But first there had to be a death.

Last night at our midweek church services, Rebecca gave her life to Christ in the waters of baptism. She died to self, and rose to walk in newness of life. We couldn’t be more thrilled. Praise the Lord for His marvelous grace!

The leadership decided to center our service around this wonderful event, and we had a time of singing, prayer, and encouragement for our new sister.

Congratulations my beloved daughter, I pray that God will ever strengthen you and that you will always walk in His wisdom and mercy, never straying from the light of His presence!

(Click on the picture to see a slide show of this wonderful moment!)

Thursday I posted some goals to motivate and track the progress on our house cleaning efforts. Here’s the results at the end of day 4:

1. Feed on God’s Word – Proverbs 31:17, 27 spoke to my heart about the diligence God wants to see in my life. Ecclesiastes 2:17-23 reminds me to keep importance on the eternal while I work on the temporal.

2. Schoolwork – On the applicable days, yes, we got it done.

3. Throw away 16 things a day – Exceeded the “limit” every day….boy we gotta lotta junk!

4. Give away minimum 16 things a day too – Over the top on this one as well so far, with 4 more bags of clothes, and some boxes of toys to take to co-op next week and/or Freecycle.

5. Do something to reorganize/repair the home – Thursday, finished sorting and labeling the “attic clothes”; Friday, pared down some toys, cleaned computer desk; Saturday, got boxes into attic, found more clothes to sort/donate, enjoyed dinner guests that evening; Sunday afternoon, sorted & consolidated 7 boxes (with Chris) from our downstairs hallway, kept 2 1/2 boxes worth

6. Post Progress – Check.

I like elephant stew.

The following conversation occured on our road trip from FL to MA in a roadside rest area:

6yo Lydia, from within the confines of her stall: “Mom, how do they make these gigantic toilet paper rolls?”

Mom: “They’re just like the ones at home, only with more paper on them.”

Lydia: “Oh.   Well, we should DEFINITELY get some of these!  That would last us a year!”

The lady 3 stalls down was laughing too.

I don’t carry my Bible to church.

There, I said it. The simple fact is that with six children, four of whom are ages 6 & under, it just doesn’t get opened much there. I have the baby on my lap almost constantly, and if she’s not there, another little sweetie takes advantage of the empty space quickly! My husband and older children all bring theirs, so I always have someone to read from if needed, and in the rare instance that I have my hands free, I use one of the Bibles from the pew.

One of the challenges of life with many young blessings is the niggling thought in the back of a mother’s mind: “If only I had another arm…” I really do think a useful heaven-sent new baby gift would be an extra limb to stir the soup pot, carry the groceries, etc. Of course, if the Lord granted us that, we’d want another, and another, until we were able to sing a line from my toddler Timothy’s favorite song: “If I were an octopus, I’d thank you Lord, for my good looks. Woo!” (not exactly deep theology, I know, but he’s only 2!) I don’t think it was any accident that Mrs. Incredible’s super power was amazing flexibility, do you? What more could a mom want than to simply reach out and snatch that errant toddler just before he gets into the…but I digress.

We have a family goal to spend time in God’s word each morning. The routine is to rise (the hard part for me!), dress, and read a portion of Scripture individually – pre-readers can play quietly nearby – then we fix & eat breakfast, and have family devotional, where each person chooses a song, and we work on whatever passage we’re memorizing as a family, (currently Philippians 2) usually adding a verse or two to the end. Then hugs all around, tooth brushing, and the rest of the day’s tasks: work, school, play, chores, etc.

My difficulty is, I have nearly as hard a time holding a Bible at home to study the Word as I do at church. Even with a table to prop my study tools, I’m usually holding a nursing baby, or even more challenging, a wiggly, grabby one! Hmm, guess I do have extra arms…

So, while the rest of the family pull their paper Bibles from their carrying cases, I go high tech. My daily Scripture reading is done on Bible Gateway. It has several translations (and not just in English!) to choose from, and you can view the text in segments ranging from one verse to multiple chapters on the screen. It has decent cross-references, and a really nice search feature for those of us who are good a remembering the content of a verse but not necessarily its context (i.e. book chapter & verse.)

My favorite feature though? The fact that it does, in fact, give me the “extra arm” that I need, keeping the Bible squarely in front of my while I snuggle my little one and start the day feeding on the Word of Life with my family.

If you’ve made a goal to spend more time in God’s word this year, maybe this tool will help, large family or not!

