Oh the Drama

This is how I found Carrie.

"What on earth are you two doing?"



Left to play alone, this is what a thirteen- and a three-year old choose to play...



"Reckless, Disgruntled Driver Hits Careless Pedestrian"



I hope this pedestrian has learned her lesson.



I don't think this reckless, disgruntled driver has.

Welcome Home!

My camera is back home!



It's as if it never left!



So, if you'll excuse me, my camera and I are off to make up for lost time...

Happy Anniversary, Sweetheart!

June 26, 1993...

 

And 16 years and many shared moments later...

 

If you would have told me on my wedding day where I would be and what I would be doing 16 years later, I would have welcomed my future with open arms!

Thank you, Paul, for 16 very special years as your wife...with many more special years to come.

I love you...always.

Preschool Speermentation

Hmmm...
This tube of toothpaste doesn't have much left in it.
Neither does the other one.
Seems silly to have two tubes that don't have much left in them.
Time for a "speerment!"



I'll just put the rest of this one into that one.



Mental note...



That doesn't really work!



Don't you just love it when you have the camera handy!
You don't have to go racing around to find it when a fun and memorable moment presents itself...it's right there at your fingertips!
That's what happened on this morning.

I've missed my camera very much.
But guess what!
I got the call from the camera repairman yesterday!
My camera is ready to be picked up!
Guess what I'll be doing today...

Wordless Wednesday..."Exhaustion!"

Blame It On Me

"When we obey Him, every path he guides us on is fragrant with His lovingkindness and His truth."
Psalm 25:10 TLB

There was something that my mom used to tell me--from the time I was a little girl until I left home--that comforted me and gave me a great sense of security.

"Blame it on me. Just blame it on me."

If I ever needed for people to stop hounding me for not doing something they thought I should be doing--or not doing, then Mom would say, "Just tell them that it's my fault. Blame it on me."

She knew the meaning of authority. She knew that even though others may not always like the decisions...or even understand the decisions...that were being made on my behalf, they would have to be accepted as the final word, because she was my authority.

She would also remind me of the protection that being under her authority provided. She would assure me that I might not always understand her decisions, but if I would be obedient, then I would be safe...and ultimately blessed.

I find myself today being reminded of those days under my mom's protection as I experience God's protection and guidance.

And just like those days when my mom would say, "Just blame it on me," I am finding myself under God's authority concerning the education of my children.

The thing is, until a few nights ago, I've been trying to come up with the answers all on my own.

"Do you plan on sending Carrie to high school?"
"I can't imagine her not being able to participate in all the fun stuff that high school provides."
"What about science labs?"

Are you really sure that you're teaching everything you should be teaching her to fully prepare her for her future?

I know for sure that these questions and statements come from very well-meaning people who love Carrie and want the very best for her. And I honestly don't mind answering the questions that come from those who are truly trying to figure out exactly what homeschooling is all about and how it works.

It's the questions that come at me like ice balls that get to me.
Those questions and statements that are laced with accusations of "unfair mom," "you don't know what you're doing," and "weirdo."

I find myself beginning to get hot. False guilt and fear start to crowd in, and I'm unable to think straight. My heart starts beating loudly in my ears. I want to cry...or hide...or puke. I start the quiet prayers of "Please help me hold it together, Lord. Help me know what to say."
Then, I start answering the interrogation with statements that really don't matter. Explanations that I really don't feel like I owe to anyone.

Blah, blah, blah.

When really all I want to shout is, "Are you praying for Carrie every single day? Are you praying for our homeschool every single day? Are you praying that I will be a good teacher?"

Or even, "Are you praying that God will make me quit homeschooling so that my kids can go to school and have a "good time"? Are you praying that I'll just follow the crowd...and the lies?"

It's not until later that the peace of God floods my soul when He gently reminds me, "Blame it on me. This wasn't your idea. It was mine, and I know what's best. I know that you didn't start out wanting this. I know that there are days that you think about how nice it might be if the responsibility and the blame were all on someone else's shoulders. I know that some days you feel so drained that you are not even sure you can do it all over again tomorrow. I see how you compare yourself with other homeschool moms and always find yourself falling short. And I know it's on those days that people ask you some of the hardest questions. Questions that make you wonder if you are really qualified."

