Happy Birthday Angel Girl

  Today is this girls birthday-

She is officially a teenager at the age of 13teen.

She was born 1 day premature and had to spend the first 24 hours hooked up to a breathing machine in an incubator to make sure her breathing was steady. 

But that day-

this girl rocked our world and those around her with her presence and stole our hearts.

We named her Angelina –

because she was our message from God – a message of completion – a message of  joy, hope and restoration to a season of deep intense healing.  A message that she may not fully understand herself, but her Heavenly Father and her earthly parents did.  As her daddy would call her, she was our “earthly angel.”  

When this girl was in the womb -

It was spoken over her that she would be a “joy bringer – a prayer warrior”

When this girl was a baby-

people continually stopped and look at her –

she would just smile or look at them or extend her hand to them…  and they would share -

how she brightened their day,  how they were struggling and she brought them joy, how they needed that smile or that touch.

they would comment on how she made them feel joy – just her presence – her eyes and her smile brought the “joy of the Lord.”

When this girl was a child -

She always asked if we could pray-  when someone was hurting or in need. If she saw someone hurting or struggling she asked if they needed a hug or would befriend them.

Now that this girl is a teen -

we celebrate why she is not only a gift to us but a gift to this world she came to bless.

    13teen ways Angelia is a gift to the world

1. This girl  is a joy bringer.

2. This girl explodes compassion.

3. This girl is a prayer warrior.

4. This girl is unique and eclectic – and her own person.

5. This girl has a wild and amazing imagination.

6. This girl is the best nurse.

7. This girl loves to sing.

8. This girls heart feels deeply.

9. This girl hugs and loves with passion.

10. This girl is all in or all out (this balanced mama loves her all or nothing kiddos)

11. This girl is a tender friend to those in need.

12. This girl radiates the beauty of the Lord.

13. This girl is a world changer.

Happy Birthday my earthly angel -

You bring joy and love and tenderness to this mama’s heart and bless me more than I could ever bless you~

Thank you for being YOU~

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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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Beauties and Birthdays

We were able to celebrate birthday for  two of our beauties this weekend at one of my favorite beautiful places to be.

 

 

This week

our Angel Girl turned 12

and

our Golden Girl turned 14.

 

They are growing up into such beautiful young woman.

 

 

 

We surprised these two beauties by taking them to the YWAM base that my missionary daughter is serving on and stayed the weekend . The past few years they have not been able to celebrate with their oldest sissy… who they adore…

 

So we packed up a suitcase and loaded the car up, while our unique son took them out for a soda.  When they got back we told them we were going somewhere for the day for a family outing for their birthdays…  oh the excitement.    We took our special son, little one and unique son with us and headed off for our adventure. 

Half way through the trip they began to wonder, but they did not ask any questions… until we stopped at a gas station we always stop at on our way to seeing their big sister.

 

 

 

When we arrived our missionary daughter had our cabin decorated for a birthday party.  We had a wonderful cabin with a wonderful view and enough room to move around and be comfortable.  We got settled in and then went for a swim at the pool on the base, while hubby went into town to get some food for the weekend.

 

 After hubby returned and the swim was done, unique son was off with his friends from the base and missionary daughter was off to take engagement pictures for a couple on the base. We went to the playground and the girly girls did a little exploring…It was a beautiful day.  

 

 

 

   The next day was filled with deer observation, hikes and exploration, more swimming, a trip into town for the girlies to do a little shopping, a mini rain storm, a lesson in how to properly kill a rattlesnake, special son learning how to ride a bike and a birthday party celebration ending with a popcorn filled movie night. 

   

  

    

   

    

 

A full day at a place filled with the fullness of God’s Glory and beauty.

 

 

A weekend filled with memories…

     A weekend living life to the fullness….

           A weekend of celebration for the birth and life of these two incredible daughters…

My heart is full.
 

 

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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…
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Weekly Wrap Up – Week 10

We started a new unit this week. We will be spending the month of November studying Europe.

I filled out our Monthly Unit Form to get an overview of what we will be covering.

Bible Theme Moses – Ruth 10 Commandments	Character Humility	Habit Daily Duties (Chores)
Continent Europe	Biography William Booth	Magic Tree House Thanksgiving on Thursday
Biome Mountains/Caves	Animal Classification Mammals	Science Unit Landmarks
Country 1 Spain	Country 2 France	Country 3 Italy
Genre Historical Fiction	Grammar Verbs	Story Element Plot
Artist Pollock	Composer Bach

   

We have been reading out of our William Booth book from Ywam.  We are really enjoying this book.  We decided to read Thanksgiving on Thursday since we will be celebrating Thanksgiving this month, I will tie this book in with our Europe Unit, since the Pilgrims came over from Europe.  We watched our School House Rock Video on Verbs and completed some worksheets on verbs and main ideas that I printed from . I have I subscription to this web site and use it often to back up our units.

 We are reading the Kingdom Tales Trilogy this year.  We read one chapter a week for our Bible Read-a-load on Fridays.  I LOVE this book.  I hope that the girls are enjoying it as much I am…

We read and completed our notebook pages for all three of the countries we will be covering this month for Europe.   We will be covering Europe in January and cover three more country then.  (We take December to complete Advent/Christmas Units)

We were able to get to our Music Appreciation Study this week. We listened to some pieces by Back and filled out a Biography Sheet for Bach We read the World’s greatest Composers book on Bach back in September, So I will be reviewing this book next week as we finish our Notebook/Lapbook elements for this Composter.

 We started reading our book on Mammals and filled out our  notebook page for mammals:

 

 

 

 

We worked on our new Habit and Character sheets.

closed our week with some pics…

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