Super stealth baby...

Today while I was inside working on phonics and reading with Christopher, Martha (Nana) was out in the backyard with the girls as they were splashing around in the wading pool. Martha told me that she had no sooner looked up when suddenly Hannah was standing on top of the sliding board! It doesn't surprise me at all that Hannah got herself in a precarious position while no one was looking because she's just sneaky like that. What does surprise me is that she was able to climb up the ladder to the slide all by herself. Not only is she a whole lot younger than Christopher or Sarah were before they started climbing ladders, but she's also a lot smaller than they were! She's only 17 months old...the same age that Christopher was when he started walking. While Christopher may excel in academics, he has never and continues not to excel in the athletic department; he is his father's son, for sure. Sarah was definitely my climber as a baby and toddler and continues to demonstrate balance, strength and agility. I've known for a while now that Hannah was going to follow Sarah's lead in motor skills because I'm constantly finding her in high and dangerous places. Right after lunch today, I found her standing in my kitchen chair at the table trying to cut something with an incredibly sharp paring knife! I mean, I had JUST gotten up from the table and turned around to find her there. That's when you have to resist freaking out and calmly say, "Oh Hannah, give the knife to Mommy...thank you." I was able to do that, but my heart was pounding in the process.

When Sarah was born, Christopher was only 19 1/2 months old. It was definitely challenging because he was still very needy, but he never put himself into such danger. When Sarah started to become more mobile, I remember thinking several times, 'I thought my house was already childproofed...Christopher just never did this!' I'll have to look up how old Sarah was before she started climbing, but it seems as if Hannah is much more of a dare-devil than she was. Hannah will be about 17 1/2 months old when baby #4 arrives and I already foresee myself grabbing her down from a high place with one arm while I nurse the baby with the other. Who says being a full-time, stay-at-home mom is not exciting?

Lest I become prideful...

...the second day of homeschooling did not go as smoothly or easily as the first day. It was almost as if the Lord gave me an easy first day in order to calm my anxieties and fears about homeschooling, and then gave me a more challenging second day in order to keep me from pride. The Lord is indeed wise, for both strategies worked.

Christopher was still eager to learn but became very easily frustrated when I drilled him on certain facts. Sarah wanted to draw on all of the flash cards that I had made. Hannah kept bringing me her board books to read to her (i.e. she gave us no peace unless I picked her up and held her in my lap while she flipped through the books). I remember thinking to myself, 'It's only the second day... has the novelty worn off already?!?'

Having said that, the beauty of being at home is that I could stop the lesson and deal with the heart issues behind Christopher's anger and frustration. While he had some time to think about these issues, I was able to give Hannah and Sarah a little attention before resuming school. When Christopher returned to the table, he was more than eager to get back to learning. And my very helpful Sarah picked up Hannah and carried her to the toy room where they happily played together for the remainder of the lesson. We still got a lot accomplished today, but it was not nearly as easy, smooth or joyful as the first day!

One of the things I told John yesterday was that having a structured and scheduled lesson is a most welcome break from talking incessantly about dinosaurs, which is Christopher's default activity if we don't have anything else planned for him. Regardless of the lesson, he will still find ways to sneak in the topic (i.e. yesterday he insisted that I write "Quaternary" and "Quetzalcoatlus" on the back of the "qu" flashcard). It became very frustrating today when during our math lesson he continually wanted to divert to his "guess which shape of dinosaur I am" game (a highly frustrating game when the 5 year old doing the charades is pretending to be a dinosaur that you've never even heard of). I had to remind him several times that I am the teacher, he is the student and the teacher is the one who decides the lesson plan while the student obediently follows it. As I was writing down "kept" and "wept" as examples of words containing the "pt" blend, he looked at me and said, "Yes, and Archaeopteryx is another word that has 'pt' in it." After thinking about it I realized he was right and had to write that blessed word on the back of the "pt" flashcard. Good grief.

So today was a good dose of reality. Obviously I'm still committed to educating my kids at home, but I'm also not blind to the challenges that will accompany this very demanding task. I must say that in the midst of the challenges, it certainly is a joy to watch my children's growth in learning and hear the funny things that come out of their little brains. I think back to my teaching days at Covenant when I would write down or try to remember the funny things that my students said or did so I could tell their parents. What a privilege it is to witness these things firsthand from my own children! I'll try to keep that in mind especially on the more challenging and humbling days...

1st day of homeschool...

