Happy 16th Birthday, Aidan!

Today is Aidan's 16th birthday!  It is with great gratitude to the Lord that we remember the past 16 years of the life of our son, starting with the date of his birth whereby we joyfully welcomed him into our arms and were able to look into his face for the very first time.  As we celebrate this occasion, we are not only filled with gratitude for the past 16 years, but we are also filled with tremendous hope for the future.  We look forward to seeing the coming days unfold, knowing that the Lord God has a plan and a purpose for those days, including the foreordaining of good works for Aidan to accomplish.

Aidan, we are very blessed to have you as a part of our family and we praise the Lord for the work that He has done in your life.  We are most grateful that our blessed Redeemer has regenerated you by including you among His elect.  In addition to this foundation of your salvation, we give thanks to God for the work that He has done in progressively conforming you to the image of Christ.  It is a great joy to see you walking in the truth and we pray that you will continue this journey of continual sanctification by always striving to take every thought, word, and deed captive to the obedience of Christ.

It is a blessing from Almighty God to be able to raise you as our son and we will strive to continue to raise you in the nurture and admonition of the Lord to the very best of our ability by the grace of God.  We place before you the following Scripture passage as a challenge and an inspiration:

Get wisdom, get understanding: forget it not; neither decline from the words of my mouth.  Forsake her not, and she shall preserve thee: love her, and she shall keep thee.  Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.  Exalt her, and she shall promote thee: she shall bring thee to honour, when thou dost embrace her.  She shall give to thine head an ornament of grace: a crown of glory shall she deliver to thee. (Proverbs 4:5-9, KJV)

As you strive to be consistently obedient to this important teaching about seeking wisdom, you have some great and precious blessings that God will grant you - including being preserved, promoted, honored, and being given grace and glory.  We pray that you will be diligent in striving to get wisdom and that as you do so, may you give praise and honor to the Lord as He provides you with the blessings that He has promised.

Happy Birthday, Aidan!  We love you very much!

Love Always,

Dad and Mom

Happy Birthday, My Precious Bride!

Today is a special day in the life of our family as it is the day that God providentially brought my dearly beloved wife into this world.  We reflect on God's goodness, grace, and mercy that He has shown through the life of Jill and we look forward to God's continuing work in and through her knowing that He has promised that "he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ" (Philippians 1:6, KJV)

Jill,

Happy Birthday, my dearly beloved bride!  I am grateful that the Lord has brought us together for the great purposes of bringing forth godly children, modeling the relationship of Christ and the Church, and working together to take dominion for His honor and glory.  I am very blessed by your commitment to serve the Lord in what you do and I pray that God will pour out His abundant blessing by giving you much joyful, fruitful labor in the years to come.  Thank you for all that you do for me and for our family.  May you delight in being my dear help-meet and the mother to our precious children.

Jill, look to the past with great joy for what the Lord has done in the life of this family and how He has used you for His purposes.  Give Him praise for His work and the privilege that He has given you to be a part of that work.  Look to the future with tremendous hope knowing that the Lord will continue to carry out His plan and purpose having included you as His child in that plan and purpose and knowing that He has given you good works to accomplish, which He has foreordained (Ephesians 2:10).

Jill, you are very special to me and I am filled with gratitude to the Lord that He has given you to me as a gift!  I love you, honey!

Happy birthday, sweetheart!!

Forever Yours,

David

Happy 11th Birthday, Amara!

We are very grateful to the Lord for His precious gift of children!  As the Bible teaches, children are a heritage and the fruit of the womb is His reward (Psalm 127:3).  Birthdays are a great time to be praising the Lord for this great blessing.  Today is Amara's 11th birthday and we are filled with gratitude that God has given us this special daughter to raise in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

Amara,

Happy Birthday, our dear daughter!  We are very blessed to have you as a part of our family and we give thanks to the Lord for His gift of you.  You have grown a lot over the past year and that growth has been both in physical stature and in godly character.  We are so pleased to see how you have grown and we are very excited about the future plans that God has for you.

Our challenge to you is to continue to read, study, memorize, and apply the truth of God's Word.  The Bible is sufficient for every area of life and as you diligently seek to understand what is contained in the Scriptures, God will give you the gift of His wisdom.  The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and there is no better way to have the appropriate fear of Him that is perfectly righteous and holy than to know Him through what He has revealed about Himself in the Bible.

Amara, we love you dearly and are grateful to have you as our daughter!  We are committed to train you up to be a Proverbs 31 woman and are delighted to be helping you along this path of godly womanhood.  Happy birthday, Amara!  Our prayer is that today will be a blessing to you, that you will know that we as your parents will love you dearly, that you will live in joyful obedience to the Word of God, and that you will know God's favor as you live a life that demonstrates that you are a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ!

