saying “no” to His blessings

Over the years, during this time of the year…   the harvest season – the pumpkin season

        we have taken out all of our books about autumn, leaves, apples,  and pumpkins

                                and place them in a basket to read or look at.

among this array of books is one called Too Many Pumpkins…

this book is about Rebecca Estelle…

each year in the spring she would plant her garden.  She planted carrots and beans, tomatoes and peas, corn and rutabagas.  She grew a little bit of everything-

                            except pumpkins…   Rebecca Estelle hated pumpkins.

She said “no” to pumpkins. 

You see when Rebecca Estelle was young, money had be tight and for an entire month all they had to eat were pumpkins.  Baked pumpkins, steamed pumpkins, stewed pumpkins, pumpkins for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  So, she decided she would never eat pumpkins again.  She did not want to even look at one…

She said “no” to pumpkins…

One Fall day while she was raking her yard, a huge pumpkin truck passed by.  She heard it coming, so she turned away, not to see it. But a huge pumpkin fell off the truck and broke open all over the edge of her yard.  She shoveled some dirt over the broken pieces and buried all evidence of that reminder of lacking. 

When spring came again the once hidden seeds became a plant of green vines.  She decided to ignore it and not water or tend to it, hoping it would wilt away and die.  But the vines just continued to grow. She cut them down, and dug then out, but week after week they continued to grow. She decided to ignore them and not walk on that side of the yard. 

One autumn day, she had forgotten why she did not go to that side of the house and when she walked around the corner, she saw pumpkins growing everywhere.

She had said “no” to pumpkins…   but her Creator had said “yes”

so she took all those pumpkins and made pumpkin, bread, pumpkin pie, pumpkin cake, pumpkin muffins, pumpkin tarts and pumpkin cookies…

A rich harvest of pumpkin goodness…

hoping to get rid of them all to the people in town.  But when she could not carry all those pumpkin dishes she knew the people would need to come to her.  She made jack o lanterns and lite each one along side the yard and path and the people came.

Young and old… everyone in town came. They enjoyed  fellowship together as they ate the pumpkin delights and as they left she blessed each one of the towns people with the blessing she said “no” to, giving away every baked item, every lantern and a bag of seeds for them to start their own harvest of blessing.  She gave away everything that reminded her of the pumpkins she had always hated…  except a handful of seeds, that she tucked away until next spring…

seeds of healing…

       seeds of restoration…

                 seeds a redemption…

                         seeds of blessing…

        The hubs and I once said no…       to  the Lord…    no to His blessings…

We said “no” to children…

              out of hurts…             out of fear…          out of lacking…

we said “no” - 

Yet, He knew our hearts….          He knew our hurts…              He knew our fears…

and He said “yes”  -

and one by one…

He replaced those seeds of fear with the seeds of love…

      He replaced those seeds of hurt with seeds of healing…

             He replaced those seeds of lacking with seeds of plenty…

     Our “no” to  His blessing…   became our “yes” to all He had for us…

 

and one by one these seeds of blessing are being multiplied for His glory…

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights.    ~James 1:17

Living in His Blessings~

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Weekly Wrap Up – Week 11

My little one loves to put up our new holiday/season clings on out slider door to our back yard… one of the ways we like focus on celebrating seasons of life.

This week was kind of a laid back week…  I was not super motivated…



We are ahead of schedule on our Unit work for Europe so we took some time to add in some fun items this week. I have been wanting to complete a Five in a Row book with each unit and have not been able to add them, so this week we completed two of them.  We read the books and then completed a few lapbook type items for each book. 

    These were from Night of the Moonjellies – which went with our North America / Ocean Unit.

 
These are from The Great Kapok Tree (not a FIAR book)  - which went with our South America / Rainforest Unit. 

We watched this book being read on youtube.

The lapbook elements are from:

We continued to read in our YWAM read-a-load – William Booth, our book on Europe and Mammals and our Magic Tree House book – Thanksgiving on Thurday




   This past month we organized our Language Arts items into notebooks. The binders have the following tabs:

~ Reading

~ Spelling

~ Grammar

~ Story Elements

~ Daily 5

 

The daily 5 section is something new we are doing this year.  I will be posting on that soon.  We worked on out spelling, grammar and logging books in our reading section. 
 

 

 

The girls also finished one of the Hightlights Top Secret Adventures Units for Europe and filled out their notebook page for this. 

We also enjoyed playing with our dog pepper and the many pet shop toys the girls have: 

   

That is our week in a wrap up…
Linking up to:

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Youth Nights – Bake Off

I recently started serving with our churches youth ministry.  Since I have the majority of my kiddos either serving or attending the youth, I felt it was the best place for me to put my energy. 

 

This past week we had a bake off competition. It was so fun to participate in.

With the help of  we came up with these entries:

My golden girl entered “Owl Wishes” – she won the exceptional cuteness award.

my angel girl entered  “I have my eye on you pops” – she won the Here’s looking at you award. her pops were inspired by her oldest brothers attempt to make cake pops that looked like eyes.- they did not turn out :( 

  My unique son entered “One of those ice cream pie things” – He won the most controversial award for an item that was not baked.

