Prayer request

I have a prayer request to share today.  I spoke to my mother on the phone this morning and she spent the day at the hospital yesterday.  She has been experiencing some shortness of breath, rapid weight gain, and swelling.  They performed a CAT scan and EKG and have determined that she has some water around her heart.  She also has some issues with her gall bladder.  I am not sure how that intertwines but apparently it does somehow.  She is at home today and on some new medicines but she will be back at the doctor on Friday for more tests.  We would be extremely thankful for all your prayers. I know it would mean a lot to both her and my dad also.  Thank you so much!

We have all been a little under the weather here this week.  Nothing too awful just sore throats, stuffy noses, and that sort of thing.  Just enough to make everyone a little sluggish and irritable.  

It really wasn't a terrible week overall.  Christian and I didn't accomplish much school wise but he did straighten out his sleep schedule a little bit.  (at least for now)  I am not sure if it was daylight savings time or if it was him feeling sick or just a combination of the two.    He has been asleep by midnight every night this week!  Yipee!   I have actually been getting at least 6 or 7 hours of sleep every night!  I think I could used to this.

Tyler has been working really hard at school this week.  He is still loving his dog unit study.  This week we talked about seeing eye dogs and he was impressed by the amount of training that goes into a dog becoming a seeing eye dog.  We have been going a little slower than the lesson plans dictate but he is absorbing so much.  It is always interesting to observe how much more attentive he is when it is something he is interested in learning.  

We finished studying/praying for Pakistan this week.  I wanted to allow a week for each country but we rabbit trailed on this one a WHOLE bunch!  It's okay though as I am sure Pakistan can use some extra prayers.  Tyler finished up a project this week for our Pakistan time.  It is a bus he made based on Pakistani truck art.  If you have never seen their truck art I encourage you to check it out because it is really pretty amazing.  Here are a couple of links for that:

  http://pakistaniat.com/2008/06/18/pakistans-indigenous-truck-art/

http://web.mac.com/mikespix/iWeb/Site/Pakistani%20Truck%20Art.html

Tyler made his using a cardboard box which we cut off the front and overlapped it to make the hood of the bus.

He then painted the whole bus gray to cover up all the writing and labels on the box.

Next he decorated it with paint, stickers, colored paper, and crayons.  He had a lot of fun with it! 

Last we put on wheels (jar lids)  on their axles (wooden dowels) and secured them with beads and a little glue.  It really doesn't look very much like the Pakistani trucks but he had a great time making it and I think he will remember this about Pakistan.

He really loves anything he can make that he can play with later.

We are still finishing up reading Three Cups of Tea but we should be done by Tuesday.  Tyler has enjoyed this book immensely!  We have also finished collecting all the change we can find around the house for Pennies for Peace  and our grand total came out to $25.65!  We are pretty amazed at how much change we have just sitting around.  It is sad to think how much we take something like our  change and think it is worthless when it can do so much good if we put it all together.  It is a nice thought to think that we have helped some child in Pakistan to have a brighter future!

This week promises to be a busy one for us as well.  Monday and Tuesday I hoping to focus on Veteran's Day.  We will be doing a free lapbook from Currclick. 

It looks like it will be a good one!  We will also be reading two books we usually enjoy for Veteran's Day.  They are:

and

Tyler has also chosen Vietnam this week for our prayer country so that we could honor those who served in the Vietnam War at the same time.

Tim has off work most of this week too so hopefully we will also get some good family time with our Vet!  
I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend!
Blessings to all of you!
Bronwyn

Pennies for Peace

We have really been enjoying our new prayer center to help us focus on praying for a new country each week.  Next week we will be praying for and learning about Pakistan.  Last year while my husband was deployed to Afghanistan I read a lot of books about that part of the world because I wanted to connect with what he was experiencing.  The book that really touched me the most was Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson.  If you haven't read this book I want to encourage you to do so.  Greg has an amazing story and he has used his life to do so much for the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan.  In preparing for next week I was looking for resources we could use and was surprised and delighted to find out that his book is now available in a young readers edition      and a children's picture book edition  .  I can't wait to share this book with my boys! 



I like to emphasize to Tyler when we are praying for a specific place that often times we can also help in a practical way.  For instance last year when we were learning about Africa we were able to contribute to buy bed nets to help stop the spread of malaria.  Next week as we pray for Pakistan we will be collecting pennies for Pennies for Peace to help Greg be able to do more for the people he loves so much.  I think almost everybody has a pile of pennies lying around somewhere that you could use to help too.  The Pennies for Peace   website has some great resources for helping your kids to understand people in Pakistan and Afghanistan and to understand how they can help also.



I would also like to share two videos with you before I go.  The first one is a song sung by Greg Mortenson's daughter Amira.  It really touched me very deeply.

The second video is the story of Pennies for Peace. I am really looking forward to see how many pennies we can collect and to help children have a better future!

