Is It Not I

Baby Gussy Update: Hearing Aids, Vision Improvement, and Fundraising, Oh My!!

2012-02-21T13:37:00.000-08:00

"Mamma, Can I just say this camera business is getting a little old!"

Wowza! It's been a while since I sat down and really updated everyone about Gussy! I know I need to be a bit better about this and I really will try harder! So much has been going on since Mr. A's Last surgery! The improvements he has been making are amazing! Glory to God! He is now able to keep his food in his tummy! Yay God! And he's growing now!!! Yay God!!!! Within weeks of being home his little puddin' head grew 4 cm!! 4 cm!!!! That is FABULOUS!!!! But even more fabulous then that, His little chest is sooooo much flatter than it was! Already!!!! His respiratory status has improved AMAZINGLY so!! As a matter of fact, (Are you ready for this?) he's doing so much better with his breathing that we have been able to, for now at least, stop using our night nursing!!!! YAY GOD!! We loved our nurses but it has been soooo very good for our family to be able to have our space again for a while!! We also made our way back to church last Sunday!!! Oh what a blessing it was to be fed spiritually!!! Praise God!!!

The day we have been waiting ever so (kinda, sorta) patiently for has arrived!!! Gussy got his hearing aids! WOW, WOW,WOW!! What a difference! As soon as he had them in, I said hello to him and he turned and looked at me in wonder! It was a precious moment that I won't forget any time soon! I wasn't able to get the first encounter with hearing aids on film but I was able to get a later, super cute moment on film! My cup runneth over y'all, my cup runneth over!

It seems as though the most common question we get is about Baby A's vision. We are thrilled to report that the improvements in that area are PHENOMINAL!! So good as a matter of fact that his therpists now say "He is such a good tracker!" If only the old therapists who saw him when his eyes were still fixed and dialted could see him now!! It's one thing that they don't even really work on now because he does it so well! YAY GOD!! Because it was always a matter of how his brain interpreted what his eyes were seeing, we didn't know what would happen. It can go one of two ways; that pathway will form or it won't. IT DID!!! YAY GOD! We are happy to report that his vision is in pretty darn good shape!! Glory to God!

We've also been working on fundraising for a very promising therapy in Los Angeles, California. It's a three week intensive therapy program called Cuevas Medek Exercise or CME along with Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy or HBOT. You can check out our "Help Gussy Get Therapy" Page to learn more about our fundraising efforts and the therapies we are hoping to do!! We are so thankful for all of the support we have recieved! Financial, spiritual, and emotional! We are surrounded by amazing people who have truly showed us the love of Christ! Please keep praying for us! We have been so blessed by all of the prayers that are being said on our behalf!

Living In His Mercy,

The Tannehill's

It's New Years Eve and I'm a party animal!

Sometimes A Song Says It All...

2012-01-02T22:12:00.000-08:00

There are times and circumstances in your life that, at one time, you would think would put you in a place where your prayers would be so detailed and long. I have found just the opposite is true for me. Most of the time I find myself just blustering on not saying a whole lot. I was listening to one of my favorite singers tonight and realized one of his songs is pretty darn close to a lot of my prayers these days. It is simple yet moves me in a way I couldn't explain, even if I were to try to attempt it.

Thank the Lord that He has given us promises in His Word that give comfort when I would other wise feel inadequate to come before Him!

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. ²⁷ And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.

Romans 8:26-27

Living In His Mercy,

The Tannehill's

Baby Augustus Update... Surgery

2011-12-27T13:27:00.000-08:00

Brother Matching time!! YAY for brothers!

I want to start today by telling you about what my heart is praising God for this beautiful Christmas season....

1. He is Good!

2. Although He has allowed more hardship, pain, and uncertainty, to come our way, He has also been blessing us ridiculously so continually.

New PJ's on christmas eve!

3. Our WHOLE family enjoyed a beautiful Christmas day TOGETHER!! HUGE PRAISE!

4. He has drawn us so much closer to Himself which makes everything more than worth it! If you have ever doubted that God uses hard times to clear your eyes, I would love to share my testimony of that with you!

5. He is good!

6. Luke is working!

7. He has surrounded us with truly selfless people. I am so grateful!

That flash is tripping me out Mamma!

8. Although our life at this time is uncertain, our hope in Him *is* certain!

5'400'586'946. He is good!!!

Thank you for letting me just get that out there. Whenever I have updates that aren't as wonderful as some, I always feel as though I am not getting across the fact that God is soooo very good!

I love my sister and she loves me! Such a blessing!

Such a fun therapy video!

So, it's not my favorite news but we are headed to Spokane on January 5th for surgery number three. Unfortunately, Mr. A's Fundoplication (tummy wrap) has failed. Which means he is now able to vomit and reflux. And sadly the news from his pulmonary doctor was worse. It probably failed a while back because his lungs have taken a beating and he has likely been aspirating small amounts for a while. His chest is "barreled" out and his diaphragm is flattened. This means he is working very hard to breath and if it is not taken care of soon his lungs could fail. The fact that he sweats a lot while sleeping already means he is working pretty darn hard at breathing which is also affecting his growth because of calorie burn verses intake. All of this is hard to take in but I am so thankful he said we could schedule for after Christmas!!!! Praise God! It was a special day for us all!

Thank you all for your continued prayers and support! We don't know how long Gussy and I will have to stay but we are praying he does well and we can be home bound again soon!

Craziness at the Tannehill house!

Living In His Mercy,

The Tannehill Family

Praise God From Whom All Blessing Flow!!

2011-12-05T07:26:00.000-08:00

It's the little things in life that God blesses us with that just blow me away! This past week has brought some really fun and useful joys!

On Wednesday night I asked Luke to pick up Hand Sanitizer and Toilet Paper the next day after work because we were almost out of both. Thursday he calls me and tells me that one of the suppliers he delivers to, "Crown Paper", heard about Augustus and wanted to "help out". This is what Luke came home with! WOW!! He brought home a professional hand sanitizer dispenser and 6 huge bags to fill it, along with a case of small bottles of sanitizer, and two very big boxes of toilet paper, paper towels, and tissue! It never stops blowing me away when God provides small things so randomly! Thank you Father!

We were also very blessed by the Richland Police Department and Walmart this past weekend. A very sweet friend from church, who happens to be a police officer, signed our family up for the police departments "Shop with Cop" event. Thank you Officer Roe! The children got to go to Walmart bright and early this past weekend and have breakfast with the Police Officers right before they were each given a $100.00 gift card and an Officer to take them Christmas shopping for their family! They got to shop and then wrap their presents, and even sit on Santa's lap and get a present for themselves from Santa! It was such a huge blessing and so very fun for them! They are so excited to have all of these presents under the tree that they shopped for and wrapped! God is so good and I am just feeling very blessed by the out pour of love to our family this Christmas Season!

The "Shop With Cop" event was on the news and a couple of the littles were on :)

Living In His Mercy,

The Tannehill's

Please Help!

2011-11-17T15:08:00.000-08:00

Meet Maggie!

This sweet little girl is the daughter of one of the moms in my support group for children with HIE (Hypoxic Ischemic Encephalopathy). She needs your help! This won't take you long and it would mean so much to them! Sweet little Maggie is not doing so well and all this family wants is to take her home to meet her family in Illinois. Please, after reading her story, follow the link and nominate her for help in every way they have posted! ! It costs you nothing and would mean the world to them! Please, if you have been touched by watching Augustus' fight, please help them in this small way!
Help Maggie!

Maggie's story taken from her page.....

Maggie Roberts is a 7 month old baby girl who is not long for this world. Due to complications she was born 6 weeks premature and sustained severe brain damage. Her short life has heart-breakingly been lived from surgery to surgery, connected to tubes and wires 24 hours a day. Her mother and father have given up everything to stay by her side and help her hold onto life, but she has been slipping these past months.

Maggie's Parents, Houng and Derek Roberts, are originally from Rockford, Illinois but moved to Ogden, Utah when Huong was offered a teaching job. With Maggie being born so premature due to a placental abruption, her mother Huong had to undergo an emergency cesarean, and then was put into a medically induced coma to help her heal from it. She underwent a hysterectomy to save her life and suffered organ failure. Thankfully, Huong was only in a coma for a month and a half and has recovered better than expected, but they will now never be able to have children. Maggie is their first and will be their only child.

Presently, Maggie is at home in Ogden, Utah with her parents, but they do not have any family here and their family cannot afford to all fly out to be with them during this challenging time.

All that her parents want now is to take her home to Illinois and surround her with family and love during her first...and last Thanksgiving and Christmas. Due to her delicate condition she would not survive traditional transport. What we are asking for her and her parents' behalf is help in finding her a way home. She needs to be transported in a specially equipped plane or helicopter. Airlines will not allow her to travel with the amount of oxygen she will need.

She has been denied by Make A Wish Foundation because she is under the age of 2 1/2.

We have sent multiple emails to media sources and entered her into the Home for Thanksgiving contest being presented by Ellen at http://www.ellentv.com/

We encourage you to contact media, enter her into the contest on Ellen's site again, and any other resources you may be aware of in helping us find her a specially equipped transport home. Even if you email Oprah or share this with your friends...you are helping.

Although we are not requesting monetary donations, if you would like to donate to assist the Roberts family it is graciously accepted. Paypal donations can be sent to: HelpMaggieRoberts@gmail.com

100% of All donations go directly to the Roberts family.

Thank you so much for reading this.

What's Your Problem?

2011-11-16T09:23:00.000-08:00

Moses said to the LORD, "O Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue."

~Exodus 4:10~

I was told about Pastor David Bell by a friend while in the hospital with Augustus. It was so incredibly encouraging to see what God has done in his life! I remember crying when I saw him with his beautiful wife and four beautiful children. Not just any cry, but you know, the "whole face cries" kinda cry. What an amazing testament God has made of him! Against what life told him, he is married, he has a beautiful family, and he is an active *PARTICIPANT* in God's work! Many would say he is "the kind" that we as Christians need to serve and minister to. It is true that we should serve those with disabilities, but he turned his face toward the living God and decided he would serve and minister to us!

So, I thought I would share my morning beat down with you all.... You're welcome *giggle giggle*

"I have Cerebral Palsy, what's your problem?"

~David Bell~

From David Bell's "About Me"...

Few individuals have felt the crushing blows that have besieged David Ring since birth. He was born to lose. On October 28th, 1953, in Jonesboro, Arkansas, David was born with Cerebral Palsy. Orphaned at age 14, he was cast about from family to family with nowhere to call home. He endured constant physical pain, humiliating public ridicule and constant discouragement. Yet in the face of these seemingly insurmountable obstacles, David emerged not victimized…but victorious!

Life was worse than hopeless to him until his relationship began with Jesus Christ who taught him self-respect and acceptance of his physical challenges. To most, physical challenges of this magnitude would prove to be a tombstone. For David Ring, this coming of age was and remains a milestone. You’ve never heard a speaker quite like David Ring. Although difficult to understand at first, you will soon find yourself captured by his quick wit and warm personality.
Whether giving a motivational message at a sales convention, or inspiring church leaders, David always focuses on an individual’s need to conquer the personal challenges an adversities of life. As you hear David Ring, you will laugh…and cry. You will be amazed at his triumph over odds. You will be moved to consider your own life. As one who has not been stifled by his physical limitations, he clearly stakes his challenge to everyone. “I have Cerebral Palsy–what’s your problem?”

As a nationally known speaker since 1973, David shares his story with over 100,000 people each year at churches, conventions, schools and corporate events. He has been featured on numerous occasions on several nationally televised programs.
David’s book Just As I Am, (Moody Press, Chicago, IL) tells about his heartaches and victories, and addresses the central theme of his life: “Triumph Over Odds.”
David and his wife, Karen, make their home in Nashville, Tennessee. They are the parents of four children, April, Ashley, Nathan and Amy Joy.

