I wish I was a little bit..

Better at keeping up my blog!

So much has happened in our life and I have really missed out on capturing it all on my blog.

* We have moved from Columbus to Troy
* I am now babysitting my niece full-time
* I have a new niece!
* We have been to Disney World
* We have had spur of the moment trips with my brother and his family
* We have been searching for a church
* We have changed jobs
* We have been doing Classical Conversations homeschool
* We have made the official decision to homeschool Emma
* We attended a homeschool convention
* We went to a rap concert
* We have taken Emma to her first "big kid" concerts (City Harmonic, All Sons and Daughters)
* Emma plays outside without my supervision and I have not yet had an actual heart attack over it
* My BABY turns 5 next month and I am already crying over it
* I joined a Book Club
* I re-joined Weight Watchers
* I still travel every other week to Columbus to take part in my Precept study group
* Emma is in her last year as a Cubbie
* Emma did ballet and has a recital this weekend
* My Dad moved out of the last house that my Mom lived in
* My Dad is making big transitions in his life
* My sister is married and now lives in NC

SO much that I have missed blogging about..  LOTS of catching up to do!

Crazy start to Christmas!

We have done a lot to bring ourselves into the Christmas spirit so far this month!

This past weekend, we treated Emma to a live play of The Velveteen Rabbit. It was not what we were expecting, but we had a good time doing the activities before the play :)

We were also able to visit and have dinner with some college friends that we have not seen since last New Year! We had a good time catching up with Nick and Lindsay! :)

On Sunday, we visited a new church that we really enjoyed that shared a message that hit us both square in the heart. It was great!

Sunday evening, we took Emma to Young's for dinner and then to Cedarville University for a Christmas concert. She loved the chapel and hearing all about how Mommy and Daddy met! I don't think she really enjoyed the music very much (it was kind of slow going), but she said she had a great time anyway :)  It was fun being on campus again!

Our weekend was also tough, though. My 3-month old niece, the one I have been blessed to be able to watch each week, picked up a pretty bad stomach bug and was, and still is, in the Children's hospital. It has been a very nerve-wracking weekend and it is still going. Poor baby girl is struggling to fight this. Your prayers would be MUCH appreciated!  We love this little girl and the blessing she has already been to our life and it has been one of the most emotional weekends ever!

December.... sweet Christmas time

Happy December!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving, and I seriously cannot find one picture from Thanksgiving day! Our original plans of having Thanksgiving in Michigan with my Dad did not work out, so we had a nice Thanksgiving at home with my brother and sister-in-law and my new niece! 

The spirit of Mom came out in me and I wanted to cook every possible Thanksgiving recipe ever created. So, we had all of the traditional foods and some that just sounded good. All of the food turned out very good and we were all stuffed after a long day of cooking! A new idea that Chris had was to create a conversation jar for the table. So, after our meal, we each took turns taking a question from the jar and then we each answered it. It was a great idea! Emma loved it so much, that every day since Thanksgiving, she asks us questions just like the game we played. :)

The next day, we set out to start decorating for Christmas. We put all of the fall things away and put up our main Christmas tree. We spent the rest of the weekend decorating! We went ALL. OUT. this year. Every item of decoration is up and every room has a little Christmas in it.  We lit a fire in the fireplace and enjoyed decorating and turning the house into the North Pole ;)  

Have I said before how much I love Christmas?? :)

    

I am looking forward to this Christmas and to the New Year that will follow. We have had a lot of huge changes this year and I am ready to wind down for the year and start fresh.

Speaking of starting fresh!  We are now officially babysitting my niece and I love it!!  Trying to do our normal things with another baby in the house has been a little challenging, but it has been a blast! I LOVE this baby and Emma loves helping. She is super sweet with baby girl and loves having her cousin around during the day. God has really blessed this and I am encouraged by how much we are all enjoying it :)

How can you not love this?

Classical what?