Love Always,

Dad and Mom

Happy 3rd Birthday, Tirzah!

Today is very special day in the life of our family as it is the day that Tirzah turns 3 years old!  These past 3 years have been filled with both joys and challenges as we seek to raise up Tirzah in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.  We praise the Lord for her birth and her life and consider it an incredible privilege to be given this special assignment from God to raise her in a godly, Christian home.


Tirzah,

Happy birthday to you!  We are so grateful to God that He provided you as a gift to this family.  We are very blessed to have you as our daughter and are committed to teaching you according to the standard of Holy Scripture.  Tirzah, we love you very much.  Our prayer for you is that you will be a godly girl and grow into godly womanhood.

Tirzah, you are a constant reminder to us of God's mercy as we had been diligently praying that God would add a new child to our family.  In God's plan, He answered that prayer by sending you into our household!  Indeed, God showed us His mercy through your conception, healthy pregnancy, safe delivery, and your growth in knowledge and stature over these past 3 years.  We are excited about what God has planned for you in the future and how you will fit into His overall sovereign plan.

It is critical that you follow the Lord Jesus Christ and we will continue to teach you about Him day by day.  It is only because of Christ that we have anything - for in Him we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28).  Not only does Jesus give us life, but it is only by repenting of sin and trusting in the work of Christ on the cross that you can have eternal life.  We will make certain that you understand this truth about salvation and will be praying that God will open your eyes to your need for a Savior and that He will bring the work of regeneration in your heart.

We love you, Tirzah!  Happy birthday, our precious, dear daughter!

Love Always,

Dad and Mom

Scripture Memory: Memverse

Memorizing scripture is so important!  What a blessing to have these verses and paragraphs and even chapters of the Bible hidden in your heart for the Holy Spirit to bring to mind at the moment you need it.  We have found a great online tool for memorizing the Bible: Memverse.  It is a very helpful program that allows you to put in the verses or chapters that you would like to memorize.  Every day you can work on it, and it tracks your progress.  Once memorized, it will occasionally remind you to study that verse so that you do not forget it.

We have been using this for over a year, and still think it is an excellent tool.  Be sure to try it out.  Make scripture memory a part of your life (whether you use this tool or another)--it is vitally important.
~J

Happy 18th Birthday, Jordan!

It is with great joy in our hearts and a blessed hope for the future that we celebrate the birth of our first-born son, Jordan.  This year is a special milestone as Jordan turns 18.  It is an excellent time to reflect on the past looking at how Jordan has been a blessing from the Lord and to look forward to the future looking at what God will be doing in and through Jordan in the coming years.

Jordan,

We are so very grateful that our heavenly Father has given you to be our son.  We are filled with incredible gratitude for the work that He has done within you - especially over the past few years where we have seen you grow and mature in godly, Christ-like character.  You have been a man that has shown himself to take responsibility, has demonstrated a strong work ethic, is correctly dividing the Word of Truth in a consistent manner, and has solid convictions for which you are willing to stand.  We praise the Lord for the work that He has done in your life over these past 18 years and are very privileged to be your parents!

We have a joyful anticipation of what the Lord has planned for you in the future.  Your strong interest and growth in theology will serve as a firm foundation on which you will be able to build.  Your passion for history will be a great asset as you are able to look at the events of the past and see the providential work that God has accomplished for His specific purposes.  We are excited to see how the Lord will weave your gifts, talents, interests, and passions in a dynamic life work for His honor and glory.

Our charge to you is that you not allow yourself to be conformed to this world, but that you daily be transformed in the renewing of your mind (Romans 12:2).  This renewal will come through the consistent intake of Scripture and focusing your thoughts, words, and actions on the truth that the Lord has provided in His Word.  The Bible is sufficient for every area of life and it will serve you well insofar as you know its teaching, rightly interpret its meaning, and faithfully apply its precepts, patterns, and principles.

Jordan, we love you very much and thank the Lord for the gift that He has given us in you!  Happy 18th Birthday, Jordan!

Love Always,

Dad and Mom

Notebooking Pages

Notebooking Pages is a wonderful resource for homeschoolers!  In fact, it's a wonderful resource for anyone needing some interesting printable pages.

There is a reasonable membership fee for those wanting access to all the pages (and there are many, many, many pages!).  We have greatly utilized these pages for the past couple years.  But, before we had a membership, we used their free pages.

