October days

I'm sitting here with Sam this morning as he eats his cereal and entertains me with his comments.  I snuck in a little video, I look forward to watching 10 years from now.

Life at home is moving and often it feels fast and furious.  Just when I think I have a child figured out there is a whole new thing to learn about them.  We are well on our way in this home schooling adventure and it's hands down the hardest thing I have ever done.  I still think it's very worth it and beneficial to our family.  I am still learning how to regulate my emotions when our day doesn't go as imagined.




Home school room all set up (it's never looked the same again)



My time with each child is so different...Jack, well he loves individual attention with his studies and if I could hold his hand all day and guide him step by step he would be satisfied.  I am working on his independent learning, this is harder for him than any one subject.  Jack has been so sweet in so many ways.  He loves touch, so if we read aloud he likes to be right next to me and he even may rub my arm or back.  It's fun to have slow moments to see some of that come out.  I am learning that Jack deep down likes to feel challenged but on the surface rejects it.  Jack is very insightful and adds to our group learning in great ways if he allows himself to stay engaged. 

Kate, is a hard little worker when she has motivation.  She works well independently on her phonics and math.  Kate can get discouraged easily if she feels like she isn't grasping a concept fast enough.  I often struggle with wanting her to "just get it".  It's been good to slow down and remember I am her teacher now it's my job to explain things in a way she understands.  Kate started piano this fall and seems to be doing well.  Our time together is good because I need all these little learning opportunities to build a relationship with her.  Kate has an incredible imagination so she will play independently tucked away somewhere this in the past didn't create very many opportunities to connect outside of dinner and bedtime.  My desire for Kate is to see a relationship with her that deepens this year and has depth beyond what she's doing at the moment.

Lucy, oh Lu I wish I had more focused time with you!  Lucy wants to "do" school so bad.  I have a workbook for her and coloring pages but she often rejects those.  I think she would like my undivided attention and for me to be purposeful with her.  She knows when I am just handing her busy work and she rejects it.  I need to find a way to have a focused school time with her.  I know this would tell her that she is loved and thought of.  Often when we are doing school Lucy likes to write in her journal, this consists of squiggly lines across the page.  Lucy loves Starfall a online game that ends up teaching her far more than I can right now.  Lucy likes our history, we have a timeline we are memorizing from creation to present day.  Lucy has the events from creation till 1000 b.c. memorized.  I guess things like identifying letters and number will come eventually.  I have a lot of room to grow in my time with Lucy.

We call this our monkey platter it is often our mid morning snack for all to share.

And then there is Sam, he can be so wild some days or just play quietly others.  I try to pull him onto my lap to participate in what we're doing, he's not that kind of child.  He wants to be doing something constantly with his hands.  I had this little picture of what it might be like before we started schooling at home, so far that is a lost dream.  I hoped that Sam would quietly play with the game or toy I gave him beside me while I taught my other children, boy was I wrong.  I love having Sam around he adds so much entertainment.  If I have been in the basement for awhile with the older ones he will often come down with a snack he got for himself.  He definitely keeps me on my toes.


Sitting the way I pictured.

What really goes on.

                 

No explanation.

                                                                         

That's homeschooling with team Davis in a very small nutshell.

Other things happening in the Davis world...we have two young ladies living with us.  Morgan who has been with us for a year now and is getting married soon.  We are so sad to see her go.  We have already experienced having one girl, Jess, move out that was sad for us and our kids but life moves everyone on.  Last week Amanda moved in with us, she is from Seattle and is dating a friend of ours.  We are in the get to know you stages of life with her.  She will be here only until December.  Tuesday Amanda spent the day with the kids and I helping with schooling and care of the children, it was great to have a hand.  I think the Lord knew I needed a little help this season of life.

We got blood drawn for the adoption.

                                               

Adoption update!!  We are so close to completing paperwork!!!!  We have our last home study visit today.  My goal is to turn in the paperwork in December, from there it will be 4-6 weeks until we are officially on a wait list.  That will be the first time our agency can look at their existing children and consider our family as a match.  The excitement is building as we move forward.  I have a another fundraiser planned, it starts tomorrow.  I hope to order 2 ipad minis and raffle off both.  The Lord has been so amazing in the money department.  He continues to lay it on other people's hearts to donate to the adoption.  We have not sent out anything requesting monetary donation yet I receive checks in the mail and people that are not involved in our daily life saying they want to donate.  I feel at complete peace about the money aspect of the adoption.

Day 3 and 4

Yesterday...on the menu was pizza, homemade no toppings just cheese (this is a sacrifice for my kids and us).  Ben came up with a fun way to further our little challenge.  Right before dinner without the kids knowing he turned off the water to the house.  We sat down for dinner and tried to fill their cups with water from the fridge but "oh no, no water!" Conversation goes as follows...Kids what are we going to do, we'll have nothing to drink tonight...Ben's mom who was over comments well don't kids in Africa have no water in their homes?...What do they do?....We then proceed to tell them that the kids who may receive our boxes have to walk a half day sometimes to get water and even then it's not clean.  Ben's suggestion... Jack, why don't you go down to the Golden village (our neighbor) and get water for the family and of course take off your shoes while you do it.  Kate jumped right in, Jack was a little more hesitant but went also.  This is how Kate came back from the neighbors.

