Thanksgiving

I am thankful for family and friends, for a warm place to celebrate, laughter, love, good food and the life of our little boy growing inside of me (and I do mean growing). Here's a few pictures from our time with the Armstrong family this Thanksgiving holiday.

Our adorable nephew, Sabastian

His mom and dad, Angela and Sergio

Me and Cecilia (Matthew's mom)

What beautiful Armstrongs

The cousins (Cameron, Sabastian, Lisa, Zoe and Anthony)

A little fun in the leaves out back

Zoe loves helping out!

Passing on the Homeschool Tradition Early

Thought everyone would enjoy this...

Katy and the Big Snow

Can I just say that I really love Virginia Lee Burton! She has a way of bringing mechanical things into little girls' hearts. Though she dedicated her books to "Johnny," it seems like the way she writes and illustrates can capture any child's imagination, no matter what gender. I love that!

(Get ready for my soap box)
I'm so tired of gender separated toys in the toy store!! As if boys can't play with kitchen stuff and girls can't play with cars and trucks. They even make building blocks that are "girl colors" now as well as "boy colors." Is this political correctness gone too far? Why do my girls always need to color princesses and barbies and the boys color action heros? I don't know. It just seems like there should be more integration when it comes to play things. Thank the Lord we are having a boy! I feel like our kids' room will become more balanced now. :)

Anyhow, back to VLB and "Katy and the Big Snow."

"Katy and the Big Snow" by Virginia Lee Burton
(c) 1943

This one is about a tractor that saves the city of "Geoppolis" from under an unbelievable amount of snow. She's a very hard worker and ready to help out whenever she can. We learned a lot about Katy and her 55 horse-power self, all the ways she functions and the different jobs she is capable of. We used pennies to learn how to count by fives (which, by the way, is a difficult concept for a 5 year old to grasp), enjoyed the variety of illustrations, talked about the weather, made our own city and city map and wrote a song! It was the first song Zoe and I have written together. She was very excited (and so was I)!

Here's our song...

Here are just some cute pictures of our children! I always like those. :)

And, my wonderful sister-in-law, Angela, threw me a baby shower last Saturday. It was so thoughtful of her, and I received some wonderful "boy" loot!

Angela and the girls

The loot

They enjoyed helping me open presents

Yummy cake!

Parakaleo Retreat

Last week, I had the opportunity to take a week away for some ministry training and refreshment. Parakaleo (a Greek work meaning "to call to one's side") is the name of a group that was started to provide ongoing training, coaching, and relational support to empower spouses for their vital role in kingdom work. This is the first retreat I've attended (I believe it's their 3rd/4th). It took place about an hour and a half from here at Lake Oconee.

One of the biggest things for me was being able to take time away to be quite and to listen to other stories from church planting wives. Getting to know other's stories is fascinating to me, and it gives me the wonderful opportunity to see how God has worked in other people's lives.

The name of Parakaleo's new book
and some of the things we covered over the week

Also, I was afforded the opportunity to do a couple of my favorite things (music and design) which I don't always have the time to do in this capacity. If you're interested in what the week looked like in pictures, check out below.

Next week we will be back to our regularly scheduled homeschool program! :)

Hodgepodge Weeks

We had quite a fun couple of weeks, so it wasn't too organized, but I'm sure you will enjoy some fun pictures of the different things we learned and explored this week...

We went on a hunt for signs of autumn, and played in the leaves together!

We went and learned about some ancestors at the Stone Mountain Highland Games...

Zoe participated in her first homeschool Project Day (a day where the kids get to share something they're learning with everyone else... kind of a mix between a talent show and a school fair)...

Watch her recite her poem here

Helped Daddy plant a new tree in our front yard...

I've wanted a weeping Japanese Maple for some time now

Our neighbor boy, Matthew loves to help in any way he can

What a handsome helper

So, as you can see, we had quite a couple of weeks. There are several other things that happened, but unfortunately, I can't remember by this time since I am behind. I will post again soon about my week away last week!

On Faith

Well, I have a couple of weeks to catch up on, and I think I might post sometime this weekend, but for now, I wanted to share a post from one of my favorite blogs sites that I thought was very thought provoking.