Flooding, Planting, Emigration, Oh So Much!

We have been BUSY!  So much has happened since my last update, which is why this update took longer for me to get around to doing than the last one did.  There is no way I could possibly cover close to everything, but I don't want to share nothing.  (Of course, I'm not sure how many actually keep up with this or care one way or the other, but nevertheless I keep this blog for my own records, anyway.)  I actually plan to do this post and then soon do another one or two, rather than fit everything I decide to cover in one post.

I found out on April 15 that I was pregnant...six weeks and a day pregnant at the time.  Wow, this is my sixth pregnancy, and that was the latest in the pregnancy I've ever been before realizing I was pregnant.  A BIG surprise, to say the least.  We thought we were done.  I had given away nearly all my baby stuff, so I'll have to buy most everything again.  I'm just now getting over my shock and denial, because as bad as it may sound, I really didn't cope well with the news.  All will be fine, though.  :-) I'm starting to feel much better about it.

I kept Passover on the evening of April 17.  I usually include the children in the footwashing, but it was all I could do to even participate in anything myself.  I was so tired and a bit down about a lot of things.  I solemnly partook of some unleavened bread (homemade tortillas) and unfermented grape juice this year, since I don't like to drink any alcohol during the first trimester of pregnancy.  The next afternoon--the afternoon part of the Passover when Salvation died for our transgressions--the boys and I watched a movie that I bought about Salvation's (Jesus'/Yeshua's) life.  I was so disappointed to discover that it was the exact movie that I did not want to see (The Greatest Story Ever Told).  It was the movie we'd rented online last year, and I HATED it.  It had so many things mixed up.  Very misleading.  I figured I may as well get The Passion of the Christ.  I did, and so we watched that about a week later, but I didn't let Trusten see the violent parts.  WHY does everyone have to portray Christ with long hair, though?  Anyway, we kept the Feast of Unleavened Bread all that week, through 25th.  I even made unleavened muffins a couple days for breakfast, and though they were small, they were tasty.  The kids thought they were fun.

Tortillas, ugly but very tasty

Delicious tortilla in the skillet

I don't have much recorded from then until a few days into May.  At some point during that time, I got Jaden William a spelling curriculum--Sequential Spelling.  This is one of those things I really need to go give a good review on.  I LOVE it!  I've not seen any spelling curriculum with which I've been happy, so I've not been using such.  The so-called Natural Speller book I have is anything but natural, in my opinion.  I've pulled it off the shelf to give it a look several times, trying to see what people like so much about it, but I just failed to see it.  I was a super speller in school, and still I'm the one my husband asks when they need to know the spelling of a word.  It was my mother who always asked when I was growing up.  Well, William just hasn't been a good speller.  He excels at reading, though, so it's been confusing for me.  SO, I was flipping through a Timber Doodle catalog one night, and I came across Sequential Spelling advertised as being perfect for those who excel at reading but struggle with spelling.  William! I thought.  I found quite a deal on Ebay for the whole set brand new, and I can't be happier that I bought them.  It makes sense!  It teaches spelling the exact same way I would do so.  I actually used such a method before with William years ago, myself, but it was too soon for him to grasp.  Sooo, if anyone reading this has a child with the same issue (or ANY child), I highly recommend this set of books.  We've done fifteen days on it, and I've already been amazed at how it's working for him.  It uses bases then includes words that all have the same base.  JW writes the word in his workbook first, then I write the word, keeping the base in one color and the beginning, the prefixes, and suffixes in another color.  He then corrects any mistake he may have made.

Sequential Spelling

I also got a language arts book called Language Lessons.  I got the book 1.  So far I've been pleased with it.  He's analyzed one picture so far, used logic to answer questions about it, wrote something about it, and the last few lessons he's done copy work, which is a poem.  After that's finished, he'll learn about poetry, and then I'm not sure what.  But eventually, there is another picture, and then the process is restarted to learn something else.  It's pretty neat.

We've been working on JW's math almost daily.  Right now we're doing addition and subtraction flashcards to help his memory and speed and working through his Grade 2 word problems book by Evan Moor, and he's almost finished with it.  I'll then have him working on more worksheets I'll print off the Internet for more practice on 2- and 3-digit addition and subtraction, including borrowing and carrying and play School House Rock multiplication songs for him to learn those.  After he's got that down a lot better, I'll start him on the Grade 3 word problems book we have.  It's designed for a problem a day, but we do three pages a day, which usually equates to at least five word problems a day.  Then there's the everyday life things, like learning measurements in the kitchen.  He loves helping in the kitchen.  :-)

We've started taking our nature walks, though for awhile I felt so tired and nauseous that I didn't want to do anything.  We'll soon make it a regular thing again, and we'll start back up the plant project, adding more plants to our binder, and we'll be louping things, too.  LOVE the loupes!

JW has asked about many things, as usual.  He took apart a broken calculator one day and asked about the colored wires, which led to a discussion on positive, negative, ground (neutral), electrons, etc.  We talked about static electricity and rubbing off electrons, etc.

