September Bustle

    Today we are only half way through September (which has gone super fast by the way!) and I feel like we have been going non-stop!

    We kicked off September by going to the Renaissance Festival in KC over Labor Day Weekend. We had never been before and my sweet friends Micah and Maerissa invited us to go for my birthday! It was pretty neat and Elisha loved every bit of it: the swords, the jousting, the pirates, the swords, the Children's Realm, the swords. Seriously, we could not leave until he had a sword of his very own.

It was a pirate themed weekend at Ren Fest and so Elisha had to wear his pirate hat.

Elisha on the "Throne of Swords"

I couldn't resist, I had to put Matt in the stocks.

 The day after Ren Fest, we remembered the The Great Pershing Balloon Derby was going on that weekend. Elisha and I had gone 4 years ago, but Matt had never gone so we decided to go. It was beautiful day, however the wind made it very dangerous for the hot air balloons to actually go up. They cold inflated a few but none of them actually went up. It wasn't all a waste though, Elisha's name got drawn to go play in one of those bouncy houses for free for 20 min and we got to eat walking tacos. When it got kind of dark out they did light up the baskets without the balloons on them so we could see that. And then the kids got some fun glow in dark stuff and we had fun running into people we haven't seen in awhile along with hanging out with great friends.

 I spent my birthday with family and friends. Elisha made me the cutest card. Matt brought home wild flowers, cheesecake and got me the movie, "Mom's Nigh Out". It was a good day with sweet people.

 We are a whole month into are homeschool-ing, which is going great. Elisha is learning to read, which is really cool to watch. So far we have learned about the 7 days of creation, we have done a unit study on the sun and we are getting to wrap up a unit study on the moon tomorrow. Then we will start on leaves- which I think will be fun considering Fall has decided to show up a little early around here as far as the temps go (now if the leaves will get the memo and start changing colors that would be great!).

Speaking of Fall, its that time of year when things are starting back up again - school, AWANA, MOPS, etc (I know there are others like t.v. shows, football, blah, blah, blah, but when do you have time for such things when there is school, AWANA and MOPS???) Anyway, I'm so excited about MOPS starting back up! I have made a lot of good mama friends through this program and its a great ministry too! Our theme this year is Be You Bravely and I have found it to be a very challenging and inspiring theme as I seek out ways to be brave as a mom, a wife and  a friend.

This Fall I am also taking on the role as Commander of our church's AWANA program. I guess you can say this is one of my "brave challenges". I'm still learning the ropes and hopefully will be able to get the rhythm of things over the next few weeks. Elisha is a Sparky this year and is very excited about this.

With all this busy-ness going on it has been a priority for our family to set aside times each week just for our family. Helping out with ministries at our church is great and important, having fellowship with other mamas is also important to me, but time with JUST our family is so precious. Time is fleeting, there is never enough time. Even as a stay at home mom, time flies. I remember being my son's age and the afternoons seemed to be never ending (having very little concept of time helps with that I suppose). I wish I could get lost in long afternoons with my kids, but housework and responsibilities pile up. I have been working on this though. It means I get up early and go to bed sort of late, but it helps tackle the to-do list. I get up at 5 am to make breakfast for my husband and we do devotions together before he leaves for work. I also get started on my laundry (with this system I usually only need to do one load a day to stay caught up, except Mondays- I usually have 2-3 depending on how busy the weekend was). I try to get everything done before my kids wake up and then it's time for them- breakfast, getting dressed, brushing teeth, Bible and school work with Elisha. I still have a few things to do through out the day and try to use Eisley's nap time to do something for myself (which usually ends up being snuggling up with Elisha and a reading a book together or taking a nap with Eisley). I can't help it, sometimes, time for me ends up being just more time with my kids. I love it when our family time ideas come from my husband and both of the last two have been all his ideas! We did a picnic dinner last week as well as a pizza night where we all pitched in to help make the pizza- so fun! No interruptions, no to-dos, just us having fun and spending time together. 

    

Eisley has kind of ensured that I slow down a little this week, poor girl just hasn't been feeling well :(

One last thing: Look at how handsome my boy is! We go his "Kindergarten" Pictures taken (Murphy's Studio in Chillicothe) and they turned out SO cute!!