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Please continue to pray for our family and our adjustment with my niece now living with us. Our family needs specific prayers going up for the following:

• Protection from the schemes and harassment from another family that is not related in any way but intent on maintaining contact with our niece. There have also been some veiled threats, so we are concerned about what might happen next.
• That my sister-in-law would have more peace over her daughter not being with her. She’s, understandably, struggling right now.
• That any and all influence that this other family has over my niece would be removed, so that she can finish out her high school years in peace.
• That my niece would continue to make close friends down here and adjust.
• That we would have wisdom and know the right steps to take to protect everyone involved. We are prepared to take any legal actions necessary, but just aren’t sure what we should and shouldn’t move forward with right now.
• Finally, please pray for that other family. Even though the have played underhanded games and their actions have seemed a bit crazy to us at times, we hope that God will convict them and continue to grow them and bless their lives.

Thanks! The power of prayer is amazing and I know all the prayers going up will help.

Lori

The girls and I just discovered a really fun site for students and homeschoolers put on by Scholastic called StudyJams, through a company I get news and visit new sites through. You can get a 14-day trial at:

http://www.bzzagent.com//p/2733541020/lori_soard

We haven’t completely checked it out yet, but it looks interesting.

Lori

Very early this morning, I woke to a loud rumbling and my bed shaking. Since I am a writer, I often have an overactive imagination. My first thought upon waking was that I was in the Exorcist and a demon was shaking my bed. Since it was pitch black in the room, I had no idea what was really going on. Over the next few seconds, as my brain began to clear and the shaking intensified, I realized that it must be an earthquake. Survival instincts kicked in and I knew that I needed to get myself and the kids in the doorways of the house. By the time I untangled from the covers and made it out of bed, the shaking stopped.

My sleepy brain tried to process all of this and I wondered if I was just dreaming. A few seconds later, the phone rang. It was my husband. He was checking that we were okay as he was already at work. He asked if it woke me up and when I said yes, he said he lost that bet. He is always telling me that I sleep so sound that an earthquake wouldn’t wake me up. Guess I proved him wrong.

We have had some milder aftershocks throughout the day today. Let’s hope this is all past and we won’t have anything else for a while. We do have a few cracks in our drywall, but for the most part things look okay. Praise the Lord for protecting everyone in the Midwest and watching over us.

Are you asking yourself these days where has the American family gone? Have you had it with your interfering mother? Sick and tired of your bratty sister, who always seems to get her way? Sometimes we would like to just write family off, especially when they are making poor decisions or their behavior impacts us in some way. But, what does God’s word say about family? Should we just walk away? Take someone else’s side? Give up on them?

MERCY

The Bible tells us to be merciful:

Show mercy to those whose faith is wavering. Rescue others by snatching them from the flames of judgment. There are still others to whom you need to show mercy, but be careful that you aren’t contaminated by their sins. (Jude 22 & 23)
Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always try to be kind to each other and to everyone else (1 Th. 5:15).

So, even if we are livid at someone in our family, we should do our best to show them mercy. Don’t just throw your hands up and ask where has the American family gone? Trust in the Lord to change that person’s heart for the better, but don’t expect it to happen instantaneously. However, vindictive, hateful acts from you will not improve the situation. Why would that person want more of Jesus when you represent him and act hateful?

Bad Companions and Poor Advice

No matter how well-meaning, some people give poor advice which can impact your life for the worse. Young people are particularly susceptible to this type of influence, which can come from friends, other family members and even the parents of friends at times.

He who walks with the wise grows wise, but a companion of fools suffers harm (Pr. 13:20).

The verse above says it all. If you are getting foolish advice, you are likely to make foolish choices. It becomes really important to understand discernment. Young people, you don’t have it yet in many areas. I’m sorry, but I didn’t have it at your age either. Experience teaches us who we can trust and who has good advice and we slowly gain this discernment. This is why the Lord has put people in your life who are older and act like they know more than you – they do about some things. The Bible clearly makes a statement about the importance of family in many places, particularly the importance of parents:

Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you (Ex. 20:12).

Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction and do not forsake your mother’s teaching. They will be a garland to grace your head and a chain to adorn your neck (Pr. 1:8-9).

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother”which is the first commandment with a promise “that it may go well with your and that you may enjoy long life on the earth (Eph. 6:1-3).

Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord (Col. 3:20).

Does the Bible say if your parents are wrong in some areas that you don’t have to honor or obey them? No, it says obey them in everything. Obviously, you don’t want to go against the Lord’s word, so if your parent tells you to do something evil you should not do it. However, this is rarely the case with most parents. Parents are human and they make mistakes.

So, what happens when someone tells you that you shouldn’t have to listen to your parents for whatever reason? Is that person right in doing this? Of course not. I have a perfect example. I have a cousin. She went to live with a friend that was a very bad influence. She disobeyed her mother, went against everyone in her family to do this. That cousin’s life has spiraled out of control since that time, which is a direct result of being out of God’s will. She is now on drugs and we aren’t sure if she’s going to be okay or not. The mother of her friend was wrong. She spoke out against my cousin’s mother and she created a situation where my cousin had the choice to take sides and disobey. Because my cousin was living in disobedience, her life began to crumble slowly, a little at a time. It’s very sad and I see similar situations all the time.

Remember that most families are your family forever. Your mother is your mother when you are a small child, when you are that rebellious teen and when you are 80 years old. Anyone who tries in any way or enables you in any way to drive a wedge between you and your family is point blank wrong to do so. I would have to question whether this person was even saved and if they are saved where their walk with Christ is, because I don’t believe that someone who is filled with the Word would even offer such an option to a child. What could the possible motivation be, when the child is safe and loved? Just because the child disagrees with the parent’s choices for them, does not mean those choices are not valid.

Friends are for a season. Sometimes a long season of summer, with days of laughter and lemonade. And sometimes, friends are for a short, spring season with blooming flowers and the sweet fragrance of fuzzy memories. But, family… Ah, family. Family is there forever. With all its imperfections and heartache, family is always there. With all of its funny moments of hilarity and shared jokes from years of knowing one another, family is always there. With all of its embarrasing moments, sad moments and just being together moments, family is always there.

So, the next time you hear someone say, “Where has the American family gone?” Just smile and tell them the only answer they need is found between the chapters of Genesis and Revelation.

Scarlette’s test came back completely clear. She does not have bladder cancer and her Urinary Tract Infection (UTI) came back clear. The vet said her hips looks great, a problem in some golden retrievers. I’m so relieved. I realize she is thirteen years old and that realistically we can’t expect her to live forever, but every year we gain is a victory. She is such a sweet, wonderful people pleaser. As I write this, she lies on a blanket at my feet. Every once in a while, she lifts her head and rubs it back and forth across my fuzzy slippered foot, making me pet her with that foot as I work. I gently scratch her a bit with my big toe and then stop. She sighs and goes back to sleep. I wish everyone had a dog as wonderful as this one. I just want to Praise the Lord that she is okay. I know many people were praying for her and prayer is so powerful.

During days like these in homeschooling, you may feel as though homeschooling difficulties have you swamped. Anytime there is a major change in your household, you may wonder if your children are learning what they need to know. However, homeschooling difficulties can sometimes turn into blessings in disguise.

Death or Illness

Although I haven’t experienced this myself since beginning homeschooling, many of my friends have had to care for an ailing family member or deal with death while trying to maintain a regular homeschool schedule. One friend of mine told me that when she cared for her mother for a year that she didn’t feel her kids were learning anything at all. There just wasn’t time or leftover energy to do the school work that needed to be done and she felt as though she was completely failing her kids. When her mother passed away, she pulled the pieces together and tested her children to see where they were academically. She was pleasantly surprised to find that her daughters were not nearly as far behind as she thought they were. They self-taught, read to one another and learned somehow through that year. More importantly, she feels that they learned the importance of caring for family and being kind to those who are ill.

