Shh! While Bee is Sleeping...

...I thought I'd sneak on here!

I miss blogging so much!

Plus also I need to post at least twice in November.

So sad.

But let's just act like old friends and pick up where we left off like nothing ever happened, OK?

OK.

There are 2 1/2 more weeks until Christmas break from school. I can't wait. But knowing we have such a short amount of time is helping me be really firm in my commitment to get 'er done. Whining? No. Pleading? Don't hear you. Get busy minions!

Mama would like to NOT still be finishing this school year in July.

We went out of town for Thanksgiving to see some of the husband's family that we haven't seen in forever and when we got there...they weren't home. Yep. We had what you might call a little glitch in our communication. But it was OK, we went to a restaurant for Thanksgiving, which was a first for me. Boy, do a lot of people eat out on Thanksgiving!

But it was delicious. And I did not spend hours in the kitchen.

Poor Sweetheart was sick while we were out of town. She had a cough--and it was just viral--but she ran fever every other day for almost a week. Speaking of weak, she was. Her little skinny body just can't handle fighting a sickness that long. She lost about 5 pounds which officially put her under 90 pounds. So we didn't do too much. A lot of relaxing in the hotel--some sightseeing. It was nice and we had fun. She finally got over the illness exactly 2 weeks after it first started.

Then she got hives. That's this week's ailment.

Bee seemed to enjoy her first Thanksgiving. She was listening to the waiter here.

She had sweet potatoes, some pumpkin pie, and table.

And now (brace yourself)...let's get caught up with the Family Revised in 1 minute or less. (I mean, I really don't know how fast you read, but still.)

Little Bit turned 9. Had American Girl Birthday (red stars). Got long awaited Molly doll.

Sweetheart went to a "tacky mini-golf" birthday party for Kate.

And Bee was cute and turned 6 months old.

Was that one minute?

And just because I want to remember it: We had just family over for Little Bit's party this year. So, I asked her what she wanted to eat for her birthday.

Cole slaw.

What kid asks for cole slaw for their birthday lunch? So we thought, "brisket goes with cole slaw." Well, S didn't have time to do that and someone told me HEB sells precooked briskets. Awesome!

Then I got there. And I saw the price.

And this is what our brisket turned into in a hurry:

Hope you all had a great November.

Hope someone is going to read this.

Hope to blog more next month.

It shouldn't be hard to beat TWO posts.

In November...

We are getting ready for Little Bit's 9th birthday this week! I can't believe she's going to be 9! We're just having a family party this year as she has had big friend parties for 2 years now. Family, and hopefully a trip to somewhere she has been waiting and waiting to go!

We are also trying to make plans for Thanksgiving. S and I LOVE Thanksgiving. It's the least stressful of all the holidays. You just go somewhere (or stay home) and EAT. Easy and simple! But our extended family never seems to know what they are going to do until right before. Trying to be proactive this year and make a plan.

My Dad has begun his chemo again. This time he's in a medical trial and recieving both a shot and a pill. The only real side effect so far has been some pretty bad mouth sores. I've made applesauce and pinto beans for him. They are better now and I'm thankful he feels so good still.

Other than that stuff, we just plug along each day doing school. We never get everything done, but we get a lot done each day. At some point in the day I just call it. "We're done!" You can only work so much.

Especially with all the help we get.

This precious little girl is such a joy. She learned to sit up last week. Just. Like. That. In one day. The other girls worked for weeks to learn that. She just up and did it.

She is such a distraction and everything she does is cute. In speaking of the recent (at the time, upcoming) elections, we had to discuss abortion at our house. Yes, my kids are sheltered. I told them, very basically and without a lot of detail, what abortion meant. They were horrified. Horrified! Little Bit marched right over to where Baby Bee was sitting and hugged her. "How could someone do that to a little baby?" She was indignant. I told them I didn't know....I had wanted all of them so badly I could hardly stand it. Later Little Bit asked, "But Mommy, what if the baby is born cute?" Exactly. How do you explain the sin in this world that allows abortion to be normal.

 

Thankful for my blessings. Even if I am 41 and tired most of the time.

 



So I Think I Have Been Wrong

Actually, I'm pretty convinced of it.

And in the process, I believe I have probably confused my children for LIFE.

OK. Where do I start?

We've been at our new church for over a year now. Our old church was, shall we say, um...a bit more progressive than we were comfortable with. It was no longer anything like the church where we grew up. I will give more specific examples later. Our new church is very much more in line with our beliefs. (And with the Bible, in our opinion.)

Our new church makes us realize how really progressive our old church was.

Somewhere along the way, I missed learning this. Which would explain why I am just learning it at age 41.

Wow. I don't even know how to start explaining this to you.

So a few years ago, I started noticing a trend of Christians celebrating Old Testament festivals and feasts. Like Passover, for example. You can order things for these celebrations on Christian websites. The way Christians "do" these feasts and celebrations is a bit differently than how the Jewish people in the Old Testament did them, I think.

