Thinking, Pondering, Musing....

I have several things on my mind as of late. Things that have been in the works and thoughts for a while. I hope to share them sometime soon when a decision is made, but I would like to ask for your prayers toward us every so often if you happen to think about it.

And now on to something completely different!

I made an exciting discovery tonight....I was getting out the fall and winter clothing bins and discovered that Katie and Noah both have plenty of clothes for the cool weather. I will be picking up a few things for Noah because he didn't end up getting quite as lucky at the post winter sales this past spring, but as cool weather comes they will be warmly provided for and I am so thankful for that! They both have a very nice 4-way coat that will probably last them each two more seasons. Katie has enough shirts to wear a different one every day for a few weeks probably! Osh Kosh was VERY lucrative at their end of the season sales last year for her! I am just so very grateful that they are already provided for this year with only a few odds and ends to add as far as dress pants or sweaters.

The bad side of that is that I really don't have a lot of clothes to put IN the sale! :( However, they did both decide finally grow some bigger feet, so we have lots of shoes to put in! AND we have cleaned the basement out a little more and have found some more things to put in. I hope to have a yard sale at the end of the month. Is September a good month for a yard sale??

Anyway, keep us in your thoughts please, and be thankful for the little things... like not having to go out and buy new clothes for fall!

3 Posts in One: A Word, School Transportation, and Recycling

Part One: A Word
The very next day after my plea for prayer and help, I got this word in our morning devotions. I felt it was a direct word on our situation..... And so... this is my hope for now. I especially love the wording of the verse: "Give thanks whatever happens." Not much else I can say except we will just wait and see and give thanks whatever happens...



And in case I didn't get it...it went further....


And now for something completely different...Part Two: School Transportation

How did you get to school when you were a kid? Bus? Car? Walking?

How about sliding down on your backside and stomach? They totally crack me up every day!



They said it scratches their back and feels good... oh well, who cares..as long as they get there...

On to part three: Recycling. I posted a request a while back on a homeschool loop about wanting ideas for how to reuse old medicine/vitamin bottles. I have accumulated quite a few since we are very avid supplement takers! :)
They had various ideas such as storing craft supplies, pins, etc. They all sounded good but not useful for me because I don't accumulate things like that, I just have other containers or whatnot. ANYWAY...
We were doing our morning workout routine (that we now do regularly as a family and I counted down for educational time) and the kids desperately wanted to have hand weights to use.
Katie used two Barbies one day (not so great or useful) and canned foods were too bulky for them. Then it came to me:



These are small stones from some bags of decorative stones they got for Christmas one year. Yeah, they got stones for Christmas...and they LOVED them and played with them and cherished them... then they got put away in a bucket under the kitchen sink till further notice.
Turns out, combined with an old empty kids vitamin bottle, they made perfect, kid-sized hand weights!


Here they are doing some lifting for me so I can take a picture. I put about 5 stones in each one so they aren't really heavy, just enough to give some resistance when they exercise. They are loving it and I am loving having this down for school time because it is an even bigger motivator to not skip it! Katie is in such a better mood when we do our exercising and she enjoys it even more than Noah. He doesn't love doing it, but he does some of it.

Congratulations on being a part of my three posts in one day. Does that make me a little more green? ha!

Asking and Seeking

We are approaching this sign it seems and we won't have a chance to make a different choice once it is made.
Actually, life may make the choice for us,
so we will have to just have wisdom in what to do with it.

(For a couple of you reading this, it isn't what you think it is.)
Please pray for us.

We need:
Wisdom.
Peace.
A Word.
Clarity.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

I had to recite this when I was in the 11th grade. I guess we will never know what waited down that other road. We do know that God will work whichever path we choose for the best outcome possible. However... how do we know which HE would have us choose?

I have been wrestling with some big decisions lately. Well... some people might not see them as that big of decisions, but some of them most definitely are!

I am at peace today because one thing I was trying to come to peace about has finally been decided. Other decisions that Corey and I both are weighing are still up in the air, but this timely one has finally been laid to rest!