Moving

Moving can put a real damper on homeschooling. We started homeschooling in the summer time, because we were “testing it out” as I attempted to convince my husband it was the right choice for our girls. Ultimately, he agreed with me when he saw how well they were both doing. However, this was a huge challenge. We were finishing a new house, living in a tiny apartment and trying to homeschool. In the middle of all that, it was time to move into the new house, so we were packing, unpacking and living out of boxes. The best advice I can offer with this homeschooling difficulty is to do a little each day but don’t overwhelm yourself or your children. We decided to focus on math, since it was summer, but during the regular school year, I would probably scale down to the three “R’s” and stick with reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmatic. Once the move was completed, I would then add in other topics one at a time, starting with science, history and then electives.

New Family Member

We recently had a 16-year-old niece move in with us. We’re thrilled to have her here, but it has been an adjustment to everyone. She misses her old school, old friends and home and we have had to rearrange things and make adjustments. The first week she was here, I scaled the girls down to math only for the week. They are nearly finished with their other subjects for the year, anyway and math is always our weak area, so I never want to let that lapse. I quickly decided that spring break wasn’t happening for us this year, unless we wanted to work most of the summer and marked that off our schedule, so we can play catch-up. My niece has now been here about a week and a half and we are settling into a routine, as I knew we would. I have started to slowly add back in other topics, starting with reading. I will then add writing, science, history and then art.

The main thing to do when you are having any type of homeschooling difficulties is to figure out what your key areas are that your children should focus upon. I would start with the weakest area first, because that is where your child is most likely to potentially fall behind. Then add the other areas back in from weakest to strongest in skills. Here are some subjects you will probably want to cover:

• Math
• Reading
• Writing
• Grammar
• Science
• History
• Bible
• Electives
  • Languages
  • Art
  • Music
  • Physical Education
  • Sports

What a day we have had in the Soard house! It is days like today, when you just grab on to your sanity and have to trust that the Lord is in control. I won’t go into all the details on everything as some is still a private family issue, but wanted to share a picture of our sweet baby Scarlette. Scarlette is a 13-year-old Golden Retriever. You can see where her face has turned gray in recent years. I think it has added some more character to her face, don’t you? Don’t ask me why she’s sticking her tongue out at the camera. My youngest daughter takes millions of photos of our pets and this one was really cute.

 

Last night, Scar-Scar (my nickname for her), kept wanting to go outside. I didn’t think much of it. I figured the kids had fed her scraps and she had the big D. I laid out some blankets in the bathroom and left her in there when I went to bed.

 

This morning, she wanted to go outside three times within 20 minutes. The last time, I followed her outside to see what was going on. She only urinated. Ten minutes later, the same thing. I went online and looked up info on a dog urinating frequently and what I read got me really concerned. I followed her outside yet again, and noticed a bit of blood on the snow when she urinated (just a tiny bit). I immediately phoned our vet, who was out of town, so I phoned a secondary vet we sometimes use. They gave me an appointment for 3:30 and asked me to collect a urine sample.

 

Have you ever tried to collect a urine sample from a dog? Think about how hard it is to get one of your own, add to that how hard it is to get one from a child and times it by about a gazillion. I can still hear my girls laughing as the dog and I walked in circles as I attempted to get her to pee in a little plastic container. After several attempts (she was going to the bathroom every 10 minutes, after all), I was able to collect a small amount, which I figured was enough.

 

In the end, the vet said she has a raging urinary tract infection and put her on antibiotics. However, he is a little concerned about bladder cancer. We have to go back in two weeks to see if the signs are looking better (lots of bladder cells in urine was the bad sign). I realize my sweet baby is thirteen and that is old for a big dog, but I’m hoping we have more time with her and this was just a bad UTI. It came on so fast! If it is cancer, we’ll just have to hope she lives a while longer and doesn’t suffer.

