For obvious reasons, I do not make comments about football. Winners or losers or favorite teams or upsets or coaches, etc.
However, as I have watched more games this season (we recently got a television with actual access to shows and games after about ten years), I am baffled with this notion that a grown man/coach that expects his players to always be in their correct position on the field cannot keep his own body off the field. Instead, they have this other grown man pulling on their shirt or pants for a majority of the game to keep them from getting a penalty. I don’t get it. Don’t bother trying to explain it to me with actual reasons because I likely wouldn’t buy them.
I immediately think of a toddler on a leash. No judgement if you actually used one of these, but thankfully, I never had to.
Sometimes the week is so “interesting” that you have to remind yourself that there were bright spots. That your home school is actually working, even though it doesn’t always go smoothly or without so. many. opinions. from these kiddos. So, after coming out of my Hurricane Irma addiction (Am I the only one who watched and watched and watched some more? Josh would say, “They are just saying the same thing, Kristy. They’re gonna say the same thing in the next 20 minutes as well.”), I led us in our home school week, but somehow it was just a wonky week. I thought sharing our bright spots might encourage me!
#1) Mack read his math lesson and made a notes sheet without my prompting.
#2) Mack and I finished Danny, Champion of the World and started The Hobbit.
I have to admit that I haven’t gotten into The Hobbit before now—I know, I know. Crazy. But I am very much enjoying this book!
#3)Our Bible curriculum (that I bought for last year, but we never got to) has been amazing. We gather around 8:45 at the breakfast table and eat and talk and then dive into a chapter of this book. I highly recommend it!
#4) The kids are loving church! Youth group is a highlight, and Mack is enrolled in Awana for the first time in his life. *GASP* Bless his baptist heart! Wednesday nights were overwhelming for me for a season, so I opted out for a few years. This year Mack is in choir and Awanas. He is still unsure of choir, but we’re gonna rock along with it because I think he will grow to love it. Josh and I are helping in 11th and 12th grade Sunday School. We may have lived here over a year, but we are still making strides out of our comfort zones. Every week there is something that stretches me here in our new place!
#5) The perks of home schooling far outweigh the challenges. Right now Mack is watching The Hobbit, and we will be discussing the differences we find between the book and the movie. The girls are singing choir music upstairs. They both joined a home school chorus called “King’s Chorale,” and I think they are going to love it. It’s more formal than either of them are accustomed to — a far cry from Toby Mac and Jamie Grace–but they are jumping in with both feet! Mack and I enjoyed reading outside this week. I read while he swung on the hammock. He gets to practice corn hole often so he can try to beat Josh. The many words that come from the kids can sometimes be overwhelming…they always have a story to tell me or someone to tell me about that they met at church….no one simply takes my orders and does their work compliantly and quietly. They get along sometimes and other times they argue so bad I wonder if they’ll ever be friends, but overall I think the time we spend together is a good thing. I like what we are learning in History, Bible and Math. I like the music elements of piano and chorus. Language Arts feels complete and strong. And I love that the kids are making friends at church.
We’re making it! Finishing up our fourth week of school and feeling good. Tomorrow we will use our Friday morning to do yard work! Kind of like P.E., but not.
I was wearing a red dress and heels as I finished up getting ready to go to a job interview at Webb Bridge Middle School in Alpharetta, Georgia. Josh was home also on that September 11th morning in 2001. We were both 24 years old and had been married a little over seven months.
My sister called to tell me to turn on the television because a plane had just flown into one of the Twin Towers in NYC. We flipped on the tv to see the second plane fly into the other tower. It was awful. Confusing. Sickening. Disturbing. Scary.
So this morning when I awoke to the date 9/11, my heart was so heavy. We have been praying earnestly for so many loved ones all along Florida and into Georgia in the path of Hurricane Irma– “the hurricane of the century” is what they’re calling it.
I wonder if my heart can take remembering such devastation like 9/11 as I simultaneously view photos and hear stories of storm devastation like I’ve not seen.
Big sigh.
But we must remember. We can’t forget. Remembering together is a very good thing. We show our perseverance and determination. We remember all the brave heroes that helped so many. Firefighters, police, good citizens, brave people on every flight, and so many brave men and women on the front lines the past 16 years.
As we remember the sadness and loss of that day and continue learning more about the loss of this day, I am reminded of G.Campbell Morgan’s commentary on Psalm 142, a chapter subtitled ‘Prayer for Help in Trouble.’
“It is a great thing in darkest hour to set over against the darkness all the facts about God. To do so is to triumph even in sorrow.”
Psalm 142:3, 5 “When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, You knew my path….You are my refuge, My portion in the land of the living…”
So today my family will remember 9/11. And at the same time, we will remember the faithfulness of our God.
And today we will remember and pray for so many affected by fires and earthquakes and hurricanes and floods. And at the same time, we will remember the lovingkindness of the Lord, His ever-present help in times of trouble.
What a wild world we are living in. A wild, broken world– groaning to be made perfect and whole again. I’ve often thought that I should I have gone to school to be a counselor, and while I still believe that, I also think a close second would be to learn how to be a meteorologist. I get consumed with weather. The big unknowns and how they determine where in the world these natural monstrosities will go is amazing.
Anyway, navigating in this broken world is challenging enough when we aren’t faced with flooding and hurricanes and earthquakes, so when these are factored into life, anxieties are tempted to grow like a fungus, taking over every crevice of our minds and hearts. I am so thankful for my relationship with God, the Maker of Heaven and Earth, who does all things perfectly. Here is a verse that we talked about this morning in regards to these days:
We also decided that for creative writing today we would write a letter to Irma. They could be polite and ask her to calm down or they could get firm with this off-the-charts hurricane. Mack was all about this assignment. Remember, he likes the words.
