A City Life For Me

We were recently able to purchase a full size van to make deputation travel a bit more comfortable.  I'll write more on that later.  Ben is in Florida picking up the van, so we came to visit Grandma & Grampa Hamilton.  We've just had fun enjoying the house, the yard, the dog, the cat, and the country.   Grandma took us to Whitney Farms - something that is right up my kids' alley!  They have a small petting "zoo" with goats, sheep, and a miniature horse.  Liberty is so fearless when it comes to animals!  She loved feeding the horse!  Nehemiah is normally content to reside in the background and watch, but this time he decided to join in on the action.   When we were done with the animals we enjoyed some swing sets and then picked a couple of pumpkins from the patch.  It was a great fall evening!   Elaine was reading to Fezzik...   ...so Nolan wanted to read to Fezzik!   Elaine gave Bart ...

Last year I made some ABC Bible Verses to teach Elaine .  It’s hard to find free ones in the KJV!  But, we never made it through all 26 letters last year. Now we are doing K5 homeschool.  We are learning approximately 2 letters each week.  I am trying to use the verses again as Elaine learns the phonics sound and how to write each letter. But I ran into a problem…my font was a nice kid-ish crayon font.  We are using Bob Jones University curriculum, and in K5 they teach a pre-cursive font.  The letters did not match from my ABC verse cards to our workbooks!  So I have updated the cards with a matching font, and I changed a couple of verses to match the letter with a more appropriate phonics sound. Here is an updated version for anyone who may want it…      Download by clicking this link… KJV ABC Verses for Preschool-K5 (Pre-Cursive Font) for personal use only, please.

I think this was Nehemiah’s handiwork…

This weekend we got a chance to stay in the City because of a meeting cancelation.  We took Saturday afternoon to do some more Bronx exploring.  This time we tackled Van Cortlandt Park . Van Cortlandt Park is the third largest park in New York City.  It is bigger than Central Park by 303 acres!  There are a lot of sports fields and a couple of playgrounds, but most of the park is wooded areas with foot paths.  Ben read online that there was a lot of poison ivy.  We discovered that to be an understatement! We couldn’t get off the path much at all because the poison ivy was so rampant.  The kids enjoyed collecting acorns, and Ben did some stroller 4-wheeling.  We hiked out on one rocky point behind the Van Cortlandt family burial plot to get a lovely view of the cricket fields and the City beyond. It was a perfect day to spend outdoors! When we got to the grassy field we let the twins out to walk.  Instead of following their siblings i...

Elaine is learning about her community in Kindergarten.  Our first unit was based on the Fire Station.  We learned about fire safety, made a fire escape plan, had fire drills, and learned about emergency calls to 9-1-1.  Along with this came shapes, colors, phonics, handwriting, and her first spelling word, it . Learning about fire and how to put it out. We spread all of this over our first three weeks of school.  At the end of the first week of school we baked a cake.  Elaine had been wanting to make an “Amelia Bedelia” cake from the recipe in the back of the book.  We talked about numbers with our measuring spoons, we mixed red and blue food coloring to create purple frosting (just like in “science class”), and we decorated it with the shapes we had just learned. To wrap up the unit we took a tour of our local fire station – F.D.N.Y. Engine 242.  Some of our other homeschool friends came along too!     Sitting in the Rig – Nolan...

A friend posted this on Facebook yesterday… And so today I am thankful that some of these “last times” haven’t come yet, and I’m thankful for all the new “first times” we are experiencing with a new homeschooling Kindergartner, a growing too quickly preschooler, and two rambunctious toddlers.

:: Breakfast in Bed :: Deputation Cutie Pies :: First Ice Cream CONES    :: Bad picture, but first bow that Liberty left in her hair for longer than 5 seconds! :: Subway Evangelism as a family :: Date Night with Nolan

I’ve had this written in the flyleaf of my Bible since high school graduation.  I never would have guessed that 13 years later, God would have led me to serve alongside my husband in the largest city of our country, and one of the most influential cities in the world.  But here I am, and New York City has become home.  God has been so good along each step of the way.

I took these pictures of the kids on a deputation stop in Maine a few weeks ago.  I just came across them today, but they seemed so appropriate, considering the 13th anniversary of 9/11. This was a war memorial and the sign says “The Price of Freedom Is Not Free”.  So true.  I am so thankful for the countless lives that have been given to allow me to grow up in a free country.  I am blessed by the freedom of America on a daily basis.  I am free to attend the church of my choice.  I am free to live where I believe the Lord has led me.  I am free to have as many children as I do.  I am free to homeschool my daughter. It just happened that Elaine was wearing red, white, and blue in this picture, but it fits so well! As part of our homeschool routine, we say the Pledge of Allegiance to the American Flag and to the Bible before we pray for school each morning.  I know Elaine doesn’t understand all of the words, but it was a good exercise for m...

I wrote my last twinsie update at 12 months.  So much has changed since then!  Mostly it is that the twins became mobile, and I have been busy chasing them and hardly found a moment to sit down and journal here on this blog. I very much enjoyed the first year of twins.  I was told a lot of “horror” stories about having two babies at the same time.  There were definitely hairy moments, but overall it’s been fun!  But these last few weeks…they have given me a run for my money.  I am tired and exhausted.  My brain is mush.  I feel like this is the most difficult stage so far (but it’s also a very funny, enjoyable stage – on some days). Nehemiah is my total-boy baby.  He loves to jump on his siblings and just sit on them, waiting for them to wrestle.  He loves cars.  He loves dogs.  He loves electronics.  As in, my most difficult task every day is keeping Nehemiah away from the computer and my iPhone .  He also loves...