October, rocktober. Kids (finally) get used to getting up at 7 o’clock. Beautifully colored leaves fall off trees (but not in TX ). The temperature drops below 70 degrees. It is also the best (and worst) time to go to the zoo! Good part: it’s not burning hot and it’s not freezing cold. Bad part: schools also decide that it is the best time to send their kids to the zoo, too. But anyway, I had just finished a lesson on cats in science. So my mom decided to make me write this post and take a picture of the big cat (aka the male lion). But Mr. lion decided to sleep…..behind a rock. So sorry! But….a zoo is not a zoo without other animals, of course. So I got some pics of other animals.
This zebra was rolling and rolling and well,rolling. So funny!
Does this guy look like he is smiling for the camera or WHAT!!!!
The snakes always give me the creeps. 
Cannot believe how this snake got so friendly, with little kids pulling its tail almost every day.
These made me laugh out loud. The blue one made me take dozens of pics of him. Lol!
Feeding the birds it always so fun(even when you are 10 
)
Giana and Juliet both were so happy the birds ate from their sticks.
Not as big as sissy yet, Juju!!!
Oh my. A lot of animals are active and moving for us today!
Then again, the big cats like to be lazy.
Hmmm….. you would make a good snack. And you. And you. And you.
First day of school: We celebrated by eating in the ‘Homeschool cafeteria’ (Jason’s Deli!)
We are in the middle of our first semester of homeschooling! Yippee!! Here’s a little peek into what’s been going on so far . . .
How we keep on task during the day.
Most mornings begin snuggling on the couch reading the Bible and praying with one another. After that, we Bless our House (clean!) and then start on schoolwork.
Rae loves the flexibility of working where she likes: her room, Daddy’s office, the couch, or the back porch.
Wednesdays are busy days for us. During my Bible study, Rae finds an empty room at church and is able to work. We have to rush to get to her dance class at 1:30,so math is sometimes done on the go!
We’ve had fun with P.E. While it was still 100+ outside, we’d swim laps. Now that it’s cooled off a bit, we ride bikes, run, or play basketball at the park.
Besides cleaning the house and helping with the grocery shopping (ha!), Home Ec consists of cooking and sewing. Her first sewing project was a burp cloth for a new baby at church (sweet little Atticus.)
For Science this year, she’s studying Zoology, specifically land animals created on the 6th day. At the end of each unit she conducts an experiment. This one was about how prey (m&ms) use camoflage to help them hide from a predator (Rae).
Studying zoology means that a trip to the zoo on a gorgeous October day is perfectly educational! (Pictures to come in a future post by Raegan.)
For History/Geography/Reading she is studying the countries of the Eastern Hemisphere. Each country takes about 2 weeks to cover. In that time she does research using the World Book encyclopedia (loaded on the laptop) and reads several non-fiction and/or fiction books about the country. To wrap up the unit, we usually find something fun to do!
When she studied Mongolia (and read Genghis Khan and the Mongrel Horde), we took a trip to the Irving Arts Center to see an exhibit featuring the Khan.
We bought a replica of a yurt (what the people of Mongolia lived in during the time of the Khans.)
We finished our trip by meeting Juliet and Daddy at a Mongolian BBQ place for lunch!
When she studied Australia she baked a favorite dessert in that country, Lamingtons (think pound cake dipped in chocolate and rolled in coconut.) They were a hit!
Along with Mongolia and Australia, she’s also studied the Pacific Islands (I read Island of the Blue Dolphins to all of the kids), New Zealand (she reinterpreted traditional Maori artwork by making a clay mask and painting it) , and Antarctica (we watched a dvd from the library that both made us very cold!!)
Today she started studying Japan. I’m excited to dress up in a kimono and eat sushi!
How quickly the first part of this school year has flown by! Aidan and AnnaBeth have started 1st and 3rd grade. Our neighborhood was rezoned, so both are adjusting to a new school. AnnaBeth especially misses some of her old friends, but is quickly making new ones.
Juliet is in 3 yr old preschool. Her teachers are sweet and she loves school, but she still manages to cry and cling to momma every morning at drop off!
Raegan has begun homeschooling! She’s named our school High Five Academy, because the first week every time we’d do something fun or different from what she’d be doing in public school we’d give each other a little high five!
In August, we headed out of the sweltering Texas heat to the Ozark Mountains.
Uncle Matt, Aunt Shannon, Macy and Zoey were with us the first few days, but then had to return to school and work. For the rest of the week, it was just us and Meme and Papaw.
Breakfast always tastes better when it’s cooked outside!
It was gorgeous those first few mornings! I even had a chance to pull out my long-lost hoodie. Hellooo cool-ish weather!
Cute man!!
Papaw took the kids to the dock to fish, putting worms on their hooks and getting the fish that they caught off safely. They each caught several, though none were keepers.
