Proverbs 3:5-6

Proverbs 3:5-6

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge Him
and He will direct your path.

This is our verse of the week for school with my kindergartener. Already this has been such a gift to me this morning.

I'm no stranger to anxiety attacks. Long story, MUCH abbreviated, I started having them in 1999 as I was wrestling through some doubt and frustration with my faith. God was faithful and brought me through that and He truly does get the glory. I had some issues when baby #3 arrived while we were in the hospital, but thankfully since that time almost 10 years ago, they have been very few and far between.

This morning I started feeling that familiar tightness to my chest and whirling in my stomach. What a comfort to know that I don't have to understand why I have these sudden unexplainable panics. He does and I trust Him. I was able to acknowledge that even though my faith in Him was weak this morning (and for which I was so so sorry), I acknowledged His omnipresence with me and that He would walk with me through this day. The words of Elisabeth Elliott popped into my mind ... "Do the next thing." I was already up fumbling through my quiet time, so I pressed on. Making sippy cups of milk. Curling up on the loveseat with a 2 year old to cuddle and watch a little Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Making a husband's lunch. Starting school with our circle time, singing "Deep and Wide" and reading the story of the tower of Babel.

Probably to most, the name of my blog seems pretty obscure. (How does this tie in with the verse above, etc.? Just hold on...) :) It's taken from Psalm 52:8-9 which says:

I am like an olive tree flourishing in the house of the Lord,
I will trust in the unfailing love of God forever.
I will praise his name for what he has done; in His name I will hope.
His mercies have no end!

So thankful for these verses on trust this morning and that He is the only one that is worthy of my complete unwavering trust ... and so thankful that when I do waver, He doesn't give up on me.

Glory to Him. :)

Friday Felicities :: August 14

Things that are making me happy this week ...

• the county fair
• the flexibility of homeschooling
• my diet coke :)
• blog posts that may not seem out of the ordinary to some, but totally encourage me
• Friday night pizza and movie nights ... I know I say this every week but it is so simple and we ALL look forward to just hanging together. Tonight's feature film presentation: Mary Poppins! (Sometimes I feel sorry for T with all these girls. :) Last week, we let him pick and watch what the girls call "the Daddy movie" ... points to anyone that can guess what Disney flick that might be!)
• notes that N1 leaves me everywhere .... they usually say something like "Mom I love you and I lick [like] you and your pretty" and "when can we go to the zoo?"
• gmail chats with the niece
• a God that is there and present and knows my frustrations ... helping me along sometimes when I don't even know why I am frustrated
• videos my husband makes of our girls ... this is a music video he put together of our night at the fair. Enjoy and enjoy your Friday!

Williamson County Fair 2009 from Travis Shepherd on Vimeo.

Read Aloud Thursday ... sort of :)

Some time back I reviewed The Story of Little Babaji for a Five Minutes for Books Kids Pick. I'm highlighting it again this week because we are focusing on it as part of kindergarten school work. Hmm? How does that fit into your school plans you ask? I thought you were doing mostly American History?

Well, I shifted gears. :) After two weeks, it was more than obvious that what I was working towards with N1 in terms of social studies was a little ambitious. (I blame most of that on the fact that once-upon-a-time I was a social studies teacher ... for secondary education! I guess I still am at heart!) Instead, Plan B, we'll be taking books (a la Five in a Row) and visiting different cultures around the world and rolling with that for the next few months.

India is going to be our first stop on this route! We had recently re-checked out The Story of Little Babaji from the library because my girls LOVE this book so much. The story of a little boy who meets up with some hungry tigers and manages to bargain with them to not eat him by giving them some of his clothing. We were able to use our book yesterday to talk about India - we found it on the wall map the globe, and talked about how it was part of Asia. That led to a conversation about continents and how they related to countries, states and towns. So fun. :) Homeschool Share has a study of this book which will be a huge help to me in planning and suggested things we can talk about.

Now, that I have realized the error of my ways in my first draft of planning (hopefully I'm not the only mom that has done this!) I'm thinking of books that we can use to jaunt casually around the world this next year. I would imagine that some of them will show up as a Read Aloud Thursday post!

For more info or to post your Read Aloud Thursday, visit Hope is the Word!

