Wow! April, huh? My husband seems to get a post on every once in while, as do both of my sisters and my mom is going strong blogging every couple of days. I don't know why I can't seem to keep with this blogging thing!
Here are a few pictures to get you caught up on the little one.
OK, so he's been here for over three weeks now (as you can see above!), but I've just not taken the time to keep up with my cyber friends (either here, on my blog, or by email) since his birth. Sorry!
Jackson Samuel was born on March 25th at 5:15 AM after 2 1/2 grueling hours of labor! He weighed in at 6 lbs. 15 oz. and was 20 1/2 in. long.
We've had a ton of help here in the past couple of months starting with one of my sisters coming the end of Feb and staying until Easter weekend. My Mom and Grandma were here for three weeks (they arrived almost a week before Jack's birth), and my Mother-in-law was here for a week, arriving when Jack was about a week old. My whole family (almost- short two brothers) was here for Easter weekend - Mom and Dad, two brothers, four sisters, two grandparents, and one sister-in-law. One of them (my sil) stayed on for a week and another of my sisters stayed for two weeks(she just left this morning ). I'm feeling mildly lonely today (like the whole world had deserted me!), but I've enjoyed interacting with and taking care of the kids a little more than I have recently.
I'm thinking about writing up a birth story , so stay tuned for that (hopefully! - but don't hold your breath! ).
OK, the next challenge is, since I've put this off so long, is to find pictures that everyone else hasn't already shared! (There are already several others that have posted about him including my husband - three times, my sister Rachel, and my sister Debra.)
I guess there's no excuse for my absence other than that life just happens, and blogging tends to get pushed aside when there are other things to concentrate on!
We had a great Christmas visiting with lots of family and celebrating our Lord's birth.
Our normal after Christmas sickness didn't prove to be as bad or as long as it's been in the past.
Our new church plant voted to purchase a building and we stood back and were amazed as the $30,000 goal needed for down payment and repairs was exceeded by over $18,000. Praise the Lord!
The gender of our new baby looks to be another boy! (a slight disappointment to both of our older kids, but I think they've long gotten over that!)
We ended up with about a month and a half off of formal school in Dec. and Jan, but the kids tended to continue to keep right on learning even without the school books.
Jenna professed salvation!
Taxes have been done.
The repairs on the new church building are well underway (thanks to the skill and devotion of many church members) and the closing is scheduled for the end of March.
My husband, Toby, is officially enrolled in school again! We finally found a school that would take all of his seminary credits as well as his associate's degree credits. Another huge blessing! It looks like he's just 30 credit hours away from his degree as well as being able to do all of the work by correspondence. (so not being tied to a class schedule as well as working full time)
Everything seems to be going great in this pregnancy so far. The baby seems quite healthy and aside from some tiredness and occasional sore backs, I'm doing great as well! Please pray for a safe and healthy birth. (Just a little over 4 weeks away!)
Today finds me getting ready for my 15 year old sister to come and stay with us until the baby comes. (the normal sweeping, laundry, picking up, getting her bed ready) She gets in tomorrow evening and we are all quite excited! (Yay!)
I hope to stop in much more frequently to keep you all up to date on our goings on here. Hope you all are having a great school year and looking forward to spring!
We've been at school now for a week and two days. Definitely not flawless school days and maddeningly enough we've had two days off of school already this year!
I'm officially teaching both of my older children (relative, I know) kindergarten this year. The curriculum does differ a bit in that my 5 yr old can read and my 4 yr old cannot. School has been fun the days that we've been able to do it and it has actually kept my house cleaner and my days more scheduled. Yay!
We're doing My Father's World, sans the phonics section, for the unit study part of our day and Making Math Meaningful for math (I'm really excited about that one!). The couple of other things I've thrown in include a phonics book that is no longer in print (but I love), so I (my mom) found it on Ebay and Trevor has enjoyed it immensely (so far!). I'm also using Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons for my four year old. Trev only got through lesson 36 (of 100) and was bored of it because he caught on that quickly! I'm also throwing in the Rod and Staff pre-school books at the end of the (school) day. There tends to be a lot of coloring included in the activities, so the kids look forward to doing those pages when they're done with their 'real schoolwork' (my thoughts, not anyone's voiced words).
What has been interesting is actually trying to convince the kids that they're in school. I asked the kids the other day if they liked school and they went on to rave about sunday school. I said, no the school we've been doing each morning. Oh, they said. Of course they liked it. Still, if I say anything about school, they want to know if I mean at home or at church!
He weighed in at 6 lbs. 15 oz. and was 20 1/2 in. long.
). I'm feeling mildly lonely today (like the whole world had deserted me!), but I've enjoyed interacting with and taking care of the kids a little more than I have recently.
).
