Some Thanksgiving smiles!
My oldest lost his first tooth while preparing chicken and leek cannelloni. He was so proud of both! Jr. Masterchef has been a fun inspiration for us!
Okay, so as close as I could get to a good shot of all three this month!
"Mom, why are you so excited about my birthday present?"...BECAUSE IT'S THE BEARS WE KNOW!!
So the adventures continue here. I continue to juggle homeschooling, parenting 3 and working part time at the church. The days, evenings and chunks of the night are very busy. I think if the kids could learn to sleep through the night the days wouldn't seem quite so long!
My oldest and I are navigating homeschooling challenges and really hoping he can start school in January when the new school year begins here. He misses having other kids his age around and really misses the classroom setting. While he is improving in many areas, I am exhausted and struggle to keep up. He doesn't like working independently on things and his little brother and sister insist on picking at him any time he does settle in. The one thing that we are both very excited to share is watching Jr. Masterchef on TV; a show where kids are in an extended cooking competition. We download some of the recipes from the show so he can try them and I love that it helps his reading, writing and organization skills as he makes grocery lists and works at measuring and following directions. Optimistically I look forward to having someone in the house who actually enjoys cooking! Unfortunately I'm not sure that we will still be here for him to qualify for the show in a few years which is what he is truly dreaming of!
My middle son is expanding his imagination as his vocabularly and his ability to create a story line is increasingly entertaining. The other day we were playing pirates and when it was time for the pirates to sleep he told me a bedtime story about an ogre who was captured by a dragon and carried over a sea of lava. I loved how he maintained that the story was a pirate bedtime story! He has some very kind moments as he is constantly sharing with everyone...even though it is often because he wants more himself...but we are emphasizing the sharing part! Now if we could just get him to sit at the table and eat at mealtimes.
Our youngest is toddling along and has begun climbing everything in sight. She even pushes toys together up against the wall so she can climb from one to the other and then look out the window. She is playful and independent and already tagging along with her brothers.
On the ministry front, some wonderful things are happening. After much prayer, I have been blessed with three amazing people to be part of my children's ministry team. They have been a huge encouragement in my life and we are already seeing a change in the kids as they begin to feel cared for. We are following a fairly camplike model with a fantastic science lab theme for our teaching. We also have this fabulous fish puppet that eggs the scientists on in doing crazy things. On the stretching end of things, I have inherited leading worship because I haven't yet been able to recruit an actual musician. At least this keeps me feeling as uneasy as my new recruits. The other amazing thing is that there is this shift toward prayerfulness that is taking place in pockets of the church, including youth and children's ministry, and in response we have seen a few people healed in miraculous ways. It is a real priveledge to be around to see God at work in such tangible ways.
I'm up for preaching this Sunday at our evening service. Chewing on thoughts about how we hear from God and how we wrestle with the desire to live significant lives in the face of the everyday that seems so ordinary. I've also been thinking about what a gift it is that God has given us the freedom to follow Him while also giving us grace if we get it wrong. The nugget being that we aren't meant to be paralyzed by a fear of getting it wrong when we are seeking His will, but set free to live radical lives without fear. Always happy for input prior to actually speaking! I'm also missing the beauty of sitting in a room brainstorming for Youth Eventz and Ryerson dreams that evolve from God revealing vision in group settings. I miss you my friends back home! But...my settling in activity for the week is a plan to go Mango picking...so I am expanding to having Australian friends as well!
