We played in the snow today.  Today I found a collectable (that's something you find)  I found it in the snow.  And I used it in Daddy's shelter from snowballs.  I put it in the very top.  I called it Point Rock, cause it had a point at the very top.


I threw snow at the basement door outside, because I thought it would be fun. I also built a snowman, but I accidently knocked it down.  It didn't even have the head on it yet.  Later after that work, Daddy and Ruth and a little bit Rebecca helped build the snowman. He got home before dark today.


Then we had hot cocoa.  It was so good.  Now we are in the house and typing to you.  Today was pretty good.  So how was your day?  Good?

Happy 6th Birthday, Britty Boy!

I don't know where to start with your letter this year.  Daddy told me just to take that first part and write it in really big font so that it looked bigger and hit print.  You Daddy isn't much for meaningful words.  You certainly never seem to lack for something to say though.  Everyone will tell you that you got that from me, but I have no idea what they are talking about.  (smile)

Monday night, after I tucked you in, you asked me to stay and cuddle and talk to you a little bit.  I don't give in often enough, but I did that night.  We laid there and talked about an hour.  You had questions about the natural man and the spiritual man.  You asked why we can't hear them in your heart with our ears.  You wanted me to explain how can you hear them with your heart.  You wanted to know, how to remember to listen to the Holy Spirit even though you are angry and mad, instead of doing what that bad man wants.  You asked about Nate and Brooke and Janie and Christopher and if they were doing better.  Then you wanted to know how Iron Man's Arc Reactor works.  You wanted to know how me and Daddy knew where not to go so that you wouldn't get shrapnel in your heart like Iron Man.  You asked why your natural man doesn't want to kill people, but other people's natural man does.

You are always an endless font of questions, but since the sermon on Sunday on temptation you really have been inquisitive.  You listened, and nodded and even answered Bro. Jonathan a few times.  It's the first time I've seen you really pay attention for the whole time.  We've talked alot this year, trying to teach you how to control your attitude.  I have learned to reign my own in as a result.  We have been learning together.  This part of your growth is more endearing and precious than watching you learn to walk or feed yourself.  One of the things your Daddy and I most hope to convey to you and your sisters is our love for the Church.  We can't born you again, and we can't give you a love for the Old Baptist Church even after you have been born again, but we hope you never doubt our sincere, deep abiding devote to the Lord and His people.


Your love for learning is also something about this age that I just adore.  You are really enjoying homeschooling, and I enjoy the privilege of watching as you discover the world.  At times it is teaching me greater patience (cause Lord knows I don't have much), we have the greatest trouble over your abysmal writing skills, both letters and numbers.  What keeps you going is know that one day you will be even neater than Unca Benji and you can't wait.  You are just beginning to blend words, and I'm about to start adding in some sight word, so that you can do some more independent reading.  What we both enjoy most though is science.  I'm still structuring all of our science around your interest and using everything the library can get in.  This year you chose to learn everything about every animal.  That order was a little too large for one school year.  But, we have been doing biology and ecology, by studying each of the earth's biomes and some of the plants and animals in each one.  It is unbelievable to me what you retain.

You have become so sociable in the last year as well.  About this time last year, I carried you to a small co-op for the first time, and we couldn't keep you in class.  You were panicked to be with me or Ruth.  But before Christmas that co-op and a second much larger one finished up, and you had made so many friends, were so confident, and couldn't wait to tell me bye and go to class.  We are taking a break right now, but you can't wait to make new friends playing ball.  We missed the sign ups for baseball last year, but got you sign up for t-ball last week for the coming season.  Daddy is especially eager to see if you love it as much as he did, and how much you learn.  You aren't that coordinated yet, in my opinion, so we'll see how it goes.

I was terribly upset this year to lose all our old videos.  One True Media went out of business and when I found out that they were closing up shop, it was too late to order our videos.  I managed to save some, but can't reconstruct most of them, because I found the original files had become corrupted and I have very little of that video.  I've started making our own new videos.  It was fun to again pour over old pictures and try to find video.  It is so hard to believe that you are now six, I still feel like a kid myself sometimes, and yet it's hard to remember our lives before you kids.

Momma and Daddy love you so much little boy more than you know,
Love,
Momma

It's January again, another year has seemingly flown by.  Looking over the last year it was a good but busy one.  I started thinking about if I wanted to make resolutions a couple of weeks ago or not, and decided I was going to at least set some goals.  I mean if we should always try to grow and improve then how can we tell if we've gotten any better unless we evaluate and goal set?

So first I flipped back to last year's resolutions, to see how I did.  I wanted to pay down debt and we paid off $26,153.79 though I'm going to say that about $4000 of that was plane flights so I'm not going to count that.  I also decided to try to yell less, I don't feel like I did very good in this area.  Gary tells me that I'm very patient with the kids, and that my expectations are not unrealistic.  But, I don't feel like I have as good a handle on this parenting thing as I would like a year later.  I set the goal of attending a homeschool convention, and meet some more people and dive more into the homeschooling world.  I did all of those things, infact we did so much of it, that we are scaling back a bit this year.  The fourth goal I listed last year was to read the Bible all the way through with the kids on the schedule our Church family was using.  We read almost every day together, with the exception of the month the kids were gone to AL and FL.  That put us behind.  We nearly caught up reading everything but the tail end of the Old Testament.  The conversations with the kids were a hoot.  The final thing I wanted to do was take some time for me to do something crafty.  I can't spend too much time doing things I just feel like doing because I ended up neglecting other responsibilities, but I get a ridiculous martyr complex when I am the ONLY one cleaning, and the ONLY doing school work, and the ONLY one breaking up arguments, and don't do anything just fun for me.  I still didn't get the scrapbooks caught up, and I didn't blog as much as I would have liked.  But, I did spend alot of time in the flower beds this spring and summer and fall which was something just for me. I also, have started doing a little decorating in my planner, which isn't as good as real scrapbooking, but it is cheery.

So on to this year's resolutions...

• Here's my biggest one.  I want to be debt free with the exception of our student loans by the end of this year.  It's going to be a tough goal, but we've already made plans to see that it happens.  First of all, there will be no trips this year.  Those cost a ton, and they always go on the CC because we don't have any room in the budget to budget for them.  In all honesty, that's a big Dave Ramsey no-no to keep adding new debt, even if it's only every now and then.  We have cut back on commitments for travel this year to cut down on our gas expenses, and Gary's found cheaper tv and internet so that we can cut the budget more than before.  I'm confident that we can do this, and that it will all be worth it next year.

• Continue to work on yelling less.

• In addition to managing our money better I want to find a better way to manage my time.  I don't do good on strict schedules, we've tried doing different things like Managers of the Their Homes and it just doesn't remotely work for us.  However, I want to get a handle on some things.  I want a habit of always loading Sunday's sermons on Monday for example, and having some time each week that I work on our scrapbooks.  I need a set time each week to lesson plan, to stay better on top of things.  Right now I sometimes schedule too far in advance and then have trouble making my plans work for me instead of being a slave to the schedule.