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“Listen! A farmer went out to plant some seed. As he scattered it across his field, some of the seed fell on a footpath, and the birds came and ate it. Other seed fell on shallow soil with underlying rock. The seed sprouted quickly because the soil was shallow. But the plant soon wilted under the hot sun, and since it didn’t have deep roots, it died. Other seed fell among thorns that grew up and choked out the tender plants so they produced no grain. Still other seeds fell on fertile soil, and they sprouted, grew, and produced a crop that was thirty, sixty, and even a hundred times as much as had been planted!” Then he said, “Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand.” Later, when Jesus was alone with the twelve disciples and with the others who were gathered around, they asked him what the parables meant. He replied, “You are permitted to understand the secret of the Kingdom of God. But I use parables for everything I say to outsiders, so that the Scriptures might be fulfilled: ‘When they see what I do, they will learn nothing. When they hear what I say, they will not understand. Otherwise, they will turn to me and be forgiven.’ ” Then Jesus said to them, “If you can’t understand the meaning of this parable, how will you understand all the other parables? The farmer plants seed by taking God’s word to others. The seed that fell on the footpath represents those who hear the message, only to have Satan come at once and take it away. The seed on the rocky soil represents those who hear the message and immediately receive it with joy. But since they don’t have deep roots, they don’t last long. They fall away as soon as they have problems or are persecuted for believing God’s word. The seed that fell among the thorns represents others who hear God’s word, but all too quickly the message is crowded out by the worries of this life, the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things, so no fruit is produced. And the seed that fell on good soil represents those who hear and accept God’s word and produce a harvest of thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times as much as had been planted!””

‭‭Mark‬ ‭4:3-20‬ ‭NLT‬‬

One should be careful where they plant themselves.

You will reap what you sow.

If you sow outside the will and word of God, you will sow outside the will and word of God.

The plant itself may make you happy momentarily, but when it dies, and it surely will, you will be left to sow death.

I love how Jesus broke this down so plainly for our daily lives.

It matters more than we think where we sow our seed.

Who determines the ground to be fertile? God’s word does, if you’re outside that, you’re outside His will.

Someone who’s planted where God wants them and is planted in His word, will yield that fruit in more than just one area of their lives. It’ll pour forth out of them, and it’ll be undeniable to those around them. It’ll show the word of God in truth and His kingdom at hand.

Someone who’s not planted where God wants them, will surely reap the crap benefits of those choices and decisions, and the LACK of fruit will show. It’ll be undeniable that they are not planted in the fertile soil, because their lives won’t reflect His word or His kingdom.

So, my question? Are you planted where you’ll actually produce His fruit or are you planted where you’ll produce your own?

Food for thought on this lovely Wednesday afternoon.

Until next time,

-Becca

We’ve accomplished our first quarter in our homeschooling journey this past week. I can’t even believe one quarter has already passed.

I’ve been able to witness amazing growth in both of my kids, and it’s been hard and great at the same time. Growth isn’t always easy, and sometimes comes with days that make your weary! I may even be missing some hair, and a few strands probably turned a nice shade of white. Ha!

Ezra has been excelling in her reading program, and can even read a few books all by herself. I am super proud of her, she shows a lot of determination to read and to READ the right way, and not just memorize words but understand how they are put together as a whole! We’ve taken our time with reading, I want her to be a confident and strong reader, not just have to be something to check off our list!

Zephaniah is loving learning the alphabet! We do a letter of the week, where we highlight the letter with pictures from the internet of things that start with it. I utilize free printables too, and that keeps him entertained. We practice cutting, pasting and writing too! He especially loves writing his name! He’s almost got it!

We have a lot of fun with our interest studies! We spent some time learning about frogs vs. toads, sea turtles, preserving leaves and all about pilgrims!

We kept toads and frogs pretty simple! You can find printables online for just about anything, and I like to give the kids lots of colorful and fun things to check out. We love to utilize the library, such a good service for us and we won’t accumulate a crazy amount of books! We learned all about the life cycle of a frog, and what makes a frog different from a toad. We also read the book frog and toad, super cute and the kids ate it up!

Turtles was so much fun! We had a lot of books on hand from Usborne! I got a life cycle toy set off amazon, and the kids loved the hands on examples! We even got off Etsy a fragment of a turtle shell, and they loved passing that around! Keep it simple and keep it fun!

Preserving leaves was such a fun project for them! We melted wax (we recommend beeswax for a smoother finish), we used soy wax and it left some residue on the leaves! We learned what type of trees are in our neighborhood and what the leaves look like too! It was fun, and we created little leaf hangers for our school room!

