Welcome to Munchkin Land

2 am

2009-01-28T22:54:00.000-08:00

It's almost 2 am in the morning and I have been helping John pack up to go to Iraq. We are currently trying to decide what he will need with him in his carry on since he will be traveling for over 2 days. Figuring out what all needs to go in that little plastic bag of toiletries.
We have packed up his duffel bag and all the stuff on his pack list. He is almost set to go. Still we haven't heard from the company on the Iraq side. We are waiting on an LOA (whatever that means) before they can tell us what day he leaves. We suspect it is Friday, which means that tomorrow is our last day together. It is starting to feel real with all this packing. When we told the kids he would be gone again, it was very intersting their different reactions. Hannah just cried and cried (she is our very sensitive, empathetic one). Bekah gave her daddy a hug and said she would miss him. We asked her how she felt and she paused and said "well"(she says "well" a lot when she is thinking)"sometimes I can't remember what your face looks like". How sad, there daddy has been away so much that she forgets what his face looks like. Keren is only 3. She just doesn't act like it fazes her. That bothers me. She is so used to him being gone it is the norm for her now. I look foward to the end of the year when he is home. Of course, we will always face separations. That seems to be the path we constantly walk down. If he works for the FBI or Secret Service that will be the norm for us. However, it won't be a constant separation like we have been experiencing... we are about to experience. I wonder what life would be like if he had gone into hotel management straight out of college instead of the Army? What if he had gone to OCS instead of gradschool? It seems everything has lead us and prepared us for this. I know God has a plan. Sometimes the plan just seems so weird and I have to wonder where it will lead afer this chapter in life. I don't think we will ever be a "normal" family, where daddy comes home every evening for dinner. I believe we will always have frequent periods of separation. Only God really knows, and I know that what He leads us to her will prepare us for and take care of us in the midst of it. If you are reading this... pray for us. Pray for the path we will walk down and that we will be equipped to travel it. Pray for the children, that they will stay close to their daddy while he is far away. Pray for me. I hold a lot together on my own. I need to constantly be dependent on the one who holds me together. ... I sure wish there was a spell check on here.

John came home... and now he has to leave again.

2009-01-26T16:14:00.000-08:00

Well, most of our friends know that John left in August to go to training with the Army for Signal Corps. He was gone for 6 long months but we were fortunate to have him come home about every other weekend since he was stationed in GA. Well, on Jan 13th he graduated from BOLCIII and came home.
We have spent the past 6 months looking for a job for him to come home to and had found nothing. The day we got home from GA, after his graduation, we got a call, his first job offer. After 6 months time we finally recieved a job offer, for a job in Iraq as a civilian contractor.
We had to weigh our options. He could take this job or we could go back active duty (which would certainly include a deployment and a 3 year commitment to active duty.) After prayer and looking at our budget we decided that God had placed this job in our lives. Better to take the job and be able to pay rent and pay off debt accrued while in gradschool, than to not have a job at all. Or, better to do this for one year than lock ourselves into a longer commitment with a sure deployment, maybe two. So, we decided to accept the job offer. The next day, the offer was retracted because John did not have a pasport yet. Our emotions were getting pretty raw. John went ahead and persued getting a pasport expedited with the assurance from the company that he would be next in line for a job.
John's pasport arrived a couple of days ago, and with it another job offer to work in Iraq with the same company. We have accepted the offer and have filled out paper work. Now we are waiting. Waitiing to find out when he flys out. It could be as early as Wednesday, 2 days from today. Or it could be this weekend. It all depends on how fast they can get paper work taken care of. They want him there as soon as possible. We told the girls tonight at dinner that tommorrow may be the last day they have with him before he goes. They understand as we have already told him that he has taken the job. Still, it is not easy. Below is a copy of an email we sent out to our church.

Thanks so much for your support for our family while John has been away at training. We have greatly appreciated it. He returned home last Tuesday the 13th after his graduation from Signal Corps training at Fort Gordon. We have enjoyed him being home! Thank you as well for joining us in prayer as we have looked for a job for John when he returned. After about 6 months of looking for a job we have come across very few opportunities. John has, however, gotten a job offer (the only offer he has received) and has decided to take it.

It is a civilian contract job in Iraq. He will be serving as a security team supervisor at an Army Base south of Baghdad for a company that is contracted with the Army. The girls and I will be staying here while he is gone.

