Busy Weekend

This is our first weekend since starting school and I must say, it is a long one! We have to spend the weekend catching up on school work since the books didn't come until the middle of the week. Plus, now that we have been homeschooling every day, our normal day to day chores have been put to the side while we try to find a balance in our new routine.

So you can probably guess that today involved a lot of cleaning! My girls are such big helpers when it comes to chores, so they worked on the upstairs while I did a lot downstairs. This is awesome! And I plan on cherishing every minute of it! I know a day will come when they aren't so excited to "help" mommy.

After all that cleaning, my little boy was getting tired and was ready for a nap! Woohoo! Extra time to get school work done! Today was a little more laid back, since technically it IS the weekend! So we breezed through our work and my little student made sure to let me know that she already knew all of this easy stuff... LOL!

I must admit, I had a bigger agenda for the day than just school work. I went to the store yesterday and bought all the ingredients I needed for about 6 frozen meals. I found a pretty straight forward Pinterest pin with lots of easy meals in it and was excited to try my hand at some more "simple" meals!

You can find all the recipes I used today here.

With my little one still sleeping, this was a great time to try and squeeze some cooking in! And we ended up getting ALL six meals DONE!! Rose was my special helper for the project and she did a great job mixing and pouring! I love it! I am excited to try some new meals and all I have to do is throw them in the crock pot! This should make next week even easier for me and adjusting to our new schedule...

She was pretty excited to be helping!!

Now I am relaxing just a bit before the Little wakes up and the girls are dancing to Just Dance on the Wii. What a beautiful Saturday to get things done! Still more cleaning to do, but am feeling blessed to have such little helpers to get it all done with! Love you girls!!

A Sweet Blessing

Thought I would share a sweet little blessing today. We were in the middle of doing our bible time/prayer time when I asked the girls what they wanted to pray for. My little preschooler sat thinking for a moment, then jumped up exclaiming, "I know! We could pray for sissy's boo boo!!" My heart leaped with joy. My eldest daughter had just gotten a huge cut on the bottom of her foot from running around outside barefoot and was pretty upset by it. So it was sweet to see how caring she was being to her sister and it also reminds me I am doing a good job that she can recognize someone else's needs before her own. After she led our prayer, they hugged! Thank you Lord for these sweet little girls!

Day Two

Day 2:

While I realize that I probably won't be able to blog every day about what we do and how things are going, I do want to make an effort and recording this precious time I have with my children. So here is how today went!

We have been starting with our core curriculum which contains our bible studies, literature readings, and history/geography. This has been very interesting to me! First, I must admit, I really don't know what to pray for with my kids some of the time but with this guiding me, it has been fun! This week we are praying for tribes all around the world who have not heard the news of Jesus Christ! I am almost positive I would not have thought of this by myself. This is also great for teaching the kids to pray for others. For literature, we have started reading Charlotte's Web. This is pretty hefty reading for my young ones but so far my first grader is following along really well (snuggled up beside me) and understanding what is happening in the story. My tongue also has been getting lots of exercise with reading out loud so much, but honestly, I think its good for both of us! History and geography has started off reading about the first people of the world and the main types of races. We have also read about different countries, flags, and currency! I have a feeling all of this is going to perk some interest in world traveling before too long!

We did get my youngest to take a nap during all this fun, so we ended up getting all of our morning work done within a few hours!

Our afternoons have consisted of math so far. I've tried to block out a bigger time frame for this because I know how challenging math can be for some kids. So far, we have breezed through the first few worksheets in under a half an hour! So far she has "learned" number place, and order. Both being entirely too easy for her but I am sticking to the plan trying not to zoom ahead.

So far, so good! I am absolutely loving this calling of mine! Thank you Lord, for this opportunity to stay at home with these great kids! I pray now for the rough times ahead. May I be able to look back at this post and remember all the wonderful things I love about what I am doing. I pray I never take this time for granted and hope I can breathe through the challenges. Lord lead me!

P.S. My little first grader has already memorized Psalm 1:1! Awesome to see that in action! : )

The Start of a New Journey

Hello friends and family and new visitors to my blog! It has been a little while since my last post and a LOT has happened this past year. So hold on tight with me on this new journey we have started: homeschooling!

