Life seriously got in the way of blogging, so this blog post will be eclectic and random, but I don't want to omit any of the gifts I've been counting or lessons we've been learning since my last post about our son's birthday, so here is the wrap up in no particular order.
Life has been super busy as we have adjusted to a new town, new school for our daughter, and back to homeschooling for our son while building a new home, but it hasn't been so busy to keep me from appreciating the gorgeous fall colors all around our little apartment. (Gift #448)
While I love to be adventurous and playful, I am much too pragmatic to fully engage with my children in all their imaginary play. I don't want to miss out on this amusing form of play which they enjoy so much, so I'm thankful when my daughter provide scripts.
My son was supposed to be calling out spelling
words to his sister and helping her study one evening, but instead, I found them in
the kitchen acting out a skit she wrote. In this scene she is being
interviewed by Santa for a job as an elf. (Note stuffed toys as props in the background).
However, now that they kids are both heavily involved in gymnastics (albeit 35 miles away which I drive four times a week and sit through two hours of gymnastics each day we're there), we have a form of recreation we all enjoy to do together. What an incredible blessing it is to meet them where they are in the air or on the ground doing movements they enjoy so much together. Thank you, Lord, for giving me a shared passion with my children. (Gift #449)
Our son is still thrilled to be in Y guides. He had a blast at the fall outing with his beloved daddy and all the other great kids and fathers in their tribe. The bond these boys share with their fathers is such a wonderful gift! (Gift #450)
We are still enjoying the mother/daughter prayer group for the 4th grade girls at our daughter's school. In November, we met for a devotion, fellowship, and a service project. The girls hand wrote personal notes to over 30 children and stuffed each Operation Christmas Child shoebox to overflowing. What a blessing it is to see girls working together to share God's love with others. (Gift #451)
We spent Thanksgiving with my family, and the kids endured Nana's annual photo shoot for her Christmas cards. Moving to a new suburb has had it's share of trials, but one of the big blessings that has come out of it has been that we are now less than an hour's drive from my family which is the closest I have ever been since I left home for college at age 18. (Gift #452)
Our Christmas card doubled as a change of address card this year. We were initially supposed to close on the home in October. Then they pushed it out to early November. Then it was late November. Then it was early December. Then they pushed it out one day and then two days, and then they pushed it out six more hours. It's odd how our house took six months, while other homes seem to have gone up in only 2-3 months. Good things must come to those who wait because we are more grateful than we could have imagined to finally be in the house, and it turned out better than we expected after a lot of initial trials. The moves this year did have me thinking much about our Lord, Jesus Christ, who left the glories of His heavenly home to live a humble, poor, life in a temporal place for the purpose of serving, teaching, and redeeming the lost for all generations. What a remarkable gift is His sacrificial love for us. (Gift #453) As we waited eagerly for our new earthly home, we imagined the joy we will have when we first behold our heavenly home that Christ is preparing for us now. That home will radiate splendor and unlike any earthly home, it will never rot, decay, break or be destroyed.
Speaking of homes, we recently had the great privilege of visiting a beautiful farm house I had read about on blog pages and heard about from friends. The owners are a couple I have respected greatly from a distance. He is a builder, and she is a decorator. Their homeschooled children are role model children with hearts that pant for Jesus. What an enormous blessing it has been for this sweet family to join our life class at our church and be assigned to our small group. (Gift #454) They are exceedingly hospitable with youth forever retreating to their home where they receive love, nurture, and Biblical role modeling. Spending time on their peaceful, gorgeous property the week before the move was just what the doctor ordered to prepare my heart for the move. I went into the move with peace and joy and without any of the stress I normally lug by the tons. It was my Christmas miracle! (Gift #455)
What really cemented an attitude of calm and peace for me the day we closed was a picture I took early the morning before closing (when I had to post a note on the door of the house for Fed Ex guys who were delivering a recliner that was supposed to arrive 12 days later but arrived only 18 hours after I ordered it and before we owned the home!) The picture showed a house with entirely too much work left to be done before closing which should have stressed me out because we absolutely had to close on Friday before our lease on our apartment and three storage units expired and before our flights to visit my husband's family for Christmas and before all the appliances and furniture we had ordered were delivered. Yet, all my eyes fixed upon when I opened the picture on my computer for my first look was the cross.
