
In the light of His Word
What a glory He sheds on our way!
While we do His good will
He abides with us still,
And with all who will trust and obey.

Trust and obey, for there's no other way
To be happy in Jesus, But to trust and obey.

I was singing that to baby tonight and then I got to thinking...in the Old Testament(which is where I am plugging away with my" Read the Bible in 90 days", very behind) about how the Lord gave the Isrealites different jobs. The Levites were given the job of all the work in the Tabernacle and there were different artists who were given the job of making all of the articles in the Tabernacle. That made me think of how we each are called to different things. What our family feels the Lord calling us to do may not be what He is calling you to do. Now I am not talking about Salvation here, Salvation is only through accepting Jesus Christ as your Saviour and making Him Lord of your life. What I am talking about is the different areas of our life where we may have different standards, where we feel strongly that the Lord would have us to do things that may be different from others. But if we trust and obey then we will be happy.

A follow-up to my declutter post

Even an old dog can relearn old tricks...I do love to declutter and get rid of things. But I am relearning that sometimes we(I) can get out of balance. Take my children's toys, for example. When my older four children were little we had the big toy box with all kinds of toys in it. But as we had more children I was inspired by what a friend of mine does. When our children went over there to play out would come one toy bucket at a time with one type of thing in it, such as legos, farm/tractor type toys, duplos etc. I just loved the idea of purging our assortment of toys and organizing things in to types of buckets. We currently have a different bucket for food, legos, duplos, farm animals/tractors, cars, KNEX, Playmobile, Lincoln Logs and wooden train tracks/trains. I do really like that way of storing their toys BUT....

Here is where the old dog relearned an old trick....we recently went to another friends home for dinner and fellowship. While we were there the boys had the best time playing with an assortment of different toys. Now some of that may have been that to them they were "new" toys but it got me to thinking about what my boys do when they play here at home and I realized that although I do love the way we have our toys separated and stored, I don't really have many toys to keep a 23 month old and a 3 year old interested for long. The toys that we have are more suited for children a bit older who are ready to sit for extended periods of time building towns, farms or trains. So I am seeing that I need to rethink our toy situation with our little boys in mind and with the thought that little "Audie" as we call B#9 will soon be in the same stage the boys are in.

I guess for me the lesson is that there needs to be a balance to everything we do. Organizing is great but there are also seasons in life where it is okay to have an assortment of toys for the children for those many times when mom needs to get things done.

Clearing out the clutter

A recent post on one of the blogs that I read on a regular basis(http://www.raisinghomemakers.com/) talked about cleaning out the clutter. Darlene from http://www.time-warp-wife.blogspot.com (thanks Aunty M for this blog) is a contributing writer on that blog and she suggests seeing how much you can clear out in ten minutes. I like that idea but thought I would tell ya'll about something we have done in the past. I challenged everyone in our family to get rid of 10 things. At that time there were 10 people in our family so that would add up to a whopping 100 items leaving our house. I "helped" the little ones who were too little to know any difference, oh and DH too. Amazingly we did manage to do it but there still seemed to be too much stuff in our house. But I didn't just throw out the challenge and expect them to all willingly comply so we threw out that if we all got rid of 10 things each we would go for ice cream at our local ice cream shop. That helped:)



I think it is amazing how much stuff we all have and what a pack-rat mentality creeps in. I personally keep a brown paper bag in my laundry room and regulary add stuff for my next Goodwill donation.



Give it a try in your family and see how many things you can declutter from your life.

Where Have I Been

Boy, I can't believe I haven't posted anything since Jan. 23. Where does the time go? I am still here plugging away with life. Have you ever noticed that when you try to think of what you have been doing to keep you so busy, you just can't think of anything?

The boys keep us busy all day everyday but lately B#7 has been complaining of not being able to hear out of one of his ears so we have been trying to get him in to get his hearing checked. Dad was just about to walk out the door with him the other morning to go when the Dr.s office called to say their machine was broken so we had to reschedule for next week. But the thought of him having to wait longer to see why he wasn't hearing was just too much so we went in today to his regular pediatrician. They cleaned out his ears and so far he seems much better. Meanwhile B#8 seemed to be having trouble with his ears again so I took him in today as well and he has an ear infection in both ears. So we are back on the antibiotic route with him. We do use some natural/herbal stuff here but when it comes to little ones and ear aches I usually prefer to just get it taken care of so they don't have to suffer long with the pain.

DH and I have been mattress shopping. Something we have been needing to do for many years now. I was having such a hard time getting excited about spending such a large amount for something as unexciting as a new mattress. But then we decided that if we are finally going to just do it we may as well get a king size mattress for all the mornings that we end up with little ones in the bed with us. We went to a local mattress store and found one we liked but I was still struggling with it. I needed to nurse the baby so I went to sit in the van with her while waiting for DH to come out. While I was in there I just started praying about it all and telling the Lord my struggles with it, primarily guilt at spending money on just the two of us when there are always things that need to be taken care of around here or with the children but amazingly I felt a peace about it all and really felt the Lord telling me that this is for my husband. He needs to feel better when he gets up so very early in the morning to go to work for his family and a good nights rest on a new mattress would be a start. I marched right back in the store and told DH that I was ready to make the purchase. We are still waiting for it to arrive and I am still praying for it to be instrumental in some of the health issues DH is having. He is so excited about it that he had the children make him a paper chain counting down the days until his first good nights sleep.

Baby is growing and changing amazingly. She is starting to sit up and is getting very close to crawling. She is pretty strong and loves to rock on her hands and knees and gets where ever she chooses in her walker. I noticed a bottom tooth coming in yesterday so I think she will be ready for steak soon:)

I decided not too long ago to try to cut B#8's hair since he isn't quite ready to go to the barbershop with the big boys. The first two tries weren't too bad. They needed some work but all in all they were acceptable but this time I just didn't do such a good job. I can't figure out where I went wrong but the poor boy looks like I just took some scissors and cut straight across at the top of his forhead. Thank goodness his hair grows fast and that he is a cutey so it isn't quite so bad.

Other then the above things, I have been continuing to work on my Home Management Notebook as talked about in the "Large Family Logistics" book that I have been reading through. I am really enjoying being more scheduled in my days. But I will post about all that later. Just thought I would give an update on things around here. There is lots more I could write about but I am sure I have kept you all long enough for this post.

Blessings to you all!