Saturday, September 29, 2012

It's a what?! :)

After Caleb was born, my husband and I didn’t know if we wanted to have any more children…and definitely not right away.  God had other plans…  In September 2005, Mark Jr. was just a little over 2 years old, and Caleb just a little over a year old.  I was BUSY all of the time.  Two little boys in the house kept me on my toes constantly!  I had a feeling that I was pregnant, but refused to get a pregnancy test.  Finally, I broke down and bought one.  I took the test one morning, and it came out positive.  I cried, told my husband, cried some more…   I was really worried…how could we add another baby to the mix?  I seemed to be so worn out already, and finances were tight.  More diapers, more bottles, more of EVERYTHING.  How would we handle it?!?!  So, I convinced myself and my husband that it was a false positive.  I had never in my life MADE myself believe something so much…  I guess I was trying to make it so.  I had a LOT of morning sickness, and just told myself that it was cold/allergy type stuff.  I had morning sickness EVERY morning!!  I had never experienced that in either of my previous pregnancies.  In October 2005, we moved from Tennessee to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.  Once we were here, I remember feeling something in my stomach.  I knew what it felt like when the baby moved for the first time because I had two previous pregnancies.  I KNEW that was the first movements of this child, but I denied that as well.  I just told myself that it must have been something that I ate!  Anyway, I finally decided to take another pregnancy test.  It came out positive again...as if I was expecting anything different!  I decided that I needed to find an OBGYN in the area and stop this denial.  Funny thing is that no one suspected that I was pregnant.  I had started walking A LOT when I got to the beach, and lost weight…which wasn’t a problem since I NEEDED to lose some anyway!  I saw the OBGYN and got the prenatal care that I needed…she was pleased with how the baby was developing even though I had no prenatal care for the past five months that I had been pregnant.  The due date for the baby was March 1st.  I wanted to know this time if it was a boy or a girl, but my husband didn’t…so we did not find out.

We didn’t have many ultrasounds, but one of the latter ones was very interesting.  The ultrasound technician was looking at the baby’s feet.  She kept looking at them, and had a confused look on her face.  I had been looking as well, and thought that I was counting 12 little toes instead of 10!  I was born with 12 toes and 12 fingers.  I had fingers and toes that were fused together.  This is referred to in the  medical community as polysyndactyly.  I inherited this from my dad…so we knew that it was genetic.  We had it in the forefront of our minds when Mark Jr. was born…but his “digits” were all “perfect.”  We didn’t think about it as much with Caleb, and he came out with all of his “digits” in “perfect” order.  So, this hadn’t been something that we had really thought about when we found out that I was pregnant this time.  I asked, “Does the baby have more than 10 toes?”  The ultrasound tech didn’t want to tell me anything…”Well, I can’t really say anything until the doctor sees it, but I THINK it might!”   I said, “If it does, it’s okay.  I had extra toes and extra fingers when I was born…and some of them were fused together.  We knew that it was a possibility with all of our children.”  She then wanted to look at the hands, but the baby had its hands in fists, so we couldn’t tell….   The doctor talked with me a little bit about it, but it was mostly not a thing to concern ourselves with since nothing could be done until after the baby was born anyway.