Living in His Mercy,

The Tannehill's

Home With Mr. A!

2011-11-15T16:09:00.000-08:00

Yep, I'm sleepy!

Outside Fun!

The LORD said to him, "Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the LORD?

~Exodus 4:11~

I set out this morning to create a new blog for updating everyone on life with Mr. A, which I have been horrible at and do apologize! I came here to my blog "Is It Not I" and tears flooded my eyes as I read the top which stated one of my all time favorite verses. It was such a blatant reminder to me that He knows my name, He knows my life from beginning to end. You see, this verse was always a favorite of mine because whenever I read it I saw the great power and strength of our God! I always imagined God using a stern, loud, Father, voice with Moses, here. One of those "how dare you question my plan" voices! I always thought it was so great! That is not the reason it brought tears to my eyes this time and not the reason it re-inserted it's self back into my life as a strong voice in my head....

Daddy Love!

Mr. A's first outing to the Pumpkin Patch!

He knew before I was knit together in my mother's womb that I would be the mother of Mr. Augustus. "WHO makes him deaf or mute??" "WHO gives him sight or makes him blind?" "IS IT NOT I, THE LORD!?!? Our God loves us so much He gives us encouragement before we even know we need it! What a MIGHTY God we serve, AMEN!? I want to explain a little further the significance of this verse in our life. You see, Mr. Augustus has been diagnosed as deaf and with Cortical Visual Blindness. This has been a hard diagnosis for me and one I have not spoken of too much because of the pain I feel when I think that my sweet baby boy has to deal with these invasive medical interventions without the use of those senses to ease that discomfort. But what a comfort to be reminded of Who chose these things for Mr. A! I don't know a whole lot at this point of my life. Tomorrow is uncertain for us. But this I do know; how dare I question the goodness of God's plan for my life, for Baby Auggie's life, for all of our children's life! This IS His plan for us. What Satan would love to use for evil, God WILL use for good! To this I am certain.

You need a kiss!

For this reason I have decided to keep my "old blog" instead of creating a new one. God knew what life would bring and He set us up accordingly. From now on I will be updating about Baby A. here.

Sister Love time!

I have prayed and thought much about what I would say when I updated everyone this time. There are great days and days that are hard to stay afloat. I have days that I recognize the ever present Lord so powerfully in this place, and days that I focus more on the enemy of my soul and what he is trying to accomplish. However, I praise God, Who's Joy is my strength, for reminding me of the truth that is my future and the truth that is the great adversaries future!! These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. ~John 16:33~ My future is bright! His is not. OUR GOD HAS OVERCOME THE WORLD! Can I tell you that if you have Jesus be of good cheer, Your Savior has overcome every trial you have or will face?! Can I tell you that if you do not have Jesus to turn from your sin and repent for there is a Great and Mighty God who loves YOU and sent His only Son to pay the debt for every wrong doing you have ever and will ever do?! This is a gift! No payment necessary! He wins and when you have Him, YOU win! I am not sure of much, but to this I am sure!

Masked bandit stopping fro some love!

Oh, how I love you!

I mentioned that Augustus has been diagnosed with hearing loss. We went to the Audiologist today for an in depth screening to tell us if his hearing is something that can be corrected or if it is permanent. As disappointing as the results were, we are ready to accept them. Augustus is completely deaf in one ear and very severely impaired in the other ear. Now, that being said, he also showed that he had a lot of fluid in his middle ear. So we have been referred to an Ear, Nose and Throat doctor. Once the fluid gets drained we are praying that he has some degree of hearing return. The audiologist told us that with the severity of his hearing loss it is unlikely that his hearing will return to normal but it can definitely help bring some of his hearing back. They were going to fit him with a hearing aid today but decided to wait until he sees the ENT so he can be fit with the correct settings right away. We have been learning sign language and Praise God, it seems to be coming naturally to everyone in the house, so far. We were told about a video series called "Signing Time" that we will be ordering soon. It is suppose to be fun and easy to learn from. Praise! I am also very excited to have learned that there is a "Community center for the Deaf" here, and that most of them offer what is called a "Deaf Mentor", which is a mentor who comes to your home and teaches your family ASL (American Sign :Language). So Praise, Praise, Praise! God always provides! Another huge praise in this area is that Augustus has made such amazing improvement with his upper extremities! The therapists says that his movement with is upper extremities is normal looking and actually seems quite good! I was so happy to hear this because I thought the same thing and it is sometimes difficult to get Doctors and Therapists on the same page as you. One reason this is such a huge praise is this means he has a much better chance of being able to use sign language himself! I have been praying so much that if he is deaf God would give him use of his arms and the ability to sign.

Couch Potatoes!

CVB (Cortical Visual Blindness) is a type of blindness that does not affect the eyes but is a result of a brain injury. I was not aware of this prior to Mr. A, but the whole brain is used in the seeing process as opposed to just one part that sees. There are many pathways throughout your brain that play a part in the seeing process. If there is damage in the middle of one of those pathways it interrupts that seeing process. This means a few things. 1. Augustus can see some things. 2. The brain *can* form new pathways if it so chooses. And 3. Therapy and stimulation of these pathways can aid in that process. His eyes are good, it is an issue of how the brain interprets what the eyes see. The great news is that he has already made some huge improvements with seeing. Praise God! We live in a time with many bright and stimulating toys and videos so we have tools all around us! Praise!

I love you too Mr. Glow Worm.

The next thing we get many questions about is Augustus' ability to eat and will he ever eat. The answer in short, is we don't know. We have found some wonderful therapies and we are very excited about the prospect of good results but all we can really say is that it is in our Father's Hands.

I love all of you so much and I can not even come close to expressing how much your love, support, and prayers mean to us! I promise I will try my best to update you more often than I have been. I also want you all to know that questions do not offend or upset us in any way. We are more than happy to answer any of your questions. So many of you have been emotionally invested in our journey and we want you to know that we appreciate you all so much!

Could therapy be any funner?

There are days when all I can do is fall to my knees and beg God for mercy. I am in no way strong, courageous, or good, but I serve a big God! If you gain nothing else from watching Augustus' journey from death to life, I hope that you know that there *is* a God and He is mighty to save!

Oh yeah!

Living In His Mercy,

The Tannehill's

The Psychopathic School

2011-06-10T13:28:00.000-07:00

This is taken from John Taylor Gatto's book, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

This speech was given by the author on 31 January 1990 in accepting an award from the New York State Senate naming him New York City Teacher of the Year.

I accept this award on behalf of all the fine teachers I've known over the years who've struggled to make their transactions with children honorable ones, men and women who were never complacent, always questioning, always wrestling to define and redefine what the word "education" should mean. A Teacher of the Year is not the best teacher around (those people are too quiet to be easily uncovered), but she or he is a standard-bearer, representative of these private people who spend their lives gladly in the service of children. This is their award as well as mine.
1 . We live in a time of great school crisis linked to an even greater social crisis. Our nation ranks at the bottom of nineteen industrial nations in reading, writing, and arithmetic. At the very bottom. The world's narcotic economy is based upon our consumption of this commodity; if we didn't buy so many powdered dreams the business would collapse - and schools are an important sales outlet. Our teenage suicide rate is the highest in the world, and suicidal kids are rich kids for the most part, not the poor. In Manhattan, seventy percent of all new marriages last less than five years. So something is wrong for sure.
This great crisis which we witness in our schools is interlinked with a greater social crisis in the community. We seem to have lost our identity. Children and old people are penned up and locked away from the business of the world to a degree without precedent; nobody talks to them anymore, and without children and old people mixing in daily life; a community has no future and no past, only a continuous present. In fact the name "community" hardly applies to the way we interact with each other. We live in networks, not communities, and everyone I know is lonely because of that. School is a major actor in this tragedy, as it is a major actor in the widening gulf among social classes. Using school as a sorting mechanism, we appear to be on the way to creating a caste system, complete with untouchables who wander through subway trains begging and who sleep upon the streets.
I've noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my twenty-five years of teaching: that schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools, as teachers and aides and administrators, but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions. Although teachers do care and do work very, very hard, the institution is psychopathic; it has no conscience. It rings a bell and the young man in the middle of writing a poem must close his notebook and move to a different cell where he must memorize that humans and monkeys derive from a common ancestor.
2 . Our form of compulsory schooling is an invention of the State of Massachusetts around 1850. It was resisted - sometimes with guns - by an estimated eighty percent of the Massachusetts population, the last outpost in Barnstable on Cape Cod not surrendering its children until the 1880s, when the area was seized by militia and children marched to school under guard.
Now here is a curious idea to ponder. Senator Ted Kennedy's office released a paper not too long ago that prior to compulsory education the state literacy rate was ninety-eight percent, and after it the figure never exceeded ninety-one percent, where it stands in 1990.
Here is another curiosity to think about. The home-schooling movement has quietly grown to a size where one and half million young people are being educated entirely by their own parents; last month the education press reported the amazing news that children schooled at home seem to be five or even ten years ahead of their formally trained peers in their ability to think.
3. 1 don't think we'll get rid of schools any time soon, certainly not in my lifetime, but if we're going to change what's rapidly becoming a disaster of ignorance, we need to realize that the school institution "schools" very well, though it does not "educate;" that's inherent in the design of the thing. It's not the fault of bad teachers or too little money spent. It's just impossible for education and schooling ever to be the same thing.
Schools were designed by Horace Mann and by Sears and Harper of the University of Chicago and by Thorndyke of Columbia Teachers College and by some other men to be instruments of the scientific management of a mass population. Schools are intended to produce, through the application of formulas, formulaic human beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled.
To a very great extent schools succeed in doing this, but in a national order increasingly disintegrated, in a national order in which the only "successful" people are independent, self-reliant, confident, and individualistic (because community life which protects the dependent and the weak is dead and only networks remain), the products of schooling are, as I've said, irrelevant. Well-schooled people are irrelevant. They can sell film and razor blades, push paper and talk on telephones, or sit mindlessly before a flickering computer terminal, but as human beings they are useless. Useless to others and useless to themselves.
The daily misery around us is, I think, in large measure caused by the fact that, as Paul Goodman put it thirty years ago, we force children to grow up absurd. Any reform in schooling has to deal with its absurdities.
It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to sit in confinement with people of exactly the same age and social class. That system effectively cuts you off from the immense diversity of life and the synergy of variety; indeed it cuts you off from your own past and future, sealing you in a continuous present much the same way television does.
It is absurd and anti-life to move from cell to cell at the sound of a gong for every day of your natural youth in an institution that allows you no privacy and even follows you into the sanctuary of your home demanding that you do its "homework."
"How will they learn to read?" you ask, and my answer is "Remember the lessons of Massachusetts." When children are given whole lives instead of age-graded ones in cellblocks they learn to read, write, and do arithmetic with ease, if those things make sense in the kind of life that unfolds around them.
But keep in mind that in the United States almost nobody who reads, writes, or does arithmetic gets much respect. We are a land of talkers; we pay talkers the most and admire talkers the most and so our children talk constantly, following the public models of television and schoolteachers. It is very difficult to teach the "basics" anymore because they really aren't basic to the society we've made.
4. Two institutions at present control our children's lives: television and schooling, in that order. Both of these reduce the real world of wisdom, fortitude, temperance, and justice to a never-ending, nonstop abstraction. In centuries past, the time of childhood and adolescence would have been occupied in real work, real charity, real adventures, and the realistic search for mentors who might teach what you really wanted to learn. A great deal of time was spent in community pursuits, practicing affection, meeting and studying every level of the community, learning how to make a home, and dozens of other tasks necessary to becoming a whole man or woman.
But here is the calculus of time the children I teach must deal with:

Out of the 168 hours in each week my children sleep 56. That leaves them 112 hours a week out of which to fashion a self. According to recent reports children watch 55 hours of television a week. That then leaves them 57 hours a week in which to grow up.
My children attend school 30 hours a week, use about 8 hours getting ready for and traveling to and from school, and spend an average of 7 hours a week in homework - a total of 45 hours. During that time they are under constant surveillance. They have no private time or private space and are disciplined if they try to assert individuality in the use of time or space. That leaves them 12 hours a week out of which to create a unique consciousness. Of course my kids eat, too, and that takes some time - not much because they've lost the tradition of family dining - but if we allot 3 hours a week to evening meals we arrive at a net amount of private time for each child of 9 hours per week.

