When God answers prayers

Today the boys and I were talking about the way God answers prayers. Sometimes it's right away and the way you want it, but sometimes we have to wait...and wait...and wait...still sometimes it's not answered the way we were hoping. I was telling them that it's important to always be ok with God's timing AND his answer. It's not something I think is easy by any means and I fail at it alot.
    That led to a discussion on answered prayers in our life...
Back in September Nehemiah was really hoping to see the total lunar eclipse. The moon was going to be red, and it won't happen again for another 40 years or so. We had a count down going on, planned to stay up super late, and take pictures for our astronomy binders. The night of the Eclipse "happened" to be very cloudy. I mean so cloudy it was black outside! We couldn't see any stars or the moon.
First check 8pm...nothing
Second check 8:20...nothing
Third check 8:50...nothing
This went on until 10:30..still nothing. At this point most of the kids gave up and went to bed. As we were walking inside I silently prayed that God would let the clouds part long enough for Nehemiah to see the moon while it was red. We went back out at 11:00...we stood out there talking for a few minutes, slapping mosquitos when all of a sudden the clouds parted and there it was! We were elated! We didn't have our camera so we didn't get a picture. It didn't matter, we saw it! As we were walking inside I told Nehemiah about my prayer. He stopped, looked up at me and said, "mom, I did too! I asked God if he could move the clouds so that I could see the moon while it was red." We both went to bed feeling very blessed!
I love sharing this life with my people!

Gah! It's been too long...again

It's been a few weeks again. I'm trying to balance and it's hard! I know I'm not the only one that needs to find balance and it looks different for everyone. The older my kids get the harder it seems to be getting. More events, more commitments, more school, more of almost everything but me! With each stage my kids have been in I've tried to enjoy it, knowing that someday I would look back and miss those times. The sleepless nights in the newborn stage, all the messes made during the toddler years, all of the questions in the 5-8 year old times, the seemingly endless homework and projects (before we homeschooled), then the looong days after we started homeschooling, sports practices and games, and so on... So I'm telling myself to step back, enjoy, don't stress...it won't last forever. But laundry still needs to be done, these kids don't feed themselves (although they'd love the chance to!), school has to be completed, church at least twice a week, add in there baseball for the boys and horses for the girls and I'm spent. So until I get it figured out I'll keep my eyes on Christ and keep on plugging on. That may mean not as many posts as I was initially planning. But I will still try. What we've been doing since I last posted: Packed lunches for the public school kids to take home over the weekend (we do that every other week) Cleaned out my closet!! Cleaned out the pantry Cleaned out the school room Hung pictures in the living room, dining room, and my room-finally! Wrote out my school plan for the next month Next on my agenda is: meal planning for next week Butchering 40 chickens Cleaning out the boys closet And cleaning out kitchen cabinets and drawers Last week's game for the youth was called "socks". Basically I split the kids up into boy and girl sides and they had to try to get eachothers socks off. The last person wearing a sock was the winner. Unfortunately I picked an area that had sand spurs in it... Yeah, I'll pick a different spot next time. But the kids did enjoy it and want to do it again! Now I have exactly an hour to figure out what we're doing for tonight's game.

What's happening over here

We've had quite a busy week here since I posted last. ~School...it's always busy... ~Church, had a few extra events going on at church this week that took up some extra time. One of which was our first ever FIELDS OF FAITH. Our local chapter of FCA (fellowship of Christian athletes) hosted a time of praise and worship. It was a very neat experience. Our church praise team led worship, several youth gave their testimonies, several coaches/teachers shared a word, and a group of talented girls did a dance/drama. Very moving service. I am so encouraged to see our youth stand up and say "I'm not ashamed of the gospel and what Christ has done for me!" ~home, Elijah is getting ready to have a birthday so we've been planning fun stuff for his birthday weekend. And then he had an unexpected offer to go with his best friend to north Carolina! He gets to fly on an airplane! And be in a new state! and be away from his siblings! He's pretty excited to say the least. This is the first time any of my kiddos have been away for their birthday, and I'm a little sad about it. But I couldn't say no to this opportunity for him. Birthday celebration is going to wait a week so I have a few more days to plan. I've also been cleaning out my closet. Let's just say it's been long overdue. I have a ton of stuff to consign though, so that's a plus. (This is me trying to find the positive in the situation, because it hasn't been fun) That's basically my week in a nutshell. How's yours been?

Spoons

Wednesday nights I'm in charge of the games for our youth group. Tonight we played the card game spoons. So the rules of the game are: put 1 less spoon than players that you have in the middle of the table. So if you have 6 players you need 5 spoons. Everyone gets 4 cards (we use regular playing cards) the remaining deck goes in front of player 1. That player picks up one card at a time trying to get 4 of the same numbers or jacks, queens, etc. He will pass one card that he doesn't want on to the next player. That player does the same thing. Each player should only have 4 cards in their hand at a time. When someone gets their 4 matching cards they grab a spoon. Everyone else then tries to grab a spoon. Whoever does not get a spoon loses that round and gets the first letter in spoon. Player 2 then shuffles, deals, and is the starting person for round 2. Keep moving down the line with each turn. The first person to spell s-p-o-o-n is out. Play continues until only one person is left. The kids have a blast with it and it's pretty fast paced. Next time I'm going to add a twist and put the spoons somewhere that they'll have to get up to get them! I'll try to start adding pictures of our group doing games so you can see how fun they are!