Social Media, Family Prayer and Young Adults

I am always in awe of how God provides for us.  We have always had the concord grapes at the bottom of our property and we've always enjoyed them.  We've picked them and made juice and jelly, even wine one year, but we've never taken full advantage of them the way we did this year.  That's where social media comes in....

I can't explain it really.  Perhaps I was overwhelmed with all that was on my plate, but navigating social media just felt like it was one more thing to deal with, so I just didn't.  I knew it would literally keep me from managing my home and taking care of the kids, so I chose to never use it...until this past summer.  Because I had the garden and produce to sell, including eggs and chicken, I finally bit the bullet one day and opened a Facebook account.  Then I was exposed to the world of Facebook marketplace.  It wasn't a huge success to be honest.  I sold a few eggs and a few harvest boxes, but it wasn't a crazy success.  That was fine, I didn't want to be too overwhelmed.  I sold enough to make a few dollars and to get my feet wet.  But then I thought I would list the grapes as a u-pick venture and oh my goodness, I was busy.  For a few weekends it was party central over here.  I was amazed.  People came with their young families, their senior parents, their carloads of grape pickers and they went nuts picking and picking and paying and paying.  I just couldn't believe it.  

I think I would have been even more successful if we hadn't had a mysterious amount of grapes go missing.  We actually think we were robbed from people as we've seen people take our grapes before when they don't think we're looking.  That was super disappointing, but God knows.  It made me wonder why I hadn't taken advantage of social media before in that way, but again, I just wasn't in that space.  It goes to show you that there can be a positive aspect to it when you use it for good.  I also wonder why our eyes weren't opened to this strange source of income before....all those years when I could have been selling grapes....seems like such a waste, but again, I can't live in regret.

I, once again, thank God for the Covid crisis as that got us down in the grapes pruning and making the trees.  If I hadn't pruned the entire vineyard, I'm quite certain the grapes wouldn't have been as amazing as they were this year.  It's amazing to see how God was in each step even during the lockdown.

It makes me wonder what other strange sources of income are right under our noses.  It has me praying about that all the time.

This year for our anniversary to commemorate the 25 years of our marriage, I bought a print I have wanted for years, probably 11 or 12 years now.  I have always wanted to buy it for RM for either his birthday, father's day or another anniversary, but I've never planned it far enough in advance.  I've never had enough foresight to get my act together.  This year I actually thought about it in time to find it and even to get it framed.  It is the painting of all paintings, by George Agnew called "Family Prayer".  It shows a family on their knees crying out to God.  You have no idea why they are praying, but you can tell their pleading with God for something.  The mother has her hand over her face in what appears to be desperation, holding on to her child lovingly by her side as they kneel with her.  The grandfather is also leaning on his cane with his face covered in reverent prayer.  Two more kids, perhaps not as engaged in prayer, kneel at a bench.  The father is at the center of it, looking to God through the window as the light shines on his face.  It seems to be a picture of hope as he looks to God for his strength.  The mother is turned away from the window...is she perhaps less hopeful, more discouraged?  It's hard to say.  All I know is that it epitomized our family so well I had to have it.  We picked it up after getting it framed that first week of September and then it sat on the table in the family room for weeks.  It was framed with barn board from our farm.  The framer had attached the barn board to another picture frame to make it more sturdy, but that also made it very heavy.  I typically hang anything on our wall with simply a nail or even a push pin.  This was going to require a heavy duty anchor that I wasn't sure how to do.  I was so afraid it would fall and break the frame.  But I asked RM to do this during a time that was the busiest farming time.  So it sat and sat and sat some more.  I really was a very patient wife!  I knew it would get hung eventually......

Yesterday we had the young adults from church over for a campfire and worship time.  It was a quieter day as the wine making is in a sit and wait season and there wasn't much to do around the farm, so I asked if it could be hung before everyone came over and to my great joy it got hung!  So here it is....I'm so thrilled.  It is in the hallway that everyone walks by every day a hundred times a day.  It's right at the height that everyone can see and literally stand and observe it as if it were in a museum.  I love it sooooo much.  More than anything it reminds me that life is hard and that there are other families besides our's, even in past generations, that have gone through struggles.  It reminds me that the only source of strength is God and that it is so important to cry out to Him as a family.  It reminds me, too, to stay on my knees, but perhaps to turn to the window and not stay in the shadow. 

