My Scripture Journal

A few weeks ago, I became intrigued with scripture journals.  Most of the instructions I’ve found, have been on LDS websites but I think this is something that anyone who thinks visually and wants to study the Word in more depth can do.

What I did was take a lovely Rhodia Meeting Notebook and turn it into a topical Bible study journal.  The first few pages are my table of contents and then I numbered all the pages in the notebook.  Each page gets it’s own topic.  I expect some topics will have multiple pages.

Then on that topic page, whenever I hear or see something relevant that helps me understand or a verse that helps me see the issue biblically, I write it down and doodle or draw to illustrate it to myself.  This is an intensely personal project but I thought I’d share a couple of pages with you.

Also, this video is  great beginning to see how to get started…

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Circles and Baubles

So I made this necklace using a kit.  It is completely not my style and I’m not really likely to wear it.  However, the making was interesting.  Each of the circles is held together using gold wire so it was a good exercise in wire wrapping.

What do you think?

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Almost Thanksgiving–where are the beans?

Thanksgiving will be here in a couple of weeks and I’m already beginning to really think about the things that I’m particularly grateful for.

I’ll list those in more detail on Thanksgiving itself, but right now, I want to talk about green beans.

I went to the grocery store yesterday and bought two cases of green beans – name brand beans – on sale. Yeah.  Crazy talk.

Last time, I bought green beans on sale, I got store brand and the cans were all full of rocks and twigs.  So far so good on these cheap beans.

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Time4Learning

Time4Learning has invited me to try their online curriculum for 30 days in exchange for an honest review. My opinion will be entirely my own, so come back and read about my experiences. Visit them for information about lesson plans, homeschool portfolios or writing your own curriculum review.

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Wordless Wednesday: My Point of View

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Voting

Hope you got a chance to vote today. The pastor of our church made a very important point on Sunday about the whole thing:

Remember. God establishes the authority of every elected leader.

Have a good night.

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Snotty

We're still recovering for the recent illness to strike the WHOLE family.

After 12 years of marriage, I've discovered something. When my husband has a cold, he hides away secret stashes of paper napkins and tissues like an old lady hoarder with post nasal drip. There are paper napkins in drawers. There are packs of tissues in the bathroom. Tissues and napkins stuffed into the cup holders in the car.

However it is quite handy when I'm at the end of cold myself and I start coughing up things out of my lungs that look like an enlightened civilization.

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Forgiveness

It started as a thoughtless, judgmental comment made in a semi-public forum. 

A really good friend, who has an interest in the subject, thought I meant it about a situation she’s involved in. I wasn’t even thinking of her situation, but I realized after she confronted the issue that my generalization was really hurtful.  Furthermore, I was just acting like a troll to cover up my own feelings of inadequacy.

After a some talking and some crying, I asked for her forgiveness and I hope that one day we will be good friends again.

Have you ever noticed how when the Lord is working on your heart that things get harder?  He’s been working on me about forgiveness for a long time now.  There are people who have done great wrongs to me and I have come to realize that I keep giving them power.  If I would just forgive them, I would take that power away from them.  What’s more, they aren’t going to change their ways, so my continued hurt over their words and actions won’t make a bit of difference to them.

The best I can do from this recent drama is learn to be more thoughtful about what I say – and hope that my friend is better at forgiveness than I am. 

Meanwhile, I’m gonna let the Lord keeping working on my heart.

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Switching Off

This election season has done something to me.  I’ve gotten mean and judgmental instead of hopeful like I was during the last presidential election season.

For this reason, I’m switching off some of my social media for a week – primarily Facebook – starting today.  It is such a time suck for me and there’s so much negativity that I just have to turn away for a little while.  Also with all the sickness in the family, I am sorely behind on domestic and educational tasks (like lesson planning) and I’ve no extra time for fooling around for a few days.

I’ll be posting here, and I’ll be tweeting.  I have to monitor our Facebook page for our Disney blog but I can do that without actually going onto Facebook.  So I won’t be giving up Social Media completely.

Meanwhile, I’ll get my house cleaned up and enough lesson planning done to get through until Christmas at least!  Maybe I’ll get all my posts for the Disney blog done for the rest of the month!  I don’t know for certain how much I’ll be able to get done.

There’s one thing I know for certain: No matter who wins on Tuesday, someone is going to get upset. 

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Talking with my son

Griffin is 20 months old.  He’s not talking that much – can say “mama” and “dada” and  calls a train a “choo-choo” and makes lots of fun noises (zoooom! is his favorite while he’s playing cars).

Here is a conversation I had with him earlier:

(setting: we’re hanging out before bedtime and he has several animal toys he is playing with)

(Holds up a Monkey) Griffin: Eee eee eee!

Me: Yeah! A monkey!

I hold up a cow

Me: What’s this?

Griffin: Ooooooommmm!

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Halloween Yuckiness

Doctor Phoebe will see you now...

So the last 2 weeks have been crazy busy and now, I think, we're paying for it.

Since I wrote the last post, we have:

• Joined a new church
• Attended a dinner for new members
• Attended a class about prayer
• Attended 2 small group meetings
• Had 2 play dates
• Attended 1 club board meeting
• Written, edited, and assembled 1 club newsletter
• Had at least 5 days of at least 1 sickie in the family

Yeah- busy. For us, crazy busy. Notice I didn't say a lot of school got done. Almost none has happened this week as whatever cold/funk/plague has affected the boy has now affected me and I have no voice.

Our curriculum relies on me and my ability to read to Phoebe heavily. No voice equals mama letting Phoebe make play dough letter shapes and do a few worksheets and whatever YouTube videos I can find that are relevant.

The boy has had a cold off and on since the beginning of October. It would clear up just shy of the date I would set to take him to the doctor. Also, he's got a 2 year molar coming thru so he's drooling a bit and starts coughing because of that.

With Phoebe, the first molar took about 2 months to finally cut thru but then the others came in quickly. I hope he's the same way.

Sunday, he had a pretty good cough that really bothered him at night and he's been waking himself up coughing for the last couple of nights. Monday, I got up feeling like crap and by Halloween morning, I was praying for death.

Little girl has a slight cough and a bit of a runny nose but is otherwise ok - although she got up this morning looking a little glassy-eyed. John has this crap too but has been pushing his way thru it until he got up feeling really bad Halloween morning.

So we did not go trick or treating. Did not go to any parties. Have barely left the house except for groceries and work and we both got out to early vote.

I need this crap gone though. I need everyone to feel better. I have something I want to do this weekend and it doesn't involve laying on the couch, drinking ice tea, and having the boy run his cars over me while the girl watches Team Umizoomi.

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