Great Parenting Books

I have recently read 2 more great books on homeschooling. Beyond Survival by: Diana Waring and Home Educating with Confidence by: Rick and Marilyn Boyer. These are wonderful books. When I find a book I really like and one that I really enjoy I usually reread it several times, always finding something new each time. I had thought about making a post about my favorite books. Katie and I were at the bookshelf trying to pull them all out and then I realized I could go on and on. I thought I could just pick a few but there are just too many. So I think I will just slowly throw in a title here and there on the few posts that I make. I enjoy reading books with Sammy after the kids go to bed. We enjoy talking about the different things that the author points out. In the past we have went through Keeping Our Children's Hearts and then Raising Godly Tomatoes. He has been reading and now finished another book that he would read to me and now I need to go ahead and read it all the way through. Sometimes these books are hard to read. Not because they are boring but because they speak the truth to us. That can be hard to hear. What I really like about the books by the Maxwell family is that they apply everything to scripture. I can spend hours in books. Sammy has noticed this and even though he also loves great books he always reminds me to make sure I am spending as much or more time reading the Bible as I do all these other books. So let's not forget the Bible is by far the best book. Reading through it shows us exactly how we need to parent our children. Monday afternoon we were able to catch up with an old friend and her children for lunch. This person is older than me and has raised several and still has several to go. She is an encourager. I talked about a few things I struggle with pertaining to the kids and homeschooling and with her wise words she gave me a great idea. Just enjoy it!!! This was the second time in a matter of days that I had heard these words from veteran homeschoolers. I had to make a call to Gateway, the school we are registered with, and I was told the same thing. Maybe when my kids are adults I will be able to return the favor and be an encourager to a younger Mom. So next I will plan to start sharing my favorite books with others that could also enjoy them. Looking forward to the weekend. The girls are planning on all kinds of Valentine treats for us to bake. Hope there will be a cheesecake in all that baking. My favorite!!!!!

Happy Birthday Daddy!!!

Happy birthday to the man of my dreams and best friend I LOVE YOU Sammy!!!! LOVE, Missy

Happy Birthday Daddy, wishing you a happy 41st Love, Morgan, Katie, Josiah, Jacob, Sarah, and Samuel



What Morgan loves about her daddy: I love when I have long talks with him about staying pure, and not going with the flow. Besides the Lord Jesus Christ YOU are the number ONE man in my life right now, I LOVE you!!!!

What Katie loves about her daddy: I love when my daddy helps me with my singing ( thanks for giving me that solo in the Easter musical I'll try hard)

What Josiah loves about his daddy: I love that my dad is a good singer.
What Jacob loves about his daddy: I love when my daddy acts funny.
What Sarah Loves about her daddy: I love when my daddy sings me to sleep.
What Sam Loves about his daddy: I love when my daddy feeds me my bottle!!!

The Party

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Tonight we had a little celebration for Sammy AKA Daddy. My mom and sister came over and had dinner, opened presents, and had donuts!!!! Sammy wanted donuts for his cake so we had the cake and candles together.
The kids made signs for their daddy and put them all around the house.

They LOVE their daddy!!!!

Samuel really enjoyed the bow

Morgan and Josiah enjoying the Krispy Kreme donuts

Sarah and Samuel

I had Sarah and Samuel twelve months and three weeks apart. They are the closest in age in all six of my children. Sarah is petite for 20 months, while Sam is very large for 7 months. So, there height and weight is just about the same.
~ Sarah now has teeth and there is eight or ten coming in at one time, poor girl~

--Sam is almost sitting up!!--

We somehow ended up with the same outfit, since they both wear the same size we decided to let them match and wear the outfits for a picture.

More Snow Pictures!!

The kids went out in the snow again and had a blast!!! Shasta(our Siberian husky) went out to play too. The kids made two snowmans and had a snowball fight, all of them had a really good time!!

~Shasta looked so pretty playing in the snow~

~Here is a picture of behind the house we thought it looked really pretty with the snow~

And the finished project.....

