Book Review: Real Marriage, By Mark and Grace Driscoll

Marriage. It looks so EASY. I remember growing up watching my favorite TV show "Family Ties" and loved the hippy message, "all you need is love!" But being a 17+ Yr marriage survivor, I can say with certainty that you need a whole lot more than love (though you certainly need that too!) And in different stages of Andrew's and my life together, we were largely flying blind. We could have benefited greatly from having read this book earlier, and I'm very much looking forward to reading it again, along with Andrew.

I was blessed to receive a an electronic advanced reading copy of "Real Marriage" by Mark and Grace Driscoll to review by BookSneeze.com. I very much enjoy reviewing books in general. Writing is a hobby of mine, and since I've been so occupied with the children I've not had an opportunity to freelance in ages. Additionally, Mark Driscoll is the preaching pastor of the church I attend, And knowing his sharp-witted, articulate and generally enjoyable style, I was excited to get to read this book!

I will say that i was NOT disappointed. In fact, i'd take it a step further to say that Real Marriage is an excellent handbook that covers SO much information, that having read it once, I know i'll be referring back to it often. Included in Real Marriage, you will find

*The importance of being your spouse's best friend.

*Men- how to be a great leader in your family and husband, complete with practical ideas, not just lofty ideals.

*Ladies- How to be an excellent wife, also complete with practical ideas.

*How prior hurts, particularly sexual assault impacts your married life and WHY it needs to be dealt with.

*Specific info on what is and is not acceptable sexual conduct for Christian couples

*How to focus your marriage on the LAST day you will be married.


I love the format of Grace and Mark interspersing their teaching. They clearly delineate who is speaking, and the husband/wife team approach is particularily effective in a marriage book. I know that Grace understands my perspective as a woman, where as, I'd not necessarily believe that Mark would. That lends much more credibility to the ideas contained within.

One thing to keep in mind is that they are very frank about specific sexual issues, and while they approached the issue appropriately, not in a salacious or erotic manner, the topic IS sex and marriage so you kind of have to expect frank discussion. For that reason I'd not recommend this book to unmarried folks. For example, I'd not have my children read this book prior to marriage. However, once married, I think Real Marriage is a MUST HAVE resource for the Christian couple. I love how the Driscolls treat sex as God intended, a beautiful, passionate, lively, and important element of married life! In a society that treats sex as something that teenagers do, the Driscolls have a counter cultural approach to great married sex!

It is mentioned in the beginning of the book, a good rule of thumb: Take what you can use and leave the rest. This was true of me reading this book. There were some ideas that I disagreed with, but none was so critical that it would cause me to not recommend the Real Marriage or give it less than a 5 star review.

A post NOT about homeschooling! Chloe's Multicultural day

This, I suppose, is what people MY age would call a "Christmas Program" Minus the Christmas of course (wink) this is the 21st century! :) Anyway, it was a great joy to spend the evening at my daughters' school this evening watching Chloe sing and seeing what all the students have been learning about.

OH, and to get off the topic, i wanted to add that i'm so bummed that i've not been able to post what we've been up to lately! its been so so soooo much fun! Nik is studying electricity and hopefully robots this month, and also is working on his comic book art, as we are taking a break from the regular routine for the annual tradition of "December school" and Leif is working more casually with Time-4-Learning, while i still have not figured out what level he's at! DANG homeschooling a neurotypical child is a BREEZE!!! Hoping to get it together soon and be able to post more. i've been busy virtually every second of the day.

Ok, so here's some clips of the songs Chloe performed.









And some pictures <3



This is Chloe's class' display.


And these are the art projects chloe made! Isn't she talented?? she's got such great style...





And here's Little miss Annabeth's project!




Cool huh? it was a very fun evening, and very well done, both by students and staff! I'm glad my girlies are doing so well in school!!

~~November 2nd~~

So often we have a really fun day and I'll be too busy having a really fun day to post to my blog about it! its mostly when i'm introspective and reclusive and SAD that I remember to post! So i thought i'd gradually go back and post some of the fun times we've had in the past month and a half. So here's the first one!

The story:

So, We went to BSF (Bible Study Fellowship) that morning and parked in our usual spot, which had in front of us a strip of grass with gorgeous maple trees lining it. It was a bright sunny day, and by the time we left BSF, the fallen leaves had cascaded all over our suburban and left huge piles all around us of leaves. I buckled Ash in and Elliott and Leif ran around tossing leaves around maniacally. I let them continue for a while, marveling at their amazing childlike innocence and joy in the simplest things, and then remembered an empty reusable grocery bag that I had tucked into the back seat. I grabbed it and packed it full of leaves and brought it home.

