Nothing New Under the Sun

We're really struggling with bickering between the two lovely middle children lately! I am really, really tired of having to hear it all day, every day. This morning, we had a discussion (spurred by something I had read in Homeschooling at the Speed of Life this morning) about God's sovereign plan. We talked about how God chose each one of us to be in this exact family, with these exact brothers and sisters and parents. Why? For our character, not our comfort. To conform us to His image. To help us learn how to deal with difficult people. Why? Because people matter to God, so they should matter to us. We want to show God's love to everyone, even difficult people.

We also talked about how I can't MAKE them do or be anything. I can only control myself and each one of them can only control himself or herself. Therefore, I am going to calmly dole out consequences for using "toxic" language, but I will no longer get upset or take it personally. (This is something I've come to terms with after reading Scream-Free Parenting.)

I think it helped, and today went much better. Now, if I can keep attending to this, maybe we'll see some progress.

This picture has nothing to do with this post, but it was cute! Daddy and Carys were watching Pooh on a Sunday morning. I'm not sure who was watching more attentively!

Show Us Your Tartan! Blog Challenge

Dorothy, a friend on the SHS loop, lives in England and started this blog challenge by writing about a Scottish dinner she is hosting for some musicians. She posted on her blog this gorgeous wedding picture of her husband in a "skirt" (he's a Stewart). The post spurred many comments about various family tartans. So Dorothy decided to issue a blog challenge to post your family's tartan. My mother is a Munro and all the siblings have either a sash or tie in the clan's tartan. Here it is:

Rest, Part 4

I've been slowly reading/studying the book Homeschooling at the Speed of Life: Balancing Home, School. and Family in the Real World by Marilyn Rockett over the past couple of months. Much of it is review for me because I'm a very organized person already. So, the organizing part of the book isn't doing much for me. However, the setting priorities part of the book is something I always need to be challenged in.

Anyway, in the "Devotion" section of the chapter I finished Friday, we were instructed to read Isaiah 40:28-31 and recall these verses when "you are impatient and tired". Now, I have memorized Isaiah 40:31: "But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary; they will walk and not be faint." But I could not think of what came before that verse.

I decided to look it up in the New Living Translation for a different perspective (above is NIV). Here's what it says:

Have you never heard or understood? Don't you know that the Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of all the earth? He never grows faint or weary. No one can measure the depths of his understanding. He gives power to those who are tired and worn out; he offers strength to the weak. Even youths will become exhausted, and young men will give up. But those who wait on the Lord will find new strength. They will fly high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint.

And it struck me immediately that this is where Brenton Brown got the words to Everlasting God, a song which he wrote and many others have recorded (including Chris Tomlin and Lincoln Brewster). I LOVE that song and the words of these verses spoke to my heart that morning. I'm including a video of the song. It's not my favorite version musically, but the video portion is awesome!

Daytona 500 Experience

We took a field trip today to Homeschool Day at the Daytona 500 Experience. Now, I'm not sure that I knew exactly what this was other than a trip to the Daytona Speedway. None of us had ever been there before, even Greg! Anyway, the Daytona 500 Experience is actually a mini attraction at the Speedway. They have several Homeschool Days, but I chose today because it was a Friday and because it was the only day there was actually something going on at the track.

They were having some sort of speed trials which were, as you can see, very noisy! In fact, Carys began crying immediately, and I had to take her away.


It was also COLD! Well, cold for Floridians, it was in the 50's.


Here is Landon with one of the drivers at Daytona.


Really! He drove the tram that took us on a tour of the Speedway which was included in our admission. Did I mention that it was cold?



You can see we ran the race and made it to Victory Lane!


After the tour, we visited the actual attraction. It was full of the history of the Daytona 500. Did you know that part of the original track was on the beach?!!!

I'm not sure what this silly pose was!


They had models of some very OLD cars that the kids could actually sit in.




There is more than just NASCAR racing that goes on at the Daytona Speedway. There was lots of information on all the other stuff, too.


This display showed the kids how high the banks of the turns are. Very steep!


This was the winning car of the 2007 Daytona 500. It was driven by Kevin somebody. Hartwick, I think, but I'm not positive!