Wordless Wednesday

Or not so ... wordless. N1's rules for her sisters:

Do not climb on my chair.

Do not interrup me.

Do not talk to me

No noise at me.

The checks with names are the offenders. Hee hee. :)

Adventurous Children's Classics!

This week's Children's Classics theme is adventure! As I was thinking of what books I could mentioned the two that popped into my mind could easily be considered the easy way out on this post. But truthfully ... can life get much more adventurous for a little one than The Complete Adventures of Curious George or the life of Laura Ingalls?

We are big fans of the mischevious monkey at our house. :) His antics are timeless and my girls can listen to his stories over and over (and over.) My favorite adventure of his is the original story, however, there are so many to choose from - how he earns a medal, when he goes to the hospital, and what happens when he takes a job. Did you know that George was originally going to be named Fifi? The life of the author, H.A. Rey is an adventure story in it's own right, and I reviewed his story (set during World War II) here.

Second, the Little House books ... right now, my girls and I are reading our way through By the Shores of Silver Lake. The book starts off with a bang - the Ingalls family is moving! Pa has been offered a job with the railroad and the family decides to take it. Most of the family is just recovering from scarlet fever, Mary is now blind, and they are in debt to the doctor. This move will get the family back on its feet and put them a little closer to family for a time. Within the first few chapters we get to see what riding on a train was like for Laura and her family - I had to laugh a bit because Laura was amazed that they would be able to travel a full twenty miles on the train and it wouldn't even take the full day. (Nowadays, my girls think that a twenty minute drive in the car is forever long! Hmm, not sure how well they would handle that train ride.) :)

For more Children's Classics with a hint of adventure, head over to Five Minutes for Books!

Past Children's Classics:
A.A. Milne
Beatrix Potter (specifically, the Tale of Jemima Puddleduck)
Make Way for Ducklings
The Little House
Ella the Elephant & The Boy Who Was Raised by Librarians (Future Children's Classics)
Henry Reed's Journey (travel theme)

From the Weekend...

I finally took the time this weekend to take a few pictures of our BBoo. She only turned two in May so I'm not too far behind! :) Of all the ones that we took, this one truly shows off her crazy character ... this child keeps me hopping as she is always on the go!







My sister also asked me to take a picture of my niece since I had the camera ready - this girl started middle school today ... and you can't tell me that she's not gorgeous! I'm excited to see what she does this year and this next new step in her life.

Friday Felicities ::: August 7

What makes me happy...

• our first week of school is almost under our belts
• tonight is pizza and movie night
• goodies in the mail
• even though there have been some hard things about this week, there have been some good lessons learned for me and I'm thankful for that
• that our Wii is back up and running, and I can do a little exercise during afternoon rest time :)
• a good (light) weekend with a little church biz-ness on Saturday, church on Sunday and a birthday party for N1 to attend on Sunday afternoon
• morning coffee

Hosted by Becky at Joyful Mother. :)

We Have a Winner!

The winner of the Crown Binder giveaway was comment #2:

Amy @ Hope is the Word!

Congratulations and thanks to everyone that entered. Even if you didn't win, I hope you keep Carla's shop in mind as you back-to-school shop!

The First Week

• Homeschooling kicked off on Monday!
• As did my WAY cool contest ... if you haven't gone and entered, please do!!!
• Our days have been busy and good.
• Kind of like the anniversary weekend I just celebrated with my husband.
• The big seven. :)
• We had planned to send the girls to Grandma and Grandpa's for Friday night so that we could grab dinner and a movie without the guilt of making my parents' stay awake wait up for us.
• However, BBoo started feeling lousy on Thursday. By Friday afternoon she had a fairly high fever and was shunned from the grandparents.
• Not really "shunned" but my Dad has some nose bleed issues and it really is imperative that he doesn't catch a cold. It is just bad. So, the snotty child was uninvited.
• That meant our anniversary dinner for two was now an anniversary dinner for three. :)
• And thanks to my sister, we were still able to go see our movie since we had already Fandangoed the tickets. And at the price of tickets now-a-days, I was glad to not have to try and unload them or lose them. Thanks, K!
• The rest of the weekend was rather low-key since all activities involved said two-year-old but we did go out to Cracker Barrel for an early lunch and ran several errands before the N's came home.
• Then I stayed home from church with BBoo since her nose and cough were still not nursery worthy.
• Then we jumped into homeschooling. :)
• We have been reading in Proverbs, reading about Christopher Columbus, colonial times and making an All About Me lapbook.
• We also finished our lunch read-aloud of On the Banks of Plum Creek and jumped straight into By the Shores of Silver Lake today. I forgot that Silver Lake starts off with a bang - in the first two chapters, Mary is blind and then Jack the bulldog dies.
• It's been a while since I read this book in the series, so I'm looking forward to refreshing my memory.

