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Sunday, April 29, 2012

Co-op, Doctor's Appt., Karate Class, Wednesday Bible Study, Teen Banquet, Belt Ceremony...Is there time to blog? :-)

Okay, obviously I couldn't decide on a good title for my blog. But it has been very busy this week.

Monday, we had our homeschool co-op classes. It makes me feel good that Hannah wants to take my recorder class again next co-op. She's sad that this Monday will be our last co-op class for this school year. The kids really have enjoyed all the classes they've taken. I plan to offer recorder classes again next Co-op.

Tuesday, was my doctor's appointment. The doctor confirmed that our baby is head down. I've now reached 36 weeks and should only have 4 more weeks to go before my due date. There have been times this week that I've wondered if she is going to come before her due date. That could just be wishful thinking though. We also had karate class that evening. We have a doctor, her assistant, and a doula that attend karate classes with us. I love to tease them about the possibility of my going into labor during class. They told me that Scott will have to catch.

Wednesday, we visited a church that is in our local fellowship. We always enjoy the times we get to visit with them. Hannah played a special on her recorder for them. If she plays a special tomorrow, I'll post a picture of her.

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Thursday, I took Joshua and Ruth to our homeschool group's teen banquet. It was a formal occasion. Even though Ruth isn't quite a teen yet I let her go since she had friends there and she is about the same size as Joshua. I also thought she would enjoy a chance to wear her formal Easter dress as well. We had to buy Joshua some new dress clothes. He had gotten down to one pair of dress pants and none of his solid colored shirts fit him anymore. Scott took him to the store Wednesday night after church and bought him two new shirts and pants. There was a professional photographer at the Banquet. As soon as I get the pictures that were taken I'll post them on here.

I was very impressed with the banquet. A lot of it had been coordinated and planned by several of the teens. I was originally afraid that it would be couples oriented like a prom or a typical teen dance. However I was pleasantly surprised. There was dancing but it was line dancing. The music was very tasteful. There were no couple dances. The line dancing wasn't showy or provocative. Even my kids were able to participate in several of the dances because the moves were easy to follow. Kind of like the hokey pokey song, in fact that was one of the songs they got to dance to. :-)


Joshua volunteered to participate in a tough guy challenge. The challenge was to see who could peel a lemon in less than 3 minutes then they had to eat half the lemon and the person that could eat it without making a face won. Joshua came close but he took to big of a bite of the lemon and gagged a bit so another boy won, but they all got a candy bar for participating.


Ruth loved playing with the balloons in the room. She was having fun balancing one on her finger. That was a hard picture to capture. I told her that the balloon made a cute picture and we were able to use the balloon as a prop for one of the professional pictures. I enjoyed watching them have fun. I'm looking forward to being able to share some better pictures soon.


Saturday morning we had belt ceremony at our karate class. Joshua and Ruth both received their blue belts. They had to wait a minimum of 6 months before they could move up to the next level. I want to get a family picture of us all in our current belts. I just need to get Jonathan and Elijah to be completely dressed in their uniform for it.

Scott told me today that he was impressed with how well I was doing the kata we worked on today. I personally didn't think I was doing that great since I can't kick as well as I could prepregnancy. He wants to get a video of me doing the kata because he says I do pretty well considering my current challenges. I'll probably let him video me on Tuesday, since I'm not sure how long I'll still be able to do the moves this month. That way I'll be able to show our baby one day that I did in fact do karate while I was expecting her.



Tomorrow is Fifth Sunday Fellowship at our church. I need to get to bed so I'm not too worn out for it. Scott is cooking a brisket to share tomorrow. Ruth has a loaf of bread started in the bread machine. I plan to fix a dessert in the morning, so I really do need sleep tonight.

Hope everyone has good services tomorrow. I'll try to not wait so long to post this week. Tonight's post I'm counting as this past weeks post. Check back soon for more pictures.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

"You know how that happens, right?"

I probably should rate my blog PG for those parents who don't want their kids knowing anything about this subject. I'm mainly posting this for those parents who worry about the day that their kids ask them "that" question.

Normally, I don't go into details over this question because usually the people that ask me or my husband "You know how that happens, right?" are only teasing and we give some equally humorous comeback and leave it at that.

Also when I was a kid this was an embarrassing subject that no one felt comfortable asking questions about.

Well, I was faced with the difficult task of explaining to my children how babies are made. We were sitting at the table and Jonathan (4) says that when he grows up he'll have a baby in his tummy. I then explained that he will be a daddy when he grows up and that only mommies can have babies in their tummies. I told him that one day when he gets married his wife will carry his baby.

He is my 4th child and I've actually had this question asked plenty of times before. My eldest, Joshua who is 13 was fairly simple for me to handle because I turned that task over to his dad to give him that father/ son talk when he was about 9 or so. Well, when our lunch time discussion took place, I saw this was no longer a task that I could just leave to my husband to handle because now it was our daughters that were also asking questions.