"I also know how much you love your kids. You love them...and Me...so much that you are willing to be obedient and walk a path that rarely brings approval from the world. I also know how important others' approval is to you."

"But best of all, I know that 'I don't call the equipped, I equip the called,' and that you repeat that to yourself daily. I also know that many people don't really understand this and maybe don't think that it applies to you. But it does."

"Blame it on me."
Four simple words that stop the hounding.
Four simple words that remind me who my ultimate Authority is.
Four simple words that bring protection and blessing.

"Why do you homeschool?"

The whispered answer, "Blame it on Me"

God told me to.

That's all there is to it.
Take it up with God.

Betsie Ten Boom said, "The center of God's will is our only safety."

Ah.
The final word.
Safety.
Relief.
I am free to answer the questions calmly...without taking offense and without feeling that false sense of guilt.
Now I am free to continue doing what God has called me to do...without the fear of others' disapproval...with a heart full of joy.
Obedience.
Blessings.

Happy Father's Day, Daddy!

What makes a good Daddy?

I think that being a good Daddy is a very careful balancing act.





It takes someone who can be tender...



and tough.
Someone who knows how to work...



and play.



A good Daddy takes good care of his family.
He goes to work every day so that he can give them what they need...and more often than not, what they want.
That's one of the big ways that he shows his love.
By being responsible.
Even when he doesn't feel like being responsible.



And at the end of the day, when he comes home from work, exhausted and beat up, he still takes the time to walk beside his children.





To be their Daddy.





Their irreplaceable Daddy.

 

 

Anyway, that's what I think.

But more importantly, here's what the experts have to say...

"I love how funny Daddy is! He almost always has something hilarious to add!" says Carrie.

"I like to shoot my bow with Dad. I just love hanging out with him," says William.

"I like when Daddy plays with me and gives me a hug," says Joshua.

"Onyongyongyongyongyong!" says Matthew.
(Translation: "I like when Daddy comes home after work and hugs me and says, 'Hey Matty-O' and gives me a tickly kiss," says Matthew.)

We love you!
Happy Father's Day, Daddy!

Who Am I? An Exercise in Getting to Know Myself

Several months ago, I read another blogging mom's profile. I was amazed to see all that she could say about herself...all that self-knowledge really "wowwed" me!

It made me start to wonder...

Do I really know myself that well?
Am I really all that special?
Who am I?

I decided that a good exercise for me...and a challenging one...would be to write down what I do know about myself. I also thought that it might be fun for my kids to read and hang on to.

I have this "thing" lately.
I find myself wondering what kind of legacy I'm leaving.
I wonder how I will be remembered when I'm gone.
I wonder if I'm the kind of person now who will really be missed later on.

Pretty deep for a Saturday morning, huh?

So, here it goes.
These are just a few of the things that I know about myself.



























I am an organization-lover who is not very organized.
I am a home-cooked meal lover who does not like to prepare meals.
I am the daughter and granddaughter of farmers and gardeners who does not have a shade of green anywhere on her body.
I am the granddaughter of a talented seamstress who does not even own a needle.
I am the lover of a clean home who cannot seem to keep her home clean.
I am the admirer of a well-kept, manicured lawn who has her own crop of dandelions.
I am a stay-at-home lover who goes on her daily "guilt trips."
I am the lover of the simple way of life who just seems to have a knack at keeping her life complicated.

I love to homeschool.
I love to bake.
I love to sit down with a good book and a cup of coffee.
I love to mow the yard.
I love to go barefoot all year round. My tough, calloused feet are a witness to that.
I love to feed the birds that frequent my yard.
I love to be silly.
I love to wear over sized sweatshirts and baggy pants (sorry "What Not To Wear!).
I love my family and friends.
I love my dandelions.

Most of all, I love my husband and my children.
I adore being a wife and mother.
I cherish being my kids' teacher.