It's not enough, is it? The richer the kid, of course, the less television he or she watches, but the rich kid's time is just as narrowly prescribed by a somewhat broader catalogue of commercial entertainments and the inevitable assignment to a series of private lessons in areas seldom of his or her own choice. But these activities are just a more cosmetic way to create dependent human beings, unable to fill their own hours, unable to initiate lines of meaning to give substance and pleasure to their existence. It's a national disease, this dependency and aimlessness, and I think schooling and television and lessons have a lot to do with it.
Think of the phenomena which are killing us as a nation - narcotic drugs, brainless competition, recreational sex, the pornography of violence, gambling, and alcohol, and the worst pornography of all: lives devoted to buying things, accumulation as a philosophy -all of these are addictions of dependent personalities, and this is what our brand of schooling must inevitably produce.
5. I want to tell you what the effect on our children is of taking all their time from them - time they need to grow up - and forcing them to spend it on abstractions.You need to hear this because any reform that doesn't attack these specific pathologies will be nothing more than a facade.

1. The children I teach are indifferent to the adult world. This defies the experience of thousands of years. A close study of what big people were up to was always the most exciting occupation of youth, but nobody wants children to grow up these days, least of all the children: and who can blame them? Toys are us. 2. The children I teach have almost no curiosity, and what little they do have is transitory. They cannot concentrate for very long, even on things they choose to do. Can you see a connection between the bells ringing again and again to change classes and this phenomenon of evanescent attention?
3. The children I teach have a poor sense of the future, of how tomorrow is inextricably linked to today. As I said before, they live in a continuous present, the exact moment they are in is the boundary of their consciousness.
4. The children I teach are ahistorical; they have no sense of how the past has predestinated their own present, limiting their choices, shaping their values and lives.
5. The children I teach are cruel to each other; they lack compassion for misfortune; they laugh at weakness: they have contempt for people whose need for help shows too plainly.
6. The children I teach are uneasy with intimacy or candor. They cannot deal with genuine intimacy because of a lifelong habit of preserving a secret inner self inside a larger outer personality made up of artificial bits and pieces of behavior borrowed from television or acquired to manipulate teachers. Because they are not who they represent themselves to be, the disguise wears thin in the presence of intimacy; so intimate relationships have to be avoided.
7. The children I teach are materialistic, following the lead of schoolteachers who materialistically "grade everything' and television mentors who offer everything in the world for sale.
8. The children I teach are dependent, passive, and timid in the presence of new challenges. This timidity is frequently masked by surface bravado, or by anger or aggressiveness, but underneath is a vacuum without fortitude.

I could name a few other conditions that school reform will have to tackle if our national decline is to be arrested, but by now you will have grasped my thesis, whether you agree with it or not. Either schools have caused these pathologies, or television has, or both. It's a simple matter of arithmetic - between schooling and television, all the time the children have is eaten up. There simply isn't enough other time in the experience of our kids for there to be other significant causes. 6. What can be done?
First, we need a ferocious national debate that doesn't quit, day after day, year after year, the kind of continuous debate that journalism finds boring. We need to scream and argue about this school thing until it is fixed or broken beyond repair, one or the other. If we can fix it, fine; if we cannot, then the success of home-schooling shows a different road that has great promise. Pouring the money we now pour into schooling back into family education might cure two ailments with one medicine, repairing families as it repairs children.
Genuine reform is possible but it shouldn't cost anything. More money and more people pumped into this sick institution will only make it sicker. We need to rethink the fundamental premises of schooling and decide what it is we want all children to learn and why. For 140 years this nation has tiled to impose objectives downward from a lofty command center made up of "experts," a central elite of social engineers. It hasn't worked. It won't work. And it is a gross betrayal of the democratic promise that once made this nation a noble experiment. The Russian attempt to create Plato's republic in Eastern Europe has exploded before our eyes; our own attempt to impose the same sort of central orthodoxy using the schools as an instrument is also coming apart at the seams, albeit more slowly and painfully. It doesn't work because its fundamental premises are mechanical, antihuman, and hostile to family life. Lives can be controlled by machine education but they will always fight back with weapons of social pathology: drugs, violence, self-destruction, indifference, and the symptoms I see in the children I teach.
7. It's high time we looked backwards to regain an educational philosophy that works. One I like particularly well has been a favorite of the ruling classes of Europe for thousands of years. I use as much of it as I can manage in my own teaching, as much, that is, as I can get away with, given the present institution of compulsory schooling. I think it works just as well for poor children as for rich ones.
At the core of this elite system of education is the belief that self-knowledge is the only basis of true knowledge. Everywhere in this system, at every age, you will find arrangements that work to place the child alone in an unguided setting with a problem to solve. Sometimes the problem is fraught with great risks, such as the problem of galloping a horse or malting it jump, but that, of course, is a problem successfully solved by thousands of elite children before the age of ten. Can you imagine anyone who had mastered such a challenge ever lacking confidence in his ability to do anything? Sometimes the problem is the problem of mastering solitude, as Thoreau did at Walden Pond, or Einstein did in the Swiss customs house.
Right now we are taking from our children all the time that they need to develop self-knowledge. That has to stop. We have to invent school experiences that give a lot of that time back. We need to trust children from a very early age with independent study, perhaps arranged in school, but which takes place away from the institutional setting. We need to invent curricula where each kid has a chance to develop private uniqueness and self-reliance.
A short time ago I took $70 and sent a twelve-year-old girl from my class, with her non-English-speaking mother, on a bus down the New Jersey coast to take the police chief of Seabright to lunch and apologize for polluting his beach with a discarded Gatorade bottle. In exchange for this public apology I had arranged with the police chief for the girl to have a one-day apprenticeship in small town police procedures. A few days later two more of my twelve-year-old kids traveled alone from Harlem to West Thirty-first street where they began an apprenticeship with a newspaper editor; later three of my kids found themselves in the middle of the Jersey swamps at six in the morning, studying the mind of a trucking company president as he dispatched eighteen-wheelers to Dallas, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
Are these "special" children in a "special" program? Well, in one sense yes, but nobody knows about this program but myself and the kids. They're just nice kids from central Harlem, bright and alert, but so badly schooled when they came to me that most of them couldn't add or subtract with any fluency. And not a single one knew the population of New York City or how far New York is from California.
Does that worry me? Of course; but I am confident that as they gain self-knowledge they'll also become self-teachers - and only self-teaching has any lasting value.
We've got to give kids independent time right away because that is the key to self-knowledge, and we must reinvolve them with the real world as fast as possible so that the independent time can be spent on something other than abstraction. This is an emergency; it requires drastic action to correct.
8. What else does a restructured school system need? It needs to stop being a parasite on the working community. Of all the pages in the human ledger, only our tortured country has warehoused children and asked nothing of them in service of the general good. For a while I think we need to make community service a required part of schooling. Besides the experience in acting unselfishly that it will teach, it is the quickest way to give young children real responsibility in the mainstream of life.
For five years I ran a guerrilla school program where I had every kid, rich and poor, smart and dipsy, give 320 hours a year of hard community service. Dozens of those kids came back to me years later, grown up, and told me that the experience of helping someone else had changed their lives. It had taught them to see in new ways, to rethink goals and values. It happened when they were thirteen, in my Lab School program, and was only possible because my rich school district was in chaos. When "stability" returned, the Lab closed. It was too successful with a widely mixed group of kids, at too small a cost, to be allowed to continue.
Independent study, community service, adventures and experience, large doses of privacy and solitude, a thousand different apprenticeships, the one-day variety or longer - these are all powerful, cheap, and effective ways to start a real reform of schooling. But no large-scale reform is ever going to work to repair our damaged children and our damaged society until we force open the idea of "school to include family as the main engine of education. If we use schooling to break children away from parents - and make no mistake, that has been the central function of schools since John Cotton announced it as the purpose of the Bay Colony schools in 1650 and Horace Mann announced it as the purpose of Massachusetts schools in 1850 - we're going to continue to have the horror show we have right now.
The "Curriculum of Family" is at the heart of any good life. We've gotten away from that curriculum; it's time to return to it. The way to sanity in education is for our schools to take the lead in releasing the stranglehold of institutions on family life, to promote during schooltime confluences of parent and child that will strengthen family bonds. That was my real purpose in sending the girl and her mother down the Jersey coast to meet the police chief.
I have many ideas for formulating a family curriculum and my guess is that a lot of you have many ideas, too. Our greatest problem in getting the kind of grassroots thinking going that could reform schooling is that we have large, vested interests preempting all the air time and profiting from schooling as it is, despite rhetoric to the contrary.
We have to demand that new voices and new ideas get a hearing, my ideas and yours. We've all had a bellyful of authorized voices mediated by television and the press; a decade-long free-for-all debate is what is called for now, not any more "expert" opinions. Experts in education have never been right; their "solutions" are expensive, self-serving, and always involve further centralization. We've seen the results.
If s time for a return to democracy, individuality, and family.

Mr. Gatto climaxed his teaching career as New York State Teacher of the Year after being named New York City Teacher of the Year on three occasions. He quit teaching on the OP ED page of the Wall Street Journal in 1991 while still New York State Teacher of the Year, claiming that he was no longer willing to hurt children. Later that year he was the subject of a show at Carnegie Hall called "An Evening With John Taylor Gatto," which launched a career of public speaking in the area of school reform, which has taken Gatto over a million and a half miles in all fifty states and seven foreign countries. In 1992, he was named Secretary of Education in the Libertarian Party Shadow Cabinet, and he has been included in Who's Who in America from 1996 on. In 1997, he was given the Alexis de Tocqueville Award for his contributions to the cause of liberty, and was named to the Board of Advisors of the National TV-Turnoff Week.

Mr. Gatto's books include: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992); The Exhausted School (1993); A Different Kind of Teacher (2000); and The Underground History Of American Education (2001)

Encouraging Words

2011-06-10T13:09:00.000-07:00

When the enemy of your soul slaps you around

and knocks you down and says,

“Why don’t you just stay down this time?”

The Hand with great wounds reaches down and lifts you up,

and the Lover of your soul whispers in your ear so only you can hear,

“I got this.”

He defends the weak and heals the broken

and knows there is infinitely more to your story.

- Geoff Ludlo-

Almost Wordless Wednesday

2011-06-08T18:35:00.000-07:00

4 little puddin' heads

Time Savin' Mama: Freezer Waffles

2011-06-07T08:45:00.000-07:00

With Pregnancies progressing, babies to nurse, schooling to be done, and meals to prepare, how many of us Mama folk couldn't use time saving tips? I am a time cruncher I like to get all my chores done in the most productive way possible so I do all sorts of shortcut work to help cut down on time when I'm feeling tired or overwhelmed with my day.

One of the things I do that my family loves and saves a ton of time in the long run is what I call "waffle weeks". My whole family enjoys it and when I'm feeling icky from being pregnant my husband has a yummy breakfast he can pop in the microwave or toaster before work! Plus, even the children can "make waffles" if need be.

What you'll need

10 lbs pancake/waffle mix. I buy mine as the cost is pretty similar and it's just one thing I like to do easy.
Waffle iron
Wax paper
Freezer
Gallon size baggies

How to do it

Now there is a reason that I call it "waffle week" and not just waffle day etc. starting Monday morning I get a large mixing bowl and make enough batter to fill it. I heat up my waffle iron and start making waffles. I will make make them until it is all gone. We eat as they are prepared and with the remaining I stack them on a cookie sheet dividing the layers with wax paper.