To catch those of you up who don't know what this last year has consisted of for our family, let me clue you in. At the beginning of this year, my husband and I decided to really get serious about selling our home (as if we weren't serious already.) We decided to drop the price about $8,000 from where we originally wanted to sell at. With this drop in price, we had to really take a leap of faith and let God control what happened next. I am so glad we decided to take that risk, because around the first week of April, we got and accepted our first offer!

It was around this same time frame that I began praying about school options for our oldest daughter. She had been in public school kindergarten and while she loved it, I hated it. Let me just say one thing, it wasn't one teacher or one incident that I hated because really, the school itself was fine. The hardest part for me was sending her away all day to people I have never even met before. I just could not get around this fact! I felt like the weird mom who didn't trust anyone. While apart of that is true, (there is a lot of people in this world not to trust,) I really just wanted to be the one who taught her things and got to see her learn and grow everyday. I did not want to hear these things about my child from someone else. So what options did I have? Homeschool? I thought, "Wow, now you really are nuts." But I prayed anyway.

Well, after quite a while of praying, the Lord answered my prayers! He set a resounding "YES!" In my heart for homeschooling. After that decision, everything started to fall into place. We sold the house, and things got really hard after that. There was quite a gap between selling our home (and leaving it) to finding and actually moving in to our new home. This also included staying with my in laws for two months with my family of five living on their back porch in the heat of the summer. I will admit, there was a ton of doubt in there! I thought maybe I should just get a job and go back to work, and I thought we would never get into this dream home of ours. My husband and I had to keep the faith that He was providing even in these crazy hard times. We did finally move into our dream home, though. It has been a little over a month now and things are starting to settle down.

This week, the curriculum FINALLY came and we were very excited!! We even transformed the "dining room" into a wonderful, colorful homeschool room! So, yesterday was the kids' first day of school! We have a first grader and we are starting preschool with my middle child. I was so nervous to see how it would go (especially with a toddler running around.) Let me tell you, it was AWESOME!!

We had chose Sonlight curriculum and couldn't be more excited! I love all the books that came and it was really easy to get started. I was so relived not to have to send her off to be with someone else and I got to see things click for her as we moved through the day! My preschooler even got to practice writing her letters and did some that I didn't know she could do!

The day got a little tense when my youngest wanted all of Mommy's attention but luckily my husband was home yesterday to swoop in and take him off my hands for a bit. I know this is going to be an adjustment for all of us for a little while until we get used to it. So for now, I will try and enjoy every minute of it!

My goal is to keep up on this blog for friends and family who are curious about homeschooling (obviously I am not shy about us doing it and love to share.) I never thought I would ever have kids, let alone stay home and homeschool! Haha, life is so funny sometimes but I have a great big God! I am willing to follow His lead on this journey and hope you will follow along too! Thanks for all of your love and support, I really couldn't do it without you all! : )

I have been avoiding my blog for a little while now. I apologize. I truly want to use this blog to provoke positive thoughts. I don't believe I can accomplish that when I can't even be positive thinking myself. But, here I am! I am feeling well enough to write again and can share what has been going on in my life.

As some of you know, I have something called social anxiety. Let me explain it a little more for you. Most people get nervous when they have to go in front of an audience or do something for a large group of people. This is not me. I have found over the years, my anxiety stems from social interaction on the most basic level. I struggle with one on one confrontation with people I don't know, sometimes even people I do know. Yes, I know a lot of people have a hard time with going up to someone new and just start talking but my nervousness goes beyond just that. One of the biggest things I struggle with is phone calls. I don't know what it is about calling someone but I just can't do it. Even if I know the person, I won't call. Even if I know the person calling, I won't answer. I also have a hard time going anywhere. I get anxious even when I know every person that will be at the place I am going. Sometimes I send myself into an anxiety attack but most days I pray hard and God gives me some peace to do what needs to be done.

These are just a few examples of what I deal with on a daily basis. Since I have kids now, the anxiety has gotten stronger. Especially now that I stay at home with the kids. I am now the responsible one that has to take care of my family and some days are just plain difficult. Sometimes I put off making a simple phone call for months at a time (which usually just gets me in trouble.)

Holiday season is now here and that proves to be the hardest time of the year for me. Please don't get me wrong. I love my family and friends! I love being able to see them and gather with them. However, to do so, sends me into an attack every time. Most people can't understand exactly what I deal with (or my husband deals with for that matter) and can't understand why. That's okay. I try and explain up front to new people I meet and sometimes I have to remind people that have been in my life for a long time about my anxiety.