Even though I've been educating my children since birth, I was very apprehensive about beginning 'formal' kindergarten for Christopher at home. I've taught 5th, 7th, 9th and 10th graders, but they all knew how to read, study and take notes. Teaching a child the 'basics' seemed more daunting to me than teaching about DNA transcription and translation. And yet, as I've been studying the various curricula for reading and math over the past few weeks, I've realized that we've been learning the basics with everyday life (i.e. we have 4 people coming over for dinner, how many people will be in our house? how many more chairs do we need?; do you see a letter "c" on the cereal box?; how many syllables does your name have?; and of course, don't forget about everything we're learning about dinosaurs...). Thankfully, I've become less anxious and overwhelmed as I've read through the books instead of more so. That said, the thing that overwhelmed me was having a schedule; a time to sit down and work on the specific rules and content of each subject rather than just teaching on the fly as the opportunity presents itself. And of course, the challenges of sticking to this schedule with 2, soon to be 3 preschoolers running around the house.

I am relieved to say that Day 1 of homeschooling has been fun and a lot easier than I anticipated so far! We began shortly after breakfast and a brief playtime with our Bible lesson and review of catechism questions. Sarah eagerly sat at the table and joined in while Hannah contentedly sat in the family room and flipped through board books. Then we moved on to reading/phonics. Since both kids know their letters and sounds, I started with the letter "Q" and how it is always followed by the letter "u" in words. When I asked which words begin with "qu", Sarah was the first to call out, "queen!" After we went through a few more, Christopher's face lit up and he said, "Quaternary!", as in the period when the woolly mammoths and saber tooth tigers lived. After some more phonics and reading exercises, we ended the morning with a math lesson and are now listening to Beethoven as we play.

Christopher just yelled from the other room, "Is that all we're going to learn for today? I want to learn more, Mommy!" I'd better go...

Backing up...Pastor's Summit - Jackson Hole, WY

I realize that we never posted anything about our trip to Jackson Hole, WY in July for our last of 6 meetings with the Pastor's Summit. I think the reason we kept putting it off was because it's next to impossible to summarize in a blog post how life-changing the Pastor's Summit has been for us. As soon as we got home from this past summit meeting I sat down and started typing up my thoughts and reflections from the week. I think I have about 6 single-spaced typed pages so far, plenty more to write about and lots of gaps to fill in. One of the things I shared with the group of pastors and their wives at the end of this last meeting was that this has not been a mere "mountain top experience", no pun intended, where we simply attend a conference or retreat, get all fired up and then go on with life as usual after coming home. These meetings, and especially this group of people that we have been sharing our lives with over the past two years have truly affected and transformed our lives. We have been truly blessed to be a part of this.

So here are just a few pictures from our week in Jackson Hole...

The wild flowers that covered the fields in Grand Teton National Park were so vibrant against the soft green sage that filled the air with its aroma.


Here is a photo of Hidden Falls. We had to hike about a mile up into the park to see this - just gorgeous.


While the scenery was truly breathtaking, what made the trip was being reunited with the 9 other pastors and their wives who have become so dear to us. In addition to gathering with this particular group, John and I also had the added bonus of getting to spend time with Michael and Denise Wichlan, former members of Trinity that we 'sent off' to seminary 4 years ago! Denise has been on staff with Covenant Seminary's Center for Ministry Leadership, which is responsible for spearheading the Pastor's Summit, so it has been a real treat to be reunited with them at most of the meetings.


Pictured here are Josh and Shannon Geiger (in front - serving at Cristo Rey PCA in Dallas), Steve Garber (next to Josh on the left - one of our speaker/facilitators who is the director for the Washington Institute for Faith, Vocation & Culture), Donald Guthrie (next to Shannon on the right, wrote the grant for the Pastor's Summit as well as a wealth of theological books), and Lisa and Andrew Vander Maas (in the back - serving at Crossroads PCA in St. Louis).


Pictured here are Adam and Liz Brice (in front - served at Christ the King PCA in Conshohoken, PA, but are now planting a church in Lafayette, IN), Chuck and Diane Jacob (in the middle - serve at Knox EPC in Ann Arbor, MI), and Wendell and Priscilla Stoltzfus (in the back - serve at Covenant OPC in Reading, PA).


Pictured here are Drew and Becky Derreth (in front - serve at Hanover Valley Church in Hanover, PA), Janet Burns (on the left - wife of Bob Burns, the director of the Center for Ministry Leadership) and John on the right (if you read our blog, you already know about him).


April and Bob Willetts (currently serving at Trinity PCA in Norfolk, VA).


Andy & Linda Phillips (Harley on the left - serve at Providence PCA in York, PA), and David and Cindy Tate (Harley on the right - serve at Manor PCA in Cochranville, PA).


