Family..

The beginning of Oct. My baby brother turned 21 and got baptized all in the same week. We had talked about going to be with my family, since it has been almost 3 years since we had more then 24 hrs with them.
We had purchased the horses and only had a weeks notice before the baptism, so we had decided that at this time we would be  financially unable to make the 6 hour roadtrip..


That Thursday I suddenly realized that my sick kiddoe was doing well, live was calm, I was relaxed and recovered from our LONG summer. I had every resource needed to make the trip, except extra cash.

So the kids and I prayed... if God would provide the money on either Friday or Saturday we would go...
Friday the mail came... we were all anticipating what God would provide. Nothing... Ok, well I guess we wait until Saturday.

Saturday morning we did our normal, listening to our local kids radio, eating pancakes and cleaning! We had kinda given up on going...

Then the mailman came... along with a check. yup! God provided. So we packed up, loaded up and headed out to visit family!

We had 6 kids, a wheelchair, luggage, my entire medicine cabinet, all of Abi and Abraham's food and the dog all piled into my mini van! It is truly amazing what can fit into a mini van!!

We had a fun trip out. My kids love to travel and are good travelers. We have no electronics, only the car cd player. Even bubbie did well. We did switch seats halfway through which was a huge help.

The only creepy moment was as we stopped at a rest area. We could not get the wheelchair out from under all the luggage so we had to find a potty break where I could leave see both the van and the bathroom from the entrance door.

We stopped at the rest area, it was fairly busy. We let Lady out to walk and go potty... I let the kids out to run around and burn some energy.

Then I pulled up right in front of the bathroom area. I stood at the door, so I could see both the van and the bathroom. There were 2 fancy SUV's parked down the row a bit, both had middle aged men watching us. There was a sign on the wall right on the bathroom door, giving a phone number to call regarding Human Trafficking... #shiver

I had the kids go in one at a time, so I never had more then one out of the car at a time. Thankfully after my prayers the men in the SUV left! I needed to go to the bathroom SOOOO bad... So I had all the kids get into the car and lock the door while I had  Lee stand in my spot with the car remote. I told him that if anyone so much as looks at the van he should scream and push the alarm button.  His siblings informed me that he looked quite threatening. That was the fastest potty break I have ever taken!


We arrived at my friends house around 9 pm. The next day we had breakfast at their house before heading to my parents for lunch with the family. They had planned a birthday for all the Oct birthdays. We had picked the perfect weekend to travel, everyone else had already planned to get together anyway!

We had lunch and dinner at my parents, then went to baptism at my brother's church. Several of my kids have not sat through a church service in quite sometime. Thankfully with the help of the tablet, both Nesiah and Bubbie did well!!

Monday morning we had breakfast with several of my sisters before heading to my parents. We hung out there for an hour or so then headed home! Our trip home was less eventful, altho Bubbie was sick and tired of traveling by the time we were halfway home!!

It was fun to meet my newest nephew and my friend's new baby! My kids totally enjoyed their time with cousins!

Everybody Can Do Something...

 This is currently one of our favorite songs! We love listening to it, the kids are constantly singing it!

It has motivated me to move out of my comfort zone, to do little things to change the world. My kids and I have been blessed by so many people who give to us... It is important to pass on the blessings...

  

I also want to teach my kids to appreciate what they have... 

Several weeks ago, we joined a bunch of other homeschool families to serve lunch at a local men's rescue mission. It was a really neat experience, very eye opening for my kids.

I am thankful that we have these opportunities. We homeschool, we don't do co op or other things where we are committed. I may struggle with commitment issues.. lol So we often ahve time to do fun spontaneous things. We are not tied to a schedule. We can decide last minute to drop everything and serve where needed. 

Advocating...

We live in a country where we can have an opinion, a voice in making laws and the freedom to advocate for those things which we feel strongly about. I happen to feel strongly about people killing babies! So I was excited when an opportunity came up for us to "do something"!

The kids and I were blessed to be able to volunteer with the Pa Family Institute and Council.

We took a stack of signed petitions to the Capital.

 We were blessed to meet several state representatives.

This was a new experience for us. It proved to be quite the interesting day! We did a lot of wandering around, trying to figure out what we were trying to do.

We believe not only in advocating for the unborn, but also fighting for the children who are born!

This is what I posted on my facebook page after our day at the Capitol.

I am not into politics. I understand very little... I tend to think that government is all corrupt. But I am a firm believer in doing what God calls us to do. I want to teach my kids to change the world. Today I stepped WAY out of my comfort zone. The highlight of my day was my conversation with our local representative, David Zimmerman. 

1. His chief of staff got so excited when she saw what we were doing. She had all kinds of questions and kept saying "we are working so hard on our end to defund planned parenthood". She wanted us to hang around until he came back from his session so we could talk to him. 

2. When we finally met him, he invited us to go up to the house floor. You can only go with an "important" person. It was such an honor.

3. David Zimmerman shared that defunding planned parenthood was a passion of his before ‪#‎defundpp‬ was the in thing. He explained to me the plan they are currently putting together to defund PP. 

4. He told us the story of his son and wife adopted their daughter from Uganda. 

5. He thanked us profusely for being an encouragement in defunding planned parenthood. (I actually felt a little guilty cause all we were doing was passing out petitions that others had done all the work on) 

6. He gave us some educational materials to watch.

I say all this to encourage you to step out... encourage those who are fighting for God's Truth in our government..

We  walked from 10:15 until almost 1 pm, handing out petitions.

My children were STARVING! We had packed a picnic lunch but it was in the car, 3 blocks from the Capital. These kids had walked and talked, handing out petitions without complaining for hours. So we stopped for Chicken Gyros!

This day was one of the most amazing of my career as a homeschool mom. It was very educational not only for the kids, but for mom!