We're considering now heavily moving to South America, probably Uruguay, possibly within the next couple of years.  Nathan and I have talked on and off about moving out of the U.S. for five years or so, but lately we've talked about it more seriously.  So we've been learning about other countries, and the boys are included in some of the learning.  Nathan and I also took a week's long trip to the U.S. Virgin Islands (where we'd not live, but it was a nice getaway).  We visited St. Thomas and St. John.  Here are just a few pics of the things that I told the boys about so that they could learn:

The ocean view from our hotel on the beach (our room had the only balcony)

A Laughing Gull

Hermit Crab

Neat rock Nathan found in the ocean, with various fossil and life features

Woven hats and baskets; we saw the guy working on one nearby

The hotel garden

An iguana lizard who lived in the tree in front of our hotel balcony

Coconut retrieval (early to harvest for its nutritious water)

Man chopping open coconuts

Some coral, shells, rock that I collected and brought to William

I have many other pictures, and William was delighted to see (as I knew he would be) that I took a picture of brain coral that was growing in the ocean.  He learned about brain coral from one of his Reading Rainbow dvds.  We all also learned that the people drive on the left side of the road in the VI, as they do in Britain.  (They also drive crazy.)  Most of the people are very friendly there, though, unlike what people as a whole have become here in the States. 

The last thing I'll mention in this post is the flooding we had.  We recently learned about earthquakes, as you may remember.  Now we talked more about flooding and witnessed it firsthand.  The creek in front of our house flooded badly twice this spring.  The last time it got so bad that Nathan did not make it back across when he came home from working.  As a result, his truck was totaled. 

The creek that borders our property on one side

The road in front of our house and the view of where the creek crosses it

Nathan's truck in the flooded creek

I also have videos of the floods we've had this year.  They can be found at the following links:

Second Flood, w/ the Truck

First Flood, High Water (Silent Audio) 
(not as high as when the truck didn't make it)

First Flood, Lower Water (Sound Included, Longer Video)


Well, there's SO much more to cover, but I'll try to make another post to cover the rest sometime next week.  :-)

Passover and Unleavened Bread, Repentance Journals, Firstfruits, and Taking Things Apart

*Sunday, March 28:  In the morning we read our proverb, and Jade did his Explode the Code lesson.  At evening, it was the 14th day of the first month of the year.  We observed the new covenant Passover with wine and unleavened bread.  I read to the boys out of Matthew.  We then washed each others' feet.  Jaden wanted to wash everyone's feet, though.  He even washed Baby Girl's feet.   I washed Jade's feet.

We will not have leavened bread in the house this week, and we will eat unleavened bread each day.

*Monday, March 29:  We read our proverb and bible story.  I told the boys what would have happened to Jesus the night before and what would have happened during different times of the day.  I did it in OUR time but explained that in Jerusalem the time of day is different, but it would have been the time of day it was here, there when it was happening.  Well, that doesn't sound well explained, but rest assured the way I said it, Jade understood.  This night was the first day of unleavened bread, a holy sabbath day.  It was a full moon, as it was the middle of the month, according to the object in the sky which God placed there for us to keep up with the months, namely the moon!  Most of adherents of the man-made religion of Judaism (as well as Passover-keepers of the man-made religion of Christianity and also Messianic Judaism [Judaism married to Christianity]) keep the Passover on this day, the 15th day of the month, although the scripture couldn't be plainer that it's the 14th day of the month that the Passover should be kept.  The 15th day of the month--mid-month with a full moon--is the first day of unleavened bread.  The full moon would have lit up the night if the Israelites happened to travel any by night after the Passover.

The full moon was lovely and should have been a reminder to all believers that God lights the way to righteousness for us.  He lights the way for us to leave the darkness of sin and death.  Egyptian bondage symbolized bondage to sin.  Serving the Egyptians symbolized serving the law of sin and death.  The Firstborn's of God death frees us from bondage, frees us to turn and serve the law of God with all our hearts and covers us with grace for our repentance.

*Tuesday, March 30:  It was nice to have a day of rest.  It was a lovely day outside, so the children and I enjoyed a good time outside.  We walked around on our property and took pleasure in the various wildflowers that have bloomed, all the greenery, and the buds on our flowering trees and bushes.  We also liked to see all the pretty butterflies fluttering about and the sights and sounds of the birds.  The only downside was some sort of gnat-type insect that kept swarming us now and then.

