Dear Teenage Me,

I know you had a tough time figuring out who you are the past 12 years and now I want to write this letter to encourage you.

First of all, you're a night owl. If there is some way you could change it while you're young it would be really nice to break that habit early on. When you get to be my age breaking the night owl tendency doesn't get any easier. Your children may inherit those same tendencies.

How about your early years? The bullies you faced in Elementary, go ahead and forgive them. You might actually become friends with them later on in your life. You can go ahead and thank your dad for teasing you now. It really will toughen you up and help you react better to kids giving you a hard time. You will learn how people love to pick on people that give them the reaction they are looking for. You will feel really good in high school when a kid picks on you and you have the perfect come back for it. Which makes him and his friends laugh at how witty that come back was. That will be the day that you realize you are no longer subject to bullies. You find strength during that time.

You will realize that you don't have to cry and act weak to get attention. People will notice you more if you let the strength in your personality shine through.

Thank your Dad for saying that you and your sister can't date until you're 18. That makes it super easy to turn guys down in both Junior High and High School. There actually is a sense of freedom in boundaries. You don't have to have your heart broken like you see with so many of your friends around you. Peer pressure to date will be a non-issue for you because you can always fall back on the phrase, "My dad won't let me date." And believe it or not your dad doesn't mind you using him as your excuse.

Oh, very important would be to learn about personalities early. I realize that you will not heed this advice until you meet your husband (which by the way is worth waiting for). You will learn a lot about personalities in a marriage and family class you will take with your husband. You are going to wish you had known this important aspect of relationships much sooner. I think that might have saved your mother some tears if you had learned the differences between the two of you before slamming the door.
I highly recommend you read "The Five Love Languages". It will one day open your eyes to understand why your mom will feel terrible when you don't let her buy something for you. You may feel you are being independent but sometimes it's okay to accept your mother's love.

When you reach my age you'll cherish getting to go out with your mom. You will then see going shopping as quality time and both of you will be happy.

Oh and by the way, your future husband will have similar personality traits as your mom. That actually makes a good combination if you learn to work with those differences. The older you get the more like your dad you'll realize you are. One day your husband will tell you, "Wow, you sound so much like your dad!" Don't worry you'll be pretty sure he means it as a compliment.

Let's see what else I should warn you about. I'm not going to tell you how many children you will have. Let's just say it's more than just the 2 you will think is all God has in mind for you. Oh and you will do quite a bit of babysitting. It really is easier when they're your own kids.

Another piece of advice I better throw in here. Your little brother will one day hit his growth spurt and will suddenly be taller than you. You better watch out how you treat him while he's small. Payback is tough. :-)

College: that will be the big question in the upcoming years. Another piece of advice you won't heed but I'll go ahead and tell you anyway. Pick something you're good at. God has given you talents. Don't be afraid to use them. You'll think you need to pick something big and important. You'll decide to go to college for elementary education but you really should go with journalism and writing instead. When you get to be my age you will wonder why you spent so much time on frivolous stuff when you could have perfected what you are already good at and already enjoy doing. You'll look back and wonder why you didn't get a job at a newspaper office or some other publishing company. You would have done really well at that.

Finally, never settle for anything less than God's best for you. I know you are now starting a list of everything you are looking for in a husband. Keep waiting. Don't settle for anyone else. I know you're going to feel discouraged. You'll even think your list is too strict. Keep waiting though. He really is out there. God's going to bring him from another state. You won't understand why God chose to call your dad to preach during your senior year, but once you meet the guy he finds for you in seminary it all becomes clear. You'll be very glad you waited.

I can probably think of a lot of other advice but you are rather stubborn. You will learn a lot just from living life. Keep reading your Bible! That will be the biggest help you have on life's journey.

And be encouraged that even with the mistakes you will inevitably make, I'm very happy with how well your life turns out.

