God has been good.

I can’t believe I haven’t blogged recently since I have so much to talk about...

our days have been filled with fun, celebrating, schooling and hard work. So many aspects of life in a Big Family. Of our life of Homeschooling, Of our life in Ministry.

We had a revival last month that changed me and spoke more to me than any other revival or evangelist we’ve had. Not to mention that I think it was our most well attended also. A friend of mine (a pastor’s wife) had a fabulous list of things to buy, things to do and places to go for all visiting speakers. It went way beyond what was necessary, but we wanted to make our preacher feel at home from the moment he arrived. It helped us make sure certain things got done when the days got crazy busy-- there’s nothing like a good ‘ole fashion list to follow. Thank you Kathy!

We’ve also had a wave of visitors come to church; It’s always refreshing watching people dedicate their lives to follow Christ. Our church is growing and that means the Kingdom of Heaven is growing too. We want to see our city won for Jesus. We have such an amazing church family full of people who I consider real friends and I cannot express how thankful I am for those in our church who invest in my kid’s lives as well.

My friend Delilah threw an awesome “Women’s Christmas Brunch” {at which I won the ‘ugliest Christmas sweater contest’}. She loves cooking and making stuff-- the fun things she found on pinterest for the party were just adorable and very Christmasy.

On the following day, we held our special Christmas program which included Charlie playing Joseph and Pearl being Mary. Ruby was a shepherd, Lincoln was a soldier and Jasper was a wiseman. Believe it or not there were other kids in the drama too. Ha! Like ten little kids all together-- it was mayhem, but it was so cute.

My older guys were part of our ‘puppet team’ and rocked it with a spectacular blacklight show run by our friends, Jesse and his wife, Delilah. I am so thankful for them because they have brought ‘puppets’ into our church as a form of ministry. And because of that, I have really been inspired. My oldest Five have even put one together along with some of their own props for a family Christmas show at my Mom’s Christmas party this Saturday. They are super excited about it.

About ten months ago, we began having something we call a “Meet and Greet” once a month (in addition to our monthly fellowship meals). The idea behind it was to get people to hang out after church so they would get to know one another better. This has been a lot of fun and so successful.

Usually we bring donuts, coffee, milk and juice, but the past few months, we’ve changed things up a bit. One month it was all cookies where quite a few Saints brought trays of their favorite cookies (homemade or otherwise). And another month, we had just pies and pumpkin spice lattes made in a crock pot. It was so good! This month we had so many treats left over from the Women’s Brunch that we had two tables filled with leftover sweets.

In between all this, the boys started basketball and our family friend, Glen, has joined up to be one of Parker’s coaches. This guy is a witnessing machine {& is single and wanting to get married-- any takers?}. Did I mention he can rap too? Ha! Our days are full and sometimes I am extremely overwhelmed which has been known to make me shed a tear or a thousand... but I keep my eyes up, focused on my Savior, love my kids like I do, thankful for my Pastor (Pastor Rob), and listening to my husband when I forget why I do what I do. God is so good and He has been so good to us.