It was actually a really beautiful night yesterday when the young adults came over.  Everyone is seeking fellowship during this coronavirus time, but knows they have to keep outside and social distanced, so properties where everyone can be outside are ideal.  Last night was warmer still, but windy, so everyone stayed out side by the fire as long as possible, but then they all moved inside to the barn where it was more protected by the wind.  It was such an amazing picture to me to see everyone on a hay bale or a chair, playing guitar and singing.  It smelled a little chickeny, but mostly like hay!  It just made me so happy to see the barn used in that way.  And again, thanks to corona virus, we have to choose to be a little more creative in order to connect with others, but it works!

And finally....the painting...now hanging in the hall:

Thanksgiving Reflections 2020

We don't mean to do things the hard way.  It just seems to be the way we do them.  This weekend was a great example of that....again.  We now jokingly call the winery we accidentally started, the "Bozo" winery.  One day, when our book comes out, people will see how we made the wine and it'll just make people laugh.  Everything so far has been done by hand.  The only reason that is funny is because "real" wineries have hired help or machines or automation!  Not us.  Nope.  But, remember, we do things without spending money and all those things cost a lot of money....not because we didn't always try to buy the machinery, however.  We did try, for little money, but, they don't always work when you don't spend a lot of money on them.  

For example, this weekend we had to take all the red grape skins and seeds out of the 3 giants vats we have full of thousands of liters of wine.  Normal wineries do this with a pump.  We bought a used pump on kijiji, but, like a lot of equipment on the farm, it was a Toys "R" Us pump, or so it seemed, and wouldn't do the job, so my husband and one or two of the children had to manually, pail by pail, scoop out all the wine, mixed with the skins and seeds, and then press it, manually again, into a fruit press (which normal wineries have machines do as well!) and then pour then into the waiting barrels.  My husband's hands were literally black, stained by the wine, and borderline injured, from all the scooping.  Because there was a timeline and an urgency to this, it wasn't something you could stop midway or the wine would be ruined, he and my daughter (who we joked is after the inheritance) stayed up until 1:30 in the morning.  It took a couple of long days like that, and lots of wine-stained hands, but it got done.  All the wine is now transferred and the second stage of fermentation will begin shortly.  It looks and tastes like real wine and if nothing goes wrong, which it can always go wrong, it looks like we'll have a good batch of both red and white.  I still can hardly believe I'm writing that.

We all looked back last night, almost as if it were New Year's Eve, and just reflected on what we are grateful for.  One of my kids said how they were grateful for the vineyard.  It really has been a family affair and one that has brought us together.  We certainly have more purpose for living right now.  It has added a certain amount of stress as we have new deadlines, all self-imposed, but it's all in the name of the greater good.  We used to have tower contracts which were insanely hard to get done, but after the short time of intensity the pay was good and we knew it would be hard for a few weeks and then there would be a time of quiet.  That's kind of what this has been like.  I'll look at my husband with eyes that say, "Are we nuts?"  and then he says, "It's a tower contract".  And, suddenly, it's true, the wine has already fermented, the skins and the seeds are out, the barrels are full, and now we just wait.

We also discovered that we truly overlooked our concord vineyard for years.  I had a source of good income under my nose for years and didn't realize it.  As we went around last night thanking God for things, we also thanked God for Covid.  This is related to the concords in that it was because of Covid that my husband lost a good chunk of his income.  If he hadn't lost his income we wouldn't have been forced to think of new ways to make money.  I wouldn't have been pushed to go down to the vines, to prune the branches to make the trees, (which I've mostly decided to keep because I love them so much even though I could have sold them!), but in all the pruning the grapes came back with a vengeance and when I saw them grow this summer, I realized I could sell them as well.  I ended up having lots of friends and family come to pick, but also had a lot of success with u-pick. We had two or three weekends when we had lots and lots of people come out.  I was in awe.  It was another source of income that blessed our family so much.  I didn't have to "go" to work outside of the home, it was literally a walk down to the field.  I used some of that money last week to buy winter coats and winter clothes that my kids needed.  Such a blessing.  I used it to pay a repair man to fix our dishwasher as well.  I used it to buy groceries.  It was amazing.  I regret that I didn't see what a gift was sitting under my nose all these years as many years went by when the grapes rotted on the vines.  However, I was quite overwhelmed by who-knows-what...kids, pregnancies, toddlers?  Don't know, but maybe God didn't open my eyes to it until now in His providence.  All I know is that my eyes are open now and I will definitely be the vine pruner, tree maker, and u-picker again this Spring, Lord willing....

