Christian Momma

2008 has come and gone already.  It sure seemed to go by quickly…sometimes a little too quickly!

January

The year started out with me beginning to work on Power Lab VBS (Ah Ha!).  I was also homeschooling Michael.  We were pretty on top of our schooling and things were going pretty smoothly at the time.  I was also beginning to work in the K-1 Sunday School class room at church.  That, wasn’t going as smoothly as I had wished.

February

VBS started to consume my thoughts.  I was having dreams about not being ready, and just an overwhelming sense that I’ve bitten off more than I could chew.  AKA…I wasn’t relying on God to help me, I was relying on my own strength to do it.

February also brought about Daniel & Andrew’s 3rd birthday as well as my 34th birthday.

Michael entered his first Science Fair and ended up with a Superior rating!  I was proud, but knew full well that if he had applied himself earlier in the month, but he decided to wait until the last minute to do it.  Then we hit a rough patch in our homeschooling…a bad one.  Causing me to question my ability to teach him not to mention my basic parenting skills.  But, through the Grace of God we got through it with help from some friends in our church.

March

March brought in a lot of saddness.  My grandmother’s health begain to fail drastically.  And a friend of mine lost her child in a horrible accident. My heart ached in ways I never knew it would.  Things in me shined trhough as well.  I didn’t realize how “in tune” I was to other’s saddness.  Michael had a meeting with the staff from his online school and things turned out so much better than I had originally anticipated.

April

In April, I took a blogging break…school slipped behind and I had to push Michael to get as much done as possible a day!  Spring seemed to bring out the worst in his schooling abilities and slowly we fell behind.

May

I won this Word Press blog…I’m ever so greatful to Lisa for hosting the giveaway that allowed me to win! The final push to get VBS was upon us.  VBS was scheduled for the 2nd week of June.  My grandmother passed away that month as well.

June

VBS week came and went without too much problems.  Yes, there were a few bumps in the road, but overall things turned out GREAT!  I was elated that things went as well as they did and relieved that it was all over with as well.

July

We celebrated Michael’s 11th birthday in July along with Kevin and I’s 14th wedding anniversary.  In between those 2 events, we threw my mom and dad a 60th Birthday/40th Wedding Anniversary party.  We were very impressed that we were able to pull it off!  Mom and dad had only suspected that we were planning on all going out to eat together, not that we would have all of their friends and family at a hall waiting for their arrival!  We even got one of their friends from High School to travel from Chicago to Ohio to celebrate with them as well!

We also got to see Extreme Makeover Home Edition in our town.  My mother drove down the night before to stay overnight and we headed out to the new house to watch the bus move.  That is a day that was HOT, but I wouldn’t have missed for the world.  To see something like that is a once in a lifetime thing.  Michael still claims to have High-Fived Ty!

August

We went for our 1 and only camping trip of the year.  We had so much fun, and would love to go back to the Michigan Dunes again.  Our church also had a Worship Night.  Something changed in me that night and I have been forever changed!

September

School started right after Labor Day!  We decided to send Michael back to public school since things weren’t working out the best for us at home.  We are happy to report that he is doing wonderful in the public school!

We celebrated Noah’s 8th birthday in September.  We also found out that an eight year old child, when given $20 in cash and not watched very closely at the grocery store (because mom and dad were busy ringing/bagging groceries), will spend the whole $20 on lottery tickets!  And before you ask…YES it’s illegal for him to purchase them, but when they have a “vending machine” of lottery tickets just sitting over by the bubble gum machines, it’s just calling for a child to play with it!  And he only wond $2!

October

In October, Kevin and I started going to a new Bible Study.  I was elated that Kevin wanted to go to one since he has never really showed any interest in going before.

We also walked, for the first time, in the JDRF Walk for a Cure for my Niece.  We were so proud of her, she ended up getting 2 awards…one for the amount of money raised and the other for the T-Shirt design!

November

We celebrated Kevin’s 38th birthday.  How?  Well, I went to a Arbone party and he watched football…now that’s love!