After which I put them in the freezer until the next morning.

The next morning I bag up the frozen waffles and start all over again. I do this all week until the mix is gone. By the end of the week we have a good supply of ready to heat waffles for whenever breakfast needs to be fast or someone (A.K.A. Mama) doesn't feel particularly keen on making breakfast quite yet.

Happy Waffle Making!

Welcome to the Homestead: The Chicken Coop is Almost Done!

2011-06-03T10:50:00.000-07:00

Not a whole lot to say on the matter but wanted to share the progress and the super cutie who was "helping".


Daddy stops to play peek-a-boo with Ellie and show Mama	the door to fetch eggs

Daddy pleeeeeease!

Ellie sitting in her roost

"Hey, come back Daddy!'


"Look Mama, Daddy made a seat just for me! "

I will post more as it gets finished!

Eight Years

2011-06-02T07:23:00.000-07:00

This beautiful little one has given us eight years of wonderful. How can it have been eight years already? Eight years since my life was to change forever. Eight years since the day I would forever see the world in a different light. Eight years since the day I would no longer care for my selfish ambitions. Eight years since the day God reached down into my life and blessed me with a the greatest gift of all; the day I became a mother.

Happy birthday my sweet, sweet Lily! You are loved so very dearly by us! Thank you for eight years of wonderful!

Tiny handprints grow so fast
Their awkward groping soon will clasp
A ball, a book, a sweetheart's hand,
A diploma, breifcase, wedding band.

Tiny handprints grow so strong
It doesn't take them very long
To snap a shirt, to paint, to draw,
To labor hard, to drive a car.

Tiny handprints grow to be
A person that is quite unique
A wonderful mix of so many things
With her own feelings, thoughts and dreams.

Tiny handprints grow to rely
On her parents to bring her up just right
Her parents pray that when she's grown
She'll say their job has been well done.

Tiny handprints are ours to love

The sweetest gift from God above

A miracle that never is surpassed

How sad they grow up way too fast.

Author unknown

Almost Wordless Wednesday

2011-06-01T10:00:00.000-07:00

My little Mama...Ellie-Anne

Welcome to the Homestead: Homemade Ricotta

2011-05-31T11:32:00.000-07:00

I recently discovered how cost affective it was to make your own ricotta cheese rather than buy it! It was incredibly easy and you don't need anything special to make it, just basic ingredients!

What you need

1 Gallon of milk (NOT ultra pasteurized) I've found that Kirkland brand works well.
6 Tbs. Vinegar (or lemon juice but I have not tried lemon juice personally.)
1-2 tsp salt depending on taste.
Cheese cloth
Plain old colander
1 pan of Chocolate Peanut Butter bars (optional but highly recommended)

This can also be halved. I used half a gallon of milk and 3 Tbs. of vinegar the first time and it worked beautifully

How you do it

In a heavy bottomed pan pour in milk

Add salt

Turn to medium heat, if you have a thermometer plop it on in there now. You want it to reach about 180-185 degrees or right before boiling, a soft simmer.

While waiting eat a Chocolate Peanut Butter Bar, or two or three. Oh and stir occasionally so as not to scorch your milk.

In the mean time place cheese cloth, 4 layers thick, in colander. I forgot to take a picture but you get the idea.Once milk reaches desired temperature remove from heat and stir in vinegar.

Stir for a few minutes, you should see it curdling almost right away.

Scoop into cheese cloth lined colander with slotted spoon until all of curdles are in cloth. You can drain the water over after into another pan to use for boiling noodles.

Once all curds are in wrap up and hang. I hang mine from the faucet.

For more creamy ricotta only hang for a minute or for a firm crumbly ricotta for 5-10 minutes.

And there you have it, fresh, homemade, cheap, ricotta! You can refrigerate for up to 2 weeks or use right away. Recipe for the Manicotti that this beautiful batch went into coming soon! Happy cheese making!

A tub with less than this amount in it cost around $2.70-$3.00. A gallon of milk cost $2.00 here. Cheese cloth is also quite cheap and vinegar super cheap. I love homemade ricotta! To see what I did with this beautiful batch check here. Happy cheese making!

Recipalooza: Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars

2011-05-27T08:06:00.000-07:00

If you are a peanut butter fan these are Fab-u-lous! And? Super easy and fun to make!

What you'll need

1 1/4 c. peanut butter
3/4 c. butter softened
3/4 c. brown sugar
3/4 c. white sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 c. flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 1/2 c. oatmeal (quick or old fashioned)
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 tsp. salt
1 recipe of chocolate frosting

How you do it

Heat oven to 350 F.

In a large bowl cream one cup of peanut butter, butter, and both sugars, until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs. Add flour, soda, oats, vanilla, and salt. Mix well.

Spread dough into sprayed 9x13 pan.

Bake for about 15-18 minutes, until edges start to brown.

Remove from oven in a particularly cute way.

Plop dollops of the remaining 1/4 c. of peanut butter on top and return to oven for a few minutes to melt it down.

Remove from oven and spread evenly over bars. Let cool down for about 15 minutes before spreading chocolate frosting over top. Place in refrigerator for 1-2 hours to cool. Cut into bars. ENJOY!

Recipalooza: Easy No-Bake Chocolate Frosting

2011-05-27T08:04:00.000-07:00

Super easy and super yummy! It really speaks for it's self.

What you'll need

1/4 c. butter, melted
1/3 c. cocoa powder
2-2 1/2 Tbs. milk
1/2 tsp. Vanilla
2-3 c. powdered sugar

How you do it

All you do is mix up the first 4 ingredients until well blended and then beat in powdered sugar 1 cup at a time to desired consistency. And Waah-Blam Chocolate frosting!

Even baby Ellie helped...

With the clean-up!

Becoming a Proverbs 31 Women Challenge: Day 2

2011-05-26T08:17:00.000-07:00

Day two of "Becoming a Proverbs 31 Women" challenge is so very important. We live in a time when we are expected to fail in our marriage. Now is the time to lift our husbands up and bring them good to survive the hardship they face.

Day 2: Verse 12

She brings him good, not harm,
all the days of her life.
Proverbs 31: 12

If you did not start with day 1 of the challenge you may go back and read it now or turn to Proverbs 31 in your bible and read the first two verses of the Epilogue: The Wife Of Noble Character, starting in verse 10 of Proverbs 31. You will see that when it says "she brings him good and not harm" it is speaking of a wife and her husband.

She brings him good and not harm ALL the days of her life. What an amazing accomplishment that is! Most of us can't say that we have never brought harm our husbands way, whether through becoming angry and saying things that were hurtful or any other mistake that was not in the best interest of our beloveds. How can we move forward from that and decide now that we will be that wife that brings good and not harm to our husbands all the days of our life?

When you wake up in the morning are you thinking of how you can make your husband have full confidence in you? How you can bring him good that day? I know that there are days when it may feel as though he doesn't deserve it or you may think "he doesn't do anything for me". But if we truly want to model ourselves as a Proverbs 31 women we must look at what it says. It does not say bring him good as he deserves it.

Today my challenge for verse 12 is to transform your thinking, if it is not already there, to know that this is your role as a wife. There are no "buts" or "ifs", if we are to follow God's role for our lives we are to bring our husbands good and not harm all the days of our life.

Here are some practical ways that you can start to transform your thinking to focus on bringing your husband good because that is what God asks of you. For 31 days let us try these and see how our husband can be blessed.

1. Each morning upon waking sit down with your morning cup of coffee or tea and write down 1 thing that you absolutely LOVE about your husband. At the end of the 31 days you will have a good list to refer to when you are upset with your husband.

2. When you see your husband in the morning what is the first thing you usually say to him? How about when you part ways for the day? Or when you come back together at the end of the day? If it does not fall in line with Proverbs 16:24 Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones. Then my challenge to you is make sure that it does. Instead of "don't forget to" or "I need_____ before dinner tonight", make it, "Hi Honey, I hope you have a great day, I love you." Or "I just called to see how you are doing and say I love you." Listen to that Proverb closely as it is very telling. If your marriage is already hurting remember that Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and HEALING TO THE BONES.

3. Pray for your husband at least once a day! This is the most important of these challenges! Our husbands face a world that tells them they will fail every day. If you do not pray for them to be the great spiritual leaders God wants them to be, who will? Our husbands need our prayer. We should be petitioning God every day with great passion to lift up our husbands to be men of God. Men of honor. Men of courage. Men of valor. Our husbands need this!

4. Be your husbands cheerleader. Speak encouraging words to your husband. Proverbs 12:25 says "An anxious heart weighs a man down, but a kind word cheers him up." If your marriage is hurting you need to remember that your husband will pick up on a condescending attitude while doing it. Think of encouraging words that you are saying with sincerity. Encourage your husband to be the men God wants them to be, not the men you want them to be. This is also very important. Sometimes we let our own selfish desires cloud the way we encourage our husbands.

So there is the plan. For 31 days I challenge you to put these four items on your to do list. It is doable and our marriage can only be blessed from it.

I forgot to say on day 1's challenge that I am also memorizing each part of Proverbs 31's Epilogue: The Wife Of Noble Character. I have found , for me, that saying the verse over and over again while doing a task imprints it in my mind. I memorized verses 10-11 while mowing the lawn. Join me in this part so as to always have these words of wisdom imprinted on our minds as wives and mothers. Since I did not add this on day one here is all three verses to memorize. I know you can do it!

~Proverbs 31:10-12~

Becoming a Proverbs 31 Women Challenge: Day 1

2011-05-19T09:12:00.000-07:00

I have been pondering much on what it means to be a "Proverbs 31 women". The character qualities and actions that are necessary. It has been a weight on my mind that this is becoming a lost trait in wives and mothers. I know there are many wives and mothers out there that desire to be the women that is spoken of in these verses. I will be going through each verse of Proverbs 31's "The Wife of Noble Character" and examining what each verse is telling us and how we can become that women. I would like to challenge each of you to do the challenge with me.

Day 1: Verses 10-11

¹⁰ ^[b]A wife of noble character who can find?
She is worth far more than rubies.
¹¹ Her husband has full confidence in her
and lacks nothing of value. ~ Proverbs 31: 10-11

What a statement! What does it mean to have worth far more than rubies? What is God telling us here? If our worth is far above rubies and our husbands have full confidence in us what should that look like in our home? In a day when many of us women have grown up having been told things such as "we can do/be anything we want", or "we deserve to be treated like a princess", or "you do whatever makes you happy", it is easy to forget God's Word and what He tells us...

"We deserve to be treated like a princess" -As sinners, we deserve nothing, all we have is by the grace of God and His tender mercies on us.
"We can do/be anything we want" -Our purpose is to grow to serve God and fulfill His plan for us.
"You do whatever makes you happy" - If we do everything that makes us "happy" we will end up engulfed in sin and selfish desires. Satan loves to tell us what will make us happy but it always ends in hurt and disappointment.

Many women today feel as though they should be pampered and should not have to work in their home. When we grow up hearing the ways of the world and not the ways of God this is fully expected and takes a real conscious effort in order to take on the attitude of serving your family.

So my challenge to you today is to find three ways to help your husband to "have full confidence in you" and make sure he lacks nothing of value.

My Three

Get up each morning before my husband and make sure he has a good, full breakfast before he goes to work.
Ask My husband if there is anything I can do for him at least once a day.
Do a 15 minute tidy up each day before he comes home from work.

I would love if you would share with me what your three things will be. I would love to pray for you on this journey! As we journey to serve the Lord and our families may we lift each other up and pray for each other.

