Goodbye Old House, Hello New!

Tonight's the night... the last night in our old house. It makes me more sad than excited as I walk around this house, seeing everything boxed up and not sure how we'll ever get all of it out. I think it's just exhaustion and silly nostalagia creeping up. Everything this week has been, "Oh, this will be the last time we'll do such and such at our house." We've done a lot of stuff here over the last 9 1/2 years. Even so, I'm getting pretty sappy even to myself so it's about time to get this show on the road and MOVE ALREADY!!

We did have our first closing this afternoon in which we signed over ownership of the old house to a young guy moving out of his parents' home for the first time. Technically, tonight we're homeless as we legally do not own a residence. Thankfully, the guy was great enough to give us 72 hours to "evacuate the property". That will enable us to attend the closing for our new house tomorrow morning (Tuesday) at 10:00am and spend the rest of that day and all day Wednesday getting everything transported over.

The kids have been so excited for so long, I don't really think they get it. They will tomorrow night when they lay their little heads down on their pillows and close their eyes in their new rooms!!

Overwhelmed and Yet Not

This morning we had our first MOPS meeting of the year. I am the Discussion Group Team Leader. There are certain responsibilites involved and I've also asked our coordinators to let me speak at each meeting (i.e. give announcements, introduce the speaker, etc.) to shake my fear of public speaking. Bible Study Fellowship begins on Thursday which I'm greatly looking forward to for my own spiritual well-being but especially for Philip and Braewyn's understanding of who Jesus is. We're in our second week of homeschooling and it's going well with continuing up's and down's. Our house is steadily filling up with packed boxes as our move across town is now 14 days away. Exciting yet looming at the same time.

My mind keeps drifting to what next year will bring. Will we homeschool again? Will I say yes to coordinating MOPS as the idea has been suggested? Will I instead say yes to becoming a BSF discussion leader? Will I have had a third child and say no to both options above? I let myself occasionally get so frazzled.

And then I turn my mind back to the Lord. I praise my God who does not let me know the entire path of my life nor do I think He wants me to know right now. I find peace in His Word.

"Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight." Proverbs 3:5-6

"Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path." Psalm 119:105

All Jesus wants from me is to trust and obey DAILY.

Our First Field Trip!

This first week of school was fun yet very trying at times. I've had no formal teaching training and never thought about how hard it might be to instruct someone on how to write. Philip and I made it through three sessions of handwriting lessons (we'll do handwriting on Monday, Wednesday and Friday) and he did get better with each one. All that hard work was rewarded when we headed out Friday morning for our first field: visiting our local non-commercial airport!! We'll be learning the alphabet in correct sequence. Therefore our first week focused on the letter "A" and "A is for Airplane"!

I have lived here in Spartanburg for 9 1/2 years and finally feel blessed to have visited this tiny piece of history. The Spartanburg Downtown Memorial Airport was built in 1927. Charles Lindburgh was at the dedication of the airport just months after completing his famous solo flight from New York to Paris!! Very cool! There are portraits of noteworthy pilots hanging in the main room of the airport. I also enjoyed reading the memorial stones to Philip which circle a flag post in a grass area. All the men memorialized were from Spartanburg; some died while flying in WWII and others died while enjoying their hobby of flying. I never thought we'd study history while on our field trip too!!

When we went inside, I told the man at the "check-in" desk that we had begun homeschooling and were learning about airplanes. I asked if we could watch any that were to take off or land and he said that a small private jet was about to leave!! He said to just stand on the inside of the white wall. What a blessing to arrive just as the jet was leaving. The pilot waved to the kids from his window while checking all the pre-flight stuff! After the jet taxied away, the airport man came outside and invited us to go to the top of the tower. This airport is no longer operated from a controlled tower. I asked him, "So is it basically, fly at your own risk?" and he said, "Pretty much." From the tower, we watched the personal jet take off, a smaller Cessna plane take off, and the local TV station traffic jet land and then take off. What a great time we had!!












Upon getting back in our car, I told Philip, "I'm not that good at teaching yet, and sometimes writing is hard for you, but guess what? We both LOVE field trips!" His face beamed.

Our First Week of School

Last Wednesday, Philip, Braewyn and I began our first year of homeschool. This will be Philip's 4-year-old preschool year with Braewyn just tagging along for the fun. So far, so good. I'm still trying to feel it out. Not try to replicate what I remember public school to be like. Trying to keep it on a play-level, but accomplishing each day's set objectives. I do love the layout of the curriculum I chose, Hands On Homeschooling, because there are four "units" for each day which give us enough to work with (around an hour and a half each day) but not too much to feel overwhelmed. I'm still feeling a little like it's Vacation Bible School as with that I would read the entire week's lesson ahead of time and then each individual day's lesson the night before, making sure I had all of my supplies gathered together. With VBS, you know it's over in a week and so I'm trying to pace myself as this is a year long which I can't think about too much. I know God led me to think about the idea of homeschooling and to teach Philip this year so I just need to focus on the fact that if He called me to do this, He will give me the strength and endurance to carry it through to completion (Phil. 1;6, Eph. 2:10).

Here are a few photo recaps.


We begin each morning with a prayer and then Calendar time (review the day, date, and weather). My good friend Regina put this trifold together for her son last year and graciously passed it on to me. I just added the calendar poster which Philip and Braewyn love adding the numbers to.


Philip has gotten very good at coloring over the last six months. Handwriting however will probably be our biggest challenge this year. Thankfully my friend Carlotta suggested I just let him do lots of letter tracing before we begin to actually write letters. Great idea! I forgot how hard writing is if you're just starting out.


They both enjoyed taping coins to cardboard (insides of cereal boxes) to create money bags. It was the craft which accompanied our first Bible story, Ananias and Sapphira from Acts 5. Wow, what a way to start the year. Philip learned in this passage that the couple lied to God and He stuck them dead.


The curriculum's arithmetic portion starts out way below Philip's current ability level. On Friday we were "learning" about matching patterns. I look forward to November when I'll teach Philip to count to 40 using beans!


Each week there is a "cooking" unit. This first week we focused on the letter "A" and were to make applesauce but my blender is in storage (coming out soon!). I looked ahead in the book and chose to make week three's food, shipshape snacks (we'll learn about sea travel then; this first month in social studies, we're learning about transportation).


Today (it's Labor Day anyway... rest from work, right?) and tomorrow we're having a mini-vacation from school as Philip and Braewyn's cousins Hannah and Madeline are visiting with their mom Aunt Lori and dad Uncle Jonathan. Here are the four cousins in the front yard of our new house. It was great walking them through the house and makes me even MORE excited to move in three weeks!!!!

Team Impact comes home

For those reading who attended the Team Impact event at our church this weekend, here's a few photos of my own little Team Impact members showing their stuff.




Philip obviously didn't miss a thing of the real event as the reenactment was close to it. After "smashing" through the "wood planks", he blew up a "hot water bottle" (i.e. a hair brush which he threw across the room signifying the explosion) and tore apart "phone books" (i.e. slung a stack of story books left and right). I then asked him if he wanted to talk about anything as the men of Team Impact presented the Gospel message at their show. He said, "I work really hard at being strong. And Jesus loves everybody." Good synopsis. Later that afternoon when Matthew asked Philip about playing Team Impact and how he smashed up everything, Philip said, "Well, obviously they didn't really smash because I was using my toys." Quite the factual little guy.

And here's a photo of him with another bit of truth... I think this makes it official!