Monthly Archives: December 2017
Eight, eight, eight is great! (Becca Grace)
Every birthday, I like to look back and refect on how our children have grown. I think of all the past years, this is the year we observed the most growth in Becca’s maturity.
Educationally, Becca went from reading out of duty to reading for delight. She completed the All About reading curriculum. She’s thriving with Khan Academy math and will be starting 3rd grade math next month. She continues to memorize large passages from the Bible from listening to it at night. She has an amazing memory and we’re always delighted with the connections she can make with her Bible knowledge.
Spiritually, Becca has come along way. Right around her last birthday she entered a period where she was very insecure about her sin and was quite concerned about the right way to ask forgiveneness. It ended up being very exhausting for me. Then she hit seven-and-a-half and everything cleared up. I was very thankful for the moms who encouraged me that this was just a period of growth. The difference in Becca is like night and day if you compare the first half of the year to the last.
- We’ve also seen Becca grow in the way she helps her siblings. She’s really grown in the ways she’s willing to help Clara and interact with her.
One other growth I was refelcting on recently has to do with Becca’s bike. When we moved to Cambodia 3.5 years ago, we bought Becca a bike. She was very protective of it – willing to share, but very distressed if she saw her bike being treated badly. So now we live in O`Yadao and are surrounded with neighbor kids who typically don’t take care of things. Becca’s new bike (she got for her birthday) is always being abused and it doesn’t phase her. The other day Josh asked her if it bothers her to see her bike abused. She said she doesn’t like it, but that it was ok. What a blessing to see this growth in her.
So thankful for the work God has done in Becca this past year. Thankful for the gift she is to our family. Looking forward to seeing what God will do this next year.
Girls’ Retreat 2017 (Becca Grace)
Last month we celebrated Becca’s eighth birthday. The last official thing we did to celebrate was to have a mommy-daughter retreat. The Tuesday after Becca’s birthday’ Becca and I headed to a hotel to spend the night. Becca was so excited and filled her backpack full of activities for us to do together.
We arrived at our hotel around 1pm and had a full schedule until Josh and the kids joined us the next morning sometime after 10 to enjoy the pool for an hour.
Our first activity was swimming. I usually don’t get to swim with Becca, since I’m usually watching the younger kids. Becca was delighted to have a racing partner.
After swimming, we took advantage of the hot water and both took long hot showers. Then it was on to crafts. During our retreat we started making friendship bracelets and pom-pom animals, I taught Becca how to play Monopoly Deal and Phase 10, and we did face masks. We had dinner at the hotel – Khmer sweet and sour. This year we finished reading The National Velvet (340 pages) and so we watched the movie (starring Elizabeth Taylor when we was a kid). Becca was thrilled.
In the morning we woke up and had tea in bed while we read the Bible. Then Becca wanted to take another hot shower (ah, the small pleasures of life). We ate our breakfast by the pool. Then we played Phase 10 until the rest of the family arrived.
Every year Becca and I usually have a sleep-over for her birthday, but it has always been when Josh was away and was only during the hours the other kids were in bed. Becca was thrilled to have so much extra time to spend together. She was thrilled that when she woke up in the morning, I was still in bed and not off helping someone else. We had a wonderful time.
My hope is to continue doing this each year and to someday have a yearly Girls’ Retreat with all our girls. I told Becca someday when she’s 35 I hope to still be doing this with her. We’ll give the husbands some extra funds to watch the kids and me and the mamas will go off for a night. 🙂
Horse Riding in Siem Reap 2017
The second full week in November we took a trip to Siem Reap. We had a few reasons for going, but one of the highlights of the trip was horse riding. Last year we gave Becca a one-hour horse ride for her birthday. Since then, she’s been saving her money to go again. We were really proud of Becca’s careful saving of her money for a year to go horse riding again.
We had a lovely morning at the horse farm. Becca had a half-an-hour lesson in the ring before she went out on her ride. The lesson was mainly for helping her get used to riding the horse and riding a gallop.
This year Isaiah decided to ride with me. It took some convincing, but he finally agreed to go. He was so thrilled to be up on the horse. For the first 10 minutes he waved at everyone who passed us.
Josh, Anna, and Clara rode in a horse cart. Clara insisted on wearing a helmet most of the trip.
Becca had a delightful time and was thrilled with her horse and the ride.
Some other fun things we did were swimming in the hotel pool (Clara was amazing with how much she loved jumping in the water), eating a Burger King, and shopping.
