Friday, Callie got to have her cast taken off!!  Yay!!!  We are quite excited!

This is one of our little princess once she got feeling like eating the night after her surgery.

We are so thankful that the Lord has blessed her body with health to heal well.

Here is a link to her running with her cast on...

http://s50.photobucket.com/albums/f321/youngwife/?action=view&current=100_5355.flv

Thank you for praying for Callie.  Please continue to pray for Rachael, she is dealing with a lot of pain on a daily basis.

On a homeschooling note,

our family is talking a lot about politics and such with the election coming up soon.  So, I have been wondering what have your families been talking about that you probably otherwise would not be discussing?

I love organization. I love how it looks, how it feels, and how it is so convenient. Sometimes it even smells nice. I like shopping for cubes and boxes to organize my stuff into. I like they way they stack and sit. It's all so tidy and beautiful.

Along with those cubes and boxes I like having a day timer/planner/datebook/brain. I like filling in the little boxes with information with a red pen. What I don't like is how quickly it becomes diorganized with little bits of paper and how I have to transfer the information year after year. I don't like that if I drop it, my brain is at the mercy of the wind, muddy feet, and sticky hands.

This past summer I was introduced to a PDA or two. I thought at first they were silly. A little more information about them filtered into my thick head and I went off in search of the nearest PDA dealer. I scrutinzed the PDA's in their shiny plastic packaging. I tapped, turned, and twiddled with them. I read the fine print. I asked the overgrown, hairy, young  salesman to give me more details. He regaled me with vast amounts of data I didn't fully comprehend. I walked away to ponder the PDA further.

After a couple of weeks of staring at them, Dear Man told me to just buy one. If I didn't like it, I could always take it back. So purchase in hand I began to acquaint myself with the finer points of pocket sized organization. By the time I got home I was enthralled! I could get rid of my day planner, all those pieces of paper, and I could snyc the whole thing to my computer and see everything there as well. It was glorious!

Two days later I took back the middle of the road PDA to upgrade to the super-de-duper, it does everything but wash the dishes in the sink, PDA. No longer did I have to decide if I needed to pack around my day planner, which more often then not I would leave behind because I was only running to the store, only to discover that I needed it after all. I didn't want to pack around a grown woman's diaper bag in order to keep it with me. My new PDA fits right into my small purse with ease. It weighs almost nothing.

Now along with all the organization, I also love books. Which I try to keep organized on the shelves. Whenever someone would talk to me about e-Books I couldn't figure out what the big deal was. Who wants to sit at their computer and read a book? That's not very cozy.

Now I get all of the above and I can read an e-Book or listen to an audio book while waiting in the Dr.'s office. No more packing along a book that I have to remember to pick up, or once again the need tote along a lunch bag on steroids to put the book in. I can read it in bed without having to keep the lights on, disturbing Dear Man. I can curl up and sit anywhere I want to.

I feel so free! So organized!

Yesterday when I was reading my Bible, God planted a verse right in front of my very eyes that I had not seen before.  This verse made me stop and think about whether or not I had been doing just what it says:

Hosea 6:3a  Let us strive to know the Lord.

Those 7 little words spoke so proundly to me that all I wanted to do after I read this was to get on my face before the Lord and know Him in all His wonderful glory.

The word strive really stuck out to me, so I looked it up.  What does it mean to strive?  to exert oneself vigorously; try hard   I love that.  I should try with EVERYTHING in me to know the Lord.  To know Him?  Know Him how?   possessing inside, secret, or special information.   By knowing the inside secrets of God.  What are those?  The only way to find out is read......the......Word.

I have been dreading the day.  Ya know the day when your oldest comes in and says, "Mom, I told her I like her."  Yep.  Robert has been bitten.  His first time the he likes a girl.  Likes her enough to want to ask her to be his girlfriend.

As a mom, I want to hold him close and scream at her to GO AWAY!  But I know my little man is growing up.  He has been patient waiting for this day to come.  She is adorable.  She has a big heart.  And I think she likes him too.

He is saving his yard mowing money so he can take her to eat sometime soon.  He asked me and his dad to drive them somewhere and then sit away from them.  My, my, he is growing up so fast.

What's a mother to do?????  Trust the Lord that we have taught him the correct way to handle this and to trust that he will remember that as he ventures into his first girlfriend....maybe......

(again!)  I knew this week was going to be busy and I probably wouldn't have time to do any memes.  That's ok, I guess.  I DID get to see the Jonas Brothers, after all.  And Ian DID get his teeth fixed and came through his surgery OK.  Those are the important things, right?!

