Micah's Music

Since no longer being in the classroom teaching, I have taken advantage of every opportunity to teach here at home. Micah’s at the age right now where he loves learning, and he soaks up everything! Lately, we have been listening to a lot of classical music , hoping to instill an appreciation and love for music in the boys as they grow older. Two of Micah’s favorite videos to watch are “Baby Einstein: Mozart” and “Baby Einstein: Beethoven”. So later, as we’re listening to music on i-tunes, he’s been able to identify a few songs by Beethoven and Mozart. For example, he’ll be playing and hear “Fur Elise.” So he’ll stop, excitedly point to the computer and say “Toven!” And since he’s already been a fan of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, he can identify some of those pieces as well. To help him expand his musical repertoire we recently borrowed “Baby Einstein: Bach” from the library. He gets excited to pop in the DVD featuring the little Baby Einstein bunny on the cover. I love watching this little boy build an appreciation for the classical music that we enjoy listening to as well! The only downside…Micah is going to grow up thinking that the little cartoon bunny on the cover is Bach. :)

Book Review 1: Practicing Hospitality

As I previously mentioned, I have a book list for this upcoming year. One of those books is called Practicing Hospitality, by Pat Ennis and Lisa Tatlock, which is one I received from Tim for a Christmas gift. This book was very helpful because I’m very much the type of person who likes to have concrete examples for abstract ideas, and their book is full of them!! Probably one of the most helpful things for me personally was how the authors explain the difference between entertaining and biblical hospitality…something I think we often confuse. Here’s a paragraph explaining the difference:

“Hospitality is a practical way to love others. Therefore, a person practicing biblical hospitality should also be a loving person. This element separates biblical hospitality from social entertaining or even distinguishes between the hospitality of a believer and unbeliever. Believers can uniquely display God’s love as they extend hospitality. Entertaining focuses on having a beautiful table décor or preparing gourmet food. Biblical hospitality is a demonstration of love. Food and other elements are merely tools used to express our love for people. Our motivation for being hospitable women is a response to God’s work in our lives. Hospitality is one way we can tangibly demonstrate our love for God.” (p. 50)

One very practical suggestion they offered was to spend time in prayer before opening your home to others. Ask God to work in the time you’re about to spent with others that the conversation would be edifying and encouraging.

The most helpful chapter was the one that discussed the need to extend hospitality first to your own family, and then to extend hospitality to others. After Wesley was born, I found the transition to life with two kids an extremely challenging one. Compared to Micah, Wesley was a more difficult and needy baby. I won’t go into all of it. And with the close ages of the two boys, Micah still needed a lot of attention, especially in the discipline department. Needless to say, I went through many days feeling like I did a horrible job taking care of the family and home…so how could I invite people into my home when I couldn’t even do an adequate job caring for my own family? This was the tension I felt for quite some time, so I was thankful that they addressed this. The authors talked about how when you’re in certain seasons of life you may not be able to show hospitality to others quite as often, and you may need to find ways to creatively show hospitality. The authors suggest partnering with your husband in hospitality, because he “can give you counsel and direction regarding how much time you can dedicate to hospitality.” I found this to be so freeing, because they continue by saying that “The protection of working under the authority of your husband is a blessing, since he knows your physical limitations, work or ministry responsibilities and unique family characteristics.” I am so glad that Tim is my protector in all areas…including hospitality!

There’s just so much more that I could include, but I’ll leave just one more thought from the book. Often we get the idea that hospitality is only having people into our home for a meal. We don’t think outside of the box or see that showing hospitality is not limited to this! When it comes down to it, what is hospitality? Demonstrating our love for God by showing love to others and meeting needs. Some ideas the authors gave included visiting someone in the hospital, a shut-in, bringing a meal to help a family out, having people over for games, meeting up with a friend for coffee. This book was not only challenging, but it helped me to redefine my understanding of hospitality, giving me a more precise, biblical understanding of hospitality, that I can use to apply as our seasons of life continue to change. Like I said, there is so much more that I learned and want to write about, but I’ll stop here…for now anyway, and say that I highly recommend this book!

And I couldn't do a post without a picture of these guys!

9 Months

It’s hard to believe Wesley is already 9 months old! I’m a little behind on my blog posts, as he turned 9 months on Feb. 25^th. His little personality has definitely been coming out more, and it’s so interesting to see the difference between the two boys. Wesley is such a strong-willed, “I WILL do what I want to do” type of baby. He loves getting into anything he knows he’s not suppose to, or putting anything into his mouth he’s not suppose to. He also loves taking Micah’s pacifier and crawling off as fast as he can (which is actually really funny to watch). He’s starting to take his first few steps, so it won’t be too long before he’s walking around, chasing Micah.

As far as foods go, Wesley has been a very picky eater in a strange sort of way. He seems to like food, but he’s always fighting against eating any of it. It appears that he just wants to eat what we’re eating. We let him try munching on a non-salted saltine cracker the other day, and the look on his face as he’s first holding the cracker was priceless!