We have decided to not participate in our local Co-op next year.

I have not been able to come to peace with this for a while because I didn't want to take my children away from friends they had made and the "classroom" experiences. BUT, either homeschool is enough or it isn't!

I talked to Katie and Noah today about doing other activities instead of CHAT because we can't afford to take the time or money to do both. Of course, I didn't tell them the reasons, but I asked which they would choose if they had to choose just one.

Noah immediately said, "GYMNASTICS!" and Katie got upset because she thought she wasn't going to get to see this one particular friend anymore. After I assured her that she could still see her friend she wasn't upset in the least about quitting the Co-op.

After that, Katie said she wants to be an artist and take piano lessons. ha ha.

To make a very long story and many possibilities short, here is what we have decided:

1. We are getting the piano from my parents' house and I will teach Katie piano lessons. (I took lessons for about 11 years and feel confident I can teach her myself for the first couple of years anyway)

2. We are ordering Art curriculum from Artistic Pursuits to give them both weekly art lessons at home.

3. Noah will enroll in gymnastics.

This solved many problems I was having with getting my thoughts together for the fall. I wanted to do art but couldn't justify the cost with paying for other activities. Katie really wants to take piano lessons, but I hated to pay for just piano when I know I could do it myself. AND, Noah really enjoys gymnastics and I think would do very well with it.

It may not look fair that we are paying to send Noah to a class and not Katie, but why should we push her into doing something when what she really wants we can do ourselves for free? I won't feel guilty for that because they are both being given great opportunities, it just so happens that hers won't cost anything (well, after getting the piano tuned and buying a lesson book or two every few months). AND they BOTH get the added benefit of art lessons at home which I am super excited about teaching and doing with them. The Artistic Pursuits curriculum has enough lessons for a year and you can easily purchase a kit that will include all the supplies needed for all the projects (no excuses to not do them! :)

This also means that we will only have to leave the house once a week...meaning that we will have much more time for field trips/park days/play dates..something we didn't get to do near enough of this year because we had so many obligations! I have already been in contact with another homeschool mom who lives in the same town as us (our other co-op was in the next town over, about a 20 minute drive) who wants to get a play group going in our area for this coming school year!!!

That's my decision for the week, and I am feeling much better and so thankful that God can just get it all over with in a matter of minutes sometimes...even if you have pondered and thought, and weighed, and prayed for a while about something.

Now, those other decisions.... I won't share about those right now, but they are HUGE, so please say a prayer for us that one day soon the light will just come on and we will have an answer on those too :)

Thanks for reading!

God Stop Sunday

God Stop Sunday participants:
Bethany, at Living, Learning, Laughing, Loving
Karen, at Hallelujah Anyhow!

Well, I only got one participant last week, but hopefully more will join us! The idea is Savoring The Observable Presence of God... God STOP. How has God Stopped by in your life this week? I find it to be such a faith builder to hear testimonies of how God is showing up to help people...all the time, right on time...every time! If you want to join, please leave a link to your God Stop Sunday post and I will add it to THIS BLOG so we can all lift each other up today! Feel free to take the photo and use it too!

For me....something very specific comes to mind. I was leaving the McDonald's drive through...trying to turn left across in a four lane very odd pull out....the lanes shift at the particular point where I was pulling out...anyway, it is hard to explain. There was a truck behind me and the driver honked their horn because I guess I sat there for more than 10 seconds and so as soon as I could go across the on coming traffic from the left I pulled on out, and misjudged the traffic coming from the right and skipped a lane or something anyway, there was a car RIGHT THERE and if I had pulled one millimeter further over we would have totally collided. God saved us right in that second from a major accident because there were cars everywhere. It really took my breath away and all I could say was "THANK YOU GOD" for timing all of this traffic so that no one got hurt!

