Well, it's that time of year again. The boys are bored with school and all are ready for a break...but something inside me alweays wants to do more with our summers than just brain veg. I wonder what I should do to make our days not just blow by in a haze.

One side of me wants to keep going and the other side of me realizes we need to do something different over the summer. Maybe actually do art or typing on those hot summer afternoons. Possibly read a good book together. Definately clean house and declutter all the rooms I longed to all winter.

Do any of you have any ideas? I would greatly appreciate them. And also, do any of you know of any good sites on how to review facts with your kids? I feel as though we have neglected memorization in our homeschool.

Hope to hear from some of you soon!

Hugs, Kathy

Please pray for me tomorrow morning! I have to have a routine mamogram and I am not looking forward to it! Why do women have to go through these things?? I haven't had one for two years, and just got over a bout of costochondritus (basically a swollen rib cage) so that's why I need you all to pray for me: #1 that I will have a healthy screening and #2 that it won't hurt!

I don't know what it is about a time change but everyone at my house has been sleeping in since Sunday! We are a mess over here! The weather is supposed to be in the 70's; so I hoped we would get our work done early. Maybe I need prayer for more than just a mamogram...Please pray for us to keep on schedule and not to let emotions, laziness or the discovery channel to take over our day. It seems my boys are hooked on South America this week and are watching this guy eat strange foods from South America. Today the guy is supposed to eat huge grubs, piranah and guinea pigs! (Yes, I could tell myself that this is school but deep down I know it is just pure enjoyment of the bizzare!)

Another thing I need for prayer for is for my Sister in law Belle. If you have read any of my previous posts you would know she has been suffering from throat cancer for 8 years and is still believing God to heal her. Please agree with us that God's healing will become manifest in her body.

Well, gotta go motivate the troops!

Yes, it's another Deal or No Deal night at our house and it reminds me how often during the day my sons try to get me to make a deal with them..."Mom, do I have to do all the math problems?" "Can I only practice piano for 15 minutes, Mom?" "Why do I have to take the dog out again??" Etc., etc.

By the end of the day, I feel like I have been tossed to an fro all day long. Then my husband comes through the door and it is a different home! Suddenly, no one complains and chores and school actually get accomplished! Why the difference? I don't know, maybe I am a wimp and a push-over being the only woman in a house full of guys. Sometimes I think they are planning a take-over! (Just kidding, but I think they'd succeed if they tried!)

Recently, I read that pre-menapausal (I can't even spell it yet!) women tend to get into a retreat and withdraw mode when it comes to day to day conflicts...I thought that only happened to you during the toddler years when you'd hide in the bathroom for about 15 minutes longer than necessary! Does that mean that I am maybe allowing them to push my buttons because I don't want to take a stand during confrontations???

Maybe I need another battle plan...I think that's why the Bible says to let your Yes mean yes and your No mean no... Hey, maybe you all could pray for me to have a back bone during the day and to not be such a push-over. Actually, I think it's just the Monday, spring-fever homeschool blues and thankfully, tomorrow is a new day!

Well, I learned a tough lesson yesterday. We were about to leave piano lessons when I asked the teacher if my son had showed him the piece of music I had asked my son to learn so I could have him play while I sang at church. The teacher said, "No." So, I laughingly said in passing, "Oh, don't worry, I'll just beat him with a stick when I get home." (Let me just say, We have a No Hit rule in our house and I was not serious at all in my comment!)

The teacher said, "I hope not because I'd have to report you." My son and I sort of thought, "Are you serious?? because we sure aren't!" Yet, I was convicted by my words because people can not tell when you are serious or not. The Bible says that we are to avoid the appearance of evil and that a fool opens wide his mouth...and just the day before, I had a long Bible study with my sons on just that topic and yet here I was...saying foolishness.

My sons were funny though when we got to the car. My 14 year old son referred to in the conversation said, "Aw, Ma, you should have told him you were gonna feed me to the alligators!"  My oldest (17 year old) said, "Not if you lived in Florida!" My youngest son said, "Feed 'em to the Piranah!"

Now, being the Mom of 3 teenage homeschooled sons, I often realize that I do not have the authority over them that I once commanded. When they were younger, the fact that you were older, and their "Mother" sort of kept them in line. Now when two of them are taller than you and the youngest one is standing on his tiptoes to try and look you in the eyes every day....there ain't much you can do if you have not already won their respect and honor.

Thankfully, my guys do respect and honor me...but not always do they choose to do so. Sorta like those PMS days when I choose not to honor my husband by giving him the sweet responses he deserves and instead show him the ugly side of my tongue.