While this is a choice we know most people would not choose to make, we feel like this is the correct direction for our family at this time. I'm sure some of you are asking, "why?!" God has prepared us for this in many ways including our recent separation and a previous deployment. When John enlisted in the Army 7 years ago this is the lifestyle we signed up for. Though he is not deploying as a soldier now, he is still going and serving the same mission that drove us to enlist in the Army in the first place, a mission we still very strongly believe in. Still, this would not have been our first choice of employement, but we fill that God has provided it as a way to provide for our daily needs as well as get out of 100% of the debt we accrued during John's time in Grad School. For this we praise him and thank Him for freeing us up in the future to serve him with our finances instead of being held back in our debt.

We ask for your prayers in these things:
· That John would be safe as he serves in Iraq. He in not going to be in the dangerous situations that he was in while he was deployed in the past, however, Iraq is not the safest place to be and he will be carrying a "big gun" for a reason.
· That he would find Christian fellowship and encouragement while over there.
· That our relationship would stay strong during his absence and we would stay emotionally connected
· That the girls would cope well with his absence (thankfully, they are kinda used to this), they are used to him coming home every other weekend and now he wont be able to come home for 4 months.
- That I would be able to hold down the fort while he is gone
- That I would not get lonely
- That homeschooling would continue to go well as Hannah has recently been diagnosed with a learning disability that has cause problems with her learning to read.
- John has applied for a position with the Secret Service. It is a 6-9 month application process. If he gets the job they will pull him out of Iraq before his year is up. We really would love for him to get this job and we have word from someone who had worked in SS that there is a good possibility. Please join us in praying that he will get this job and will be stationed at the Greenville Branch.
Thanks again for all you support and love.
John and Betsy Clark

Obama says Palin has no experience? Hmm... Let's examine this.

2008-09-13T18:35:00.000-07:00

I just have to say that I saw this little compilation and thought it was awesome. These are the facts. When you put away the sweet talking and the charisma they you have the truth. The facts are what we need to look at. You will need to stop or pause the music player at the bottom of the blog while you play this video.

My Ballerinas

2008-09-04T19:33:00.000-07:00

Hannah and Rebekah started Ballet today. Hannah took it briefly before when we lived in Colorado, but for Rebekah this was her first time. The looked so pretty all dressed in their black leotards, pink tights, ballet shoes, and hair in buns. I am impressed with thier teacher. She has studied in some major ballet companies and I believe she will be a great teacher. The girls did a good job. I spoke with the teacher briefly after class and she said they did well. She said that though Rebekah was shy when it was her turn to do something by herself that she did well and got over it. I hope it will bring her out of her fear of performance the same way that getting a dog has gotten her over her fear of dogs. They were so excited to tell me all about their class and came home and showed me some of what they learned. I was impressed that in the first class they already learned 3rd position. Before bed tonight Hannah was disapointed to learn that they will not be going to ballet every day but only once a week. Ah well... Keren on the other hand had a fit because she had to leave her "sissys" and couldn't dance with them. She is so used to doing everything ( even "school" ) right along side of them that she doesn't understand why she can't take ballet with them. Co-op on Wednesdays and Ballet on Thrusdays may be wierd for her for a while. It sure is easier for me to run a few errands with only one though :)