One of the biggest highlights of this last trip was spending time with and getting to sit under the teaching of Joe and Barb Novenson (both pictured on the right sitting next to Becky and Drew), who serve at Lookout Mountain PCA in TN. John and I both felt like his preaching cut us to the core and spoke to our situation in much needed ways.

As one of the other pastor's wives and I were reflecting on this past summit meeting, the one word that we both walked away with was brokenness. I remember the first time we all gathered together for worship, I was so moved by the heartfelt and emotional singing from these 30 or so pastors and their wives. I thought to myself, 'Boy, nobody sings like a bunch of broken pastors and their wives who are constantly trying to remind themselves of the transforming power of the gospel!' John also pointed out to me later that it was just so refreshing to be able to worship without the worries of the temperature in the room, the timing of the announcements, if the service was going too long, how the sermon was going, etc. etc.

Our times of worship were led by Reggie Kidd, who truly ministered to this group of pastors with his rich knowledge and talent as well as his compassion, heart for the gospel and his heart for pastors. On the last day of the summit, John and I went into the worship service right after an intense meeting with Joe and Barb Novenson over breakfast to talk about life, marriage and ministry. We were deeply encouraged by their own life journey and counsel to us and had much MORE to reflect upon. Now, I am not easily moved to tears but I quickly turned into a puddle on the floor during that last gathering for worship. Reggie had us sing, "Before the Throne of God Above", which happens to be one of my favorite songs but after such an emotionally intense week, it particularly hit me like a ton of bricks - especially the 2nd verse.

When Satan tempts me to despair and tells me of the guilt within
Upward I look and see Him there who made an end to all my sin!
Because the sinless Savior died my sinful soul is counted free!
For God the Just is satisfied to look on Him and pardon me,
to look on Him and pardon me.

Once the tears started, I simply could not stop them. But I soon realized that I was far from being the only one who was so moved. I heard several others from the pastor's summit comment that they were more encouraged by the shared trials, sufferings and brokenness with the other pastors/wives than they were by the shared triumphs. How true it is that Christ's power is made perfect in weakness. "Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me." (2 Corinthians 12:9b)

Big sister Sarah

Every time I talk to my mom on the phone, she asks, "So what cute new things are the kids doing??" I always find that it's easiest to think of Hannah's new things because she is in that rapid growth and development where she's constantly doing adorable new things. With Christopher it's usually something really hilarious that he said to someone. As for his obsessions, he's still stuck on dinosaurs. When she asked me, "What about Sarah?" I had to stop and think for a minute. I started to panic as if I'd somehow been neglecting to notice my middle child! What I realized is that while Sarah seems to follow Christopher's lead in most things (i.e. she's into whatever he's into at the time), she actually acts more like the big sister than the little one. I told my mom that she's very bossy towards Christopher and I will hear my own words come out of her mouth to him (i.e. "Now remember Chridofer, wash your hands wif soap and water!"). At the same time, she's very motherly and nurturing towards Hannah. Whenever Hannah is out and about, Sarah is looking after her, playing with her, giving her toys, making her laugh, sharing food with her, and taking care of her. Whenever we're out in public, she insists on pushing Hannah's stroller or holding Hannah's hand when walking.

Hannah has lately been bringing me books to read to her no matter where I am in the house or what I'm doing. I cannot tell you how many times she wanted to have Brown Bear Brown Bear, What Do You See? read to her today. So if I need to do the dishes or get dinner ready, I can always ask Sarah to read Hannah a book and she does it with such cheerfulness and a sense of responsibility! As you can see in the picture above, Hannah will gladly plop down into Sarah's lap just as she does mine or Daddy's and Sarah will make up the story or tell it as best as she can remember it as she flips the pages. She's always doing very adorable things like this, but I can't exactly say that it's her new thing because it has always been in her nature to be so. I'm looking forward to how she will be with TWO little sisters in the house!

Christopher teaches John about dinosaurs

We realize that this is mostly of interest to our own family members in other states. Here is Christopher teaching John about dinosaurs last night.

The link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-ROkHiGcrk

Noah Yohannan has arrived!

Our dear friends and partners in the ministry, Jake & Jaya Yohannan, have a new little baby boy named Noah! We love them, but they just cannot have a boring delivery and birth!!! :-) Here is part of a note from Jake along with some pics...

Well....his name is Noah. FOUR seemed to be the "number of the day" (too much Sesame Street at our house). Our fourth was born on Thursday July 24th at 8:42am and weighed 4lbs 14oz. He came four weeks early at 36 weeks in Jaya's pregnancy. Jaya had been having pre-term labor since July 4th and we were praying she could make it for a few more weeks.