Sincerely,
Your future self,
Stacie

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Emily Freeman, author of the book Graceful wrote a letter to her teenage self. She encouraged other writers and her blog followers to do the same. You can see all our link ups on her blog at here

I really like the idea. If you want to write a letter to your teenage self and want to share it with me, leave a comment on my blog post and I'll go read your letter. :-) Have fun!

Family Moments

This summer was filled with so many activities with our extended family members.

My brother and his family returned to the states on furlough from France. It was really nice to get to see and visit with them. It made taking family pictures even more meaningful. We never know when we'll have these opportunities again.

We spent a week at my parents house with them. My sister and her family also came and we took a family picture.

We also had a family reunion at my grandmother's house larger family picture with all my aunts, uncles, and most of my cousins on my mother's side of the family. It was great that they planned this reunion right before my brother's family went back to France.


Family seemed to be our theme this summer as we seemed to do everything for and with family all summer long.


We took this picture with Scott's mother when we visited her in Michigan.


This is a picture we took with my paternal grandmother.

This one we took with my maternal grandmother at her home.
We were so blessed this summer with so much family time.

This week I've been missing everyone that we saw this summer. I would love to do it all over again and get even more visiting in.

I realize I hadn't been keeping up with my goal of blogging at least once a week throughout this year. I am going to try to pick back up and start blogging once a week again. I may even get a few extra in to make up for the weeks I missed. :-)

Church Camp

We did so much this past Summer. I only blogged on a few of things that we did. So much keeps happening that I seemed to have missed blogging about church camp.

Our church camp was the last full week of July. We enjoy renewing friendships each year as well as making new friends.

We arrived at camp on a Monday around 3:00 p.m.
We registered and paid our fee. At 4:00 p.m. we had a sponsors meeting. Scott, my husband was voted to fill in for the song leader who was absent this year due to health problems in the family. He did a really good job coming up with songs last minute.




I lost my voice during camp. It was just starting to leave me on Tuesday. I was able to teach and lead the children's choir. But by Wednesday my voice was gone completely. I really appreciated my brother helping me during the week. He taught my 2nd & 3rd grade class on Wednesday and helped me with the children's choir on Thursday. He was really a blessing!



The kids all had a lot of fun. Besides preaching and classes there was also recreation time. The kids played basketball, putt putt golf, swimming, and all sorts of fun activities.



The food in the cafeteria was good. I really liked the onion fried green beans.


If I had been feeling better I would have gotten in on more of the fun. I usually try to get more pictures as well.



There were 20 saved and 12 rededications.


I have gone to this same camp since I turned seven years old. I was saved on a Wednesday afternoon under the same pavilion that I taught from this year. I always enjoy giving my testimony to my class and pointing to the spot where I sat and repented of my sins when I was 10 years old. The Lord sure has been good to me with blessings beyond measure.

A New Body

We were having our Wednesday night Bible Study tonight at our home. We were learning about Gideon putting out the fleece. Somewhere in our discussion, Scott mentioned how that one day when we go to see Jesus that we'll have a new body.

Jonathan was intrigued by this. "Will I be a girl?" he asked.

"No, you will just have a new body. It won't feel any pain."

"Will I have brown skin, and have the sides of my head shaved?"

Okay, I'm sure you can guess which Rocky movie we watched last. Somehow Mr. T fascinated him. That was the kind of body he pictured himself having in heaven one day. The rest of the night he and Elijah went around making muscles and saying, "I pity a fool!"



1 Corinthians 15:51-58
Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,

In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.

So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.

O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?

The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.

But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.

The Adventures of Parenthood

I'm going to stray a little from talking about our summer activities to share with you another adventurous day in the life of our family.

I woke up a little late Saturday morning, having gone to bed late the night before. We drive about an hour on Saturday mornings to go to our karate class, which doesn't leave us much time to dawdle. The kids fixed oatmeal for breakfast, everyone got dressed in our karate uniforms and we started heading out the door. Scott came running into the house as I was just about to go out asking me if he had any ants on him. The front passenger side door had ants all over it. It had been a few days since we had gone anywhere and the ants had found a dead frog on the top of the door and some packages of unopened crackers in between the front seats of the van.