When I posted to facebook about IMPORTING leaves into our yard, I got a lot of comments, mainly offers for homes with leaves that needed collecting :) Our house has NO trees and our neighbors have mainly pine trees, so my poor children are normally deprived the joy of jumping in leaves and playing with leaves. So we fixed, at least temporarily!

"Your child has autism"

I don't know why that statement is so traumatic. You'd think, being the 3rd time around and having suspected for about a year now that that was the case, we'd just be glad to finally get a diagnosis so we could move on and try new things. And that was partially true, but Monday, when the doctor said those words to me, a part of me died, yet again. Maybe its because with an autism diagnosis comes the loss of a dream. When you find out there's a sweet little baby living inside your body, and you hear the reassuring heartbeat, when you get the ultrasound that verifies that your children do NOT have the same kidney disease as their older brother, you feel like everything is fine, and you imagine great things for their life, a life that does NOT include autism.

But now 3 of my children's lives DO include autism, and with Asher, its not aspergers, a more highly functioning form of autism, but regular old autism, hand flapping, non-verbal autism. I wondered, will he always be obsessed with airplanes and knocking down chairs? Will he ALWAYS run to an open door and slam it shut? Will he ever be able to relate to a woman, and fall in love? Clearly the chances of me finding a babysitter are slim to none. What does this mean for him, for me, for all of us. Maybe it is selfish, but in the last 6 months, i've given up everything that makes me ME. I ditched weight watchers, exercising, scrapping, just about everything that was just for me, to try to keep my family together. I just about lost it the other day when dh thought I was ignoring him. I guess you can say that i've been a bit obsessive on the whole research and autism quest.

Monday when i found out, i cried nearly all day and was up till nearly 1 am crying, praying, trying to find peace with the whole situation. I think I did. I really feel like God has taken this off my chest as far as the burden of the whole situation. I'm now just working on myself to try to constantly give it up when I start feeling like i need to do yet another thing to try to figure him out. Or Annabeth for that matter, whom we know something is horribly wrong with, but we don't know what. If i carried that weight, i'd collapse in days. My constant prayer is that i'll fight my own instinct to do that and turn it over to the one who created me, to the one who created my beautiful ashie, and let HIM guide us, lead us and carry the burden that's way too heavy for me to handle.

I was telling dh the other day that if the statistic i read that 80% of couples with an autistic child get divorced then we have about a 240% chance of divorce. We both laughed knowing we are way beyond that point. (probably the odds are more like 500% when you consider all the other crap we deal with on a daily basis, money issues, twins, school and homeschooling, etc) But God is bigger than people's stupid statistics. Thank goodness for that.

HOPING my next post will be about something fun and homeschooly we have done- believe it or not, there have actually been quite a few i've not posted about! Thanks for reading, and for your prayers, they mean a lot to us. Now more than ever, its clear that we are not standing on our own strength.

Product review: Time 4 Learning

Ahh.. back to reviewing homeschooling stuff! I love trying new things and reporting back to you all and this particular product is one I'm especially excited about!

As you know, we have been through complete chaos in the last two months. We've gone from completely homeschooling, to completely public schooling, and finally settled on homeschooling some and public schooling some. I think we are going to stay at this level of schooling, as it feels like a perfect happy medium. I'm definitely looking forward to homeschooling everyone next year though! it will be SO nice to have our family back!! But Time 4 Learning is a very interesting product because it met the needs of both my homeschooled AND public schooled kiddos.

Homeschooling using EXCLUSIVELY Time 4 Learning

I pulled my 7th grader and Kindergartener out of school pretty quickly and without much of a back up plan, so for the first week or so they both used Time 4 Learning as their primary curricula. I loved how thorough the subjects were, and how it covered interesting topics that I have found tend to get Neglected, like my 7th grader's "idioms" and "roman numeral" lessons. I, personally, am NOT a huge fan of doing ALL our school work on the computer though. I guess i'm old fashioned :) As we procured other supplies we gradually weaned off of the computer a bit.

Homeschooling using Time 4 Learning as a supplement

This, by FAR is my favorite of all the scenarios i'm presenting. We had the main curricula for most of our subjects but certain subjects were still a bit sparse for my taste, so I had the kiddos do whatever we had in book form, and group work early in the day and in the afternoon, Nikolas would finish his book work, having more since he's a Jr. High school student, and Leif would get to use Time 4 Learning when he'd finished his chores and whatever else i wanted him to do, because Time 4 Learning, is FAAAABULOUS bribery material because its WAY more fun than book work!! So, after i'd extorted tons of of schoolwork out of Leif in the morning and chores after lunch, I was so generous as to allow him his fun computer time (WINK, WINK) and he did many, many more learning activities. Now, the one caveat to this plan, and I think, honestly, that this is Leif-specific, is that once he's ON the computer he never wants to get off, and so it was a real struggle to get him off the computer after a couple hours of Time 4 Learning. Nikolas also enjoyed using time 4 Learning. He found it to be a nice break from reading his textbooks and literature- He eventually found he liked alternating a subject he was doing on Time 4 Learning with a book subject and he found that to make his day go nicely.