Happy Wednesday. :)

The Sacred Cipher

I enjoyed this book! This is one that I can easily see as a motion picture - adventure, buried treasure, our unlikely heroes working together to unravel an ancient language and unlock a riddle. The main character, Tom Bohannon, stumbles upon a cache of hidden historical artifacts and within is a small scroll. While Tom and his friends work on reading the scroll, little do they know of the danger they are placing themselves in or that they have jumped feet first into one of the biggest mysteries of all time.

If you are looking for a great (clean) adventure story, I recommend this book! It's like going to the movies without the expensive tickets and the long lines for popcorn. :)

This week, theChristian Fiction Blog Allianceis introducingThe Sacred CipherKregel Publications (July 31, 2009)byTerry Brennan
ABOUT THE BOOK

History's greatest secret could be tomorrow's greatest threat. More historically and biblically accurate than The DaVinci Code and just as adventurous as an Indiana Jones movie, The Sacred Cipher combines action and mystery to draw readers into a world of ancient secrets and international escapades.

When an ancient scroll appears in a secret room of the Bowery Mission in New York City, Tom Bohannon is both stunned and intrigued. The enigma of the scroll's contents will send Bohannon and his team ricocheting around the world, drawing the heat of both Jewish and Muslim militaries, and bringing the Middle East to the brink of nuclear war in this heart-pounding adventure of historical proportions. The Sacred Cipher is a riveting, fact-based tale of mystery and suspense.

If you want to read the Prologue of The Sacred Cipher, go HERE

A Giveaway from Crown Bindery

It's been a while since I've been able to do a giveaway on the blog so let's do one in honor of our first day of homeschool today! :) I've been emailing with the very nice Carla of Crown Bindery and she has graciously offered to give one of my readers one of her 9x11 Triple Crown Notebook Binders!

There are a LOT of things that I like about these binders!

• One, her shop carries a great assortment of different fun and colorful papers so you can have a binder that is your favorite color, or one that is a different color depending up on your mood. :) Yellows, blues, pink & orange - a huge variety.
• Two, the binders aren't your typical three ring binder. Because she uses binder rings, you can lay them flat in your lap and write in it like you would a spiral notebook. However, because she uses binder rings you can add and subtract paper to your heart's content. (To be truthful, I am kicking myself that I didn't come up with this idea first!) :)
• Three, she uses a thicker-than-normal laminating film that makes your binder super stiff and strong. I'll be honest again here - when I first saw these binders I thought, "I'm pretty crafty - I can make that!" Well, not with my little home laminating machine! As she says from her shop: Each laminated page is handcrafted by laminating doubled-sided paper. First, paper is hand selected for color and pattern. Each page is then cut to size and painstakingly aligned to assure a perfect fit in the laminate pouch. We run the pouch through a thermal laminator to seal it up tight, three hole punch each finished page and attach the rings. Waalaa! A Crown Binder is born! Her's are much thicker and sturdier than mine which makes a huge difference in the durability. I learned my lesson. :)

Carla has created these binders in several sizes - 9x11 for your standard notebook size sheet, 9x6 for a half-sheet of paper, and then several smaller index card sizes that would be perfect to keep little hands busy in the car or at a restaurant, or for holding your file cards if you are doing research.

I hope you will celebrate back-to-school with me and take a look at Carla's Etsy shop! If you want to be entered to win one of her 9x11 Triple Crown binders, take a peek over at her shop and let me know what you like the best in a comment below. I'll close comments on Friday morning and post the winner that day! Good luck!