Tabernacle with me for a moment

Sukkot has come and gone. I'm a little sad and a little thankful. Sad that it is over and our time "tabernacling" together has come to an end, but soooo thankful to be home and have a day (or two) to sit in my pajamas and let the kids be vegetables!


The kids took mini courses during the week. They built a "Sukkah", a dwelling, and had class in it one day!

The Feast of Tabernacles is a time for God's people (yep, even you) to join together for one week, vacating their lives and homes, to remember God coming to tabernacle (dwell) with the children of Israel in the desert. It is also a time for us to recognize the Son coming to tabernacle with us! In both occurences, the Israelites needed to see and know God, to experience His love first hand and to get personal with Him. Its important to remember that even though the children of Israel were disobedient and complaining and difficult to discipline, God stuck with them throughout the whole 40 years! He didn't leave, He didn't walk them to the edge of the Jordan and point the way and then let them go on ahead without Him. NO, He went across FIRST! What He SAID, He was and He did!

John 1:14 says that the Word (God's spoken knowledge!) became flesh and dwelt among us. When God came as a man, Yeshua, it was again to help us see Him, love Him, hear Him, obey Him and get personal with Him. Then, being crucified, He came back, being the first to cross back from death and into life! He lead the way, and since then, His Spirit has dwelled with us, never leaving us. How awesome is that?! It is certainly worth celebrating and I'm so thankful that I had the opportunity to be with other believers during this appointed festival.

Some of our collective children; Kids outside, being kids!

This past week was fun and exhausting. The children were great. I'm really impressed with how well they held up, 11-13 children on any given day, together from breakfast thru dinner. There were tears, but there was laughter in abundance. Friendships were strengthened. I hope the adults feel like they got some of that this week too. I know I did.

Despite all the blessings, I have been struggling with one thing. There is a person in my fellowship that just rubs me the wrong way constantly. I know I am called to love even those I don't like, but this has been especially trying. I am ashamed to admit how much anger I have toward this person, but I know that you will pray for me. Pray for me to have grace and exceeding patience. I have had one fairly well handled confrontation with this person and another not so well handled interaction. It's humiliating, but not in a spiritually humbling way. Its a humiliation that comes from letting a weaker opponent get your goat. One that sparks my desire to retaliate, to tear this person down. I want to put on my battle armor and march in with swords ablaze! However, I know this is not what the Lord would have me do, at least not now. This is where genuine humility comes in, knowing that my God can see the ugly things in my heart. There may come a day when I can speak against the things that have this person ensnared and doing evil, but for now I have to try to speak life and not death, even for this person. That's a hard thing for this warrior to do :)

Count down - 80 pictures to the finish

I got my sketchbook in the mail on Monday. It is little but still very intimidating, with its 80 blank pages staring at me. I managed to start one drawing in it yesterday, and finished it mostly. I'm still undecided as to what medium to use. Probably pencil and colored pencil, since that's what I have on hand. If I want anything else, I will have to push my way in to my office and dig thru some boxes to find it.

Pencil it is!

As far a theme, I chose "The greatest story ever told..." I had to make a short list to help me focus. I'm a list maker, perpetually, and I have found it has helped me keep the contents of my head in order and in so many ways.

One idea was to draw my way through the bible. I really like that one, but that might be the most controversial and I'm just trying to ease my way back into this. Not to mention, I'm short on time and that is definitely going to take longer than 16 (eek!) weeks. I do plan on doing that one also, but maybe after the new year.
Another idea was to just make it a book of portraits. Each portrait is a picture of a person and what story could be greater than that of every person you know? Everyone's story is of value and interest, however short or sad or carefree.
In the end, it was a simple drawing of my infant son that helped me narrow down my topic. It will be a biographical series, chronicling the life of one person (male), birth to death. I am in a position where my models are all around me in several ages and stages already (my husband and boys) and if I average 4 or 5 drawings a week, I could be ready to mail it in January 1st. I'm going to choose to forgo words of any kind to help me capture the moment for each period. That means I won't caption the pictures or explain in words what is going on. They will just be pictures.

One picture down and....79 to go :) Hope your evening is peaceful.

Less time

Apparently I read the rules wrong. I don't have a year to complete the sketchbook, I have.... 17 weeks, if it arrives in the mail this week. Huh. That's a much shorter time, so I guess I better start brainstorming and getting a sketch bag together.

17 weeks.

Sweet summer

Just wanted to share a sweet picture of my littlest one with one of our dear friend's girls. The girls at church fawn over my little guy and in this picture, he is almost asleep, cradled against her chest as she rocks him back and forth on the swing. They're just precious :)

Sketchbook Challenge

I've just signed myself up for a sketchbook challenge. I have one year to fill a sketchbook and even though the book is not here yet, I'm already worried that I won't be able to fill it!