  I entered Doggie Casserole  - I won the doggie most filling award.

My rock star son entered “Goulish Delight” – He won the grand prize for the Edge 2012 Bake Off  - His trophy was a rolling pin.

We all enjoyed the many entries of sugar treats.  One of the other mom’s that helps with youth also brought “real” food, we both felt with all the sugar we were going to need some balance…

Things I am thankful for this week:

an awesome youth group with wonderful, dedicated leadership
opportunity to serve along side of my kiddos
oldest – giving son’s faithfulness and steadiness
seeing this son thrive and love serving as intern for our church
family fun night
serving at family fun night
seeing my kids serve whole heartedly
watching my little one enjoy life
youth leadership catalyst meeting
being able to hear youths hearts
50 cent can of chili
seeing need to trust even more

Enjoying serving my King~
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Weekly Wrap up - Week 4

We are finishing our unit on North America.  I feel like we need a few more days on this unit to wrap it up. We will be taking the first few days of next week to work on this.

My laptop, that I have all my school files on, crashed this week, so I had to spend some time working on that... still do not have it working but felt I had to just set it aside for now.   I was loosing some momentum toward the end of the week so it was a blessing to have our monthly co-op on Friday to recharge alittle...

I thought I would share some of the things we are working on:

We have been reading various books on North America, Oceans and the three main Countries of North America ( USA, Canada & Mexico).  I love A True Books because they are colorful, easy to read and cover simple basic facts about the subject without getting to lofty or overwhelming with facts and information. Another of my favorites are the Explore series by Fact Finders.  We will be using these for our Biome Series.  One last series I like are the Bobbie Kalman Books.I have bought some of mine at Amazon and found others to add to our unit studies at the library.

 

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 We did a study of the Ocean Zones and made these flap books.  When you open up the flaps the ocean Zones are listed with a description of each zone. We used construction paper to show the water. They turned out really cute and were a great tool in teaching and reinforcing the different zones. I want to use the same printable (which I found in a Mailbox Magazine) to make a game for the learning center.  I will post that when I have completed it.


 We put together out Expedition Eath Notebooks and added all of our papers from this unit into them under the North Ameica Tab.  I bought the 8 tab set for each of the "three silly sisters" - one for the World and they other seven for each of the continents.  We are also using these for our monthly co-op.  My "little one" is into writing her name with curley letters... love it!!!


We ended our week with our monthly co-op meeting.  My unique son and some of his buddies are starting a "guys Bible study during our co-op time.  They also help us mom's by playing games with them while we are setting up and keeping an eye on them during lunch.

 For lunch we had foods that represented North America... Mac & Cheese (Canadians are know for eating more mac & cheese than any other country - Beans and Chips, Salsa, and Quesadilas for Mexico - and even maple cookies. 

During our teaching time I read from this book....
about Joni Eareckson Tada.  I could not get through the chapter without crying...  My kiddos are always teasing me about this... I cry during comercials, I cry when we read books, I cry during shows... even when someone tells a story... What can I say - I am an emotional person...  I love this series for reading quick overviews of different missionaries and Christian men and woman who changed the world.  They are perfect for our co-op setting.



 Well that was our week check out these links to see other homeschooling families weeks...

Linking up with:


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Back to School

This week  was our first official first week back at school.  Since we have a tradition that you get your birthday off from school and we had two “Birthday Girls” on Monday and Tuesday, we decided to start our new school year mid week this year.

This year we have 4 students.  (my class is getting smaller and smaller as the years go on)

We began the morning taking new school pictures…

my “unique son”  is in 11th grade this year:


my “ golden girl” is in 7th grade this year:


my “angel girl” is in 6th grade this year:


my “ little one”  is in 3rd grade this year:


I asked each of them, “What do you want to learn this year.”
Their answers are recorded on their pictures.
And of course we need a picture of the “teacher” – Mom

I am excited to be able to learn alongside of my kiddos, so often I feel I am the one who learns the most.  Especially in those “spiritual lessons.”

Linking up to the following sites:
Open to all He has for us this new school year~
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Baptism

My Angel Girl has been wanting to be baptized for the past year.  A few weeks ago, they announced at youth that they were having a Baptism coming up, so she signed up for it.  Pastor Craig spoke to the group of 4 students making this decision,   about the meaning and importance of giving and living your life for Christ. It was so exciting to see each of these youth make the decision to want to follow their Savior with all their heart.
 
    She was so cute, all week she practiced holding her breath and plugging her nose, while I counted to 5.  Pastor Craig and Beth (our youth leader) were both at her side.  They prayed for her afterwards, I love the look on her face.  She took it all in and loved being prayed for.  She is my prayer warrior, so this part was very special.

My unique son was asked, by one of the young men in their youth group, to be at his side when he was baptized.  This young man is a very special one, and has really embraced being a part of the youth.  It has been so fun to see him grow and want to follow the Lord, and it has been extra special to see my children just encourage and love him in all his specialness.  He comes over from time to time to hang out and I just love seeing him be able to have such special friendships.




Loving and embracing these special times in my children's lives~

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