And I think that is the moral of this Thanksgiving....it's been in the trials that we discovered new sources of income.  It was because of the loss of income, it was because of the birds eating our grapes, it was because of Covid that my eyes were opened to the concord grapes.....all of these things that seemed like disasters and unexpected and frustrating trials, that God used them for good in our life.  My home is now decorated in pretty vine trees and vine balls, we've now started a new venture in the world of wine making and hopefully selling, and we experienced an extra source of income from the grapes that we've never had before this year.  To me, it's the definitive experience that Ann Voskamp has known for years - giving thanks for everything and then the miracle is imminent.  It really is true.  We feel we're in the middle of a miracle fairly regularly around here.  I'm starting to truly see the pattern of thanksgiving, not just once a year, on the holiday, but in my daily living.

In My Tent of Meeting

This morning I purposely woke up early even though I didn't get a lot of sleep.  There's just so much going on in the lives of my children, I felt I needed to spend a significant amount of time praying.  I wanted to skip my Bible reading (that might sound funny), because I knew I was reading in, dare I say, a part of the Bible in Exodus that was about the building, designing of the tent of meeting.  I wanted to be reading something that would inspire me more today, like the Psalms, or something like that.  But where I ended up reading - Exodus 28 - which was the next chapter in my daily reading, was just perfect.  I should have known...every word is profitable, right?

Exodus 28 is all about the priests' garments.  So many times it talks about the specific skill required to make them and how God fills "all the skillful, whom I have filled with a spirit of skill" to make them in a very specific way.  I was immediately impacted by the fact that sewing is something God loves, "for glory and for beauty" it says.  I have a sewing daughter.  It is so amazing to watch how she makes things, just for fun and is getting better and better at it.  I'll remind her today of the importance of sewing and how God can use it in her life!  It also goes on to describe how the "names of the sons of Israel" will be engraved on the stones "in order of their birth" and how Aaron "shall bear their names before the Lord on his two shoulder for remembrance....to bring them to regular remembrance before the Lord.....regularly...."  I knew I was in the exact right passage today.

Last night I was up until 10 with my older children.  Each one is going through so many amazing things and some more challenging things.  We all talked and talked.  I actually really loved it.   But this is the thing, I feel like I'm at the center of each situation as I am the counsellor, the academic advisor, the love coach, the mentor, the discipliner......yikes.  How am I supposed to know what to do all the time?!  My oldest son and I sat for almost 3 hours last night looking over each aspect of his med school application.  We didn't want to miss a period, a comma, a blank space......I felt like his life was hinging on that form.  With barely two hours to spare, he got it in on time...now we wait.  Talk about the pressure!

Meanwhile, I have that same kind of involvement in just different forms with each one of the other children.  It all just seems so much!  I think I'm going to get some garments made with stones that I wear on my shoulders.  I'll get some engravers to engrave their names on them and then I'll go into the tent of meeting and regularly bring them before the Lord.  But then, I realize.  I don't have to get any garments made.  Or stones engraved.  I just need to sit here.  And pray, one by one....in their birth order and regularly bring them before the Lord.  It's literally all I can do.  I can't magically get my son into med school or help each one get the perfect spouse with a click of my fingers or help them finish college overnight or teach them better habits in areas where they struggle......I can ONLY regularly bring their names, which are on my heart day and night, to the only tent of meeting I know, my family room, looking at the sun rise, on my chair, and say name after name, issue after issue, asking/begging God for wisdom for each one.

I'm so glad I didn't skip to a more "inspiring" passage of Scripture.  That was the exact one I needed to read today.

My Husband and Noah....they have a lot in common

Unbelievably, we can thank the birds for eating all the grapes in our "red block" for the strange opportunity it has pushed us into.  

When we first walked through the vines mid-summer and we saw all the grapes being eaten, there was a sinking feeling in our stomachs.  We did all that we could without spending a fortune.  We added the ribbons, the bird calls and kept our eyes open, but the netting we needed was way out of our reach, at least for this year, and so we just had to watch and pray as day after the day the birds swooped in, eating almost every single last grape.

I watched to see my husband's reaction.  I was quite happy to see him just say, "It's ok.  There's nothing we can do."  I was kind of glad he didn't freak out.  I was glad he didn't say, "We're sunk" or fall into some kind of grape depression.  It was more of a "we'll figure this out and learn for next year" kind of reaction.  I think this helped me to stay calm, too.  