I think he did a great job expressing his feelings toward Irma! “Instead of ‘Mack, watch out for Irma,’ it’s ‘Irma, watch out for Mack!'”
It’s Friday of our second week of school. It’s felt a little bit like a circus around here (again). I awoke to the sound of a large truck and talking out in my driveway. Trash guys are here to take away the debris from our deck demo. I overhear them say they can’t get it all on one trip and will have to come back. Then, Maria shows up around 8:30 to clean my house– she is a welcome sight for me! The kids start waking up one by one looking for breakfast. Then, the doorbell rings and the trash guys are back again ready for round 2, but not until Cat gets some clarification from me. Yes, Cat is his name. While I am out in the yard, a delivery truck pulls up to drop off some outdoor furniture. They work around the trash truck and get that taken care of. The kids and I start school in the kitchen while Maria works upstairs. Then, we go upstairs when she is ready to come downstairs. As we are doing school, I hear the yard guys weed eating and blowing and cutting grass. A little while later, the trash guys are back and ready for round 3. I just hope they are done before the firewood is to be delivered. Josh opted for a load to be dumped on our driveway instead of them stacking it for us because “it’ll be good for the kids to do some manual labor.” O-K. (UPDATE: The guys had time to stack the wood, so I went ahead and paid them for that because, um, reality. It’s storming and there’s a tornado warning until 10pm tonight. Stacking wood is not on my radar in such conditions.)
This stay-at-home-mom gig is a far cry from sitting on a couch eating bonbons.
Not to mention our day yesterday. We had a visit to the eye doctor for Ruby because she wants to give contacts a try and needed her eyes checked again anyway. She had to practice putting them in and taking them out several times. Can you say ORDEAL???
The next stop was the orthodontist for them to fix something that was broken in her mouth. We scoot home, eat some lunch, then I take Mack to the pediatrician for a check-up. He is a healthy kid, but he does have this pain in his heels that they call Severs Disease. It’s just growing pains, basically. Some kids get it worse than others. We had an absolutely hilarious thing happen to us while we were in with the doctor, but I can’t share it with the internet because Mack might strangle me one day. We both laughed and laughed till we couldn’t laugh anymore about it. I’m including it here in hopes it will jog my memory in a few years when I am reading these blogs to remind myself of what life was like.
This morning, in the midst of all the people in and out of our house and around our house, Mack was just being an absolute clown. Words are his jam. He speaks and speaks some more all day, every day. They were supposed to be doing math when he overheard me tell Ruby what the topic for “FreeWrite Friday” was. It had to do with the football game we went to last night, so he stopped with the numbers and pulled out his notebook and got to writing. Writing and writing and writing. It is so great that he loves the words, but he also needs to develop some love for the numbers–at least to get him through the basics of high school and college math. Maybe he will marry a math wizard that loves budgets and crunching numbers.
This week we worked on a second part of a writing project that is basically noticing words and writing down words. Then, we wrote them on little cards and randomly chose about 15 and put them together the best we could for a poem. That was pretty funny as most of them made little to no sense, but if you read them just right, one might think you were extremely artsy and creative.
Anyway, this week we studied a piece of art (as in, the kids told me all that was “weird” or all that they didn’t understand about the painting) and then I led them through some questions and in the end, everyone was to have a poem written about the painting. Ruby went first. Hers was so-so, but good. Molly wouldn’t read hers out loud. Mack was pretty proud of his, but none of us were expecting much of it, if I am honest. However, he blew us away! I was super-impressed, and he was quite happy that we all were blown away. Again, words are his jam.
We have been working on spelling a good bit this second week of school, too. The rule for the week is “I before e except after c– watch the exceptions.” Ok, I don’t know if you have ever tried to teach this spelling “rule,” but it is kind of annoying.
I mean, seriously. Talk about exceptions. However, we used the rule for most of our spelling words, but not without much commentary on this “stupid rule” from the kids.
Mack found a golden quote from his reading book:
On another note, Molly never becomes so interested in practicing her piano homework than when it is math time. That girl gets serious about pounding those notes out when it means she doesn’t have to do math. Except she does have to math.
The clown with the pianist. Both doing what they can to dodge the Saxon Math book. And when I would give Mack a look that said ‘GET TO WORK,’ he would say, ” Don’t look at me like that. I’m a Christian.”
Don’t ask me what that means. I don’t know. And he doesn’t either.
We also went shopping for some hunting clothes for Mack this week. He has grown like a weed this past year and none of his clothes from last fall even come close to fitting him.
And since I don’t know about hunting so much, this is the pic I sent to Josh with “Is this the right kind of camo???” Because, wow, have you been in a hunting section at the store lately? Choices galore.
So, second week of school, you weren’t as productive as the first week in actual books and projects, but there were definitely some lessons on time management and schedules and over-booking of ones’ life in there. From birthday dinners to eye appointments to grammar lessons to many people in and out of the home…..I am hoping and praying for a restful Labor Day and maybe a “NO PROJECTS” commitment for the fall and winter.
Oh! And here are some photos from a fun Thursday night at a pre-season Panthers game.
The times when the camera caught people dancing was my favorite part by far! So funny.
I saw my cousin, Austin, at the game! Small world. He is a huge Steelers fan, so he left happy last night, I am sure.
Sweet little moment with Josh and Ruby. These kids are blessed to have him.