We had our traditional weekend after Thanksgiving shopping adventure.  My parents’ took Michael, Noah, Daniel, & Andrew for the weekend (it ended up my parents had Daniel & Andrew and my sister had Michael & Noah).  We always enjoy that weekend away from the boys.  It’s nice to pretend we are childless…even if it’s just for the weekend!  But we are always so excited when they return.

December

We spent most of the month either running from Christmas Program to Christmas Program or from Christmas to Christmas.  However this year it seemed to be a little less travel than usual.  We only spent 1 night up at my parent’s house and we actually had Christmas Eve and Christmas Day at home for the first time in a long time!

For 2009, I’m sure there will be new things that God shows us along the way, new challenges to overcome and new friends to meet, but I trust that God will be joining us along this journey and we will rest in the knowledge of Him.

Yep, you heard it…I said that phrase probably about 20 different times yesterday! Did I mention it was 95 degrees outside!! What a long day!!

My mom came down here on Wednesday evening and spent the night. We were up and ready to go out the door by 6 am! Yes, I was up…but I’m not a morning person AT.ALL. We grabbed McDonald’s and headed to the parking lot where the school shuttle buses were. We didn’t have to wait at all to get onto the bus, so no time to eat breakfast!

We get to the house at 6:30 am and eat our breakfast on the neighbor’s lawn. They had the yard blocked off by gates so you knew where you were/weren’t allowed to be.

The volunteers start throwing things into the audience…how exciting! Michael got a pair of shorts that have that little red bear bottom from Charmin on it. When we went to the bathroom, someone handed each of us a Charmin t-shirt. Then they started throwing out bracelets. They were in support of the SMA (Spinal Muscular Atrophy…which is what the 2 girls have). Both Michael & Noah got one of those.

We did take after take after take after take of the bus moving, the family arriving, the crowd screaming. By the time the family actually arrived…we were all tired of yelling…not really, but I was!

We seen a number of people pass out from heat and the medical staff run through the crowd to take care of them. The volunteers did bring out case after case of water to pass out to the crowd. The thing I didn’t understand, why would you come to this event unprepared? They weren’t there to give out water and food to you while you were there, the news told you to bring water and food to the event if you were going. Even when they interviewed Ty, he told everyone to bring an umbrella for shade, food and water.

Michael took off (I gave him boundaries of where he was allowed to be), apparently, he wiggled his way up to the front and even gave Ty a high 5! Little bugger! I would have L.O.V.E.D. to have gotten a photo of that, but I was way back in the crowd…people don’t really like to move for a double stroller, so we pretty much found our spot and stayed put!

It was really neat to see the family actually arrive and yes, I did see

Michael Moloney

Paul DiMeo

Ed Sanders

and Ty Pennington!

Yeah, I know, they are hard to see, but I wasn’t really close to the front…remember the stroller? Yeah, we were stuck in the middle of the crowd!

The house

I hope you enjoyed looking, I had fun, but it was HOT and my arms are now burnt, my boys thankfully didn’t get much sun…my mom, however, she’s really, REALLY red!

Extreme Makeover Home Edition is in our town! I have been watching the news (almost every station…but ABC has the most coverage) about the progress, I went and drove by the area (the roads are all blocked off)…it’s about 1 mile from my house!

It’s exciting to see how many people care for this family. Apparently, there were 25,000 letters submitted on behalf of this family who was in need of a home renovation.

This family has 3 children in a bi-level house. The girls (both of them) have Spinal Muscular Atrophy and the boy has Crohn’s Disease. The girl/s (I can’t remember if they said both or just 1) has to be carried from room to room in her home because her house is not built for her wheelchair. My own children go to the same school as these children, so we have seen this family before.

We haven’t ventured over to the house yet, but I’m seriously contemplating going there. This is probably a once in a lifetime type of thing. Watching them build a house for an extremely needy family.

Not sure if you will be able to see (or even want to see), but here is a link to some photos of their work on the home. It’s from our local newspaper, I’m a member of it, so I don’t know if you can see it without being a member.

Anyway, I just wanted to share!