March 1, 2006 came and went…and the baby was still snug as a bug in my tummy.  March 2nd, 3rd, 4th  REALLY?!  Extra days felt like extra MONTHS at eight months pregnant!  My doctor had given me papers to begin inducing me on Monday, March 6th if nothing happened before then…  Saturday, March 4th…I was getting ready to go to bed.  I told my husband that my stomach was cramping, and that sometimes that is a sign that the baby is about to come!  (By this time, EVERYTHING was a sign!)  So, Sunday morning, I woke up to get ready for church…my stomach was STILL cramping…but I got up to take a shower.  I started having contractions in the shower…but I had done all of this before, so I kept on taking my shower…washed my hair…dried off…blow-dried my hair…got dressed…got Mark Jr. and Caleb dressed…and we were out the door, headed to church, with me huffing and puffing through the contractions!  They got closer and closer together as we were heading to church.  By the time we got there, they were 5 minutes apart.  I walked in the door, and my mother-in-law said, “I think this is IT!”  My sisters-in-law both comforted me…and tried to help as much as they could.  My father-in-law ended up cancelling church…one sister-in-law took Mark Jr., the other took Caleb, my mother-in-law and father-in-law headed out the door to drive to the hospital, and my husband and I got back in our car to lead the way.  We got to the hospital, and the nurses took me a room for observation…which means that I had to lie down.  I laid there for about 5 minutes, and the contractions stopped, and didn’t start back up!  The nurses said that I needed to get up and walk to get the contractions to start again.  So, I walked…all day long!  No consistent contractions started anymore that day! The doctor finally told me that I could only walk so much…and that she was going to start a Pitocin drip to get the progress to move along.  Once she started the Pitocin drip, labor began no more than an hour later. 

My water had to be broken, but once it was…there was no stopping.  My baby was born very soon afterward!  I laid there, waiting, and finally heard one person say, “It’s a girl!”  Then another say, “It’s a girl!”  Amid all of this, I heard my baby cry.  Mark Jr. did not cry when he was born…he simply looked around…no crying at all.  Caleb couldn’t cry…only grunt.  So, this was the first time I had heard that first cry of MY newborn baby.  All of this, on top of  a really tiring day, I just began weeping, crying, and shouting, “Thank you, Jesus!” at the top of my lungs!  I kept trying to stop, but I couldn’t.  I apologized to the others in the room…telling them, “I’m sorry…I just can’t stop!”  I was happy…happy that it was over, happy that I had heard that cry, and happy that I had a baby GIRL!  We named her Sarah Grace…the girl name that we had picked out since 2003, but hadn’t been able to use…until NOW!  Sarah was a very healthy 8 lb, 2.5 oz. girl.

Sarah did have 6 toes on each foot…and they were all fused together except for one.  She had 5 fingers on each hand, but all four of her fingers were fused together…so that her hand looked like a mitten.  Our pediatrician sent us to an orthopedic surgeon, who in turn sent us to the Shriner Hospital.  Sarah had to have a series of four surgeries to correct all of the “problems” with her fingers and toes.  Her first surgeries were for one hand and the opposite foot…and then the last two were just for her hands.  She had to wear casts during healing so that she wouldn’t pick at the stitches.  They said that was the best way that they had found for little ones to not pick at their stitches. 

This is Sarah following one of the surgeries…


And this is Sarah now…
She is our princess!  She loves to dress up and play all kinds of very “girly” stuff.  She can get “rough and tumble” with her brothers, but for the most part, she likes to stay in her room and play with her doll house, her school house, and her play kitchen.  She is 6 years old, and LOVES school!  Her favorite colors are pink and purple!  She says that when she grows up, she wants to be a Mommy!  (That makes my heart smile!)

2 + 2 more...equals a family of four!

A few months after Mark Jr. was born, I found out that I was pregnant again! This pregnancy was very “easy.” Just like with Mark Jr., I wasn’t sick much at all. I went to the same midwife that I’d gone to with Mark Jr., and everything was measuring right, and I was gaining the right amount of weight, and basically following all of the steps to have a healthy pregnancy. Fortunately, I didn’t have to deal with a cyst like I did with Mark Jr., so the pregnancy proceeded as normal. Baby #2 was due on July 21…only 3 days after MY birthday!

Regular visits to the midwife were all going well. She scheduled a checkup on July 17…4 days before the due date, and the day before my 26th birthday. My husband decided that since we were going out for the checkup, that he’d take me to my favorite restuarant after the checkup for a birthday dinner. We saw the midwife for the checkup, and she seemed to think that something could happen THAT DAY, but the baby’s head still was not down… So, she told me to go ahead and do my birthday dinner, go walk around at Wal-Mart for a while, and then come back, and see where we were afer that… We did as she said…went out for my birthday dinner. It was DELICIOUS….but only a few minutes after I finished eating it, I felt very nauseous. I ended up “losing” all of my wonderful dinner… As soon as I could, I called the midwife and told her what happened…and that I didn’t really feel up to walking around at Wal-Mart then. She instructed us to get to her house as soon as we could…she thought that the baby was definitely coming THAT night!!!

