As I look back on this unit that began with a trip to the Adler Planetarium a week before they closed due to COVID and ended with the Space X launch literally on the next-to-last day of our first official school year, it seems so obvious to me that God’s timing is perfect. This was not coincidence. This was not serendipity. This was God revealing Himself to our family – and to our children – in a beautiful way.
There’s never been a point when I haven’t read to our boys, but homeschooling provides much more opportunity and time to read to them. At the beginning of 2020, I got the CD version of the book Read-Aloud Family by Sarah McKenzie and began listening to it. I devoured the book over the next few … [Read more…]
My parents taught me a lot about the sacrificial, unconditional love that parents have for their children, no matter how those children are! While I would never want to repeat the circumstances that led to us living with my parents for three weeks, I look back on that time as a gift to our family and to my parents.
I still don’t have my “daily devotions” or “quiet time,” as is traditionally thought of in regard to the spiritual disciplines like reading the Bible and prayer. But pursuit of God has been weaving its way through our days more consistently now than ever before.
For Christmas 2019, I splurged on the purchase of a full-access pass to the 2020 US Figure Skating Championships, which was being held about 40 minutes from where I live. I had never spent that much money on something so “frivolous,” but it wasn’t frivolous to me. It was a grueling almost-full-week of being away from my family for 12 hours at a time on top of driving back and forth to the arena, but it was worth every minute and every penny!
2020. I don’t know how it’s possible to simultaneously have both the worst year of your life and the best year of your life. But I suppose if it was possible for Charles Dickens, maybe it was possible for me. It is my hope and prayer that you are encouraged by the 20 2020 stories I will tell in this series. I hope that they will make you smile. I hope they will remind you of God’s amazing faithfulness.
When I found out our Thanksgiving dinner table was going to have few guests, I was excited about having Ezra’s help and making Thanksgiving dinner with him! He did not disappoint! All in all, it was a great Thanksgiving. I’m so thankful for my little family and how they have taught me to enjoy the simplest things in life. I’m so proud of Ezra and the growth and maturity I’m seeing in him. I’m so proud of how far we’ve come as a family.
So, what is to be done when our kids so desperately need two antithetical things (consistency and novelty), especially in regard to homeschooling?
On top of having some great homeschool curriculum, we heavily supplement our learning with books, book series, and TV shows that cover the same content in our lessons. (I will be discussing how this helps ADHD kids in an upcoming post.)
Enjoy the now. It’s beautiful and wonderful, but I know it’s hard and exhausting and draining. The future is also hard and exhausting and draining and beautiful and wonderful. I’m convinced that motherhood doesn’t ever really get easier. It just gets different. Just you wait…