The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down. ~Proverbs 14:1

Holding On For Dear Life

2011-05-19T09:10:00.000-07:00

How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever?
         How long will You hide Your face from me?
How long shall I take counsel in my soul,
         Having sorrow in my heart daily?
         How long will my enemy be exalted over me? —Psalm 13:1-2

The ups and downs of life; one of the many ill affects of sin. As someone who loves my life and adores my family I have intense guilt when life overwhelms me and I feel down for no real reason other than life is sometimes overwhelming.

Most of us have heard the numerous conversations and sermons about how the world has been desensitized to the pain and hurting all around us. Most of us have at least some affects of this in our lives. Surely not all things that break the heart of God break our heart. That being said, I find myself being one that is deeply affected by the hurting world around me. My heart is greatly troubled for the devastation in the south, I find myself in great distress when I see or hear of hurting children, and most of all I cry often for the ones I love that don't know the greatness of our Living God. All of these things add a great sense of guilt when the every day life that I have been so greatly blessed with brings me to tears and I feel like giving up.

Do not sorrow, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.”

Nehemiah 8:10b

I know I cannot be the only Mother who feels guilt when feeling down about every day life, which is why I wanted to share two verses that has given me much comfort... proverbs 16:9 and Psalm 32:8

In their hearts humans plan their course,
but the LORD establishes their steps. Proverbs 16:9

I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;
I will counsel you with my loving eye on you. Psalm 32:8

These verses are a great comfort, they tell us that God cares about each step we take. Even though we may have a life that is wonderful and we love it, it is okay to cry out to God and ask for strength when life overwhelms us.

Feeling overwhelmed today? Tired? Discouraged? Is it just "one of those days" for no particular reason?

Hold on to these great words of comfort that our mighty God has given us and hold strong to Him!

The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge. He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.

Psalm 18:2

Of David. The LORD is my light and my salvation--whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life--of whom shall I be afraid?

Psalm 27:1

Let Your unfailing love surround us, LORD for our hope is in You alone.

Psalm 33:22

Welcome to the Homestead: Getting Started with Chicks

2011-05-17T14:28:00.000-07:00

For they all made us afraid, saying, Their hands shall be weakened from the work, that it be not done. Now therefore, O God, strengthen my hands.

Nehemiah 6:9

What a bountiful blessing the Lord has provided us with! We welcomed 10 new sweet babies into our family recently! As soon as they start laying we should be getting around 10 eggs per day for our family! What a blessing!

We ended up choosing two different breeds, both known for their good laying abilities. The first breed we choose was the Ameraucan. These sweet little birds are multi colored and lay blue, green, and white eggs! how fun is that! And the eggs are known to be a larger egg as well! The second breed we choose was the Rhode Island Red. These chicks are much more feisty but still very sweet. I have been extremely happy with both breeds thus far but particularly like the Ameraucans for their sweet calm personalities. Both breeds we choose for their good laying ability and the fact that they are both considered a good combination breed. Meaning that when they are done laying in 3-4 years they are also meaty enough to be able to butcher and have a decent quantity of meat.

Getting Started

The first thing we did was work out a brooder for them. Or in other words a box of some sort that they will live in their first 4-5 weeks before going outside into their coop. We used a wire cage but in the future I would use a clear rubber made box because they are constantly scratching at the pine chips and making a mess on my floor. For ten chicks I would use a big old long Rubbermade tub so they have enough room to get around. I saw some great instructions for making a top here that is super easy.

Buy List

1. Rubbermade tub or cage.

2. Feeder.

3. Waterer. I bought the ones that screw onto a mason jar. I recommend two for easy switch out because you will be switching them once or twice a day.

4. Chick feed. I bought medicated because I did not want to deal with disease first go around.

5. Chick grit. When your chicks are inside they will not be pecking for pebbles to help them digest their food so they need chick grit which is basically tiny pebbles. Just sprinkle some over their food like pepper or put a small dish into their brooder.

6. Electrolytes. Add a sprinkle or two into their water while they are still in their brooder. this came at the recommendation of the Farm and Feed store I go to.

7. Heat lamp and bulb. Start out with it about 12 inches above them and move it up each week a bit until you finally take it away by around 4 weeks or so. Follow their behavior as a guide. If they are all huddled under the light they are too cold. If they are at various levels of activity around the brooder they are probably about right. If they are all as far away from the heat and panting like they are hot move it back a bit.

8. Pine chips. Don't use cedar as it is toxic to chicks. You can also use newspaper, hay, or any other material like that, but pine is super absorbent, smells good, and is cheap.

And that's about it. We put their waterer up on wood at head level for them so they don't poop in it and also they will scratch pine chips into it and it will soak their water out all into their bedding. I tried Styrofoam at first but they pecked and ate that all to bits! We left the first day we got them without knowing this and came back to chicks with no water and wet bedding! Not good! We thought we were going to loose one of them for a while she was lethargic and kept to herself but she came through great! Praise God!

Around two-three weeks your chicks will love you if you bring them treats! My children bring them rolly polly bugs from the yard and they go nuts! They LOVE these! We have given them apple and lettuce but the bugs are their favorite by far. They will fight over them and try to crawl up the children's arm looking for more. The children get a great big kick out of this fun!

Recipalooza: Breakfast Muffins

2011-05-17T09:19:00.000-07:00

Lily made these breakfast muffins all by herself, start to finish! We all enjoy a sweet bread at breakfast time that is quick and easy around here, hope your family will too!

The Recipe

2 eggs
1/2 c. oil ( I have tried apple sauce as a substitute here and it is one recipe I did not like the results with the sub)
1 c. sugar
1 tsp. salt
1 c. milk
3 c. flour
4 tsp. baking powder

I use Rumford for that little "Non GMO" label

Beat eggs in large bowl. Add milk and oil , stir well. Add dry ingredients stir only until blended. Spoon into paper lined muffin cups. Bake at 400 for about 20 mins. Remove from pan right away and let cool.

Variations:

Blueberry muffins:
Gently fold in 3/4 c. canned, drained blueberries or two hand fulls fresh or frozen blueberries after you have mixed up batter. Bake as normal. You can also add slivered almonds... Yum!

Apple Cinnamon Muffins:
Grate up 1 apple

Tip: Quarter apples and peel skin out...


You will grate them down to the skin without grating skin.

Add apple and1/2 tsp. cinnamon to batter fold in gently. Put batter in pans ( Sometimes I use heavily greased bread pans for a breakfast bread). In a small bowl put in two hand fulls of brown sugar, a pinch more of cinnamon, and a hand full or two of slivered almonds. Mix up and sprinkle over batter. Bake as above.

Basically anything like fruit, nuts, chocolate, or whatever, you want to add to this is a good variation!!

Recipalooza: Peanut Butter Granola Bars

2011-05-16T15:51:00.000-07:00

My family loves these and it makes for a protein filled snack that the whole family can enjoy! Super fun treat!

The Recipe: Peanut Butter Granola Bars

3 c. Granola

3 tablespoons butter

1/2 c. peanut butter
2 beaten eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
May add other ingredients such as chocolate chips or dried fruit if it is not already in your granola.

Melt your PB and butter together. Remove from heat and add already beaten eggs to mixture using a wisk and stirring up quickly and vigorously so your eggs do not cook before they are mixed in really well with your peanut butter mixture. It will turn into a thick paste type mix. Stir in vanilla. Add granola and any optional ingredients you desire. Mix up until well coated. Spray 9x13 pan, VERY important step! Dump mixture into pan and press down until even all around. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour. cut into desired shapes and enjoy!
My children and husband LOVE these!
Variation: Add 1/2 cup of chocolate chips when melting butter and peanut butter for a chocolatey bar.

Recipalooza: Home Made Granola

2011-05-16T15:50:00.000-07:00

We make and eat this granola on a regular basis here at the home front. We recently tried these bars and LOVED them as well! Super easy and super yummy!

The Recipe: Granola

* Note* this can be halved as I make a large batch for our family. This recipe makes enough for 5 of us to have a bowl for breakfast and still fill up a gallon bag for later.*

6 cups Oatmeal
1 cup honey
1 stick butter
2 hand fulls flax seed ( I use dark and golden, one of each)
1 cup slivered almonds (optional)
2-4 hand fulls of raisins, depending on taste (optional)
1 1/2 c. chopped up dates (optional)
Dried cranberries to taste (optional)
Chocolate chips to taste (optional)
*Note* If adding things such as chocolate chips or M&M's do so AFTER baking and cooling or you will just end up with a melted mess.
Melt butter and honey in pan on low heat.

Remove from heat and add oatmeal and flax seed.

Add all of the other desired ingredients and mix well.

Grease or spray two cookie sheets, VERY important step!
Spread granola in an even layer on pans.

Bake at 375 for 10 minutes.

Let cool and harden. Enjoy!

Recipalooza: 90 Minute No-Knead Bread

2011-05-16T10:36:00.000-07:00

Super easy and super yummy! My family loves this bread and it is so easy and a great recipe for a family on a time crunch. One of the greatest things about this recipe is the variation are endless! I recently whipped up a batch and had two loaves of cinnamon raisin bread for breakfast and two loaves of Garlic, cheddar, chive bread for dinners! And it took almost no time!

The Recipe

4 c. warm water
4 T. yeast
4 tsp.salt
7-8 cups white flour ( I use 7 with perfection)
1/2 c. sugar
1/4 c. vegetable oil (I use olive oil)

In large bowl dissolve yeast in 1 c. of the warm water.

Mix in rest of ingredients and let rest for 15 minutes.

With a wooden spoon beat up pretty good for 2-3 minutes. ( dough will be "gooey".) This is when you add extras for variations.

Divide dough into 4 well greased bread pans. I use a round stoneware pan sometimes too for a pretty round loaf. Don't worry about shaping, it shapes itself.

Let rest 30 minutes.

Bake in 400 degree oven for 25-30 minutes.

Remove from pan right away and let cool on wire racks.

Variations are endless with this recipe. All you do is at the end of mixing up with the wooden spoon you stir in your extra ingredients before adding them to their pan. I often divide and do 1 or 2 different types with each batch.
Some Ideas: Cinnamon, brown or white sugar, and raisins. Cheddar cheese, chives, parsley, and garlic salt ( great with a creamy soup). Chopped sun dried tomatoes, basil, oregano, and fresh chopped garlic (great with spaghetti). Dry Italian dressing packet. Ranch dressing packet, grated carrots.

All In a Day: How to Encourage Unity and Closeness in the Family

2011-05-06T07:59:00.000-07:00

What an honor God has given us to have a family! The joy far out-weighs the hard times. I can not count the number of times that I have been in an all out, full on, belly laugh, because my children have done something so silly and funny that only a child could come up with it!

And he said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. ~Matthew 18: 3

What a joy they are! What a wonderful blessing! My heart aches for the world and it's view of children. They are seen as a burden and not for the great blessing they are. If you doubt this I challenge you to ask any family you know that has more than 3-4 children about the comments they hear from the world. Children in numbers is no longer viewed as a blessing from the Lord but as something that must be an accident or that comes from sheer ignorance. This is sadly not only within the world without the Living God in their lives but those right here within the Body of Christ.

That being said my first and foremost piece of advice for encouraging family unity and closeness is to remember that each child you have is reward! A Heritage from the LORD!

Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one's youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate. . ~Psalm 127:3-5

If we, as parents, do not see our children as a blessing but as a burden, how can we encourage unity and closeness within our family? Have you ever felt out of place, like you were a burden to someone? Did it make you want to draw close to them? If you want your children to draw close to their family, remember that they must always know what a blessing they are to you! My husband said something to me that has really stuck in my mind. He told me that he changed the way he thought. Especially on the days when he's tired and doesn't want to play or read bed time stories, he has changed from, I need to do this, or I have to do this, to I *GET* to read them a story tonight, I *get* to put them to bed, I *get* to play soccer with them. By changing this one word in his mind it reminds him that every moment he gets with his family is a blessing straight from the Lord. The day will come when you no longer have a little one hanging on your dress asking you to cuddle with them and read them a story. A blessing indeed!

