Never too young to guard your heart

(This post is written by Paul & Audrea's friend, Dawn)

I have the most amazing opportunity every week to teach young kids about God and His Word. They are always attentive and eager to learn and somehow remember most everything I teach them. It is a HUGE encouragement to me to see how much they learn and remember. I am blessed every week with 3 beautiful little girls, Makayla, Sabrina, and Elayna. There have been though, many a Wednesday nights or Sunday mornings where somehow I know I am at church, but I feel like Art Linkletter or Bill Cosby are present filming a secret episode of "Kids Say the Darndest Things." We added a friend last night to our Wednesday night events. Taylor, a boy, who is in Kindergarten, joined my beautiful girls. We went through our normal activities of Play-dough, coloring books and crayons, and a short Bible Story. I brought in some Kids Worship music last night to play while we ate our dinner and colored. After class, we had a bit before the kids got picked up, so I proceeded to turn the music on and they all decided to dance around and enjoy the music. They were all laughing and smiling and enjoying each others company. Sabrina decided to dance with her sister Elayna and Elayna was more than willing to enjoy that with her. Well, Taylor, my only boy, decides he wants to dance with Elayna as well, so when Sabrina finished, he made his way to Elayna and took her hands to dance. Elayna stops, plants her feet to the floor, quits smiling and laughing, and yells "NO ROMANCE BEFORE MARRIAGE!!!!!" She dropped Taylors hands and went on dancing by herself enjoying the music. I mean seriously, where is Bill Cosby and Art Linkletter when these things happen anyway? :)

Horse-Riding Lessons

Savannah has talked about taking horse-riding lessons for a couple years. It used to be that she would ask us to buy a horse. We told her how much work it was and how fast the poop accumulated, but that usually didn't deter her. Eventually we said, "Well, how 'bout lessons, instead, someday?" Our mistake. From that point on, she had talked about lessons. This Christmas, her favorite gift was a certificate for horse-riding lessons. According to her, "It's the best gift I've ever gotten."

There is a horse riding club right here in town, just 5 minutes away from our house that we take her to. You'll notice in the picture that she has her coat on and looks bundled up. The lessons occur in a large barn but the barn is not really heated. She loves it all the same, though.

(It isn't extremely bright in there, so you'll have to excuse the graininess of the pictures.) When I took her for one of the lessons, I was kind of nervous, considering my horse-riding accident last spring. Watching her go around the fence without any help slowly built up my confidence in her.

Meanwhile, she goes on loving horses and still talking about a career centered around horses.

Happy New Year!!

Welcome to 2009, everyone!!!!!

My family and I wish you all a happy new year and pray that you will experience afresh God's grace throughout the whole year!

William

Tonight we will look at a few glimpses of the busy life of our toddlin' boy William.

Will turned 1 this year and celebrated with a decorations of dogs everywhere! (Notice the wall of coloring pages and drawings behind him in this picture.)
Will loves to work--especially cleaning. If he can get involved with whatever you're doing, he's happy!


Will is also our little builder. Here he is below after he and I went to Home Depot where they help kids do building projects once a month.
Will is also very strong and agile. Here he lives up to the name on his shirt--Lightning Mcqueen. Audrea frequently catches him up on top of the girls bunkbeds sometimes standing up and dancing to their music.
And speaking of music, he's a huge fan of anything musical (his tastes range from classical to rock, from hip hop to country, so basically anything daddy listens to!)
He has also picked up same love for books that his sisters have. Here he is with them and his Grandma Connie reading to him.
For the longest time he would do this silly little face shown below. He'd scrunch up his lips like so and breathe loudly in and out through his nose. Give it a try. I'm sure your friends will love it!
Finally, I leave you with my favorite picture of the year. Will and his best friend, Caleb, were playing in the bedroom after Will's bath when we caught him just like this. The picture was so hilarious we hosted a caption contest on facebook. The winning caption was "Tell me again... why do I have to be naked in order to escape?" The second place caption was "Uh dude, you're visible again."

Elayna

This morning I want to introduce you to my darling Elayna. Elayna turned 4 this year as you can clearly see in the picture below.
Baby Sweet's happy grin is always such a warming sight! Here she is doing one of her favorite things: munching on snacks!
Here she is doing her most favorite thing: sleeping whilst sucking her thumb under her cuddly "tt-woobee-bubba" (as she calls it--she keeps adding new names that she likes).
Elayna can't decide who she likes to play with more: Will or Sabrina. She has been such a big helper with her brother but does tend to get into the most squabbles with him :)
Here's my little lovely one helping make these flowers look even more beautiful.

Sabrina

This evening I want to show you our "little red"--Sabrina. Sabrina turned 6 this year and is also growing up way too fast!
You may have noticed Sabrina's length of hair in the picture above. She announced to us this year that she wanted to get her hair cut a little shorter. It was the first major cut she has ever had! It was down about two-thirds of her back, but 10 inches later it touches her shoulder.

