Allison.Party_of_Six

*Long post alert* I’m not exactly certain what happened during the last two weeks. It’s all a blur!! We prepped for the hurricane. We left. We spent time with family and homeschooled on the road. We got to see my mom feeling pretty good and talked lots about how her experience with cancer changed us all. One of my closest friends had life saving emergency surgery and I freaked out for her more than I even realized! I left my older children in the upstate for a fun week. I came back home and did all my hurricane clean up. Our HOA scheduled & completed repairs (thank you!)! I went back to my parents and got my kids, spent some time with my wonderful mother in law and aunt n uncle in law, spent some time with a good friend, saw my Granny who hasn’t been doing well (and it was an amazing day!!) and got to see my aunt who was doing an incredible job keeping my Granny in good spirits, got to spend some quality time with my brother and parents! Then I came back home and threw

Cooking with kids... ...not going to lie...it’s HARD!  I really want them to learn and they love doing it, but there are constant moments of shredded cheese getting everywhere, strawberries being tossed into omelets, etc etc!  It’s so worth it, and I 100% intend to keep teaching them, BUT, I felt the need to let you know that despite the adorable picture and the fact that the omelets turned out AMAZING, it’s not all rainbows and sunshine! #dontcomparehighlightstoreality

You’ve always taught us to be strong, independent, and self sufficient!  How to love hard and be a little scrappy to make the best out of all things...but this year, you showed us what that REALLY meant!!  I love you and I’m so proud to say that you are my Mom. I’m so in awe of how you’ve fought to give Glory and praise to God and to see His beauty in all things!! I love you, Mom and I’ve never fully appreciated what spending another birthday with you (even from afar) meant to me until this one! 💗 HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOM!!!!

Philippians 1:12-26 When you open God’s Word, expect to meet with Him and to learn something about Him. Expect to find more of who He is and what He wants you to be like. In a wonderful way you’ll grow to understand God and His ways if you are open to being changed by what you find in the Scriptures. Every time we read the Bible together, we will begin by praying over the scriptures.   As you begin reading, open your heart to the teaching of the Holy Spirit; ask Him to give you understanding and to help you think and act in God’s way. Before we do anything else, I want you to simply read through the passage once. You can print a worksheet out  here  to follow along with! Once you've printed your worksheet out we can really dive in on learning how to use the "Observe" portion of inductive Bible study! Observations are what you see with your eyes within the text! “You will miss a lot of information if you are only looking at how you are feeling."

I recently started following a new way of reading the Bible!  You are going to have to bear with me, because I am new to this way of doing it myself, but I wanted to share, because as I was getting started with it I discovered that there were very few resources to help people like you and I through this! Tons of resources for the Bible scholar, but very limited hands-on break downs of this observe-interpret-apply process for people like you and me! I started this pattern while putting together our study plan for my Women's Bible Study this spring!  ((Speaking of...do you know that the church of Philippi began as something similar to a small women's Bible study?!?!)) Of course, I had a few resources to help me, including Women of the Word by Jen Wilkin , my brother, Caleb Creel, who recently graduated from seminary, and the timeless  commentary by Matthew Henry . So what am I doing exactly?  This is the exact activity we did in Bible Study yesterday and I plan to expound i