Mama On The Move

This is one of my favorite Christian skits ever. We first saw it at our church in Kansas. When we found out Ben's youth group was going to perform it here we were absolutely thrilled. It's such a good visual aid for teens of how things can come in between them and God. Ben is playing Jesus. He creates a girl, creates a world for her, and they dance. Then a boy comes in and dances with the girl, turning her attention from God. Next, her pursuit of money takes her attention. Then alcohol and the desire to be thin and look like a model enter the picture. As each thing takes her time attention, it is then standing between her and her Creator. Finally, death enters the picture and tries to get the girl to kill herself. When she tries to get back to Jesus, all the things which had separated them hold her back. But of course, in the end, Jesus saves her. This skit is performed to the song "Everything" by Lifehouse.

Somewhere out there is a girl who is one day going to steal my son's heart away. One day he will marry this girl and she will be part of our family forever. I'd like to apologize to her now. Sleep while you still can girl, Ben's a cuddler.

At some point in the homeschooling years, kids have to learn to be self-directed. They have to stay on top of their own schoolwork, keep up with which chapter they supposed to be reading in which books, and find answers on their own without me policing them every step of the way. I do still have to check their math and language lessons. I do ask them the questions about the book they just read. I have to set up science experiments, and have history discussions. But some things they can do themselves without me having to hold their hands and baby-step them through every moment. Ben and Emily can check the teacher's manuals and see which pages they are reading in a book today. They can find which lesson of math they have to do. Especially when I am still sitting next to Katie saying, "Okay, what should you do next? Right. Then what's then next step? Right. Look at the page, not at the ceiling. The answer is not written up there somewhere. No, you may not go to the bathroom. ...

Katie recently competed in an Awana Bible Quiz. We've practiced her Bible verses for months . Everyone in the house knows them by heart. She practiced weekly with the other kids from our church who were also competing. The competition was delayed once because it was originally supposed to take place the day a tsunami warning was issued. But finally the big day was here and we carpooled with the rest of the team (at the crack of dawn) to a church 30 minutes away where the event would take place. Katie walked in, took one look at the stage, and decided she didn't want to do this after all. "Do I have to go up there?" "Yep," I told her. "I don't want to," she whispered. It took a little while to calm her nerves. Fortunately, one of the teens in our group talked with her for a while about how much fun it is and convinced her to try it after all. Once she got up on the stage, she seemed to completely loose her stage fright. (Please ignore the hol...

We set up a carpool with a number of other families to ride to TeenPact. No need for all of us to have to fight the Honolulu traffic. The very first day of TeenPact, I was the mom scheduled to take three teen boys and three teen girls to the state capitol. I loaded up the six teens who had all been remarkably altered by business attire. On the drive down, all the teens were griping endlessly about all the research they had to do. One of the girls remarked that the research hadn't been to bad, but memorizing all the state leaders and representatives had taken her a while. All the other teens reacted with horror - "We were supposed to memorize that? I thought we just had to write it down!" They all dove for their papers and there was a mass scramble throughout the van as they earnestly tried to memorize a page of political facts. They also had been instructed to memorize 2 Timothy 2:1-3 - "I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgivin...

Last week we had a great unexpected lesson on nature in action. We were all standing around chatting, waiting for PE to start when one of the many young'uns in our group discovered a large praying mantis. There was much excitement about this. Everyone was greatly impressed with the size of it and everyone shared all they knew about mantises (manti?). There was talk about taking it home and making a pet of it and a heated debate about who should have it and which mom would actually allow it in her car. One mom shared how her kids had once found a praying mantis and kept it for a bit. Then, when they discovered another praying mantis in a bush outside, they decided to release their mantis into the bush so it wouldn't be lonely. The mantis in the bush promptly ate their pet mantis' face off. The debate over who could keep it ended abruptly when the mantis suddenly took flight. We all watched it sail three feet away whereupon a bird appeared out of nowhere and snatched it from...

All of my kids have learned a good bit of sign language in the last year. Our youth groups perform regularly at church. Recently, Emily and Katie were in a performance together signing the song "Amazing Love" by Chris Tomlin. Emily is a traditional signer. Classic. Elegant. Tradition is not dramatic enough for Katie.

Katie is getting ready for her dance recital. She really loves the skirt on her costume. It's very twirly.

I downloaded an app on my iPhone called " Hipstamatic ". It takes pictures that look as if they were made with one of those old plastic cameras we grew up with. Then I snapped this photo of Emily: I can not stop looking at it. I love the coloring!

Back at the beginning of the school year, I signed Ben up for something called "TeenPact". This is an excellent program, where students go to the state capital for four days and meet with their state representatives and learn about making bills into laws. Pardon me for a moment while we have a musical interlude: "I'm just a Bill. Oh, I'm only a Bill and I'm sittin' here on Capitol Hill." Anyway, I signed Ben up back in, oh, September or so, and promptly forgot about it because it wouldn't actually happen until April and that was forever away. And I forgot to tell him about it. Then last week, I finally looked at all the information that had been sent to me and realized Ben had homework . And lots of it. And Ben was not happy with me. He had to read an entire book about the government (it was thin though he complained mightily). He had to memorize a Bible verse. And he had to look up five pages of terms and vocabulary words using the 1828 versi...

This is for those of you who are not fortunate enough to live near a beach every day of your lives.... - you may bask in the happy glow from my life.