Honestly I don't know too much about why Christians would observe those days. My first thought was, "Well that's a strange thing to do----those things are part of the Old Testament and that doesn't apply to us as Christians." It has become trendy to do so, however.

And there is more to it than just celebrating something from the Old Testament---which New Testament Christians did not do. There's also the fact that it's all mixed up and crazy. This article I found on google will highlight what I mean....it's the taking of an old Jewish feast and mixing it up with Christian beliefs. It's assigning new "religious" meanings to traditions that may or may not have even been part of the original feast as ordained by God.

Basically, people are making up a holiday here.

The New Testament mentions nothing about Christians celebrating Passover. Or even a hybrid form of it. So should we be doing that?

So just know that those thoughts were swirling in my head.

THEN, I started hearing about how Christmas and Easter should have no religious significance.

What? How sacrilegious! How unheard of! Why would you take Christ out of Christmas? Why would you make the Easter Bunny more important than Jesus Christ?

Seriously, the whole idea of celebrating these holidays with no religious significance at all floored me.

This is the very thing I have fought against for many years!! We, as a new family, with very little thought to the consequences, started off doing things just as they had been done when we were growing up. We hunted eggs. The Easter Bunny left treats. Santa visited. We read 'Twas the Night Before Christmas....on and on. That's how our little family started doing things when Sweetheart was born.

But then, I started to feel guilty. I mean, these traditions have pagan roots for goodness sake! I read. I learned. Hunting eggs? Bad. Christmas trees? Bad. Every single tradition seemed to have a pagan root. I didn't want my children growing up thinking it was all about eggs and candy and Santa and presents! I wanted them to know the "real" reason for the holidays.

I'm telling you what I thought here.

So for many years now (probably 6 years), I have worked to make the "real" meaning stand out while minimizing all the pagan stuff. I got Resurrection Eggs. We stopped dyeing eggs. I gave the girls Bibles and Bible covers for Easter treats instead of "bunny" stuff. We learned the names of Christ and made ornaments out of them and hung them on a tree. We decorated with more nativity scenes and less Santa. We learned all about Christ's final week. We did crafts. We read Bible passages. We made this a part of our homeschool. A part of our evenings. And very much a part of our celebrations.

And now I think that was wrong. I was wrong.

During the time I was working to overhaul our holidays to the "real" meaning, our old church started doing some things I wasn't comfortable with. In our old church, there is a large wooden cross beside the "stage" for lack of a better word. It sits there 365 days a year. It's like part of the building and I really didn't even notice it all that much. Then a few years ago, they started draping black cloth on it on Good Friday. Then it would change to white on Easter Sunday. There was purple in there too. I didn't know where all this was coming from so I came home and researched and found out it was all related to Advent. Advent is not something we grew up doing. Or celebrating. Or whatever. And I don't read about it in the Bible so it's not something we do. It's made up, in my opinion and there's too much symbolism to keep up with!

Then they started "the flowering of the cross." Everyone would bring fresh flowers and they wrapped chicken wire around the whole cross and stuck the flowers in on Easter Sunday during the worship service. Where are we getting this stuff from???? This in NOT in the Bible!! We started going out of town on Easter. It was easier than trying to explain all these things to the girls when we couldn't make sense of them ourselves.

Later they started having "Good Friday" services at the church. We did not attend. Everything was getting really, really religious. But not really biblical.

I stamped my foot (inwardly, of course) and said, "This stuff is not authorized in God's Word! The church should not be doing this stuff!"

But I forgot to look at our own house. I'm sharing this with you, dear blog readers, because I have brought you along on my journey to overhaul our holidays. And now I won't be doing things the same way because I have come to the understanding that these holidays--they aren't in the Bible either.

Just as Advent is not taught to us by Jesus, and we have no record of the apostles or first century Christians doing such things, neither is there authorization for making the birth of Christ and his death, burial, and resurrection into religious days. These holidays are NOT found in scripture.

Of course I have always taught my children that December 25th probably wasn't Jesus' real birthday. But if God wanted us to celebrate that day, that event, He would have given us instruction on how He wanted that done. And when!

Now don't get me wrong....Christ's birth and his death, burial and resurrection are events I am VERY thankful for!! We have been instructed to remember Christ's death, burial, and resurrection on the first day of the week when we meet together. We have not been given instructions about remembering Christ's birth.

It isn't that I think remembering these things is evil...it's that they are not religious celebrations ordained by God in His word.

Folks, we have made some stuff up here. And it's all confusing and mixed up with pagan stuff. It's a mess. Just like those new "Christian Passover" feasts. There is this constant struggle between secular and Christian and it needn't be! Christians don't need to waste their time fighting to "keep Christ in Christmas" because He hasn't asked us to celebrate it anyway!

