Today is Isabella's 6th birthday, yay!!!! We feel like we are the most blessed and happiest parents in the world because she is in our lives. Thank you Lord for our precious little one!

The kids are excited about the days events bcause every birthday is a fun one for everyone! Our plans are Chuck-e-Cheese, the store to buy gifts and the cake, then we come back here and celebrate more at home. My Isabella chose to get a swing set and a train set (that she said she will share with her brother). She is one of the sweetest most unselfish people I know. For Christmas my mom got her a kit to make stuffed animals and she gave all the stuffed animals she made to her siblings. I love my baby!

My Rosie got ill today just from thinking about bacon, so she said. I think she just has a bug. She rested a while before breakfast. Poor baby.

Nicky requested that I print him out a "Prince of God Chart" like his sisters have (the girls' charts are called "Princess Charts"). It's a way for me to encourage them to act like "royalty" (1 Peter 2:9) of God. So before breakfast I printed his out and he already earned 3 check marks for helping me throw away dirty diapers and for doing it joyfully with out complaining.

Later Nicky helped me cook "chorizo con huevos". Lately he's been my little sous chef helping me crack eggs, measure ingredients, mix them up, etc. He's such a good little man!

Isabella played computer for a while I fed the other kids. After breakfast Rosie found a rainbow on the carpet because the glass table acted as a purism as the sunlight from the window shone through. So we had a discussion about the subject of light and prisms and such.

I'll write more about how the day goes later tonight.

Poem I just found.

I thought that one day
I would be a famous artist
and create great works of art

Instead, God made me a mother,
and my children are His masterpiece.

The design of their lives
will live on after me.
What is painted on their hearts
will last an eternity
- Anonymous

This morning I woke up a bit groggy. Bella woke up several times during the night and therefore woke me up to go with her to the bathroom, or to turn on the TV (for the light because the dark scares her). By the time we got down stars it was about 7:30a.

Before breakfast we did our daily Psalm reading. it's something recent I began to do with the kids every morning before breakfast and so far it's gone better than I expected. The little ones play while the older 2 girls listen to me read a Psalm. That has led to interesting discussions about our faith and to many questions about the Lord. Sometimes those questions are not even with in the subject of the days Psalm, but that's OK. I'm just happy to get the kids thinking and asking about the Lord!

After that I prepared breakfast while the kids played with the Wii and the lap top. The kids sat down to eat while I did some dishes and started the laundry. By the time I got to sit and eat my bf the kids were done with theirs so they went back to their games. I thought it would be a good time to do some reading but that did not turn out to be the case. After I put Eva down from her high chair to go play she became a bit fussy. I thought she was still hungry so I gave her 1/4 of my bagel. She ate some but she was still not happy so I sat her on the ground to play with foam letters and numbers puzzles that she loves and that kept her busy while I finished my bagel and coffee.

After bf I sat with Nicky who wanted to watch Santa Claus music videos on youtube.com. Soon Isabella joined us and we watched the videos and laughed at some weird ones. That lead to us finding even more silly videos and we did that for a while.

In the mean time Rosie made some Miis. Those are character avatars the kids make on the Wii. She also showed us her collection of "giros" (sp?) that she had collected on her Animal Crossing game and we had fun looking at some other people's Mii's. We love to see how creative people can be and the kids like to figure out how people made those.

Isabella wanted a snack so I made her PB&J and Rosie did some anime drawing in the front room. I announced that after Bella was done eating we would have "clean up time".

I don't assign specific chores to each child. I've found that becomes more of a hassle than help so instead we have "cleaning time" where we all clean up together and all of us clean up as needed. This time Isabella and Nicky had fun cleaning up. I allow them to play as they work as long as things get cleaned and picked up in a timely manner. Unfortunately Rosy had a hard time being "joyful" in her work today. So she and I had a conversation on why the Lord wants us to be joyful and great full in all things even when we don't feel like doing our work. We talked about how blessed we are to have a nice warm and safe home and that the Lord wants us to take care of the things He gives us. Also, I reminded her that there are many people who would give anything to have her life so full of love, health and blessings. That helped her to see things in a new way, and although she still didn't want to clean she volunteered to vacuum while the other kids and I cleaned up the upstairs and she didn't complain anymore.

After cleaning time we sat for a few minutes and watched some cartoons. It began to rain and the wind was blowing hard and that scared Bella. We prayed about it and sang "God Is Bigger Than The Boogie Man" but we made up our own lyrics "God is bigger than the scary storm". That made the kids laugh and Bella said she felt much better.
Eva began to get fussy again so I took her into the room to nurse her. Isabella and Nicky came into the room. Nicky requested we sing "Jesus Loves Me", one of his favorite songs, with sign language (we learned how to do that on youtube a few days ago). So we did, about a dozen times! Then Isabella wanted to play from the Rhyme Time Reading Kit my mom gave me. We made sentences out of sight word cards and then played the card game War with the cards provided in the kit.

