Memory Verse - Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place.
2 Chronicles 7:14-16

Introduction - I thought that I would hit the “easy button” this week and not only make the assignment light, but also give us a chance to get to know each other better through prayer.

Assignment - This week I would like you to post any prayer requests you have. What is going on in your life that you need prayer warriors for? Feel free to post an unspoken request if you feel it is too personal. Then if you would just take the time to visit as many other BFS buddies as possible, pray for them and then leave them a little note letting them know that you have prayed or will be praying.

Introduction: You Deserve a Break Today (McDonalds) –After all this crazy weather, the economy ups and downs and now a new President for the United States you all do deserve a break today.  I want to give everyone a ‘break today’ and have the ANNUAL SHOPPING SPREE!!!

Memory Verse: 1 John 4:16 (NIV)

And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.

Intro: Sometime “being all you can be” is a challenge.  We are trying to balance being a godly wife, mother, teacher, keeper of the home,  and much more.  None of us are perfect and we all struggle in our own ways with being able to achieve what we feel needs to get done.

Assignment:  This week I thought we could share what great ways we have found to help with all we have to do.  Besides the obvious getting face down in front of God, what have you found that works?  Have you done a great bible study that deals with this area?  Do you have a certain “thing” that  really helps you like a planner or gadget?  Do you have a certain bible verse that just speaks to you and you have it posted so you see it all the time?  Is there a website that is really valuable to you in this area?   What do you do that if someone else found out about it, they could benefit from it?

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I love this assignment because this is actually one of my new year's resolutions.  My desire for this year is to be happy and content being at home and that my children and husband would be as well.  To me being happy and content is not running around like a chicken with their head cut off (which I can do QUITE well) so organization is important.

One of the things that I have found that works really well with us is meal planning.  I have used two different websites, b/c I love websites and my husband's techiness has rubbed off on me, Menus4Moms and E-mealz both give you a weekly dinner plan and a shopping list to go with it.   They also both usually have at least one crockpot meal a week which is great for my evenings when I'm teaching piano.  This usually saves me money and I know what's for dinner.  I also have basically 3 rotating lunches and breakfast so I don't have to think much.

Home cleaning, is one thing I'm working on.  I'm trying to schedule things one day at a time.  For right now Monday is laundry day, Tuesdays bathrooms, Thurs. floors.  As you can see I still have to figure out when to clean my kitchen and the other odds and ends.  This is definitely my work in progress.  I've been reading, Managers of Their Homes and I'm trying to figure out how to do some stuff.

I'm currently only homeschooling my oldest (7yo) but we buy him a monthly planner and a binder.  In the planner, I write down his assignments and that becomes my lesson plans as well.  We take the planner with us for our homeschooling meetings and we write down field trips and stuff like that on it so we know what's coming up.  His binder we use for any loose leaf stuff we have and also our reading log and scrapbook of fieldtrips.  We try to be concise and I just keep a filing box for his records for that year.  Anything that doesn't fit in the box we don't keep.

The one things that I'm truly enjoying out of our week is our CBS.  All of us go to a weekly bible study.  My oldest and I are both studying the book of Mathew for this school year.  It's a great time to just meet with other women and look into God's word and study it out.  My children love it and are really learning more about God's word.  This is 2 hours out of my day, that I'm truly glad I scheduled.

Check out BFS for more women who are "BE ALL THAT YOU CAN BE"

Memory Verse:

Genesis 7:24 The water held power over the earth for 150 days.

Introduction: The only witnesses to the Flood are Noah, his wife, his three sons and their wives - 8 people.   And then there’s the animals, 2 of every unclean animal and 7 pairs of every clean animal. When Noah and his family emerged from the ark, they offered sacrifices and praised the Lord for preserving them.

Assignment: What kind of catastrophe have you lived through? Weather? Fire? Car crash? Did you feel the oppression of the power of the disaster, or the protection of the Power of the Lord?  Tell us the story of how you rejoiced and praised Him through it and after it.

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     I've lived in Florida all my life so hurricanes have made an impact.  I remember Hurricane Andrew it hit when I was in high school.  I just remember the whole family just huddling together and the eery sound of the howling wind through the night.  I also remember how in the morning and for the weeks to come neighbors would help each other and the extension cords running from one side of the street to the other b/c one side of the street had electricity and the other side did not.  I also remember going down south to Homestead and passing out essentials to the people who had truly lost everything but their own lives.  I wasn't a Christian then but I do remember feeling so grateful for what I had.

    Fast forward a little more than a decade and here comes 2004.  The year of the hurricanes.  I thought we never would get through that year.  God was definitely with us that year.  Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne.  I was nine months pregnant when Frances hit us and it was difficult.  That storm never arrived on time, LOL.  I remember sitting on the floor in front of our door with it open so we could see to try to entertain our 3 yo.  This was before the storm arrived but we had somehow already lost power.  We didn't go to the hospital b/c we would have to be separated but we just prayed that our son would not make an early arrival. 

