Last night, I felt restless in my spirit. You know that sensation that you get when you have plenty to do, but you don’t WANT to do any of it? I had the need to get out. Some people call it “ME” time.

I don’t call it “ME” time. I never found spending an hour pampering myself to be refreshing at all. However, I DO find a nice, long, not too slow, and not too fast, walk to work WONDERS. I didn’t allow any little boys to come with me, because that would have been counterproductive. This was not family time. This was not ME time. This was God time. Oh yeah, I’m talkin’ Jesus again.

In person, I’m not comfortable sharing my spiritual thoughts with others, but I have become so accustomed to sharing them right out loud on the internet that I honestly forget that anyone reads it.

I’ve been hearing the Holy Spirit speaking to me a lot lately. (I’ve discussed this before. It’s not an audible voice. Please don’t mail me a straight jacket.)

“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.” John 14:25-26

Lately this is what I have heard from God.
-Trust me.
-If you stay in tune with Me, it will go so much better for you.

I sometimes joke that I am “just not good at life.” Of course, I am no better or worse than most folks at life, but I love to exaggerate to the negative, focus on the problems rather than the blessings, and forget to just trust God.

I am still slowly reading through the New Testament this year. My focus is on learning more about Jesus. Jesus is an amazing window into the heart of God.

“Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father.” John 14:12

It is greater, but I had a hard time figuring out how anything we could do could be greater than anything Jesus did, so I looked it up in my favorite reference book:

The works that we do are greater in that we are doing these works in the power of the Holy Spirit. This is a miraculous thing in this world!! For God to have taken His Spirit, and rested it on the heart of every single HUMAN believer, that we may be his agents here on Earth, that is AMAZING. How can we be so unholy, and yet be agents of God?

Only through Jesus, only through God’s grace.

Today I got to do something, at church, that is great fun to me. I got to sing. I love to sing. However, singing in front of an audience is not as fun, because I get so nervous my body actually shakes. I quiver, right down to my legs. I can’t steady my spirit. I’m a sickly, selfish, vain little soul, but if I rely on the Holy Spirit, I can. God will help us do things that are done for his glory.

Stories of our boys……from this week:

This whole week is exciting for our family. This week we fly again. We are flying back to the South. First, just the boys and I are going. Alan will join us later. I will get to go to Destin TWO times, once with my mom, and once with Alan and the boys.

I’ve had a sore throat all week. Thursday I couldn’t even read out loud to the boys without coughing, so I had to cancel reading time. Joshua had all of his brothers stop what they were doing right there and pray for their mom to feel better. LOVE!!

I took this photo from the boys’ window. JD and Dan love to play in their dirt pile, usually with cars. Joshua was eating watermelon, which he consumes unbelievable amounts of. Caleb was repairing the trampoline net, where he had ripped it straight across.

JD has earned the name “the Great Communicator”. This boy cracks me up. He is so good at getting his point across. He always knows exactly what he wants and finds the words to get that across. Sometimes we have to guess…

“Eck. Uck. Ruck!”

“Back?”

*Scowl.* “No,” in his cute little tiny voice.

“Truck?”

*Smile. Giggle.* Then he runs in the direction of whatever he is currently calling a truck. Any vehicle that is not a car is a truck, even motorcycles.

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“Juice?” (By far, his favorite word)

“No, JD, you’ve already had enough juice. I will pour you some milk. You need to drink a little milk.”

*Scowl.* Then he almost howls, in a fretful, fretful voice, “Noooo! Juice. Juice.”

Poor dear. I don’t drink milk either, but disappointment is just one of those things you have to learn how to deal with. Besides, if he drank all the juice he wanted that’d be a never-ending case of runny poop….

By the way, JD has finally fully recovered from his ear infection and is sleeping through the night again. 🙂 Hallelujah! By the fourth kid, I’ve just forgotten to worry about sleep issues. I just go with the phases, and eventually, “This too will pass.” It takes a long time to fully recover from colds sometimes, and sleeping is the hardest when you have snot in the back of your throat.