Now, about celebrating Christmas with no religious significance. How freeing!! I feel a huge sigh of relief coming on. No longer do I need to struggle with this. Christmas is simply a day to get together with our family and loved ones and give each other gifts and enjoy a meal together. And that's it! That's all it needs to be!

I don't have to spend the weeks before Christmas doing a countdown where we read a scripture each night about the coming Messiah from the Old Testament prophets. We don't have to crack out the Resurrection eggs and have a devotional all week prior to Easter.

I can quit trying to make these celebrations all about God because He hasn't asked me to do that anyway!!!

Because these are not celebrations He commanded us to keep.

Do you feel the huge weight lifted off my shoulders?

Now hear me...we are stil going to celebrate Christmas and Easter around here. Easter has never been a really big one with us anyway. Christmas I love. Thanksgiving I love. We celebrate Independence Day too. There is nothing wrong with having a day set aside to spend with your family and enjoy food and fellowship and gift-giving.

But we will no longer be celebrating them as religious holidays. I hope I have made sense in my explanation of why.

Because now I have to explain this to my girls.

In the Absence of Peer Pressure

I have so many things to share with you, including pictures of our camping trip and what's going on in our homeschool, etc.

But today my thoughts are on teenagers. You know, I have one of those. We like to refer to her as a "young lady" instead of a "teen" and I think she kind of likes that too. She knows that the word "teenager" was invented quite recently in history and that throughout most of time, people her age were called/treated as "young men and women."

But she's just on the edge of all that. She only turned 13 two months ago. She's still on the edge of childhood, really. Still content to play with her little sister (as they are doing right now), and yet able to take on a lot more responsibilities.

I worry sometimes about her maturity. I don't know why. I'll see a Facebook page of a girl around Sweetheart's age, and I'll flip through their pictures. They just seem so much more grown up than her.

But actually, I don't WANT my daughter to spend her time taking pictures of herself in the bathroom mirror with the caption, "wat y'all think?". I really don't.

So I'll think about how she still seems like such a little girl, and then I realize a few things:

1. This is what 13 looks like for her.
2. In 6 months, she'll be different.
3. I wonder what other 13 year olds would be like if they didn't have peer pressure causing them to act like they do.
4. I'd rather have a daughter who reads her Bible than posts pictures of herself on Facebook making stupid faces and spelling everything wrong.
5. Children today REALLY can't spell. I know a lot of it is on purpose, but not all of it!
6. Like, for example, the picture of food I saw today with the caption, "This is my favorite snake."
7. See what I mean?

Sorry, got off-topic there. The point is, Sweetheart is in transition mode. She's moving from childhood to young womanhood and it isn't an overnight change. Nor is it supposed to be.

Example? Last night we were walking out the door to go to church and she came around the corner carrying Bee and her American Girl doll. At the same time. That is just a perfect picture of where she is.

And like the morning that I needed to sleep in and Sweetheart came and got Bee from my room. When I got up, Sweetheart had Bee laying on her activity mat in the living room, while she made pancakes in the kitchen, while playing with Little Bit....all at the same time. She had everything in perfect control when I walked in.

This transition is interesting. And from what I see on Facebook and around me...I know we need to spend more time on Bible and less time worrying about what other "teens" are doing/wearing/talking about.

Oh, and definitely more time on spelling.

Patting Myself on the Back

I am so proud of myself! I made baby food!!

OK. So, as it turns out, "baby food" is just grown up food mashed or pureed up. I know that now.

Let me start over. I've had a baby in my 20s, a baby in my 30s, and now...a baby in my 40s. (That pattern stops here, by the way!) I am a MUCH wiser mommy in my 40s than I was in my 20s. Much.

Sweetheart ate baby food. The kind that comes in a jar. WAY longer than was necessary. I liked it because I knew she was getting a fruit, a vegetable, and a meat at supper. (That statement makes no sense to me now.) I didn't know or care what was in those little jars. It was baby food. It was made by Gerber. What could be wrong with that?

Plus, I worked back then. I barely cooked for US, much less the baby!

Flash forward 13 years. I have been a homemaker for 5 or 6 years now. I have learned a few things. And it seemed to me that making Bee's baby food would be no big deal.

First I had to make sure I was getting the right thing. Text: Dad, is the one on the bottom the acorn squash?

OK--so 40 doesn't equal wise ALL the time.

So this morning S cut an acorn squash in half for me and I baked it. I filled 2 ice cube trays with it.

Then this afternoon, my dad baked a sweet potato for her. I got another almost full ice cube tray from that. Along with bananas and apples from our countertop, she should be good to go for quite a while! (Especially since I'm not feeding her at every meal, or even every day---just whenever the time seems right.)

I know I could have (should have?) waited until she was 6 months old, but she's ready. I watched for all the cues. I tested her tongue thrust reflex. I let her chew on an apple slice in the feeder thingy. She's an eater now. Its all going well except for that unfortunate idea to give her some cold carrot to chew on for those sore gums....

Thankfully, she forgave me later. After she threw it across the room.