Though she's not proud of them, notice the freckles that daddy passed on to her that are starting to pop up under her eyes:Sabrina has a darling little smirk (as shown below) that is designed to capture your heart. I will be a very busy dad fighting off the boys with this one!
I love this picture below where Audrea caught her in a natural moment having tons of fun on a hay ride:
Our little Bina has about 45 nicknames that we've given her including but not limited to hoppy, boppy, bina bop, hippity, hoppity, and on and on. One of her other nicknames is revealed here in this picture: floppy.
This was also the big year for her to part ways with her two front baby teeth.
The new ones did grow in quickly before Christmas!

Savannah

For the next two days, I'm going to highlight our four beautiful blessings from God: our children. Today, I start with our oldest: Savannah. Savannah turned 9 this year and is too quickly growing up as you can see in this portrait below.

Savannah loves all things horses. Here she is riding Star at her uncle Rick's farm.
I'm not kidding when I say "loves" horses:
Savannah is also our avid outdoors person. She'll stay out all day if you let her. Here she is with her first catch of the day at our Elliott family reunion.
You'll also notice in these pictures a strange device she is wearing. We discovered this year that she has scoliosis and will have to wear this brace until she stops growing. I wrote a lot about this trial in our life earlier this year on this blog.

Savannah is also the leader of our little artists. Here she is below with a butterfly she painted on silk at an art camp at Sojourn Community Church this summer.

She also wanted you to see this large silk banner that she helped her class paint.

Savannah's accident was a big highlight of her life in November! If you hadn't heard, she fell off a diving board at our school's rec center pool and was taken to the hospital for stitches. Here she is being assessed by the medics.
Here's the Gurney Girl being rolled away!
Here she is being loaded into the ambulance.
And, praise the Lord, here she is with the only effects of the fall: 3 stitches in the chin.
All has healed up nicely and matches the little scar on my chin where I hurt it jumping off the stairs backwards at First Baptist. We've decided to start our own club. Not sure what to call it though: the chin club or the clutz club!

Fieldtrips!

One of the great benefits of homeschooling is the freedom to take many more field trips than you would get to in a typical schooling situation. When my mom taught us at home we were able to visit all kinds of interesting locations such as a candy factory, a newspaper press, television studio, and of course historic sites. Audrea has it even better than we did: she found a group that is explicitly about creating field trips--River City Field Trips.

Recently they were able to visit The Farnsley~Moremen Landing here in Kentucky.

The main reason for the girls to go on this trip was to help Savannah explore what an archaelogist does by working in a dig and seeing a real dig site.

The girls were allowed to work in the hole and see what they could find!

At the end, the girls were able to create their own bricks from clay with their names engraved.

Scoliosis

Scoliosis is a condition where your spine has an unnatural curve in it and results in a misalignment of nearly every other bone in your body. The curve can be either an "s-shaped" (a thoracic) or "c-shaped" (a lumbar) curve.

At Savannah's last well-child doctor visit in Minneapolis, the doctor discovered that she has scoliosis and is bad enough that she should be x-rayed. After checking the x-rays, she recommended that Savannah go to the Twin Cities Spine Center. We went there and they did some initial checking and said that with her current degree of curvature, given her rate of growth, she could have a very bad case of scoliosis by the time she is done growing.

Once we moved here to Louisville she started going to the Norton Spine Institute and working with a doctor who trained under her doctor in Minneapolis. If the scoliosis is advanced enough there are only 2 treatment options--bracing or surgery. Surgery is reserved for very bad cases. Savannah's curve is not bad enough to warrant surgery but is enough to require a brace. There are different kinds of braces made depending on the type of scoliosis you have. Savannah has both thoracic and lumbar and was custom fitted for a brace that she must wear 23 hours per day (except for when athletic activities are too difficult to perform with it--then she can remove it).

Below you can see Savannah sporting her new equipment. The point of the brace is to stop the curve from getting worse while she grows--so she has to wear this brace until her body stops growing. It is uncomfortable at times and can be hot to wear in this humidity, yet if she doesn't wear it, the results can be dramatic.

Sabrina has also been diagnosed with this condition and is being monitored to see if she will need a brace. While being monitored she is undergoing chiropractic care to help her remain flexible and potentially help improve the condition.

This has been a very interesting trial in our life. If you read my blog at all, it shouldn't come as a surprise to you, though, that I believe there are connections between the Gospel and Scoliosis. I hope to expound in those in the coming days. In the meantime, you can read more about scoliosis at these links:

• WebMD
• KidsHealth
• SpineKids

Scoliosis and the Gospel Pt. 1
Scoliosis and the Gospel Pt. 2
Scoliosis and the Gospel Pt. 3
Scoliosis and the Gospel Pt. 4
Scoliosis and the Gospel Pt. 5