Here’s a little guy that Aidan managed to catch. Teeny! Meme accidentally caught a giant turtle, and the unhooking of it was traumatic for us all. Juliet used to think turtles said, “turtleturtleturtleturle”, but now knows that they hiss like cats!
We didn’t actually put a hook on her princess pole. Instead, I taught her to cast and reel it back it in.
The bulk of our time was spent in the water or on the boat.
Juliet started the summer scared to swim, and ended the summer not afraid of anything. She loved jumping off the boat into the water and riding the tube. “Faster! Go Faster!”, she’d yell. One of the funniest things she’d do would be to stick her face in the water and swim around. She said she was talking to the fish!!
AnnaBeth started the week a little timid. She wasn’t fond of the lake water, and would only ride the tube if is was guaranteed to go slower, which meant she wanted to only to get on if Juliet was on. By the end of the week she’d turned brave, tubing with Aidan and Raegan and yelling “Faster” with JuJu.
Aidan and Rae loved tubing,and Papaw and Rick both loved throwing them off. Aidan made an attempt at learning to ski, but quickly decided he’d rather tube.
Rae was able to get up on skis the afternoon of her 10th birthday!
I think we’d all agree that the best part of this vacation was getting to spend it with family! (Although not pictured, that includes Shan, Matt, Macy and Zoey too!)
Wouldn’t that be a fun way to fish?!?!
I’m not sure how much education goes on during the last couple of weeks of school. The primary agenda seems to be fun. And giving the kids sugar.
Each of the big kids had their own field day. Juliet and I got to hang out at AnnaBeth’s one morning, and then came back for Raegan’s that afternoon. (We missed Aidan’s the next week because we were on day 2 of potty-training.)
AnnaBeth’s class was the winner of the morning!
Raegan graduated from the fourth grade . . . moving on to White House School (homeschool) next year.
She loved Miss Cason!
AnnaBeth finished up second grade. Mrs Berns was such a great teacher. She even came to one of AnnaBeth’s baseball games!
And finally, Mr Aidan graduated from kindergarten.
All seven classes. (With 700 cameras pointed at them!)
Thanks Mrs Renfro for a great year!
Congrats kiddos! I’m looking forward to what 5th, 3rd, and 1st grade hold for you.
My friend Jen gave Aidan this great book for his birthday.
It’s a simple, but brilliant concept. I read a passage of Scripture aloud, and he draws what he hears.
What a fun way to help hide Scripture in his heart!
Here’s the finished product. Thanks Jen! I can’t wait to work through the rest of the book with him!
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
This Spring we embarked on a great experiment: Could we in fact have three kids play baseball on three different teams, and come out alive? The good news is that we are still all here. With five practices a week on three different fields, and then once the season started, six games a week, we will probably never do this again!
Aidan played t-ball for the Giants. The boy is fast (super-fast is how he describes himself), has a great arm, and can knock the ball hard. He loved playing pitcher, because that’s where the action was. Once when he was assigned to play center field, I saw my aggressive son inch up with every play. Before the inning was over, he’d taken over for the shortstop!
AnnaBeth played coach-pitch ball for the Nationals. She had the best attitude, always smiling and enjoying the game, even if she’d struck out. She started the season as one of two girls on her team, but ended up being the only girl before the games were over. She was a great hitter, and was a great pitcher, second basemen and outfielder. She got to be the catcher a few times and loved it.
Raegan played Minor kid-pitch ball for the Angels. She also ended up as the only girl on her team, but wasn’t intimated in the least by the boys. It was amazing to watch this girl improve throughout the season. She once was able to hit the ball off a pitcher that was striking the boys out left and right. Her best hit was a triple that brought tears to this proud momma’s eyes. Her team was third in the league and played in the championship game against an undefeated (and stacked!) team.
We are truly blessed to have healthy kids that are able to play hard. My prayer is that they pursue the Lord with even more joy, sweat, and tears than they apply to all of their sports. May they be salt and light to the kids and adults they play with. May Rick and I be missionaries to the families we encounter in the stands. May all that we do as a family glorify Him!
My boy is six!!
Enjoying some birthday waffles with chocolate syrup.
Passionate, full-force, driven, focused, Star Wars, Legos, baseball, soccer, football, swords, Jedis, creative, competitive, fun-loving, tackling, running fast, BOY.
Building a ship with legos.
Building a Minute to Win It type tower. He did it!
Spring means warmer, crazy weather, grilling out, and, most importantly, celebrating our Risen Savior. Our life was full of all of these this season!
Sprinkler fun while Daddy gets dinner ready.
At CityView’s Community Easter Egg Hunt. How do you like the boots? ha! Poor girl has such terrible eczema, most shoes tear her little heals up. Boots are the exception! And in case you were wondering, the red circle on her face is exactly what she requested: a red circle!
Action shot.
With sweet friend Aby.
This boy is all business. Jumping house, egg hunting, eating candy. No time for face painting or pausing for pictures for mom.
You are never too old for a basket full of candy!
All dressed up and ready for Easter Sunday. AnnaBeth has become our resident fashionista. She loves picking out everyone’s clothes. This day was no exception.
This day in May was spent playing at Trinity Park and riding the train with our CityView playgroup. On this occasion, that meant 35+ moms, kids and babies!
The ‘big guys’. On the way back they got to ride backwards on the caboose. Fun!
AnnaBeth says that Spring is her least favorite season. The reason: tornadoes. Here we are bunkered down one night in the downstairs bathroom. The kids and I are bunkered down, that is. Rick was out watching the sky. He saw two small twisty-like, moving clouds to either side of us.
No bad weather will keep THIS girl from her book!
This sweet thing had been in bed a whole five minutes when the sirens went off. She slept through the whole commotion, even through the kids stepping over her and squealing at how big the hail was.
The rest of our Spring was spent at baseball practice, baseball games, celebrating Aidan’s birthday and finishing out the end of school. More coming soon!
Last week I finished missionary Amy Carmichael’s biography, A Chance to Die, written by Elizabeth Elliot. What a great read! I love her passion for pushing back darkness. I love her focus on the task at hand. I love her love for the truth.
She understood the shortness of this life. Once when she was in Japan, someone suggested a fun ‘grab’ to bring girls who worked in the factory to come to her Bible study. I think the suggestion might have been needlepoint (I guess that was fun in the late 1800′s?) Her response, ““I would rather have two who came in earnest than a hundred who came to play . . . We have no time to toy with souls like this.”
Wow.
My heart was so challenged. What do I do with my time? Do I ever consider that I am ‘toying’ with souls?
May my prayers for friends on the mission field, friends struggling with sin, and friends who aren’t in Christ be infused with urgency. There’s no time to mess around. “Satan is so much more in earnest than we are – he buys up the opportunity while we are wondering how much it will cost.”
It seems strange, but I seem to be better about managing my time when I find myself in a time crunch. In the summer, when time stretches endlessly in front of me, I seem to lack purpose and urgency, and nothing seems to get done. The house is a wreck, we don’t go to the library as planned, I’m scrambling to put dinner together at the last minute.
Yet in our current season of life, jam-packed with school, baseball (six games a week plus practices!), piano, homework, Bible study, and playdates, things are getting done. Right now our moments are urgent and purposeful.
I’m sure the solution isn’t making sure that we are always super-scheduled (I KNOW that isn’t it!). My mindset has to change. What needs to happen? What’s important? What’s eternal? We have no time to toy with souls.
So, to finish out this little post about time, and the redemption of it, I thought I’d share a little of some things we do in our house to help it run smoothly. Most of these are in effort to not only be efficient, but to do it in such a way that I can love my children and husband well.
During the day I write down things that the kids need to do. When they get home from school, they have a snack, a little down time, and then at 4pm they start working through their jobs. Writing it down allows me not to overwhelm them with tasks, and lets me calmly deal with things that might otherwise bug me. So instead of “Grrr, why don’t these kids clean up their bathroom?!” I just write it on their list. It gets done, and I don’t ever have to nag. They love wiping things off the board when they are done. (Who doesn’t??) Sometimes, especially on Saturdays when the lists tend to get a little longer, I’ll put some fun, reward-type activities at the bottom. Wii, trips to the library, movie nights, bike riding . . .
Every woman should have a laundry room she loves. I certainly love how mine functions. After clothes are washed and dried, I’ll either fold them and put them in the appropriate family member’s basket (on the shelf above the w/d), or hang them up (in age-order, starting with Juliet’s clothes on the left to Rick’s on the far right.) When baskets or the rod gets full, I write ‘put away laundry’ on the white board. Works wonderfully!! (The clothes that are folded on top of the dryer, by the way, are ones the kids have outgrown. I don’t yet have a good system for dealing with those!)
Thanks to Shannon, my sis-in-law, all four kids have towels with their name on them. I can walk in their bathroom and instantly know who forgot to hang their towel up. No more blame-game for us!
Shoes and backpacks have a home by the front door. This (mostly) helps us not to lose these items, and the kids (mostly) store their things where they belong when they get home. It’s also a great place for purses and jump ropes.
And finally, here’s the meal planner I keep on my fridge. I’ve tried this numerous times throughout our marriage, but until I had baby number four I was never able to maintain it. Suddenly there were six hungry people (who couldn’t just eat popcorn for dinner) that depended on me to cook that I finally became (mostly) consistent at using this. Having a plan helps me to shop more efficiently, prep for busy days (like setting out meat to defrost or getting food into the crock pot), and it also helps me not to waste leftovers (I can plan to eat them!)
