We quickly packed the van Monday night and headed off to Mini's (MIL) camp for one more adventure before our school routine and Eric's work schedule on campus really gets into full gear again. It felt great to pack and not even care about what the house looked liked because we were no longer showing it to sell. It also felt great to get away without work obligations such as traveling or having the cell phone attached to the hip. To say the least it was a wonderful week!! (minus the one massive migraine I had )

I have so many pics to catch you all up on our summer fun! Watch out for the photofest to come... For now you can see Eric and I in my profile pic. Did I say we had a great time?!  Jared took that silhouette pic for us at the end of a sunset! The rest of the pics will have to come later after I get a good night's sleep and finally fully unpack from all the traveling we have done. Thanks to Diona, my very pregnant sister in love who left a full bag of oreos at camp, I have now had a delicious midnight snack with a big glass of milk before turning in. Ah, all is well in the world.....

OK, this is just not right! I did the spell check on my post and xanga did not recognize the word Oreos!!! Does someone else see a problem here?!

Oh I can't sleep so here is one pic for you...

Caleb: It would be really cool if I could be on TV someday.

Chloe: Just crash through the screen and you can!

Mama: That's how someone gets on TV?

Chloe: Yup.

Mama: How would he get out?

Chloe: Crawl out the back

Jared: But Chloe there are hundreds of lights inside....there would be no room.... (trying to be so logical)

Chloe: No he would fit around the lights!

Mama: Chloe what TV show would you want to be on if you could go through the TV.

Chloe: Probably Clifford.

The homeschool families in our area had a large meeting on Wednesday to go over this year's activities. I am beyond delighted to find out that one of the Mom's went through the 4H training to lead a general 4H Club.  I LOVE this for so many reasons!! The first reason is that if you have read my blog long enough you will know that I do not believe children should always learn in age segregated atmospheres. Sadly, even our churches have fallen prey to this fallacy. That's another subject though... Anyway, ages 5 and up will all be included in this allowing all my children to be in 4H together! Second, I love that this group will obviously be mostly homeschool families if not all. Third, the fact that it's a general group is awesome! So many of the 4H groups in our area concentrate on one thing only. For example many up in this area do horses. Well, if you don't own a horse it's not much fun for your kids! So, this group will be studying and learning about everything from agriculture, gardening, cooking to crafts. The list is endless! The kids will also be given a chance to compete in our county fair with their projects. How Fun!!! I think this is going to be a great avenue of learning for our whole family!

Our homeschool group will also be having professional art lessons at a local gallery. This is exactly what I have been waiting for to give Caleb an extra boost in his education as he is so artistic! Guess what? The artists do not want age segregated classes. Hurrah!! So, in October we will begin our 4 week sessions. Each session will focus on a specific type of art. For example....Drawing 1, Basic Pottery and Painting. Caleb is going to LOVE school this year!!!

Let's see... the homeschool group also planned Gym days (done by a professional), Pool days, Park days, Science class to dissect something like an eyeball (This one is for 3rd graders and up and will be taught by a professor at the University -I think Eric will have to do this with Jared. Gross!) and our annual "One Nation Under God" fair. Gym days and Pool days are only once a month each so not a huge commitment but just enough for the kids to have some fun and learn in a group setting. One Nation Under God is where each family studies a country for the academic year and then presents what they learned in the Spring. We also cook and bring a dish to share that is food from the country you studied. This gives the kids a great opportunity to speak and present in a public setting. If our family is able to accomplish this with our pending adoption and transition of new babies Grandparents will be invited to attend.

Piano lessons will start up after labor day. Of course, we are already looking forward to Jared's
Christmas recital this year! The Christmas recital is always my favorite as it's so festive! Jared will also be starting to learn how to be apart of a worship team at church. He will be meeting twice a month (along with Papa) with the church worship team to practice. To begin with he will just sing until he is at a level that he can play an instrument too. This should be a great outlet to get Jared used to participating in music in a public setting but also with the benefit of using his talent for the Lord.

We are continuing to use Sonlight for our curriculum at home. Sonlight continues to just fit our family dynamics and learning styles so well. We are still using Core 2 (second part of World History-not grade level!) this year with the boys in separate reading and math levels. They are in the same "study group" for all other subjects. Phoebe and Chloe will be starting the preschool (Core B) program and will be in the same "study group" together through out their homeschooling as well. This works well as I will only be doing three cores at a time with six kids as the next two will be in the same "study group" together. As Jared and Caleb get older they will be working more independent too.

Whew! Here we go.... Is summer really over?! ( I still have some summer pics to show you when I get a chance to edit and upload.)

No pics (are you surprised?!) but I had such a delightful day yesterday with my children! Eric had a ministry appointment about an hour away so the kids and I packed up to go along for the ride. Eric's meeting place just happened to have a Borders Bookstore across the street. His meeting was approximately 2 hours long and the kids and I spent THREE hours in Borders!!! We had a blast browsing through all those delicious books and the boys were finally able to spend some birthday gift certificates they had for Borders. Eric called me after the two hours and said we were welcome to meet them at the restaurant as his colleagues just continued to hang out for fellowship. The kids and I opted to stay in borders for another whole hour!!

The funny aspect was that it wasn't until evening that I realized my kids thought we were in a big library not a store. I guess the boys thought their gift certificate cards were just a library card to take out books. So what a surprise at the end of the night when they figured out they got to KEEP their books that they picked out. Can you tell we don't live any where near a real book store and any books we do buy are from yard sales or used children stores?!

