This weekend, we cut the grass for the last time this year. We will not need to cut it again until March. Unfortunately, our big tractor was on the blink again (so what else is new?) and while DH tinkered with it for hours, I completed the grass cutting with our Sears garden tractor. Let me tell you that this meant a total of 6 hours on the lawnmower seat! Believe me, my back was killing me by the time it was over. And did I mention that I was freezing as well? Everytime I rode the tractor toward the east, the wind cut through all three layers of clothing and made me shiver. I have never been so cold while cutting the grass! That was the downside.

The upside was that I had six hours to think, pray, and process all the events of the week. There were several things to think about. Some were wonderful (see my last post!!) and some made my heart heavy.

As I get older, I have more and more trouble with change of any type. One change was that my new progressive lens eyeglasses arrived in the mail on Monday. They took some getting used to, but they are pretty nice. That is a positive change.

That same evening I went to our homeschool fellowship mom's monthly meeting. Whereupon my dear friend announced to us that she and her family are probably (definitely?) going to move out of state. Her parents are not doing well, and they would benefit from my friend's moving close to them. My friend is doing her filial duty, which, I suppose, is a good thing. But it is not a good thing for me. But since she is likely to read this post, I mustn't go on about myself, lay heavy guilt on her, and whine about how all my best friends end up moving away. I happen to live in one of the most transient areas in the country. Everybody comes here for awhile and then moves on. Especially if they are my close friends. I cannot tell you how often this has happened. Sigh. Sigh again. So, instead, I will say that I honor and respect her and her family for praying hard and doing what they believe to be the right thing. Even if it sucks for me. They have had a hard week this week. They lost a beloved pet. So life is hard for them. But I will miss them immensely, and I am tired of my best friends moving away. This was the first family to greet us when we began to attend our present church, and they are our best friends there. This is a bad change.

Here is another change that is probably going to make my readers laugh, but hey, it just adds to all the misery. A local restaurant, Fazoli's Italian fast food, suddenly closed. This is the third time this year that I planned to meet DH after work at a restaurant, and when we both arrived in the parking lot, found it to be closed and gone. But now, Fazoli's! This was our home away from home. When you live out in the country, you need such a place. How many times we have had to grab a cheap, healthy, non-fattening dinner at Fazoli's when we were on the way to some place, or on the way to supermarket shopping, and now we can't anymore. It is one less option for us, when there weren't that many options to begin with. After all, where else could we get a healthy meal for a family of four for $17, and be able to stop at Lowe's, or any other such place, before heading home again? I know it sounds silly, but I am going to really miss that place. I now know why they call it a Depression.

I am starting to hate change. Unwelcome change.

Today we had a congregational meeting at our church. Our church has been through a lot of change this year. There were some unfortunate events that caused one of our pastors to leave, and several families, as well. Our church budget has been shrinking for a couple of years, and now it is really going to shrink a lot more for 2009 as membership falls. It has been reaching crisis proportions. We love this church, but in some ways it does not resemble the church we joined five years ago. We have no building, as we didn't five years ago. It's a long story. There has been talk of constructing a new building, but various factors have prevented this from happening to date. Now, with the membership and budget where it stands, the prospect of a building, as designed, is looking slim.

But that was not what the meeting was about. The meeting was to ascertain the feelings of the congregation regarding hiring a worship leader and professional band for our weekly worship. Our church needed a permanent worship leader; a person who would not be leaving within a year due to graduation from seminary. Additionally, I suppose it was thought that our worship service needed a "pick-me-up". So, our church advertised for a worship leader, and one of the applicants has been leading worship music at our church for the past six weeks or so, as an extended audition. Now we are to decide whether to hire this 5 member "band" permanently. The price tag for this music group is extravagant, to say the least; i.e. more than 20% of our annual budget. As in, I am shocked that someone can be paid this much money for working one morning a week. I should have chosen music over engineering, I guess. I am also shocked that our leaders even considered this person, knowing the high price, and allowed him to do worship for us for the past month. Basically, they set the hook in the mouth of our congregation.

Imagine if your spouse brought home a luxury car to "try out" for an entire week, allowing you to drive it and fall in love with it before springing the ridiculous price on you. This is what happened to our congregation. Never mind that our church budget is about to shrink to two-thirds of what it was this year. Some folks in our church think that we should hire this band because the music is good, and the leader is a good leader. Hmmm. A few people thought we were in no position to hire such an expensive band. The meeting adjourned, and we left, rather depressed, and feeling that there was truly a wide split in our congregation over this issue.