The sun highlighted the cross pattern of the accent trim in a way that encouraged my heart
so much. God is in control. Our perfectly gracious and loving Lord
owns this home, indwells the hearts of all four occupants, and should
receive glory in all that is said, thought, or done in and around this
place. (1 Corinthians 10:31) What a blessing it will be for me early each morning to see those trim lines highlighted by the sun to form a cross, reminding me that Jesus Christ is Lord over our home and lives. (Gift #456)
After having my son in school last year, I have really enjoyed having him with me at LAMBS this past year (Gift #457), and LAMBS was one of the big highlights of his week each week. I love the fact that He loves to learn about God. (Gift #458) So, when the kids performed an adorable mini concert for the women in the Bible Study, complete with lots of dance moves and sign language, I took more pics and video than ever before because I knew how much I had missed seeing him up there last year. In the larger photo below he is "shooting the artillery".
Shortly after
this concert, a spot opened up for him at our daughter's school, so he
will be enrolling in January. I'm so glad I was able to cherish this
time with him at home with me again even though it was only for a semester. (Gift #459) He is a self-motivated learner who is easy to teach at home, but he is lonely and feels left out with his sister at school even though she is forever complaining about how strict it is. He is overjoyed about starting school in January. (Gift #460)
He will be repeating first grade so he can graduate with kids his own age and not deal with all the emotional trauma of having skipped a grade during those awkward middle school years and again when everyone gets their driver's license while he would still be too young. Some would call it dumbing him down, but when we visited the classroom, we found that they covered grammar facts in much greater detail than we did at home. He knows all that information intuitively and is already diagramming sentences with ease, so to return to diagramming words by phonic sounds and to go from multiple digit division and basic geometry to single digit addition and subtraction may seem like a waste of time and money, but we are hoping it will provide a more solid foundation to help him in the long run. And with him being my baby, I have come to realize that there is no need to grow him up too fast. Now I will have an extra year with him at home with me, and surely that could not be a mistake.
Our daughter is adjusting to the new school and making lots of friends. We've hosted play dates and attended parties. The mothers there are all so gracious and kind. I could not ask for a more loving environment for her. (Gift #461) She will probably never like how strict it is, but the discipline she is learning there in terms of always giving her best and paying attention to detail has already born some fruit in her life. And I am realizing that even a strong visual basic learner like herself can adapt to a more structured environment without losing her love of learning. (Gift #462)
She's still competitive as all get-out during recess, however. During a foot race, one boy did not like the fact that she was winning, so he tripped her. (Okay, so we have had some issues with boys not being very nice at that school, but her girl pals are incredibly sweet girls, and our boy is not stereotypical, so they are probably just being typical boys.) She fell so hard her entire right side was scraped to the point of bleeding. She runs to win!
Having band-aids all over her body did not prevent her from photo-bombing photos. This photo was taken right before my husband and I left for our last date night before the move. We enjoyed dinner out with friends followed by a Christmas party with the annual white elephant gift exchange for our church life class.
Speaking of the move, here are some snippets from our adventures in moving for the second time this year.
Our creative girl has a very different approach to packing than her left-brained mother.
With fond memories of my engineering logistics career days, I fill each container to optimum capacity (trying not to break maximum weight capacity) with items that are all destined for the same shelf, drawer, closet, or living space.
My right-brained daughter, on the other hand, tosses a few random items
destined for opposite corners of the house into a box 10x the size of
those items (so they will have plenty of leg room during transit). She
procures those items by pretending the apartment is the Thames River and
the furniture dolly is a boat and then punting around the apartment
with a mop serving as her punting pole.
Our son did not seem to enjoy packing, moving, and cleaning out the apartment at all until we arrived with the 26' U-Haul beast at the first storage unit.
There he found his beloved Tonka truck, and he soon discovered that the U-Haul truck ramp provides great acceleration opportunity for his truck.
Driving, for my husband, is not about getting from point A to point B as it is to me. For him, driving is an experience that should bring pleasure, and the degree of pleasure is directly proportional to how fast that vehicle can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph. So, when he drove the moving truck beast, he never had a smile on his face. Thankfully, he has navigated submarines in his past, so he used many of those some skills to steer this truck around town and managed driving through all those tight spots safely and without incident. (Gift #463)
After having our move date and time changed numerous times over the course of the building process, the actual date and time we closed could not have been more amusing. It was the week before Christmas and the week before we have to pack again for major holiday travels. It was Friday the 13th, a fitting date for the nightmare to end. For the past six years, we had been waiting and wondering, with numerous emotional ups and downs as buyers of our previous home came and went, years of indecision and being unsettled followed by six months of pranks so horrible you could not make the up in the apartment. What better day to close!