This is also a good time to state that I try super hard not to use this as some sort of crutch either. I have a life and I will continue to do so. Let me also say, I put my hope in God. For He is the only one who has proven to give me relief and peace. From very early on, my husband and I decided that loading me up on medication was out of the question. So I have turned to prayer. When I feel an attack coming on, I stop and pray. I meditate on what God is trying to tell me in that moment. Also, I want to use my life for Him and how can I do that when I let my anxiety stop me from doing something that is God's will for me?

Want an example of how God works in my life? One day while coming out of a local grocery store, I could hear the Holy Spirit talk to me. I was pregnant with my third child and also had my youngest with me at the time. We were walking to our car and noticed a woman hunched over her car with the hood up. She looked like she needed help. Normally in a situation like this, I tend to stay clear, especially when I have my children and by myself. That's when I heard God telling me to ask this woman if she needed help. I tried to ignore it but knew I couldn't and knew I needed to obey. So I put my child in the car with the groceries and went over to ask the woman if she needed help. It took every bit of the Lord's strength for me to do that and believe that none of it was my own! Thankfully, she did not end up needing help (not that I would have be able to, as I lack in car skills) but I knew I had listened to my Lord.

Call me crazy (you probably just might) but I love the way the Lord uses me. Not every situation is easy. There have been plenty of tears shed out of fear and doubt in myself. But I never doubt my Lord! I know he has a plan for me and I intend on obeying. I often wonder, would I be able to continue my faith while being tortured or burned for what I believe in? I honestly hope that opportunity never comes. Instead, I will continue my small feats of over coming my anxiety to do God's will.

Today, I ask that you open your heart and mind to hear God speaking to you in your own life. What does He ask of you? What does He want for your life? Where does He want you to be? If you let Him, He will change your life!

I had a dream last night that put a little spark on my heart this morning. The dream wasn't really important so much as how the dream made me feel. It took me back to high school days. Not that I particularly had a difficult high school experience but the way I felt in high school was horrible most of the time. It wasn't until I met my husband I knew why. 

When I met my husband, we fell in love almost instantly (although we were very stubborn to admit it at the time!) From that moment on, I knew I would give that man my whole heart. Little did I know, he would give me his as well.

Sorry, I don't mean to get all mushy on you so suddenly but he was honestly the first person to ever love me the way he does. He was the first person to choose to love me through all my faults and failures. He chooses everyday to stand by my side and lift me up with unconditional love and support.

This is something I never felt in high school. I was always depressed on some sort of level and never really understood my purpose in life. I have always felt this way since I can remember. After the death of a close friend freshman year, I even tried to take my own life.

Actually, I tried to take my life again shortly after that. They had loaded me up on "happy" pills to correct my dis-functioning brain, so the bottle of prescription pills were so readily available to me. At that moment, I took a second to pray. I asked for Jesus to help me and give me a clear sign on what to do. I had always been a "fan" of Christ Jesus but let me tell you, this was the day Christ changed my life. I could NOT get that pill bottle open! It was a simple child-proof top just like any other, but greater forces beyond me was stopping my hand from opening that bottle! I told the Lord that day, that second, that I would follow Him the rest of my days and I would never try to take my life again. 

It wasn't an easy task after that. I switched to a Lutheran school and tried to fit in. Looking back now, I don't think I ever really did. On top of that I had gotten involved in bad relationships that seemed to be on repeat. Although I never tried to commit suicide again, I thought of it often. I could never shake the feeling that I had no purpose. Until I met my husband.

We met the summer of my graduation and within months I was pregnant with our first baby girl. Although this is a story in itself, I'm not going into any more detail about that now. A few weeks after my 19th birthday, I became a mommy! Between the love of my husband and that baby girl, I have found my purpose!

It's so funny how God puts people in your life when you least expect it. I never knew I could be loved like that until my husband and now, even more, loved like that from God! It is truly the most perfect feeling; a sense of being complete. That is why I dedicate my life to sharing the gospel of the Lord because it is truly through Jesus in which I was saved. I will keep serving Him with my life, as I will my husband.

Hi all!! Me again! Trying something new today and tried a video! Please don't mind the dark circles under my eyes and the lack of hair styling! haha! I hope you all enjoy it. Leave a comment of encouragement! Thanks : )