And you know what else?
I love being the daughter of The King.
I am thankful that I am saved by Grace and forgiven for all the dumb things that I do and say.
I love knowing that God created me just as I am...quirks and all.

777

Joshua: When my phone gets plugged in to service, how can I call Heaven so I can talk to Tiff?

Mommy: I think Heaven's phone number is 777.

Joshua: Like this? 77777777777777

Mommy: Yeah, just like that.

Joshua has one of our old cell phones that can still be plugged in and take a charge. It holds the charge for about 2 minutes before it powers down.

He often wants to call his favorite people using this phone, and I have to tell him that he has to use the house phone if he really wants to talk to them. His phone doesn't have service. You have to pay for that.

So, when Josh's phone "gets plugged in to service," he has some people, and tadpoles, that he would like to talk with.

I remember when the best dog in the world, Duke, died, William was a little boy...maybe just a little older than Josh is now. He asked, too, what Heaven's phone number was. Then, usually when I was driving, I would hear this little whispered voice in the seat behind me talking to Duke. Duke told William all kinds of things.

As we get older, you realize that you can't call Heaven using 777.
But even age can't keep you from wishing that you could.

A Sad Day

This will be a sad day in our home.

Like every morning, I woke up and went out to the kitchen to make Paul's lunch and start the coffee.
Like every morning, I went to the drawer that holds the remote for the television, so that I could check up on the weather for the day.
Like every morning, I said a quick, "Good morning!" to the tadpoles that are quickly changing into frogs.

But this morning, something on the kitchen floor caught my eye.
One of the tadpoles, the one Carrie named Tiff, I think, had leaped out of the aquarium and landed on the kitchen floor. She had to have been swimming awfully fast to have missed the counter top and landed on the floor.

At first I was a bit nauseous.
Then I was a little emotional.
I was torn between going to wake Paul (I think for moral support more than anything) and just taking care of it myself.
I even filled another cup of water to put her in...just in case she could be revived.

Finally, after pulling myself together, I used a paper towel to pick her up and realized that it was too late for her.

I'm just very sad now.
Zac is swimming alone in the tank. I've put a cooling rack over the top of the tank to prevent him from leaping out too.
Had I known that she could get out, I would have put the rack on the tank earlier.
She was the faster of the two...lots of energy. She swam so fast around the tank. We described her as flighty.
But I never saw this coming.

Who knew?
She was so close to becoming a frog.
Both tadpoles had developed their back legs and were using them to swim. They both had teeny tiny little front legs too. They were also eating quite a bit now. All that was left for her was losing her tail.

It's just so doggone sad.

The instructional guide that comes with the tadpoles says that success doesn't depend on your tadpoles reaching adulthood. Success is measured by how much you learn about frogs. Death is a part of life.

Blah, blah, blah.

Maybe it would have been different if she would have died of "natural causes" or because of water contamination or overfeeding. Those are the things that the instructional manual warned about.

But leaping out of the tank?

Please learn from me...put a screen of some sort on your tadpole tank after your tadpoles develop back legs. The combination of a strong tail and back legs are a recipe for disaster.

Tot School--"The Days of the Week"

**Josh is 46 months old...a very proud 3 1/2 if you ask him!**
**Matthew has now entered "Tot-Schooler." He is 14 months old.**

For Valentine's Day each year, we do a very simple treasure hunt. It has to be simple, because all of the clues are hidden in the house somewhere.

At the end of the hunt lies the treasure...usually a cardboard box filled with stuff. Stuff like their favorite breakfast cereal, some chocolates, a small toy...

This year, I found water bottles at Walgreens. The red water bottles were filled with stuff. Stuff like Kleenex, hand sanitizer in a tube, and these nifty little pill boxes.




I decided that since I am so bad about remembering whether I give the kids their vitamins each day, I would store the vitamins in these little pill boxes. They have helped my memory tremendously!

And the added bonus?
Josh has learned the days of the week!

Talk about "accidental teaching" on my part.
Josh's teaching, though, is a little more purposeful...