School Days, School Days

2008-09-03T14:54:00.000-07:00

John left 4 1/2 weeks ago for Ft Benning for some Army Training. He will be gone for almost 6 months all together. We have really missed him but since he has been gone we have been very busy.We started back to school 4 Mondays ago. We have really been enjoying it this year!!! We are using a Charlotte Mason based approach to education and are loving it. We have fun reading, reading, and reading. The kids have really enjoyed reading about various birds in the Burgess Bird Book, and about fairy tales in the Blue Fairy Book. They have learned some great classic information which will help them in the Great Conversation. They learned about the Brave 300 Spartans who held back the Persain invasion of Greece and about Alexander the Great and his horse. They have learned about the coming of the Romans to England and how the Brittans were so brave and feriece that Cesear left with much respect for them. We are learning about Geography through a great Caldecot book named Paddle to the Sea. So far they have learned about the Great Lakes and how the rivers flow from one to the other and thus on to the Ocean.
Poetry is one of their favorites. They love to hear great poetry about children like themselves. Right now Beauty and the Beast stands out as the favorite story by far. At first, as I was reading it, Hannah tried to tell me that that was not how it went (she only knew the disney version), but soon she was very interested and wanted to know how it would end. She told her daddy all about it!
For math we are learning with a great program called Math U See. The kids love playing with the blocks to learn place value and figure out problems.
I am most excited about our new Spell to Write and Read program. So far the kids have learned all of the sounds of all of the letters and have them well memorized. They are currently working on the multiletter phonograms (or blends) and are doing very well memorizing them. We will start our first spelling list of 20 words on Monday. I dictated the word "apron" yesterday to Hannah and she spelled it correctly!!! The emphasis of this program is to learn all of the sounds of letters and multi letter phonograms first, spell second, and learn to write and read as a result of correct spelling. So far I see the benefit and am excited.
On Wednesdays Hannah and Bekah are going to a co-op. They are taking Art, Math, and Spanish there. They spend an hour on each and come home at 12:30. Today was their first day and they had so much fun. We have some Spanish homework to work on for next week.
Hannah and Bekah will be taking Ballet on Thursday afternoon. It is with a Christian fine arts company and has a basis in letting our talents be our worship. The kids are so excited about this! We went and got their ballet shoes on Monday and they have been wanting to wear them.
Fridays are our fun day.
We go on Nature Walks. We usually go to the Roper Mountain Science Center. While there we walk on the nature trails and look for new things to see (bugs, turtles, moss, fungus, etc...), and then head to the butterfly garden and pond. There is lots of great pond life and beautiful flowers to study.
This past friday we went to the Childrens Garden in Downtown Greenville. The kids got to look at the river and see how the water flows. They saw ducks and we discussed how the water flows off of their backs. They identified flowers and smelled some of the more fragrant plants in the herb garden. It was a lot of fun for them. Afterwards we made a trip to the interactive fountain where they had fun playing and getting wet.

Friday evening John came home for Labor Day weekend. We had a great time together as a family. We spent a lot of time just hanging out at home. We went to church together and just spent time being a family.
On Sat night John and I went on a date to Rio Grill. It was sooooooo good!!!!! Oh my word that steak was to die for!!!

Mission Complete!

2008-06-01T22:35:00.000-07:00

After 2 years of Grad School, ROTC, Family Responsibilities, and Work. John finally graduated and was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Army. More details to come. Until then, enjoy the slide show.

It has been 2 months and we are loving it!

2008-04-22T18:01:00.000-07:00

At the end of the week we will have been homeschooling for 8 weeks. We LOVE it! I never dreamed it would be this freeing and easy! Hannah has raced ahead in her reading ability as well as math. It is so encouraging. While in school she was struggling to keep up with friends in reading. She often felt defeated and said "I can't do it". Now she skillfully sounds out words and has no problems with phonagrams like sh, ch, th, ck, wh and others. She is also tackling the silent e and double vowels.
In math she is also doing very well and moving into first grade work! She is adding double digit numbers such as 46+9, and is also learning to skip count and some basic algebra.
Today we started the very exciting art of Cursive. I have discovered a wonderful Cursive curriculim called Cursive First. We decided to go with cursive "first" because Hannah took little care with her print. She did not write from left to right and was very sloppy. I had read that often cursive corrected much of these problems as well as reversals. Today we worked on the half upward sloap, the clock stroke, and the connector stroke. Just for fun, john wrote the word apple and explained the parts of the letters using the attic, main floor, and basemment. She copied his cursive "apple" and for a first try it was suprisingly neat and pretty. I was shocked. So I have a very good feeling about this!

We have been busy getting to know friends in the homeschool community and are excited to be starting new things. Hannah and Polly both will be starting social dance classes tomorrow afternoon. They will be learning to waltz, swing, and shag, among other dances. They are very excited and so am I!

We are loving this adventure so much and I wonder why I didn't start this long ago.
Currently we are praying about bringing Polly home next year for homeschooling as well. It will depend on what the future holds.

The Homeschool Lounge

2008-03-04T20:10:00.000-08:00

Click Here to go to the

Homeschool Lounge

I found this neet new website. It is like myspace or facebook but for the homeschool community. There are groups you can join based on your interest and discussion boards to be able to ask questions. I really am enjoying it.

Can someone remind me why I had kids again?