AfterSchooling with Time 4 Learning

Now, I'm probably not the best person to review for this particular way of schooling- as i'm finding that with our size family, the school kids get home, get snacks, do homework, play with their little brothers, and then its time to start dinner, and more homework with dad and family stuff and bedtime, so I found it REALLY hard to have time to encourage my girls to give it a go, but they did a few times and both really enjoyed it. I think our family is unique in having very little time at the end of the day since it takes us SO ridiculously long to do everything, with there being 7 children, including 2yo twins. I think this program would make an EXCELLENT after schooling program, and if you are blessed with MORE time than you need in the evening, this would be a much more productive way for your child to spend time than television or video games.

Time 4 Learning overall

Overall I am VERY pleased with the program and think its economical and useful and has SO many great features. I'm planning to continue with Leif, and possibly Nikolas, later when our finances start to settle down a bit.

I love how the parents can customize the learning experiences for their children. For example, I have learning disabled children and i was able to go into Annabeth's settings and lower her grade level so it was manageable to her. Also I was able to modify how long they had to work to use the playground, which was awesome. There's so much I didn't get to try out, either, just due to being insanely busy. there's lots of parent support features and a forum and everything!

I guess the one thing i'd like to see differently is the pricing structure. I'd LOVE to see a single family rate, instead of the base price plus add on additional child prices. I appreciate the price break anyway, but realistically, if you have a whole bunch of kids, they aren't going to be able to use the program as much as a one child family would, and it would be a LARGE difference. I would LOVE to get it for all my children, but that's just not in our budget right now.

All considered though, I think Time 4 Learning is a FANTASTIC program, well worthy of your consideration no matter WHAT kind of schooling you do.

NOTE:
As a member of Time4Learning, I have been asked to review their online education program and share my experiences. While I was compensated, this review was not written or edited by Time4Learning and my opinion is entirely my own. Write your own curriculum review or learn how to use their curriculum for homeschool, after school study or summer learning.

What it is like having children with special needs.

Today I felt like a good rant. And I feel completely qualified to address this subject since right now, Andrew and I are managing 5 with special needs 2 without. Each carries with them their own special set of requirements and preferences, and I'm here, with my other full time jobs, of managing our large household and managing schoolwork, homework and homeschooling, trying not to be completely buried in it all. And not doing a very good job.

Let me introduce you to my family, First, there's Andrew. He's my awesome, hardworking husband. He works for Fedex, He's a swing driver. He's incredibly talented and has this incredible set of navigational skills that if you don't have them, (like me!!) its particularily notable!! he's 39, now, i think? LOL. I'm Rebecca, I'm 35, I am a SAHM and love to homeschool the little ones that i'm able to right now, that would be Leif, my 5yo and Nik, my 12 yo and a bit of alex, my 16 yr old who is currently attending community college concurrently with homeschooling high school.

Alex has autism, he's an aspie. He is the one who gives me hope that there's a light at the end of the tunnel- he's become a sensitive, caring, and phenomenally SMART young man. He's gotten nearly perfect scores on both writing and reading Compass tests and scored into Calculus in college, where he's currently pulling a 3.8 average. He struggles with social issues and has some temper problems but is overall doing very well!

Nikolas is my 12 yo. He tested into the school district a couple of years ago several years behind grade level in math, reading and writing. We suspect he's dyslexic, but never got him dx'd He is so hard working and buckled down and pushed through his slow reading by doing it CONSTANTLY. The result is that while he still struggles with writing in particular, his math and reading are near grade level and he's got college level comprehension skills and vocabulary. I'm so proud of him.

Next is Chloe- my little mini-me :) She has Autism as well. She was diagnosed with Aspergers last month, and is currently in public school. Being an Aspie, she likes things really cut and dried and likes rules. She is a bit behind in math, but advancing nicely, and reads at a 9th grade level (she's in 5th grade) She reads Beverly Cleary books pretty much nonstop. Though i think she might have just run out. She is precious and loving and beautiful. I struggle with her to get her to understand the idea of the Gospel. You can tell it doesn't make sense to her.