I am troubled that our church is actually considering taking on this huge expense when, financially, we are "on the skids". I am troubled that there are so many folks in the church who think we need to do this. People who said they didn't "enjoy worship" until this wonderful band came along. Big sigh. There was talk of taking a "leap of faith" in this area. There was the implied belief that this musical band was guaranteed to expand our membership. My DH knows of one couple that did not care for the new group, a couple that had only been attending for a half year. I am not sure if they have been returning. And what about the building project that was discussed 6 months ago as a leap of faith, to expand membership?

America has two types of folks. Spenders, and savers. By spenders, I refer specifically to folks who spend money that they don't have. I see that both groups are present in our congregation. DH and I are savers. We are very careful about money. We are very analytical. We don't want our church to commit financial suicide. Adding this music band will mean that each household unit in our church will need to contribute an additional $100 per month. Just for the music. Not to expand anything else, not for missions, not for community outreach. Just for the music.

Are we paying for our own musical entertainment, and calling it "worship"? Someone said we need to "do worship right". What does this mean? Our own pastor has traveled to African churches, and witnessed firsthand what churches can do to worship with little or no money. Aren't they "doing worship right"?

When we joined this wonderful church, we did so because we were so impressed with the fact that this church appeared to have its priorities right. They didn't have a building, they didn't have a nursery school, or any of the trappings or programs that many American churches have to meet the needs of the membership. But they were seeking first the Kingdom of God. And with no building to care for, they were largely unencumbered by all the burdens and expenses and worries of taking care of a physical plant. They could use all their resources for missions, outreach to the underprivileged of the community, children and youth, and local ministries. The congregation was special, and had their heart in the right place.

But now, I truly worry about our leadership. I worry that they have been overtaken by a modern spirit of materialism. I was already worried that the proposed building would be too fancy. And as lofty a goal as that building was, I am now discouraged that we will never reach it, because we will go broke paying our professional music band. I guess I just don't have enough faith.

This afternoon, DH announced to me that if our church hires that band, we will be looking for another church. Hiring that band will be pure foolishness in his eyes (and I guess in mine, as well). But where will we go? I have no idea. No idea at all.

So here is where the lawnmower therapy came in. Six hours on a mower provided plenty of time to pray, meditate, think, process, and worry. About change. About the future. About the economy. About grieving the possible moving away of a dear friend. About possibly having to find another church. I really don't want to do this. I wanted permanence in a church for our kids. Especially at this time, when Baby Girl is on the verge of making her profession of faith to the church.

Too many changes. Too much heaviness of heart, even as I feel great joy over the Holy Spirit's working in my children's hearts.

I cannot believe it has been an entire week since I have written a post. It's not that life has been boring; quite the contrary. But I haven't had the time or opportunity, until this weekend, to process everything in my mind and heart.

We have a joyous piece of news to report. Baby Girl became a Christian this week! It was truly a great day for us on Friday.

Until recently, much of our morning scripture discussions has been between Little Son and me, but recently I decided to make sure that Baby Girl was aroused from bed earlier so that she could at least listen, even if she did not wish to participate in the discussion. She is not a morning person. I knew she needed to hear more of scripture at home than she was hearing. As it turned out, before long she approached me twice within a week to tell me that she wanted to "turn her back on sin", to use a phrase that we used when Little Son received Jesus two years ago.

So during our school lessons on Friday, November 21, she told me again that she wanted to "turn her back on sin" and "turn to Jesus". So I put the books aside, grabbed some materials I had kept on hand for this moment, and tried to assess her understanding of the Gospel by asking her questions, reading to her, and defining some terminology. Then we went together through our own very annotated version of the sinner's prayer, and then I joyfully welcomed her into the family of God. She was obviously very pleased with this new change in her life, and promptly went out to the family room to announce her profound and life changing decision to Little Son.

I would like to say that Little Son spontaneously threw his arms around his little sis to welcome her to her new life in Christ. But..... "sibling-ness" overcame all, and Little Son refrained from such a display of emotion. That is, until I told him how appropriate it would be for him to welcome Baby Girl into God's family. At that point, he did hug his sister, with giggles to punctuate the significance of the moment. As only a big brother can.

Now Baby Girl has already expressed an interest in meeting with the elders of our church so that she can make her decision public, and simultaneously join our church. This is a tough call for me, because I want to be absolutely certain that she can articulate her newfound faith and understanding of the Gospel. Although she appeared to "get it" on Friday, I feel that she needs more development before she can adequately convey her convictions verbally, on her own, without my assistance, to our church elders. I want it to be a positive, successful experience for her, so right now, I think she may need more time. Am I making a mistake by waiting? I am not sure. Should I "strike while the iron is hot" and her enthusiasm is high? Might she become shy and self-conscious later on? Dh and I need some wisdom here...