But now, I'm playing catch-up, and it's going to be easy......

Jocelyn wants to know about our Homeschool Routines for the Homeschool Memoirs meme this week.  I saw the theme earlier this week and thought "that will be easy for me this week" because, well, we don't have a routine!   I see other people listing routines on their blogs, down to the hour, or increments of an hour.  I'm a fairly organized person (hey, I had a hand in The Schoolhouse Planner, after all) - I like making lists and creating forms, etc. But, I do NOT enjoy planning my day down to the minute.  It's just not me.  Plus, I can't stand when something gets thrown in to mess up my plans, and God-forbid I have to use white-out or something.   

 So, for me, it's so much easier for our school day to be flexible - my girls are late-to-rise and aren't very productive 'til later morning.  Having a todder boy in the house makes for some interesting homeschool days and requires a great deal of flexibility on both my part and the parts of the girls as well.  If we get all our schoolwork, some housework, my TOS work, and supper all done in a day, we feel we've really accomplished something!   So, you see, my routine isn't too exciting and may or may not be the kind of routine you want to incorporate in your home.  It works for us, so it just might work for you too!  You never know!

And as for The Heart of the Matter's Friday meme......

Last night, I found myself thinking of a great article for my blog just as I was going to sleep. Do you think I remember what that great article was? No, of course not!

Since I can't remember my middle of the night brilliance, I thought I would share a funny story with you. Last week-end, my husband and children and I went on a long week-end trip to the beach. We went with extended family and friends. At the high point of the week-end, we had 12 children and 5 adults in the house. Not too bad when you consider that 6 of the children were our children and 2 of the friends came with us.

We had several people depart on Monday, since they either had to be at work or school on Tuesday. I planned the extra night there, so that no one would have to leave for an early Monday morning check out. And it also gae me an extra day to take my children on a field trip on Tuesday to the NC Aquarium at Ft. Fisher.

So Tuesday morning, I wake up and know that I have a lot to get together and packed in our van, and I was the only adult left, and I had 8 children to get out the door. Fortuunately, I had 4 teenagers, so I had a lot of help. We were able to get everything loaded into the van before 9:00 am, and we had the housekeeping things completed as well. The house we shared with family was large, so I did not walk through every room to check for missing items. My goal was to make sure I had 8 children in the van!

So we left our little beach getaway and checked out with the rental agency and were on our merry way to the aquarium. Everything went so smoothly, and we finished touring the aquarium around noon. And we started our long ride back across our beautiful state.

After a 6.5 hour ride home, we unloaded our van. My 5-yr-old was missing his pillow after we had everything carried in. I didn't think leaving a pillow behind was a big deal. So we found him another pillow for the night.

On Wednesday morning, I received a phone call from our rental agent. The housekeeping ladies found my 5-yr-old's pillow, suitcase of clothes, and bag of toys in one of the bedrooms. If you know me at all, you know that I *used* to be really good at keeping up with *stuff.* Now that I have 6 children, I am not as good at it. I am just thankful when I count all six children in their seats when we load up the van. In this case, I had 8 children to be accountable for!

I don't know how many times we have forgotten the diaper bag, or pacifier, or shoes for the littlest one when we go somewhere. I am becoming quite unemcumbered of *stuff.* Sometimes this is a good thing, and some times, it is not a good thing.

Fortunately, my rental agent is sending a package to me with my 5-yr-old's belongings. And I am thankful we are all home safe and sound minus a little *stuff.*

Have a blessed day! Tami

A few weeks ago we had a Bob The Builder day. (Actually it turn out to be a week.) Ethan is a fan of Bob and the gang. We read some of his Bob The Builder books and watched a couple of his shows. Bob’s theme is “Reduce, Reuse, & Recycle.” So in honor of Bob the Builder week, we took some aluminum cans to the recycling center and came home with $12.75. I was shocked! It was a lot of money for a few cans, about 5 kitchen size trash bags. Ethan got excited when he saw the very large crane machine. Mom and I laughed when he said, “Look at all this junk!” We explained that they were going to take all the junk and recycle it by crushing it up and shipping it somewhere else to be melted and transformed into new metal items. Last Christmas Ethan received several of the little matchbox like toys of the machines like Dizzy and Lofty, characters of Bob the Builder. This Spring, I found 2 pre-school Bob The Builder learning books at the Dollar Tree, one of my favorite stores. So we did a couple of activities from the books and played with the toys and had lots of fun!