Snow, Snow, Snow!!!!!!

We did not get that many snow pictures because all the kids would not stop running around throwing snowballs, trying to make a snow man, and getting the lid off the trash can and trying to "slide" down our driveway finally realizing it was NOT going to work. I wonder who thought of that one, Morgan.


-- a picture of our house you can't get a good picture of it because we have so many trees--

Have a blessed Sunday everyone

Schedules

Now that the kids are much better we are enjoying getting back into our regular schedule for school and home. This is not easy for me. I have a tough time keeping up with everything but life runs much smoother when we implement our schedule. The best thing we have ever used is from the Maxwell Family. Managers of Their Homes and Managers of Their Chores. It helps us to stay on track, this in turn helps with better behaved children and that is always a plus. When we are off our schedule it seems like everyone is going in a different direction. This usually ends in chaos and confusion. Not a good thing ever. I need to get the Managers of their School book from the Maxwells. This sounds like a good one too. I had planned on getting it from them when they came through our area but plans changed and we didn't make it. This also allows time to schedule in all the extras. There is so much we want to get to but never have the time for. I hope to do better at that. We are also back to the Flylady for keeping up with the house. The kids enjoy doing that so I just let them go for it. Not everyone enjoys cleaning house(that would be me) but they get in pairs and enjoying working together. Older with the younger works out well!! The boys can't be partners very much they seem to get sidetracked.

This Sunday is something I have been looking forward to. It has been several weeks since i made it. We have a group coming in "This Hope" . My husband has a wonderful video of these on his blog. It is worth your time to watch it. It is based on a true story and it brought me to tears. ( I know that sometimes isn't too hard). I love the words to this song. We are so free in our country to worship God. I can't imagine what it would be like to not have that freedom. But lets not kid ourselves about it. It might not always be that way. We need to pay attention to what our kids are being taught. We need to make sure they have the correct truth and not what the world wants to teach them. Okay so watch the video it is so good. To think what this man had to go through. It makes me want to stand even taller and be even prouder of this life that we have chosen. I know I won't go to jail for this because it is legal. But to get teased, be made fun of or talked about. Through the years we have faced this at some point. But the blessings from God and the encouragement and kindness from others totally outweigh the negative. Isn't there and old saying that a true friend loves you, faults and all. I pray for me this is true because I have plenty faults. Would I change anything if I had to go to prison and be away from my family. Very tough question. I pray that our family would stand strong with Gods help. Here's the link to the video http://sixparriskidsandcounting.com

Sam and Sarah update

It has been a long week so far-after a quick trip to TC Thompsons Sunday night we found out that the RSV had caused Pneumonia to start setting up. They didn't want to keep him since he was feeling pretty good and thought the antibiotics would work well. Let me just say this is a very hard place to be at. I walked down the hall to go for a chest x ray and everywhere I turned I heard screaming sick babies. They were full at the ER in every spot. I noticed several times many Dr's and nurses working on one baby. One image in my mind I wish I could forget but it keeps popping up. I am so thankful that my little boy was looking up grinning at me almost to say" Hey I feel better let's go home". My heart was so heavy for the other parents there. When we first pulled in I saw an ambulance bringing in someone. Never a good thing to see at any ER but just something about it being at a Children's hospital gave me that sick feeling in my stomach. When we got home with the baby Sarah had already started running a fever. We Had thought she might be able to get over it easier because she was a little older, but of course I was back at the Dr. with her Tuesday morning. Her chest x ray showed no pneumonia but her high fevers really scared me. As of Wednesday things seemed to be improving except for the fact that Samuel still hates his breathing treatments and just loves to spit out his medicine. But that's OK he will probably have to get used to them if he is anything like Jacob. Now on Thursday the Dr. has decided to finally put Sarah on antibiotics because her symptoms are changing just like Samuel's did. Hopefully we will see a major improvement in her in about 24 hours. So what we are trying to do is just keep a normal routine as much as possible and let the older 3 do alot of independent school stuff and then if the little ones go to sleep at the same time we do our group time together. Poor Katie is starting to get sick now too. She has been such a little helper to me. The oldest 3 have been such helps around here. Morgan and Katie doing just about whatever needs to be done. From house stuff to food to helping with the little ones and Josiah is trying to keep up with folding our always huge pile of laundry and also doing some of the girls regular chores as I need them in other places. This has been a time for us to all pull together. Anyone who knows me well knows I don't do very good without sleep, I know I should just get used to it, so I really appreciate them working.
A funny side note- when Sarah and Samuel weighed we were sure that he had passed her up but she still has about a pound on him. So funny, one petite one and one chubby one. Who would have thought. Prayers for all of us would be great. #1 for no more of this junk to be passed around and #2 I can't seem to get over this queasiness of maybe indigestion stuff . I think I need to just get back on some prilosec and here's the big one stop drinking coke and lose about 50 or so pounds. I just can't stand this yucky sick feeling. It could just be nerves. Looking forward to the weekend and praying away this sickness. Thank you Lord for taking care of us!!!!