He came fast and furiously. We arrived at the hospital around 7:30am on Th. and he didn't even let his mom get an epidural. It was all natural with lots of screams from mommy and baby: ) He was kept in the NICU for several days because he was small and needed a little extra attention, but they finally sent him home by Sunday evening. We are trying to settle in at home, since he came almost a month early. God is SO GOOD for protecting him and Jaya. We are glad to have him as part of our family (especially Jesse our almost 5yr old, who REALLY wanted a little brother since according to him, "i don't want another baby sister"). Too bad for Josephine; she'll have to put up with the boys!

Noah means "rest" and "peace" and we pray he will be a man of peace, especially in the next few months. Our prayer is that he will love the Lord God and share His peace with anyone who needs it. His middle name is "Yaakov", Hebrew (a language i love) for Jacob which is a family name for a few generations now. Yohannan is a straight translation of "John" from the Malayalam New Testament Bible (language of Kerala, India).

Please pass this on to any of our mutual friends and family, and please forgive me for not getting to call you personally as we just got back home and have been very tired trying to set up. Hopefully we'll be able to talk or see you soon.

With thankful hearts,

jake for jaya and the gang: )

News from the sick house...

It seems as though everyone in our family, excluding Sarah, has come down with symptoms from a nasty stomach bug. I was the first to go down on Saturday, which as most of you parents know, it is never a good thing for momma to get sick. As we say down here, when momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy! Plus, John was gone all day working on his sermon, so I was left to hold down the fort while feeling miserably nauseated. Thankfully, the kids played extremely well together all day so I was able to parent them from the couch. After all of the kids woke up from their afternoon naps, however, I was really feeling wretched. Shortly after that, John came home and then his mom came over and offered to keep all 3 kids overnight so I could finish being sick, get some sleep, and so John could finish up his sermon. WHAT A BLESSING it is to have family so close by and so willing to help!
Later on that evening, we got a call from John's mom saying that Christopher had thrown up all over his bed! Gross! I had just had my last sick episode and collapsed into bed. The next morning, I felt better but incredibly dehydrated and spent. I called over to John's parents house to see how the kids were doing and to offer to take over, but they insisted on keeping the kids who were all contentedly playing after breakfast. Christopher didn't eat or drink anything besides water, but was already at work on his giant dinosaur puzzle. So I got to work disinfecting my kitchen and bathrooms before collapsing again. The kids all came home around lunchtime and Christopher fell asleep while reading his dinosaur books in bed. Then John came home from church feeling sick to his stomach! Either we all caught this virus at the same time and place or it is highly contagious with a fast and furious latent period.
When Christopher woke up from his nap, I asked him if he was hungry or thirsty, to which he said, no. He said he was still tired and then said to me, "But you could stay in here and read to me about dinosaurs..." So we read LOTS of books yesterday and put together numerous puzzles. As the day went on, Christopher still wasn't eating or drinking very much, but he was playing like his old self. I figured he was over the worst of it until he woke up this morning and threw up again on the way to our room. Poor guy! After I got him and the floor all cleaned up, I said to him, "Christopher, I'm sorry you're still sick. I thought you were getting better." He then told me, "Well, I feel better as long as we're talking about dinosaurs. When we stop talking about dinosaurs is when I start to feel sick again." Ha! How's that for a prescription?!
So I sent John into Christopher's room to talk to him about dinosaurs while I got the girls some breakfast. You would think that he went through a miraculous healing or something by hearing the volume and excitement in his voice from the other room! Next thing we knew, he was running out of the room to grab his big dinosaur books to show Daddy what he was talking about...since Daddy doesn't know as much as he does about dinosaurs.

Pictured above are Christopher's big dinosaur books that he reads over and over and over again. No exaggeration, he can identify every dinosaur on every single page of these three books. I know this because he has shown us several times. Today he took us through the fat book in the middle and even gave us some facts about most of the dinosaurs in there. The middle book is one we got from the library and have already renewed once. It is due back this Saturday and I'm wondering if we might owe some money on this one since it has been so 'well loved'. Honestly, I'd be happy to buy it since I know he'll be sad to see it go. Ah, but I remember there were about 4 shelves of dinosaur books upstairs, so that should help to assuage his loss.
We concluded that talking and reading about dinosaurs really did help Christopher to feel better. The video below will show Christopher feeling just fine as he reads the book, Go Dog Go, by P.D. Eastman to Sarah. What cracks me up is that regardless of how slowly he reads, he does it with inflection in his voice and everything!