     Our son was born two weeks later, and then another two weeks later we were hit by Jeanne.   I was hit again with the stress of having a newborn and being in the midst of a hurricane.  God was good.  Our house though hit by two hurricanes was not badly damaged.  I did not quite learn my lesson though of trusting God completely until the next year with the next hurricane.

     Hurricane Wilma came in 2005 and I again was pregnant.  (We laugh that since I haven't been pregnant there's been no hurricanes that have hit us)  This time the storm hit us at a much stronger angle.  We had been playing in my older son's room and we went to the living room to have a snack, during this time a piece of metal from someone's patio flew and hit my son's window.  The window was shattered and glass and other materials flew into the room.  Miraculously the wood covering the window did not break just the glass behind it.  This truly showed me how God protects us and even when we feel that our world is crashing around us He is there.

     I know that in 2004 if I had damage in the house with a newborn or being pregnant that would have been too much for me.  God watched over us and protected us.  He again protected us from being in the room when the window broke. 

This top one is a picture of my neighbors garage.

Memory Verse: Ecclesiastes 3: 1, 2 -  To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven; A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted.

Intro: My Prayer Box is a unique personal declaration of faith. It’s a place for our family to lock our worries, wishes, desires and prayers–even keepsakes or photos of loved ones. It’s about gathering thoughts and prayers that allow us to pursue dreams and to recognize that we are never truly alone. My Prayer Box represents faith, which is a force that allows us to believe in things—things you can’t hold in your hand, but can always feel in your heart.  Here is a post about prayer boxes and how to get started using them, it’s not too late since it’s early in the year.

Assignment: Tell about your prayer box, if your family has one that you peruse at New Year’s Eve or New year’s Day and share those prayers, thoughts and acts of faith on the next year.

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         Last Christmas, (2007) our church had a children's christmas party and at one of the stations they made prayer boxes.  It was a great idea.  The problem was that it was a cardboard box and even though it lasted for a few months, the box I mean, we never got to really use it for its intended purpose.   Most of it being mommy's fault for not keeping up with it.  Dis-consistency roars its ugly head!!! 

           So this is what I propose for this year for my family.  We'll have a prayer board.  We'll write down our prayers and as they get answered we can erase them or cross them off.  It's visual b/c we can see it and be praying for it and I just love erasing things or crossing things off. 

         What I also have been wanting to do is just write down my worries and concerns and just burn them and give them to God in prayer.  I remember before getting married doing this and just loving watching the papers burn making it very real to me that they are gone and done with.

Proverbs 5:12-13 (New International Version)

Proverbs 15:31-33 (The Message)

We have been feeling sleep deprived for the last month or so.  Our darling daughter has been the culprit.  She has been having nightmares or she has just decided to get up and talk to herself.  The  boys we would just let cry out on the days of no nightmares but she has picked up a quite different habit.  She has started to redecorate her surroundings with her poop.  We have suffered the consequences of letting her cry it out and therefore we now go and check on her anytime we hear her in the night.  We have been very tired because we have completely forgotten what it felt like when she was an infant.

Another family has been dealing with sleep deprivation since their 3 year old son was born.  This is a family that we have decided to put in our prayers.  Because of brain pressure, the child has never slept.  NEVER!  The parents are on 24/7.  Please read about this family and keep them in your prayers as well.

http://www.local6.com/news/16210114/detail.html

Karen is hosting an online Curriculum Fair about what we have used this year and what we have liked or disliked about our curriculum.

Language Arts

Abeka we're using Letters and Sounds, Speeling (LOL), and Language Arts.  I have been learning so much with this program that it's amazing.  I definitely needed it for me just to teaching phonics correctly.  My son enjoys it as well.  He went to speech therapy when he was younger so that seems to affect him now with the blends and the spelling.  It's amazing how everything connects.  He reads wonderfully and without stopping or sounding anything out but when it comes to spelling and saying blends it becomes dfficult and he can become frustrated easily.  I like then that it gives them repetitive exercises.

Phonics/Reading/Bible

We're using two different books for this.  From Rod and Staff we're using the Bible readers.  They are short two pages long with reading comprehension questions in the workbook.  I love the fact that this way my son can have time to read about God and have his own quiet time.  For extra phonics practice we're using Explode the Code from EPS Books.  Now both of these books are very simple in nature.  They have no color and the drawings are one step above stick figures for Explode the Code.  But they seem to work with what we are doing. 

Math

We started our homeschooling adventure with Abeka Math as well but we switched to Horizon early on.  I love the color and the pace in Horizon.  My son does not get bored and I think that he is learning quite alot.  I appreciate that they use bigger numbers to do simple concepts.  They teach them to add bigger numbers so that it won't intimidate them later on. 

We're planning on doing some unit studies for science and geography when I come home for the summer since we'll have time for that.