Surprise!!!

I wasn't sure that I would ever write on this blog again.  But reading my friend's blog has inspired me, so I'm going to post.

I have been learning so much about godly womanhood and God's plan for families and it is having a huge impact on my family.  There's way too much for me to write about in this post, but suffice it to say that we are focusing on our home being our center of ministry, not only for our family but also as a way to reach out to those around us.  We're cutting out activities that do not support our family vision and beginning to make our home a center of industry.  Rebecca and I began a foray into canning this last week, with decent results but a lot of room to grow!  At least our strawberry jam is edible, if not a little weird.  We also want to learn to sew.  And I want to improve the gardening situation in our back yard and bring the kids into my gardening projects.

But all this industry takes time, and when we are doing school until 4pm every day (including piano practice) we don't have time for any additional projects.  So we have decided to start doing year-round school.  I never expected to be excited about such a thing.  But I am thrilled at this prospect.  I think that we will have so much more flexibility in our year because we won't be pushing to be finished by a certain date.  When the grandparents want to take the kids camping and it goes over a week day, I won't be worried about their school.  And if they don't get everything done in one day, I will know that we have many more days to work on it without the deadline of the end of the school year looming over us.  It will also keep their minds from turning to mush over the summer, so that's a good thing.  If all goes the way I think it will, we will have academics in the morning, Bible and music practice in the afternoon to be done by 2:30.  Then we'll have our project time from 2:30 till 4:30 or so where we can work on whatever we have going at the time.

The other change I want to share is that we are converting one of our bedrooms into a family closet!!!  In short, all of our clothes, shoes, bedding, etc. will go into one room on hangars, shelves and bins.  Once I have the project done, I'll (hopefully) post pictures of it.  But you can google "family closet" if you want to read more about it.  You can probably imagine what a chore the laundry is around here.  And then there are the bins and bins of off-season clothes and in-between sizes clothes.  Oh my, it's a job.  This should greatly simplify the challenges of getting laundry clean and put away for me, as well as help me to see at a glance what our clothing needs are.  And in the end, it will greatly increase the storage space in the rest of the house.  So a major overhaul is coming at the Stroup home in more ways than one!

Merry Christmas

Oh come let us adore him,
Oh come let us adore him,
Oh come let us adore him,
Christ, the Lord.

What should I do?

Over the past couple of months, it has come to my attention that some stores that I frequent are either directly or indirectly supporting Planned Parenthood.  I was very disappointed to hear about this, since I like one of the stores so much I actually have their store credit card.  But knowing what I know, I could not knowingly support a store that is contributing to the holocaust of our children.  In the past, I was involved in the big Target boycott, which lasted a decade.  It eventually ended in Target removing their support for Planned Parenthood.  So I have seen how a boycott can change the course of a company's decisions.  Therefore, my husband and I have decided to join the boycott of these stores until they change their policy.

Someone recently told me about a pet store chain that had been getting their animals from places that were not humane.  I guess this fact made the news and within something like a week that pet store was out of business because people were so indignant that the pet store would support such an atrocity.  One week!  It took us ten years to get Target to change their policy, but a pet store was put out of business in one week!  Where are our priorities?  Why is it that a child is seen as less important than a dog?  And what are we going to do about it?  Let's wake up!  You might not be able to change everything, or address every injustice.  But do something.  Ask God what he wants you to do and then obey him.

Inspired

For some reason I'm inspired to write a blog post tonight - at 11:30 when I should be in bed.  But I thought I'd better grab the inspiration when it comes.  (Maybe I should drink black tea with lunch more often...)