I believe in only giving a child as much information as they want to know on a subject like this. We don't watch t.v. except an occasional movie. We don't let them run free on the internet. To them kissing on the lips is something you don't do until you're married. So whenever someone on a movie kisses they ask if they're married.



My first explanation is that the mommy has part of the baby and the daddy gives her his part of the baby and God puts the two parts together and the baby grows in the mommy's tummy. That used to be enough of an explanation to satisfy their curiosity. Not anymore!

Joshua had given the technical name of the daddy's contribution. Then the girls commenced to speculating how the daddy gives his part of the baby to the mommy. They thought that when the parents kiss the daddy spits his part into the mommy's mouth. Hannah was hollering, "Ewwww... that's gross!" I saw that I wouldn't have to worry about them kissing boys. But I also realized that this needed to be our biology lesson for the day. The above picture is the kids all set for my explanation.

Okay, sensitive folks may want to stop reading here. But for those parents who want to know how I handled this "every parent's nightmare" situation here is my explanation. But don't be offended because I'm warning you now. :-)

First, I told the kids that they know the differences between boys and girls because they've seen me change lots of diapers. They all agreed. Hannah even mentioned having seen her baby cousin's diaper changed which is a girl.



This is the pictures I drew on the board. I explained that my pictures were not exact and not to scale. This was just for illustration purpose. I first drew the picture on the left of the female reproductive system.
I explained how that God created girls with a whole lot of eggs inside of their ovaries. I then explained that when they begin to turn into women they will release an egg once every month. I then explained the menstrual cycle. I had to explain for Jonathan's sake that boys don't have to worry about that part. They just need to know for when they have wives.

Now mind you that the kids are all making comments and asking questions throughout the whole explanation. I'll give a few of those at the end of my commentary.

After getting through the explanation of the menstrual cycle, I then drew the internal reproductive organs of boys. I reminded them of boy diaper changes, so that they would know what area I was talking about. Yes, I gave them all the technical names for all the parts.

I then explained how when boys become men they will produce sperm. I then explained how the sperm exits the same area urine exits but the sperm is produced in the testes not the bladder.

Then when a man marries a woman they come together and as the Bible says they become one flesh. They join together.

I would have stopped there but the girls then asked, "How do they join together?"

I then drew the picture on top of the board of the funnel. I explained that whenever you want to pour something from one area into another area that is smaller you would use a funnel. I drew a picture of a bottle with a funnel and a bucket of water and told them how the water goes into the funnel and into the bottle. I then erased the bucket and put a bunch of dots to represent sperm and erased the bottom part of the bottle and explained that the boy part (a.k.a penis) was the funnel that inserted the sperm into the womb.

They still wanted to know more and I explained how parents share a bed and made sure that they understood that the sperm doesn't just jump across the bed but that it was only when they join together that they can make a baby.

The light came on at that point. They told me what they thought I was saying and I told them they were exactly right. They then said that even though they didn't understand it all they could wait until they were married to figure the rest out. I told them that they now know more than I knew when I first married and that it's fine to not understand it all. It's okay to figure the rest out then.

Now for the comments and questions they had during my explanation.

They all imagined chicken eggs when I talked about how women have eggs inside of them. Jonathan thought I was going to crack and be cooked because I have eggs in me.

Jonathan was real caught up on the sperm part as well and even offered me his which I explained that when he grew up he would give those to his wife. Remember he's 4 and he has the totally wrong idea of how this works. I informed him that in a few years daddy will reexplain it all to him.

Thankfully Jonathan forgot the word "sperm" by the time Scott got home and when he asked me what it was that was inside of him I sent him to go ask Daddy his questions. Scott told him about his heart and his lungs. How digestion works, etc. He even told him about his kidneys and blood. This was all fastenating information to Jonathan. And Scott wisely avoided any further explanation of reproduction to Jonathan. Like me, Scott didn't want Jonathan explaining it to every stranger that greeted us in the store. I could just see that the next time someone asks us, "You know how that happens, right?"

I hope this post helps some of you with children know how to broach that inevitable question. Only give children as much information as they want to know. You'll know when it's enough to satisfy their curiosity without having to go further. They'll usually say okay and switch subjects or run off to play or they'll keep asking questions.
All children are different but hopefully you can get some ideas from my experience. :-)

Matthew 15:4-6 "And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder."

Monday, April 09, 2012

Easter Sunday

Saturday night, I put the girls' hair up in curlers. Ruth wanted her hair a little more of a conservative curl with it curling under all around. Hannah wanted wild curls all over her head. :-)

I did manage to get Hannah's curls to be a bit tamer after a good deal of brushing on Sunday morning. Ruth's hair I curled too thick and I'll have to try again sometime with less hair in each curler. I let her wear my butterfly clip and that made it all good.