Our two favorite things about Wesley is his crazy hair and his smiles. Every time he wakes up from a nap or we take his hat off, his hair is ALL over the place! He’s always cracking us up with his wild hair. And he is always smiling. It certainly doesn’t take too much for anyone to get a smile out of him. Happy 9 months, Wesley! We love you!

Goals for the New Year

Starting a new year seems to have a way of causing me to reflect on the previous year and to look ahead to different changes. When I was younger, I would always write down my New Year’s resolutions, only to fail in the first week. I think one of the reasons we so often fail so quickly is due to lack of specificity and planning. At Cedarville, one of the things my professors continually told us was when writing lesson plans you must have goals for your students that are measurable and attainable. The season of life that I’m in can sometimes be difficult to spend much time on anything that doesn’t involve caring for the boys or home, so I needed to be careful that my goals weren’t too grand! Taking that information, last year was the first year that I set out to write goals for myself that were such. I carefully made plans of how to try to attain these goals and for the most part, was able to keep them. My goals this year are similar to last year, but tweaked here and there. Here are a few in no particular order:

-Practice my flute 2 times a month (I very much miss playing, and doing so with the little ones has been difficult. Last time I tried playing for our two little guys, Wesley immediately started wailing. Practicing 2 times a month I thought would be doable.)

-Memorize the book of Philippians (Tim found a plan for memorizing Philippians, so it’ll be something we encourage one another and memorize together.)

-Read 12 books (Reading one book a month should be an attainable goal for me. I have a list of books I would like to finish this year-- some classical literature, Biblical parenting, and some to keep up my educational background. Last year my book list changed slightly, as I was introduced to new books that I thought would be more beneficial at the time. My goal is to blog about some of these books as I finish them, so you can be watching for that in the future.)

So even though this is a little bit late, Happy New Year! May we look ahead in anticipation to how the Lord will work this year!

Christmas Newsletter 2010

Merry Christmas from the Hill family!

If we could sum up this year, it would probably be defined by learning. With the many changes over this past year, we’ve had many opportunities to learn, grow, and change.

In April, God provided Tim with a second job working at the local Piggly Wiggly. He’s been learning how to stock shelves, fill propane tanks, and bag groceries! Though the extra income has been helpful, he’s been especially thankful to get a little better connected to some people in the community. He’s had opportunities to speak of Christ on several occasions.

On May 25^th, Wesley Owen Hill was born, weighing in at a hefty 9lbs., 5oz. (Poor Kristen!) It’s definitely been a challenge transitioning to two children. The need for constant attention combined with lack of sleep (Poor Kristen!) have taken their toll, but we’re thankful for God’s daily grace and learning to rely on the strength He provides. As much as we may not want to admit it, the struggles have had a purpose. God is refining us to make us more like Christ. And at the end of the day, we’re thankful for that, even if refining isn’t what we most want.

This summer flew by as Tim was preaching most Sundays. The highlight of August was getting ready for our church’s Vacation Bible School. We were thankful for Bible Baptist in Ishpeming supplying decorations, puppets, supplies, and material to allow our VBS to go well!

September we enjoyed a trip to Michigan for Jeremy’s wedding (Kristen’s brother). We’re very thankful for God bringing Jeremy and Siera together! A little over three years after our wedding, Jeremy and Siera were married and in the same city we were, and just a mile or so down from the church we were married in! We were thrilled to be a part of their big celebration.

Micah celebrated his 2^nd birthday, November 11^th. He’s at such a fun age, doing silly things to make us laugh, like wanting to try eating onion and ginger. It’s been so neat to see his knowledge increase, as he’s been learning his numbers and letters. And thankfully, he’s starting to enjoy playing with Wesley, who is now crawling and getting into everything!

And now, here in December, we look forward to spending time with family over the holidays, while remembering Jesus—the true reason for Christmas.

Merry Christmas!

Mommy's Little Helper

Micah is such a funny little guy! Whenever I do my baking he wants to sit in the stool and “help” me bake. He enjoys being able to taste test what we’re making...his favorite has been canned pumpkin, believe it or not! Anyways, one day I had him help me dump in some cinnamon into our bowl, which he quickly tried tasting some. I told him not to take anything out of the bowl. Next was the ginger that he dumped into our bowl, which he quickly stuck his hand in to taste some more! His reaction to eating the ginger was hilarious! I wish I had it on video! As soon as he tasted it, he stuck out his tongue and started screaming hysterically, trying to wipe theginger off his tongue. I quickly found his sippee cup and tried to help him out. I don’t know what plain ‘ole ground ginger tastes like, but he did NOT like it one bit! (And now I’m tempted to try my own taste test to see what it taste like!) I think he’s learned his lesson to NOT taste what we’re putting into our bowl. At least for now.

Play Time

I would not consider myself to be a creative person at all! I always find myself taking ideas that people post online. So when it comes to keeping Micah entertained or even introduce new play ideas to him, I’m not always quick to think of creative, fun ideas. I was so excited to find out about this book, Unplugged Play, that I quickly reserved it from the library. I loved this book and the many great ideas that it gave for different age groups. If you are creatively challenged and want some ideas for your kids, I definitely recommend this book!