We called family who wanted to be present for the birth on the way back to the midwife’s house…and almost as soon as I got back there, I started contracting. Things were going well, but the baby’s head still was not down. Some family members showed up not too long after that, and I continued to labor. My water broke…but the baby’s head was still not down! The midwfie monitored the baby’s heartbeat throughout the labor. After one particular contraction, she said that there had been a decrease in the baby’s heartbeat, so we had to get the baby out fast! She was able to push the baby’s head into the right place, but it seemed that as soon as she did, the baby would turn again. Long story short, she ended up getting the head in the birth canal, and I ended up pushing harder that I EVER did with Mark Jr. to get the baby out as soon as we could! In the midst of all of this, the clock struck midnight…it was my birthday…people began singing “Happy Birthday” to me as I was in labor! People began encouraging me by telling me, “Your baby is going to be born on your birthday!” My birthday gift from God!

IT’S A BOY!!! As I looked down at my baby, being cleaned up, I saw how beautiful he was….strawberry blonde hair, blue sparkling eyes…I began to sob! As my sister-in-law asked me what was wrong, why I was crying, I said, “Look how beautiful my baby is!” A name at this point was no problem because we had a boy name that we hadn’t used for our first child…so, “Caleb” was born! The only thing is that I didn’t hear him crying…at all! He was grunting. The midwife immediately got the oxygen mask and gave him oxygen. They worked on him with this and other techniques for about an hour, and he still was not breathing well. The family decided to take him to a nearby hospital. I got to hold him for about 30 seconds before he was taken off to the hospital. I wanted more than anything to be with him… I told the other midwife who had been present for the birth that I wanted to go to the hospital to be with my baby. She said that I could on two conditions…that I could get up and take a shower…and that I ate something. I got up, took a shower, while my sister-in-law made me some breakfast foods….scrambled eggs and toast… I ate the food…and asked again to be taken to the hospital to see my baby.

The assisting midwife drove me to the hospital, explaining to me that he would have tubes and things hooked up to him and to not overreact…everything would be okay. I was calm…I just wanted to see my baby. As we arrived at the hospital, I had to go through all of the steps to even get back to the NICU where my Caleb was now being treated. When I had “prepped” myself, I walked into the room, filled with incubators with tiny babies, and others in cribs that were hooked up to tubes and machines monitoring all of their “vitals.” As I walked in, with my husband, who had been in the NICU already visiting our baby boy, a nurse stopped me, and said, “Who are you?” I said, “I am Caleb’s mom.” She said, “No, you aren’t.” I said, “Yes, ma’am, I am.” She said, “That baby is only a few hours old. There is no way that you look like this and are up a few hours after giving birth!” I assured her, and my husband did as well, that Caleb was my baby…I told her that I was determined to see him, and that since his birth, I had taken a shower, changed clothes, and had breakfast. She just looked at me as if I were an alien from another planet, but then allowed us to see our baby. I could have been knocked over with a feather as I saw that beautiful baby with things stuck all over him, and tubes in his nose and mouth. I was happy to be near him though. I talked to him, and held his hand…which was all that I could do at that point.

The doctors did not know what was wrong with Caleb at first.  They were almost certain that he wasn't a full term baby, even after I told them several times that he was. They did an x-ray and found out that his lungs had not fully developed. There was nothing that I could have done to change that…nothing that really happened to make it that way…just that some babies’ lungs don’t fully develop when they are in the womb. He had good days, and bad days…and so did my husband and I…we cried and longed to hold our baby. Our first child, who was only 13 months old at this time, was being watched by family. Someone brought him to see us…so that was some comfort. My father-in-law is a pastor. One day, he and my husband went in to see Caleb together. They each held one of Caleb’s hands, and held each other’s hands….making a circle, and prayed over him. The next day, the doctor’s told us that they weren’t sure what happened, but that Caleb was doing great, and could be released tomorrow if all continued to go as it had been for the past few hours. The doctor’s didn’t know what happened, but we did… The Lord had touched Caleb and healed him! We were able to go home the next day. He spent 8 days in NICU.

