The Wonderful Cross

Our second day of travel took us through the panhandle of Texas and past the Largest Cross in the World. Because of Hurricane Ike, Amarillo was blanketed with fog the morning we were leaving there. We decided to hit the road early and stop for breakfast at this huge cross which was also surrounded in a blanket of fog. We were the only ones there, so after a light breakfast in the trailer we walked around and explored the amazing exhibits surrounding this gigantic cross. Around the outside of the cross are bronze statues depicting the stations of the cross. There is a station for Calvary with the three crosses and next to it is a tomb with a giant angel statue inside. The children loved looking around and reading all the plaques at each station. It was a wonderful way to start our long day of travel.

Home again in Arizona

We have returned safely from our journey east to Virginia. What a trip it was for all of us. A truly wonderful experience with some interesting adventures along the way. It was difficult to leave the beautiful green of the Virginia farm where our dear friends are dwelling this summer. It was a balm to my spirit to dwell there if only for a few days. I have so much to share and many pictures to post, but my computer is not feeling well and I think may have a virus so not sure how that is going to work. I will work today to try and get my old computer up and running and see if I can get some of the photos posted over there. In the mean time I have piles of laundry to sort through and children to get back on track. We are all overwhelmingly tired and a bit sick. Miss Emma got a cold along about the time we were in DC and then by the time we were headed home I had contracted it. The Lord was merciful and it has not been horrible for any of us, but we do need to take it easy I think for a couple more days. Hard to re-enter your life when you have been gone for such a period of time. But alas we must try. Robert is headed back to work and I will have the task of getting us back to school. What a blessing our time was to all of us, treasured memories we will have for a lifetime!! Stay tuned for more about our journey...

Our Big Adventure

We have been having an amazing time on our journey across the country. We have not had email or web access for most of the trip so I have not had a chance to blog...but I am going to tell all about our adventure when we get home. Right now we are still in Virginia and having a blast on the farm!! What a blessing this has been for our whole family. I'm looking forward to sharing all about it when we get home at the end of the week.

Three Weeks into School Already

Well we started back to school on the 4th of August and now suddenly it is already our third week!! So far we have stayed on track with our new schedule and amazingly enough I think that they are ALL learning. We have made some significant changes in curriculum this year and I'm loving it. We are still using Sonlight as our core for history, Bible and reading but we have changed to Abeka for most of our language arts and science. As well as adding Institute for Excellence in Writing which is fabulous! The children are doing so well with all of it, and it is such a relief since I spent so much time stressing over my choices as I mentioned in another blog entry. The Lord truly helped me through Robert to discern what were the best choices and He is rewarding us with a smooth transition. James, Peter and Emma are doing key word outlines and writing summaries from them all on their own...praise the Lord. My non writers are begging me to do writing which I never thought would happen. We have also done science every day we have done school...which for those of you that know me well know is a feat in and of itself. They are loving it and doing so well with learning about insects and some things about plants which we did cover last year. We are also doing devotions each morning to start our day and everyone is memorizing scripture together as well.

Daniel and Ana are on the right track as well and are coming along with their Abeka curriculum and Math U See. They still work slower than the others but I'm seeing some real progress and I'm hopeful that we will be able to cruise through the kindergarten curriculum and perhaps squeeze in some 1st grade work before the end of the year. We'll see! True praises all the way around.

Through some evaluations we have discovered some of the learning difficulties that we are dealing with with Peter and Ana and it has helped me to change my way of doing things and my attitude toward their learning. Sometimes you just need someone to lay things out for you and it puts things into better focus. We are getting them some extra services lined up for speech and occupational therapy which I think will also help. Daniel is still receiving OT services and making some real progress with it. It is daunting at times to think of all the individual needs, but I'm so thankful that the Lord is giving me the chance to help them through home schooling. I truly believe now more than ever that we have made the correct choice to keep them all home. They would flounder greatly if they had to survive in a large classroom setting. I don't have much free time during the day, but we are getting what we need to accomplished and I'm feeling content with our choices. Each day is not a breeze don't get me wrong, there have been a couple of doozies let me tell ya. But the Lord is giving me the strength and the patience most of time :).