Just this morning, I sang the "Days of the Week" song with Josh before giving him his vitamin, and he said, "Are we going to Blake's house today?"
He right!
This is the day that the big kids usually have piano lessons, and Josh gets to play with our piano teacher's son, Blake.

He's putting it all together!
Don't you just love it when little ones start making sense of their world?!
It's so exciting!
This is just one of the many reasons that I am thankful that God called us to homeschool. I get to be present to see that light turn on...and then am able to share how good God is.

He is so good!

The Plunge

That's right!

We took "the plunge." We bought a frog hatchery kit about a month ago. It's one of those kits that comes with everything you need to watch a tadpole turn into a frog...everything except the tadpoles. You have to send for those.

Several years ago, we tried the butterfly hatchery kit. That was very fun! We sent for the caterpillars and then watched them metamorphose (is that right?!) into butterflies. Then, one sunny afternoon, Carrie, William, and I released them onto our butterfly bush in the flower garden. It didn't take them long to start flying happily around the yard.

Frogs, I have learned, are different.
You can't release an African water frog into your environment because it will cause "an imbalance in your ecosystem."

Oh.

If...and I say if because we've been warned that many tadpoles don't make it to froghood (I know that's not right)...if our tadpoles do grow to be healthy adult frogs, then we either have to keep them as pets or we have to find a suitable home for them.

The good thing about the African water frog is that he lives in the water all the time and doesn't have to eat live food. If we had received leopard frog tadpoles, we would have had to prepare a terrarium rather than an aquarium.
And provide live food.
Or put liver on a stick and train the frog to eat it.
The African water frog really is less work and maintenance than the leopard frog.

I guess.

This video was taken about three weeks ago when they were just itty bitty tadpoles. They were so itty bitty that I had to take a video of them...a picture wouldn't pick them up.




They aren't so itty bitty anymore.
Today, they are about three inches long, from their heads to the end of their squiggly little tales. They're huge! We catch ourselves saying, "Good morning, little tadpoles...I mean, big tadpoles!"

And they get bigger everyday!

They were shipped to us in a tube of water packed inside a very well padded envelope. We received three live tadpoles and, we think, the remains of one that didn't make it...although it was so small that we're not sure that's what it was.

One of the tadpoles died after just a week. We were sure that the other two would die soon after, but now after almost a month, we still have two very big, very healthy-looking tadpoles.

I think they look healthy. I don't know...I've never had tadpoles before.

Well, that not true.
When I was a little girl, my brother and I found tadpoles in a water-filled tractor tire track down the lane from our house. We collected them in a cup and brought them back up to the house so that we could watch them change into frogs. We knew that we had to find a "just right" home for them, so we put them in the best place we knew...our cows' drinking trough.

Hmmmm. How smart were we?

I digress...

I'm now getting over thinking that they are kind of creepy. I still won't set my coffee cup beside their bowl, but I do enjoy just sitting and watching them.

Carrie has even given them names now. The calm one is "Zac" and the flighty one is "Tiff."

I love that they come to the side of the bowl to watch me when I am close by. I love that they have little mustaches. I love the squirmy little tails that flutter continuously.

When we received them, I didn't picture us having pet frogs, but now I wonder how I could ever say goodbye to these two little guys.

Anyway I hope they're both guys.
Or both girls.
Not one of each.

You know.

So Sad

My camera is broken.
I have to take it to a repair shop...very soon!
How am I ever going to blog without it?!

Until my camera is up and running again, here is a picture that was taken before the unfortunate event...taken by Joshua.



This is Joshua.



How did my camera get broken? What was the unfortunate event?

Live and learn.

Mommies shouldn't leave their cameras where they can be knocked off the table by their camera-loving 3-year olds.

It really wasn't his fault. It was mine.
He actually did take some pretty good pictures before knocking it off the table.

And maybe this will encourage me to do some catch-up blogging.

So, until my camera visits the camera doctor, here are some "lost episodes" and blogs without pictures...also known as...well, blogs without pictures. Not creative enough? How about "What's Inside My Head?"

So, are you ready to know what I'm thinking about?
Tune in.