I will never forget when big brother first saw little brother. He said, “Baby,” and looked at him all of the time. He was already so gentle…touching him with little touches, rubbing his hands, just looking and watching him constantly. At home, when it was Caleb’s nap time, Mark didn’t want him to go to sleep…because he couldn’t see him, and he didn’t have anyone to “watch out” for…so, he would yell, “Bubba!” over and over…trying to keep him awake! They were precious together though… Caleb was a very laid back baby…very different from his brother… He was content, but cried more than Mark Jr. did. Mark Jr. always found ways to entertain himself…Caleb wanted to be entertained and just lay back and watch…but if he didn’t have something or someone to watch, he wasn’t happy!

Caleb is now 8 years old. He has blonde hair and blue eyes, and is still a beautiful boy. He warms my heart. He loves to cuddle and just sit with me and his daddy. His favorite color is blue… He does well in school…and seems to excel in math. His lungs haven’t given him any more problems, and his checkups since birth have all been great… “His lungs sound wonderful” we were told at all of his early checkups. Praise the Lord for what He did with my Caleb! He is a joy in our lives! He loves macaroni and cheese, and pizza…but the best part is a local pizzeria that combine the two…YES, macaroni and cheese pizza…. You should see those blue eyes light up when he sees that! He had been saying for a long time that he wanted to be a policeman when he grew up…but about a year ago, he looked at me and said, “But if I am a policeman, I might have to shoot someone.” He decided that he doesn’t know anymore what he wants to be, because he doesn’t want to have to shoot anyone, even a “bad guy.” If someone asks him what he wants to be when he grows up, he said, “God hasn’t told me yet.”  He does have some idea that he wants to be a pizza delivery man...because he wants to get free pizza!  ;) 

Sunday, September 23, 2012

...and then came baby!

Now that I have told you about my husband and my reason for homeschooling, I will tell you about our children…beginning with our first-born.

About three months after we were married, we found out that I was pregnant! We were very excited and nervous at the same time. We were thinking of names and had decided that we wanted to be surprised as to whether we were having a boy or a girl. Pretty quickly, we came up with “Sarah” for a girl, but couldn’t think of a boy name. Everything I liked, he didn’t…everything he liked, I didn’t… One night, as we were in church, my father-in-law (our pastor) preached about Caleb and Joshua. As he was preaching, I was thinking in the back of my mind…”I like the name Caleb.” When we got back to our house, my husband said, “You know, I like the name Caleb.” We finally agreed! Then, a few months later, he decided that he’d like to name his first born boy after him, so we changed from “Caleb” to “Mark Jr.”
Soon after, we saw a midwife that had been a long time friend of my husband’s family. The pregnancy was actually a very “easy” one for the first few months. I rarely got sick…I can only remember one time! As the pregnancy progressed, I was measuring bigger than I should have, but I hadn’t gained that much weight since the beginning of the pregnancy…so, the midwife thought that I could be pregnant with twins, but she was never able to hear more than one heartbeat. So, she sent me in for an ultrasound.