The problem was we had planned to sell both the reds and whites for profit, obviously.  We had sunk a lot of money and labour into the grapes over the years including 3 years of spraying, 3 years of hoeing, 3 years of pruning, weeding, etc.....it did hurt a little to see it all go to waste.

Knowing there was only going to be a super small crop of reds, if any, and maybe not so great a crop of whites (disease had hit them, too, despite all the spraying and care), we looked at how much we were going to make and it was pretty dismal.  This is where we can thank the birds.  It really forced us to see what we could do better in order to make it more worthwhile.

We looked at the income from the sale of grapes.  It was ok - IF you had a full crop.  We looked at the income from the sale of juice from having the grapes crushed.  Better?  We looked at the income from the sale of fermented juice, i.e., wine - much better.  It was a no-brainer for my husband.  Just like that, he started the research for what he needed to do in order to become a winery or at least a winemaker/seller.  In a matter of days and weeks, he had applied for all the licenses required to process, crush, ferment grapes (who knew there were so many licenses required?).  \\

The next step was to find equipment - oh, that costs thousands of dollars.  Problem.  We didn't want to go into debt one bit and we wanted to do this entire venture with cash.  I know!  Buy old, broken equipment!  Perfect!  Ugh.  But that's what we're good at.  We make our money by using, and somehow making work, all the old stuff.  So he found some HUGE grape presses and made a ridiculously low offer, because they were old and broken, and they accepted it.  They should be arriving any day.  They are very big and very heavy so that is a process in and of itself, getting them here.  They'll sit in our shop where I'm sure my husband is going to have lots of fun fixing them over the winter.

Next, being a professor at the college, he had access to all the winemaking courses for free.  Scrap that.  No time to take the course.  Instead, he bought all the books, read them all summer, self-educated himself and is now entering into the world of wine-making.  He's made wine before, but not on this level.  Next thing I know, he's bought every single type of yeast you can imagine and over the fall/winter will be experimenting with different kinds of fermentation.  But this isn't the funniest part....

Back to the grapes....we listed our lame grapes for sale on the grape growers website.  We got a call from Quebec and we were happy to hear they wanted what we were selling.  We told them our crop was small and they seemed ok with that, but casually asked if we could find them some more grapes to make up for the small amount we had.  This got my husband thinking....look for grapes and sell them for a profit?  Sure!  Next thing you know he's buying and selling grapes for this winery in Quebec. And, on top of all that, due to the low volume of reds, we decided to keep all of those for ourselves and once we found more grapes from a different vineyard, we decided to also keep our whites to practice the winemaking!  And, it turns out he ended up shipping tons of grapes to Quebec, all from different vineyards that he sourced out.  The crazier thing was he also sourced out all the bins required to hold all the grapes.  I don't know how many trips he made out to Toronto to buy these bins.  Each time he came back with more bins I thought my husband was losing his mind.  I had no idea what he was up to.  Half the time this summer he'd get up and say, "Gotta go...I'll be back in a few hours...."  I would barely get two words out and then he'd be gone.  Our property was covered in these gigantic white bins that could hold a half a ton of grapes in each one.  But as of today, they are all gone....he bought, somewhat miraculously, just enough for all the grape buying and selling he did...and he made a profit on those bins, too, as he got them at such a low price.  Crazy, how did he even know to do that?!

So, in a matter of weeks, if not days, our WHOLE LIFE has changed.   We are on a completely different trajectory.  I have to say, it has been a very wild ride, super fast, super hilarious and quite fun if not funny.  My kids can't even keep track of it all.  I can't even keep track of it all.  My husband is who-knows-where half the time wheeling and dealing, the whole time somehow managing a full-time job and part-time teaching, too.  But, he LOVES this.  This is what he's created for.  It's the entrepreneurial spirit coming out of him in full-force.  We prayed and prayed over the whole corona lockdown for a way to bring him home.  This could be it.  