I used to draw. And paint. And make pottery. My life has not been all that conducive to hours of sketching on end, like it was when I was a teen! I browsed (ever so briefly) thru some other artist's posted sketches and got a big dose of intimidation! Of course, these people have gone to school for additional training, and possibly have careers centered on their artistic abilities. I chose to forgo school for life. That's right, I didn't go to school because of so many reasons, but the top of that list is because I couldn't bear the thought of postponing life for school! Silly, I know. I do have to say that I filled those year when I could have been in school with adventures and starting a family (and I'm not in debt up to my eyeballs), so I do feel pretty good about that decision. I guess I will have to remind myself that an artist isn't necessarily made better or made great by going to school, but by doing it.

I'm interested to see what will come out as I start to draw again. 10 years is a long time to be away from a sketchbook! A new challenge awaits...

Rainy day homeschool fun

Things have settled down around here finally. We are unpacking and doing our best to finish the house at the same time. So far the school year has been easy, probably because we have spent the last month playing catch up from last year. The boys are nearly finished with their math books from last year but, we have quite a way to go with English. At this point, I would love to jump to the next book, but I'm undecided. I worry that we will do the same thing next year and miss the same chapters, which could cause problems later. I haven't even ordered books for this year yet!

Today was wet and gloomy outside, and since I had a lot of work to do preparing for Shabbat, I let the oldest boys run off and entertain themselves. That left me with one preschooler to entertain. Off and on for the past 4 years, I have used "Slow and Steady, Get Me Ready" to help me get an idea of where each of the boys are before we start a solid curriculum with them. I'm not very consistent with it, at all; I use it as an evaluation reference, flipping thru the last 6 months to a year and looking over what they know, what they should and maybe doing a few of the activities with them if I'm in doubt of their ability in any given area. This year, I decided to try to be a little more proactive, with my 3rd son now officially a preschooler. Little did I know that his small lesson would turn into a game that all the boys would enjoy!Brody, exploring the clothespins

Today's lesson was a game of sorts - toss clothes pins into a small bucket from a short distance. The point is to refine hand and eye coordination, learn to gauge distance and understand that all our tries are good, even if they don't make it to the target. All good lessons, right? After Brody had a turn at tossing his 10 clothes pins a few times, the older boys asked if they could try. We played the game a couple ways and it seems like they enjoyed it! I'm sure other families have this all figured out and you can search for it online, but here are our versions that we played today:

What you need:

10 Clothes pins for each child. Be sure that they are different colors or materials ( plastic for one child, wood for another). I made the mistake of mixing and matching because some of them were in use on the clothes line... big no no! If at all possible, paint or have the kids color clothes pins in sets of 10 and just keep them around.

2 or more small containers, like baskets with no handles, coffee cans, mixing bowls, etc. If you feel like you need it, use cups for each childs pins.

A line to stand behind. Tape on the floor, a bench, the point is to stand behind it and shoot. The bench worked really well. Each child could stand to play and have a table top to put their pins on during their turn.

Ways to play:

Clothespin missles! The first game we played was something like darts. Brody tossed his pins at the basket, placed about 5 feet away (lengthen this for older kids) from the bench, and we counted how many he got in and how many out. There were no "misses". After 2 or 3 turns, his aim improved and we moved the bowl back a foot. Very easy, but everyone loved it! It was good to see the older boys challenging themselves by stepping further back for the next round.

Clothespin Shootout! Two children stand side by side behind the bench, with their clothespins (different colors!) There are two (or more) containers placed on the floor, one at 5 feet from the bench, the other at 7 or 8 ft. Depending on the children's ages, give them 30-60 seconds to toss their clothes pins at the containers. Clothespins that make it into the nearest container are worth ten points each, the farther container 25 points each. Prizes can be anything you want them to be! Again, so easy and so much fun! If you have a very competitive child (in my house, this is around 4-5 yrs old), its best not to pair them up against anyone for the shootout, but let them win a prize for their personal best of pins in.

There are so many ways that this could be played and so many items could be substituted for the clothespins (and what kid doesn't love to throw things in the house?) I'm feeling a little long winded now, so I think that I'll leave it at that and say that I hope you find a new way to play this with your kids and that you'll share it with me. We had fun and we beat the rainy day without resorting to a day of t.v.! Take care :)

Move over

Tonight is our first Shabbat in our new home! It took us a while to get things ready and finish up those last chores before we could begin, what with all the boxes and homeless items in the way, but we finally made it.

We tried very hard to get packed up before the end of last week ,but it just wasn't happening and we ended up postponing the move to the beginning of this week. It turned out it was a blessing as it took us a whole week to get moved out! It also meant we were able to spend a special last Shabbat in the old house.

It is such a relief to be in and know that we don't have to devote any more time to any other projects, just our normal (someday I assume they will be) routine and work on this house. After two months, having our energies divided between homes was starting to get really overwhelming! Since we moved in last Sunday, there have been drains to unclog, appliances to be moved (and then repaired), and unpacking unpacking unpacking! I've been cooking on a camp stove for the week and it has really made things easier since I can cook right at the table.

Soon school will need to beginning and it life will resume a semi-normal pace. If all goes well, we will have most repairs and decorating finished by the end of the year. I would love to have a housewarming this winter. In the mean time, you can keep track of our progress here.