Today as I was coming home from Cartersville I saw a terrible accident. Well, it was the aftermath of an accident. I couldn't even see the cars, but what first got my attention was a helicopter that had landed right on the interstate! There were police cars, firetrucks, but you couldn't see the actual cars from the accident they were all off the road I assume. The helicopter was from Children's Healthcare. I don't know what happened or who was involved in that accident, but it just really got to me and I started praying for them. I know it sounds crazy for this to be a "God Stop" but for me, God was truly stopping by to tell me to pray for them. Someone's child or baby was in that accident and hurt badly enough to require an airlift. Maybe those people didn't have someone to pray for them. Maybe the people who would pray for them just hadn't heard, or were in too much shock.
Isn't it good to know that God is watching out for you, even if you aren't the one who is spared from the accident as we were yesterday, but that He is stopping people, even strangers....and listening to their prayers for you and you may never even know!

How often does God Stop for us and we never even know it? That's what I am enjoying about the whole sharing thing I hope to start here. Building your faith daily and weekly, to draw on in those times when we think we have been overlooked....we haven't...we just don't know it yet!

Still blessed...a year later!

It has been almost exactly a year since I posted this blog entitled "Blessed."


It was December 6th, 2007, when we discovered that Katie needed glasses. It was such an awesome day!


I also posted about another miracle (Blessed Again) when her glasses arrived the very next day when we were told it would be a week. She looked so adorable in her new glasses and the changes we saw so immediately were just amazing!

I also posted another update a couple of weeks later: HERE


Then, the next March, we went back to see how the glasses were helping and if her eyes had immediate improvement. We were astounded again when her vision had, in fact, improved dramatically in a short time. That is when I posted Katie's Eyes with the update. She wasn't seeing 20/20 with her glasses, they couldn't improve it to that point even with glasses because her vision was so bad, but you can read to see the improvements that occurred! The dr. said at that time that she may be able to acheive 20/20 with her glasses, at least in her good eye, by the one year mark.


Today, we went for a full year later check-up. The news was great!


Katie's vision in her "good" eye with her glasses is now between 20/30 and 20/25. She could do part of the 20/25 line! And, in her left (worse) eye, she is now 20/40 with her glasses! She was at 20/60 last time! (I am pretty sure that is right.)


She has been complaining of her head hurting and her eyes hurting some, so that is due to her reading so much. She absolutely is ALWAYS reading something unless we are watching a movie or eating as a family. She is a cereal box reader at breakfast! ha ha-just like mommy! The doctor said that is probably why her vision is improving so rapidly. Since she reads books with lots of words on the page she is having to focus her eyes and really exercise those still elastic eye muscles and is able to actually improve her vision!


I am just still so thrilled with everything. I am happy that her eyesight is getting better and better...and that we discovered the problem before she was too old to still exercise the muscles to improve her vision. I can't imagine if we had waited another year or two or five even-and had to just deal with the best we could do with glasses.


Since this time last year, Katie has gone from seeing the world every single day with 20/400 vision to seeing books and movies and flowers in 20/25-30 and 20/40!


That's why we are just SO STILL BLESSED and continue to be every day that she wakes up and is able to put on glasses and read the cereal box!!!!!


We were quite pleased as well that we were not going to have to pay for a new pair of glasses since her prescription is working fine...but...what do you think happened tonight? Her glasses got broken.How is that for irony? A full year later, I mean, those glasses survived being stuck down in a basketball goal a week after we got them (thanks to the ingenuity of our best local eagle scout friend we were able to fix them) and tonight as we were getting ready for bed she pulled them off her face and one of the earpieces came right off!!!

Corey is going out early tomorrow to see if we can get them fixed or if it would just be cheaper to let insurance get her a new pair. *sigh*
But hey, still blessed! At least it took a year...with a 5/6 year old that is pretty good I would say!

Katie's eyes....

3 months and 2 weeks later. It seems longer since we took Katie and found out the poor girl hadn't been able to see for 5 YEARS! Well.....I was a little more stable today than the first time, and able to understand a little better what all was going on, but on with the good news: Katie's eyes are IMPROVING at a DRASTICALLY FAST RATE!!!!!!!!!!

PRAISE GOD!!!!!