Yes, you counted right there is an extra person in the back of the van in this picture. We didn't have time to evict the ants from the front of the van so Scott moved to the backseat.

It was strange not being able to talk to my husband while I was driving. I actually had to call him on his cell phone to tell him about the truck that played leap frog with us. I hate when a vehicle passes me while I'm passing the one in front of me. They stayed right on my tale while I was passing and barely gave me time to move over before passing me.

Later another car in oncoming traffic tried playing chicken with me as they came into my lane in order to pass someone in front of them. I had to slow down and move over onto the shoulder of the road but I missed them. I told my husband later that it was probably good that he didn't see that one.

We arrived safely to karate only a few minutes late. We had a great class! I'm trying to get back some of my flexibility that I lost while I was pregnant. It's coming back and I feel really good while exercising.


After class, we needed to go grocery shopping. We also needed to find our bank. Our GPS was failing us! It said the bank was in the Walmart parking lot. Scott ran into Walmart while I drove laps around. No bank. But a Walmart associate told him that Kroger had the bank. Our GPS put Kroger in the middle of an intersection.

I have a friend that I knew could help us out because I saw her post that milk was only $1.99 at Kroger on her Facebook wall just a few days ago. So Scott traded places with me and drove while I sent a text message to my friend. (The ants had dispersed at this point and my husband came back to the front seat.)My friend was very prompt to answer and told us exactly where it was. She is much nicer than a GPS.

We arrived at Kroger and all 8 of us got out and headed to entrance. We were greeted by fire fighters showing off their truck to children.
Each of our kids got a chance to sit in the truck.

Elijah wasn't too sure what he thought about it.

Actually Elijah was more interested in the giant chicken that also greeted us. If I were his size, I'd be a little concerned about the giant chicken too. I was proud of him though he didn't cry or holler and he did hesitantly touch the chicken when I told him he could. He was a bit nervous but he kept saying, "Hi, Chicken!"

The chicken passed out water, chicken samples, and a balloon to each of our kids. Scott and I don't know which is worse last week's experience with Buddy Bucks (I thought we would never leave HEB last week with all the kids wanting to play the Buddy Buck machine) or this week's helium balloons.

I knew this would be a test of our parental patience when Jonathan lost his balloon before we even entered the store. Imagine if you can, 5 children (and a baby) following their parents around the grocery store with 5 helium balloons. I felt like I was either dodging balloons or getting hit by them everywhere I turned. On top of all that the bank gave us packages of cookies and we let the kids eat their three cookies.

One of the employees said that they were having some sort of kid appreciation day. I'm not sure how well most parents appreciate the effects of the store's good intentions.

Elisabeth became hungry and Ruth wasn't feeling well, so the 3 of us found a nice sitting area. Ruth and I talked while I nursed Elisabeth. Yes, I breastfeed my babies. I used to feel stressed about finding a private place to breastfeed. That was in my earlier years. Now all I need is a place to sit down. I use a blanket or a nursing cover for privacy. (I need to blog on my take on breastfeeding sometime. There are so many different levels of opinion on that topic.)

I just finished feeding Elisabeth when Scott finished shopping with the other 4 children. We made sure all balloons were secure and that all the younger children held one of our older hands. Scott and I always seem to be doing a head count. We started to leave when Jonathan exclaimed that he wasn't buckled. Why was he not buckled? Because of the balloon!

Okay, I'll spare you the story of our ride home. We arrived home safe and sound. But can you guess whose balloon popped just a few seconds after we entered the house? Jonathan's.

As soon as I heard it pop, I commanded,"Don't cry!" Okay, I may not have come across as very sympathetic but I did tie his string to one of his stuffed animals as a leash.

