Count your many blessings

Count your blessings, name them one by one,
Count your blessings, see what God hath done!
Count your blessings, name them one by one,
Count your many blessings, see what God hath done.
-taken from the song Count Your Blessings | Johnson Oatman, Jr

This week was Thanksgiving. I love Thanksgiving. I love that we have a holiday celebrating all the wonderful blessings that God has given to us. I don't just mean material blessings - I mean all of our blessings in Christ, our families, being together, the freedoms we enjoy in this country and on down to the food we eat every day. I am thankful for our supporters who allow us to be here. I am thankful for so much; as I said, I love Thanksgiving.

My parents came down to visit this weekend. It was such a nice time with them. We spent Thanksgiving Day here at our house and then went to a park on Friday. They had to head back home this morning, but it was still a nice time.

When I count my blessings, I can name them one by one:

Even though Dave's parents weren't here to celebrate Thanksgiving, they definitely rank in our "blessings" list as well:

The Great Wall of China

This has probably been my favorite Sonlight curriculum year that we have ever had. We are doing so many cool things and it has really broadened all of our view of the world. They take this look at the Far East, but they do it in such a way that it burdens your heart for these dear people who have been made in the image of God, but are lost without a Savior. We have been praying through 100 Gateway Cities of the 10/40 Window and have been traveling around the world in our History. Right now we are studying China and it has been rich in its lessons.

Today we did this totally cool thing where we built part of the Great Wall of China. My dear friend here at the mission let me borrow her Ancient China Treasure Chest and so today we built part of the wall. Cool. Very cool. Here are some pictures from our day:

"Oh no, the Mongols are attacking! But wait! We built this wall so we are safe!"

Joshua Spielberg

Joshua discovered "still frame" movies. This is his first movie. We added a little music for fun...

Around the World in 180 Days

This year we are studying world geography. (Do you like my play on words there in the title of today's blog? You know the book Around the World in 80 Days? Well, we have 180 days in our school year and we are studying world geography throughout the year? Get it? hahaha I crack myself up.)

Anyway...we have been studying certain countries in our school time here at home and then we have been studying other countries in our co-op. We started in Papua New Guinea and continued on to Australia and New Zealand as we were studying here at home. Now we are studying China. In our co-op, though, we started on the other side of the world and began in N. America and then on through Central and South America and just started into Europe last week. Here is the map of the world and countries we have studied so far:

Harvest Party

This is the view before we left for the Harvest Party at a local church last night:

 Anna the clown

 Tim a ninja guy

Sarah a cheerleader. (Sam and Josh decided to go as Sam and Josh, respectively.)

This was the view after we got home:

Josh won the cake walk 30 seconds before we left! Plus the kids got a bit of candy. Just a smidge.