I have not told the story of Sarina's birth yet, so I'll give that a quick summary.  We were supposed to be induced on June 9th.  But we really didn't feel peace about it.  After praying about it, we decided to go with my doctor's recommendation and proceed with the inducement.  However, we were praying that God would close the doors if it was not his will.  The 9th came and there were no closed doors, so off we went to the hospital.  We checked in, got our room, I got dressed in the gown, IV, everything.  The bag of pitocin was ready to go and the midwife walked in.  First things she asks is how I feel about having the baby today.  So I was upfront with her and told her that I wasn't feeling so sure about it.  After much discussion and some tests on the baby to make sure she wasn't under stress, I walked out of the hospital still pregnant!  I never would have thought that I would be happy to leave the hospital one week past my due date and pregnant.  But I felt so much peace that it didn't matter that I was physically uncomfortable.  I glorify the Lord that he was able to close the doors for us so late in the game.  He sent us just the right person to enable us to follow his plan.

We went back to the hospital the following Friday, the 11th.  I can't tell you how differently I felt driving there.  On Wednesday I had been feeling dread, fear, worry, but this day I felt excitement and anticipation - all of the things I should feel when I'm about to meet my baby.  The inducement on Friday went off without a hitch.  Pitocin started at 7am.  Although the contractions were progressing, it was nothing big until my water broke at 9:20.  Then everything took off like a rocket.  Sarina was born at 9:55 am.  So that was almost three hours from start to finish.  Not bad.

Now she's four months old, rolling all over the place, smiling, laughing and delighting us all.

Our school year is going great!  Every year seems to bring new improvements over the last one and this year is no exception.  I am learning better time management skills, as well as learning to accept that even if I don't get everything done in a day that I would like to, God knows what I need to do and everything else can wait.  The older two kids are learning how to manage their time better, too.  And we're all learning how to work together to keep our home a nice, clean place to live.

One more bit of news before I go.  We just found out that there is another home school family living in our neighborhood with a large family like us.  I actually had met them before, because they own a used curriculum book store that I shop at.  But last Monday, Rebecca came rushing in exclaiming that the people who own the book store lived just down the street.  So we literally dropped everything, piled the babies in the stroller and went to introduce ourselves.  We all had a blast and the kids went back over today to play again.  Matthew and I had just been talking last week about how our kids don't have other kids in our neighborhood to play with.  I remember at the time of that conversation submitting my heart to the Lord's plan for our children and reminding myself that he knows what they need.  So the timing of meeting this family was so sweet to me because the Lord was answering the cry of my heart.

God is so good.  He fills my life with so much joy.  I love living for him.

Final Decision About School

I just found out today that the John Adams Academy will not be able to receive all the funding they need to start up this year until October.  So they have decided to wait until next year when they can get the funds earlier and use them for their start-up costs.  That means we get another year to home school!  I have been having a hard time with the thought of not having the kids home.  I would miss them so much during the day.  I know that I would adjust.  And if it's what God has for them, he has a different plan for me, too.  But I'm really happy to know that I get to keep them home for another year.

Treasure in Heaven

Tonight our oldest daughter was baptized.  It was a very special event that I was greatly looking forward to.  She has been ready to make a public commitment to the Lord for some time now.  But what made this event even more special was the fact that Matthew got to baptize her.  I didn't find out that he was going to do it until right before the baptism.  So I pretty much cried non-stop from the moment I found out until after she was baptized.  Our kids are such a blessing to us.  And our greatest desire for each of them is that they would have a personal relationship with the Lord and follow him with their whole hearts all of their lives.  They really are the treasures we are storing up in heaven.

I did manage to see through the tears to get a few pictures.  :)

I did it!

I just managed to add a button to my blog from a source that was incorrect! But with a little research and using someone else's html code with my changes made, I fixed the problem and now I have a beautiful "Drawn from Water" button on my blog!

Drawn from Water is very near and dear to my heart. It is an orphanage in Africa that rescues "Mingi" children who are marked to die because of tribal superstition. Our church started this orphanage to rescue the children and find adoptive homes for these kids who would not have survived otherwise. The picture you see is of the first child rescued, who has now been legally adopted by a wonderful family in our church. They are heading to Africa in a few weeks to meet her and bring her home. Please take a minute to read the blog. I'm pretty sure that this is one of God's favorite ministries on earth right now. ;)