The ultrasound technician started the ultrasound. As she moved over my stomach, she started asking me questions with a confused look on her face. “Have you emptied your bladder?” “Yes, ma’am. Just before I got here.” “Do you feel like you need to go again?” “No, ma’am.” “Alright, we are going to schedule a visit for you to see the high-risk pregnancy doctor. I think you have a cyst on your ovary. Everything is okay. The baby looks great…but I just need the doctor to check on the cyst.” I could have been knocked over with a feather at that point. I didn’t understand. I saw that one side of my belly was all black…and on the other side, I saw my little baby. I made an appointment to see the doctor the following week.
What a long week it was! Waiting, wondering, trying to figure out what would happen. This was my first pregnancy, so I had very little knowledge about the whole “process” of things anyway. The day of my appointment finally arrives.  The doctor does an ultrasound as well, and explains things a little more in depth. “You have a LARGE ovarian cyst. We have to remove it because it is so large that the baby will eventually not have enough room to grow in there. We will schedule you for surgery.” And I thought that last week was a shocker! Not only am I pregnant for the first time ever, a newlywed (my husband and I had been married less than a year when all of this started), but now I am going to have to have MAJOR surgery. They have to cut my belly open and remove a cyst while there is a living baby inside there. For a long time, I was in shock. I didn’t say much…I didn’t react much…I just knew that it was going to be very different from everything that I imagined for my first pregnancy. Surgery was scheduled for mid-April…my baby would be at 28 weeks gestation when the surgery was performed.

The day of the surgery came…  I was admitted at the hospital…and my husband stayed by my side until he could no longer… My in-laws prayed with and for me and the baby before we went into the operating room. My husband was able to pray with me and our doctor before the doctor and I went into the operating room. I remember little from that point on.  I know that I was put to sleep, and then I woke in the recovery room. The nurse came over and said, “You finally decided to wake up, huh?” I didn’t care how long I'd been asleep because of the intenses pain that I was feeling. The nurse said, “How are you feeling? Are you hurting.” I said, “Yes.” She asked me on a scale of 1 to 10, and I told her that it was a “10.” My stomach was hurting worse than any pain I’d ever felt! She got some morphine for me, but the pain never really subsided. It was lessened, a little, but not anywhere near me feeling “okay.”
Soon, they moved me into a “regular” room. No one was there. I was so excited to be able to see my husband…but I waited and waited. The nurse came in about an hour later and said, “Can I get you anything?” I said, “My husband. I don’t know where he is…and I really want to see him.” She said, “I will see what I can do.” A few minutes later, he showed up. He apologized and said that he and his parents were in the cafeteria eating lunch…that the nurses had assured him that they would call him when I was out of recovery, but he never got a call until just a few minutes ago. The pain was still horrible, but having them there helped me to feel more “safe” and “comfortable.” The nurses kept checking on me…eventually putting in a morphine drip…”Just press this button whenever you are hurting, and it will give you another dose of the morphine.” Being me, I never pushed the button. I was worried that my baby would get too much pain medicine. I was worried that I would get too much of it. I didn’t want to push it. So, the nurse came back in…I was still in pain. She asked me if I had pushed the button, and I told her that I hadn’t. She picked it up and pushed it three times! She said, “I am serious. Push this when you are hurting.” I think I might have pushed it one more time before they discharged me. Also, the doctor came in and told me that the cyst was a large one….they had taken five and a half liters of fluid out of it. Before we left, we asked the nurses to bring in a set of scales. Since we had been monitoring my weight gain during the pregnancy, we knew what I weighed when I came in for the surgery. After the surgery, I was 15 pounds lighter! I had been carrying around a 15 pound cyst….they said, “for no telling how long.” Amid all of the pain, I also started contracting. The baby was not responding well to staying in there after my stomach had been so “invaded.” So, they gave me medication to stop the contractions and also constantly monitored the contractions and the baby’s heartbeat.

My mother-in-law and husband took care of me for a long time. I couldn’t walk when I came out of the hospital. I could barely do anything! It was terrible. I had to have help with showering, help with using the bathroom…everything. I couldn’t be shy…and this lady had only been my mother-in-law for less than one year. Talk about bonding! LOL! So, I finally get to the point where I can take care of myself…things are going well. I still have to take meds every day to make sure that the contractions don’t start again. So, one typical day, I was at my house. I started feeling weak. I felt like I had a fever. Instead of taking my temperature, I laid down and took a nap. When I woke up, I was sure I was sick. I went over and got the thermometer. My temperature was 101.7. I called my mother-in-law, who lived just up the road. I told her what had been happening. She came and picked me up and took me to her house. She got on the phone with the high-risk pregnancy doctor who had done the surgery. They said to call back in about an hour to let them know how I was doing. My sisters-in-law began wiping me down with cloths soaked in cold water. They also moved a fan to blow directly on me. My mother-in-law took my temperature again. It was over 103. She called the doctor back. They said, “Get her here as quickly as possible.” I went back in, and turned out that I had a kidney infection. I had to stay in the hospital for two days for that…until they got the infection under control and my temperature down to normal. So, I was again discharged from the hospital.