But before I get ahead of myself too much....we now have an interesting week ahead....we hand-picked the reds last weekend, it only took a few hours because there were none left.  The wine-making has already started there.  The whites we did this weekend.  There were over two tons.  That was a great crop for our first year.  We brought in friends and family and had such a great turnout.  It was so amazing.  Felt like a barn-raising event.  Those grapes have already been delivered to a local winery to press and crush for us as our presses aren't ready yet.  We'll get the juice today and then....more wine-making.  THEN, because we had such a lousy red crop, we ordered grapes (crushed and pressed) from that other winery.  That juice also arrives this week, so we'll have two tons of that juice arriving...that's a LOT OF JUICE.  Then, my husband, the new winemaker, will start his crazy new project.  I don't know how he keeps all these balls up in the air, but in a way, I think it keeps him alive and full of excitement.  And, like I said, it's funny to hear the kids, "What is Dad doing!?"  "Where is Dad?"  "What are we doing with all these grapes?  He's something else.....

We've been reading in Genesis and yesterday's verse was, "Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard."  That's it - my husband hasn't always been "a man of the soil" nor a vineyard planter, but he is now.  Four years ago, when he sat me down and said "This is what I want to do", if I had said, "NO", we wouldn't be doing what we're doing now.  It took 4 years from that first visioning lunch we had to today.  Those four years would have passed either way.  I'm glad we didn't listen to the voice in our head that said, "It'll take too long"  "It's too much work"  "You have no idea what you're doing".  Noah must have known it would take time which is why it was one of the first things he did getting off the ark.  

Now there's lots to do.  We won't be bored this Fall or Winter.

The MCAT Mountain - Grace, grace to it!

The waiting is over, the mark is in.....after two weeks of pins and needles, my son got his MCAT mark.  The night before I had dreamed he had failed.  I was so relieved to wake up and discover it was just a dream.  He had a number in his head that he knew he needed to get in order to be competitive - 510 - and, just to keep him humble and remind him that he still needs faith, he got a 509.  This is not by any means the best score for the MCAT, many get higher, but it is a GOOD score and people get into med school with this mark, so he was HAPPY to say the least and we were all so relieved, praising God for His goodness once again.

I had written in my journal the day we were waiting for the mark that, depending on the score, our life was about to change.  And it has.  Almost within minutes of getting the score, he had to send out all sorts of emails to the people he knew that he wanted as references.  He couldn't do this until he got his mark, but now, he literally has only 2 weeks to get his extensive application together, due by October 1!  Yikes....always so much pressure around here!  He sent all the reference requests out and right away he heard from all of them promising positive references.  That was such an encouragement to him.  His GPA is good, his references are good, his experience is excellent and his MCAT is competitive, so I truly believe he has a really good chance of getting in - 5000 applications for only 200 spots!  So maybe not, but it seems God is so clearly leading him down this path.  He'll only apply to 3 schools this year as he only will have finished his 3rd year and half way through his 4th.  Only a few schools let you apply after 3rd year.

The week before we had so many encouraging verses for him, including this one, Psalm 128:2, "You will eat the fruit of your labour; blessings and prosperity will be yours."  And then, while we were away at the cabin, I read this amazing verse in Zechariah 4 that talks about a mountain.  This passage is amazing, "Then he said to me, 'This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel:  Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts.  Who are you, O great mountain?  Before Zerubbabel you shall become a plain.  And he shall bring forward the top stone amid shouts of 'Grace, grace to it!"

As I shared that passage with the family up north, we realized each one of us had a mountain in our life- the math mountain (some of us really struggle with math!), the homeschool mountain (I don't always feel like the best homeschool mom!), the MCAT mountain, the piano mountain, the work mountain.....SO MANY MOUNTAINS!  It's like living in the Appalachians!  But the passage is so great because it says, "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit"!  Yes, we can plan and study, but ultimately it is GOD who makes the way.  And how does God get rid of the mountain and make it a plain?  By shouting, "Grace, grace to it!"  Only grace.

The night before we got the results of the MCAT, we all prayed, heads bowed, everyone, one-by-one asking God for His mercy on my son.  When it came to my 10 year old to pray, he said, "Grace to it!  Grace to the mountain!"  I couldn't believe that two weeks after I had shared that passage with the kids, he remembered that.  I immediately felt this amazing peace, that no matter what, bad mark or good mark, my son would be ok.  If he didn't do well, it was because the mountain wasn't moved yet and that God was still working grace in his life.  If the he did do well, God had flattened the mountain and it was only His grace that had done it.  No amount of studying and working hard can move mountains.  We all had to come to a place where we surrendered our rights to a good mark.  We had to acknowledge God, His sovereignty, His power.  That powerful prayer time left all of us at peace knowing God was in control.

Getting the mark back was like watching the mountain fall into the sea.  God had done it.  Grace had done it.  I believe my son was faithful with his time and God blessed him.  I'm so grateful.  

