Heavenly Home: September 2009

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Welcome to fall!

First day of fall celebration!

Potato Corn Chowder
garnished with bacon and cheese
served in a warm home made bread bowl!

Now that's what I'm talking about!

Happy Autumn, everyone!

Sunday, September 20, 2009

We're back in the swing of things...finally!

So weeks after everyone else's "back to school" posts, we have finally smoothed out all the bumps, finagled the schedule with a toddler around, and are ready to rejoice in a new year of learning together! Forgive me if I get a little too preachy about how much we love Home-School, and how wonderful it is (even after a crazy day) to have all my little lambies here at home, and how good the Lord is to make it all work, and how grateful I am the spirit is the real teacher, and how every day I realize that truly "all things testify of Christ".....oops, there I went! But really, it is amazing and I am one Blessed Momma to have this be the Lord's plan for our family!

So we always start back a little at a time. Four weeks ago when everyone else went back to school, we started with just Devotional, Spanish and Math. Then the next week we gave everyone their beginning of the school year blessings, (sidenote- I always type these up and staple them to the inside of their notebooks and reference them often!) and we added in Typing and History. And then came the ummm.....really challenging week...adding in English and Science and going full time....with Briella. AAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!! The schedule was have all your morning routine and math done by 9:30 ready for Devotional and the rest of school. It went pretty well ...till 9:30. After that, we were lucky to get 15 minutes without Briella destroying something and a major interruption to school to clean it up and redirect her...over and over and over again. Lotion everywhere, mom's make-up all over, dish detergent all over, kittly litter all over, entire shelves knocked over...after two days of that, all of us were exhausted. So we revamped and had everyone scheduled on Briella rotations, and though there were less messes, that wasn't all that effective for learning, either. I don't know how we made it through the week. I was praying "mightily", let me tell you, and knew the Lord would make it work, but I had no idea how. No idea. None. Whatsoever.

So I went back to the Lord and asked Brian for a priesthood blessing by the laying on of hands. I not only got immediate strength, but was promised direction and instruction on modifying the schedule. I went to bed peaceful. And woke up an hour early the next morning. As clear as can be the Lord said in my mind "start school right away". It wasn't even 7:30. We started school right away. We had a good hour and a half before Briella even woke up and were able to finish Devotional, History, and English!. We got done in an hour and a half what had been taking over three hours! It was a wonderful! We fine tuned the rest of the schedule throughout the week, and we are now back in full gear and HAPPY starting school right away !!!! Briella is much happier, too! Now once I get her up, I only need to rotate through the kids independant work, and she gets paint time, playdough time, puzzle time, momma time! The Lord worked it out for us! He is so good!

So here's to another year of learning and growing and laughing and being together in our "heavenly home"-school! And another testimony to me that the Lord knows us, knows our needs, and is ready to work in our lives as we turn to Him!

Isn't life great?