...so far. The moving trailer will be delivered on Wednesday, the 24^th and we will load it up and then it will be picked up by Friday and they will deliver it in Hopkinsville approximately 6 -7 days later.  We are scheduled to fly out on Sunday the 28^th and need to figure out how to get from the airport with 5 people and who knows how much luggage to home.  We are due to arrive in Nashville at around 4:00 on Sunday evening.  So I guess all that is left is to get the vehicle transported back there and find a place to stay for two days after our stuff leaves. 

I have to admit we have mixed feeling about going back. I mean we miss everybody back home and know that we will be welcome and that we will be able to make things work out eventually.  It will not be easy but it will be more reliable.  At the same time, in the short time we have been here we have come to like things here, particularly the weather and will miss all of the opportunity for learning and different experiences that are here.  There is so much to see and explore and do that we will miss that. Of course, as with anything you will always wonder if there was something you could have done differently to make things work out better.

We have pretty much put school aside for now.  Too much stress in all the other areas of our life.  So we will pick it back up when things settle down a bit I hope.  I definitely have reevaluated the process and approach we are using and feel we need something else.  I must admit coming from the teaching field that I would lean more toward textbook just because that is what I know.  But I don’t know if that is necessarily what I have always believed in anyway.  The only reason I am thinking so much about it at this point is because of finances I will have to plan ahead quite a bit. I like the idea of History through Literature.  I think I don’t really know that I could use that for more than one age on some level.  I may have to look a little harder to find books for my 8yo. I want them to learn logic and I don’t really know all that much about Trivium so I will need to research more.  If I have to go back to work I don’t know how much time I will have to plan and grade and I don’t really like the grading part of it but it is necessary. I definitely want to focus more on foreign language and then I want them to have the necessary everyday skills in math and economics as well as government so they can find there way with confidence and conviction.  Don’t think I forgot about God, He is the absolute first on the list but I think that is better learned by example and I would love to do a bible study with each of them so that I can see their growth and be comfortable knowing I have done all that I can with Christ’s help.

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I know this to be true but I also know it is sometimes hard to accept when things are not going well in your life.  I guess the problem is that I worry too much about what others think of me and always have. I don’t like the circumstances that I find myself in and I don’t like having to depend on other people to get me out of them.  I know that most of them are just vessels of the Lord (“most” because there are “some” that have selfish reasons for helping) but just the same I feel badly because I am not able to do for myself. 

I believe that God brought us to California so that we would become completely dependent on Him.  Which, of course, we needed to do anywhere we were, but probably wouldn’t have done if we had stayed where we had friends and family to fall back on when things got tough.  We have grown together so much as a family.  When you only have each other there is great growth in the relationship, as it is with God when you depend completely on Him because you have no where else to turn. Now I don’t know that I really had no where else to turn but I am one that likes to be independent and therefore don’t like to ask others for help. I guess because it makes me feel helpless or useless. I already struggle with feeling unimportant or insignificant. 

I feel like I have much to offer and many ways that God intends to use me. Why else would I have survived the many tragic and life threatening experiences in my life, but to help others with similar life circumstances.  I know there are plenty of people who have similar circumstances in their life, so why me, and when and with whom?  All really good questions and I just try to keep myself open to the opportunity for I do not know when or where it will come. 

I am actually excited about going back to Kentucky. (Weird, never thought I would feel like that let alone ever think it.) I feel like I have learned much about myself and my life as well as different things I feel I can take back there and use in ministry of some sort.  I guess that is in my nature to try to always improve things.  Well I guess I should go try to finish packing.  Just feeling good about God providing and seeing the light at the end of tunnel even if it is way down there and wanted to share.

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Well I looked at this blog all day yesterday and just couldn’t bring myself to put my thoughts out to everyone.  I just thought they were too depressing and whinny.  So I started out today with my quiet time with the Lord praying that my husband would make a decision and we could quit living in limbo.  Well he did and we have decided to come back to Kentucky.  It was a long and agonizing decision but I do feel good about it.  Now are the real things to deal with, the money to get home and move us back. It looks like it will cost about 5000 to get our household back there.  That will not include us though.  We will have to have the suburban shipped back which means the five of us will have to fly or find another way back. 

To top it all off when I went to the mail box I received my first and hopefully only eviction notice in my life.  We have three days to either pay $4300 or leave the premises.  Now I understand where the landlord is coming from and I’m not upset with her at all.  I wished I had the money to pay her.  I wished that none of these problems came up at all but they did and now it is time to deal with them and move on. 

So with the adrenaline pumping I am getting out this request for prayer and provision to God and anyone who can pray and I am going to start packing as fast as I can.  Now let me tell you I have been packing slowly over the last few weeks in anticipation that we would have to move somewhere anyway but now I am under the gun.  So I don’t know what will come next but I am sure that God is in control and I am not worried.  Wow, it is so relieve to say that.  I have been worried since three weeks after we go here and to finally not be is such a relief.  Well I guess I better get packing and thank you for the prayers.  I will try to get on here again before we head out.  But until then and after then I don’t know how soon I can or will be here again.  I have only been on here a few days and I really love the way you guys comment and feel like friends already.  Thank you so much, and may God be with each and every one of you. 

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I am so ready for school to be over.  I really believe we have lost any momentum from the beginning.  How much is enough for you to do in one year.  I am guessing that technically we have not completed the required days for school but we have mentally reached the end with all the stuff going on in the other parts of our lives.  Stress is really not conducive to learning, on any level.  Well I think I would like to just call it a year and be done.  But the 10^th grader is barely through half of the units in the curriculum.  If she were closer to 8 of the 10 units I would be more inclined to let it go.  I don’t know maybe I am just tired. We will see where we are tomorrow.