The truth is, now there's another mountain - the med school mountain.  But, won't there always be a mountain, a new trial, this side of heaven?  God has this way of keeping us on our knees, keeping us faithful, humbled, and crying out for His grace in our lives.  It's a good place to be.

A Great Start - at least for day 1!

 I think that had to be the best first day of school....at least it seemed great to me!  When I was describing it to my husband later, I realized, I'm really only homeschooling 2 kids right now, the 8 and 10 year old.  The other kids operate very independently and I'm just this lady they talk to once in awhile when they have a problem.  I kept thinking to myself, "Why is this going so well?"  Oh!  It's because they aren't 3!  They can walk!  They can talk!  They know how to feed themselves!  They can read!  It's a marvel to me that I made it through those younger years.  They are BY FAR the hardest.  I just didn't know it.  Guess what I will be doing whenever I see a younger homeschooling mom.....I'm going to tell them how GREAT  they are and how AMAZING  it is that they are doing what they're doing and that they'll MAKE IT!!!  If I can, they can.

The other amazing thing that happened in just the last two weeks was I transformed my house into a "campus".  I have a primary/elementary wing, a junior high wing, a high school wing, a boarding school wing, a college/university wing and a music school.  Genius.  All without any money spent on school renovations.  I do this every year.  I stand in the middle of a room and I put my hands on my chin (my kids always get worried whenever I do this) and I pray and I pray.  I ask God to show me what to do, to help me figure things out, to help me figure out my "stuff" so that everything will have a place, so that I'll be happier, the kids will be happier, things will go smoother, etc.  After the pandemic hit I started making those crazy vine trees and had the beaver dam of vines in my house for literally months.  I thought I was going to sell them and I still might, but for a long time, even after the beaver dam was gone, I had these crazy trees all in a corner of a room looking like a little forest of vines.  It didn't look bad, but I knew I needed the space back for school.  What to do?

I also knew I needed books back in our family room area.  I had moved them all to my room upstairs because I didn't like the chaos the shelves had become, but the problem was, if you move the books, no one reads.  But have you ever tried to move shelves with books on them?  It makes my kids SO MAD AT ME!!!!  "MOM!  WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS AGAIN!!!!???"  Oh well, I make them move them anyway.  haha.  I also stood in my AWFUL mudroom area and put my hands on my chin and prayed and prayed there, too.  "Lord!  What do I do with all this clutter?"  I really needed a place for a school office/administration area and I didn't want it in the kitchen, the family room, or my bedroom.....what to do yet again?  Suddenly it came to me....get rid of the crates, or at least some of them.  So that's what I did.  I had my two of my sons move all their clothes up to their room, stuffing them under beds and taking crates for their clothes upstairs.  Now I had a place for a desk, which is just a long white board resting on crates, in the back of the mudroom.  I brought down all my teacher books, curriculum, resources, printers, etc....and I had a secret study for all my stuff, away from everything.  Then, it occurred to me, and this is the amazing part, my 14 year old could also use this as his private study center (i.e., my new highschool wing).  He LOVED the idea.  Yesterday when he used it for the first time I kept thinking, "Why is there no arguing, no fighting?"  Ohhhhhhh......my two firecracker boys aren't seeing each other!  The 10 year old and the 14 year are explosive almost every time they are in the same room.  All of last year, I was separating them.  Yesterday, one child was with me, one was in the high school wing and all was at rest.

The books made themselves downstairs as well and now all the kids are reading more.  My vine trees decided to not leave but instead I ended up using almost all of them in my decorating which, to me, looks AMAZING!  I love how they look!  Might be a bit of vine tree overkill, but I love it.  My 12 year old works in the junior high wing/library and she loved it, too.  It's cozy, Christmas twinkly lights everywhere, books all around her, her own table....lovely and near me so if she has a question I just am a quick walk away.  That was the only thing I did notice yesterday, I was walking all over the "campus" answering questions!  Oh well, getting my steps in, I guess.