So, I was humbled and asked their forgiveness. They in turn asked each other's forgiveness for the idle things said each day. But I cannot begin to tell you how much the Lord has pricked my heart with this! We are to be above reproach in the world...Oh, and not to mention the verse in Proverbs about a foolish woman tearing down her house with her own hands!!!

Lord, set a guard at the watch door of our lips so that we might not sin against Thee. May we build up our loved ones and not tear them down with our words even if it is just in jest. May You be glorified at all times, in Jesus' name. Amen.

I could hardly believe my eyes this morning when I woke up and looked out to see it SNOWING!!! It is like a blizzard out there! (I guess I should have turned on the news at least once during the past few days...

Anyway, I got up and put two the ingredients for bread in two bread machines and filled up the spare tub with water in case the power goes off. (We lost power for two days after the last snowstorm.) It figures that I would be out of Paper towels, toilet paper, napkins and bread this morning. I had planned to go shopping after church.

The boys are loving this snow because it has the best consistency for snowballs, snow men and snow forts. DO your children run outside at the first sign of snow with a spoon and a bowl???? Mine do! They think it is a food group. Seriously!

Being caught off guard with the snow this morning made me aware of "Prepared - ness" (if that's a word) . There are many things in life that I cruise along on auto-pilot on; falsely thinking that I'm ready to handle whatever comes my way. Today, I bow the knee of my heart and ask God to guide me each minute of my day. I just want to be found in hidden in the cleft of His hand. He knows our frame and what we need. If we are seeking Him and staying close to Him, we won't have to fear not being prepared for the days ahead.

Hi Everyone,

Well, after a long sabbatical, I want to try this again. Blogging is daunting to me because I just am not as computer literate as some of you all seem to be. I LOVE all the wonderful blog sites on the Homeschool Blogger site...I just don't know how to make mine flow like all of you do.

So I sat down and printed out the tags and variables list - and I thought teaching spanish was hard?!  

Next, I'm gonna check out the web ring stuff. Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.  (I believe that was a "Bleg" for help.)

My heart's desire is to share with others the unique setting homeschooling 3 boys can place a mom in. There are so many funny and wonderful days mixed in with all the difficult -on your knees- type days. Encouraging them in godliness and on to manhood is truly a blessing that I would like to share with others...so please help me. I'm leaving up all my old posts...partially because I don't know how to move them around and so that those helping can check out what I have figured out and offer any suggestions.

Thanks ya'all!

Kathy

It is amazing how a few months can go by so quickly when moving from one family crisis to the next. It seems that we are in a lull right now; and I am breathing a thankful sigh of relief. We have had a busy year with family members aging and needing more care, dear friends in marriage crisis and friends moving away. Please pray with me that our family will have a quiet uneventful holiday season to rest under the shadow of His wings.

My sister in law is still waiting on God to heal her of her cancer and has been waiting now for over 8 years. Her faith is amazing. I ask you to keep her in prayer too. She hopes to have another debulking done in her throat so she can swallow again. She hasn't been able to talk much since the last debulking so I have missed her voice. She had ordered a prayer shawl from a ministry that shall remain nameless and they said it would be handmade and prayed over before it was sent to you...Well, she waited for 3 months, finally got it and it was made in China. She felt so beat up by that. I don't know how that ministry can let people down like that. I told her that I would have some of my friends get together and pray over the shawl for her.

Please keep Belle in your prayers.

Gotta go and get ready for Thanksgiving tomorrow and then hit the hay.

Blessings to you and yours.

My sons are all very out going and friendly with their peers...But as the teenage years have started, I have noticed that one son is struggling with making friends. It is not that he is not winsome and fun to be with with. I think he is TOO friendly, TOO overwhelming maybe.

He is my middle child and often competes with his older brother for attention of friends. This causes him to be very annoying while vying for attention. I also notice that he manipulates conversations. Have any of you had to teach your children how to respond correctly to friends?

As I prayed about it, I realized that maybe we need to focus on Friendships during our devotional time. I found an old copy of a Navpress book called "Friends and Friendships" that I hope to go over with the boys.

I'll let ya know how it goes.

Kathy

What a blessing to be able to start over. I am so looking forward to our new school year; but I still wonder if I am ready. A couple of years ago, I went to a Season of Prayer day at another homeschool mom's house. What we did was spend the day laying our next season before the Lord and asked His direction and guidance of our plans. Let me tell you, that really impacted me...but the enemy extinguished alot of the neat things I planned that day. The Lord still remembered what we had talked about though and would you believe I found my notes I had taken that day and it is even more relevant to our year this year than it was in 2001!!!!

