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Our first week of homeschool went great and Lily is still loving it!

In other, not so great news, we are not the healthiest group.  On Thursday afternoon we discovered a nite in Lily's hair (no live lice thankfully, but this was enough).  We previously thought we escaped this lice exposure, but it seems as though we haven't.  Thankfully we seem to have caught it pretty early and we haven't found anything else since on any of us.  We did go ahead and treat all of us just to be safe.  And I've been cleaning, cleaning, cleaning and washing just about everything that can be washed...just to make sure there's nothing lingering that could re-infect us later.  Uggghh...makes me feel creepy all over just thinking about it!

And of course all of this happened right about the same time that Eli started getting sick.  It started as a nasty little cough, then a runny nose and finally yesterday I could hear it settle into his chest and he was wheezy sounding.  Yep, we've been here before.  Poor little guy.  Ironically he had his well child check up yesterday (even though he wasn't so well)- and sure enough his oxygen levels were low (not low enough, thankfully, to need to be in the hospital, but not good).  And once again I am so thankfully for our nebulizer.  Some good rest and a few more treatments and hopefully he'll be just fine.  I also woke up not feeling so good this morning.  And so we missed our niece Lacey's 4th birthday party today.  I love birthday parties and I hate missing out on family gatherings, so this was just a bummer all around.  But, in the end it was probably good for us to have a restful day.  Oh wait, I cleaned all day...so I guess it was good for the kids to have a restful day!

So, that's the update on us.  In happier times though (maybe a week or two ago) we thought it would be fun to put our pool at the bottom of our slide.  We were right- as you will see!:)

Friends

 

This is the Kidd family and they are our dear friends. They are on staff with Campus Crusade and John and Kelly lived here with us is Maine for a bit while they trained with Lifelines. And ever since they have been special friends. They spent most of their year in Virginia doing Lifelines, but every now and then we get to spent a summer with them. And we did just that this summer. And once again we were totally blessed to have these dear friends living just down the hall from us. Our older girls were best friends this summer playing together ALL the time. And I think that Eli may have formed his first little crush on their little girl (who's just a month older than him). It had a great time taking these pictures of their beautiful family (never, and I mean never, have I experienced children so easy to photograph)! We love them...now if we can just think of a way to get them back to our neck of the woods!

Is that a bird I hear?

I am finally getting around to some of the pictures I took this spring and these ones just made me laugh! Lily and Eli had a great time playing with their bird whistles (which actually make a really beautiful noise). Is that a sweet little song bird I hear? Or maybe that's the giggle of two sweet little children!

Kindergarten!

Once upon a time before we had children we swore up and down that we would never homeschool our children.  Ummm...we also swore we would never own a minivan.  So maybe we should stop saying never!:)      Lily loved school last year (and if they had a Kindergarten program we would probably stay there, but they don't).  And while Joe and I don't have anything against public school (we both went to public school), it just so happens that our school system was recently ranked the 2nd worst in the state educationally.  2nd worst.  And sadly the social climate is equally as challenging.  True we could have sent her to private school (with the hope of some significant scholarships), but we just felt like for this year that homeschooling is best for our family.  Many families on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ homeschool their children because of our crazy travel/work schedule.  And that's sort of what made the decision for us this year.  I think it's a good year for us to give it a go and see how it works for our family.  We are taking it year by year (or maybe even month by month) and making the best decisions for our family as we go.  Who knows what next year will bring, but for now we are jumping into homeschooling!  We found a couple homeschooling groups for Lily to be a part of, we picked out a curriculum that I'm really looking forward to, we've talked many hours with friends who have traveled this road ahead of us and those who are on the road with us, and we found some great extra activities for Lily to be a part of so that we can make sure she gets plenty of time with other kids her age!  And with that we jumped right in today to kindergarten!

All week I've been working to do a few little things to make Lily's first day of kindergarten special. 

Including this great, big chalkboard that I made mostly with things we already had and with a homemade chalkboard paint recipe! I also brought up the globe that my parent's gave us and recycled the garland from Eli's birthday! I I also made a Schultute for Lily. Schultute is a paper cone filled with school supplies and treats that children in Germany get on their first day of school. It was fun to incorporate a little bit of our German heritage into the day (and we were even able to find Germany on the globe). Not to be left out Eli got the cutest backpack in preparation for school next week!  