Our family is in a phase of transition right now. We have sold our house and left our old life to start new adventures together in a brand new city

One of these adventures, is a new home-school co-op for Emma. This year, she is 4. So, we really have to make a decision on schooling. We were fortunate to move into an area with excellent school reputations. However, for the past 4 years, we lived in an area with only one good choice of school and so we had decided to home-school. I decided to embark on a journey of trying out the home-school option to see what we thought of it. So, this year, we joined a Classical Conversations home-school co-op because it was the only one available to a 4 year old that did not require an older sibling in order to join. :)

The first week we went to CC, I still had a car filled with pyrex dishes in the back seat and moving boxes in the trunk. We looked like a family that lived out of our car! Now, if you know me at all, you know that I am not very good at meeting new people and being in situations where I do not know anyone at all. I am introverted, painfully shy at first and awkward in personality. So, this required me to go WAY outside of my comfort zone. Fortunately, I birthed a child that is the complete opposite of me and have been pulled outside of this comfort zone multiple times a day in the last few months. You see, my daughter thrives on meeting new people and making new friends and chatting up the local coffee shop barista. This little 4-year old person does not know a stranger. Everyone is her friend, whether they like it or not.

So, in we go. We walk into a room of home-schoolers and our new life begins. Emma walks over with me to the area where everyone gathers to start the day and I pull her to the back row and sit in the chair with her on my lap and a strong coffee in hand. My little safety net scurries off of my lap and starts introducing herself to the other kids and making friends faster than I have ever seen anyone make a new friend. It goes something like this:

Em - "Hi! I'm Emma! What is your name?
Friend - "I'm _____!"
Em - " You are my best friend in the whole world!"
and off they go dancing together making new friends along the way

Meanwhile, the moms are introducing themselves to me and I am drinking coffee faster and faster to try to spur the extrovert to come out of me. Caffeine does the trick. Soon, I am talking and saying ridiculous and awkward things to everyone around me and Bam! Just like that, we are in a new community of people.

Emma LOVES CC and after 11 weeks now, I am loving it too. I'm not going to lie... it was (and still is at times) very overwhelming. It is a LOT to take in but I must admit, Emma has thrived with it and I am constantly impressed with how much she loves to learn new things. She far exceeds my expectations and while I realize that each child is different in their learning capacity and love for learning, I am slightly intimidated by how quickly she picks things up... and terrified at the things she must be picking up from me that I am not intending to teach her.

Right now, I love homeschooling Emma and will probably continue to school her this way through next year.
Not because I hate the school system. Not because I want to shelter Emma from the evils of the world. Not because I want to indoctrinate her and force her to my beliefs.

I want to home-school my daughter because I love being with her. I love being the one that gets to see that light bulb go off when she "gets" something for the first time. I love re-learning everything right along with her. I love making learning fun for her. I love going to the grocery store during the day with her and learning through our every day life. I love watching her talk with adults at the store during the day, picking things up for people, sharing a smile with someone who seems grumpy to her. I love having Friday morning coffee shop dates where we do our homework over a cup of hot cocoa and Emma talks up a storm with every single other person in the place.

I love that it gives me a slight bit of empathy for the people in my life who have dedicated their lives to being under-paid, over-worked, educators of young children. My hat is off to those, like my sister, who spend every day in a classroom filled with kids at all different levels of learning and speaking the English language. What a challenge!!  I couldn't do it :)

What an adventure we have begun!

Oh. My.

Was my last entry really November of LAST year??

I regret letting this go. I regret not capturing the memories of our life in this past year. Mostly because this past year was one of MANY struggles and MANY huge changes!

In April of 2014, we started applying for a new job for Chris. His work life had sucked the life out of our home life and needed to change. For some time we had felt God preparing us for something. We just never knew what that was. God led us down a tough path of choosing obedience and seeking a life totally outside of our comfort zone.

Chris has a new job now. God moved us from Columbus to Troy, OH, selling our house in 6 days!! This is truly of God, as most houses in our neighborhood were taking months and months to sell. We packed up, moved to Troy and began a journey that we are still not sure of!

