A Two Week Repose

Happy New Year to everyone!  May 2015 be a blessed and great year for all.
 

William and baby "K" playing.

I can honestly say for the first time in 11 months I feel rested.  I thought I was tired before we started back into foster care!  Every since the toddlers came and then baby "K", I have been running on E and often at borderline exhaustion.  Tim always asks me if I slept well and I don't even remember.  I am just "out" as soon as my head hits the pillow and then morning or a bottle feeding seems to come so quickly.

Antonio wanted me to take a picture of a new shirt he got.

Whenever I usually give the children a day off from home schooling, we do some sort of work that day.  Like raking leaves, stacking wood, cleaning in the barn or deep cleaning in the house.  There is always so much to do around here.  I rarely have ever just given them a day off to do as they wish, except for Sabbath each weekend. 

"B" improving his hand strength with the good old light bright.

We had a very hard respiratory virus go thru starting the beginning of December.  It lasted for a few weeks with each person and slowly went thru us all.  I was beat from not feeling well, trying to keep the house disinfected and the children were struggling to recover.  Also, my schedule cleared for the last two weeks of the month of December.  Ballet was closed.  For the first time ever, our therapy place closed for the holidays.  I had only three appointments in two weeks and two of those were for Antonio's therapeutic massage therapist, who comes to our home once a week.  So we called a... stay at home, watch movies, work as little as possible, vacation, recovery, get some rest, time.  Two weeks of... do what you want even if that meant sleep all day.  Which some of the children did snooze on the couch some. 

William and "T" taking an afternoon snooze.

I truly got some rest as well.  I still had to tend to the sick ones and the well ones.  I still had to do meals and keep the house running.  I still had to make sure the barn chores were done.  But I left the house to go to town very little and spent a good deal of time planted on the couch with small children either climbing all over me or nestled up beside me resting.

Don't think it was easy peazy though.  To keep it all real...Of course there is always Elizabeth...sadly she spent most of her two week rest and vacation doing school work, as it is the only punishment that means anything to her.   Zeke also spent one day of his two weeks doing school work as a punishment.

I always feel so badly for Elizabeth.  She always has to ruin a good time by her own bad behavior, mean spiritedness or tantrums.  She even lost the privileged of staying up and celebrating New Years Eve with the other children.  I often just give her grace and let her participate...and always give her a chance to earn things taken away back.  She absolutely refused this time.  :(   I keep praying one day she will mature enough to be able to control herself and do what is expected of her with out lashing out at others.  On the good side, God has been working on her every day and every year that passes she improves a small amount.  I believe with all my heart, some day she will be saved and have natural love and self control.  She can go long spells now behaving and then has a week or so of just regressing terribly.  The past  month was one of those times. 

I am so grateful these three get along so well together.  They are good friends.

I feel good.  I feel rested and am resolved to keep my schedule lighter in 2015 and try to keep life as simple as I can for a season.  God is so good.

Lamentations 3:22-23  It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.  They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.

Blessings,
susan