Good Friday!

Today we celebrate the day that Jesus took all the wrath our sins deserve on Himself as He died on the cross in our place. What glorious grace!

We are celebrating with these hymns:

Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed

Jesus Paid It All

Nothing But the Blood

When I Survey the Wondrous Cross

I love these ideas from Doorposts:

• Look for a recipe online, and make hot cross buns together, or braid a batch of bread dough into a wreath, and then poke toothpicks at all angles into it to form acrown of thorns for an edible centerpiece at your table.
• Darken the house on Friday evening and all day Saturday. Turn off or dim most of the lights and put a black tablecloth on the table. Have your children help remove any flowers or plants, and decorate with bare branches or stones instead. Leave the house dark on Saturday, and before everyone gets up on Sunday morning, redecorate with candles, plants, a bright tablecloth, and an Easter lily or other flowers.
• Use this great idea from Mustard Seeds. With a permanent marker, make a red mark on the top part of each family member’s hands to remind each of you of the nail wounds Jesus endured on the cross to save us. Use a fine-tip black marker to write each person’s name across their red “wound”. What a visual reminder of the fact that Jesus died for each of us! Don’t be afraid to tell your children that Jesus suffered for them!

Our Favorite Christmas Books

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

by Robert Frost

illustrated by Susan Jeffers

The Legend of the Candy Cane

Saint Nicholas: The Real Story of the Christmas Legend

by Julie Stiegemeyer

OR

The Secret of St. Nicholas

by Ellen Nibali

A New Coat for Anna 

by Harriet Ziefert

This classic tale of redemption needs no explanation. I highly recommend it for big kids.

The Little Fir Tree

by Margaret Wise Brown

The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey

by Susan Woiciechowski

When a widow asks the town hermit to carve a nativity set for her son, a new friendship is slowly formed and a man gets a reminder of joy. We always follow up the book with the movie. Love both.

Christmas in the Barn

by Margaret Wise Brown

One Wintry Night

by Ruth Bell Graham

This is the Star

by Joyce Dunbar

Christmas Tapestry

by Patricia Polacco

The Donkey's Dream

by Barbara Helen Berger

Happy Spring!

What an awesome Creator we serve! Even the flowers bring Him praise.

A Biblical View of Motherhood

Adoption and Abortion

With so many Christians feeling forced to vote for the lesser of two pro-choice candidates, I thought this was very thought-provoking.

Best Adoption Movie I've Seen (so far)

 I really loved this. So many adoption truths in this movie.

 

Judah Update: 10 Months

Judah is pulling up on everything and has started cruising now. His main form of transportation is crawling though, since I now know how important it is. He has recently been going through a growth spurt - "a sleep spurt" as I call it; he's sleeping late in the morning and taking long naps. I miss him! 

So, I've been struggling with this big dilemma since Judah was a newborn: What to do with his hair.

He has a cowlick in the front that makes his hair go his left, and a cowlick at his crown that makes his hair go to his right. What's a mom to do? The struggle of how to handle this has kept me up nights (ok maybe it was just insomnia).

Well, I won't keep up the suspense. I know you're on the edge of your seat. I decided to part it on his right. 

And it looks great. I am so relieved.

You may now go on with your day knowing that all is right with the world.

Homeschooling Arrogance: Don't Do It!

If you're a homeschool parent, just watch the first 8 minutes of this.

It's a fine line between being convicted that home education is the best education for your child and becoming proud and arrogant about doing it. (Do you think you're somehow better because you have this revelation? Think about it. It's a common temptation. Repent and move on.)

I LOVE being able to witness all the educational milestones of my children with my very own eyes. It's such a blessing to have the freedom to do this!

But don't forget to always bring it back to the gospel! That's the WHOLE POINT! If we've given our kids an excellent academic education, but haven't educated them about the their sin and their need for a Savior, we have really really missed the boat.

Message to Black Christians

This Woman is Angry at Christians

How do we respond to this kind of anger? Here's how:

Judah Eating

Have you had the pleasure of having someone this in love with you? It's really fabulous.

Things That Help Our Days Run Smoothly

When young moms ask my advice about homeschooling, I'm at a loss. My family looks different than theirs so it's not going to run the same way. I want to say: "Oh just do this or use this curriculum and your problems will be solved!" But it doesn't work that way. You have just two littles and I have 4 big kids. You do all the cooking and cleaning and I'm just a supervisor and helper of those tasks. You do all the teaching, but your school day is an hour long. My big kids do most of their school independently, but our school day is 4-5 hours long. Homeschool families just don't compare. 

