November and December ended up a bit crazier than we had anticipated and as a result we ended up with a "7 week vacation". By that I mean that we did not do school or have a schedule of any kind from the week of Thanksgiving until the second week of January. We learned the hard way this is NOT good for kids! We did travel and see family and friends during 2 1/2 of those weeks, and my parents visited one week, but that is only half the time that we took off. What did we do the other 3 1/2 weeks? Honestly, I don't know! I know we dealt with awful behavior, fights, excessive whining, screaming, and that's all I remember. We were all lazy and the kids reacted horribly to it. Let me say here that we have to deal with these things normally, but for some reason they seemed to be 10 times worse during this time. Just 1 week of being in a semi-routine (that is ever being tweaked and changed) has made a huge difference in temperament and feeling in the house. I cannot really give credit to routine (though it would be easy to say that as someone looking from the outside would say that was it), but it is God working in our home, Jesus's blood covering us and the Holy Spirit working in our hearts. We are having family devotionals 5 days a week, God is helping us to teach our kids grace, and our priorities are beginning to line up as they should under God's rule. God is faithful to His people, and I am thankful that He is even when we are unfaithful. I pray that we will continue to grow close to Him and that His ways will become our ways every day.
(It's been a year and a half since we came to Louisville. What a fitting post for today!)
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