Now with all of that, most of us have experienced the bickering children, the sinful nature, the selfishness. So onto some practical ideas for helping to encourage that unity within your family and amongst your children.

When my children are fighting and being willfully mean to each other I have a discipline that almost always ends in smiles, laughing, and apologies. Which is the goal, right? We don't want to discipline our children just so we have the satisfaction because they were a bother. We want them to learn and grow.
When this happens I make them stand in one spot and hug until I am convinced that they have softened their hearts and are showing love for each other again. When we start I am usually met with moans and groans but it almost always ends with laughter and softened hearts.

Another thing we do to foster closeness within our family is support each other in our individual endeavors. I always encourage my children to cheer loud for their brother and sisters when they are playing in a soccer game, piano recital, or any other event they are involved in. When daddy plays basketball we cheer loud for him.

Letting our older children help with the younger ones has really helped our younger children to feel loved by their older siblings and it helps our older children to feel a sense of protectiveness and love towards the little ones.

I guess when it comes down to it we try to remember a few simple things to encourage closeness and unity within our family. One: Our family is a blessing from the Lord! His Heritage! Two: Treat each other with respect. Three: Defend and protect each other. Four: Cheer for each other in encouragement.

When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Mark 10:14

Here is a list of ladies linking with All in a day.
Carrie @ Our Full House
Christi @ Where the Creek Meets the Lake
Elizabeth@ Yes They’re All Ours
Kathy @ Kathy Mom of Many
Kristy @ Little Natural Cottage
Lori @ Happy Busy Mama
Monica @ Natural Mama
Renee @ Bakers Dozen

Healthy Tips: Vitamin Routine

2011-05-05T13:27:00.000-07:00

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
~1 Corinthians 6: 19-20~

As part of a health routine my family and I enjoy a glass of this green juice each morning. Luke and I have a huge increase in our energy levels when we do and our family gets sick far less. When we do get sick we are usually sick a shorter amount of time than those we see around us whom are sick. I believe this is due to our vitamin routine so I thought would share what we do.

First, we usually start with Milk and some chocolate syrup to mask the taste of the alcohol in the vitamin tincture.

Second, I add two drops of 4000 iu per drop Vitamin D3 to the children's glass, and 4 drops for Luke and I. This bottle last us 6 months for a family of 6.

Third, I add 1 Tablespoon of Barlean's Omega Swirl to the children's and 4 Tablespoons for Luke and I. They have a whole assortment of flavors and this is a far superior way to take fish oil.

Fourth, I add the "green stuff" as the children call it. Liquid Chlorophyll . This I usually do a small cap full for the children and a Tablespoon or two for Luke and I. My iron was a tad low at my last check up so I have been doing a bit more.

And that's it. My children LOVE this mix and ask for their green juice every day.

**Of course I am not a doctor and this is just me sharing what our family does. I don't know your health and this is not intended to tell you what is best for you and your family. **

Weekend to Remember Giveaway Winner

2011-05-04T10:23:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Sarah Mae @ Like a Warm cup of Coffee Who won this giveaway!

Thank you to everyone who entered!

The Devestation is Heartbreaking!

2011-04-28T12:17:00.000-07:00

If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? 1 John 3:17

The Tom Lee Family

My heart aches for the devastation in Alabama. Now is the time brothers and sisters to help. Now is the time that we see our brothers in need. Many of us have read and enjoyed the writings of the Crawford Family. And now they are left homeless with aching hearts for friends that were lost.

The Lee family has suffered great tragedy since this devastation. Tom Lee was tragically killed after he threw himself over his children one of which included his oldest son, Jordan. Jordan witnessed his fathers mouth fill with blood and heard his last words as he cried out to our Father in heaven to protect his family. God heard his cry and spared his families lives. This family is left homeless and fatherless with no time to grieve within the wreckage they are left in.

Dear brothers and sisters, now is the time for us to come together as members of Christ's family and lift the burden that has descended down on these families! May the world see us all Praising Him through this storm and may He be glorified!!

If you can give any amount here is a place where you can give directly to these families through a church. They need time to grieve let us lift the burdens that we can!
Providence Church tornado relief fund

31 Days to Clean E-book!

2011-04-27T13:39:00.000-07:00

From the moment I saw this e-book I was super excited about it! I love practical help books! Here is a fabulous opportunity to pick up this e-book for free! But you better hurry! It ends at midnight tonight (EST)!!

I have yet to read something from Sarah Mae that I didn't love so hurry and get your copy! Even if you don't get a free copy I will be blogging a review of the book after I read it and I'm sure it will be worth the $4.99 to buy your own copy!

Head on over to "Like a Warm Cup of Coffee" Now and get all the details!

Give Away! Family life presents: A weekend to remember!

2011-04-26T13:10:00.000-07:00

My husband and I went to this conference and let me tell you what, it is fabulous! This is not for troubled marriages, this is for all marriages or soon to be marriages! Luke and I still refer back to this conference. It was a wonderful experience that we learned a great deal from.
So that being said I want to tell you that first and foremost you will not be seeing anyone in "spandex jumping around talking about feelings and crying." That is a direct quote from Luke when I asked him to go. He was less than thrilled with the idea, to say the least. He envisioned something much different! Now? He talks about it all the time and how much it helped him!

Here is what Family Life has to say about it...

WHAT CAN I EXPECT?

Weekend to Remember is not a large counseling session, and you will not be asked to participate in small groups. Rather, you will receive marriage-changing principles that you can take home and apply to your daily lives that will strengthen your marriage. Whether you are newly engaged or have been married for 50 years, you will find value in the tools provided at the getaway.

The Giveaway

Tickets to the conference for 1 couple.

This does not include hotel but there is usually a pretty good discount at the hotel. We HIGHLY recommend going for the weekend and not just going home each night. There is so much benefit to taking a whole weekend away from the normal to focus on your marriage!

Where And When?

Locally it is coming to Pasco on May 13-15. At the Red Lion Hotel in Pasco.
But there are conferences all over the United States.
Click on the link above and check to see if there is one within your area and when it is before entering.

How to enter?

Leave me a comment telling me you want to go.

Blog about it and add a link back to the giveaway.

Facebook about it with a link to this giveaway.

Leave me separate comments for each thing you do and I will choose the winner using Random.org. Be sure and leave me a link to your blog or an e-mail address so I can get a hold of you if you win!

This giveaway is for U.S. residents.

This give away ends May 2nd, 2011.

This giveaway has ended. Thank you to all who entered! I will post winners soon!

Give away! Home made living...The whole series!!

2011-04-22T08:31:00.000-07:00

I am so super excited about this giveaway! I am going to be starting some fun giveaways really soon, including a big one coming up this week, to help promote traffic to my blog! So keep an eye out and tell your friends! But this is not my giveaway but one I really want to win! But, if I do not win, I hope you do, so head on over to Homestead Revival and enter to win this fabulous series!

All in a Day: Investing Time With Hubby

2011-04-21T13:52:00.000-07:00

Our men have been on my heart so heavily lately I was especially excited when I saw this subject on the "All in a day" blog list.

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” ~Ephesians 5:31

My husband is so precious to me I get frustrated easily if I do not get the time I desire with him. As you can probably imagine with four small children and being pregnant, time is always something that has to managed well or none of us get our desired family time. I'm so very passionate about how important marriage is and how we should hold strong to our marriage above all other earthly blessings. Today it has become very popular and has been deemed necessary to place your children above all else including your spouse. The Word of God is clear that this is not what He has called us to. It seems such an odd concept to me, if your marriage fails it does nothing productive for your children. It has a lifelong negative impact in fact. My husband is my very best friend and God has greatly blessed our marriage for holding strong to His word in Ephesians 5:31.

Life can be so very busy with little ones in tow but we must take the time to strengthen and nourish the foundation that those sweet little lives have come from.

Now onto some practical advice for investing the time needed with your love...

1: One thing my husband and I always try to do even when money is tight is when we receive unexpected money or if he has more earnings come in then usual, we always try to use a small amount of that to go and have a date night. Sometimes that consists of nothing more than a coffee stop and sitting down by the river alone for a while. Other times we get to go to dinner and a movie. We try very hard to save money for hard times and we want always be good stewards of what God has blessed us with. However, there was a time when that overtook our need for time spent together having fun.

2: At least once a year we try to spend at least one night away by ourselves on a special date. We started this a couple of years ago when we attended Family Life's A Weekend To Remember marriage conference. They greatly encouraged us to stay at the hotel and really spend the weekend together without children. We did and what a difference it made! We had the time we really needed to remember why we fell in love!

3: Take advantage of every moment you can. If your children are off playing or sleeping don't go off and do your own thing, spend that time laughing about something that you both find funny, watching a movie, or just discussing your day. Luke and I both enjoy chit chatting about what we heard on the news or a funny happening of the day. If your marriage is already strained from lack of time spent together start small. Instead of trying to all of a sudden make that special night together happen, try getting back to looking to your spouse for your conversational needs. Be your husbands friend!

4: And my final piece of advice is, in my opinion, the most important. As tired and un-sexy as you may feel, make love to your husband! I know, I know, it is simple and to the point but it is so very important. God has given us this amazing gift to connect with our husbands! Nothing makes me feel closer to my husband then when we are truly focused on nothing more than each other.

The wife's body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband's body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife. ~1 Corinthians 7:4

When it really comes down to it, just remember that our marriage is not just a covenant between our husbands and ourselves, but a covenant between our husbands, ourselves, AND our God! It is a sacred union! Nourish it. It should be at the top of your priority list.

Head on over and check out what some other ladies have to say about this! I'm sure you'll enjoy it!

Carrie @ Our Full House
Christi @ Where the Creek Meets the Lake
Elizabeth @ Yes They’re All Ours
Kathy @ Kathy Mom of Many
Kristy @ Homemaker's Cottage
Lori @ Happy Busy Mama
Monica @ Natural Mama
Renee @ Bakers Dozen

If they fail... We fail! What are we doing to our men?

2011-04-18T10:27:00.000-07:00

As I watched this video my heart hurt as I pondered on the failure rate of our men....

Why do we continue to encourage failure ladies?

We all want to be beautiful, yes? But what does the

Word say about beauty?

Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting;
but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised. Proverbs 31:30

She is clothed with strength and dignity;
she can laugh at the days to come. Proverbs 31:25

Strength and dignity! When you imagine a

women who is clothed in dignity

do you think of the average young lady you see today?

I don't.

I see beautiful young ladies who have

been fooled by the world to think that they must

dress to show in order

to be beautiful and desired.

And so now I go back to the heart ache I feel for our men.

They are failing in their walk with the Lord. They are in a constant battle with their own minds.

Again I say, we are called to be their helpers.

Are we helping them be the men of honor God has called them to?

I will step out on a whim and say that the majority of women,

especially Christian women with a heart

after the Lord's,

get married hoping that now that they

are married their husband will stay strong and

be men of valor and virtue.

But is that what we are helping them to?

Proverbs 31:10-12

Her husband is respected at the city gate,
where he takes his seat among the elders of the land. Proverbs 31:23

What is God telling us here in Proverbs 31? There is

a pattern we see.

Again God is telling us that our virtue,

our honor, is what will encourage our husbands to

be strong and make it through

their life with strength and serving the Lord until

the their ending day.

I have point to everything I have said here. My point is this; Don't compromise yourself because you think that is what it takes to be beautiful and for men to want you. Honor the Lord and the wisdom He gives you in Proverbs 31. He has a plan for you, He has the perfect mate selected for you. When you are waiting for His perfect will remember that He will bless you as you follow Him.

Do you want to be married to the man that will *stay* strong

and live for the Lord all of his days? The one that will not

waiver and fall when times

get hard?