 

The moral of the story is that you should always err on the side of caution. Even though our budget was tight and the $116.00 vet bill was painful to pay, my dog now feels better after a couple of doses of antibiotic and seems to be resting comfortably. And, I have a little peace of mind in knowing that she isn’t in dire straights for today.

 

If you have a dog (or other animal), go give him or her a hug. Our pets truly love us as no one else does. A dog loves you when he stink; she loves you when your breath is rank; she loves you when you laugh and when you cry; she loves you when you don’t share your food but especially when you do; she is always happy to see you without fail; when you cry, she will comfort you and give you the sad-dog eyes to show you she understands; she is your best friend and your most loyal companion. Treasure the time that you have with these, one of God’s most special creatures, man’s (and woman’s) best friend. Sniffle. Excuse me while I go hug my dog.

Well, it’s official. We all have cabin fever. I know! I know! It’s only been one day. How can we possibly have cabin fever? Our weekends are usually busy. Either the girls have friends over or they go to someone’s house. We do things on the weekends. We have church on Sunday, and youth group, and usually lunch with friends. Instead, church is canceled and we’re stuck in the house. We should probably play board games or do something really memorable, but I think we’ll just cozy up in our jammies and watch some movies. We refer to this as “vegging out” and it probably lends to my crazy night owl tendencies.

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I am officially dubbing this the Blizzard of 2008, because it is the closest we’ve come to one in a good long while here in Southern Indiana. We woke this morning to white swirls floating down gracefully and collecting on the ground like a group of women gossiping on a Sunday morning.

The snow hasn’t accumulated much. Maybe an inch or two, but it is soft and powdering, creating pretty drifts up against the sides of the houses that resemble Mount Everest’s peaks. One can almost imagine a tiny person climbing those powdery drifts in a struggle for life.

They are forecasting up to 10 inches more overnight, again with drifting. It is one of those days when you just want to snuggle up in your house. I thought it might be fun to share with you what the Soard family does when this weather hits. Poor Dad has to try to make it home from over in Louisville, while we snuggle up and just enjoy our snow day.

The next few days will include these activities:

Playing in the Snow – One of the great things about having kids is that sometimes you get to be a kid. When we get a lot of snow, the girls and I bundle up and we go out and make snow angels. Our Golden Retriever, Scarlette, loves the snow almost as much as we do. She will frolic alongside us, make snow doggies (she even rolls on her back) and she loves to stick her nose down into the snow and fling it up in the air, especially when it is this powdery. We love to have snowball fights, but this snow probably won’t be good for that.

Building a Snowman – Even though this snow is powdery and not good for building a snowman, that won’t stop us from trying. The fun part isn’t really in the building of our somewhat awkward snowman. The fun is in dressing the snowman or snowwoman. We love to add scarves, twig arms with gloves, hats, carrot noses and so on. We even put a boa on a snowlady one time and a big red hat.

Hot Cocoa – When we’re done playing outside, we’ll come indoors and make hot cocoa. Recently, we’ve gotten into making things from scratch and homemade, so we won’t use a packet mix. As we sip the hot cocoa, we’ll talk about other snow days from the past and other snowmen and good times. Even though the girls are getting older, they still want the traditions we’ve always had. If I forget something like the cocoa, they start asking questions and wanting to know where the cocoa is. Or maybe they just like chocolate.

Hot Soup – Dinner has to be something warm like chili or soup. Tonight we had chili. Tomorrow we will have some “hobo stew” which is my specialty. Hobo stew is a mish mash of leftovers. I keep a container in the freezer and add that one tablespoon of green beans here and another cup of leftover corn there. Hobo stew never really tastes the same twice, but is always yummy. When I’m ready to make hobo stew, I either make a pot roast the night before and use the juices and leftovers for the soup, or I add some hamburger and beef base. I actually prefer it with the hamburger. There is nothing better with hobo stew than homemade bread. We now make bread from grinding our own grain and baking from scratch. This is much healthier and it tastes wonderful. It took a few tries to get it perfect and I’ll share about that another time. Making this bread does take some before thought of several hours. I usually grind the grain in the morning. If the bread is in the bread machine by noon, it has time to rise and is ready for the oven within a couple of hours. I let the bread machine do the kneading and rising work and then I pull it out of the machine and bake in the oven in metal pans. It is soooo delish!

