I AM ENCOURAGED!

2 Corinthians 7:6 (Amplified Version- my FAVORITE!) says, "But God, Who comforts and encourages and refreshes and cheers the depressed and the sinking, comforted and encouraged and refreshed and cheered us by the arrival of Titus."

Well MY Titus arrived today in the form of my neighbor Claire!!!  She has graciously offered to help with our homeschool moving forward this year and it was such an unexpected blessing to me from the Lord!  She is a stay-at-home Mom with a sweet one year old son named Lliam and her and her husband Luke just moved here over the summer from Washington State.  They are originally from California and were involved with Calvary Chapel on the West Coast.  They used to attend CC Costa Mesa and even sat under Chuck Smith's teachings!  They sought out our Calvary upon moving here so not only are we neighbors but we attend the same church!!  It has been such a blessing to have them move into our "backyard".  They live in the house directly behind us.  God is so GOOD.  He has plans for our lives.  It's hard in those in-between times though when things are rocky and we don't know what the plan is.  Just hang on.  Joy comes in the morning.

Family Life

Today was Kalista & Karisma's first day of ballet classes!  They were very excited.  I haven't really encouraged them with lessons of any sort but Kalista came to me about a week ago and was absolutely dying to try ballet.  So naturally Karisma wanted to do it with her so we signed them up through the county.  Antonis was gracious to take a picture of me with the kids!

Zachary has been trying his hand at painting...

Antonis is back in Fall Baseball for his 4th season.

                            Annalise is just having fun being toted along to everything.  Her time will come!

Daddy Bear and his cub

Exciting Day!!

The kids and I took a trip over to Bethany Christian Services this afternoon to submit the remaining paperwork that comprised our formal application for our adoption!  It is exciting for things to be moving along..next we will have 3 interviews with our social worker.  One will be a conjoint interview with both Bob and I and then we will each have a separate interiew with her.  After the interviews we will have a home study where the social worker comes out to our house and meets the kids and makes sure our home is safe and has room for another little one. 

I am filled with joy anticipating what God holds in store for us but at the same time my head swims with everything we have going on here already!  God is teaching me to continue to rest in him and not to measure the success of my day by the world's standards.  The perfectly clean and tidy home, straight A's on the kids report cards, everything checked off the to-do list...it's just not necessarily what God has for my day!  It's more about being right with God and fulfilling His purpose for each day...not mine.  He is definitely preparing me for this sixth child to enter our house!!!  It's a big step.  God is with us!

What a week!

It's amazing to walk with the Lord because you can be so much closer to God than you used to be but He is always calling us closer.......we have begun a very challenging school year and the remedy is to press in closer to Jesus..to get into the Word MORE!!  The remedy is not to quit homeschooling and send all the kids to school because it's getting hard.  I have instituted a new course to our lunchtime meal which is a reading out of the book of Proverbs.  We are moving towards feeding our children 3 courses of spiritual food each day.  Jesus is the answer to all of our struggles.

The Lord continues to teach me that I am to follow His lead each day and not anyone else's.  It's so easy to be in that perpetual state of feeling like you are "behind" and not enjoy the moment.  Always racing to the next thing and not having alot of fun in the process.  He is teaching me to rest in where He has me and to not put any yoke upon me that is not of Him.  There is such peace in resting in Him..it is such a delight and brings such joy and contentment.

Our Pretty Daughters

Anna Banana

Kizzy Wizzy

Kalista Wista

Pictures!! Yay :)

We finally have our camera back from Nikon...it broke during our TN trip only a couple weeks after we bought it and I waited all summer on it getting repaired.  So now we will be able to add pictures again to the blog.  Praise the Lord!