Be a women of virtue and honor and wait for that

man who sees the beauty of a women of virtue. He will be respected at the city gates!

Remember, God is a God of wisdom! He doesn't lie,

He will never leave nor forsake you!

What if?

2011-04-14T19:48:00.000-07:00

1 Cor. 11:8 For man does not originate from woman, but woman from man; for indeed man was not created for the woman's sake, but woman for the man's sake.

I've been stirring on this entry for some time now. I've put a lot of thought into this because it is so important for us, as wives, to understand...

Do you know that the odds are that only one in ten men will finish strong in their Christian faith? Is there scriptural backup for this number? No, not directly. But there is scriptural backup for two in twelve...

God is about to hand over the promised land to Israel, He instructs Moses to pick a *leader* from each of the twelve tribes. It is important here to realize that God didn't instruct Moses to pick just any old guys to go check out the land, but LEADERS. These were the men of great promise. The ones you would put your money on to be great Godly leaders, the ones you would look to as an example. Do you know the names of these twelve men? I am guessing no. I would however guess that you know the names of two of them. Do you know why? Because only two of those twelve very promising, Godly young men finished and had the courage to do what God had asked. Those two men were Joshua and Caleb. The rest were all too scared to do God's work. They feared men more then they feared God whom they had seen perform incredible miracles since their deliverance from Egypt. As a result they had to wait 40 long, hard years before they would get to the promised land.

It was happening then, it is happening now. When I say one in ten men, I am not talking your run of the mill men. I am speaking of the best and the brightest. Those that have completely 100% committed their lives to Jesus Christ and his work. Those men we look to as great spiritual leaders.

I read a story recently about the year 1945 and how three great evangelists emerged that year. One was Billy Graham. You probably know who he is but do you know who Chuck Templeton or Bron Clifford is? You may or may not, but I would guess that the majority have never heard of the latter two. Why do you suppose that is? All three were packing the house preaching the good news. As a matter of fact the latter two were considered more prominent than Billy Graham at the time. In 1946 the National Association of Evangelicals published an article about men who were "best used of God". Billy Graham was not even mentioned. Templeton was the highlighted man. Clifford set more attendance records than any other clergyman his age in American history!
So why is it that Billy Graham is the only one that you still hear of? All three were on fire for the Lord's work! All three started strong.
In just 5 years time Templeton left the ministry to become a radio and television commentator and eventually denounce the name of Jesus Christ all together.
Clifford? By 1954 he had lost his family, ministry, and eventually his life. He left his wife and two son's , whom had down syndrome. He died alone in a hotel of cirrhosis of the liver. He was an alcoholic.

Ladies, of the three most prominent young men in the work of Jesus Christ of that time only one made it. One!

There are many more stories I can give you all of which paint the same story. Sadly, most men will not make it to the finish line strong.

Proverbs 14:1 The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down.

A very wise women, whom I greatly admire for her wisdom said something to me once that I will likely never forget. She said "What if when we stand before our great and mighty God we are judged on nothing more than how we helped our husbands serve Him?"

What a thought! I've pondered on this thought for a great deal of time now. God's Word tells us that we were made for man's sake. Everywhere God speaks to us as wives in the bible it is ALWAYS telling us how we can serve our husbands, and what He expects us to do as wives for our husbands. What if the reason that so many women were horribly miserable in their marriage is because they were so caught up in what their husbands should be doing for them instead of what they should be caught up with; What they can do for their husbands.

Ladies, nine times out of ten when the enemy goes on attack with your family he will go straight for the foundation; Your husband. And I use the word *when* very deliberately. It's not if Satan attacks your family, it's when. If he can destroy your husband with one of many of his great lies he can destroy your entire family. Your children have a minuscule chance of surviving his attacks without their father. Your marriage is done without him.

Our God in His infinite wisdom has given us these words as wives for a reason. Great Christian men who start so strong are failing daily. They need us as wives to help them get to the finish line strong.

The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him." Genesis 2:18

God calls us "Helper". He said "It is not good for man to be alone". This is the God of the universe. His wisdom is unsurpassed. We were made to help our husbands. If this is true then it is time that we see that if our men are failing at such horrible rates that means that WE are failing as his helper.

Let's take a look at what God has to say to us as wives.

~Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. Ephesians 5:22

~Wives, likewise, be submissive to your own husbands, that even if some do not obey the word, they, without a word, may be won by the conduct of their wives, when they observe your chaste conduct accompanied by fear. 1 Peter 3:1-2

~For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Ephesians 5:23-24

~Let the wife see that she respects her husband. Ephesians 5:33

~For in this manner, in former times, the holy women who trusted in God also adorned themselves, being submissive to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord, whose daughters you are if you do good and are not afraid with any terror. 1 Peter 3:5-6

~"The aged women likewise, that they be in behavior as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed."~Titus 2:3-5~

~Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.1 Peter 3:7

~To be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God. ~Titus 2:5

How to the point our God has been with us! 1 Peter 3: 1-2 is so clear on the subject! If they are failing let us by our conduct bring them back to grace!

I write this with tears in my eyes. Our husbands are loosing the battle. WE are loosing the battle. If they fail, we fail. Simple as that. We were made to help them. God tells us that our own behavior can bring them back to Him. What an honor that is! What an honor!

Are you miserable in your marriage? My prayer for marriage today is that wives will return to what God has called them to. Help their husband's not just finish but finish STRONG! If you are miserable in your marriage look to the word of God. Start asking yourself what can I do to help my husband, I was made to help him.

Our Dear Father God, I lift up each married

Man and women to You today.

Lord bring them back to Your ways.

Strengthen them so that they may each

Finish strong in this race.

Give them the courage to live outside

Of the worlds ways. To follow You and Your

Ways even when it is the

Harder choice. Lord, give us wisdom

To discern what is right, follow You,

And never waiver.

Lord help us all finish strong!

In Jesus Name, Amen.

***Thank you to Steve Farrar. for the great information and inspiration I received from his writings.***

Where are the children?

2011-02-03T13:44:00.000-08:00

Recently, near where my husband works, many new billboards have popped up. These billboards have been provided from "Planned Parenthood". They all say something along the lines of someone being scared and pregnant and how Planned Parenthood is "there for them". There are two things that really strike me about these signs.
1. They are placed right in the very poorest part of town.
2. Where are the children? Where is the parenthood?

If you go to their website you see many pictures with women and men who are strong and proud. But again I say... Where are the children?

Why oh Lord don't they see?! The Parenthood is not there. This is not an organization of parenthood, this is an organization of life being stopped.
If they wanted to help people that were pregnant why are they not showing the reality? Where, I say again, are the children? It's all about their bodies, their choices, their life. What about the children? Their life. The joy they bring. Their choice?

Where is this picture?

Or this?

Where is the baby?!

Time 4 Learning Curriculum review

2010-11-30T13:26:00.000-08:00

We were invited to try and review "Time 4 Learning" Homeschool curriculum. My opinion is entirely my own and I am in no way associated with" "Time 4 Learning".

First, Here is an excerpt from their website to explain a little about what time for learning is and how it works.

"Time4Learning is a convenient, online homeschool curriculum that combines education with interactive fun. Animated lessons, interactive activities, printable worksheets and detailed reporting make the learning system a top selection of the Homeschool.com "Top 100 Educational Websites" list, year after year."

After watching their demo, I mainly wanted to try the program for Roman who was struggling to pay attention during learning time. I was pleasantly surprised at how engaged he was during the lessons! And better yet, he was actually remembering what he was learning!

Roman was using grade K. For his level of learning I was very impressed. It was fun, engaging, and held his very active minds attention. Best of all, he was retaining the information well!

At his grade level there are 3 subjects to choose from.

Language Arts
Math
Science

I thought both the math and L.A. were very well done, however I did decide within a few days that we were not going to be using the science. Not because, at this point, it was un-biblical, but because I was not impressed and felt our time was better spent elsewhere.

Lily is using grade 2. At her level I really liked how much she enjoyed doing her school work. The lessons were fun and set up well. For her grade the subjects available are.

Language arts.
Language Arts extensions.
Math
Social Studies
Science

The Math was great! I Liked the style of teaching and she learned so much in the short time she was doing it! We will be staying with T4L for Math for the time being. The L.A. were about half way good. Most of the material in the LA was too simple for Lily but some was very useful. All around I liked it. Again, I did not care for the science. The social studies was good but not great. I liked the L.A. Ext. because of all of the worksheets available for her to practice writing.

All around for the program...

Pros:

Fun for kids
Access to 3 grade levels at one time.
The forum available on their site has a section set up for Christian homeschoolers that parents have set up warnings if there is any questionable material.
The record keeping is phenomenal!
Frees up a lot of time for more bible and character building activities. Plus, Way more one on one reading and snuggle time.
I know that they are getting state standards for things that I really don't care about but it will help them do their standardized tests each year, which are required in my state. And again, all of this is happening while I still have the time for what I do care about!
Math is great!
Price is reasonable and you get a discount on every child after the first.

Cons:

Do not care for the science.
Some of the material is way too easy.
Kindergarten has no print outs that I have seen.
If you have a large family you really do need to invest in a laptop or computer for each child or they have to take turns doing work.

All around my final conclusion for T4L is positive. We will be using it for our core math curriculum and for the time being Roman's core math and L.A. curriculum. It has been very helpful during the holiday season. If you are at a busy time in your family (New baby, holidays, family visiting, etc.) this is a great "keep them up to standard" learning tool. We will not be using it as out core curriculum all around but it is a wonderful addition to any homeschool routine, especially for times of stress and trial. That being said, if any homeschool family was thinking of giving up and sending their children to public school because they were having a hard time doing it, I would tell them to use T4L instead! It is better than Public schools as a complete curriculum! The price is affordable and you will still get a better education then the public schools are offering! Plus the price is affordable and it is very little work for you.

Time 4 Learning
Demo

Loving my new find

2010-11-12T20:08:00.000-08:00

GOGO Squeeze
I came across a product at Walmart recently that I LOVE!

GOGO Squeez!

These are so nice for little ones on the go! Ellie is one and can eat a "bag" of applesauce all by her self! It is 100% apple and apple juice concentrate, no sweeteners. Plus it's a great non-messy snack for older kids too! No spoon needed! I found them in the checkout line. If I remember correctly they were $0.67 each.

Thursday Tea and Poem; Tea With Me

2010-11-11T14:16:00.000-08:00

Tea With Me

A little brown bird looked in to see

What I was spreading on bread for tea.

He looked so hungry I felt I must

Eat the middle and leave him the crust.

The very next day he came again

Shivering cold in the pouring rain.

"I'm hungrier still today," he said.

So I ate the crust and gave him the bread.

Now every day, whatever the weather,

That sparrow and I have our tea time together.

We chirrup and chatter like very old friends

And I eat the odds up while he eats the ends.

~Alison Winn~

A wife of noble character who can find?
   She is worth far more than rubies.
Her husband has full confidence in her
   and lacks nothing of value.
She brings him good, not harm,
   all the days of her life.
She selects wool and flax
   and works with eager hands.
She is like the merchant ships,
   bringing her food from afar.
She gets up while it is still night;
   she provides food for her family
   and portions for her female servants.
She considers a field and buys it;
   out of her earnings she plants a vineyard.
She sets about her work vigorously;
   her arms are strong for her tasks.

She sees that her trading is profitable,
   and her lamp does not go out at night.
In her hand she holds the distaff
   and grasps the spindle with her fingers.
She opens her arms to the poor
   and extends her hands to the needy.
When it snows, she has no fear for her household;
   for all of them are clothed in scarlet.
She makes coverings for her bed;
   she is clothed in fine linen and purple.
Her husband is respected at the city gate,
   where he takes his seat among the elders of the land.
She makes linen garments and sells them,
   and supplies the merchants with sashes.
She is clothed with strength and dignity;
   she can laugh at the days to come.
She speaks with wisdom,
   and faithful instruction is on her tongue.
She watches over the affairs of her household
   and does not eat the bread of idleness.
Her children arise and call her blessed;
   her husband also, and he praises her:

“Many women do noble things,
   but you surpass them all.”
Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting;
   but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.
Honor her for all that her hands have done,
   and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.