For once, Greg was taking all the pictures. I think he had Landon take this one to prove he was there!


The attraction also included a simulator. But, alas, Carys was too short to ride!


Greg posed this picture--can you tell?


On the way home, we stopped at Publix. Why Greg took a picture of this I have no idea!

Happy 2nd Birthday, Carys!

January 17, 2006...


January 17, 2007...


January 17, 2008... I used to be 1!


Now I am 2!


I made homemade belgian waffles for breakfast!


Birthdays are school holidays at our house (even though Carys is too young for school!) We went to Sears to have her pictures taken, then had lunch at Burger King.




We tried to wait to open gifts until Dad got home. Carys ignored them in the morning, but after we came back from lunch, she attacked the pile. We managed to hold her to opening only two. This "phone" thingy I got from a teacher supply store in Tampa which is supposed to help them learn beginning and ending sounds of words, etc. It has a name which I cannot remember!


I picked up this tamborine stick as part of an Oriental Trading Co. order this fall. It was one musical instrument we didn't have.


When Dad got home, we had spinach pizza for dinner then opened gifts. Everyone was there! Chase...


Gerren...


and Landon (reading a book while eating cake, but there nonetheless!).


In addition to the two gifts she already opened, Carys received this cute bear and $5 from Uncle Jeff, Aunt Kay, Rebekah and A.J....


This fun sound toy from Gran....


Wee Wedgits from Landon, Gerren, and Chase...


and an Ipod from Mom and Dad. Well, actually it's a Fisher Price Kid Tough FP3 player. You are supposed to be able to add music from CDs you own to the player. However, we have managed to download the songs onto the laptop but NOT onto the player. We are still working on this. If we can't get it to work this way, back it goes!


I looked all over to find one of these as Carys has been saying the word iPod since before Christmas. She always wants to listen to ours, but we're afraid that she'll damage them!


She also got $500 for her college fund from Grandma Epie and Papa JoJo. This is a gift they give each of the kids every year for their birthdays. So, they'll each have a nice fund when they graduate high school.

Next it was time for cake. The Wal-Mart bakery will only let you order a quarter sheet cake or larger. Well, we just can't eat that much cake! So we bought a cake off the "shelf" and purchased this Pooh topper for $5 from the bakery. It was a great way to go!


Carys thought it looked good, too! Greg caught her red-handed!


She blew out the candles in one try!


What a difference from last year. Carys actually used a fork!


The topper was such a success that she even had to lick the icing off!



Happy Birthday, Carys! We love you and are so glad God gave you to us!

Rest, Part 3

I am not a writer. Some of my url homeschool friends whose blogs I read amaze me. Yvonne, Liz, Kathy and Dorothy (to name a very few) never cease to convict or challenge me, to make me laugh or cry. My irl friend Becky along with a team of several others writes e-devotions for our church that are incredible! Even though I am pretty good at articulating my thoughts out loud, I just cannot write them down as well. So, I have been working on this post for several days.

Every morning as part of my quiet time I try to pray. This is much harder for me than reading my Bible or memorizing Scripture because my mind wanders. I am a morning person and my mind is on the thousand things I have to do that day. It is so hard for me to focus! It would be so much easier to talk to God (and listen to him) if he were actually here in the flesh. Hmm? Maybe not! Anyway, I have been asking God every morning this year to teach me what he wants me to learn about Rest that day. Here's what I have so far:

1) Rest, in God's economy, is not necessarily the cessation of physical activity. In fact, as a mom of 4 homeschooled children, I am just not going to have a lot of free time.
2) Rest involves priorities. Even though I have many demands on my time (laundry, housework, meals, educating 4 children, church, local homeschool support group, etc.), I still have the freedom to choose which of these things come first. And maybe sometimes it should be none of these things, but something else instead (reading a book, talking to a friend, playing with my kids, a date night with my husband).
3) Rest is very much about trust. It isn't so much a physical condition of rest as a mental condition of rest. Ah, here is the crux of the matter for me! It goes back to my statement above about having trouble focusing.