I read the proverb of the day.  Then I read some out of Revelation to Jaden.  That was an impulsive thing, and I didn't really have any specific reason.  Then I had Jaden write in his new repentance journal, and I had Trusten talk to me, and I wrote what he said in his for him.  You may remember that the boys have rewards journals for the Feast of Trumpets.  For the Feast of Unleavened Bread, they have repentance journals.  They write in the repentance journals; Nathan and I write in the rewards journals.  They write the sins they need to work on overcoming for this year.   Here's a picture of the repentance journals:

Jaden wanted pancakes so badly this morning.  He's asked one day last week, and I promised him we'd make pancakes "sometime next week," not thinking at the time about what week it was to be!  SO, we made unleavened pancakes.  It was simple.  I just left the baking powder out.  They were flat as a pancake.  LOL!  Okay, seriously, they were a bit flatter than normal, but they tasted fine, we thought.

I went over the feast map that I downloaded several years ago from United Church of God's sabbath school section for children.  I have copies for each of the children and myself, and they're colored.  It makes it more fun as we go through each step, and I quiz them (mostly Jade right now) on what each of the feasts and holy days mean as it pertains to the plan of salvation.

We didn't have a real lunch this day.  We just snacked all day.  Then for dinner I fixed some very delicious chicken fajitas, with of course unleavened bread (tortillas), tomatoes (canned, as I can't have anything close to raw), and fresh red bell pepper.  Oh, and we added some fresh organic shredded cheddar cheese.  They were so very good!

*Wednesday, March 31:  I can't remember the conversations of this day.  It never fails; if I don't take notes, I forget.  I know we read our proverb and bible story.  I also know the boys watched the following Youtube videos:

Survival:  fresh drinking water, making a snare, making a bow
Moral cartoon story:  "The Crocodile and the Monkey"

We had delicious chicken and dumplings, with the dumplings being tortillas I cut into dumplings, and green beans.  

*Thursday, April 1:  Proverb, bible story, and Youtube videos.

Survival:  making an arrow, dehydration
Moral cartoon stories:  "The Fingers," "The Crow and the Necklace"

We tried ground turkey for the first time (excepting pre-made turkey burger patties that we've  had a few times), since I've not fixed beef much in the past few months, except for special feasts and usually leaner red meats only on the weekly feast day.  The things, like tacos, that I normally used ground beef for, I've fixed vegetarian, with beans in lieu of meat.  Well, tonight we had soft tacos with ground turkey, and they were super!  We have things made with tortillas (unleavened bread--no yeast) all week during the week of unleavened bread each year.  It's an extra reminder what the week is about every time we sit down to dinner (which is overcoming sin, yeast being symbolic of sin).

*Friday, April 2:  Proverb and bible story.  Jade also played on Clever Island, playing "Time in a Bottle" to work on his time-telling and a game he really loves called "Meer Cat Mob" in which he has to shoot at meer cats (or maybe their signs) that have the right words labeled in front of their holes and get them before they go back into their holes.  There will be a category, like "verbs," "adjectives," or "food words," and so he is supposed to only shoot at those kind of words.  A screen shot from "Time in a Bottle":

We had vegetable-venison stew for the sabbath, but we had tortilla triangles to go with it for a change.  We had a mixture of chocolate and vanilla pudding for our dessert.

*Saturday, April 3:  Today was the sabbath day, and I read the daily proverb and then a lesson out of Choosing Thankfulness, about how David praised God and was a man after God's own heart.  I worked on the book I'm writing, God's Law of Love:  The Perfect Law of Liberty, and I'm nearly finished with the sixth commandment.  It was also a very gorgeous day, and I got to spend plenty of time outside cherishing the gift of creation by the Wonderful Creator.  I walked around with my Liv and then sat her on the grass so that she could pull at flowers and kick the grass back with her bare feet.  She got her feet dirty.  She really tore that grass up!  :-)

*Sunday, April 4:  The day after the sabbath during the week of unleavened bread is First Fruits.  It's not a feast of any sort, not a holy day.  Under the old covenant, though, the priest would wave a sheaf of the first fruits of the harvest to be accepted by God.  When Jesus the Christ ascended to God after his resurrection, he fulfilled this.  He was the firstfruits of the spring harvest (I Cor. 15:20), as laid out symbolically in God's feasts that lay out the plan of mankind's salvation.  So, I explained this to Jade and how ironic it was that this year it happened to fall on the same day that Christianity keeps its feast of Easter, on which they claim their christ rose from the dead, known in ancient heathen religions as the "sun god." Easter is the name of a heathen goddess, also known as Ishtar, Astarte, Eostre, Isis, etc., depending on which culture and language is being used.  She is a fertility goddess, hence the big deal over sex-crazed rabbits and eggs. 

We ate out at Las Palmas, a Mexican restaurant, for a late lunch today, and then when we got back, Nathan put together our new ceiling fan for the living room, while Jaden took apart the old one.  The other day, Nathan replaced a couple of our door knobs, and Jade took apart one to study it.  When I asked him the other day what his favorite thing to do currently is, he said, "I like to build, but I also like to destroy, and then when things can be fixed, I like to rebuild them after I tear them down."

Well, that's it until next time.  It will soon be the last day of unleavened bread, starting this evening, a sabbath day.  So, tomorrow I'll be going over the feast again with the boys and the entire plan of salvation.