Hold Fast

Welcome to my new blog. I'll be working out all the kinks as I go along and will continue to adjust this blog as I figure out how it all works since my old blog was hosted elsewhere and I'm not yet familiar with Blogger. Should be easy enough I hear. Plus I have a teenager in the house to help. ;)

I'm starting this new blog to chronicle my family's journey holding fast to the path we've been led to. The last 5 years have been pretty difficult ones. We've somehow survived the loss of our youngest son, Peter. Then we were blindsided by the economy's tumble. So far we just can't seem to recover. We had to move away from an area we had come to love very much and we long to go back. I've nearly thrown in the towel a few times because of discouragement and I'm so thankful that I didn't. Since I know we're not the only ones struggling these days I hope this blog will encourage others to hold fast through their own trials.

Inspiration for the name of this blog came from my daily Bible reading: Joshua 23:8 says, "but you shall hold fast to the LORD your God, as you have done to this day". I thought it was a very fitting verse since I've been fighting for the last two years, especially, to hold on to following God in spite of others' discouragement.

So for my intro: I'm a homeschooling mom of four children. The rest are in heaven being schooled by the Master Himself. I love reading and acquiring knowledge on all manner of subjects so this homeschooling thing springs naturally from that love. I also like knitting and spending time with good friends. I have organizational and time management issues that seem to get worse with stress. I'm easily overwhelmed. But I know where to go for help and have mostly survived thus far.

My children are:

Ninja- 17 year old black belt extraordinaire. She loves Christian rock, headbanging and keeping up with her favorite bands. She plans to devote her life to rockin' out for the Lord.

Tink- 12 years old. She loves reading just as much as I do and when she's not knitting or bouncing off the walls, she has a book in her hands. We've recently found she has a gift for clothing design, particularly in the area of knitting but she'd like to branch out and maybe eventually become a clothing designer for equestrians. There was a time when I would have said she has ADHD but she seems to be maturing so that's changing. She's still distractible and not the best of organizers (like her mother) but can focus better now that she's older.

The Dude- 7 year old handsome little man. He's super smart, but held back a bit by language delays, a bit of general anxiety and a strong need for routine. He goes three times a week to speech therapy and about once a month to occupational therapy for feeding issues. He can build just about anything with Legos and loves to draw.

And of course, little Lady Bug (LB for short) is 3 years old- She's the princess of the castle. She can talk up a storm and charms everyone who sees her. She loves being involved with our schoolwork and always wants to be right in the middle of it all. She adores books and is forever asking, "Can you wead dith to me?" Read her a book and she's happy.

As of right now our family is using My Father's World curriculum. We like it quite a bit but when you have to buy for 3 different age groups it gets pricey. If funds are not available when next school year starts, we're going to use a method taught by Carole Joy Seid which is very similar to My Father's World except it's a bit more relaxed.

So that's my first blog post. Time to go check on the kiddos so I'll be back later with some pictures.