Schoolhouse

We're a few days behind my schedule as far as academics go, but I'm actually quite thrilled about how this school year has gone. God's blessed us with some nice enrichment--it had to be him because the fun stuff I plan usually never makes it off the planning sheets.

Earlier this month a real live missionary came to our house! When I was a kid, I recall a few missionaries coming to Vacation Bible School but they were like untouchable celebrities in my childish mind. We certainly never had one in our house. (The preacher came to our house once or twice, but my parents didn't like the attention and it was always a little tense!).

It worked out for Shannon (my friend Terrie's best friend) to come to our Life Group while on a break. I knew my girls would love to meet her so I asked if she'd mind coming over while she was here. She came with her laptop full of pictures, great stories, some Indonesian language training, and she even brought Indonesian purses for each of the three oldest girls!

We just finished reading Torches of Joy, about missions in the area near where Shannon serves. That was a great tie-in. Our curriculum this year is called Eastern Hemisphere and we're studying the history, culture, and outreach to that side of the earth-very neat.

The last two days have been more of simple country living field days. The 3 oldest girls were gone 2 full days to a family friends' home about 45 minutes away. She has a great log cabin home in the country, a pool & hot tub, incredible fun stuff to do outside...she led them on one of her traditional treasure hunts with 20 questions leading to their prizes! They made cakes and swam in the hot tub (I hear my oldest took a bet/bribe and jumped--and fully submerged herself!--in the regular, unheated pool! It was in the 60's today after getting into the 40s overnight!). Some of them skinny dipped (okay, so that's not exactly enrichment, lol).

I feel like this has been a great year so far-the karate has pushed them socially but especially physically. Ash's new Bible Study has her digging into the Word like never before. She calls Bible Study her new favorite subject. Having friends go into the mission field and praying for them as a family, meeting Shannon, reading about missions, training Ash & Hope in childcare through watching Adri, and the blessing of them making incredible, invaluable memories with my mentor (who's becoming their mentor) is better than I could have plotted out in the homeschooling planner. God is good!