A day at the Dallas Museum of Nature and Science

Mondays are John's day off and we usually try to plan for an excursion of some sort. Today we decided to go down to the Dallas Museum of Nature and Science since the kids enjoyed it so much the last time we went and since they also had new exhibits and IMAX movies to see. We first went over to the Nature building where the Ice Age and Oceans exhibits were along with the fossil lab and many dinosaur skeletons, bones and fossils. Just as learning about art history helps you to appreciate priceless works of art in an art museum, so our recent learnings about dinosaurs gave the kids a much greater appreciation and wide-eyed wonder for all of the exhibits we saw today. It was really hard to keep the kids from running from one thing to another or yelling at the top of their lungs when they recognized something. It was a lot of fun.

Here is Christopher standing in front of the woolly Mammoth skeleton (Ice Age Exhibit) that was found in the Trinity River here in Dallas.


Here are Sarah and Christopher standing in front of a Mosasaurus skeleton (Oceans Exhibit). Christopher will be quick to correct you if you call this a dinosaur shark. It is NOT a dinosaur; it's a swimming lizard.

After we were finished at the Nature building, we headed back over to the Science building to see the Roving Mars IMAX movie, which was incredible. It really made you appreciate all the time, work, and painstakingly detailed research that went into making and testing the Mars Rover before it even left the earth. You even felt like jumping up and cheering along with the people in the video at NASA when the Rover successfully landed on Mars and started sending the first pictures of Mars ever. Very impressive and the kids thoroughly enjoyed it as well.

After the movie and scarfing down a packed lunch, we then explored the Science building exhibits.

Here, the kids were able to be a paleontologist for a day in a big sand pit that had several dinosaur bones scattered throughout. The pits are filled with paleontologist tools such as shovels and brushes to excavate the bones and measuring tape to examine them (see Christopher measuring a bone above). Funny, there were no hammers, picks or chisels...


Sarah carefully sweeps the sand off of this giant femur. Sarah's T-Rex t-shirt was on backwards, but she assured me that she liked it that way.


Above the sand pits stood this enormous Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton and the Quetzalcoatlus flying overhead. Sarah's favorite dinosaur is the T-Rex, so you can imagine how excited she was to see this up close. I pointed to it and asked her, "Sarah, do you know which dinosaur skeleton this is?" She looked up and started to say, "I don't kno..." and then gasped before proclaiming, "It's a T-Rex dinosaur!! Chri-o-fer! Wook! It's a T-Rex!!" I asked Christopher afterwards if the Quetzalcoatlus was a flying reptile or a Pterosaur, to which he said, "Mommy, they're the same thing." Oh...


This is a Triceratops skull that was sitting just on the edge of one of the sand pits. To get a sense of the size of this thing, you can see Christopher's head poking up just behind it.


I was resistant to let her in the sand pit, but Hannah was just dying to get out of the stroller. She could have cared less about the dinosaur bones but she had a blast since this was just a super-sized sand box to her.

I was hoping to avoid going downstairs to the children's museum, but unfortunately Sarah remembered riding the tractors the last time we came and insisted we do it again.

Here Sarah is dressed up like a fireman (or fire woman). They also have an area where the kids can dress up like bugs and crawl through an ant hill tunnel.


Firemen Christopher and Sarah at the wheel and Hannah in the background.

We were there from about 10:30 a.m. until 2:30 p.m. Needless to say, we were thoroughly exhausted from such a fun-filled day and the kids were in bed well before 8:00 p.m.

Yet another obsession...

If any of you know Christopher or have kept up with our blog long enough, you'll recall his various obsessions. His latest obsession, which was piqued earlier this past Spring after watching an IMAX movie at the Science museum in Dallas, is dinosaurs. Sarah sat on my lap and shivered throughout most of the "Dinosaurs Alive" IMAX movie, but Christopher sat upright on the edge of his seat, wide-eyed, commenting and asking questions all throughout. A teenage girl sitting next to him, obviously amused by this, leaned over and asked, "Do you want to be a paleontologist when you grow up?" With wonder in his voice he smiled and said, "Yes."

I then purchased Leap and the Lost Dinosaurs book for his Leap pad and gave it to him to play on the trip up to PA...which he did, intensely and incessantly! Every now and then he would pop his head up and ask, "Did you know that Bracchiosaurus weighed more than 5 elephants?" along with dozens of other "Did you know...?" questions. You may remember from the preceding post that he would ask random people at restaurants and service stations these "Did you know...?" questions as well. Needless to say, he was very excited about his newfound love and knowledge of dinosaurs that he couldn't contain himself.

I also mentioned in the last post that Christopher is learning to read (even sounding out pretty long and complicated dinosaur names) and I think that Sarah will fall hot on his heels since she always wants to be where Christopher is and do whatever he is doing. The following video clip captures them in one of these moments. (Also notice the dinosaur t-shirt he is wearing...)