Praise

I am praising the Lord right now because I just got off the phone with someone from the Naval Hospital and I was told that we have been approved for our boys to be seen at doctors out in town.  She said that she had a stack of 12 similar requests sitting on her desk and we were the only ones that had been approved so I truly believe this is a God thing.  This means that all their medical bills will be paid when they see civilian providers and that we won't have to pay a deductible.  This is a huge blessing and it also means that hopefully we will be able to get them some of the extra services that would benefit them.  This also means that Tyler can continue with the testing to see what gives him his headaches and stomach aches.  Thank you so much to those who prayed about this!  This is truly an amazing answer to our prayers. 

learning about Nicaragua

This week we decided to learn about and pray for the country of Nicaragua.  I didn't know a great deal about Nicaragua prior to this week so I was also interested in learning more.  I did remember the United States and the dealings with the Contras and I was also familiar with Daniel Ortega and some of the things he has done.  What I didn't realize was what a beautiful country Nicaragua actually is and how rich in natural resources it is.  It saddens me to know that a country with so much potential is so impoverished.  Tyler also enjoyed praying for and learning about Nicaragua.  It was especially important to him that we pray for good leaders there.  He was pretty upset about the fact that Mr. Ortega has tried to change their constitution for his personal benefit.  This was a great opportunity for us to discuss term limits for a president and we had a nice discussion about when this was established here in the United States also and why it is so important.  I love it when we have opportunities to have great discussions like that. 
I did want to share some of the resources we used this week so that you also could enjoy learning about Nicaragua and hopefully you will also be moved to pray for them.  We discovered there is a lot of need for prayer there.  One the first resources I discovered was on Time For Kids it has a great science experiment about pollution and the lakes of Nicaragua.  It also has a worksheet we completed about Nicaragua's volcanoes.  We did this coloring page of the beautiful Nicaraguan flag.  I also made a few worksheet of my own for Tyler to complete.  The first one is a map activity .  The second one was a worksheet to learn more about the Nicaraguan Flag .  And the last one was a sheet of research questions for him to work through.  We had also wanted to make some Nicaraguan recipes this weekend but it was just too crazy around here so maybe even though we will be starting a new country this week we can still squeeze these in.  The recipes I had wanted to try with him were Gallo Pinto which is red beans and rice and Patel De Tres Leches or cake of three milks.  A couple of more resources I found for learning about Nicaragua are:
1. EdHelper
2.A great printable activity about migration during the Contr/Sandanista Wars (this is for older students)
3.Prayer point for Nicaragua
4.Operation World Links for Nicaragua

Hope you decide to check out Nicaragua!  This week we are going to be praying for Afghanistan.  We know a little more about this country as my husband spent most of last year there.  We are going to use The Kids of Courage: Bold Believers book to guide us along this week.  It is a great resource and I am looking forward to it.  We really are enjoying our prayer time together.

October already!

I can't believe it is already October.  This year is just flying right by.  The weather here is finally starting to feel a little more like fall.  It has also been a lot less humid so we have been trying to walk down to the park everyday while the public school kids are in school.  Christian enjoys it a lot more if he can run back and forth by himself.  We also took a nice family walk last night.  We used to walk together every night but have fallen out of the routine between moving and the summer heat.  I hope we can get back to it though as it is a nice way to wrap up the day together.  We were able to explore one of the new park areas here last night.  They are putting up  a bunch of them as they renovate base housing.  Anyways, Christian went up a big rock climbing wall which is something he has never done before.  He needed some help but he did very well.  Tyler still struggles with being with his feet off the ground and it is always kind of sad to watch him cling for dear life as goes on the taller playground equipment.  He works at it though and I think he still has fun.
Our week here has been going pretty well.  Christian is still irritated about not not being able to be in his room unsupervised but other than that he is fine.  Fall offers up so many sensory activities for me to try with him.  We have been exploring nuts and leaves this week.  Tomorrow we are going to sponge paint an autumn tree.  I know he will like that because he loves to paint.  The only problem is he doesn't like to stop.  Usually I have to have several sheets of paper handy.
Tyler has also had a good week.  We are praying for Nicaragua this week in our prayer center.  He is liking that a bunch so I have been using one of our boxes each day to focus on the country we are praying for.  This week I chose Nicaragua after watching Joni and Friends on television this weekend.  They were working with a beautiful little girl there in a wheel chair and I just really felt like this was the country we should pray for this week.  It has become like a little unit study for us.  I will share all the materials we have used on Friday after we have completed this week.  I still would like to find a recipe from there for us to make too.  Tyler also enjoyed our fall gourd game today.  He did very well at writing descriptive sentences.  They were all written in his unique perspective so they were fun to read.  My favorite one was "This gourd is orange, bald, chubby and looks like Jimmy(from Veggie Tales)."  Somehow I just knew we were going to have some Veggie Tale sentences in there.  He also had a lot of fun using the gourds to  make up Veggie stories with his dad tonight.  I love my silly guys!
I don't mean to cut this short but I am going to go to bed now because I just noticed Christian is actually asleep before midnight.
Have a blessed night!

May 7th is the National Day of Prayer

Please remember to pray for our country on Thursday!