BUT I do have some tips I've learned as a big homeschool family that really help us. I hope you may find some encouragement in here somewhere:

• soaking breakfast dishes until lunch time so we can focus on school work in the morning
• specific "tidy up" times (we do one in the morning and one in late afternoon) so I don't have to constantly be correcting the children for not picking up after themselves
• chores only after school (I'm not including setting table and the like here, just stuff like vacuuming, dusting, watering plants, sweeping the porch, etc. Trash is the exception. It has to be taken out in the morning.)
• I have learned to develop a team mentality when it comes to where things belong. I like to think it's my kitchen, but since I depend on my kids to do so many kitchen tasks, it's really a team effort to keep it running. So I figure I won't be the boss of where stuff goes until it's mostly me in the kitchen. Right now, it definitely isn't. This also goes back to the idea of: I can nag all day long or I can figure out a new way of thinking that eliminates the stress of doing that all the time. 
• When it comes to keeping the kids' closets in order and clothes neatly stacked in drawers, my method is denial for the most part. 

Worth Your Time

Why I Love Homeschooling

I'm pretty sure I've blogged about this before, but I have new reasons now:

• My 14 yo daughter plopped on the couch on Saturday night and read Tales from Shakespeare in her pj's. 
• My almost 13 yo daughter still holds my hand when we're out together. 
• None of my kids have labels, although several would if they were out-schooled.
• My kids are confident and secure. They are able to laugh at themselves.
• If I don't get enough sleep, school starts later. Or it starts without me. 
• I really love going to the zoo/museum/vacation when no one else is there!
• My kids' best friends are each other.
• God is developing patience in me, as well as compassion and endurance.
• I'm a better mom because of homeschooling. 

Who Do You Follow?

Judah Update: 8 months

Judah has been army crawling all over the place lately. So fun and now that we know the value of it, we put him on his tummy all the time. The kids are all impatient for him to start hands-and-knees crawling, but I'm in no hurry to get to the next milestone. It's all great!
At 8 mos, Judah has 7 teeth. His teething has been fast and furious. He drools, he chews on everything, and the next day he has a new tooth. Easy peasy. Never had a kid grow teeth with such ease.
Love this boy!

At six months, I started Judah on solids and he didn't go for it. We stopped for a month and then came back to it. Now he loves to eat.
Guess what he's been eating lately.

Tie Dye Fanatics

Any guesses what we were doing last night?

Update: Our church's fellowship was at the roller rink this month. We decided to dress in 70s style just for the fun of it. We made quite a scene (which we all loved) since no one else did anything like this.

The Parent Rap {Trust me, you need this today}

Adoption Journal: Giving Up My Fears

One big issue our older adoptees have is their difficulty communicating their needs or emotions. In Liberia, it wasn't safe to communicate needs or emotions or ask for help. So they learned not to. Unlearning that is a monumental task. 

I've had to deal with my big fears of their future if they don't grow in this area. I've spent much time worrying how they will communicate with a spouse, should they marry. I've recently realized that their spouses will just have to learn what we have: how to communicate with someone who doesn't. It has been sanctifying for us and it will be sanctifying for their spouses.

We were teasing Isaac the other night because he was obviously wanting something from Kyle but wasn't asking. I held him by the shoulder and had a huge smile on my face as I said: 

If it's God's will for you to marry, we'll be training your fiance in how to communicate with Isaac:

When he's mad, he won't tell you, but he'll act like this and you need to ask if he's mad.

When he wants something, he won't tell you, but he'll act like this and you need to ask what he wants.

When he's sad, he won't tell you, but he'll act like this and you need to ask what he's sad about. Etc, etc. You get the idea.

Pat Robertson says adopted children "grow up weird"

In a recent broadcast of The 700 Club, a woman sent in a question about a man who wouldn’t marry her because she has children who were adopted internationally. If they were her “own” biological children, he would have no problem, she said. But because they were adopted, he saw too much risk. 

Pat Robertson said the man “didn’t want to take on a United Nations,” and that, after all, you never know about adopted children; they might have brain damage and “grow up weird.”

The issue here isn’t just that Robertson is, with cruel and callous language, dismissing the Christian mandate to care for the widows and orphans in their distress. The issue is that his disregard is part of a larger worldview. The prosperity and power gospel Robertson has preached fits perfectly well with the kind of counsel he’s giving in recent years. Give China a pass on their murderous policies; we’ve got business interests there. Divorce your weak wife; she can’t do anything for you anymore. Those adopted kids might have brain damage; they’re “weird.” What matters is health and wealth and power. But that’s not the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

Read the rest here: Pat Robertson vs. The Spirit of Adoption

On a personal note:

What the author says about his statement lining up perfectly with the prosperity gospel is certainly true. If God only wants good things for us that make us happy, then adopting children who definitely will have issues isn't going to be on God's agenda. If, however, God is more concerned with our holiness than our happiness, then He will be calling Christians all over the world to adopt these needy orphans and teaching these families what it really means to love unconditionally in the process. (Which He most certainly is.) Adoption has sanctified me more than anything else has. 

To God be the glory.