Imagine a cold, blustery day, but inside you have warm soup and hot, fresh bread dripping with a little butter. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.

Jammies & Movies – Another thing we love to do when it snows is to take our showers and put on fresh pajamas, which we stay in all day. we put on slippers or warm and fuzzy socks and we pile up in bed and watch movies all day.

These are our favorite things to do when it snows. One thing that a blizzard can make you do (or even just a little snow) is to slow down and appreciate your home. You are stuck inside for a change, instead of running here and there and everywhere. Here are some tips I leave you with this winter:

• Take a minute to just enjoy your home life.
• Take the time to hug your kids.
• Play a board gam.
• Appreciate life’s blessings, such as a hot bowl of soup.
• Bake something. The smell will make your home seem warmer and more comforting.

Even when kids are grown and have children of their own, they remember the smells of home. I remember the smell of biscuits baking in the oven. The smell of cornbread still reminds me of my great grandmother. What smell will remind your children and others of you? Pick a signature scent. Mine is the homemade bread. Yours might be as simple as Pillsbury cookies baking in the oven.

 

 

 

After months of researching correspondence high schools and thinking through all of our options, our family has made the decision to send our oldest to the local high school next year. I’m at peace over this decision. I prayed about it and the Lord’s answer was to let my daughter make the decision. We spent time visiting the local school, reading through skads of info on correspondence high schools, looking at options and making pros and cons lists. I know she prayed about the decision and struggled with it, so it wasn’t a snap decision she made. She feels she is in the Lord’s will as well, and she is strong enough that I know her decision is hers alone.

I was also very impressed with the local high school, particularly the guidance counselor. And, if my daughter hates it, or we all hate it, she can always come back home.

We will now be a split family, with one child in public school and one at home. It should be rather interesting next year as we work to juggle commitments to the local school and commitments to home schooling. I have always been involved in some way in my children’s education, and that won’t change now. It’s just going to be harder to juggle.

I have also noticed that some in the home school community are what I will nicely refer to as home schooling purists. I’m a little worried about these purists and their reaction to our split-schooled family. Being a purist means that they do not believe in ever sending your child to another school. They may not come right out and say so, but their comments about how *they* have home schooled all the way through, and are just committed to what the Lord wants them to do, speak volumes. As if we’re not committed to Lord, is the insinuation. Then, there are those who understand completely that each child has different needs at different times and would not judge anyone else for their choices. This is how I strive to be.

There are obvious things Christians need to stand up against. If someone is committing a sin, then we should speak out. We should try to lead lost people to Christ. But, despite what some might think, sending your child to the local school is not a sin. We have other battles to fight, and I don’t know God’s plans for my beautiful daughter. It might be for her to reach other teens for Christ in a powerful way.

I do have to admit to being a tiny bit sad over her decision, however. I was looking forward to working toward CLEP tests and reading some of those wonderful books she would be working on in British Lit next year (she did American Lit this year). I was excited about her taking some courses through the local community college too. But most of all, I am going to miss having her here with me all day. Her personality has blossomed in the last three years of homeschooling. She has gone from a kid that used to be very difficult, mainly because she is so strong willed, to a kind, loving, and passionate Christian. I have enjoyed our discussions this past year on some very deep topics. She’s now going to be gone seven plus hours a day and then any sports or activities. I have treasured the last three years of homeschooling, because we had reclaimed our time with our children again. I enjoyed the fact that we could stop and pray at any moment about anything that concerned us. I’m going to miss that.

I know it’s time to give my baby her wings and let her start those first fluttering movements that will one day take her out of our nest and into a nest of her own, but no one ever told me that Mama birds mourn when their babies learn to fly.