2008-02-20T08:31:00.000-08:00

Today is not quite your normal day around here. Both Bekah and Keren spill milk on themselves not long after we get home from taking the girls to school. I ran a bath for them and put them in it. Thinking I could trust them I left and went back into the living room to do more research on the computer for HS stuff. Well, stupid me. You can never trust a Clark child.
I went back into the bathroom to check on them and found them dumping water on the floor by the cup fulls. Amazingly I stayed calm (if i hadn't im sure i would have regreated my next actions). The bathroom was completely flooded. So now on top of the mountain of cloths to wash i also have bath mats and towels i used to sop up the water for 20 minutes. I put the kids in bed and told them they had to stay there until we went to go pick up the girls. We have one of those childproof doorknob covers on the inside of the door so I was confident they couldn't get out. I laid down to take a much needed nap. When I woke up I realized i had underestimated them again. A whole bag of cheerios were scattered and smashed all over the same bathroom floor. I think I have had it with children. I am ready to go to bed and start over tomorrow. Oh, wait, I can't do that, I still have half of the day left.

We are getting ready!

2008-02-20T07:19:00.000-08:00

Hannah has 2 more days left of school after today. I am feeling a bit guilty for taking her out. I know her friends mean so much to her and she really loves her teacher. She goes back and forth between being sad and being excited about doing school at home. I am very excited as well.
Her birthday party will be on Saturday so she will get to see her friends again then. (Ohh! I gotta go order that cake!)
I have contacted some people through a Homeschool Yahoo group here and we are setting a weekly park day. We will meet around 11:30 for a pic-nic lunch and then have time to play and socialize. Hannah will love this and it will give her a great chance to make some new friends.
I went to Children's Books in Lyman yesterday. That place is crazy overwhelming. There is sooooo much there to look at. If you don't already know what curriculum you want to use it can be quite confussing. We got the Horizons K Math curriculum. I am going to start Hannah about half way though and Bekah in the beginning. I hope to have Bekah caught up by next year so I won't have to teach 2 math lessons.
Besides the Horizions I will be continuing Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. I have also found a handwriting curriculum on-line that follows along with this.
We will be going to the library to explore insects and animals and to learn about countries. I have decided to have the kids make lapbooks to document what they have learned about these topics. This is a new concept to me and looks like so much fun. I also bought the girls some journals that have blank space at the top to draw pictures and write about it. I hope that they can journal about what we learn. This will be more difficult for Bekah but it will be good to practice letter and sentence formation and will give her an idea of what is to come.
Here is a video I found on lapbooking that got me excited about it:

There's no place like home

2008-02-18T18:26:00.000-08:00

We finally took a step toward home. Home schooling that is. Even before Hannah was born I knew I wanted to homeschool, but over the years my ADD has made me afraid to try. What if I mess her up. What if after 2 years of failure I put her back in school and she is behind. These are the fears that lead me to put her in Kindergarden in the public school this year. Though we have really loved her teacher and have been so pleased with the quality of the school, that ever present desire to homeschool has not left. I have missed Hannah. Though Hannah and I clash more that the others (we are very much alike), I have come to realize just how much I miss her sweet sensitive self. Since Polly has come to live with us it has strenghtened the need for homeschooling in our home. To begin with we tossed around the idea of bringing Hannah home next year for first grade, but as time has gone on we have realized that the need is much more immediate. Polly has many needs and requires much time spent with us. I have felt a great strain in giving Polly the attention she needs while not neglecting Hannah's needs. I have time with Rebekah and Keren while Hannah and Polly are at school but there is no time with Hannah. Polly is struggling with the adjustment of moving into our family and this comes with stress on her and the rest of the family. Hannah is getting lost in this. I came to the decission to bring Hannah home based on these factors. I will be able to spend time with my three kiddos durring the day while Polly is at school and will be freed up to give Polly the time and attention she needs in the afternoon without feeling guilty. I have spoken to the school and have already signed up with an accountability organization that will keep me legal. We will bring Hannah home on Monday the 25th. Now that this decision has been made I feel so great about it. On Friday, I took Hannah out of school early and we went to a homeschool valentines party. I am looking at curriculum and making plans. I really feel that this is a good choice for our family and the fear is gone. I have a total peace about this now. All this time, I have wanted to do this and fear has heald me back. Now that I have been pushed into it by our situation and have found it so freeing.