This morning in church we listened to our pastor as he preached about Psalm 100, a psalm that teaches us the proper way to express thanksgiving to God. He got to verse 3, which reads: know that the LORD is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture. At that moment, Baby Girl smiled up at me in the pew and whispered: "I belong to Him!"

"You sure do, Baby Girl, you sure do!" I replied, giving her a big church cuddle!

That is correct. We just mailed the final test in on Friday. Little Son has successfully completed Lesson 160 of Calvert School's Third Grade course. Now we take that long awaited break time that I often thought (and dreamed) about during the long hot summer weeks. I took some time after he finished his test to organize his papers and close the cover of the big 2 inch heavy duty three ring binder that contains his third grade portfolio. I felt pride and satisfaction over his completing this challenging course, and yet there was a tinge of sadness. Third grade seems to be the end of the young "primary" grades in my mind, and fourth grade seems so "old".

Fourth grade will begin for us after New Year's Day, and it will provide a much heavier workload than third grade did. But there are many things to look forward to. History will feature A Child's History of the World by Virgil Hillyer. I have heard so many good things about this book since I first planned to homeschool, and we will finally discover what it is all about. My bloggy friend over at Modern Day Ozzie and Harriet has given me a glimpse into the older Calvert years, and for that I am grateful, because I do not know anybody in person who is using Calvert at a level above third grade.

I am extremely proud of Little Son for coming this far and loving learning all along the way.

Baby Girl has begun First Grade, and I will continue to school her between now and New Year's. She says she "loves school" and she is doing fine with her first grade course so far.

I am so thrilled and thankful for what the homeschool lifestyle has already done for our family. I would not trade this experience for anything!

My next personal goal is to sit down and figure out how best to spend all the remaining "free time" I will have over the next six weeks. I want to use that time to the best advantage to prepare for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and take care of errands (and dental work!) that I have put off for far too long.

It's the "most wonderful time of the year" alright!

We just returned yesterday from a camping trip to Fort Desoto Park. The weather was magnificent. Not a cloud in the sky, and every day was breezy, dry, and in the 70s with nighttime lows in the lower 60s. We have been perfecting our camping skills as well, with the camper van making our lives so much easier. DH has truly figured out how to organize everything so well. We visited Fort Desoto, spent time at the beautiful beach (the nation's No. 1 beach in 2005), and walked out on the fishing pier. One of the highlights of this trip for our kids is crossing over the Sunshine Skyway, a very spectacular looking bridge. The children saw some live starfish on the beach, and a live manta ray that washed ashore just before we walked past. Also, pelicans galore. One exceptional highlight was the dolphin we saw just offshore, maybe 100 feet from the waterline. It was jumping and plunging repeatedly into the water. Thanks to Little Son for noticing that!

Here we are checking out the mortar cannons at Fort Desoto. This fort never saw any combat. It was constructed during the Spanish-American war to protect Tampa Bay. This cannon could fire a 1000 pound cannon ball over a mile up in the air. it was interesting to learn how they practiced firing it off every day, and the conditions the soldiers had to live with during that time (around 1905). The barrels of these guns, alone, weighed 29,000 pounds. It was interesting to learn how they mounted these guns in place way out on this remote barrier island before they had heavy equipment such as cranes to do the work.


Here are the children out on the fishing pier. It was very interesting to watch everybody salt water fishing on a Sunday afternoon. The water is just such a lovely aquamarine color there. The beach sand was so white and powdery.







Here is a photo of some of the many pelicans we saw. The fishermen had to compete with these to catch fish. No contest!













Baby Girl and Little Son decided to go into business for themselves. They collected the prettiest seashells they could find, and put them up "for sale" at the edge of our campsite. After sitting there for about an hour, and flagging down every passing car, they had $1.25 to show for their efforts (and sold the prettiest shells!) Some campers are very generous people. Too funny!

Oh, and lest I forget, here is a picture I took on the way out of town, through the windshield, of our children's absolute favorite bridge, the Sunshine Skyway. For the blog, of course.










It really was a terrific camping trip.

Our next camping trip will be the week between Christmas and New Year's Day. More on that in a future post.

As part of Calvert's Third Grade plan, Little Son read the book Smiling Hill Farm, by Miriam E. Mason. This is a book that has been read and enjoyed by generations of Calvert third graders. It is a very sweet chapter book tracing the history of the Wayne family from the time when they settled in Indiana, and everything that happened on and around their property through several generations. It also described how their lifestyles changed over more than 100 years, beginning with carving out their lives from a wilderness setting, and up through much of the 20th century. It is written in a very sweet, simple and innocent narrative style with plenty of dialogue, much of it from the point of view of the children in the family. I recommend it to any child who wants to learn about American history in a warm and interesting way.