Last but not least, we’ve been spending time reading books about the pilgrims and the first thanksgiving. We’ve loved utilizing books on hand, like what was the first thanksgiving and my first thanksgiving book. We went to the library and took out additional books, and we’ve just spent a lot of time reading. I printed off some printables for them to color while I read, and they love it. We have painted turkeys with cotton balls, and learned all about what we think they ate!

Also, as some added fun we got some pilgrim Halloween costumes and they’ve enjoyed acting out being pilgrims!

That’s been our last few weeks with school! The goal has been just to keep it simple and fun, it doesn’t have to be instagram or Pinterest ready. It just has to work for you and your kids!

Until next time,

Becca 😘

I’ve been contemplating this for awhile, and our pastor last week spoke about it. I finally had to muster up the ability to put it into words.

I had recently been studying God’s promises to His people in the Bible, and was sharing with my husband some of my thoughts on that.

I think most people walk around disillusioned about God’s promises. That they are either automatic or unattainable, they can’t be somewhere in the middle there, it’s usually one or the other. The thing about God’s promises is THEY ARE yes and amen, meaning they are a for sure thing in the heavenly realm, and they CAN BE a for sure thing in the earthly realm. They are not unattainable, but they do require action on our part.

You can’t sit there, and say “God, you promised me health!” and go around eating ice cream every single day. Cause, come on.

You can’t say “God, you promised me a healthy marriage!”, and not expect that you’ll have to fight tooth and nail for it in prayer! Cause, the enemy would love nothing more than to destroy your marriage!

You can’t walk around wondering why those promises have not happened, when you’ve sat back on the sidelines and let someone else pray them into your life!

Some of the greatest people in the Bible, had amazing promises from God but they weren’t just handed to them! Moses was promised the promise land along with Israel, Abraham was promised Isaac and descendants that out numbered the stars, Joshua was promised Jericho to his family and friends. I could go ON and ON about people who had CLEAR promises for God, but went through A LOT to CLAIM them.

We may have some pretty hefty promises from God, and it’s easy to look at them through our own eyes and say “well, that’s not happening right now”, or “where is that promise, cause I don’t see it!”, we are a NOW driven society, forgetting that God is a lesson driven Father. He wants you to glean and learn as much as possible through the PROCESS, because He REALLY loves you!

I think it’s disheartening how many situations I’ve seen as of late, where people are disregarding His promises for them, His goodness for them, His faithfulness for them, because they don’t want to walk the hard concepts out to get into His glory!

I challenge you today, what are those promises you’ve put aside or forgotten about in Him? What does His word say about your health? Your marriage? Your kids? Your families? Those are your promises!

He promises healing.

He promises a strong marriage.

He promises long life for your kids.

He promises GOODNESS in the land of living.

But, are you claiming them today? You need to be willing to lay it all down like Abraham, be near to God like Moses, and be willing to do whatever it takes like Joshua!

You are going to have to be willing to pursue God’s throne boldly for your promises, in prayer and supplication make all your request KNOWN to Him!

The thing about Abraham, Moses and Joshua is that they WANTED those promises more than anything else and they were willing to sacrifice everything for them! Are you willing to do the same? Am I willing to do that same?

It’s time to get up, put on His amour and start seeking the God who’s able, and the God who’s willing. Those promises are still YES and AMEN, so spend time PRAYING them from a NO and NO WAY, to a YES and AMEN in your life!

Until next time,

Becca

Some encouraging bible verses:

Jeremiah 29:11 (for your daily life!)

Deuteronomy 31:8

Mark 11:24

Joshua 1:9

Philippians 4:19

Romans 8:28

Proverbs 3:5-6

Mark 10:9 (for your marriage!)

Jeremiah 30:17 (for your health!)

Psalm 103:3 (for your health!)

Matthew 19:4-6 (for your marriage!)

This has been on my mind, heart and soul for the last few days.

This nagging thought or feeling that I’m letting people down, failing at the smallest tasks and literally just NOT doing enough, which translates into not being enough! 

If you’re a mama or a wife, you just related to those words more than you’d like to admit. 

My house isn’t clean enough. My kids didn’t spend enough time learning about nature. My husband didn’t get enough of my attention this week. My kids aren’t learning enough. Translation. I am not enough. We see every flaw and every nuisance, but we don’t tend to see the highlights, or even realize that some of the highlights are in our inadequacies. 

This past week was tough. I felt like their wasn’t enough of me to go around. I have a small business, my husband has his, we have two small kids that we homeschool, I’m 7 months pregnant and I have two giant dogs that love to add some flare to my life. So between sleepless nights, and squeezing every ounce out of my days, I was just done. As I went upstairs to tuck my kids into bed, I found their rooms destroyed, you know the rooms that I helped clean yesterday. I LOST IT. 