Not too long afterward, I started having contractions…very regularly. So, we went back to the hospital. They began monitoring me, but the contractions stopped on their own. The high-risk pregnancy doctor asked me if I was still wanting to have this baby at home with the midwife. I said that I did. He said, “If you can go to 37 weeks, I will be okay with you having it at home.” At this point, we were at about 33-34 weeks. So, the midwife suggested that we stay in a home next door to hers…that she owned, but no one was living in at that time. So, we did…instead of driving over an hour to the hospital and back every few weeks. I made it to 37 weeks! The next day, contractions started…my mother-in-law was with me. She was timing the contractions…as they came closer and closer together, she called the midwife… Then she called my husband and her husband. Everyone started making their way to the midwife’s house. By 10:10 that night, I had my baby! Mark Jr. was 5 lbs, 5 oz….a very little guy! So little in fact, that pushing him out was less difficult than I expected…I was in shock. My mind was saying, “Is that it? That wasn’t so bad. Is he really out?!” I never said anything…I just sat there…silent. The midwife kept us there for about a week to make sure that baby and mommy were okay. Then, we were on our way home…to start our new life as a family of three!
Mark Jr. is now 9 years old. His birthday is June 5. His favorite color is redHe likes to eat pizza, hamburgers, and salad (with ranch dressing). He is a blessing to his daddy and me. He is very smart…has a great memory. He enjoys reading. He is very active and loves to play sports. He enjoys going to church…and sometimes cries if he can’t go due to sickness or some other reasonable reason for missing church (which doesn’t happen often). He has a soft heart…recently crying during a commercial about pets without homes. He says that he either wants to be a fireman, a preacher, or a missonary when he grows up.

Friday, September 21, 2012

A little bit of background info...

Well, I guess I will start with the beginning because that is always a good place to start...

I am an only child.  My mother stayed home with me until I started school.  When I went to school, she went to work.  I did have to have a babysitter for the before school and after school times when she was working though.  Before I went to school, my mom “played school” with me a lot.  That was my favorite thing to play with her, and by the time I was 4 years old, I had already decided that I wanted to be a teacher when I grew up.

When I went to school, I had a great respect and love for the teachers that I came into contact with, keeping my dream of being a teacher alive…and being fed from year to year with the great teachers that I had.  Years pass and I finish high school.

With my dream of being a teacher still going strong, I went off to college to begin my 4-years of study.  The four years passed slowly while I was there, but to look back, they were very fast.  I met many great friends there, and actually grew closer in my relationship to the Lord at that time…but that is another story for another day.  Again, years pass, and I finish my collegiate studies.  I remember the day walking across the stage to get my degree.  I was so happy.  A dream that I had carried with me since I was 4 years old was finally realized.  Oh yes, I did have to get hired by a school to teach, but I had done everything that I could to put myself in a position to get that job!   Several family members and friends came to watch me graduate that day.  They will all tell you that I was smiling from ear to ear!  I couldn’t stop smiling, actually.  I sat there thinking about how long I had wanted this, and it was finally before me.  A friend told me after the graduation that he had never seen anyone smile that big before in his life!  Many people also told me that they had never known anyone to grow up to be what they wanted to be from such a young age.  Most people change their mind, or just do not pursue what they thought that they would want as a child…but I did.