~Proverbs 31: 10-31~

The morning of "I don't want to get up yet"

2010-11-10T21:22:00.000-08:00

I wrote this way back in February and saw that I never posted it. I laughed and came close to tears at the same time, so I thought it was worth posting.

I will love You, O LORD, my strength. The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer; My God, my strength, in whom I will trust; My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I will call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised; So shall I be saved from my enemies. ~Psalm 18:1-3~

It is now 12:45 A.M., a high pitched screech floods the heater vents from down stairs, "Get out!!!" Grouchily I stomp across the floor as I hear 3 little sets of feet scrambling for their beds; "That is ENOUGH!!!" I yell down the stairs, sure that I am going to loose my mind at this point.

"Why, oh Lord, tonight? We have to be up at 5:00 A.M. to take Daddy to work then off to co/op by 9:00. We cannot skip because it is my day to work..."Why tonight Lord?" As soon as Daddy is off work we are heading up to our, "fun filled", cabin in the woods weekend.

I quickly see it all in play in my head, The weekend will be a disaster filled with grouchy, fighting children. Co/Op is going to be a day of horror.

"Don't touch me! I'm telling!!! Moooommy, he won't leave me alone!"

"That is it!!! Go to sleep now, or we aren't going to the cabin!!!!" I stomp off "knowing" that they deserved my grouchiness.

Minutes later I realize that I don't hear fighting. My heart starts to soften. "Oh Lord, forgive me. I am not being the mother you have asked me to be."

Fear not my child

2010-11-09T10:01:00.000-08:00

And she went and did according to the saying of Elijah: and she, and he, and her house, did eat many days. ~1Kings 17:15~

Oh God, in all your goodness You provide my every need without fail...

Food preservation is a wonderful gift God has given us. Apple sauce as I knew it has changed forever! I was introduced to the wonderful world of food mills. What an incredible difference! No more peeling, coring, or prepping at all! Cut the apples in half, boil them down, and turn the knob. That's it! I was able to make a huge pot of apple sauce in no time at all. Praise God!

And whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord, and not for men, ~Colossians 3:23~

How tender a heart

2010-11-08T21:17:00.000-08:00

"It is a great deal easier to do that which God gives us to do, no matter how hard it is, than to face the responsibilities of not doing it."

~J.R. Miller~

"How many times have I told you to speak kindly and stop yelling at your brother?" The harsh tones spill from my mouth and cut deep before I'm even done speaking. "This is not how I speak to daddy?" I know now the issue is mine and not that of this tender heart I am being angry with. My heart aches as I ask her forgiveness for my harshness.

But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness. ~James 3:17-18~

These precious hearts that are entrusted us are not only watching the way we interact with our husbands but the constant interaction with them. How can we see our children to humility, kindness, patience, love, joy, a servants heart, gentleness, and peace if we do not ourselves, correct them with humility, shower them in kindness, be patient with their eagerly learning hearts, love them the way we desire love, joyfully serve them and others, and gently lead them to peace in their hearts and in our homes?

Oh Father, teach me your ways! If I do not train up my children with hearts after you I am but the servant who squandered Your gifts. The battle for souls is strong, teach me to train warriors for Your kingdom, oh Lord.

Be content and joyful, dear mothers, for you have been given a great task in the plan of our Lord. You have been entrusted with filling this lost and lonely world with warriors! God's plan for family is a very powerful tool. If the evil one can destroy the family he can destroy nations.

"The state of a nation

is always determined

by the state of the home."

~Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin, Biblical Femininity~

"Be Fruitful and Multiply" Today?

And God blessed them. And God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth." ~Genesis 1:28~

Does this apply to us today? Here are some questions to ask yourself when dealing with this issue.

What is God's design for building up His kingdom?
Is it about the population of the earth or God's kingdom?
Is your decision to "take charge" of the size of your family based on biblical principals or worldly ones (i.e) finances?

What does the Word of God tell us?

“Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.” ~Psalms 127:3-5 ESV~

We see here that Children are a blessing from our Lord. This is pretty cut a dry, Children are a blessing.

I have heard it said often that that commandment was meant for the time, the earth is populated now. But this I ask you, what of God's kingdom? I recently read that there are currently 1 million Muslims per 1 Christian missionary. That Muslims have an average of 8 children and Christians have an average of 2. We are not only to have children but to bring them up to serve the Lord.

Christians must recognize that... rebellion against parenthood represents nothing less than an absolute revolt against God's design. The Scripture points to barrenness as a great curse and children as a divine gift... Morally speaking, the epidemic in this regard has nothing to do with those married couples who desire children but are for any reason unable to have them, but instead in those who are fully capable of having children but reject this intrusion in their lifestyle.

~R. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY~

We Can't Afford More Children

My friends, God tells us to be good stewards of our finances but has anyone ever thought to look to the Word of God about holding off on children? This is a worldly view not a biblical one. Has God ever told His people in times of trial to not have children? In conditions a far cry worse then that of our hard times, God speaks through His prophet Jeremiah to the exiles in Babylon...

“Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease.” ~Jeremiah 29:4-6 ESV~

God asks us to but trust Him and He will provide.

But God Is In Control No Matter What I Do

Do not put the LORD your God to the test... ~Dueteronomy 6:16

This is a very true statement indeed but is it an excuse to sin? God is the author of life, and every child is a gift. Sisters in Christ I urge you to hold strong and let the Holy Spirit guide you, through the Word of God, to truth. Our bodies are not our own. Fill your quiver. We are Warriors sharpening our arrows for the next battle.

Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; ~ 1 Corinthians 6:19~

How sacred a gift

2010-11-05T10:50:00.000-07:00

Marriage, what a beautiful gift from our Father....

Song of Solomon 8:6
Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame. (NIV)

In a day when it is acceptable to have openness in your marriage and "looking is fine, as long as you don't touch", marriage is no longer sacred but empty. Today is a day when we are scorned and ridiculed for our very much so justified jealousy. Jealousy is looked upon as wrong or bad. There are forms of jealousy that do fall under this category. But today most forget that our God is a Jealous God (Exodus 20:5) and there are many forms of jealousy that are not only justified but necessary.

Song of Solomon 2:16
My lover is mine, and I am his. (NLT)

Today I want to address the young women. I came across an article that was so sad I want all young women to pay special attention and listen to The Holy Spirit when faced with situations that can compromise any marriage.

The Young Womens List

If you are a young woman:

• Don’t play coy with someone else’s husband, not even just a little bit! It is so commonplace that most people pretend it’s natural. It is ugly and evil.

• Don’t seek out a married man for counsel. If you need counsel, do as the Scriptures say and seek out an older woman.

• Don’t cause a wife any reason to feel insecure. Judge yourself, that you be not judged.

• Don’t place yourself under the authority of another woman’s husband, including that of your pastor. Know for a certainty that you don’t belong there.

• Marriage is sacred. Treat it as such. There is enough divorce happening without you assisting in another.

• If you are a young woman in a cloistered situation, beware of jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Staying in the frying pan is much to be preferred, for you can always jump when a clean alternative shows itself.

• Do not move into another family’s home against the cautions of others, even if the wife invites you. You remember that Little Miss’s younger brother cautioned his sister against moving in with Old Dude. Obviously the young man saw something that was not right, yet she chose to ignore her brother’s concerns.

• Live like you believe this!

*You may read the whole article that this list is taken from here.*

Proverbs 30:18-19
There are three things that amaze me—
no, four things that I don’t understand:
how an eagle glides through the sky,
how a snake slithers on a rock,
how a ship navigates the ocean,
how a man loves a woman. (NLT)

Marriage is sacred union not only between man and women but between man, women, and God. Do not come between the sacred.

New Homeschool curriculum try...

2010-10-15T20:20:00.000-07:00

I've been invited to try Time4Learning for one month in exchange for a candid review. My opinion will be entirely my own, so be sure to come back and read about my experience. Time4Learning can be used as an online homeschooling curriculum, a web based afterschool tutorial or an online summer program.

Is It Not I

Baby Gussy Update: Hearing Aids, Vision Improvement, and Fundraising, Oh My!!

Sometimes A Song Says It All...

Baby Augustus Update... Surgery

Praise God From Whom All Blessing Flow!!

Please Help!

What's Your Problem?

Home With Mr. A!

The Psychopathic School

Encouraging Words

When the enemy of your soul slaps you around

and knocks you down and says,

“Why don’t you just stay down this time?”

The Hand with great wounds reaches down and lifts you up,

and the Lover of your soul whispers in your ear so only you can hear,

“I got this.”

He defends the weak and heals the broken

and knows there is infinitely more to your story.

- Geoff Ludlo-

Almost Wordless Wednesday

Time Savin' Mama: Freezer Waffles

Welcome to the Homestead: The Chicken Coop is Almost Done!

Eight Years

Tiny handprints grow so fastTheir awkward groping soon will claspA ball, a book, a sweetheart's hand,A diploma, breifcase, wedding band.

Tiny handprints grow so strongIt doesn't take them very longTo snap a shirt, to paint, to draw,To labor hard, to drive a car.

Tiny handprints grow so strongIt doesn't take them very longTo snap a shirt, to paint, to draw,To labor hard, to drive a car.

Tiny handprints grow to be

A person that is quite uniqueA wonderful mix of so many thingsWith her own feelings, thoughts and dreams.

Tiny handprints grow to relyOn her parents to bring her up just rightHer parents pray that when she's grownShe'll say their job has been well done.

Tiny handprints are ours to love

The sweetest gift from God above

A miracle that never is surpassed

How sad they grow up way too fast.

Author unknown

Almost Wordless Wednesday

Welcome to the Homestead: Homemade Ricotta

Recipalooza: Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars

Recipalooza: Easy No-Bake Chocolate Frosting

Becoming a Proverbs 31 Women Challenge: Day 2

Becoming a Proverbs 31 Women Challenge: Day 1

Holding On For Dear Life

Welcome to the Homestead: Getting Started with Chicks

Recipalooza: Breakfast Muffins

Recipalooza: Peanut Butter Granola Bars

Recipalooza: Home Made Granola

Recipalooza: 90 Minute No-Knead Bread

All In a Day: How to Encourage Unity and Closeness in the Family

Healthy Tips: Vitamin Routine

Weekend to Remember Giveaway Winner

The Devestation is Heartbreaking!

31 Days to Clean E-book!

Give Away! Family life presents: A weekend to remember!

Give away! Home made living...The whole series!!

All in a Day: Investing Time With Hubby

If they fail... We fail! What are we doing to our men?

What if?

Where are the children?

Time 4 Learning Curriculum review

Loving my new find

Thursday Tea and Poem; Tea With Me

The morning of "I don't want to get up yet"

Fear not my child

How tender a heart

How sacred a gift

New Homeschool curriculum try...

Tiny handprints grow so fast
Their awkward groping soon will clasp
A ball, a book, a sweetheart's hand,
A diploma, breifcase, wedding band.

Tiny handprints grow so strong
It doesn't take them very long
To snap a shirt, to paint, to draw,
To labor hard, to drive a car.

Tiny handprints grow so strong
It doesn't take them very long
To snap a shirt, to paint, to draw,
To labor hard, to drive a car.

A person that is quite unique
A wonderful mix of so many things
With her own feelings, thoughts and dreams.

Tiny handprints grow to rely
On her parents to bring her up just right
Her parents pray that when she's grown
She'll say their job has been well done.