Winter creatures

I must say that the past few weeks/months have been really difficult to get any nature study in. We have all been missing our weekly walks in the woods and this weekend was finally warm enough to go! I am amazed at how many things we saw...

Three deer! A young one:

And then we saw the Mommy deer:

And here are all three:

Canadian goose that was honking loudly:

I didn't get a picture of the mallard ducks but here is the muskrat we saw!

Julia really wanted to go swimming, or bathing or something (much to Louisa's concern)!

It's hard to tell but we were on a pretty steep river bank, and she just wanted to jump right over.

We are glad to have had a chance to enjoy the great weather and see so many winter creatures!

His mercies

Today was a super rough morning. Julia did not want to cooperate and had a lot of tears to shed. It's times like this that I wonder if I am capable to continue homeschooling. Two hours of toddler crying fits will test you like nothing else; this was on top of some bad attitudes from other children. Regardless of the silent prayers that were happening in my own heart, I realized that it wasn't enough. We all needed to pray and ask for Gods forgiveness, for his help and to be thankful (because I was not feeling anything close to thankful). I made each of us (the three of us who can talk) repent of our sin, thank God for something about Julia (which we were all struggling with) and for something about the day. After we finished, we all felt much better and the afternoon improved. I realized this- that I really am not capable of homeschooling. At least not on my own.
This is one of the things that God has made very clear to me about homeschooling: I can't do it on my own. Not even just homeschooling, but being a mother, being a disciple of Christ... These things we can try to "improve on" by our own will but it simply doesn't work. I need His help every minute of every day. I am reminded of the passage we read from today: Lamentations 3:22-23 "The steadfast love of The Lord never ceases, His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness." Thank the Lord that we get to start a new day tomorrow.

Field trip

We took a field trip last week to the Garfield Park Conservatory- it was a hit with all three girls. It's been quite a few years since we've been there and it's a great place to go in the winter! Here are pictures from our day: