The Bible Is Better Than Netflix!

Do you like your movies with Action? Gore? Romance? Comedy? Meaningful family interaction? Sex Appeal?

Do you root for the underdog? Do you want love conquering all odds? Or do you enjoy gripping your seat in suspense?

Then, baby, open up your Bible! As soon as I started reading my Bible, I cancelled my Netflix. I was on fire for the Word before, but now I can’t get enough.

That’s right. I said it. I’ll scream it from the rooftops:

I read the Bible FOR FUN, too!

I read it for guidance. I read it for relationship. I read it for Fun.

Hands-On Learning of Bones

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Bones can be complex and mysterious if you can’t see them and feel them. Hands-on learning is really the only way to absorb that much information. In order to learn the bone names, shapes and placements, we put together a life-size skeleton. In order to learn the different types and functions of joints, we played with a skeleton doll.

This seems to me his favorite lesson so far! (And it was perfect for being stuck inside due to cold weather!)

We also took some moments every day to express how creative and attentive to detail God is!!! Studying the abilities and complexities of the human body is a *great* conversation starter about God’s creativity and concern for our well-being.

If You Build It, It Will Come…and It Did!

My son is turning 10 in December. He has not had a single pet. Every boy needs a dog. I finally broke down and got him one.
My husband was set on a puppy. (ay, yai, yai) I was set on a German Shepherd.

My son spent some homeschooling time building a doghouse himself (great measurement lesson!). It is almost finished. Phillip (my son) and I laid hands on it and prayed earnestly that God would bring us not just any dog– the perfect dog for our family.

I believe we definitely found him! We found a 1/2 Golden Retriever 1/2 Black Lab puppy. He is so gentle, fun, and 90% housebroken. (We let him rule the “finished” basement while he’s adjusting. It has no carpeting.)

My son is so smitten that he wants to sleep down there with him. (The basement has actual bedrooms, too)
My heart is thrilled.

Following his human–his best buddy

Government Unit Lesson: Glad It’s Over

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Some subjects really are as boring to teach as they are to learn. I know that’s one of those things I’m not supposed to say. But man, government is dry. We finished it up just in time to go and vote so it worked out well. I’m just very glad to be moving on. Of …

Repost of “The Hippies Got It Right” on Enuff Stuff →

http://enuffstuff.info/the-hippies-got-it-right/#more-1336

This is a repost from Enuff Stuff website. Amazing and relevant.

Start with Why (And the Rest Will Follow)

Start with Why (And the Rest Will Follow).

Found from site http://communicateskills.com/

 

If You Build It, It Will Come… ?!

I made a deal. (Right there, you know it was a mistake. ;))

If my son applies his math skills to the task of building a dog house during the winter, then in the Spring I would get the dog to go inside it.  We have a heated garage so he could work all winter and his dad used to be a carpenter so I knew he could teach him. I didn’t realize that they would both get so excited that it would be almost done within two weeks– it’s not even winter yet!!

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(I have to wonder how much my husband is “teaching” him: the “why’s” of what he is doing instead of just the “how’s” of how to do it?!)

Wrapping Up a Unit Can Be So Sad Yet So Fulfilling

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We finished up our maps/globes studies unit. We made our own own maps: a floor plan and neighborhood block. (He loooooves using his compass!)

We finished up our “go green” unit. He set our house up for recycling. We did a quick diagram of photosynthesis. (We covered ecosystems, etc)

These were really fun units and I’m glad we chose them as the beginning of our first homeschooling semester. I’m proud to look over them and see them accomplished, and so enjoyed in the process.

Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda Week at Homeschool

I’ve fallen into the trap.  I’m a little over a month in and I’ve caught myself making it more and more traditional-school style.  Yikes!!

We started off fun and hands-on and have somehow slid into sitting-at-desk-reading-out-of-textbooks schooling. No, no, no, no, no! Adhd + sit-at-desk-textbook-reading = my son feeling tortured.

Then– 

We had a rough week. We didn’t get anything done– that sent me into overdrive trying to catch up.  Every day I added more to what we needed to cram in.
He and I started bickering.
I started getting crabby.

I coulda stopped the train in it’s tracks the first day I noticed it was going so very wrong and avoided the inevitable chain reaction. I shoulda nixed that day altogether and just read aloud together snuggled on the couch to reinforce the nature of our education and our emotional bond. I woulda, except we would have then fallen behind.

I coulda corrected my attitude to avoid hurt feelings,  a lower self-esteem, and an overall feeling of unhappiness in our school in both of us to stop the bickering in its tracks.  I shoulda made it a point to have special alone time to read my Bible and center my chi because I let the task become more urgent than my source of strength. I woulda, except I had to go to work every night and that would have taken even more time away from studying.

Parenting Fail.

I coulda wallowed in my guilt and self-pity, which would guarantee that the next week was just as rotten and the Enemy could get a good laugh knowing he was tearing down our school from the inside out.  I sure did use the opportunity to discuss Grace, accepting responsibility (both of us), and regain a mutual perspective of our overall mission. I woulda pretended it just never happened and gone on next week as if it had no consequences, but hey, that’s not my style. 😉

I would value any feedback from all my dear family in Christ out there about how to prevent such a downhill slide in the future!!

(Side note: I feel like I know most of you personally!)

Marriage: Conjunctions Can Change Your Life

I am celebrating my 3rd year of marriage. My favorite new saying is “Nothing will bring you to Jesus like trying to stay married.” As a married woman and an English major, I came to realize that conjunctions often get substituted. “Or” is often considered interchangeable with “And”.  It really shouldn’t be.  That little conjunction can change your whole life.

DISCLAIMER: I'm not trying to make a grandiose argument or anything. This is just a random observation I had one day. So if you think I'm completely off my rocker, you're probably right and therefore starting ruckus in comments is probably extraneous.

Wedding vows: For Better- OR-  for worse. For Richer- OR- for poorer. In sickness- AND- in health.

I was randomly noticing one day that all of a sudden the conjunctions in wedding vows change.

OR, means that one or the other things can or cannot happen. I think that this means there is a chance that we are entering a covenant that may be ONLY worse the entire time and that better will never come. Now, I don’t want to sound like Debbie-Downer so let’s remember that this could also mean that better could come the entire time.  My point isn’t to abase the institution. Really. I’m simply realizing that God did not leave out “the fine print.” In deeper reflection, I think it makes entering the covenant even more sacred. God meant marriage to be so lasting that even the conjunction is perfectly chosen to stress the no matter what.

The hardest part of that is accepting it and staying married anyway. (This doesn’t apply to abuse– duh.) I have found in my own relationship that the first 3 years have been difficult. I am not implying that my husband is a bad husband– he’s not. I have found that I give out 50% and then wait for his 50% and am disappointed when I think I haven’t received it. (I also have the ‘comparison’ problem, which is my struggle not of his doing.)

I read in a book recently about a spouse giving 100% and not expecting a return from the other spouse. Simply put, true love is giving our all despite what we get in return. True love is wanting the best for the other person even at your own cost- no matter how angry, unsatisfied, or lonely you feel at the hands of your spouse.

Only Jesus can really do it all the time.  My human nature just keeps killing my best laid plans to be that wife. And guess what – my spouse is human, too. He mucks it up. Just like me.

God gives us spouses as leaders, helpmates, and overall another imperfect human to help us practice the 100% love. He knew what he was doing when he planned it this way.

I toy with this thought all the time:  Marriage is the opportunity to fine-tune our character qualities.

It’s easy to demonstrate integrity, true love, and grace when everything is going great. That doesn’t really speak  much to one’s true character. It’s the reactions and choices one makes when all is shaken loose that shows our areas of weakness that need improvement. And hey, practice makes perfect, right?

Marriage gives us lots and lots of practice.

For some, not all, matrimony also gives us someone on our side to help us when it’s the outside world that’s beating us down. (It’s kind of like when you were a kid and had siblings or a best friend that you fought with all the time but if someone else fought with you they would whoop their ass. Same principle, only stronger bond.)

And the outside world will come. I have learned this– The Enemy wants our marriages to fail. He wants our Homes to be Broken. He wants our Children to suffer from divorce.

I’m going to share some of my ugly character flaws with you- much to my chagrin.
For me, even so much as entertaining the thought of divorce leads to wrong action in little ways. I listen to him just a little less. I make a few more snide comments just a little more often.  I get quick to anger a little more. Guess what all that does for me– provokes him to do the same.
Voila!- A vicious cycle. Voila!- Satan’s foot is in the door.
(Biblical example of this: David’s first accidental glance at Bathsheba. He entertains the thought of her. We all know the next step: Thoughts=Action.)

• I throw myself face down on my bed, sobbing, telling God that I give him my marriage broken and to return to me fixed. I make sure to stay deeply in touch with God.

• I try to change my actions with nothing but the hope that it will inspire him to change his.

• I choose my hills to die on and let the rest go– no matter how hard it is. Then I take my resentment on some of those to God.

• I continually seek out wise counsel and Christian literature to help me.

• Every day I think of one wonderful quality in my husband that I love and speak it out loud to myself. On really bad days, I speak it and then write it down. Yes, sometimes it feels difficult to think of even one, but it’s really not that hard once you get started trying. Even “he didn’t do anything stupid TODAY” is a start. 😉 Ha-Ha.

All I know is that I knew what a conjunction was when I chose to say it.  All I know is that today is not the day I get divorced. All I know is that tomorrow is not the day I get divorced.  And so on.

For the record– my husband is a really good man. He tries really hard to be a good husband. I did not share this post with you as a complaint about him— it is about the reality of how difficult dedicated marriage is.