Rock Solid Family

Scott was such a dear to listen sympathetically to my day’s frustrations. I know that all the work that I had on that one day is really nothing compared to the burden he bares daily to provide for me and our children. I am so blessed to have him!

Saturday, we had karate class that morning and afterwards we went to the grocery store and bought some groceries for this week.

Most of the groceries we bought were for the baby shower that I am giving for a church member that is also a friend in our homeschool group. I am hoping that I have a good attendance of the other mothers in our homeschool group as well. I have a tendency to go overboard on preparations and then I wind up very disappointed if no one comes.

This time I am trying to keep an open mind and have a backup plan if no one that was invited comes. I may do like the king in the Bible that calls people from the street to come to the banquet (check out Luke 14:16-24). Okay, maybe I won’t go so far as to call strangers to eat with us. Maybe just call our children and husbands to join the party. I must say that is one advantage to having a large family, you always have party participants available.

Wednesday, I have an appointment for an ultrasound, where we hope to find out our baby’s gender. The kids are hoping for a girl. Joshua and Ruth said that they wouldn’t be disappointed if the baby did turn out to be a boy. Hannah however is determined that this baby has to be a girl. So for her sake, I’m glad that we are finding out early. That way she’ll have time to adjust before the baby gets here.

Everyone seems to be curious about the names we’ve picked. If we have a boy, we plan to name him Joseph Harold. If the baby is a girl, we plan to name her Elisabeth Rose.

We have a pattern to naming our children. For their first names we choose a Bible name, and their middle names are all a family name or a slight variation thereof.

For instance Rose comes from one of Scott’s grandmothers whose name was Rosa. The interesting part is that her full name was Rosa Elizabeth.

Even Joseph Harold has extra significance. Harold was not only my husband’s grandfather’s name, it is also the middle name of my childhood pastor that my father always called his father-in-the- ministry. His first name was Joseph, although he went by Harold.
We would call ours Joseph.

Well, I better quit blogging about my upcoming week and get busy living it. 🙂 I have a lot to do before I’m finished being ready for the shower. I better get busy.

This first picture is Joshua and Ruth working on their computers. We found out about a really great website www.kahnacademy.org. It’s a great resource for learning all sorts of subjects. It’s free and the kids love learning with it because the lessons are interesting and they receive points and awards that we can keep track of.

Even though she doesn’t look like it in this picture, Hannah really does like working in her workbook. The biggest realization she had with yesterday’s lessons was that word-find puzzles really aren’t as hard as she thought they were. She finished finding all the words today without any help.

And this is the best picture I could get of Jonathan. He loves to be goofy and make funny faces for the camera. I have a hard time getting a serious picture with him. I guess he makes up for Hannah always making serious faces. Now if I could get them to meet somewhere in the middle for pictures. 🙂

And Elijah wouldn’t stay still for a picture because of the flash, so I chose this picture of him from Christmas.
He spent most of our lesson time tackling Jonathan. Although Elijah did learn a major lesson yesterday.

I cooked pancakes for us to eat on our drive home from karate class. The kids were wanting to have some but I explained that they just had lunch and that I wanted to save the pancakes for later. Elijah kept asking and I told him a very infatic no. I was distracted for a few seconds typing something into my tablet when I looked up and saw that Elijah had stolen the big bowl of pancakes right from under my nose and was helping himself to them. I knew that I had to teach him real quick that what he did was wrong.

It’s hard sometimes as a mother to be firm with your children, when they are young and cute. I don’t like seeing my children cry, but I learned quite early on that if you allow wrong behavior when they are little, it only gets harder to teach them what is right when they are older. So to help myself teach my child, I imagine him doing the same crime as a teenager and I nip it in the bud while it is fresh on his mind and while he is still young enough to take me seriously.

He did pucker up and cry real tears of repentance because with his punishment, I explained in simple terms exactly what he did wrong. Then I removed the pancakes from his reach. I held him as he thought, in his young mind, about it. A little later he was showing me something he drew on a magna doodle and I smiled and really bragged on how good of a job he did. I could tell by how he approached me that he was making sure that he had been forgiven and that all was well between us.

Children learn so quickly at such a young age. That is why the Bible tells us to raise them up right while they are young.
This going to be a really good year of growth in our family.

