And Abraham Went Out . . .

Just checking in . . .

The weather outside is. . . 
Overcast. Saturday was crazy beautiful! Almost 70 degrees and sunny. Sunday it rained all day. Today it is chilling off again.

One of my favorite things . . .
Seasons. Advent is coming. I don't have any big plans yet but I am hopeful for a quiet, reflective season to prepare my heart for Jesus. I'm in great need of such a season.

Oh yes, I can't forget!! As I mentioned the other day. I am so very, very thankful for the field of naturopathy. There are some wonderful resources out there. Just recently I had a couple of labs run and learned some interesting things about my body. It's so neat to connect the dots. I get so pumped up about stuff like this. I think if I won the lottery I'd send my whole family and a bunch of friends to a good naturopath. Very cool stuff! If you are interested, check out "The Family Clinic of Natural Medicine" in Madison, Wisconsin. I found "Stevens Naturopathic Clinic" in Liberty Lake, Washington excellent as well.

In the kitchen . . . 
Nothing impressive this week. Our weekends have been full for a couple weeks now, I haven't done any menu planning or big grocery runs. All last minute trips. Not my style at all; I do like to plan my meals out. Back at the normal routine this week. Yeah.

The boys and I are reading . . . 
"The Adventures of Buster Bear" by Thorton Burgess. You gotta love Mr. Burgess.

On my nightstand . . . 
"Dear and Glorious Physician" by Taylor Caldwell. Great book! It's historical fiction based on the life on the life of St. Luke. I"m sure you'll hear more about this one.

Family Verse
"Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful." Hebrews 10:23

God is good 
Good people. A family invited us over to their home on a whim last night for dinner. I'm thankful for this small town and for some very solid, welcoming, and Christ-following families with whom we rub shoulders.

On my heart and in my prayers
The world is on my heart and in my prayers. I'm just trying to learn how to be still and quiet. "Be still and know that I am God."
  The offer on our house fell through last week. That was discouraging. Now, like I said, I'm trying to be at peace and understand what God is doing here. Just attempting to give my will over to His.

Learning, learning all the time
We are finally starting to find our rhythm. We are doing a couple things that seem to be making all the difference for us.  As I mentioned the other day, we bought two subscriptions to First Math online. That has been giving the boys daily math fact practice and also giving them daily exposure to computer skills. Sage had been struggling through his phonics/reading lessons, so I started him back at the beginning of our book, "Phonics Pathways." I'm so grateful we did this! Dolores Hiskes talks about in "Phonics Pathways" how a child's "tracking muscles" need to strengthen for reading. I think starting back at the beginning has allowed Sage to slow down the lessons and strengthen those muscles. He now is reading smoothly across the page. It's great to see him feel a new self-confidence in his reading.

Plans for the rest of the week. . . 
Some work busyness for Doug. Nutmeg's birthday! The library. The pre-Christmas parade and lighting in our cute little downtown. Other than that we'll just keep plugging along in our lessons and slowly start to prepare for the busier season that will soon be upon us. We have some fun plans on the docket!