I wore a maternity dress that I hadn't worn in a while. It used to be much looser on me. The kids kept telling me that my belly was getting tight. They were impressed with how much the baby has grown.


We have a tradition every year of taking a picture of all the children at church on Easter Sunday. We were missing a couple of families so our children were the only ones present. You wouldn't believe how much work it was to get Jonathan and Elijah to stay still or not make faces for the camera. :-)



Since we were the only ones there we took some individual pictures and group pictures. This was my favorite of the boys pictures. We had them sit on the steps hoping Elijah might stay put better.


Since the boys sat on the step, we got a picture of the girls sitting on the steps. They felt like princesses in their pretty dresses. Next year we'll have Elisabeth in the picture.


Ruth took this picture of me and Scott. Joshua also got a picture with Scott's phone. We also set Scott's phone on a timer and got a family picture. I need to get him to transfer that one to me so I can post it.

Services went well. I taught Hannah, Jonathan, and Elijah during Sunday School. Scott preached an excellent sermon from Exodus about the Passover and the last plague of Egypt. Scott brought out a little fact that I had never thought about. Pharoah wasn't the firstborn in his family. His firstborn son died but he did not die. I thought that was interesting.

Another point in Scott's sermon that was thought provoking is how Pharoah would have let the men go worship God by themselves, but wanted them to leave their women and children behind. Scott mentioned how that was the same thing Satan tries to get families to do today. Satan will tell parents, "Oh, it's okay for you to go to church and follow God, but just leave your kids to do what they want to. You don't have to take them with you." You can see this happening all around. People saying they want to follow God but on Satan's terms not how God wants them to.

We need to stand up like Moses did and say, "No, we're taking our families with us. We're not going to leave anyone behind."

Sunday night we had a good lesson on Complaining. Our family was the only ones that showed up for the evening service, but we had a great lesson and discussion despite our low attendance. The lesson talked about the Children of Israel complaining in the wilderness because their was no water. We discussed the different ways we should be content under all circumstances. That doesn't mean we can't desire something greater but that we can be content under whatever circumstances we find ourselves in. Hannah informed us that she will never complain again. :-)

After our lesson, we were supposed to have business meeting but we jokingly declared no old or new business and voted to adjourn. We did sit down and talk about the problem we have with our attendance and discussed what we might can do to help improve our current ministries at the church.

We would like to see everyone, members, nonmembers, and visitors want to come to church. There needs to be something that gets everyone to feel they have a place where they want to come. I'd like to see everyone so excited about what they get to do for God's Kingdom that they are excited and not just coming because there is nothing better to do.

We've discussed different aspects of ministering and how different things we do can help encourage others. I'm hoping some of our discussion will be something we can start incorporating into our own personal service at church and that the changes we make will be the spark that helps get our church on its way to revival. Pray with us as we seek to make a difference in our community.

I also encourage anyone reading my blog to consider your own heart and the reason you go to church. Do you only go when you don't have anything better to do? Do you look at church as only a social club where you go whenever you feel like getting together with friends? Is church only about what you can get out of it?

Or is going to church your way to show God how much He really means to you and to encourage your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ? Does your heart yearn to hear the message God has prepared for you that day? Do you see church as your opportunity to serve in that greater calling that God has for you?

God wants to be close to you. He wants to do great things for you and through you. Even if you don't see what that great thing is right now, go to church seeking out what God has for you. He'll show you if you really truly want to know. It can't be a half hearted search though. You need to seek God with your whole heart.

My prayer is that everyone will get off the monotonous fence of everyday life and seek a greater relationship with our Heavenly Father. He can show you true happiness and contentment. Go to church and ask God, "What can I do to serve You better?"

You know it would make your pastor's day if you came to him and said, "I want to be more involved in church! What can I do to help?"
And even better than that, it would make God happy!

Jeremiah 29:13 "And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart."

Sunday, April 08, 2012

Family Baby Shower


We had a great weekend. Since my husband was off on Friday, we were able to leave Thursday evening to visit my family. We spent Thursday night and Friday night at my parents cottage and enjoyed getting to relax and visit with them. Then on Saturday we went to my Grandmother's house for a baby shower for Elisabeth.



We really enjoyed the time with my parents, my sister and her family, my Mema, my Aunt and Uncle, and one of my cousins and her daughters. In the picture with the shower gifts, I'm sitting next to my second cousin.

In the first picture we had all the great-grandchildren present pose with Mema around the picnic table my Dad made.



In this last picture, Elijah was sitting so sweetly in Mema's lap. He was so comfortable that we thought he was going to fall asleep.

On the way home from our visit, we stopped and picked up some beads so that I could embellish one of Hannah's fancy dresses for Easter. It looks extra fancy now.

I also put the girls hair up in rollers. I'll be taking pictures after church. It's very late (or early rather) and I need to get some sleep.

I'll try to post some more pictures later.