So, I have again gone before the Lord and hope to implement all the plans I had forgotten. This year I am implementing a schedule for all of our moments...the boys, my husband and I. The first priority scheduled is time in prayer: Psalm 90 says in verse 12: "Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom." That is my daily prayer because I have been the kind of mom who just let's days slip by and I look around and often wonder what I did all day! Well, I will let you know how it goes.

 Please pray for my sister-in-law, Belle today. At 1:00 p.m. she has an appointment with an oncologist to discuss a possible treatment for her cancer. This option has never been available before and we do not know if it will be a blanket or a cure but Belle is trusting that Jesus is in control of the situation. (Belle has cancer of the larynx, trachea, voice box and the doctors think it has spread to the lungs, stomach, kidneys and possibly the bones...but they are not sure.)

Since I last wrote to all of you, she has begun having difficulty breathing below her tracheotomy. She always has had difficulty from the trachea up but now she can feel blockage in her lungs. Since she received the doctors CAT scan in May, most people would probably have her in the grave; but Belle is not like that. Her faith is in the God who can heal and she trusts Him no matter what happens. She is in peace and although she has had days where she cries...her trust in His goodness and grace keeps her. Whenever I talk to her I can imagine Paul's conviction when he said that the Lord told him "My grace is sufficient."

Belle would ask that all of you pray for her healing and so do I.

How do any of you help your teenagers find friends? My 16 year old son is such a blessing to us. But lately I have been wondering if he is feeling depressed. We have homeschooled his entire education and I think he is beginning to feel lonely. We are also between churches and so he is not involved in any youth group. The few friends he has that homeschool are so busy in their lives that he is with us most of the time... Come to think of it, alot of them probably feel as he does. It seems as time goes by the ranks of homeschooler teens seems to dwindle in our area; people turn in the towel by high school. So I wonder am I doing what is right for him....

What do all of you do to help your kids find and connect with others?

Any suggestions?

Kathy

Yesterday, eight moms gathered to pray and God was there! In fact, I am still basking in the annointing that came forth. It reminds me of Aslan in Narnia..."Aslan's on the move..." - GOD IS ON THE MOVE!!!

Since September we have been gathering almost every two weeks. The mom's pray and the kids (19 of them from age 17 down to 2) play. Awesome things have been happening. Prayer definately changes things. Homes are being put in order, marriages healed,and most of all it is igniting in us the desire to pray more. The Holy Spirit has definately been meeting with us and it carries over into our prayer closets at home. We are all from different church backgrounds but are all homeschooling moms desperate for God to intervene in our lives and draw us and our families closer to Him.

I challenge all of you today, grab a sister in the Lord and sit down and pray together and see what God can do when 'two or more gather together in His Name'. I know you will feel His presence and it will change your lives.

Belle's doctor appointment went very well. Thank you all for praying for her. The doctor said that the growth just inside her tracheotomy area was just granulation...just like stalactites but not cancer. The cancer is still above that point in the trachea itself; they can keep going back in and debulking indefinately if they have to. (We are praying it will give up and not come back!)

Also, they made an appointment with an oncologist in case there is something new out there that might reach this type of cancer. Belle has a sinus infection from all the drainage and swelling after they debulked; so please continue to keep her in your prayers. She can't sleep if she can't breathe and all this tends to block her breathing. She spends her days by the moisturizing oxygen tank, coughing and watching CBN, TBN or staying in the Word herself. Right now she needs prayers for healing and strength.

Again thank you for your prayers...

Please pray for my sister in law, Belle, today.

Eight years ago, Belle discovered she was pregnant with her first child at 41 years old. She had tried to get pregnant for years and had assumed that she was unable to. A month after finding out she was pregnant, she started to be unable to catch her breath. Doctors told her it was panic attacks until one doctor finally had the wisdom to look down her throat and discovered that Belle had cancer. Cancer of the trachea, windpipe, larynx and voicebox.

Because of the pregnancy, doctors wanted to take the baby early so they could treat the cancer. The only known method of dealing with that type of cancer was to cut out everything from the neck to the breastbone and basically sew the chin to the chest. Belle would have been unable to speak or eat and probably would have died. She cried out to God for a way of escape.

After the baby was delivered and Belle was scheduled to have the horrid surgery, the surgeon walked in and said, "You know, Radiation is now an option since the baby is safe." That "option" had never been offered before! Belle knew it was God's way of escape. She did the radiation treatment and was cancer free until 2 years ago. Now she is unable to do radiation anymore (too much will turn the tissue to mush) and the cancer is not treatable with chemotherapy because it is in the cartilige and not the blood.

So, Belle has been going on faith and diet all this time. She looks great and thankfully the cancer has not spread anywhere else.