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We seem to be plagued by financial difficulties.  I know that some of them are brought on by the poor decisions we make but not all come from that. But I am just so tired of this problem.  We knew there would be sacrifices with our choice for me to stay home with the kids we just thought we were making decisions that would eventually ease some of that.

My husband tries so hard to do what He thinks God has assigned his job to be, Provider of the family. Unfortunately, he also feels like he fails repeatedly.  I try to gracefully remind him that money is not the only way he can provide for us.

Sometimes I wished God still used the Burning Bush or the writing on the wall.  Some days I don’t think anything short of yelling at me would get my attention. However, I have many things I would love to just crawl up in His lap and talk with him about. You know like "Father", "Daddy", Where do we go when we have to leave this house?  We can't afford anything right now, so what do we do?

Now I know that I pray often and sometimes I feel a peace that He has answered but still don’t know exactly what I am supposed to do.  I mean there is definitely something I am supposed to do, right? He doesn’t expect us to pray and then just sit on our bottoms and wait for Him to take care of it does He?  I would love it if that were true.  Someone, please tell me it is true.  Well even if it were the bill collectors and other people in the world aren’t going to let me get away with that.  So I keep working about the things I believe I am suppose to and wait on a word from the Lord.  If God leaves a word for me with you could you please tell me?

Emotionally exhauseted and Confused?

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Well it is that time of year again. You know the time of year when you have to decide what curriculum you want to use.  In the past this has been really simple for me.  With our oldest we have used Switched on Schoolhouse for four of the five years and it has served us well. I still may use it for my younger one but I think it is time to change for #1. She is very much, academically anyway, like a typical student.

She does the work but only because she knows I won't let her do anything else until she does it.  I have had to evaluate this year and realize that it is just not the atomosphere of learning I desire.  I want my kids to love learning and to look forward to it. 

I don't know maybe it is just because it has been such a tough year for us.  I mean we have moved away from all we know, she was the most resistent, my husband was gone for a month during the holiday season, and we were packing up all she has known for her whole life. Since we have been here one of her great grandmothers that she was very close to as a child had a stroke and passed away as well as other family members passing too.  We have been under a tremendous amount of stress financially and....    (OOPs this was suppose to be about education and homeschool.)

Anyway all of that has made me think about what I really want my girls to learn in life and education.  I have always believed, even when the professors where telling me something different, that you really get what you expect from children. If I enjoy learning I hope that my children will enjoy it also. 

I guess when they reach that high school age you just start to worry if they are going to have enough time to learn all the things necessary to go to college and get in if that is what they want.  Well I think this coming year I would like to focus on the things that we are finding necessary just to survive in our new surroundings... hmmm ...like a foreign language that most of our neighbors or anyone we see speaks.  We haven't put a lot of emphasis on it in the past even though we knew it was a requirement for college.

Help!!!!!! The perfectionist in me is going to struggle with a relaxed way of teaching, what to do, what to use?

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Sometimes I wonder what I am doing. I mean I have the best intentions to get so many things done and then I have the interruptions of life that I cannot control or can I?

I mean, I guess I am suppose to be able to control some of the interruptions that happen like the fact that the kids don’t do what they are suppose to and come asking something every time I am on the phone or right in the middle of a some thought that I am trying to convey to someone by email or instant messenger.  I know that children are supposed to be blessings and that the reason I don’t see them as such is a failure on my part in their upbringing.  But I just don’t know that I have the stamina to take them on.  I mean it is three against one. When I think I have something under control I have some"little"one interrupt to “help”, as if any of the others  think that one mother isn’t enough.

I have read books on parenting, taken Bible studies and talked to many other experienced parents.  I have decided that none of these methods work without the consistency and the team work of both parents.  This can be a problem when one of us is much more focused elsewhere in the world.

I am reminded of Paul in Romans 7:15 (NKJV). For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. For I know that in me(that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find.

So herein lies the dilemma, I will to raise my children to be the blessings God intended them to be, but I seem to have trouble with the practice of what I know is good yet I do not do it because it is so hard that I cannot do it by myself (team needed). I mean it doesn’t do any good for me to lay down the law if I don’t have anyone else to enforce it, does it?

Before anyone might think I am bashing my dh know that we have also discussed these issues and know our own shortcomings as well.  He knows how I feel, he just may not agree all the time. He is a wonderful and loving husband and I know that he does the best he can, as we all do and sometimes just fall short.  Thank goodness Christ came to cover all of those shortcomings.

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First of all I am a math person and not a writer so this is all new to me.  I was thinking that I have a lot of experiences that may be of benefit to someone but needed a creative outlet to share.

I am 37 years old and the mother of 3 very intelligent and beautiful girls. I have been homeschooling for five years now. The oldest dd is in the 10th grade and the second dd is in 2nd grade.  The third lovely dd is only two but tries ever so desperately to keep up with the other two in every way.

I have recently moved over 2000 miles away from the places I was born and raised in so I don't have any friends here yet. So I am looking to connect in any way I can find for now. 

So How did I come up with name CrackedPot?  Well, believing that God has placed me in this wilderness so to speak in order that He can use me for His Glory and since I feel I am far from perfect as hard as I try. I mean with the life experiences I have had a I feel a little beat up  and cracked and I recall teaching about God using broken vessels for his glory.  Vessel seems a little bit dated but everyone knows what a "pot" is, right. Well anyway this is my attempt at a start at a blog so leave me a comment letting me know how I am doing or any advice will be appreciated.

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