This year will also be good in that we’ll be getting to find out whether we are having a girl or a boy this month, the baby is due at the end of May, and my brother and his family will be visiting us while on furlough from France. We’re going to finally get to have a family picture with my kids and our brand new baby, his 5 kids (one of whom I hand’t met in person yet), and my sister’s new baby will be in it.

I am so excited to see all the blessings unfold in 2012!

Proverbs 22:6 “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

Okay this should be my last post for now. I’m determined to have blogging simplified while still being nice looking. 🙂 Thanks for baring with me while I experiment.

I looked back over the pictures of 2011 and am amazed at how much has happened over this past year. I was not the best at posting especially toward the end of this year. I gave the excuse that I was too busy living my blog to type about it. Now I am taking a break to catch up on 2011 and plan to get a fresh start in 2012 on blogging.

There were sad moments in 2011 as well as happy moments. Let me get the sad moments out of the way so that we can focus on the happy. The two main sad times were the passing of my grandfather James Taylor in January and the passing of my great uncle Trenton Jones in December of this past year. Both of those moments for our family even though we take joy in the knowledge that they are no longer in pain and we will get to see them again one day.

The funeral for my grandfather took place at the beginning of February. It was good to see family face to face and not just on Facebook. I enjoyed getting to visit with my second cousins whom I hadn’t seen in a long while.

In March, we celebrated Elijah’s first birthday and Hannah’s 6th birthday. It’s hard to believe that Elijah took his first steps by himself on his birthday. He not only can keep up with the rest of us now, he also can climb just about everything and seems to have no fear of heights. It shocked me one day when we were at the park to see him by himself at the top of a very tall slide smiling down at me.

In April, Hannah was saved. That seems like a long time ago, but she was Baptized in May. She is growing so fast spiritually that I have a hard time fathoming how all this growth can happen in just one year.

In June, I signed the 4 older children up for swimming lessons. That built their confidence in the water. I would like to get more lessons for them this next year as well. Also towards the end of June, Scott and I took a 3 week trip to Thailand where we enjoyed helping a missionary teach English classes in several of the schools there. We met so many wonderful people and got to learn so much from that trip. If you check out my June and July blog posts you’ll see a lot of what we experienced on that trip.

Joshua turned 13 in June, and Ruth turned 11 in July. Then at the end of July, we had church camp. I taught the 3rd grade and Scott taught the High School and College aged class at camp. I also enjoyed leading the children’s choir during the week.

In August, I threw a baby shower for my sister and her husband, whose first child, a sweet baby girl was born in September. She was my parent’s 11th grand baby. Then shortly after her arrival, I called my sister to let her know that I needed my maternity clothes back.

We had to hurry to get the news out to all the family before it was spread across Facebook. Sorry, our family grapevine has precidence over Facebook. Then we announced it to the rest of the world on my blog and Facebook.

In September and October, I taught a recorder class in our local home school co-op. The kids each chose classes to take. Joshua took Creation Science and Teen Drama. Ruth took Stomp and Creation Science. Hannah took Texas History and Home Economics, where she got to do a lot of cooking. Jonathan was in the 4 and 5 year old class and Elijah was in the nursery.

At the beginning of November, we celebrated Jonathan’s 4th birthday with a family camping trip with our homeschool group. I also found out that his favorite color is green. He wanted a green cake for his birthday. Oh, and when your 4 your 4 the whole month is your birthday. He has been growing so much and I am often entertained by some of his anecdotes. One time I heard Hannah hollering from the livingroom, “You can’t fire me! I’m working!” When I went to find out what the problem was she told me, “Jonathan is pretending that the living room is his yard and I’m his worker but he keeps telling me that I’m fired and I’m still working!” She seemed to feel better about it when I reminded her of their ages.

Another time in the past month Jonathan was singing at the top of his voice while we were driving to the park, “I’ve got joy in the river, I’ve got joy in the river.” It was to the tune of “I’ve got peace LIKE a river” but I was smiling so big that I couldn’t bring myself to correct him.

One thing I never got around to blogging about was that Scott and I celebrated our 15th anniversary at the end of November. I chose to stay off my computer for that weekend. That was why I never got around to blogging about it. I was also having problems with loading pictures at that time.