One of the assignments was to create puppets of many of the characters from the book. There were so many characters! So Little Son came up with his own way of depicting the myriad characters of this book. Here are some of the results:


Today, as part of his lesson plan, he is to act out select scenes from the book with his puppets. Should be cute!

In late September, I administered the Iowa Test of Basic Skills to Little Son. It was his first experience with any standardized test. I wanted to do this because, well, although I suspected he was doing very well, I like to have evidence of it for his homeschool file.

Since we begin our school year in January, rather than September, he was nearing the end of third grade when he took this test. He took the Third Grade test. However, since he took the test in September, they compared his score to a national norm of Fourth Graders in their first month. I guess that was the best they could do.

We got the results back last week and his composite score was 93rd percentile. Reading was 97th percentile, Language was 89th percentile, Math was 73rd percentile. Other scores added into the composite as well, including Science and Social Studies. We are very pleased with this and happy to keep this in his file.

I do not report this to brag about Little Son's progress. But I do give a lot of credit to Calvert School. This curriculum is just amazing to me, and I would be helpless without it. So this is my small way of getting the word out about Calvert, in case anyone is searching and interested.

I also think that, just in case our national environment becomes less homeschool friendly in the future, it is a good thing to have standardized test results in your child's file. Just my opinion, for what its worth.

Monday was an exciting day for Little Son. Earlier in the summer, he had written a letter to President Bush as part of a Third Grade Calvert writing assignment. His letter was generally supportive of the President, and encouraged him on one of the significant issues of the time.

Months passed, and this Monday, the day before Election Day, we received a big manila envelope from The White House. Little Son tore it open, and read the following letter:

October 31, 2008

Dear [Little Son]:

Thank you for taking the time to write and for your kind words of support.

It is an incredible honor to serve as President of our great Nation. As my term of office comes to an end, my Administration will continue to confront the challenges of our times. You also have an important role to play for our country. I encourage you to study hard in school, reach out to those in need, and never doubt that you can make a difference.

Mrs. Bust and I send our best wishes. May God bless you, and may God bless America.

Sincerely,

George W. Bush

All I can say is, how 'bout that? A timely message from a President very close to the end of his administration.

Two photos were also enclosed, one of the President donning a cowboy hat, and one of the First Dog, Barney, autographed with a paw print.

Needless to say, Little Son was very happy with the response and we will be framing this for his wall.

I have to say that I was without words this morning. I did not have the ability to express what was in my mind and heart today. So I am thankful for all my bloggy friends for being so articulate this morning. I even discovered some new blogs today, with excellent wisdom to share. Thank you to all you Spirit-filled ladies; your words have been a blessing to me today.

One person pointed out this verse from Proverbs:

On Wednesday, I went to the polls. It was at our local library, where I first entered with my children to pick out new books. Then I went outside with the children to wait on a line for about a half hour, with the hopes that the new books would keep the children busy during that time.

An older couple immediately behind us caught my eye. Although the gentleman didn't indicate who he was voting for, he obliquely replied to a comment about candidate- of- choice with this comment: "Are you kidding? We were in the same hotel together. The H*noi H*lton!"

At first, I wasn't sure who he was talking about, because I didn't catch the entire conversation. I heard his wife comment "This is my walking miracle here", as she clapped him on the back. At that moment, it dawned on my what they were talking about. So I smiled broadly and said: "Are you talking about yourself?" and he replied "Yeah."

Wow! Goosebumps. So he proceeded to tell me the story of how his plane got shot down over Viet N*m and he ended up as a POW in the H*noi H*lton two months before J*hn McCain had. "Five years and 7 months, I was in there". His wife showed me his uneven shoulders, from having been shot in one shoulder, and as for the other shoulder, he commented "Ejecting out of a plane going 800 miles an hour really tore me up". Yes, he knew J*hn McCain at the time, and knew him well before his imprisonment as well. He is two years older than Sen. McCain.

I shared with him the joy I felt when we returned from Viet Nam with Little Son, how our plane went over New York City and I could see the Statue of Liberty out the plane window. I pointed it out to Little Son, then 7 months of age, with a huge lump in my throat. This gentleman explained the best feeling he had was when he got out of the POW prison and was flown to the Philippines, where a crowd of 10,000 was there to greet and cheer him. He said it was a wonderful feeling for him, kind of like how I felt in the airplane that day.

Just talking to this couple made me all teary eyed. "You have my utmost respect and admiration", I said to him.

He chatted with Little Son about airplanes a bit, letting him know that he could still fly "in the back" some day, even if he didn't have 20/20 vision.

It was an uplifting and encouraging experience for me.