Sweet Fellowship

Here is a really great picture of a group of sweet ladies from my church. We all went out for Thai food to celebrate lots of January birthdays. It was so much fun. We laughed so hard, ate some AMAZING food, and enjoyed some great fellowship. It's been a blessing to have woman who love the Lord, love you.

I am learning so much from them. The most important thing is that although you may have many friends, it's so important to open your heart to more. I am so thankful that these ladies have opened their lives to me. I may not have years of history with them, our children may not have known each other from "the womb", I didn't go to their wedding, share in in work in the ministry, we don't have tons of memories to laugh about but they love me just the same. I am learning so much about the importance of the friendships we have with our "sisters" in the Lord. It is a very precious gift to be treated with care and much prayer. (If you haven't read Beth Moore's book "So long insecurity you've been a bad friend to me" I highly recommend it for some brutal honesty about women and their friendships)

Now that being said, my heart still misses my sweet friends "back home" I am so blessed for the beautiful and amazing friendships I have with my "sisters" in Maine. Friendships that have stood the test of time, and distance. Friendships that pick up just where they left off. Friendships knitted together with prayer and love, and tears. I miss you sweet friends, more than you will ever know. You are always close in my heart.

Sailboats at Sunset

By Elijah
By Isaiah

From the Desks of Isaiah, Elijah and Hannah

There are so many reasons why people choose to homeschool. We have our own list. But recently I was questioning the effects of homeschooling on my kids. I have been noticing that they are NOT like other children. And wondering what "sheltering them from the world" is doing to them. And God spoke very clearly to me" It's not they are being sheltered from the world but rather set apart from it." So sometimes even for a "seasoned" homeschool mom you question ?why? when you can't find the reader, or you forgot to by the air dry clay, or your 1st grader has a meltdown, and your 5th grader rolls his eyes and your toddler finds a marker and colors all over herself. It's nice to have a sweet reminder that your calling is for His Kingdom, not this world.


Isaiah just finished reading a biography about Thomas Edison. I think I learned more than he did. We made our own "phonograph" from a rolled up piece of card stock, then you attach a toothpick to the end with tape. Take a piece of tin foil and crumble it up. Then listen in the cone as you slide the tin foil. It's pretty neat...vibrations create sound!

Some lessons on pulleys via Supercharged Science. LOVE THIS WEBSITE!

My body is my canvas! So she found a yellow marker and went to town. I am thankful it wasn't a black one and it wasn't a permanent.

She loves her puppy!

Amazing Hummingbirds

So I have come to the conclusion that I have three little artists in the house. (three now that Hannah has discovered and loves crayons) The boys finished their beautiful and amazing hummingbird paintings yesterday. So the are done in ink and then painted with water colors. They are so proud to show me their work and I love displaying everything in frames on our "art wall".

Love Note

A message from Isaiah to me in his math notebook. This made me smile and reminded me how much I LOVE homeschooling my kids.

From the Desks of Isaiah, Elijah and Hannah

Christmas break is but a distant memory now that we've been back to school for about two weeks. I don't know who misses it more, me or the kids. The transition as gone pretty smoothly, but my expectations have lowered over the many years I have been homeschooling. Hannah has had a nasty cold and that really throws everyone off. We are all at her mercy. She wants to be held, her naps are all messed up and she hasn't been sleeping well at night...translation mommy and daddy haven't been sleeping well. We jumped right in though a cold can't hold us down. The boys have basketball twice a week, plus guitar, plus art, plus gym...that's a lot of running around. Oh yeah and we still have school to do. Phew let me catch my breath before I show you some fun pictures.

The boys and I worked so hard on our Hydraulic Land Mover. I will say it was much harder than the hover craft but I was so determined to make this. There was drilling, and hot gluing all of which needed to be very precise. The boys lost steam mid project but I pulled them back in and it was awesome.

By pulling and pushing the syringes it made the land rover move up and down and dump the cup. At first it didn't work well. But later I filled the tubing completely with water and then it worked much better.

Switching gears to Elijah's history. We are still in Ancient Egypt. This week we leaned about hieroglyphics. Elijah had fun playing online with a hieroglyphic translator. And he made a "scarab" which is dung beetle that Egyptians used for official seals and protective amulets. Our was made with a clay mold and filled with plaster of pairs.

Spray painted gold (we have used this bottle of gold spray paint so much) and then painted blue.

TA DA the finished product.


Here's Elijah's hieroglyphic work. It is translated "Elijah's mom is good and so is his dad"

This picture is so funny. Elijah was playing with Hannah's kitchen for a long time. I took this picture to remind me that he's still my little bubby. Shortly after I realized he wasn't pretend playing with food. He had Star Wars Lego's and the kitchen was sort of a huge space ship. It was still a delight to watch him playing.

Beautiful Hannah enjoying her first snow outing. She loved the sled and hated her boots.

Finally some SNOW

We finally got some snow to play in. We have learned from the last few snowfalls that you better hurry out to enjoy it because it will melt fast. Not like Maine at all. So I knew that snow was expected so I made sure we had all our gear ready.This was actually the first time Hannah was out in the snow (not counting our summer visit to Artist Point where there was tons of snow) She loved it. She may have been born in Washington but she was made in Maine and she instantly had a love for it. Now her snow boots were another story. She hated them. She wouldn't walk in them. She just sat down. It was really funny. She loved the sled and I pulled her around for over an hour! The boys are pros when it comes to snow. The get right down to business, sledding, snowballs, and snow angels. I had a blast too. It's been awhile since I played in the snow. She looked ADORABLE! The mittens I got her are awesome. The are basically like socks with waterproof ends and no thumbs. They go all they way up to her elbows under her coat. They are not coming off!

There is a tiny "hill" more of a knoll that the boys love to get a running start and slide down.

"go go go" she told me every time I stopped pulling her on this sled. It was so funny. I got an unexpected workout early this morning.

My THREE amazing kids. They really are a good looking bunch! Hey did you notice how much lighter it is in this picture? This was about 9am. The first pictures were at 8am and it was still sort of dark out.

Hannah loves eggs