I went to Sally Clarkson's blog today to read her latest post upon the recommendation of one of my "loopy" friends. The post was entitled "Moving From Anger to Joy" and was filled with good stuff to contemplate. After I finished reading, I was exiting the page when the previous post's title caught my eye: "Decluttering--The Secret to Peace and Rest". She said something I could relate to:

I'm not a person gifted in handling details—too much mail, too many catalogues, too many emails, too many options, too many things. The more there is, the more I become responsible for, the more work there is to be done, and so, the more anxious I become. Same with activities. The more I commit to, the more I say yes, the more I have to drive, the more my house gets into a mess, and the more anxious I become, the more hurried we feel, and the more weary I become. When I am not at peace, nothing in our home is at peace.

That is so true of me, though it's probably something no one really knows about me. Everyone sees how well I handle the many things going on in my life. They don't see that it robs me of peace... more often than I'd like to admit.

We can all see how too much clutter and too many piles causes us to feel overwhelmed with life... But, I have also come to realize that my brain and heart can be the same way—cluttered with worries, responsibilities, duties, children’s future, finances, time constraints, expectations, disappointments, critical attitudes, resentment. All of these added together, can tend to create soul piles and mind clutter. If I don’t take the time to sort the piles of mind clutter, my spirit becomes a mess and my heart becomes overwhelmed and weary.

Yes! This is it! What Sally talks about above is the reason I need rest, not just my busy schedule. It's a rest of the mind and soul, rather than rest of the body. And that is because I need to learn to trust God to handle all the details of my life. Sally goes on to quote many verses on rest and peace, most of which I looked up and read at the beginning of this month. So far, this is my favorite: “In quietness and rest shall be your strength.” Isaiah 30:15

Well, that's all this non-writer has for today. It is Carys' 2nd birthday. Unbelievable to us!

The Work Begins!

Today we began the arduous process of replacing the kitchen floor. The need for this arose in December when we found the sink had leaked under the cabinet and under the laminate flooring causing it to warp. Of course, Pergo no longer makes this particular floor, so we were in a dilemma as to what to do. A friend in my local homeschool support group also has this floor in her house and had a box of leftovers, however it wasn't enough to replace the warped boards. After much agonizing we decided to replace it with a slate-looking laminate. This way we won't have two wood looks up against each other.

The one blessing to this is that we are replacing the utility room floor with the same stuff as the areas run together. Right now I have a vinyl floor in my utility room that I have hated almost from the time we moved in. It just did not wear well at all!

Greg spent several hours Sunday afternoon tearing up the old laminate. He hopes to begin putting down the new Tuesday evening.

Here is the bare concrete floor in the kitchen. At first Carys refused to walk on it and cried and cried. "This is going to be a long few weeks," we thought.



When we built our house 5 years ago, before we put any flooring down, I used a permanent marker to write verses of Scripture, carefully chosen, on the floor of each room. It was kind of neat to reveal two of these verses as we tore up the floor. This is the verse in the kitchen.



And this is the verse in the breakfast nook.



It was fun to reconsider why I had chosen those particular verses. I think the dining room has "Taste and see that the Lord is good." I figured I'd be doing most of my work in the kitchen (I was right!). And I guess I figured that we'd spend the most time talking around the table in the nook. Looking back over the past 5 years, I think these were pretty good choices!

I'll post pictures when the new floor is down.

CAP - Orientation Flights

One of the neatest (in Landon's opinion, anyway) Civil Air Patrol activities is what they call Orientation Flights. Each cadet gets a certain number of these, a certain number in the front seat and some in the back seat of the plane. The Southeast Region, of which Citrus County is a part, funds a certain number of these each year.

Yesterday, our small but growing squadron hosted the first O Flights of 2008. Unfortunately, the cloud cover did not allow the planes to land at the Inverness Airport because it is a VFR (visual flight rules) airport.

They were disappointed, but the cadets used the time wisely anyway. This is the raising of the flag by Major Shewbart.



Senior Member Kuhlman and the cadets pushed his Cessna 150 H plane out of the hangar, and he took the cadets through the preflight inspection checklist (Landon is 2nd from the left between Sam Shewbart and Heath Duke).



Landon is certainly attentive!