hey, a post!

To make things easy on myself, I'm going to put up a note I wrote to a friend who asked for some info on our family on a variety of topics. Hopefully nobody minds. :-}



Dresses: We teach the girls to wear dresses, and so now they want to. Simple answer. We aren't so narrow minded to think that dresses are the ONLY thing ANY woman should wear, but we do think it's the BEST thing for US to wear. I believe the Bible teaches a Christian woman should be modest and feminine. That leaves a lot of room for interpretation, and each woman/family has to work that out for themselves.

Big family: I "do" it only by the grace of God. I am by nature very quiet and orderly and bookish - not a "people person." I think God sent me the children to challenge my comfort zone and make me grow. :-) I have wavered on the idea throughout my life. At times my life's ambition was to be a hermit. At other times I imagined I'd adopt and have 20 children. I never thought I'd marry a man who would work through things together with me. Anyway, about the time that Azariah was born, I started thinking about what God wanted for me in that department, instead of just thinking about what I wanted. I dug out my concordance and topical Bible, and the more I looked the more I found about how much God loves and desires children. Never saw anything about limits, or spacing, or prevention. So we went for it. :-) We've had to revise our position as time went on, and because I'm overweight and prone to joint problems, I have tried to space the children a little farther apart than would happen naturally, but I still look forward to the next one.
For the daily managing, it all kind of goes together. Since I have several children, it follows that some of them are older, and they help out a lot. Since we homeschool, I don't have to compete with outside influences as much, and the children are more what we've trained them to be.

Homeschooling: The best part? That's a hard one. I could be super-spiritual and say the best part is knowing that I'm doing what God has called me to do. Or I could be self-effacing and say the best part is not having to deal with the school personnel and programs. :-D I enjoy going at the child's own pace. Naysha is 8 and just now starting to read, where Riah is 6 and reads everything. Of course we are working with Naysha, but she's not under tremendous pressure to "catch up." I enjoy the freedom of time; that we can all go to activities during the day, or stay up late on a week night if needed. I like that Bob and I are the main influence on our children - they aren't teased or bullied into conforming with ideas we don't approve of.

Religion: We attend a little non-denominational church, and we teach the Bible, as plain and simple as we can. We read the Bible together (a chapter or less) every morning and evening, and discuss what we've read. We try to explain the hard stuff, but we don't "explain it away."