It's been too long-an update

It's been so long since I have paid attention to my blog that is almost seems pointless, but I still want to keep up with what's been going on around here!!  Halloween and Christmas have passed.  So have both of my girls birthdays.  The new year has started and it has been a time of reflection and thinking for me.  My days are consumed with preparing school curriculum for next year and pouring over a new diet book my sil gave me for Christmas.
This book has changed the way I think about food and the way I eat.  So far I have lost about 10lbs. and I still get to eat things like chicken broccoli alfredo with noodles and the ever so important, chocolate!!  You can go to trimhealthymama.com  to find out more!  It's a long read, about 600 pages, but worth every word!!  Serene Allison and Pearl Barrett (sisters who wrote the book) have tested all of this info on themselves and have tried almost every diet on earth.  For them this is a way of life, not a weight-loss plan.

When it comes to school I have decided to switch gears altogether.  So far I have used mostly Abeka with the kids which is traditional schooling.  We have used a couple of other things along the way, like Soaring with Spelling, Veritas History, and Apologia Science.  Over the last semester I was so thoroughly impressed by the caliber of work my niece and nephews were churning out in their new schooling venture with Classical Conversations. As the name implies this is a classical learning style, which is not something I completely understand yet, but I am so excited to start learning. The level of work that is expected of the student is high, and they also have a local co-op of sorts that meets once a week during the school year to provide our family with tutors, healthy competition, debate, and learning games in a group.  They do offer so much more but like I said I really can't fully understand it all until we start this fall.  As Isaiah moves toward the upper grade levels, Classical Conversations will help me challenge him in a way that I don't think I could do on my own!  Be praying for us....this change will be HUGE  for the kids.  We have essentially done school the same way since Isaiah was in kindergarten (that was over 6 years ago)!!!www.classicalconversations.com


That's enough update for now. Here are a few pictures of the last couple of months!

Only the Word

Over the last couple of months I have spent a lot of time awake at night.  It's during those times that I realize, I am a brilliant writer!!  I write the most lovely blog posts, thank you notes, and speeches for my children.  Somehow when the dawn breaks, all my brilliance fades like the shadows and I once again sound like someone that doesn't have a college degree.  That being said; I had an epiphany in the middle of the night.  Hopefully I come across sounding half-way intelligent.
Anyhow....recently I started reading another Christian self-help book.  If you know me well, you would know that I am a self-help book junky.  I love to read how to be a better wife, mother, Christ-follower, ect.  This one is supposed to help me overcome my bad reactions to raw emotion. You know; the kind that sneaks up on you and has you yelling at your kids before you even know what hit you.  Then later you're full of regret for how you acted!  The book is Lysa TerKeurst's Unglued.  I must say the book is wonderful.  Lysa is funny and full of true to life stories about how she has blown it and what she is doing to overcome exploding in the moment.  As I lay in bed last night thinking about this book and the many others I have read, it occurred to me:  There is one common theme in all of these Christian self-help books.....read the Word, know the Word, apply the Word.  So simple, yet seemingly so difficult.  Why do we find it so hard as believers to do what the Word says?  We say we believe, but then we don't listen to the verses that are there to help us overcome our issues.  Be sure that I am not pointing the finger here; I struggle with this too!
So the conclusion I came to in the night was that while the stories and steps to freedom written down in all these books are helpful by showing us we're not alone; the thing we really need is to listen and apply what our Creator has so lovingly written to us!!
Praying that I will dig deeper into His Word every day for strength and freedom to be more and more Christ-like. 

I am still here!!

I know it's been a long time since I have written in this blog!!  I am still here!!  For awhile I have wanted to give a baby update, but was a little scared to do so.  The closer my due date came, the more frightened I became that everything would go wrong in the end.  I did start to have a few health problems at the end of my pregnancy that renewed my fears.  My mind raced, and even though I knew if everything were to go terribly wrong I would make it with the help of the Lord; the fact remained that delivering and burying a full-term infant would be much different than delivering and burying a 16 week old baby!  Holding two babies that literally fit in the palm of your hand is not something you ever forget.  It has a way of getting into your soul and mind and never, ever leaving!  That being said; I never fully believed that I was really going to have a baby.  I stayed emotionally distant from my pregnancy, but that came with consequences.  I spent most of my pregnancy being irritable and snippy to my family.  If you had asked me if I was worried, I would have told you that I really wasn't too worried, but it showed in ways that were beyond my control. 

Fast forward to August 30, 2012....my fears were relieved when I delivered a healthy baby boy and heard his first cries!!  Again, the Lord shows me that He is trustworthy and I am confident I would be able to say that today even if my fears had come true!!!  Beautiful little Allen Christopher has joined our family and we know that we are blessed!!  Praise the Lord!!

Update in Pictures

Swimming with cousins

Father's Day 2012

Olivia helping Isaiah make cookies

My princess

We flew to Destin with some of our Bible Study group

Big and pregnant on the beach

Great friends

Good food at Pompano Joe's

Emma went to Big Splash Adventure in French Lick with friends

Enjoying the lazy river with great buddies

Just a week later our family went to Big Splash Adventure and had a great time!!

Having fun waiting for the city fireworks!

Praying during our 1 year celebration of Family Bible Church

Enjoying cake and cookies after the service

First night in the new bed!!  The girls were so excited to share a room and have a bunk bed!!

Pensacola Beach 2012

I realized it has been a long time since I have updated the blog; so here it goes!!  We recently finished school and we decided to go on a family vacation before my pregnancy got too far along.  So a couple of weeks ago we went down to Pensacola Beach, Florida and stayed a week.  Our family really needed the time away to just relax and enjoy each other.  I think it will be easiest to "tell" you about our trip through pictures!!

View from the condo

Fort Pickens

National Aviation Museum

Ryan caught a crab on the beach