Wonderful

Oh my goodness.....tonight was wonderful. Travis Cottrell was amazing. He recorded his live DVD at our church tonight! His band was wonderful! His singers were wonderful! His approach to worship was wonderful. What a talented...talented man! I hope he was pleased with the attitude of worship at our church! I took my camera in to take pictures....the one of Travis is awful but I am putting it anyway and the one of Beth Moore was pretty good. I have to tell you...I love to take pictures of my family and friends but I would never take pictures of Beth Moore and Travis Cottrell if it were not to put on my blog. It always seems so cheezy when people are taking pictures of well known people. WHY? I don't know I am just goofy like that!

Anyway it was my first time to hear Beth and I thoroughly enjoyed her. Have a great day!

Guess Where I am?

Guess where I am?? I am at my church First Baptist Woodstock......with Beth Moore! Yes she is here tonight...I have never had the chance to see her in person so I am so very excited!I will give you an update later! For now I am waiting outside the doors of the church...the doors open at 5:00 and I have been here since 3:00.

This weekend I spoke at a church in Florida. I took my daughter Emily with me and we had a wonderful time. It is so much fun to have one child away like that. We were in the car for 12 hours so we made up many games and talked about lots of fun things! The ladies in Florida were wonderful! Such a sweet, sweet time!

Talk to you soon!

The Video

Hello Ladies.....Here is the video that I promised???!!! Look at those pants.....and you know I feel really good about losing 80 pounds until I see myself on a video looking pregnant...I need to go shopping and have a tummy tuck???!!!!

Life is just embarassing sometimes!

I had the awesome privilege of speaking to a wonderful group of women in Douglasville this past Friday night. I love to encourage women to be passionate about the things that God created them for! The ladies were wonderful...the entire night was planned out so nicely......and as someone who speaks at womens events.....sometimes it is crazy unorganized! :) Not this one! I took Lindsey my 15 year old daughter with me. We had a blast. She is so fun....she makes parenting a joy! After the night was over she was my biggest cheerleader. What an encouragement she was!

Now for the embarrassing part????!!!! I took our video camera just to get a few clips for a video that our church is putting together for our ministry. On Saturday morning I picked it up to download it on the computer and I of course saw myself........AAAAAHHHHHH I called Lindsey...."Please tell me that this is a mistake on the camera...because I am pretty sure that my pants look really short!" You know.......when it looks like your grandma went to the bathroom and pulled her pants up way too high!!! Not a little short...way short!!! How could I do that?? Lindsey told me that they were indeed to short and she(my total fashion girl!) didn't want to hurt my feelings and she didn't know if I could afford new pants so she thought it might make me sad! OK that is very sweet!!! BUT I do have other clothes! I wear those pants all the time but not with the shoes...I told her that I guess that was the problem and she said no that just made it worse but basically they were always a little short. We then had a nice conversation about how she can help me without hurting my feelings or making me sad that I don't have money to buy new pants!!!:)

I will try to post a picture of it soon so you can join in the laughter! Thank goodness the night wasn't about me but about Him and I did my dead level best to honor and glorify Him!

Love those babies!

Back in the Swing of things

I am always glad to move on to the next thing....when summer is over I am ready to start school...when Christmas comes I am so ready to enjoy Christmas and all it's activities....when it is over I am ready to dive back into school again...just a cycle. It has been a good start back but it is so hard to get back into the routine of early mornings...I am such a night owl and I love the lazy holiday times when we can be up half the night and sleep until 10:00 and yes my children will do this as well. They have been well trained in the sleep department!

You can pray for me if you think about it...I have 5 children and 3 of them are dyslexic! I knew very little about dyslexia when we started the homeschool journey 11 years ago. But I quickly had to learn because it was so odd that Lindsey was so amazingly bright and verbal and just could not pick up the reading part. There are many different aspects and degrees to dyslexia and thankfully we were able to get the first two the help they needed, they were also both "milder" cases......but one of our children has such severe problems with it....it is very frustrating for her and for me. She is so bright...she is on or above grade level in everything she does but she can't read. She is approximately 5 grade levels behind:( ......I have to read everything to her....this is very time consuming! We have the amazing blessing of having a very gifted specialist donate her time once a week for an hour to work with her and help me know how to teach her and that is going well. The specialist confirmed my suspicions that this was a severe case and that it was going to be a long process.

It is another time that makes me aware of Gods sovereignty when He called us to home educate all those years ago. She would be in every "special"class imaginable if she was in public school and I am sure she would not be the same happy, sweet determined student that she is today. I am glad to help her but it is very demanding of my time...I have a 1st grader who almost totally needs me....a 3rd grader who is becoming more and more of an independent learner and 7th and 10th graders who do a great job but still need guidance and some help. I am asking the Lord to provide some help. I do not know how that will come....strength for me?...someone to help?...healing for dyslexia???...I do know this...He cares about her more than I do and He knows what both of us need more than I do!!!

Love those babies!

Happy New Year!

We had a wonderful Christmas as I hope that you did as well. It has been a nice break from the business of school. We do not have crazy big Christmas's here as far as gifts are concerned...first because we do not think you should just buy gifts for the sake of buying. And secondly we usually are extremely tight money wise and we refuse to go into debt for Christmas. This year was the first year of full time ministry and going into the Christmas season we really had very little money. My kids are getting older and although they are amazing about their expectations I so wanted to bless them. They have made many sacrifices this year as well. It was so neat to watch as money came in and grandparents and uncles blessed my kids with gifts that were so much more than they would have ever asked for! God is good!

As I look back at this past year I am amazed at the way the Lord met all our needs! We lived a life walking be faith. That was really tested when all our money was gone from our IRA and we were truly dependent on Him! There were many who supported us monthly. We saw many young people come to faith as Eric shared in so many different places. My children saw the undeniable hand of God! We are very excited about all that the Lord has in store for us this next year! I pray that your family has a blessed New Year!

This is from a tissue paper/nerf gun war that the kids had with their daddy!