For more help for growing families, visit Ship Full O’ Pirates.

Or rather, power is restored to us. The kind that runs lights and refrigerators, not countries.

With the recent New England ice storm, our electricity was knocked out from Thursday around 3:00am until Monday about 8:00pm. The saying is more true than ever, “You never know how much you use something until it’s gone.” We were well provided for, actually. We ran our wood stove for heat and cooking, and our water was still working, unlike many in the area. Flushing is good. Friday night a friend even loaned us a generator, so we were able to plug in the fridge, freezer and a lamp or two.

Exciting stuff without power:

• Since it’s dark by 4pm these days, when I sent the children to bed at 8 Friday night (the usual routine) Lydia happily commented: “Mom, we got to stay up SO late since the power’s out!”
• While running an extension cord from the generator to the fridge, I lit my hair afire with a candle Friday evening, after warning children all night to be careful… No major damage, and the stuff really does smell like “burnt feathers” as they say in Little Women!
• Timothy was very confused as to why his favorite toy, the light switch, did not produce the desired effect, but he did love playing with his mini flashlight “just like Daddy’s.”
• Rebecca & Andrew had a great time cooking grilled cheese sandwiches and pancakes, respectively, on the woodstove. They did a fabulous job playing pioneer.
• Friends from church let us use their house to bathe everyone in warm water Sunday evening. Hey, we’re not THAT pioneering!
• Last but certainly not least, I stepped outside for a few minutes yesterday and chatted with our neighbors across the street, which was nice, as they are busy and we rarely see them. When I returned to the house, I found some “glory” lying on the kitchen floor. 1 Corinthians 11:15 “…but that if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For long hair is given to her as a covering.” Pictures to follow.

A hilarious tongue-in-cheek melody “praising” all the stereotypes about homeschoolers. Made all the funnier by the fact that I was wearing my favorite denim skirt the first time I watched it.

I saw this over at Life in a Shoe, where the author is, like me, a graduated homeschooler who is now teaching her own children. She claims that no less than THREE of the members of her family were wearing flowing denim garments at the time. Hmm, maybe there is something to this stereotype thing!

In other news, I was posting a paper “Giving Tree” on our church bulletin board just outside the nursery door a couple Sundays ago, and one of our members joked that my 2yo’s cutting skills were very good, as I kept coming in & out the door where he was playing with new pieces for the tree. “Well, he is homeschooled,” was my casual reply.

Oh yes, one more thing. For those of you who may not be familiar with YouTube (Hi Mom!) I don’t control any of the links that pop up at the end of the video, those are YouTube generated, so click at your own discretion!

Yes, I looked up those words so I could title my post more creatively. I’m weird that way. Here’s their definitions, so you don’t have to google them. My children would be required to look them up, but I’m in charge of their schooling, not yours

A`be`ce´da`ry
A primer; the first principle or rudiment of anything.

Or·thog·ra·phy
The art or study of correct spelling according to established usage.
The aspect of language study concerned with letters and their sequences in words.
A method of representing a language or the sounds of language by written symbols; spelling.

Our family rented Akeelah and the Bee a couple of weeks ago. While it was fairly common practice around our house to spell out info we might not want younger ears to hear, the system has jumped to an entirely new L-E-V-E-L. Rebecca and Andrew want to spell out just about e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g, and it’s sparked some fun conversations.

Andrew, for instance, is very proud of his ability to spell “xanthosis.” “It’s so easy Mom, I don’t know how they ever missed it!” Of course, another word from the movie which is mentioned but not spelled in the show: “psoriasis” gave the children a little more trouble. Ironic, since it happens to be a disease that runs in the family on his daddy’s side (otherwise I probably wouldn’t know how to spell it!)

While I was tending the wood stove the other day, Lydia, my beginning reader, stood next to me to make a request for her favorite winter beverage. She spelt out H-O-T  perfectly, then forgot her phonics and resorted to Greek: “Chi…” she said for the next letter, and then muddled through the rest of “chocolate” with a very respectable effort, so of course I gave her permission, which T-H-R-I-L-L-E-D the whole family!

Not to be left out, Bethany asserts several times a day that she can spell (insert random word here), at which point she proudly rattles off P-T-S-Y-Z. I had no idea how many words were spelled ptsyz. Quite a few.

Guess Chris and I will have to resort to ig-Pay atin-Lay in order to eep-kay any ecrets-say around here!