She is improving very very quickly according to the doctor. Katie's vision without glasses is 20/400! (I know they both aren't the same, this is in one of her eyes, the good or bad one I can't remember). With her glasses, the best they could get for her before was 20/60, and today she was up to 20/40! Up "four lines" on the chart according to Dr. Jabaley! She was amazed. She said that usually it takes a couple of years to get the eyes to improve with a case like Katie, but she says that by December (a year) that she thinks Katie will be improved to 20/20 with her glasses!!!!!!!! YAY!!!!!!! What awesome news!!

I don't think I really realized when we went before that Katie's glasses weren't totally fixing her eyesight, only improving them as much as they could. I don't think I was told either or didn't remember the 20/400 number. But, you know, there are a lot of people out there who are "blind" without their glasses (me being one of them), so I am just excited that there is such awesome improvement and that the hope of 20/20 is in sight!

Katie has started reading more fluently (less stopping, quicker recognition, and no pointing while reading). She has also been running without stopping, and just "doing things" more easily. Things like moving a game piece around a game board, coloring, writing, etc. Now I know we have had practice with school, but I know her glasses are helping her as well....a LOT! She is "braver" about going down slides at the playground, and wants to go higher on the swings. She is loving ballet and I am so happy that she got her glasses before she started the classes. Often throughout the day I will ask where Katie is and Noah will reply: "She's in her room reading a book." She loves to read and now just reads on her own all the time.

I am so thrilled today! We are supposed to go back every three months to check her progress and I am excited, so thrilled to see how the three months improves again! Maybe, just maybe she will be at 20/20 in one of her eyes!

We didn't have to pay anything for today (of course now that we have insurance :) so afterward we went to Wal-mart and both Katie and Noah picked out a prize....this morning they were WONDERFUL while they waited for me to get a haircut, and then Noah was so good during Katie's eye exam and Katie didn't have a meltdown during the eye exam like she did last time. Well, they didn't do the spray dilate thing like they did last time since her eyes were used to not over compensating now, but still, the lady tried to do that eye puff thing they do at exams and Katie didn't even cry when they did it. I can't even stand to do that air puff in my eye. (She didn't have to even have that done, another lady came up and said she didn't need to do that since Katie was less than 9 years old). Anyway, they both got a prize....besides being so good this morning (after a very late bedtime after church last night and an early morning to get to my hair appt) they are just GREAT CHILDREN and we are INCREDIBLY blessed to have them in our lives!
Noah picked out a Nerf rocket football, and Katie picked out a FurReal Pet, a baby duck that you feed a bottle. They have had a blast playing with them. I just love my Katie and Noah!

Blessings....

