High School

As I have recently reconnected with friends from elementary school, junior high , and high school on Facebook, it really got me thinking. I am SO glad that God helps us grow and mature after high school. I don't know about you , but I am not even remotely the same person I was was when I graduated!

My "old" friends have a hard time believing that I homeschool because I was not a big fan of school back in the day! That is actually part of the reason I do homeschool. I want my kids to enjoy learning! I also want to be able to spend extra time, if needed, to be sure they really "get" the information and I want them to be able to fly through material that they have a good grasp on.

It is so cool to reconnect because I get to see the kinds of people my friends have grown up to be. It helps me realize how much I have changed and that God keeps forgiving me as I mess up and then He lets me start again with a clean slate!

So, thanks to all of my Facebook friends who were my friends back then and still wanted to be my friends now!

More Blessings

My husband is now "officially" unemployed due to a lay-off and we are experiencing the Peace that passes understanding. I think one of the reasons that we feel such a peace at this normally stressful time is that we have really been focusing on our blessings and how thankful we are for what we have.
The list that follows declare a small portion of the blessings we have received since Joe found out about the lay-offs last November. It is kind of long but we have found that the more we focus on our blessings, the less we fell sorry for ourselves!

• This is an opportunity for Joe to find a job he really loves!
• This happened AFTER we got out of debt - thanks Dave Ramsey!
• His date of lay-off went from Jan 4 to March 31 in a span of 15 minutes.
• This can be Joe’s mid-life crisis! (He got the news the week of his 40th birthday)
• We decided to continue our giving to the church instead of lowering it when we completely renovated our budget. The next day my dad suggested looking at our 401k contribution. The amount of contribution that now goes into his paycheck instead of his 401k equals the amount we had considered lowering our tithe amount – plus some.
• That same day we received a monetary gift – enough to live by our Emergency Budget for almost 3 months.
• Someone who provides a service for us dropped the rate by $10 per month, without us asking.
• We had our 2nd straight year of All Cash Christmas!
• We have had tons of encouragement and prayers from family and friends - thank you!
• We are living on an Emergency Budget and putting money in savings every month, we have realized that we can live on SO much less than we have been!
• Found out about using an antenna instead of cable and we disconnected our land line saving us over $600 per year and we still get great channels!
• Started using Cartridge World for our printer ink cartridges saving us over $10 per cartridge.
• After we prayed for provision, Joe continued to be extended in his job for an additional 4 months.
• I got a little part time that that will, hopefully, pay for our groceries each month.
• We put in a raised-bed garden and it has provided over $200 worth of free food this summer.
• We are healthy.
  
• We were given a really cool entertainment center that looks great in the living room - AND hides the TV when it is not in use!
• We thought we had a major car issue but it turned out to be only a fluid problem.
• We have found so many ways to go and have fun for FREE!
• We were blessed to be able to spend time with all four of our parents this year.

We know that God has a plan for us and we believe part of that plan was for us to learn to live on less. It is such a great feeling to have a little money in the bank rather than a ton of debt hanging over our heads. We continue to search for more ways to save - it has become almost a game for us! Thanks for taking the time to read this, hope you have a great week and I encourage you to count your blessings!

Jungle Flight

"A harrowing near-crash at a remote airstrip, a deep-jungle rescue mission, a jaguar attack, spiritual warfare, terrorist attack, a mass evacuation in the face of a militant uprising. Who says being a missionary is boring?!? "

Jungle Flight was written by the Pastor of our church in Virginia and is based on a personal trip to the jungles of Southeast Asia and private interviews with the pilots and technicians of JAARS (originally, Jungle Aviation and Radio Service).
I am so excited to let you all know about it and I hope you will enjoy it!

"Jungle Flight will ignite your imagination and inspire your heart to read about survival and rescue missions made possible by the miracle work of Jesus Christ, the Pilot of our souls.
This collection of short stories will allow you to peer into the cockpits of airplanes set apart for missionary service in the Name of the Lord and learn how aviation has contributed to carrying out the Great Commission. As a pilot myself, I have been amazed at how God has used planes and helicopters as effective tools to elevate Bible translation for the purpose of evangelism in the most remote parts of the world." Franklin Graham President and CEO,
Samaritan's Purse and The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association

Jungle Flight is the gritty reality and harrowing adventures of JAARS mission aviators and technicians living and working on the edge of the civilized world come to life in this new book by Dane Skelton. , this book tells it like it is, taking the reader inside the cockpit and into harms way with men and women of deep faith and profound commitment to service through professional excellence.

BEGINNING AUGUST 1st YOU MAY ORDER BY CALLING - The JAARS Gift Shop at 704-843-6104.
JAARS will get a portion of the proceeds if you order directly from them.

Also available now at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com
For bulk orders leave me a comment and I will get you the information.