Emma, now 4 1/2 by the way!, has adjusted wonderfully. We are now within 20 minutes of all of our Risheill family and an hour closer to my Michigan family. Our neighbors are wonderful and the 3 houses surrounding ours have children Emma's age. She has already become good friends with all of them.

We have also begun the journey of homeschooling, officially. We are involved in a Classical Conversations home-school co-op and have made many friends through this opportunity. It is one day a week that we are able to spend with other kids her age. Emma loves school and loves to learn. Just this month she has learned to read! I am still doing a lot of praying over being a home-school family, but for now it is where we are at.

We have a new niece!!  Willow Risheill was born August 27th and she is super cute! Blue eyes and blond hair just like Emma! However, Emma was born with black hair, which later turned blond and Willow was born with blond hair .. and lots of it! :)  We were also blessed to be asked to be her caregivers once her Mommy goes back to work in two weeks. So, we will have a much busier schedule and a new addition to our daily life here soon. I am pretty excited about it! I miss having a baby around, so this will be fun for me and Emma is beyond excited to help me "take care" of baby Willow :)

My sister is now a wife, as of August 2, 2014!  I was privileged to be a part of her wedding, which was beautiful!, and am happy for this new chapter in her life. Her wedding led to her living in NC and although I do miss having her so close, I am happy to see her so happy!

I look forward to blogging more frequently and trying to keep a record of our ever changing life!

Update on life..

We are all alive and doing well

Piano lessons have started back up and we have a full schedule that keeps us super busy all week long

I cannot believe it is Fall, almost Thanksgiving, almost Christmas.  How is that for a run-on sentence?

I am hoping to update more frequently

I am still working out like a maniac and hope to post some before & afters on here soon. Not too much of a difference visually speaking but lots of differences to speak about, nonetheless.

Happy November!

What else is there...

On this day, six years ago, we buried my Mom. 

On this day, six years ago, I learned a lot about what the other people in my family feel about death, life and what happens to us at the end of it all.

On this day, six years ago, our faith became more real than it ever had been up to this point. What do we really believe? We had nothing left but faith, hope and an utter reliance on all of the things we had hidden in our hearts, our minds and our life.

Yet, some in my own immediate family are choosing to believe that this is the end. She simply ceased to exist and is lying in this spot forever. That there is no life beyond what we physically know right now. 

What hopelessness. 

What sadness.

What grief.

I am confident of this, friends: My Mom is not in that grave. This spot simply stands as a memorial and a resting place for her body until her Savior returns! 

WHAT HOPE WE HAVE IN CHRIST

There is no way around it. Those who choose not to know Him, will never understand the peace, the hope, the comfort and the strength that comes from no longer being blinded to the truth.

What will be on your grave marker? What will you believe? 

We have a tendency to believe that everyone that dies goes to Heaven because it makes us feel better. All dead people create angels. Am I right? "Don't worry, they are looking down on you" "She's an angel in heaven now" "God must have needed a new angel" We can spend a lifetime choosing not to believe in God, live our life for Him, seek Him...  but as soon as someone dies we suddenly believe they go to heaven by default.

No!  It's SO much more than that! Not everyone goes to heaven! 

So, where are you going to be? 

When that grave marker has your name on it and your loved one is standing by dealing with the fact that you are gone... where will you be? 

My Mom is in Heaven with her Savior. Her first love. She has been redeemed and even though she doesn't deserve to be in Heaven (after all, we are all sinners!), she is there because she knows that Christ died for her and she has been forgiven and chose to give her life over to Christ. 

She is not sitting on a cloud, looking down on me and acting as God in my life. She is enjoying time with Jesus and who knows what else!! What matters, is that I will see her again one day.

I know this, because I too am a sinner redeemed by Christ. 

I, too, am promised an eternity with Him simply because He chose to forgive me and call me His own.

Life doesn't end in that grave.

You are going to go somewhere.

Where will it be?