We are looking forward to a grand adventure coming up next month. We will be travelling back to Virginia to see our dear friends and to visit Washington DC. We are all thrilled to be getting to do this. It is something that has been in the works since the beginning of the year so we are all anxious to finally get going. Until then we will try to complete some of our house projects. Robert is done laying the foundation for his garage...yippee! And we are taking some time now to replace some windows on the house and prepare it for paint. Which we will hopefully have someone doing while we are on our trip. So with God's help, when we return we will have a freshly painted house to welcome us. What a true blessing that would be.

Summer Blessings

Since I have still had such a hard time keeping up on this blog I will condense this post of what has been going on the last month and a half with some blessings from our days that I'm thankful for.

1. The giggles and smiles from summer swim lessons where my children are learning to not be afraid of the water and are truly becoming swimmers.

2. Fun summer movies with friends from church. Yummy lunches afterwards too!!

3. Finishing a wonderful Bible Study (finally...we made it girls!) and sharing fellowship with sisters in Christ who always hold me accountable.

4. An amazing visit from certain sweet friends from Virginia...sharing laughter and tears and the joys and trials of motherhood together.

5. Birthday celebrations for Miss A and me and God's blessing us with another year. Fun dinners and desserts to celebrate were an added bonus.

6. A wonderful camping trip with family to celebrate our nation's birthday. Exploring and just playing with the kiddos around the camp ground.

7. Learning to knit with sweet Miss E and fun fellowship with friends while doing so.

8. Celebrating my mother's retirement after 20+ years with the University of Arizona. Hearing the relief in her voice and the anticipation of new adventures for her on the horizon.

9. Celebrating 13 wonderful years of marriage to my soul mate.

10. Sweet fellowship with old friends and new friends at the homeschool conference. Feeling encouraged to start a brand new school year knowing that I'm doing what is best for my children's education!


As you can see it has been a busy month at the Upton house and we have much to be thankful for. One additional blessing is that Robert has been diligently working on the new garage and in what little time he has had, has managed to complete the slab and get a good start on the brick. He is such a blessing in himself and has been very patient with all our travels this summer and interruptions of his project. I pray that as your summers wind down you will take the time to remember your summer blessings!!

Such a Fun Week and Weekend

This was a fun week and weekend for our whole family. This was VBS week which is always highly anticipated by the kiddos and myself. They attend VBS at Robert Road Baptist church which is not our home church but has one of the best (we think THE best) VBS in our area. The woman that runs it is amazing and she spends literally the whole year preparing for this special week. The staff is also a mixture of young and old congregation members and they are such faithful servants of the Lord it is so amazing to watch all of it unfold. It is also a special week for me since it is my one week a year that all the children are gone from me for three and a half hours each day!! Being a homeschool mom I'm passionate about spending time and energy with and on my children but for this short week I get a much needed break and a small recharge. I was able to shop a little on my own and watch a movie I'd been trying to watch as well as talking to my sweet friend who is in Virginia for the next six months. It was a blessing for all of us. The best part of the week though was Friday night when the children perform a musical of all the songs that they had learned all week. This always brings tears to my eyes to see how much they have learned and grown from one year to the next. Robert and I were especially blessed to see Miss Ana and Mr Daniel perform this year. Two years ago when they attended their first VBS it was a rough week. We had behavior issues galore and barely made it through the week. This year nothing could have been further from the truth. They were in the Kindergarten class and had an absolute blast and never once had any behavior problems. Then at the musical they were the most fun to watch, singing at the top of their lungs and worshipping the Lord with all their little hearts, hand motions included!! What a blessing to our hearts to see what the Lord has done in our family in the last two years. It is so wonderful when the Lord gives you those glimpses every once in a while when you need some perspective.