What others are saying:
"JUNGLE FLIGHT is a compilation of real stories about ordinary people doing extraordinary things in service to God. I couldn't put it down. Read it for heart-soaring adventure as well as soul-stirring inspiration.", Professor and Pastor, Dr. Max Anders, author of 30 Days to Understanding the Bible
"After 40 years of serving the US space program, I find myself awed by what the men and women of JAARS have done to impact the global ministry of Bible translation. What they do each day requires more than just being made of the right stuff: it takes extraordinary faith in the One who created the mountains they fly over, the people they serve, the One who's guiding their flight from start to finish." Tom Overton, Multiflow Integration Manager, PH-O Kennedy Space Center, FL

Dane Skelton is a pastor, an aviation nut, a motorcyclist, and is interested in anything that rolls, floats or flies. Dane has been married to Krista for 25 years and they have three daughters.

Field Day

Last week the girls attended the area wide homeschool Field Day. There were a couple hundred kids and lots of family and friends there. The girls had so much fun and always look forward to it.
The things I love about it are:
FRIENDS! (Mine and the girls')
Kids who did not know each other were pairing up for team competitions
I heard NO bad language at all
Kids were cheering for each other
I did not see anyone making fun of anyone else
Lots of good sportsmanship
Lots of fun and good exercise!

Casey won 1st place in the 3-legged race with her friend Addison,
she won second place in the back-to-back with her friend Alyssa,
she won third place in the girls team relay with Addison and a girl she did not know, and she ran a mile.

Cody won a first place ribbon for participation,
second place ribbons in the 1/4 mile run,
backwards run, girls team relay with her friends Camille and Prairie, the frisbee throw, the hula hoop, and a third place ribbon for the short yard dash.

Good Friends!

It was fun and exhausting and we need an entire year to recover and be ready for it again next year!

She's Black?!

Casey babysat 2 sweet, sweet kids last night at our house. The little girl who is 5 began telling me about our new President. She informed me that he is an African-American (in case I did not know!). As we began discussing how far "black-skinned" people (as she put it) have come in America and the equality they have acheived my 5 year piped up, "I don't think I have any black friends." Knowing full well that she does I said, "Baby, yes you do! Trinity is your friend, you play with her every week and she is black." (Technically Trinity is mixed but she has the beautiful brown skin, dark, dark eyes, and crazy cool curly hair!) Cody replied, "She is?!"
Then Casey said, "Oh yeah, and Addison is African-American too! I don't even see her as black, I forget that she is because she's just.....a friend!"
So we begin talking about all of our friends and neighbors who are African-American and they keep saying things like, "Oh yeah!" and "I always forget that!"

So here are 2 things I learned last night:
1. That I don't want my kids telling people that they don't have any black friends, because they do!
2. That it is AWESOME that they don't see their friends as black, white, Hispanic, Latino, Chinese, Armenian, German, Liberian, Russian, Panama Indian, or Native American, they see them for who they really are.....friends.

Blessings

So far the New Year has been relatively uneventful but since my husband sent me an email telling me I need to update my blog I thought I would share some of the blessings we are thankful for in regards to his news about his job.
If you do not already know, he is being let go (as is his entire department) on March 31. We made a decision to TRY and focus on God and all of the ways he is blessing us during this difficult time, so here it is...

This is an opportunity for Joe to find a job he really loves!
This happened AFTER we got out of debt - thanks Dave Ramsey!
His date of lay-off went from Jan 4 to March 31 in a span of 15 minutes.
This can be Joe’s mid-life crisis! (He got the news the week of his 40th birthday)
We decided to continue our giving to the church instead of lowering it when we completely renovated our budget. The next day my dad suggested looking at our 401k contribution. The amount of contribution that now goes into his paycheck instead of his 401k equals the amount we had considered lowering our tithe amount – plus some.
That same day we received a monetary gift – enough to live by our Emergency Budget for almost 3 months.
Someone who provides a service for us dropped the rate by $10 per month, without us asking.

December 2008
We had our 2nd straight year of All Cash Christmas!
We have had tons of encouragement and prayers from family and friends
We are living on an Emergency Budget and putting money in savings every month, we have realized that we can live on SO much less than we have been!
Found out about using an antenna instead of cable and we disconnected our land line saving us over $600 per year and we still get great channels!
Started using Cartridge World for our printer ink cartridges saving us over $10 per cartridge.

We know that God has a plan for us and we believe part of that plan was for us to learn to live on less. It is such a great feeling to have a little money in the bank rather than a ton of debt hanging over our heads. We continue to search for more ways to save - it has become almost a game for us! Thanks for taking the time to read this, hope you have a great week!

Thanksgiving With Old Friends & New

This Thanksgiving was a little different for us. We usually either have family in town, go to visit family, or have a family over for Thanksgiving dinner. This year some new friends invited us over to their house. We have known them for a while but have just become "good friends" over the past several months. We went to their house for snacks and then we all piled into our cars and went to the lawn of a local plantation to take family photos of each other's families. We had SO much fun goofing around outside together. We headed back to their house and ate, and ate, and ate! We had such a great time with our new friends!

Friday we went to a nearby park to meet up with one of my old high school friends from Texas and his family who were in town visiting his grandmother for Thanksgiving. He found me on Classmates.com a few months ago and then we realized that they would be less than an hour away from us this week. The kids all ran and played and we got to visit for a little while. It was neat to reconnect after 20 years!

Our Thanksgiving was wonderful, we were able to talk to our families on the phone and spend time with friends. We are thankful for our God, family, friends and our freedom.