Today day 4 was a different story we started the morning off really rough.  Jack and Kate both opted for oatmeal with chocolate chips and brown sugar.  Ben made it and they both threw the most royal fits.  Ben only put 4 chocolate chips in, not 5 and Kate refused to eat.  Jack tasted his and did the same.  I was honestly a little shocked they should be way past this throwing fits stage, right.  But I think what I would've done most mornings is appeased them and said fine here are more chocolate chips, but not today.  It was sad to me that I hadn't help instill a more thankful heart for the things in front of them.  Now in the midst of this I am reminded how sinful I am also I don't want to stop and take time to have character building conversations and to gently remind them of where they could grow and change.  So in the end of the morning it really wasn't about the oatmeal anymore but what was going on in their hearts.  This week is showing us as parents how we still need to grow and change also.

Dinner tonight I made a vegetable soup that was actually a winner in Kate's eyes, how about that?  The other kids weren't fans by any stretch.  We told the kids that we and aunt Kerry were going shopping for our boxes tonight, Jack was pretty excited and wanted to know if this would be the end to our simple meals, nope not till Saturday buddy.  We all packed up and headed to the store.  Let's just say Meijers and all their customers didn't know what hit them when our two families entered the store.  Boy are our kids loud!  Thanks Kerry for the pics.  

                                                 Dear Africa we got your oil for cooking- Lucy

After all was said and done we ended up spending what we normally spend on groceries for the week with my $23.00 we spent earlier in the week plus the cost of all our boxes.  That felt good that a small sacrifice will really mean a lot to others in this world :)  Hopefully they can see Christ's love in the hands that deliver it!

The challenge...

We were at church and had an opportunity to take a box to fill it for a family on Thanksgiving, great check the box we can do that.  Well I felt like maybe this was a good opportunity to challenge our family further.  What if we take more than one box and use this week's grocery money to fill more boxes?  This is nice in theory but the family would have to be in on it since this would change what we eat for most of our meals.  Ben and I asked them after church what they thought, without much hesitation they said sure (I don't think they really got the reality of this).  We intended on taking one box for a local family and 1 box to send to Africa, this will stretch us a bit but I know that we can still be comfortable.  Well somehow we ended up walking out of there with 4 boxes for Africa and 1 for a local family and I could feel myself tense up a bit and feel the stress of this.  I knew immediately after the initial silent freak out that this is a great chance to serve other believers so that they can bless the people around them!

We kicked off our first night of the week ironically with takeout pizza to make a point to our children that you look at this as normal but this is a month worth of wages for a good part of the world.  We read them several facts about some of the African countries.

-There is a food famine in a area of Africa that includes Somolilia, Ethiopia and Kenya a child dies of hunger or poor nutrition on average every 6 minutes so by the time we finish our pizza that would mean 3 kids. 
-Nearly 29,000 children under 5 have died, and millions are at risk, kind of alarming.


(So I am not about just finding a really grafic image to display my point but it's a little disturbing to me that his took 3 seconds to find this with the google search Somolilia children)


These were shocking but I knew just as I often do they will probably just go right back to life and forget most of what we were telling them.

The plan:
-Spend $6.00 a day on food till Saturday, I'm shopping today so that = $30.00 for this weeks grocerys.
-Plan meals that either reflect a country that is in need such as beans and rice. Or keep all my meals simple with little to no meat and cheap ingrediants.
-Talk often of how God can use our family to affect those localy and those in other nations.

Day one...I was packing lunches and Kate was being extremely picky I told her sorry Kate I just don't have that many choices of things to put in your lunch today.  Jack quickly told her "Kate we are not going to be able to have a lot in our lunches this week, remember were feeding Africa".  It was such a good reminder that they were listening and God may use this, this week to impact our family.
At dinner:  Tonight I served a really simple bean soup and cornbread which was an extra.  Kate couldn't help but comment how boring the soup was and lacked flavor.  Ben quickly reminded her that this was part of the challenge to not use a lot of ingredients and keep things simple, we need to have appreciation for the food on our table.  It was very encouraging to see them eat their soup withour complaint after that.

We are all well aware that we are not going to fix a hunger crisis or we may not even save a life but I feel strongly that this is part of our calling as believers to care for and pray for other believers around the world.  Our goal this week is to help instill in our family a posture of sacrifice and giving to help others who are in greater need than us.


Welcome to our challenge this week!

One on one

I wanted to share a idea I found in Family Fun this month.  A reader suggested that to have individual time with her kids they have them take turns staying up a night of the week.  We decided to try this idea and love it.  It is so cute the excitement that this builds all week.  J has Mondays, L Tuesday and K Thursday.  J is already talking about next Monday and how he can't wait.  While one parent puts the kids in bed the other spends time with the child staying up, we only do 15 minutes but to them it's like eternity.  K on her first night chose to do a craft and tonight chose to play games and add some cartoons to Netflix while eating a snack, J chose to play a computer game with Ben and L chose to read books.  They are all already thinking about what they will do on their next turn with mom and dad.