My desire at that time was to get a job working for the elementary school that I attended as a child.  It was not my first interview, but it was my last!  The day I went in for the interview was the day I got the job!  I was the “new” Kindergarten teacher at Smithville Elementary School beginning August 2000.  I loved my job!  Coming out of college, my top two grades that I wanted to teach was Kindergarten or 3rd grade…so I couldn’t have asked for things to go much better.  I was able to work with some of the teachers that had taught me in grade school, and also met some teachers that I hadn’t met before.  We were all great friends, and I enjoyed working with them.  The children were great.  You know how 5 year olds are…they just LOVE you, and want to show you!  There are no words to describe how much I loved teaching those little guys and gals.  They were a blessing to me!

As I grew closer in my relationship with the Lord, I met a Christian lady who lived in a nearby town.  She had connected me and her pastor in an online group for sharing prayer requests and what the Lord was doing in our lives.  The pastor recommended that I meet his children, who were all around my age.  I did meet his children…but kept in closer contact with his son, Mark.  As our relationship developed, he expressed to me how he wanted for his wife to stay at home with the children and eventually homeschool them.  That pretty much shut me down for our relationship developing any further.  I loved my job!  This was my “dream” since I was a little child!  I told him that, and his response was always the same, “Just pray about it.”

I hope that my words have conveyed to you how much I loved to teach!  It was my “niche.”  It was where I felt like I was “in my element.”  Even on the bad days, I still wouldn’t have changed my career for ANYTHING…except a word from God!  I have told many people that it had to God that changed my heart because I was very anti-homeschooling as a public school teacher.  I wouldn’t have left my job for anything less.  As I prayed about this situation, as Mark had advised me to do, God started showing me a lot of things.  I started seeing all of the pro’s of homeschooling and all of the con’s of public school.  I started to think about what I wanted my children to learn, and what I wanted them to be passionate about…and those things were not part of the public school…and were not even accepted into the public school systems.  God showed me new things…and before long, as Mark and I continued talking, I told him that I could see myself being a stay at home mom amd homeschooling.  I told him that I had been praying about it, and God had just given me a peace and an understanding beyond what I could have found or anyone else could have shown me.

Mark and I had developed a close relationship through these conversations and several get-togethers with our familes, so this was just another piece of the puzzle that God was fitting together.  Five short months after we met, Mark asked me to marry him!  I said that I would….and we were married 3 months later.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Why blog??

Everyone blogs these days, right?!  So, why not me?  Honestly, I was never really "into" blogging.  Doesn't Facebook tell us everything that we want to know about someone?  My answer was, "Yes."  Then, in March 2012, my family took a trip...from coast to coast...we began on the East Coast...where we live...and traveled all the way to the West Coast... It was an awesome trip.  I never thought that I would be able to plan 14 days for a family of five traveling all the way across the country.  I spent a lot of time planning, and re-planning, and stressing...but when all was said and done, we had a wonderful trip.  So, I thought..."Maybe there are other families out there that would like to do something like this, and don't know where to start...like me...  I should blog about it...to help other people to have an easier time than I had."  That is where my blogging spark began.

I homeschool my three children.  I know that homeschooling is becoming more popular these days...but I also know that every family is different.  So, I also want to include homeschooling posts here as well.  In actuality, that will probably be the bulk of my postings...because it is my "job."  It's more than that, but for all intents and purposes, it is my "job."  I love my job, and wouldn't trade it for any other in the world.

I try each day to teach my children more about Jesus.  I want them to know about Him, love Him, and serve Him.  I want them to strive to be more like Him each day.  A verse that has given me comfort in those days when I wonder if anything is getting through...when I wonder if they understood a word that I just said...is Proverbs 22:6 "Train up a child in that he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it."  I take comfort in knowing that God says that I should do my best right now...train them up!  So much easier said than done, but I give it my best!

This is how I came up with the name for this blog...I would be blogging about our travel...so the word, "Destination" came to mind.  I figured that would work well with parenting, homeschooling, etc. as well...so, I thought "What is my destination as a mother?"  To train them!  Therefore, you have the name, "Destination:  Proverbs 22:6."

My next few blog posts will introduce you to those little blessings that God has given to me to train...to love...to care for...to teach...and to have lots of fun with!  I praise the Lord for these three gifts each day.