Then we have Annabeth. Annabeth is my8 year old precious double dose of Grace (her name means Grace and her middle name is Grace :) She's a spark plug and is always running. Shes full of joy and a natural hard worker. She's one of the most extreme special need children in our family right now. She is struggling with reading, writing, math, being able to hear and absorb what people say and has a very very depressed vocabulary system. We have no idea what is wrong, and we are struggling to figure it out.

Leif is our 5yo. We always talk about how he and Annabeth would have made the cutest twins. He looks like a boy version of Anna, cute, petite, blond, with a winning smile. Leif has no special needs to my knowledge and is a BREEZE to homeschool. We think he might be an up and coming math whiz like Alex. Our struggles with him are having enough time with him, and that he seems the most morally negotiable of the bunch.

Asher and Elliott are our 2yo twins. Elliott was born first, is a tiny little bundle of energy and is so interpersonal and articulate! Asher is the opposite, except he's a bundle of energy too. But his energy is random, angry, and LOUD. He's been in therapy the last 6 months or so, and we suspect he has autism of some kind. We are praying its just aspergers. He, along with Annabeth, are our biggest focus right now.

So that's us! I'm finding life to be an extreme struggle right now. There's no time- there's no money- there's no forseeable hope that anything is changing any time soon. Right now, stuff just isn't getting done. School is getting done, I'm reading with annabeth after school, and thankfully Chloe is a self starter and easily gets her own homework done. but our house is always looking cluttered, meals are spotty, we're trying not to eat out, because financially we're nearly sunk, but that takes time too and i've not figured out how to get it all done yet. We're trying to manage asher's 6x a week therapy, anna's diagnostic stuff and visual therapy, Alex's bus schedule, homeschooling nik and Leif, and i have to admit, i'm near breaking point. I don't know how much more of this I can take! I'm currently in the process of trying to see if we can get respite care for Asher, as he's a full time job himself- he needs constant attention.

Did i mention that having special needs kids is EXPENSIVE?!? thankfully we qualify for dshs medical to supplement dh's medical from work or we'd be entirely sunk! But Asher is constantly breaking things, popping holes in the walls, destroying stuff, breaking windows... see a theme here? Andy has to find the perfect balance of work and being home to support me, and each carries with it serious consequences. I'm trying to squeeze blood from a lemon and its not happening. I would really appreciate prayer. I know that its God that's making all this WORK. As difficult as things are, they are going WAY better than they ever should be, and as much as I struggle, I know i'm witnessing miracles every day. I'm so priviledged to be in this position. But i'm tired!!

another day at home.

Might I say that Leif is about the most fun child to homeschool EVER! He's so enthusiastic and learns so quickly. I still have yet to order, let alone receive his curriculum from MP3 yet, so in the meantime, i'm working with an ebook i got from curr-click for phonics, and the Shiller math curriculum we had left over from last year




and an extra horizon K part 2 workbook we have left over. We skipped to the second half of kindergarten because Leif is so advanced, and i'm really hoping i didn't miss anything! Here is a video- my very first video ever posted to a blog! with Leif working on his place value. He's proficient now at tens and ones and is getting there with hundreds. This is all oral- we've not done written work yet. The sound cuts out at the end, dumb camera.. I don't know why it does that :( Anyway, he was so cute i had to get it on video :)




Here's Leif working on his horizon math book

Then when Nik went out to do his Bella walking and playing with, we read two books aloud, the first one had a really sad ending-about a tree! and we were both sad. That's how well it was written! Then we lightened the mood with "Truman's Aunt farm" I think we'll read it again tomorrow, pronouncing "Aunt" like ant instead of awnt. Then we can talk about homophones, fun!




Finally, Leif ended his day with some painting. No curriculum, just fun.

I *LOVE* how he can be done by lunchtime or a little after and still have gotten a packed day of work in :)

This week i'm trying to transition us into doing the majority of the Organic homeschooling schedule that I purchase. Have you heard of it? here's a link I HIGHLY recommend this. Its mostly a super gentle program, using real books and whatever math and language you use. What I really like about it, is how it integrates the things that go south for me almost all the time- read alouds, art, music. I love having it all on ONE schedule, and its reasonable, not like my typical "bite off twice as much as I can chew" pattern of lesson planning :) I LOVE the recommended literature books, I love the music study, (we'll be studying Bach soon) and i love how i can integrate my little one and big one for much of it. (though Nik will still be doing his own Apologia general science- because its the BEST one out there!) Rumor has it that the website will be updated soon and be more in-depth which i'm looking forward to. Hoping for a message board! i'd love to collaborate with other users and share ideas!!

So that's it for me today, i'm hoping to post both last weekend's fun and the weekend before, since I didn't get to it in the chaos that was last week!