I guess the Lord must have known that I needed a little more practice in patience. :-)

Romans 5:3 "And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience".

Family Reunion

I'm getting all my posts out of order but I'm just going to get caught up on everything we did this summer in the most logical order I can muster.


My brother, Jason, and his family all came back to America on furlough from his mission work in France. It has been a little over 2 years since they last visited. Three babies have been born during the time they were away. Sarah and I had never met Jason's youngest and he had not seen our youngest children.

This is a picture my Dad took at church camp of the three of us siblings holding the 3 children that had been born since Jason's last furlough.

We really enjoyed seeing my brother, his wife Angie and their 5 children. The first day we saw them this summer we adults expected some really big excited show when all the cousins got back together again but they all just said, "Hi!" and commenced to playing and talking like they had only been apart a short time.

This is a picture of all the cousins sitting on my parents couch.

We've had a tradition before my brother had gone to France of taking a picture of all the cousins together. Whenever we had a new child born it was time for a new picture. Elijah was just born the last picture we took. This time my sister has a child she was able to add to the group along with our niece that was born in France and Elisabeth that was just born a couple weeks before they arrived.

It was nice to find a day that we were all able to get together at my parents to take pictures and visit. The kids had an amazing time building memories with their cousins.

During the week at my parents we were able to enjoy a trip to the zoo and out of the 11 children present not one got lost even once.

I'm glad that we are getting to build memories with my brother's family.
It was nice to have them at church camp again this year. It made this camp extra special for us. I'll try to get a blog in about church camp this week as well.

Summer is almost to an end. It won't be long before I start posting about homeschool activities. I'll try to be caught up before then on my summer posts.

Joshua's and Ruth's Birthdays.

Well, I'm still behind on posting but I'm not going to quit. Hopefully I'll get myself back on track and post at least once a week again.

Joshua and Ruth both celebrated their birthdays this month. I should have posted much sooner but it's been a busy few weeks. So this is my catch up post for both of their Birthdays.



Joshua's birthday was June 27 but we had an early celebration with his cousins. My brother and his family came back to Texas on furlough from France. I made a homemade pinata and let Joshua paint and decorate it however he wanted. We spent that Friday night at my parents cottage with my parents, my brother, his wife, and their 5 children. It's amazing how little space can accommodate 6 adults and 11 children.

We had planned for the boys to spend the night in our tent but wound up with only three of them stayed out there all night. Saturday we visited my paternal grandmother, which we affectionately call Mamaw.


Mamaw lives in a nursing home. She always loves to see us when we visit. We took a couple of pictures while we were there.

Mamaw holding Elisabeth

After a nice visit with Mamaw, we visited my maternal grandmother, affectionately known as Mema (pronounced Me-maw).

Mema with her eldest great grandson and her youngest great grandson (my cousin's baby born a month before Elisabeth).

We actually took a family picture with Mema just before Elisabeth was born. Now we need to take another.

Ruth's birthday is 2 weeks after Joshua's. She had a good birthday as well.

Ruth's 12th Birthday cake.

Joshua went to a teen camp with the youth of my parents' church during the week of Ruth's birthday. Scott was still on vacation at the school so we celebrated her birthday all week. That Monday, I took all the girls antique shopping. We were looking specifically for tea cups. Both girls found a set they liked and a tea pot to go with it. We visited another store next door to the antique shop. Ruth and Hannah both found fancy umbrellas that they wanted. I'm not sure what possessed me to say, "yes" to buying them each a $27 umbrella but those umbrellas had better last them a lifetime. :-) That night we had tea in their new tea cups along with birthday cake.

A before picture of Ruth's first professional hair cut.

Tuesday was Ruth's actual Birthday. She wanted to go to a Build-A-Bear workshop. She wanted to buy her bear, Frosting, a husband. So we went to the Workshop where Ruth arranged her bear a marriage to a very kind and handsome bear she named Teddy. We bought both Teddy and Frosting a full wedding wardrobe.