Tears, yelling and me throwing my hands in the air, and saying “THATS IT, I’M DONE.”

Ever had those days? The ones that you are embarrassed to parade on Facebook or Instagram? 

I ended up downstairs, in tears with a husband who just swooped me up and gave me a hug. He looked at me and said “You are doing more than enough.”

Cue the “aw so sweet!”, and he is at that. I’m blessed to have a caring husband, who notices what I do everyday. BUT, I still walked away feeling less than. I’m just not doing ENOUGH well .

I listened to the lies all day long. “You aren’t doing enough with your kids”, “They aren’t learning enough”, “ Your house isn’t clean enough, or even nice enough!”, “You  aren’t getting enough work done in your business.”. Meanwhile I’m buying it, not just BUYING it, but putting stock in those words. It tortured me all day, stressed me out, and flat out put a damper on my day and attitude.

How easily we will just buy into a lie, or fall into a comparison game because the lady next door looks more put together and her kid can figure out calculus at four, and yes that’s a made up story. But, the comparison game isn’t, and the torture that comes with it, that isn’t made up either. 

Let me just encourage you with these words, you are more than enough. You are doing more than enough WELL. Your kids are thriving. Your husband is fine. Your house is just an object, and will be there the next day. 

In words that have been poured into my spirit this week “just give them me”. It means slowing down, taking a deep breath, and realizing that He is what matters. His burden is light. His yoke is easy. He is more than enough for YOU, and he is capable of bringing life back into focus!  

The enemy will use your greatest joys and your crappiest days to derail you. Be wise, my friend. Your Heavenly Father has more for you than that, and anything else other than His loving thoughts is a lie. Can we always be and do more, sure. But, it shouldn’t come with discouragement or fear that you are not enough. It should come with challenging and motivating thoughts! 

So, take some time to just breathe in His goodness. In your weakness He can show you strength that only comes from Him. He will remind your heart, mind and soul that you are ENOUGH, because He gave it all for you. Everything else can and will fade away, but He is everlasting!

Until next time,

Becca

We’ve been taking time each week to dive deeper into an interest or just something fun. This week we planned a dinosaur theme.

I think it’s important to make sure we are doing our everyday curriculum but more so, I think it’s so much MORE important that I am stimulating a creative and critical mind in my kids. I don’t want to make my main focus math and reading, even though they are important, they are not everything. We live in an amazing world, created by a an even more amazing Creator. I wanted to facilitate for them to get to know Him more and more. I think in our days we stifle and ignore His creativity around us, and the creativity He naturally put in our kids. So, this week we dove into dinosaurs!

First, I’ll say, I am a busy mom. I don’t have time to sit and plan these weeks out for hours at a time. I try to limit myself so I can spend time where it matters. Pinterest and Instagram have been my best friends, so many amazing homeschool mama’s out there making it happen and helping the rest of us! I’m thankful for them.

This week we got books from the library about dinosaurs, I let the kids pick the books! I think that way, they are invested into reading them more! My mom snagged some books online that were bright, engaging and educational. I try to hit all three of those things!

We had a lot of stuff on hand for Dino week. We had our dinosaur floor puzzle from Melissa and Doug, super fun and has the names of basic dinosaurs on the puzzle! We had books from usborne, the big book of dinosaurs is one of our favorites! We colored pictures of printable (free on the internet!) of our favorite dinosaurs!

Later in the week, we froze mini dinosaurs to pretend we were archeologist and paleontologist, we used hammers and chisels to dig “up” our fossils! I really recommend this project if you are doing dinosaur week. I just took mini dinosaur toys and froze them in ziplock bags overnight. The kids LOVED it and we got to see some imprints of our dinosaurs in the ice! It really drove home the meaning of a fossil.

Again, we just used tools we had on hand for this task! Don’t go crazy blowing your budget. Utilize what you have on hand, and make it work for your family!

One of the things we did purchase, was a dig kit online. We got it at amazon for $20, but really worth it. It was a simple set up, and kept the kids entertained for about half hour or more! It’s messy, so be prepared for that.

They really LOVED the treasures buried inside. They remembered all the tools archeologist need to dig up fossils. We went over the impressions and imprints left behind, and all that fun stuff. They really caught on to the information with this project. I’d highly recommend it. They also got to KEEP all the fun things hidden and read about them in the booklet included.

All in all, they had an amazing time learning about dinosaurs, paleontologists and archeologists. It was fun for me to set it all up, and give them something to look forward to that week. I recommend spending a week on an interest of choice, it gives it repetition and really becomes glue to their growing brains! Plus, it’s way easier on the Mama who’s busy with other things! Keep it simple. Keep it fun. Give them Him! What should we do next?!?

Until next time!

-Becca