The Merry Ole Land of OZ

2008-02-11T13:02:00.000-08:00

I feel as if I have had a tornado come along, lift up my life and land it in a land that is upside down and inside out, but it doesn't feel merry. Things are so peaceful while the girls are at school. Rebekah and Keren play nicely together. Then Keren takes her nap and Bekah comes and has snuggle time with me. All is right with the world.
Then 2:30 comes along and it is time to pick up the girls from school. As soon as they crawl into the car the fighting begins. She said this and she did that. I wanted to play this and she wouldn't let me. She hit me so I hit her back, and the tears - oh the tears. It is enough to put me in a mental institution.
I don't understand why one feels the need to be hateful to the other all of the time. Shaping a heart is a very hard job, and sometimes I am afraid that the wrong childs heart is being shaped in the opposite way. How our lives have changed in the past 3 weeks.
I feel so insufficent for this job. Just going to the grocery store this afternoon was trauma. Even when they are all happy the decibel level is enough to burst an eardrum. My patience hangs by a thread and I am afraid I have been loosing it more lately.
There has been a true blessing in all of this. I have had the opportunity to see the Spirit in my 5 year old. Before we debated weather or not she truely understood what it meant to give her heart to Christ and to become a believer. Since Polly has come to live with us we have seen Fruit demonstrated in ways we have never seen before. Hannah handles Polly with a certain grace and forgiveness that is uncommon for a child her age. She prays for her on her own innitiative with a strong sincerity. She has expressed her love and care for Polly to her in the midst of receiving a hateful spirit in return.
Hannah has a mood disorder. She is an extremely sensitive child and does not hold up well under extreeme stress, yet the grace she has extended in the midst of hurt feelings and broken hearts has been extraordinary. I am very proud of her.
I miss her very much. The only time I have with her, Polly is home too. If I try to hold Hannah and talk with her Polly wants to climb up in my lap too. I have no quality time with Hannnah anymore and we are suffering for it. I understand that Polly needs this too, especially since she is separated from her mother currently but I have to find a balance between helping Polly and protecting my family. It is hard to do.
Rebekah is just kind of along for the ride. She is used to being the follower so having one more person to follow is no big deal to her.
Keren has been acting out more lately. She realizes that Mamma just doesn't have the attention and time to stay on her and make her obey as much. I feel aweful that I have neglected this but I still try to get in snuggle time with her.
Joy is harder to come by these days, but as I said, the blessings still remain. This is definately a time of growth and character development... for all of us.
Oh... there comes my sweet Hannah, prehaps I can get some time with her, just the two of us.

Life is Good because God is good

2008-02-11T09:07:00.000-08:00

Interesting title for the state of life we are living in. It is quite a season, Hard to tell if it is winter or spring, though I'm praying for spring. It could be the winter but all things must die so they can be made new.

John, my wonderful DH is in gradschool at North Greenville University. He is getting his masters in Christian Ministry. He is also working at our Chruch, Shannon Forest 30 hours a week. We feel very blessed by this and it really is the perfect job for him.

Now let's back up a bit. John is a soldier (that would make me an Army wife). I have followed him across the U.S. and back. We have 3 beautiful children all born in different states. Hannah is 5, Rebekah is 4, and Keren is 2 DD #3 our beautiful baby girl Keren was born while he was in Iraq. That was a very interesting season in life.

We are now back home thanks to the Army's generous offer to send John to school to get his Masters Degree. When he graduates he will be a comissioned officer in the army.
Because of this he also has to take ROTC and all of the demands that go with it along side of his full load of graduate classes and working and being a husband to one and father of three.

Need I say that he is never home? Ok, never is a bit of an exageration. For example, he was home last night, and awake for the entirity of it writing a paper. I guess I should say that he is rarely home at times when the girls and I are awake.

3 weeks ago we took our neice Polly into our home. She is 6 months older than Hannah our oldest and they are both in Kindergarden together. There have been some major adjustments in our family as of late. Polly and Hannah clash and with Hannah's very sensitive heart she has had a very difficult time. Polly has been very upset and misses her mother and I am trying to juggle everything.

Still, life is good. There are many blessings bistowed on us daily. Our church has rallied around us in countless ways. God's provision is always perfect to meet our needs. He has emptied me of myself and set my eyes on Him. Life is Good because God is Good.