She has had cancer of the trachea, larynyx, voicebox for over 7 years. Through it all, Belle's faith has been AMAZING...I am always humbled by her simple faith and trust in her Savior's promises. I know that Belle is alive today because of her simple trust in her Savior. We are trusting that these cancer cells are just going to give up and that Belle will be healed of this, in Jesus' name. She struggles to breathe each day. Please pray with us for her healing.

With American Idol and the Olympics both in full swing, it has really brought to my attention the "need" people have to be better than everyone else.

Even our own family, feels the constant battle of this. You almost have to be diplomatic with every conversation. "Oh, you did a great job on that Spelling test - just like your brother did on his math test"; so as not to hurt any feelings.

But I am not so sure that I buy into the whole need to do competitions so that "it will look good on a transcript". I have always been the one to beat to a different drummer. If someone says you need a lot of "things" like competitions, etc, on your kids transcripts for college, I get an attitude...almost like rebellious.

Lately, I have been trying to homeschool with the attitude of keeping heaven as our goal...the approval of the Lord, not men.

I have always heard we are to be in the world but not of it...and I desperately want to get the world part out of us. Because of this, I have been avoiding the homeschool competition and contest scene. We have participated in the past; but I have seen from our own experience that it fostered the wrong kind of desire in all of us: The desire to have the glory for ourselves.

Anyway, that's where we are right now...Gonna go check to see who won Idol tonight though.

Rigid and very shaky, my dad tries to get his balance and stand up. Fear of falling, or hurting my mom or I as we try to help him up, seems to make it more difficult for him. As I watch my father go through this suffering, my mind sees the strong dad who used to be and it tears me apart.

My dad had paddles used on him to resusitate him after a heart blockage caused his heart to stop. This shock to his nervous system triggered these horrible breathing panic attacks that make him almost resemble a stroke or Parkinson's disease patient. He trembles, breathes heavily and cannot walk on his own when he has the panic attack... Medicine doctors offer to treat them only dope him beyond belief.

It has been almost six months since these daily attacks have come upon him. You can tell it is beginning to get him down. My mom is even feeling imprisoned with him because she is afraid to leave him alone. So they are not able to go out or do the many things that bring them joy. Yet God shines through this difficulty in an amazing way...

Whenever my dad has an attack, my mom will sit beside him and read the Bible to him. They started in Genesis in October and are already through Isaiah. Watching my mother sit beside my dad and reading God's words of comfort to my dad made me feel as though I were sitting on Holy Ground. You see, my mom has always read God's word through cover to cover; but this is the first time my dad has truly gone through the Bible.

Please pray for my my parents. Pray that God would heal my dad from these attacks and that they will be delivered from being imprisoned in their home. My parents are such a blessing to so many people when they are out and about. House bound -they seem to be so isolated - even not able to attend their church because of my dad's health.

Isn't it amazing how a cover of snow can make the world look so crisp and clean??? Even the air smells wonderful! Then as the day gets warmer, the trees begin to drop the covering of snow and their true colors show through.

Isn't that what happens to us?!!! As soon as life gets a little warm with trials - our true colors show.

I heard once that a preacher put a full glass of water on a table. While he was preaching, he bumped the table and the contents of the glass spilled out on the table.  He said, 'notice that when the glass gets bumped only what's inside the glass spills out'. I hope that we are so full of the love of Christ that only His love spills out of us.

Well, I guess I better go make some hot chocolate. The boys have been outside enjoying sledding and are about to come in...

Another day before me...another chance to bring Him glory. To use my time wisely each day has been a challenge but I feel as though the key is getting closer to the lock. What is the key?

Prayer. Pressing in and laying hold of the promises my Heavenly Father has given to me. Sitting at His feet and listening to His quiet directions for my day. I am so thankful for His loving guidance!

I have been so exhausted lately! The laundry pile is winning and the pile of papers to grade and file has taken over the homeschool table. Also, my boys are so distracted and sneaking out of work at every moment possible. What is happening to us???

Isn't it a little early for winter burn out? Maybe the weather has played a part in it. We desperately need to get back on track though. The only thing that is going right is our Bible time. We are reading the Bible through and singing hymns together each morning. But I would covent all your prayers for our family to get back on track with school work and house work.

Also, I just got my Old Schoolhouse Magazine and hope to learn how to do this Blog thing. At least I'm trying...but even carving out computer time has been so difficult lately. I think we have overdone the sweets this fall and now are all suffering from sugar let down. Craving comfort food 24/7 is a sure sign somethings up. (So much for exercising! Will power has been at zip this week!)

Well, I've gotta motivate these guys and myself before grass grows on us.