Then December blew by somehow! My birthday is in December and fell during Scott’s Christmas break from work. For my birthday, we ate cake balls for breakfast that I had made over the weekend. Hannah gave me the sweetest gift that she made herself with a little help from her older siblings. She even declared the gifts value when she told me, “…and that’s my last dollar!” I had a brief thought of telling her that she didn’t have to give me her last dollar but then I thought of the widow’s mite and realized that I needed to let her give me this gift. It would later be returned to her in other ways. God loves a cheerful giver.  I then accepted her gift with a hug.

We then left around lunch time to fulfill my birthday wish of having pizza at Cici’s on our way to visit my parents for the week.  We enjoyed a good variety of pizza. When the kids had eaten their fill of pizza Scott gave them each $2 to play games. I had such a good time just watching them.  It was a wonderful birthday. We then arrived that evening at my parents. We did some last minute Christmas shopping with the kids. Scott had each of the kids draw names and we took them in pairs to buy gifts for the name they drew.

My Mom and I had a day of birthday shopping. I think the part I enjoy most about going shopping with my mom is the quality time we get to spend together. I love quality time. 

One of the books that I read this year was “The Five Love Languages”. I highly recommend this book. In it the author talks about the five basic love languages. I find that my biggest way to show that I love someone is to find a way to spend quality time with them. I try to pay attention to my children and the ways they each show their love as well. Some love hugs, others may like me to do something for them, some feel loved just by a gift that I might give them, and others love having one-on-one time where they can just spend time with me. 

My sister and her family also came to visit my parents and we had a fun time reminiscing and laughing over good times. We sorely missed my brother and his family, but we are all looking forward to sitting and having a great time with them when they come on furlough in June. It will be great getting to have another cousins with all the new arrivals in the family. The last picture we got is missing my brother’s youngest baby and my sister’s new baby and by the time my brother is down in June our new baby will be here.  So there will be 3 additions to the cousins picture we take whenever we can.

But we did get to talk to my brother on Skype on Christmas eve. Then Christmas day we enjoyed the services at my Dad’s church. Then Christmas night we drove through a light show. The show was pretty and I got all sorts of Christmas songs stuck in my head after that.

The day after Christmas, we visited both my grandmothers. We really enjoyed our visits and decided to go back home Monday night in order to be home to get the trash out to be picked up on Tuesday morning. This week has been spent organizing the house and getting all the rooms cleaned. 

Today is the last day of this year and I don’t plan to blog again until next year. 🙂  Although I do plan to blog more in this coming new year. 

Have a happy New Year!!!

We enjoyed spending Christmas with my parents. My sister and her family came for a few days and we all decided to open presents a day early. We asked the older children if they minded and of course they loved the idea. 🙂 So we went ahead and let them open there Christmas Eve pajamas a night early.

My mom, Scott, and I stayed up ’til 3 a.m. wrapping, putting together, and organizing presents. Then we were awakened by our early-bird brother-in-law at around 7 or 8 with great desire to get the show on the road.

We tried to keep things pretty simple for the kids this Christmas. We got the oldest two skateboards, the next two skooters, and the youngest we gave a basketball goal. They all loved their gifts. We let each of the kids draw each others names and we took them to the store earlier in the week to buy gifts for the name they drew. The girls had drawn the boys names and the boys drew the girls names. They all did a good job picking out appropriate gifts for their siblings.

My sister’s family gave us a tabletop game that the kids will enjoy.

My parents gave Scott a really huge knife. He says it makes him feel like a kid again. I bet he’ll be sawing down a small tree with it before long. They also gave him a salsa mix which he will enjoy. I gave him a giant print preaching Bible, which he loves. He shouldn’t have to get so close to his Bible when he is preaching now.  I also got him his first bifold wallet which is less bulky than his trifold.

My parents gave me a set of Tupperware plates which will help a lot with serving the kids. They tend to break glass products so I’m really happy with the Tupperware. It also brings me back to childhood and the plates we used to have.
I am looking forward to reading the new books they gave me. I love to read. Then there is the new calendars that both my mom and my sister gave me. I can hardly believe that the year is that close to an end again.

And my sweet husband, after a week of throwing out hints of what he got me, presented me with this new tablet which should remove all my excuses for not blogging as often.

This is my first post from my new blogger app. It may not be pretty yet, but I’ll try to get all the bugs worked out. 🙂