When the kids and I were finally famished we walked back on over to where Eric's meeting was to make a quick appearance before heading off to Pizza Hut. The kids ate while Eric and I talked over lunch about the ministry. OK, so nothing big deal here except we had the best waitress ever and the kids were so enjoyable to eat out with even though we were talking "grown up" stuff.

What brought me the most joy was how well behaved and helpful the children were!! The boys were very quick to remember the "buddy system" we have had to practice while in public places. Otherwise, Mama has four kids (soon to be six) all going in different directions. Not good on busy, city streets by foot! Jared immediately remembered and said, "Time to be buddies like the Duggar family does!" Each brother took a sister by the hand to keep safe. I have to say children are such a pleasure when well trained! I was thanking the Lord all day for HIS wisdom in raising our children as well as how well their hearts have received our teaching.

Afterwards, we went off to our favorite Bible Bookstore. This is only about a twice a year trip because of distance. I was going in only for one CD that I had loaned out and never got back. Well, get our family back into a bookstore and going in for just one thing is not going to happen. It doesn't help that the owners have known me since I was a little girl and really enjoy us being there as a family. Anyway, Eric bought some resource books for the ministry while the kids and I browsed through the homeschooling section and we also got ourselves a brand new family Bible. Not like we don't have enough Bibles in our house but this one was large print so that the children could read it easier during our family devotions and in church together.

The only bummer of the day was that I was supposed to have a prescription waiting for me at the compounding pharmacy. The pharmacy is an hour away from me but it's the closest one to me. To my disappointment my doctor never called it in so I will have to make another trip. I really hate it when they don't get to things like that right away knowing that you have a distance to drive to get it! I will have to call today and see what the hold up is.

To end a great day we spent a wonderful evening with my Grampa. We arrived just in time to see Grampa coming out of his blueberry tent from picking a whole bucket of mouth watering blueberries. YUM! The kids ate Grampa's home grown blueberries with milk and then proceeded to eat two full, huge trays of fresh picked blueberries. I wished I had taken a picture of how many blueberries we ate with Grampa! Then we watched Jeopardy with Grampa while the boys tried to participate and answer the questions too. Later, we had hotdogs around the coffee table and watched "America's Got Talent." The kids were beyond excited when Grampa's favorite ventriloquist won! Grampa then saw us off on our way back home with a whole bunch of veggies from his garden. YUM! Thank you Grampa for a fun visit with you!

I went to bed with a warm heart... I like those kind of days when you can lie your head on your pillow with a smile.

It feels good to be settling back into our routines at home after a full summer of travel. Would you believe that tonight we have a frost warning in our county?! Where did summer go?! Not only did we make sure to bring in our veggies from the garden but tonight we also took our campfire inside.   I tried to capture how serene of an atmosphere our home was tonight by taking a picture of the fireplace. The kids were all quietly reading, coloring or building with legos while mesmorized by the glow of the fire. I was just lucky to get our Dachshund to be naturally posed without being all flopped out like she normally is when the fireplace is bursting with warmth! This picture isn't crisp, especially compressed but, when I showed Eric what I took he said, "Wow, that looks like a picture in a magazine" because of the setting. So, I decided to share a little piece of our home with you.

That is the word I clearly heard from the Lord today during church. Specifically my mind is to "shut up to negative thoughts." Sorry if that sounds crude but hey when you are dealing with the enemy, as Pastor says, you must stand under the truth! My mind has been racing and my heart worrisome but God has reminded me that I need to be and can be in His peace when the enemy starts moving in. I'm ready to see the miraculous in our lives and especially with my Mom! I will be speaking God's healing into her life and will not be dwelling on the negative. God's word clearly states that negative words are like poison (curse) rather than blessing. I am believing that God will have His way in this situation and every other that has been worrying me! Let's get ready to see what God is gonna do!!! Nothing is going to stand in the way stealing what is God's best in our lives!

By the way, I told Mom yesterday that I would feel real guilty if I got the call to travel overseas for our adoption through all of this and she very quickly told me that under no circumstance was I to even give a second thought to that. Mom wants something to look forward to and celebrate her three new Grandbabies' arrivals! No I'm not bringing home three! My sister is pregnant and due in December as well. So, Mom seems very positive as well!

I'm sorry right up front for extended family that may be hearing this for the first time especially in this manner. I just need to get it out and I am not about to call every single person as I am speechless and going through many emotions. My Mom called me today (Saturday) and informed me that she will be going into surgery on September 20th for a brain tumor. What is going on?! I just feel angry, sad and confused right now. First I lose my Grammie in April to cancer and now this! I know Mom will be OK as it's not cancerous from what they can tell before going in. They also caught it early before she started to have any effects like seizures or loss of ability in her left side etc. Regardless, it's still scary for anyone to think of their Mom having to go through such an awful experience!!!!! I just feel like I need a break from my heart feeling so heavy. Not to mention this has just put my fears over the top regarding my own headaches! Nevermind that.... this is about Mom. MY MOM!!! I have added brain tumor to my list of things I hate and honestly I don't think God would mind that I feel that way. To say the least... I can't sleep tonight.

Please pray for my Mom. Please pray for my entire family to stay strong together in this journey. Mom loves the Lord and I trust HIM with her life no matter how I initially feel inside.

We are looking forward to hopefully traveling for our adoption soon. We did hear from our adoption agency that our facilitator is trying to get us an appointment with the adoption center. Pray for God's timing in it all!