They yesterday we headed to Phoenix to celebrate James' 12th birthday. We had gotten Diamondback tickets a few weeks ago and surprised him with this trip for his birthday. With five I get a little weary of parties so we try to mix things up and do some trips for birthdays when we can. We started the day by having lunch with Granny and Brad at a fun mexican restaurant and then headed to the hotel to check in before going to the game. The hotel has a wonderful pool with a lazy river that you can tube around and just relax as well as a water slide and another pool with a waterfall. The Diamondbacks didn't have their best showing so we came back and swam instead. Which was a perfect time to do so without the 110 degree temps. We swam again this morning after breakfast and then had a fun lunch at the Cheesecake Factory for Father's Day before heading back up the hill. It was a fun trip for all of us and James I think has felt sufficiently celebrated!!

Fun family fellowship is sure a wonderful way to spend our summer days. Thank you Jesus for knitting us together.

So How Does a Month Pass Sooooo Quickly???

Here I was trying to make my posts around every week and here we are at the beginning of another month!! What a busy month it has been. Early in the month the kids had their first two choir performances. The first one was at the mall and the second one at Embry Riddle which was a true recital. Peter, Emma, Daniel and Ana are participating in choir and are loving every minute of it. Daniel particularly is doing a fabulous job and it is so awesome to see him doing something that he truly enjoys and that he is good at. They sang three of their songs at the mall performance and then at the recital they did five different numbers. It was so much fun to watch them all.

James and Peter have also started an art class through the same academy and are loving that as well. They both have an amazing gift in the area of art, and I have no skill whatsoever in this area so it is a tremendous blessing that this program exists. They have only been to one session but they are so excited and the program will go throughout the summer so that will be wonderful as well.

We had our first travel adventure two weeks ago. Robert was working down in Phoenix for the week on a project that he has been working on for a while that needed some more of his attention. So the kids and I tagged along and went down to stay at the hotel with him and do some swimming while he worked. They enjoyed it more than words can describe and I was able to still hang out with my honey a bit. We also got the chance to meet another adoptive family while we were down there. They just recently adopted two children from Russia and live over where we were staying so we were able to have dinner with them and share some of our experiences and give them some insight about our experiences. What a blessing that was, sweet fellowship that will hopefully grow from here. Our children played so well together and ours enjoyed meeting more children from Russia. Their children are a delight and we look forward to seeing them again.

We thought we would be getting back in the routine the last week of the month but last Sunday night we received a call from Robert's mom saying that his dad had fallen off a ladder while building his garage and broken both of his arms. He was okay but going to have to have surgery up in Colorado the next day. So we packed our bags and headed for Colorado! I was pretty impressed with my ability to get seven of us packed and ready in about three hours but I guess you can do most anything with the Lord's help. He was truly in the whole experience. Robert's dad could have been much worse off but he had the surgery and was out of the hospital in around 48 hours. He will be laid up for a long time but the Lord saved him from much more serious injury and his bones all went back into place when the doctor went in to do the surgery and he didn't even have to put in any pins on the inside or plates of any kind and the arm was broken in 15 pieces. We serve a mighty God. We helped to get things squared away up at their place and they will be coming back to Arizona for his recovery. Robert did a ton of work on the garage and finished up the second floor and arranged for roofers to come and do the roof in the next couple of days. We cut down trees and did a lot of clean up on the property and it should be all set for them to come home mid week. The kiddos had a blast playing around on the property and they did an awesome job helping out and staying out of trouble. They were even very good in the van on the drive and didn't complain at all. I was extremely proud of them!!

We got back today and aside from having about sixteen loads of laundry to do I think all is well. We will hopefully get back into the routine tomorrow. We have a bit of school to finish. Daniel and Ana will continue through the summer but the others will be pretty much done after this week. Which I might add they are very happy about. So here we are starting another month and I'll try once again to post more often. But you never know...time does fly by.