Frosting and Teddy posing with Ruth's birthday tea set.

They have been happily married 13 days now.

We had karate class that same evening. There is a tradition in our karate dojo that for our birthdays we get to spar everyone in class that day. Our instructor calls it "iron man" sparring. It was nice getting to spar again after not being able to for a year. I enjoyed it and kept having to remind people that I'm not pregnant anymore. :-) I think Ruth might have hoped it would be a smaller class. She's not real fond of being in the spotlight. She did well though and at the end she said that she really liked her birthday.

Ruth in the process of her first "real" haircut.

Wednesday, we went to a Children's Museum. There were a lot of educational activities for the kids. I want to take the kids back again where they can have even more time to go to all the exhibits.

Jonathan, Elijah, and Hannah in one of the exhibits at the museum.

After the museum, we went and visited our friends at a sister church in our fellowship. We always enjoy visiting them when we are able. This was the first time they got to see Elisabeth.

Thursday, I took Ruth to get her first professional haircut. I was about her age when my mom took me for my first haircut. We have a friend that goes to our Church that had gotten a new job in a nearby town as a beautician. I was excited to get our hair done at her salon. We were also able to enjoy visiting with her. We both like our hair and plan to go back again.

Ruth with our friend, Karli, who gave us both great haircuts.

We had so much going on this Summer that I'm way behind on blogging. I still plan to catch up but not everything will be in order. However I'm going to try to get everything recorded on here before summer is over.

Ruth looks so grownup with her new hair.

I'll hopefully get another post done in a couple of days. So be sure to check back.

Vacation

We are enjoyed our vacation. We don't get to see Scott's family very often. The last time we visited Michigan Elijah was just a few months old. That year Scott had gone to Thailand and I took the kids to Michigan while he was gone. Last Summer he wanted me to go with him.

We left on our vacation Monday night June 25th just as the sun was setting. The air conditioner isn't working on our van, so we decided to take advantage of the sun being down. We planned to drive until we were too tired and then stop for the rest of the night. Scott was feeling good and awake and drove the whole night while I slept. Then as the sun rose, I took over driving while he slept.
Elijah is pretending to drive after one of our stops where he was the only child to wake up.
The kids slept fairly well in the van. We had to stop every 2 or 3 hours to feed Elisabeth.
We finally stopped that afternoon of the 26th at a hotel.

No, we decided not to stop at this hotel we saw. Although the kids did want to look inside it.


The hotel we did decide to stop at had an indoor swimming pool. The clerk gave us a real good price on two rooms. She has 5 biological children that are grown + 5 adopted children she is now raising. So she was very helpful. We got plenty of rest and were back on the road Wednesday afternoon, Joshua's 14th birthday. We stopped at a gas station and Scott bought Birthday Candy Bars. I'll need to do another blog later just for Joshua's birthday.

Elisabeth in the hotel.


Jonathan and Elijah were so cute looking up at me at one of gas station stops.

Joshua turned 14 on this trip.

Scott's mom, Judy, gets to hold Elisabeth for the first time. We gave Elisabeth the middle name Rose after Judy's mother, Rosa Elizabeth.

"The girls"- My in-laws' boxers.


We went to the beach of Lake Michigan and had a picnic with Grandma Judy.


Scott carried Elisabeth over to the beach area in the baby carrier we have. He said that it was a piece of cake. He could carry her like that for 9 months. :-) I've always teased him that I carried the baby for the first 9 months that he should get the next 9.

Judy enjoying some more grandma time holding Elisabeth while everyone ate.


Scott was showing his mom how the camera on my tablet works.

I wasn't able to post a blog during the time we were in Michigan since I didn't have a Wifi connection. This post is about the first half of our trip and this will have to make up for the post I missed. I'll post another one tomorrow about the second half of our trip to count as this week's post.

I will get caught up on all my posts soon. Then I'll be back on track posting once a week. Please check back during the next few days as I play catch up.