In the mean time Rosie was in the living room outside playing with "Flip Note Studio" on her DSi (it's an animation program). I decided to write on this blog but then Nicky threw a tantrum about something or other. He needed a nap, but of course he didn't take one.
The tantrum was quenched by a swat in his butt after he smacked a drink off the desk in anger . I know , I wasn't going to spank anymore, but he doesn't seem to respond to any other form of discipline. I won't give up though. I still want to find a better way of disciplining that little dude.
Earlier when Rosie and I talked about being joyful in all circumstances we also talked about Christians like Corrie Ten Boom and her sister Betsie who were persecuted during the Holocaust and how they were able to keep their joy, thankfulness and faith in the Lord during such horrific circumstances and how by their testimony many people, including some women in their concentration camps, have come to Christ. Also about how amazing it is that the Lord has used their obedience to bless millions around the world decades after the fact and even us here in little old Buckeye Arizona today. That is why, I told her, we need to be obedient with joy and thanksgiving to the Lord because we never know when or how the Lord will use our own testimony of joy to bring others to Him and encourage many more.
The rest of the day the girls kept busy with their drawing, computer and Wii games. While I cleaned my room Nicky and I watched a biographical drama on HBO called "Temple Grandin" about an autistic woman scientist who works to make conditions for livestock more humane and also to help fellow autistic people. I don't know how much of the story Nicky understood but he asked a lot of questions about what was going on and he sat through the entire movie very interested. He loves to watch non-infantile movies with me often.
Isabella took a bath, just for fun as she's been doing lately, and she even volunteered to scrub the scum off the tub! She seems to enjoy cleaning and earning check marks in her "Princess Chart". So does Rosie, but in her own way.

While I was reading the news on the Wii Nicky saw a picture of Obama. He goes up to the TV and points to it and says "Awaka Bama". Ha, ha, ha! It was so funny because we have no idea how he knows that!
Later this afternoon while dinner was cooking and after Rosie jumped on the trampoline she wanted to do a couple of science experiments she found on a kitchen science book. The experiment involved sugar cubes, hot and cold water. We discussed and looked at the periodic table of elements, solutions, molecules, atoms and how heat affects molecules. Isabella played with the foam letters and numbers.
After dinner Nicky played Wii (yes, they are Wii freaks specially since I let them put it down stairs). I showed Rosie how to blog (hee hee). It's about 5:30pm now and I suspect the rest of the night will be dedicated to jumping on the couch, playing with boxes in the living room (like they are doing now), doing a final clean up, showers, devotions and prayer, and finally bed.

Eva is going through what I call "the streaker" phase. You know, where baby discovers she has control over whether on not the diaper stays on. So all day I've been following a trail of diapers and puddles (with one round and brown surprise on the floor) leading to a little bare bum. Thank goodness for onceies! Well, at least until she realises she can still undo her diaper from the inside if she reaches into the onceie.Also, Nicky has become the expert screw driver man. He has been unscrewing everything from our kitchen chairs, to toys, to the central vaccum outlet thing on the wall. We really need to get him some gadgets he can take apart safely and ones wed don't need!

Living The Free Life

This is the first entry in my blog regarding our lives as unschoolers. I call it living the free life because that is what we are, free. As unschoolers we are free to soak up all that this life and this world have to offer. As Christians we have been set free from sin and death by the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are free from man made rules and religions as well. That is not to say we are not law abiding citizens or that we feel it's ok to do what we want with out consequence. We do live by the principles, values, and morals we find in God's Word the Bible because we believe that is God's ideal plan for mankind. Though we are not perfect, we strive to serve and love our Lord and to treat other human beings with love and respect because they are made in the Father's own image. We believe in free will. The Apostole Paul writes "Everything is permissible, but not everything is helpful. Everything is permissible, but not everything builds up" in 1 Corinthians 10:23. Again he writes in 1 Corinthians 6:12 "All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything." In other words, God gave us free will to do as we want. We are free to do anything. However not everything is good or proffitable. And as Paul writes "...I will not be mastered by anything." Some of those things we are free to do have the ability to become our masters therefore we chose to not do those things. We don't just tell our kids "don't smoke" or "don't drink nor do drugs" or "don't have premarital sex", etc. We also let our children know the reasons why they were created by the Lord and that they are worthy of better choices in life. We tell them candidly about the possible negative concequences of such actions and that they, not us their parents nor anyone else, will suffer the most from those choices, In the same way we explain to them the awesome and wonderful concequences that come from living a pure and holy life for the Lord. Yet, the choice is left up to them. I've told my children that it is not enough for them to say they belive is Jesus Christ and in our Christian God if the only reason they say that is because we told them so. They may in their own time seek that truth for themselves because only when in their hearts they are truly covinced God's truth will they be saved. That does not mean they will have all the answers or that of of their doubts will be satisfied. However they cannot live a faith that does not truly belong to them just because their parents told them that is what they have to believe. I am not afraid in the least bit to allow my children the freedom to question, iquire and even doubt our faith. On the contrary, I am eager for the day when they realisise for themselves that Jesus Christ is indeed the only way to the Father beyond a shadow of a doubt. So we continue to grow and discover all that the Lord has to offer us in this life. My husband and I are our children's partners and facilitators in their journey of discovery, and other than the Lord himself, we are their biggest fans.