My husband and son committed to sing in our church's fabulous Christmas program months before when we thought we were closing in October or November. As luck would have it, we closed the weekend of the musical, so while I was home packing boxes all week before the move, my husband and son were at church for rehearsals that lasted until 11pm each night. My boy was so sick from all those late nights that he had to be medicated to sing in the concert and even then looked so frail and sickly on stage. Then when closing got delayed six hours on Friday, they guys had to miss the first show (out of four shows that weekend) because we closed during curtain call. That was a blessing for me because we had a 26' U-Haul filled with items we needed to unload that night before the movers came on Saturday. So, he was there to help and do lift the items I could not lift on my own.
Despite the move, the guys still managed to attend the other three shows and all the rehearsals. My daughter and I scraped up some tickets for the Sunday afternoon show, and we were simply blown away by how impressive the performance was. The goal was to invite 1000 unchurched people. I sure hope we came close to that number because the call was sent out in a way that was easily received.
We were greeted at the church door by Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer and other reindeer. But my daughter immediately recognized the voice of the one dressed as Rudolph as her Sunday School teacher. There's no fooling that girl anymore.
Then when the show begin I recognized a familiar voice from my past. During my college years, I was a big fan of Dove award winning musical artists,
Dick & Mel Tunney. I had been to their concerts and owned their CDs, but could that really be Mel Tunney up on stage with my son (pictured far lower right on the big screen) and the other kids? She performed during several numbers throughout the program, and I just knew it had to be her, but what was she doing at our church. Then in a duet between Mel and our new assistant worship director's wife, she called Mel "Mom", and then I realized the connect and saw the resemblance. I had never known that connection, but what a blessing it was to hear Mel's sweet voice in person again. (Gift #464)
Moving the week before Christmas makes finding someone to install custom window coverings nearly impossible. So, a creative friend helped us improvise with these coverings. The window coverings to the far left have the added benefit of being soft, pliable quicker picker uppers while those in the middle are informative on current events. The colored mosaic coverings on the right provide comical relief.
We have an insane number of do-it-yourself home improvement projects to do in this home since we opted out of many of the upgrades to save money (after losing 6 figures on the last house, we felt we had to). After window treatments and installing nine fans, built-in cabinets around the fireplace and island base are our next big priority. Then lots of trim molding and columns and painting rooms will come next. My husband has big plans for mirrored and stone walls in the exercise room, but as much as I would love that, I have asked him to push that awesome idea down the list. I am glad we splurged on the granite and fireplace, however. The following view, taken two days before closing, from behind the kitchen counter is where I will likely spend most of my time.
It will look better with built-ins, window treatments and all our
furniture & new decor, but I'm still very pleased with the various
granite, marble, and stone walls in our home. When we replaced our Corian counter tops with granite
in our last home, a conversation followed between my son and I about
Christ being the rock upon which we stand. That conversation led to my
son praying to receive Christ, so it is significant to me that we have
lots of natural stone in this house. That probably sounds crazy, but
I'm a big fan of setting up memorial stones all around us to remind us
of God's faithfulness as in
Joshua 4. (Gift #465)
Since much of our furniture and home decor from the old house does not match the new house, I've been selling or donating furniture, oriental rugs, curtains, bedspreads, decorative items, etc. We decided to go with contemporary tables in the breakfast and dining rooms. I bought this table for the contemporary lines, but my son thought I bought it as a half-pipe for his cars.
Since these types of posts usually include funny quotes from the kids, I'll close with a few, although as the kids get older and wiser the funny quotes dwindle, since what makes them so funny is the inherit childishness behind them.
GPS said, "Take a sharp left."
7-year-old said, "Yikes! That sounds dangerous."
The
landscapers around our new subdivision must carry some very cool tools
because my boy was most impressed that one of the guys had a "sword like
pirates used."
First she wanted a bunny...now she wants a dog because as she says, "Dog is God spelled backward".
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