no way!

the next 10 day forecast looks amazing. thurs especially.

Thu
Aug 26

87° high
61° low

great find

I found all of these books at a garage sale on Friday. I love buying cheap books that are ones I want anyway. Our Baton Rouge pastor used Eric Liddell as an example in a sermon once so I am happy to have that one. I love the Chronicles of Narnia and therefore my kids do too. I have the whole set in one book. But, I am so excited for Streed to have these once he is really reading. Now I just have to look for the 2 missing Chronicles of Narnia books in this series so they will all match. The other 4 are on a list of "Classics" that I have not read. All these for $2.25!

just life

It seems that lately I keep hearing about kids getting tumors. And they are not benign. A former supporter and friend of Chip's from Alabama just had their 7 year old daughter diagnosed last week. Almost the same day a lady from my bible study here emailed about a 5 year old boy with a brain tumor. Of course we are and have been praying for little Noah, Donna's nephew. He is almost 7. It is scary and beyond sad. I am grateful for healthy children but know that that could change in a matter of minutes.

This is our temporary home. But what's hard is that we love hard while we are here. We are called to, but we also just do. We are relational beings, created by a relational being. So, life is hard. It gets harder the older we get. Problems get bigger and often are unavoidable or fixable. It's not supposed to be easy here though. I think I posted about this once before. We are to long for heaven, and that's hard to do when this life is so grand. And although we KNOW it is not, we often forget. Until real life kicks in for us or someone we know.

Please read Noah's blog if you do not already. It can be heart-wrenching. But, The Larkin family (all of them) need lifting up. They are tired. Pray that in their weakness HE will be their strength.

Homeschool example

I have been meaning to post this. This is week one page one of Streed's school book. The page is the "weekly wisdom" for all elementary school kids at his co-op. The K4 and K5 do not learn grammar, math, art or composer there. They are exposed to it at the assembly on Mondays but we do not have to review it during the week. I am amazed at what all they are learning and will learn this year. Their bible verse is not always the same as the older kids. Last week it was Jeremiah 33:3. The timeline is set to a song, which is helpful. Everything else is straight memory. They will learn part 3 of The Lady of Shallot this semester and Hamlet's Soliloquy "to be or not to be" next semester. And after all this I am teaching him phonics (Phonics Pathways) and math (Saxon Math).

There is a book called Story of the World by Susan Bauer (The Well-Trained Mind) that correlates to the history fact. I bought it even though he does not really need it this year. It is nice to be able to learn more about the person than just a few line synopsis. We have also checked out a few books from the library that go along with the science and/or history fact.

So, this is basically what we do. Gotta clean up from lunch, get Nate down and hit the books.

could it be?

The native Arkansans swear the weather cools down in September. I have never lived anywhere where this was the case. Although it feels like the lazy days of summer,

the leaves are beginning to change and fall.

A-R-K

Remember when we were kids and each state had a three letter abbreviation?
I am assuming Arkansas' was Ark.
AND I am pretty sure it stands for:
A = a lot of
R = road
K = kill

I am not kidding. Almost every outing I spy road kill. And it is not just on my treks to our new house. It is in Little Rock too. I have seen way more in Little Rock than I care to.

This is not normally what I mean but this was too funny. We were driving to the house yesterday on the interstate when I spotted this. I said, "Is that what I think it is?" Chip initially thought I was not real bright and said it was a stick. Upon further staring we realized it was in fact ROAD KILL!!! Humor me: it was on the road and it had in fact been killed! :)

Zoo Day

The zoo loured us outdoors yesterday with special incentives for members. We braved the heat with the excitement of unlimited carousel and train rides as well as a free juice at each concession stand and a hot dog meal per person in the cold cafe. Streed was our tour guide, Nate chilled in the stroller and Ella chugged the free juice (aka: sugar water). It was warm, but you really can feel a difference between 94 degrees and 106 degrees. It was actually bearable compared to the ridiculous heat of last week. We had a great time and saw some neat animals. The huge friendly bear (behind super thick glass) and the giraffe were my favorites. I think the kids favorite was the carousel.

moving right along

We now have a yard and flower beds. It is nice to see but I wish it wasn't done so early. We are about 5 weeks out from closing and are now having to spend the time and energy to make sure it all does not die in this crazy heat. It really is our builders responsibility I guess but her husband had a pretty serious injury yesterday so we are handling this for her. After the kids naps today we will head down to the house, water the grass and let them run in the sprinklers.

All the rooms are painted and the cabinets are in. The countertops are getting fabricated this week. The flooring also is scheduled to start going in at the end of this week. I picked out the accent tiles for our shower and I am super excited about how it is all coming together.

We love our drive to the house. Depending on which exit we take we get to see a different set of horses. Here is my favorite route.

K5 here we come

I did not get a great picture of Streed on his first day of school. Believe it or not we were running late :) Not terribly late, we just wanted to be early. But here he is with his backpack and lunch bag.
I did not get much info out of him on how his co-op went so I was interested to see what he learned when we started on Tuesday. I asked if he knew about "The Lady of Shallot?" The are learning part 3 of Lord Alfred Tennyson's The Lady of Shallot. He said No. So I started quoting it. He jumped in and said, "Oh is that about the barley-sheaves?" He knew it already after one day. It goes, A bow-shot from her bower-eaves; He rode between the barley-sheaves... It is his favorite thing to say.

Here we are on day 1. Streed, Ella and I "do school" while Nate is sleeping. It works out perfectly for us. We do our normal morning routine which consists of whatever errands or fun things need to be done. Then we eat lunch, put Nate down and head to the table. By day 3 they were really tired. So, we took Friday off and have reviewed throughout the weekend.
I do not know what is so funny. As you can see her shirt says laugh. She hangs with us for a little while, answers most of Streed's questions and then she heads off to play computer games. She is my verbal learner. She picks up on things really quickly. Streed is going to be more visual. I think it will get easier for him once he can read. But he is really doing great.

small town--in all its glory

Last weekend the kids and I went with Chip to Northwest Arkansas for a work event. A volunteer department was having a festival as a fundraiser for their department.
I had no idea what to expect. I thought we were going to an indoor conference. I thought we would be there for a little while and then go do something fun in that part of the state like go on a little hike or something. I was delusional. 1) it was an outdoor festival; 2) we would not leave early; 3) who wants to go on a hike in July in the south? We got to the hotel on Friday night around 8. We had promised the kids they could swim in the indoor pool. We finally got everyone in bed around 10pm. The next morning we had donuts and headed to the festival around 10am on Saturday. It was HOT!!! There was a good bit of things to do for kids but they still got bored mid-day as they were now hot AND tired.
About this time the tune shifted. A 75ft aerial was extended over the streets of this sleepy downtown. Since we were first-timers to the "Centerton Days", we did not know what was going to happen next. Suddenly water was pumped from that truck onto the street offering much fun and relief from the heat and boredom.
For 5 hours Chip judged a competition between several departments. It was called a "firemen's muster". Some of the time he was judging he had a little help from one of his friends.

This is an example of one of the competitions. A hose was pumped full of water. The guys had to wrestle it, get it under control and fill up a 55 gallon drum with it. Actually the firefighter you see here is a woman, a tough woman.

Passing the time.

Even the firemen were getting tired by this time. I think Ella actually took this picture. It was pushing 8:00pm by this time. I guess they should be tired. They were working hard in full gear.

I took this picture and then sent a text to a friend saying: "I feel like I am in a movie. I am in a country downtown festival and a band is playing Sweet Home Alabama in the background."
We left at 8:45pm. Swung through Chick-fil-A for DINNER! And made it home to the apt by midnight. YeeHaw!