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One last thing I’m excited about this week:
Money Saving Mom is teaching a course on increasing productivity by “making over your mornings”. Oh, you’d better believe I will be there!
Money Saving Mom is one of my favorite blogs. Crystal has accomplished an insane amount to include writing several best sellers, maintaining a successful website, keeping a tidy house, and home schooling her 3 children. As you can imagine, I feel like I can learn a lot from her!

For my full review on this Make Over Your Morning course after I took it, click here.

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We have so much more fun when company comes!!! This was the train ride through the redwood forrest.

This past week had the potential to be a total nightmare. This is “Finals Week” of the 3rd quarter for Alan, and I’m the kind of person that can only handle all four of my own children, by myself, for so long.

Enter the in-laws. Their timing was perfect. Well, for me it was anyway. They probably would have liked to have spent more time with their son, sure, but I really just needed someone to take my mind off of the nights that Alan had to work late and the cabin fever.

Caleb, soaking in the sights and smells of the forests– and searching for banana slugs. We love banana slugs.

Big shout out to DaddyO and Nonna for helping out this week and for allowing us to drag you around northern California. We had a great time.

Oh! And best of all, Caleb has two whole front teeth again!!! That’s right! Alan and I both got to be there for the oral surgery. DaddyO and Nonna kept the preschoolers and the home schooler. Caleb handled it all really well, and as of today, he can’t even remember it. It’s amazing what good drugs can do.

As I mentioned before, my phone bit the dust, so I have no beautiful Caleb photo to share. 🙁

I don’t think Nonna and DaddyO were quite aware of just how stressed out Alan and I were when they arrived, just 8 days ago, but I think that by the time they left, they were thankful they never had to home school their children.

Bahahahahaha

Okay, so really I’M the one that lives seriously stressed out. I think Alan is fine.

DaddyO and Nonna

Nonna gave me some great organizing tips for home schooling. She was a teacher for 20 years, so I’m always happy to get ideas from her.

We only have ONE QUARTER of our first year of home schooling left to get through. I remember when I first decided to home school. I didn’t want to tell any of my friends in Virginia. Why? Because I knew that as the people who see me everyday, they knew me well enough to know that it didn’t make much sense. I’m a social person with social children. I have four boys who like to wiggle about and have fun. I have a toddler in the mix that needs a lot of attention, so I was practically attempting the impossible.

And I knew my friends would let me know it, so I tried to keep my home schooling ambitions a secret.

You should have heard my friends at supper club.

“Are you SERIOUSLY going to home school? How in the world are you going to do that?”

*Insert feeling of sheepish embarrassment.* I knew they were right. They knew they were right. This would be hard. This would be a little crazy. This would be way out of my comfort zone.

Several people lately have asked me, “Why do you homeschool?”

I throw out this reason or that, mostly stuff about my children’s education and being a control freak. (Ha!) I wanted to help Caleb with reading and Joshua with math. I didn’t want my children to constantly change schools, creating insecurity. I wanted them to have a Christian education rather than a secular one. I wanted to pull them away from so much materialism and worldliness. I just wanted to try it, and Alan was in agreement with me about all of this.

But really there was one big reason. I prayed about it, and God said, “Home school your kids.”

I prayed that four years ago, when Joshua started Kindergarten, and God said, “Send them to school.” Different season, different circumstances. God speaks to us through the Holy Spirit, which he has given to all who have accepted Him. He lives in our hearts.

“Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us: for after that he had said before, This is the covenant which I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them. And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.”

Hebrews 10:15-17

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”             John 16:12-15

So sweet! Alan still found plenty of time to have fun with us. 🙂

Home schoolers do take the coolest field trips.

I’m just following where the Lord leads. Yes, He gave me more than I can handle. From that, I have learned to rely on Him more and to talk to Him more. I may not always home school, but I hope that I will always simply follow where the Lord leads our family.

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