We had debated ALL YEAR about sending my gr. 12 daughter to school.  She's my "cat" child.  Loves sleep and loves to, uh, sleep.  How would I get her up each day?  But God just kept showing me, over and over and over, no, keep her home.  But I didn't want to!  I wanted to send her!  I was willing to work in the mines to send her!  But, it didn't feel right.  So what then?  I researched all the curriculum she needed to make her feel like she was accomplishing all the right courses and we spent more than we normally have in years, but still waaaaay cheaper than private school.  This made her very happy.  She had curriculum she could feel and see and turn pages (no online courses).  She loved that.  She could look at each book and know how much to do each day.  To my utter shock, she woke up right away yesterday (only day 1, but off to a good start!) and like a little 6 year old, came down so many times telling me, "I just got smarter!"  So I think we made the right choice.  She seems to enjoy what we picked and went at it.  She's the boarding school child.  I send her "away" to the school upstairs where she has room and board.  The only difference is she keeps coming downstairs to tell me how smart she is.

My college wing has an indoor/outdoor location.  My son's college classes are all online.  He can study above the music room in his loft or if need be he can move to my husband's office in the shop, outside.  He's set up for both spaces if it is too loud or if he needs more space to work.  My university son will study in his room, but he did that all summer for the MCAT so he's quite happily set up there.  I can NOT believe all 8 will be home this Fall, including my husband.  It's absolutely nuts and full of people everywhere, but oddly because of the set up of the house, seems so spaceious and no one is running into anyone anymore.  It's almost as if the school doubled its capacity with just a few changes.

I also can't believe how much we all need a schedule.  I rewrite them every year.  I make them for every child, for every subject.  I print them out and display them.  It motivates each one to stay on track.  There are no questions as to what to do.  Chores were done in and outside and the house looked great when we started yesterday morning.  When the house is orderly it makes such  difference in how school goes.  Clean house, happy kids, happier mom.  So, a good start to the year.  Maybe day 2 will be rougher, but at least the first day went well.

Twenty Five Years....Celebrating the Back Story

 Today marks the end of summer unofficially as we attempt to start school.  Wow....it never ceases to amaze me how fast it goes.  We managed to end with a bang as we celebrated our 25th anniversary.  It was a dream come true for me and such an answer to prayer as I had wanted to do something all summer, but there was just no way we could do it.  Here's the back story....

For many anniversaries, we take the 40 days, or 6 weeks leading up to it, to pray, fast, give something up, in the name of seeking the Lord for our family, our marriage, our specific needs, requests, burdens.  This summer we had so many.  We were praying for two of our children taking the biggest exams of their lives.  We were praying for better patterns in everyone's lives.  We had taken a hit financially with covid impacting my husband's work, so we were praying for miracles in our making extra income.  We were praying for godly spouses for our kids.  The list goes on and on...and I was also praying for God to bless us in a way that only He could for our anniversary.  That sounds so selfish writing it down.  I knew I was acting somewhat entitled and so I surrendered it every single time it came into my mind.  

I wanted the 6 weeks to look a little different this time.  I didn't want it to be, dare I say, "typical".  I wanted it to be a challenge in the sense that it was going to really force me on my knees to pray in a way I never had before.  After meeting with a friend a couple of times this summer to swim and hang out, she described her most recent health changes they had made - the whole family had become vegan.  I cringed.  There is no way, I thought, but as I met with her the second time, I asked a million questions and got great answers.  I walked away knowing that was it.  I would attempt, in my most feeble way, to be vegan for 40 days. No meat, no dairy, just veggies, nuts, beans and fruit.  It was almost funny as I thought about it.  The funniest part of the whole thing is, I ended up loving it!  There were so many recipes for all the things I loved and missed.  I would literally type in butter chicken and then add the word "vegan" and suddenly a vegan recipe would come up for something that tasted almost exactly like it, but without meat.  So I did this for every single meal, every single snack, everything.  And, to top it off, I was the only one in the family being vegan.  My husband was doing his own fast, but still ate meat.  I cooked all the meat and just always had a separate meal on the side going on.  I've never made so many veggie burgers.  I would occasionally make the whole family eat vegan for a meal without telling them and they always liked it....every single time, so the food is very good.  I will 100% keep cooking with less meat, maybe not entirely, but it is way cheaper and super healthy and just as delicious.  

All that to say, with my new crazy lifestyle/fast, I was definitely praying all day every day.  I cannot even believe all the breakthroughs we saw happen.  The Lord answered so many prayers for our family from providing in so many creative ways such as through the garden, and selling things that never should have sold, to giving my husband super creative ways to make extra money on the side.  Because of the garden, I felt like I was never at the grocery store and because of the meat birds we had grown and the chickens that were laying, I never had to buy meat or eggs (I must say I can cook chicken 1000 different ways now...)  I learned to save money even more than usual.

