ballet

Arden and Esther have taken ballet/tumbling for the last couple of years and loved it.  After some thought and prayer on the subject, we decided it was time to move on from where they were taking and find a new place that provided more formal training and would teach them how to honor the Lord with their bodies and dancing.  The Lord provided a wonderful ministry that does just that!  We have been really pleased with the training the girls are getting and the environment in which they are learning.  It is a beautiful thing to see your girls dancing to songs of worship and giving thanks to Jesus for their class!  

Here are pics from the first day of class... 

side note-I have gotten a lot better at doing buns! :)

The girls' class is a pre-ballet class, and for their last class before Christmas, they combined with the beginning ballet class for a special time of celebrating.

taking joy

The weeks leading up to and following September 11th, marking the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on 9-11-01, and also the due date of our baby were hard.  Not only was my heart hurting for the family of those lost on 9/11 and my mind kept going back to my classroom at TFA where I heard the news from a teammate and turned on the television to see the second plane... but my heart was and honestly, still is recovering from losing another baby.  If you aren't sure where I'm coming from, you can read here for a little background knowledge.


In reality, the seven months leading up to this date had many hard days in them.  It has been a little over a year now that we found out we were expecting... our seventh pregnancy.  Seven pregnancies in seven years.  Seven babies. Three here on earth.  Four with our Lord.  It's a lot to swallow.  When I wrote about this fourth miscarriage a couple of days after the D&C, physically, things seemed to be going okay.  As it turns out, this was the hardest one on my body physically.  Emotionally, I believe it has been the hardest.  I had "down" days for weeks at a time, this moved to a couple of days a week, to one day a week, to one day a month, where I would just cry.  One day Woody asked me if I was in a dark place, and thankfully by God's grace, I could answer with a confident no.  I was just. really. sad.  


A good friend recommended a book to me, that though was emotionally hard for me to read through at times... (it's hard to read when your eyes are full of tears!), it was such a rich source of encouragement, that I didn't want to put it down.  The book was One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are by Ann Voskamp.  If you have not read this book or if you're not familiar with Ann Voskamp, I would highly recommend getting familiar with both!  Ann writes a blog, A Holy Experience, (I have it linked on my sidebar) that provides daily encouragement and grace to its readers, no matter who you are or where you are in life.  As I read through One Thousand Gifts and realized that giving thanks to God in all aspects of life, even the very smallest of things, brings joy, I began writing these "gifts" down.  It seemed silly at first, making this list, but as time went on, God used it and continues to use it to bring about joy and thankfulness in my life and to heal my heart.  
I have been writing these gifts down for about 10 months now, and have not been consistent with it by any means, so I was elated to see this Joy Dare on Ann Voskamp's blog back at the beginning of the year!  Count 1000 gifts in 2012.  Make a habit of taking joy, just 3 gifts a day.  And no, it's not too late to start-I dare you, take the Joy Dare!  


The Lord used the following excerpt from One Thousand Gifts to minister to me during the first few weeks and months after losing our fourth little one...


"What will I believe is greater today?  My problems?  Or God's provisions?  What this moment holds is always His provision and He never leaves nor forsakes.


Because this is it:


The needs of our day are great but our God is greater and we call Him Providence because we believe: He is the One who always provides.


And when God provides, He should be praised and if God always provides, shouldn't praise always be on the lips?


We are the people provided for and praise is our song.  God has made provision.  So we will make praise.


I have everything I need.  Not what I think I need.  But what He knows I need.  I can trust His love.  I can trust what He gives.  I can trust His provision of this moment."

while we're homeschooling...

I forgot to mention that homeschooling would not be complete without having Chloe around!  Here are a couple of pics from our first few days of adjusting to homeschooling...

She really has done pretty well with things and most of the time she wants to do school with us, so she's right in on the action.  And no, I don't usually allow her to sit on the table, much less dance on it, but what can I say, she was just too cute. :)

homeschool?!

Over the last few years, I have thought about what school would look like for our girls and since I taught Kindergarten for six years before having Arden, I dreamed of their Kindergarten year and all that it would hold.  Homeschooling our girls never crossed my mind until the last couple of years, and when it did, I would dismiss it pretty quickly.  Our city has a large homeschool following and the majority of families in our church homeschool.  I have close friends here who homeschool, but still, it just really never crossed my mind as something that our family would actually do.  This last Spring, I was really struggling with where Arden would be going to school in the fall for Kindergarten.  The Lord kept putting homeschool on my heart, but I wrestled with whether this would be the best thing and stubbornly, I would say no.  The wrestling and struggling continued... looking back, I'm not sure why I fought it so much, but when I relinquished what I thought I wanted, peace abounded immensely!  When I said, "yes, Lord, we will do this," His peace reigned and everything fell into place with ease and joy.  The first few times I said out loud, "we're going to homeschool" to others, I think I actually laughed out loud!  It was very surreal and "am I really saying this?!" entered my mind a lot.  The whole process of beginning this journey has been exciting and overwhelming at times.  I am very thankful for friends who have gone before me and graciously offered their time and advice in getting started!  I'm also very thankful for all the support and encouragement we've received from family and friends in making the decision to homeschool.  

Now, with all that said, can I just say, I love homeschooling!  I know it is not for everyone and that the Lord directs each family in how/where to educate their children.  For our family and the place we are in right now, this is what He has for us, and it has been such a blessing!  

Starting in August, we began homeschooling Arden in Kindergarten. 

Here's a pic from her first day!

 It has been a joy and a delight getting to teach her and see her mind at work! Arden and I have bonded in new way through this experience and I am thankful for how the Lord is using this to build our relationship as mother and daughter.  

Over the last few months, we've definitely had moments where Woody and I look at each other and say, "we're officially a homeschooling family!" and we have a good laugh.  For example, we were traveling through GA and Woody and I were singing the history sentence from Arden's memory work trying to get the girls to sing along..."come on girls, let's sing about the Boston Tea Party!"  Um, yes, we are that family-ha!   The way I think about things and our days has changed and I'm always on the lookout now for a good field trip! :)

(And yes, call me crazy, but I will admit that getting all the curriculum in the mail and doing lesson plans is fun to me!  Having kept my K files, I've also enjoyed being able to do things with Arden that I did with my Kinder students.)

 Now, backtracking a little bit...something that got me excited about the possibility of homeschooling was attending an informational meeting for Classical Conversations, a Christian homeschool community that has local communities across the U.S., as well as in other countries.  I loved the mission and structure of CC and thought, this makes sense.  Fast forward a few months, and our city now has a new CC group that started in August.  We meet once a week and I am actually tutoring a class of 6-7 year olds.  Arden is in her own class and loving it.  Each week, the students learn new memory work, do a presentation, a science experiment, a fine arts project, as well as review past memory work.  It has been a privilege to tutor/teach my students and build relationships with other homeschooling families.  And it has been really exciting to see all that Arden is learning in Foundations.  The way God has wired her little mind to learn and memorize is sometimes well, mind-boggling, and we look forward to all He has in store for her!  

Here is Arden meeting her tutor for the first time

And giving her first presentation...

getting caught up...

Okay, so I know it's been quite a while since I last blogged!  I had hoped to get caught up with 2011 before 2012 began, but as you can see, that didn't happen.  I'm going to attempt to get caught up on everything in the next couple of weeks, so please bear with me while I reminisce over the last few months of 2011!