Click here to go to the freebies. They have a good variety of pages in each subject: bible, arts, history, science, famous people, geography and more.  It was a great start for us to see just how much we would use notebook pages, and also how much the children would enjoy them.  It was a wonderful addition to our studies--so much so that we obtained a membership after just a couple years.

I am writing this post to be entered into a drawing for a prize on Notebooking Pages, but truly I would not do it if I didn't endorse the pages!  We have benefited from them, and I highly recommend them.  The owner also designs new pages about every month.  With a membership, you can have access to them/download them forever.  Good deal!

Have fun looking at all you can get, even just in the free section to get you started!  Happy Notebooking!

~J

The 100th Anniversary of the Sinking of the Titanic

On April 10, 1912, the Titanic set out for her maiden voyage.  Everyone thought they were quite safe.  Some even had the audacity to say that God could not sink the Titanic.  However, things did not happen quite how they thought.  During the night of April 14, the Titanic hit an iceberg.  The Carpathia's warning to them that they were nearing an iceberg had been ignored.  The ship's first mate quickly made the ship go in reverse away from the iceberg, but it was too late.  The Titanic already had numerous holes along the starboard side below the waterline.  Water started rushing into the holes.  Unfortunately, there were only enough lifeboats for half of the passengers.  The sailors quickly started loading the women and children onto the lifeboats.  They had not planned for the ship sinking, so the untrained sailors sent some of the lifeboats off only half full.  Many of the men bravely stayed on board, letting the women and children survive.  When the ship was nearly completely sunken, the band played "Nearer My God to Thee."  68% of the passengers were lost, even with the Carpathia coming and rescuing the survivors.  Those who pridefully said that not even God could sink the Titanic were proven wrong.  Just as God stopped the building of the Tower of Babel, he stopped the people from boasting about the Titanic being unsinkable.

~ Aidan

Aidan Becomes Certified!

What can one accomplish with hard work, lots of perseverance, and the blessing of the Lord? Anything, of course! Aidan took a terrific online computer course last summer from ITonRamp called Home Track (Computer Essentials) and really enjoyed it. He was interested in taking a more difficult class: A+ Track. We were nervous--it was going to be a big commitment. But he was willing to work at it, so he began that class last September.

I quickly realized that "big" commitment was turning into "HUGE" commitment, and I rearranged his schedule accordingly. He finished the class in December, and studied and studied for the next 2 months. At that point he felt he was ready to take his certification tests.

All went well, he passed the tests with flying colors (he said he was relieved to discover the tests were easier than he was expecting), and so now Aidan is officially CompTIA A+ Certified!

{Amara made him this cake as a surprise while he was gone taking his tests! We also made a quick sign we attached to the door to see before he even walked in!}

We are understandably proud of Aidan, not only for becoming certified, but for showing himself to be a man in disciplining himself to study--even the times when he would have rather been doing something else.

He also had the wonderful opportunity to meet his instructor, Nathan Maxwell, in person when we went to the Family Economics Conference in March. He had been hoping to meet him since we knew the Maxwell family would be there, but we weren't sure if Nathan would be there as well. We were so excited when we saw him sitting with his family during the conference. Aidan was able to speak with him a few different times and when we were able to chat with him at their book tables, we snapped these pictures (yes, I'm posting both because they were both such good pictures that I could not choose between them!) Sarah also took pictures for the Maxwell family's blog. You can see Aidan there (count down to pics 17 and 20 to see David and Jordan talking with Nathan {also pic 19 has Aidan just barely in the pic on the left}; pic 26 to see Aidan and Nathan).

And yes, we highly recommend the ITonRAMP courses for anyone interested in them. They offer the ones Aidan took, as well as Website Design.

~J

Happy 22nd Anniversary, My Dear!!

Today is our 22nd wedding anniversary and as I (David) survey what has happened from the time that we got married, my heart is filled with gratitude!

Jill,

I am grateful that you are a woman of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and are seeking to grow in your walk with Him day by day! I am so thankful that I have had you with me during times of joy, as well as times of sorrow. I greatly appreciate your loyalty and your willingness to stand by my side. As I look to the past, I have great thanksgiving in my heart for you.

In looking to the future, I have great hope! I have the hope that we will continue our journey of faith together. I have hope that we will be diligently working to raise up a godly seed for the honor and glory of Christ. I have hope knowing that we serve a God Who has prepared good works for us to accomplish and that He is able to carry them out through us.

You are my dearly beloved bride. I pray that God will continue to work in us and that He will use us mightily in His work that He is doing here on this earth.

Happy Anniversary, my sweetheart!