Our sick Baby Boy

Just wanted to do a quick post and ask those of you that keep up with our family through the blog to pray for Little Samuel. He had been sick for a few days so we made an appt. with the Dr on Friday. He has RSV. That is a pretty scary thing for us just because he is still so young. They also did a chest x ray and checked his oxygen level. It was at 100 % and there was no sign of pneumonia. He was just having a hard time with his breathing so they wanted to really check him out. He was able to get past the flu somehow a few months ago and just caught this somehow. The Dr said he should be improving by Sat. Well it's now Sunday and I don't think he has improved but it could be worse. He doesn't like the breathing treatments but of course who really would. Sarah has started to feel yucky too. If you remember, say a prayer for us.

Sunday Service

We had an awesome service this morning. I was excited to get ready and be at church for the first service of 2010. Sammy took a Sunday off last week and we did not have service Wednesday so it seemed like it had been so long since I had been in church. We had some great music!!!! And then a sweet little girl that I have known and loved since she was a baby was baptised today. I have been friends with her Mom for over 20 years and her parents were in our wedding and we were in theirs. I know they are so excited to know that both of their girls have accepted the Lord. What more could you ask for? When our oldest daughter Morgan was baptised it was on Easter Sunday. I'll never forget it . We were in revival and she had went forward one night. Then a few days later her Daddy was able to pray with her and she asked Jesus to be her saviour. How thrilled we were. Since then we have seen Katie and Josiah both be saved and baptised at Waterville. We do something a bit different than I was used to but I really love it. When the person along with the pastor come out into the Baptistry, he asks for a word of encouragement to be shared. This is when a parent or spouse or maybe even a teacher speaks directly to this person and gives a bible scripture. Sammy did this for Katie and Josiah. I watched them look at their Daddy so sweetly as he spoke to them. It is a very special time. Today Kendall's Dad, Tim spoke to her just before she was baptised. You could tell he was moved beyond words. Sammy and I remembered tonight when Tim was saved quite a long time ago in our younger years. We are so proud to be in church serving the Lord with Tim and Loren and their girls. Our pastor then challenged us to daily read the word and pray. I really enjoyed the sermon. We all need to be reminded of the basics. It is so easy to get in a rut. I am not one to do a typical New Years Resolution but I do enjoy a fresh start. I think I am going to get our One Year Bible and start reading with the kids. I know they will do their best to keep us up to date. I saw on another blog I enjoy reading that she had a 90 day challenge going. That sounds great too. Morgan, Katie and I are also going to do a study together called Raising Maidens of Virtue. I am looking forward to it too. I have wanted to read this with them for sometime now. We might share more about it as we're going through it on one of our blogs. Not sure who will post about that one. Looking forward to the year ahead.

Last Post of the Year!!!

Happy New Year if you want to see pictures of our Dollywood trip, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day photos head on over to my daughters blogs, Morgan and Katie!!