I almost think I will not be able to explain this fully through a blog...but I am going to do my best....
Those of you who have known us for a long time know all this, but I am going to share a little background for anyone reading who doesn't....
Katie, our 5 year old daughter, has had a developmental delay with her gross motor skills from birth. She didn't crawl until 11-12 months and didn't walk until she was 17 months old. Her pediatrician didn't seem overly concerned (although she is quick to refer to any kind of blood test available-another story) but she did eventually refer us for physical therapy for her. She went for a month or so....was catching up somewhat....but still far behind her age group. She is also very big for her age, so it appeared to be even worse than it was...for a child that looked 2 years old to be barely walking. She is smart, was talking, mentally fine. Just confusing to us all around and frustrating.
It really broke my heart as a mom. Why was our little girl dealing with this? I prayed over it, I worried and cried over it....but we were in such a different season of our lives at that time. I was a full -time student...pregnant again...dealing with all kinds of things.
Eventually Katie caught up to be not that far behind. We figured and accepted that Katie is just Katie. She likes to walk slowly, she very very slowly and cautiously took steps one at a time on the same foot, didn't enjoy playground as much as she should...etc...just heartbreaking.
Side story ....at her 4 yr check up, she was slightly not perfect on one eye during her vision screening. They said follow up with an exam, but with the "over-cautiousness" of my pediatrician always reccomending some test or another I didn't ever get around to taking her. Katie is SO smart..already knowing all her letters and sounds at 3 years old, and in the earliest levels of reading at 4. I talked to her 3 yr pre-k teacher who agreed that Katie was doing GREAT in school and didn't seem to struggle with her sight at all, saw things fine in class, etc....plus we did not have vision insurance.
Fast-foward to Oct 2007. Katie is taking Tumbling classes....not doing so well as we expected. I mean I am proud of her because she has started turning foward rolls (a major feat), attempting the balance beam, being a real trooper. In our first year of homeschooling I had started noticing that Katie was having fine motor skill trouble as well. It was a struggle for her to concentrate on forming letters with a pencil and for putting little pegs in a hole. I just thought, well Katie will be a little behind with fine motor skills also.
Nov: 5 yr check up. Same results with the eye screening. For some reason (GOD!) I decide since it is the second time, we will take her for an exam.
Yesterday: Take Katie to the eye doctor. They spray her eyelids with this stuff that makes them relax the eye muslces so they cannot strain. I quickly notice during the exam as it was confirmed by the dr. Katie's vision is extremely bad. She basically sees in blur. Both eyes are very bad, and one is hardly being able to be used at all because she has overcompensated most likely for FIVE years!!!! She has no depth perception. She has no peripheral vision.
I asked the dr. knowing the answer, "Could this possibly affect her gross motor skills?"
The dr.'s answer brought me straight to tears: "OH ABSOLUTELY YES!"
She continued to say that it will also make them complain of headaches (check) and make them feel sleepy (double check!).
It all makes so much sense now. But I never would have thought that her delay in going up and down stairs, jumping, climbing on playground equipment, etc. was due to her sight, as much as it seems SO OBVIOUS now. And her tiredness....just everything. I might have thought of it had there been ANY other symptom (not learning letters, not recognizing objects, not being able to see things we saw) She was "seeing things" but just the way she had always seen them and was smart enough to adjust to that. Motor skills were the ONLY thing that she showed a delay in, which to anyone would seem to be a strenth/movement/confidence issue. Difficult to have confidence climbing a ladder with blurred vision and no depth perception!
At first I felt SO overwhelmed with guilt. But the dr. assured me that it is wonderful that I brought her in when we did because something can still be done about the one lazy eye and that she is just starting serious school so this is year.
As the day went on I went from guilt to complete and total overwhelming joy!
What a BLESSING! Katie, whom I have cried and worried over...who we had just accepted to be a little behind...is going to have a HEALING of sorts over this thing we weren't even thinking about anymore. And I am compelled and happy to give thanks where thanks is due, because I can't even tell you what a miracle this is for us. I really wasn't planning to take her for an exam. She didn't seem to show ANY symptoms at all with struggling with sight. She has dealt with it for so long that it is just normal for her. She doesn't struggle academically, has started reading by just getting by with her one eye. There was no sign that she would need glasses. I fully expected to get the same result as at the pediatrician: she is a little bad with distance. It was the opposite: Katie has trouble with closer distances. Which even further explains the particular issues she has (handwriting, pegboards, balance beams, steps, etc.)
We weren't worried over it anymore actually, we were past that point. I didn't even know that this was an area that was even "up" for a miracle anymore. But we were just dealt the biggest blessing of our lives!
GOD was in this from the beginning.
WHY didn't I take her last year? Because God's timing is PERFECT!
My husband and I have also been on a spritual journey the past 6 months in a new season of our lives....and if we had been given this miracle last year....we would have said Thank God, but not to the degree we can this year. God is real and in our lives as #1 priority to us now, and he knew that ALL HONOR would be given to him...in THIS year, at THIS TIME, and in THIS CIRCUMSTANCE.
I am just so thankful I can't express how much. We are excited to see in a few days when we get her glasses how the world is going to change for her. I am holding on to the faith that was poured out on us yesterday. I will not let it fade.
I know that Katie's first few days with "working eyes" will be an adjustment, but I am ready...SO ready to see how this changes her life. THANK YOU GOD!!!!