And I made this school activity chart for us. Each day it will change to reflect the order of how our homeschooling day with go (or at least how I plan it will go)! This was really helpful already today in helping to keep me organized and to give Lily a visual.  

One of the things she got in her Schultute was a new first day of school outfit...which happened to be a Hello Kitty dress (her very favorite)! Lily was very excited for her first day of kindergarten!  

And this was pretty much how Eli felt!:)  

This little girl has a whole world to learn about!  

Cutest little student ever!

  Hard at work in one of her workbooks!
I was really excited, half way through our day, to do a little art project...marble painting. I remember clearly doing marble painting at either my kindergarten orientation or my first day of kindergarten. I don't know why, but it's one of those things I have always remembered. So it felt really special to do this project on Lily's first day of kindergarten and they both loved it! Overall our first day of school was a big success! We did Bible, our Sonlight curriculum, science, math, reading, art, science, and cooking (we made banana bread muffins for our homeschool group tomorrow)and we had a lot of fun. At one point Lily very seriously told me that she wasn't so sure about homeschool before, but that she was having so much fun and she loved it! She proceeded to prance around the house declaring her love for homeschooling! I'll call that a victory for day one. Of course after homeschool things went downhill a bit as the kids fought like cats and dogs most of the afternoon, I nearly ruined our waffle iron at dinner, and then while I was doing the dishes Eli ripped off nearly all of the buttons on our tree activity chart. Thanks to the picture I took early in the day and my handy hot glue gun they are all back on! So the whole day might not have been perfect, but my girl had a great first day, one that she loved and will hopefully remember, and that makes this homeschooling mama pretty happy!

A Few Prayer Requests

As we head into the first week of school (at the University and also for homeschool) I have a few quick prayer requests...

• Would you pray for our first white water rafting trip of the year tomorrow (Monday).  It's a trip for freshmen and we are asking the Lord to move in their lives in ways that only He can.
• Could you also pray for me...I've been having some significant muscle pain in my neck, down into my right shoulder, back, and shoulder blade.  This has been happening on and off since last fall (sometimes with months in between)- but on Wedn. it all just seized up and it's been the worst it has ever been.  Would you please pray that the muscle would relax and that the pain would go away (and stay away).
• And then just a bit ago we found out that our friend's little girl (who played with Lily last week) has lice.  Lily's asleep now so we haven't been able to check her, but would you please pray that she doesn't have lice (oh man, it makes me feel all creepy and itchy just thinking about it)!

Thanks so much for your prayers!

10 Years Ago

10 years ago I had just joined staff full time with Campus Crusade for Christ.  After finishing up my new staff training in Florida I visited Joe (my boyfriend at the time) in Maine.  I had been in Maine for about a week or two visiting Joe and fundraising when Joe planned a fun day for us together in Camden (this sweet little coastal village I had driven through by myself earlier in the week and said I wanted to visit).  Our day started out hiking with lunch and hiking Mt. Battie.  Later in the afternoon we visited a beautiful little white steeple church that I just feel in love with.  And then Joe planned something really special- a sunset sailboat cruise out in the ocean (complete with lobster dinner aboard)!  That weekend was the Windjammer festival in Camden so after sailing we got ice cream and walked around the harbor checking out the boats.  At the end of day Joe took me out onto the Rockland Breakwater to watch the fireworks from the windjammer festival.  And then, with fireworks literally going off over the ocean around us, Joe got down on one knee and asked me to marry him!  You know, I'm not even sure I actually said yes- I'm pretty sure I said something like, "Of course I will!"  That was 10 years ago this month.

And last weekend we were at the sweet little white steeple church that I fell in love with the day we got engaged and where we were married 4 months later.  Last weekend we were there to speak and share about our ministry.  After church (and a delicious brunch that a couple from the church treated us to at the Samoset Inn) we took the kids out onto the Rockland Breakwater. It was almost exactly 10 years from when Joe proposed. And after we walked a little ways out (it's quite long- almost a mile I think) Joe suddenly stopped, pointed to a rock and said, "This is it, this is where I proposed."  I didn't quite understand how he knew the exact spot until he said that the night he proposed he purposely stopped at the first spot with a large rock sticking up over the side...so he would know the exact spot for the future!  Melt my heart.

This is just one of the many reasons I married him.  I was pretty sure that night when I said, "Yes" or "Of course I will" or whatever I said that I was making a good decision. And 10 years and 3 children later I am certain beyond a doubt that it wasn't just a good decision, but one of the best decisions of my life.