a change of heart

everyone i talk to comments on how fast this summer has gone. i agree. even though my kids aren't going off to school today, it still marks a change in season for us with the neighbor kids going back to school. they have been a significant part of our summer, and if you read this post i wrote a couple of months ago, you'll remember that it didn't start off gracefully. i don't know if it was before or after i wrote that, though, that God really began convicting me of my attitude, particularly toward the kids directly across the street from us who are in foster care. levi made a comment to me one day about these kids (based on something he had heard me say) that became the catalyst for my change of heart. hearing my attitude coming back at me through the mouth of my own child was quite convicting and made me quickly realize how NOT in line it was with what we want to be living and teaching to our kids. God began to soften my heart toward all the neighborhood kids, but especially these two across the street who don't even know right now who their real family is. we began including them as much as possible in what we were doing and the kids clocked hours and hours of play time together over the past couple of months. what could have been a constant annoyance became a real joy to all of us. and honestly, while it will be good to get back to more of a routine around here, i'm a bit sad that the neighbor kids will now be gone at school all day.

how ironic

a strangely hilarious thing happened today. the subtitle of my last post actually came true in a way other than what i intended when i wrote it. this morning we heard lots and lots of truck horns going off through town and i vaguely recalled hearing something about a truck parade. well, if you know my boys you know that of course we had to rush out and find it. so i'm driving along and thinking, man, traffic sure is slow and there sure are a lot of big trucks on the road... and it didn't take long before i realized that somehow i had actually inserted our sweet minivan right into the middle of this so-called truck parade. people were waving and the truck drivers all around us were still blowing their horns. apparently, since the parade went all the way from zeeland to holland down a main road, they don't completely shut it down to the rest of traffic. i laughed for a while after that.

my first 5k (a.k.a. dietsches on parade)

i have always hated running. that's why i'm not quite sure how this happened, but suddenly i find myself training for a 5k. the story leading up to this decision begins here in a post i wrote about 6 months ago. since then, i have tried to continue the jogging trend, but was finding it really difficult to stay motivated and extremely easy to talk myself out of it (and into an ice cream sundae instead).

i decided i needed a plan and a goal or this would never work. i discovered a running schedule online that helps you work up to a 5k in two months. somehow i talked matt into doing it with me, knowing that having a running partner would also help with the motivation factor. so now it is a family affair. we have a set route that miriam and levi have become familiar with as they lead the way on their bikes, and matt and i follow with sawyer in the jogging stroller. the kids really enjoy it. and i have to say... i pretty much still hate running. BUT, five minutes after finishing it feels great. (during, however, i must admit that some choice four letter words come to mind.)

today was day 1 of week 5 in a 9 week training schedule. by the end of this week we are supposed to run 2 miles without stopping. right now the thought of that makes me want to crawl in a hole and hide. so, here's hoping i'll stick with this for another month and actually show up for the race on october 4!

thought i'd finally post a photo of my new haircut. it's been a while since it's been this short!

oh, and if you're wondering about the shirt... i was so excited to score this for matt at a second hand store a while back, as it is one of our favorite will ferrell skits. :)

summertime kiddos

sawyer, pre-haircut

i don't know if you have hundreds of these in your backyard like we do, but sawyer is currently obsessed with finding cicadas and the skins they leave behind. this is only the beginning of his collection...

it's not often i can get levi to cooperate with the camera... though not surprising how quickly he struck a pose when positioned in front of our neighbor's truck :)

miriam's streetside bouquet

a collection of neighborhood kids

we sometimes tend to monopolize the sidewalks around these parts...

homeschooling update

two weeks ago i was feeling quite overwhelmed and unable to cope with this homeschooling lifestyle... feeling very anxious at the idea of not sending my kids off to school at the end of the month. believe me, i considered it. yet my heart was still saddened more than it was satisfied by the thought of being away from my 7 year old for at least 35 hours a week. the time may come for that in the future, but not yet.

and now that i am more organized on the academic side of things, i am looking forward to what we get to learn together over the coming months. because really, some of it requires teaching but in most cases i am learning right along with them. (i'm convinced that i retained maybe 2% of any history i may have learned in school.) we purchased a used Sonlight set from another family in town, which is a literature-based curriculum. it is at miriam's level, and for levi i will just be filling in with some brief reading and writing lessons. (i try to at least have the boys playing quietly nearby while i read some of the more advanced stuff, but to make them sit for all of it at this point would not be fun for anyone involved.) and miriam's writing lessons are taken right from the books she is reading, which i really like.

i'm also excited that miriam & levi will be attending a friday school for homeschooled students starting in September -- excited for them to have a weekly outlet and change of atmosphere, and excited for me to have a bit of a break to look forward to each week. i think that will be really good for all of us. it takes place very near our home and and will cover things such as music, art, drama, spanish, and phys ed.

photo shoot #2

inspired by photographing my sister's kids a couple of weeks ago, i wanted to try it with my own. so last night we headed out to my parents' place to give it a shot. wow, what a lot of work to get them all looking good at the same time on top of trying to remember how to work my camera. :) the kids did great, though, and we did come away with some good ones... and only sustained a few casualties in the process. lots of mosquito bites, a wildberry-stained shirt, and bee-stung legs... matt stepped on a bee's nest just as we were finishing up and was stung about 5 or 6 times. thank God, though, that our kids had already left the area and our one-year-old nephew, who was standing right there, was unharmed! so, which are your favorite??