Magic Moments

  I read this poem to the boys this morning while thinking about the Ukrainian soldiers. Tennyson wrote this just six weeks after the battle in the Crimean War in 1854. At the time, it was the British on what was basically a suicidal mission against the heavily armed Russian Army. Tennyson calls out the bravery of the British to sacrifice themselves without question and declares them heroes. Thankfully, God rules over rulers and countries. For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods. Psalm 95:3 God is the King of all the earth; sing praises with a psalm. God reigns over the nations; God sits on his holy throne. Psalm 47:6-8 His dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation; all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, "What have you done?" Daniel 4:34-35 Charge o...

 All three boys began taekwondo this year. At first I only had plans of Cade doing it, but eventually the other two joined as well. Tom and I frequently say it's the best money we've spent. The boys have learned so much. They are stronger, they've learned balance, concentration, self-control, and discipline. Their teacher is simply wonderful. I told him he can't retire until our youngest achieves black belt. The boys have worked hard and were all ready to take their tests to move up a belt this weekend. All three will be moving onto yellow belt, and it was really good for them to have to perform under pressure. Sage thrives on pressure and does well. Aiden doesn't do as well with pressure, but he rose to the occasion. Cade is six and still learning about himself. He got nervous and had to repeat his requirements three times because of silly mistakes, but in the end he did amazing. So proud of these boys. I'm the mama who sits with tears in her eyes at the taekwo...

 Science Fairs are a lot of work for kids and mamas. Maybe when I committed all three boys to doing a project, I didn't quite think through how long everything would take. However, it's not as if I could exclude any of them, so three projects is what we did.  Cade did an Ecosystem. He's in kindergarten so  he displayed his knowledge rather than formulating a hypotheses, developing an experiment, and running trials. Cade created a self-sustaining ecosystem with a pond layer and earth layer. It sustained life for plants and animals and showed the water cycle. No matter how much reading you do on the internet, there will be issues. So, we did loose a few guppies and we had to switch to gold fish. The man at the pet store knows me well now. He even loaned me a heater because I couldn't keep the  water warm enough for the guppies. I also think it's possible we starved the guppies at first because our ecosystem wasn't mature enough to produce enough food for the fish....

 I'm sitting here on this blog today for the sole purpose of recording a few current events for my boys to be reminded of when they read this years from now. One HUGE reason we homeschool is because we want our boys to be critical thinkers. We don't want them following the masses. We don't want them to just accept what others say without question. We want them to know what science really is. We want them to know history and the role it plays today. We want them to know that the Bible is NEVER wrong.  Throughout the last two years I've been taking screen shots of articles, memes, headlines, and pictures in the news. All those screen shots backup to our photo storage account. I do this because God only knows what the history books are going to say about the last 2 years we've lived. The lies that have circulated, the mass panic, the false narrative, the people falling over themselves in an effort to do whatever the government says is necessary, all this combined into ...

  Sage is 10! Single digits no more. He's in love with all things guitar. He'll play classical songs like Opus 241 #18 and in the next minute I'll hear him on the electric hammering out a Greta Van Fleet favorite. He's a math whiz, has a powerful kick in taekwondo, and wants to be an electrical engineer. I find him reading way too late in bed before he sneaks into our bed and falls asleep. Sage's heart is tender and He loves Jesus. We pray that this is always true, and Sage's faith is always his strong foundation. No matter what he grows up to be, may he always first be a God honoring man. God, grant sage wisdom beyond his years and keep him safe. Happy birthday to our dear Sage!

 Football in the rain? These three say "yes." It was a cozy, rainy day. School, reading, playing, painting (always), dinner, and a quiet evening. Just living the everyday.

 We're trying to settle into our new house and it's slowly starting to feel like home. We're working to make it ours and thus Tom and I haven't sat down for three weeks. We're really tired. This weekend we took a break from painting the exterior. It's project we wanted done by Friday, but alas it is taking longer than we anticipated. We watched football with family, we went to our new church for the first time, and we went to the apple orchard. The orchard was disappointing. We couldn't pick our own apples and the apple crop wasn't great. We vowed to make the trip to Apple Jacks next year because that's our orchard and we love it there. We brought home pumpkins, picked up pizza and watched a movie. I wish the weekend wasn't ending. Monday morning brings all the commitments of the week....school, taekwondo, guitar lessons, Spanish class and more painting. Aiden started with a new soccer team here and of course during his first game he sprained his...