Allison.Party_of_Six

 I love the phrase "adulting."  It basically means making grown up stuff happen and pretending like you truly know exactly what's going on, when really, you are just making it up as you go.  I basically began my adult life as a mom since we had our first baby at 22...so for me, parenting often felt exactly like "adulting" in my early years.  Actually, I still feel like I'm just winging it quite often.  The truth is though, now that we are getting to raising our fourth little one, I'm beginning to feel like I know what I'm doing...sometimes or well, at least more frequently than before.  Over the last decade, my mindset on parenting has changed from "how do I do this correctly?" to "what needs to be done to raise them well."  I've found that taking the mindset off of me and my performance and moving it to them completely changes what I do and how I handle most situations.   For example, my just turned two year old loves trying

    While I have yet to make it past Chapter four in Praying with Paul (grace and peace, right?), I was challenged even before I finished the preface of the book.   According to D. A. Carson, one of the major problems within the Western Church is prayerlessness.   Ok, great.   I pray daily.   Clearly this doesn’t apply to me.   T he two pitfalls within the Western Christian church are too much activity that doesn’t include prayer and praying without a basis in the scriptures .   OK, maybe I do pray daily, but are my prayers as well thought out as they should be?   Are they too simplistic?   Do I focus too much on my own wants and needs? They aren’t always based in scriptures.   I rarely sit down with the Bible and pray a passage…clearly, I have a lot to learn.       The first action I took to try to improve my prayer life was beginning to create space.   (I write the word beginning , because truthfully, I still have a long ways to go.)   Now…I’m a home schooling mother of three.  

I still can't imagine being thrown into homeschooling so quickly. I know I've said this before, but I personally needed the time to prepare. I'm a creative soul, and schedules do NOT come naturally to me, so I was so incredibly grateful to learn from my preschooler homeschool curriculum how to schedule the days for my youngest so that I could do it well! I just got off the phone with the owner of the My Father's World curriculum and he gave me permission to share some of it with you to help you adjust to your new way of life as well! I set up Brayden’s mornings like this so he will play happily & feel included while I homeschool the older kids (and of course, I include him in the schooling as possible as well). I treat his activities as though they as just as important as big kid school so he does them diligently and put them away in boxes after so they are special so he loves them while they are out. Once Avery finishes his K4 schedule he joins Brayden in t

     Many Christians live in a constant state of worry about whether or not they are good enough. This is not new information to me, because for the longest time, this was me. I, like many others, lived in a constant struggle of trying to be good enough, failing, and then trying to hide my failures from the world and still look “good enough.” God does not intend for me to live like that. He sent His son so that I may live life abundantly.     The illustration of Creation, The Fall, and Jesus’s Sacrifice really solidified to me that the Holy Spirit truly lives within me so therefore I should allow my body to be a vessel for him. At the time of Creation, God created mankind with a perfect union to Him. Up until the first sin, Adam and Eve lived fully and had a complete relationship with God. After the first sin, mankind fell from the perfect relationship with God. While Adam and Eve were still technically alive, they were not abundantly living because they were not in perfect u

Well hello there sweet thing!  I’ve never had such an in depth first trimester anatomy scan before. It was really cool seeing baby!  Can you believe they are this whole and complete at only 3 months gestation!  Every organ is at least partially formed, the sweet little eyes are hidden under eyelids, the tiny little nose is forming, as well as the mouth and even tiniest little tooth buds!!  Baby looks great! I still have a fairly significant subchorionic hematoma which is cause for concern, but my doctor is optimistic that things will go well!  Please pray that this resolves itself quickly! Taking it easy is not my strong point!  I love being active, doing things with the kids, getting outside, etc etc!  That has not consistently happened in two months at this point, and today I can feel it wearing on all of us...especially in my kiddos antsy-ness!  (I half blame the weather, typically I would just send them outside at this point!) Regardless though, it has been a bit of a blessin

Baby is growing big and strong and waving hello!! Measuring 11 weeks and 6 days and due last day of July/1st day of August. We didn’t expect to see baby today, but he/she gave us quite a scare last night. Actually it turned out to be ME causing the scare. There was/is a pocket of blood beneath baby that caused lots of bleeding and resulted in my blood pressure dropping super low & my passing out twice over the last 12 hours!  Thankfully, my church family was quick with prayers and childcare for Nick to take me to the doctor, and we are hopeful that everything will be just fine! 🙏🏻 This verse was on my mind all night and morning long: You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you. ~Isaiah 26:3 **Editted to add that Caroline Creel just informed me that the baby is due on Harry Potter’s bday. 😉 🧙🏻‍♂️