St. Patrick's Day

Today commemorates the death of St Patrick. His life is a testimony of love for our enemies. Kidnapped from his home just before his 16th birthday and sold as a slave, he lived among the Druids in Ireland for six years. It was during this time that he repented and turned to Christ. At 22 he received a message from the Lord that he would return home. He traveled 200 miles on foot to the coast where he found the boat that would take him home. Food was scarce and eventually ran out. The captain challenged Patrick to pray to his God for food. Patrick gladly obliged and God miraculously provided in abundance. After 2 years, Patrick safely arrived home. He did not forget God, but studied to become a bishop and priest. God, however, was preparing him for something else. Patrick was called by God to do the unthinkable--to return to the land of his captivity and preach the gospel. Despite opposition from church and family, he returned to Ireland and spent the rest of his life preaching the gospel to the Druids. As a result, many souls were saved.

As we celebrate this St. Patrick's day, remember St. Patrick's life, his love for the lost, even his enemies, and follow his example.

To learn more about St. Patrick's life you can read his autobiography, The Confession of Saint Patrick, or The Story of St. Patrick (for children).

Photo Credit

Living Waters

Saturday was a very busy day. Dad woke bright and early to meet the men from house church for breakfast then took Pierce to play practice. Afterwards, our entire house church met at the Transformed conference by Living Waters. We have been watching their training videos at home, but it was great to be there with our entire church. Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron do such a great job teaching Christians how to share the gospel in the same way that Jesus did and cutting through all of the pitiful excuses we make for not doing so. For more information, click on the Living waters link on the sidebar. Pray that we will be bold in love.

Celtic Festival

Friday our homeschool group took a field trip to a Celtic Festival in Sonora, CA. Dad took the day off and we headed out at 6 AM for the long drive. It was a cold morning, but nice. There was lots of pottery, jewelry, clothing booths (the girls' favorites) and weapons booths (the boys' favorites). Actually, the swords and knives were quite beautiful! One in particular had an antler handle and was gorgeous! Everyone's favorite though was the bagpipe music and singing. It made us just want to dance! We even brought home a couple of CD's to enjoy at home.

Thomas and Pierce put on a couple of pieces of chain mail that weighed 31 lbs. It made them realize how strong soldiers must have been to wear all that chain mail and armor. Lauren was really excited to see a live American Kestrel. All of the boys enjoyed learning how to load a cannon. Just before noon it began to pour. After eating lunch under a pavilion, we watched a jousting match (staged, but still kind of fun), then headed home.

Snow Trip

On Saturday Thomas and I (Lauren) went with our friends, the

Lebers, to Lake Tahoe to go sledding. After waking up at 3:30am and leaving at 5:00am we were on our way! After the sun rose we began passing by numerous orchards and herds of sheep and cattle. We drove by a group of people on horseback herding some cows along the road.

They were using three small dogs to keep the cows going in the right direction.

Several more hours of driving brought us to see scattered snow on the ground. Farther on there was more and more snow until there was at least two feet of snow piled on top of the roofs of houses.

The Leber kids were thrilled! We stopped at the top of a large hill which we could sled on. We had planned for Thomas and I to babysit David, Neveah, and John while Mr. and Mrs. Leber were skiing. Mr. and Mrs. Leber were about to leave when Nevaeh went down the hill alone, head first, straight into someone walking up the slope. She ended up getting a bump on her head almost the size of a golf ball. Mr. and Mrs. Leber decided to stay and sled with us. After tiring of sledding we all built an igloo. It was strong enough to hold Thomas on top of it and big enough for Mr. Leber, David, Nevaeh, John, Thomas and I to fit into! The heat coming from our bodies made the inside of the igloo start

dripping icy water onto us.

We left Tahoe in the afternoon and got home exhausted.

We enjoyed the trip!

Lauren

How to Get Objects Out of Noses!

Even though this happened a few weeks ago, I thought it was worth a post.

With seven children, it's amazing that we've only had objects up noses 3 times so far. We've found that the easiest way to remove them is to block the unobstructed nostril and have the child blow. It will then be low enough to be pulled out. But what do you do when the child doesn't know how to blow his nose? This took us a good 3 hours to figure out. Stephen put a large bead of Zoe's up his nose, and couldn't blow. I tried playing a game where the kids tried to blow out a candle with their noses. It didn't work. Finally, Dad came up with this idea: blow in the mouth like doing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. It should work like blowing his nose for him. It worked! Another costly doctor visit avoided.

BTW, Stanford Children's Hospital has a display of objects that have removed from noses and other orifices.

Nature Outing

Twice a month, we go on a nature outing with a group of other homeschoolers. There are so many great places to go around here! We look forward to these as the highlight of our month. We get out in the great outdoors to play, to fellowship with other homeschooling families, and to spend time with families who are considering homeschooling, of which there seems to be a surge right now. When Lauren was 3 we got involved with a homeschool group and just began listening and learning. It's good to be an encouragement and help to others now that we're the experienced ones. Usually the outings start out with an organized game, then free play. The boys' usually like to build forts, while the girls enjoy finding fish, flowers, and unusual insects. Everyone comes home filthy and thoroughly exhausted!