Teaching an Art.

 Every mother out there is equipped to teach their children. One thing that is important to me is to teach the arts. As my daughters start to get older I am getting excited about teaching them new skills. Some skills I will be learning right along with them. The most important thing I want them to know is never stop trying, do all things as unto the Lord.  I want them to understand that skills are a blessing and should not take away from the ones you love whether its cooking, writing, sewing, music, counsel, listening, gardening, organization or whatever your gift might be it is secondary to the ones the Lord has put in your care.

Natalie made Rachael's dolly a blanket for the baby crib.

We live in a society that is constantly pushing us to think about “our” needs, instead of the needs of others.  I love the end result of sewing but it brings much frustration for me when things don't go just so.  Teaching Natalie brings back lots of memories for me. I am very thankful my mom took the time when I was young to teach me this womanly art.
 For me I need to remember to shower my daughters with praise and be patient with them as they try new things. Kindly and patiently  instruct. Teach them with example as well as with words. Encourage, encourage, encourage—this is so important in teaching and igniting a love for learning and building a vision that entails a love for the home that one day they too, will create and manage.

“As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another,
as good stewards of God’s varied grace…”
I Peter 4:10

Our Book Nook

Like any typical homeschooling family we have LOTS and LOTS of books. We are constantly blessed by others, giving us new books and resources.  These are just two of our book cases where we keep alot of the children's books, today we pulled all the books off the shelves sorted into categories. Science, history, character building, board books, readers, and stories.

We also sorted with my "it may be good but is it best?" system, we purged a good size box.

  We also dumped out the train table bins and re-sorted and scrubbed everything down.
This is our little nook off our living room. It works perfectly as a little play corner and helps not have toys all through the house.

Some of our summer so far..

   We have been having so much fun this summer, I have pictures of somethings and none of others.
We took a sporadic day trip with the children and headed east to see what we could find. We found a heritage outdoor museum with gold panning and an outdoor theater. On the way home we stopped and went for a hike up to a waterfall, every year is a new adventure as the kids get a little older and see things a little different.

Our city puts on an outdoor movie theater, we packed some snacks and met some friends in the park for that. My sweet little Jude couldn't hold his eyes open and fell asleep before the movie even started.

Our home days are filled with swimming in the pool, playing on the trampoline, picnic lunches, and dinners on the deck.

This past weekend we went to a friend of the family's cabin and laid on the beach for hours and hours. I truly have not got to relax and just be with my husband and children like that in a very long time.

Chris took our girls out on a daddy/daughter date, the girls got all dressed up and went to a restaurant they have never been too. They finish the night with a stroller through the book store and a movie.

Mommy Porn?

After hearing alot of buzz from family and friends about the new books Fifty Shades of Grey , I did some looking into what this is all about.


My question is why are these two forms of entertainment aimed for women being  advertised as harmless entertainment?  If a man started bragging at the latest issue of Play Boy we would all be disgusted. Women everywhere are heart broken at the damaging effects of pornography use in marriage, but as women we believe a lie that for us it is harmless. Why such the strong double standard? I know for one if my husband insisted on going on a guys night out to watch a sensual movie, my thoughts of not being enough would flood over me.
Where are the Godly men, I want to see them stand up and say no to these things not turn a blind eye to their wives walking straight into a dangerous open door.

According to Jesus, fantasizing in your mind about someone other than your spouse or indulging in even literary sexual voyeurism is sin. Because sin is ultimately a heart issue, we can’t ingest titillating images or stories about the sex lives of other people without participating (at least in our minds) in their sin. 

 This includes magazines, books, websites, movies, television, or whatever “provision for the flesh” we dream up (Romans 13:4). A woman reading erotic fiction is sinning in the same way a man is when he views pornography.

 I don't know enough about these two things to write much more than this, but after the 4th phone call of someone calling to tell me about it my alarm bells were ringing.

This is the way of an adulterous woman: She eats and wipes her mouth, and says, “I have done no wickedness.” (Proverbs 30:20)

hard work

Mothering is hard work, I know because I am right here in the middle of it. I know moms need encouragement everyday, because I do too. I'm very thankful to have a husband that daily tells me what a great job I am doing even if I don't feel like I am. He is quick to point out progress. Like look so and so gets buckled up right away remember in the summer they would bounce around in the car until you got to them. Or look he says thank-you with out asking "what do you say?" so and so is doing that chore without being asked remember 10 months ago you had to remind him everyday. It's good to stop and look back at the progress that has been made.

For the past little while I have been on a little journey kinda like a journey to the heart. Letting go of things that I held onto for no real reason for example *fear*. I quietly have walked through different area's in my heart and gave up things that I really didn't need to grip onto. I never saw how much I was not letting the Lord in based on my opinion on something that really had nothing to do with my home or family. I decided to lay my opinions at the foot of the cross ( don't confused opinion and personal conviction together) and just let go. To rest in what the Lord has given me and called me to do and I saw for the first time it has little to do with what or how my neighbors do something.

One great thing about having many little children is you constantly get to check yourself at every stage on the way, just when you think you "mastered' an age and your know it all wisdom pops up the next little one is right there to work out some more kinks in your life.
I think it may just be what God meant that women will be saved through childbearing.
Which brings me to the miror when I truly look at myself is it really what I want my children to be? You can not harbor resentment secretly towards other people including your children and expect their hearts to soft and submissive. You can not be greedy with your time and expect them to share their things. We also can't run from the Lord's correction and expect them to receive correction from us.

Being mom is alot like being pastor, we have our own little congregation right in our four walls. It means connecting with each child, it means noticing when someone needs something or needs a break. It means sacrificing my peace for fun, clean kitchen floors for play dough that someone mixed with water or letting that older child make everyone snack.
None of this is new but it's new in away for me to look inward not what I think will help so and so.