As the end of August approached, I knew we had no extra money to go away.  Leaving the country was out of the question and I couldn't see us spending any on going away even locally, but I just kept praying.  I shared my concern with a friend of mine who understood and prayed with me.  She had heard of a place that was up north that normally had a kids summer camp.  They were renting out the cabins to families all summer instead of to kids.  She suggested that to us.  I said to her, "No, it's not an option right now for us." That was the end of that.  

Later on that summer, she and her family went up to that camp themselves and enjoyed a few days there.  While she was up there, she felt a tremendous prompting to call us and tell us that she and her husband wanted to bless us with a few days up there for just the two of us.  I couldn't believe it.  But as generous as it was, I immediately knew we could never go.  How could we go to a fun camp with all sorts of fun things to do WITHOUT our kids!!! I would have been kayaking, swimming and paddleboarding the whole time wishing they were there.  So we graciously thanked them for their kindness, but said no.

Then, a few nights later, I woke up and thought to myself, "Who do we think we are to say no to someone's kindness?  Maybe there is a way that some of us can go...."  Of course I hoped for the whole family to go, but the older kids had done a few things this summer, so maybe it would just be the younger ones?  I spoke to the older kids and asked if they'd be ok if just the younger ones went away with us.  They all said, "Of course!"  They even offered to help pay to get us there.  The days the camp was open for us to come was the first week of school, so the older ones couldn't really miss school anyway.  I shared with my friend that we were now reconsidering going, but maybe with just the younger ones.  But I told her how sad it was making me to leave behind the older kids.  She prayed that day a prayer that moved mountains.

THE NEXT MORNING, I got an email out of the blue from the camp.  I had told them we were not going and had left it at that.   I never told them why or all the things that made it impossible to come. In the email, the camp said they had an unexpected cancellation ON OUR ANNIVERSARY DAY.  Would we like to take that time slot.  I have no idea what compelled them to even suggest it.  This changed everything.  Now my older kids wouldn't miss school.  But could they all get the time off?  Impossible.  Each workplace was very rigid on not taking time off without a ton of warning.  Each one asked and to my utter amazement they ALL got it off.  They were all ok to contribute to the mini-getaway.  The camp even knocked a little bit more money off because of the size of our family....how amazing is that?!  We also got an additional night added on so it went from two to three nights....that doesn't seem like a big deal, but I really hoped for the 3rd night.

Suddenly, what seemed impossible was happening.  We were getting away to a cabin up north completely last minute.  We left right on the day of our anniversary which seemed to make it even more special.  We were going to a place that had so many activities I can't even begin to describe.  It was a camp after all for kids!  The best part - we had the run of the ENTIRE CAMP with literally no one there except for one other family and a few adults that stuck to themselves.  We took over 4 cabins.  The girls took one, the older boys took another and then RM and I shared one with the little boys.  We had one just for cooking......it was perfect.  We overlooked the most scenic lake and had a private dock....the only way I could explain it was that all of us had our hearts full all week.  We would look around and say, "I CAN'T BELIEVE WE'RE ALL HERE!!!" and say that over and over.  I couldn't believe how God brought it all together.  I never would have planned it or thought it or dreamed it.  It was just perfect.  The kids were busy all day fishing, swimming, kayaking, doing archery (that made me so happy that my older kids did the activities, too) or just hanging out.  It was a gift from God.  I ate meat all week and LOVED IT!  We bbq'd most meals and enjoyed that so much!  

After we got back, we shared with our friends how grateful we were to them and for their generosity.  God used them in our lives and helped create my most memorable vacation/anniversary yet.  I think because it was so obviously brought together by God made us appreciate it even more.  I felt each child was that much more enthusiastic about being there.  I didn't get the sense once that that weren't appreciating every single second of their time.  Would I have preferred a Caribbean getaway?  Not really....this was literally only 4 hours away, no plane ride, no passports, no stress.  I didn't have to worry about thousands of other guests....this was our personal getwaway.  The bonus?  We did get to interact with the other family and I got to share with the mom about our faith as she observed our family all week.  The camp wasn't Christian and so hopefully we were testimonies to them as well and to the staff.

So I'm in awe....God blessed us so much.  As I surrendered my dreams and desires for something, I didn't even know what to hope for, I would sometimes take my hopes back and feel pity for myself, but then I would surrender and relinquish them again.  God heard me and in His grace.....only His grace, He chose to bless us and it was just amazing.  I'm so grateful.