A tough morning

It was a tough morning. JD and I made a phone contract after he lost and recovered his cell phone after a month of searching. If JD breaks one of the rules on the contract he gets a strike. If he gets only two strikes in a day I take his phone for one day. JD got strike one this morning after I attempted to wake him up three times. And he got the second strike during breakfast. Then during a “life skills” moment he simply would not tell me what he would thank God for in a prayer.

I had JD read the devotion today and he went a bit out of order. The devotion for 5 Dec is called National Bathtub Day. It talked about being dirty on the outside until we shower or bathe. Then it talked about being “dirty” on the inside. You know those things like: envy, pride, greed, deceit, anger, and hate. To clean this up we need to place ourselves in the shower of God’s grace. He promises that when we confess our sins, he’ll cleanse us, forgiving us completely. Once we’re clean God can use us to do his work. Think of this devotion like a dirty glass. What good would it do to wipe the outside of a glass?

Math was confusing and JD was distracted by the happenings of our home. Today we learned how to add and subtract integers. It’s all very confusing and I’m wondering what we need this for. It seems like a bunch of nonsense rules to memorize for an assessment. We’re going to be in trouble when we have to decipher what process to use on word problems.

We did not do science today because I got tripped up on multiple social studies lessons. I let JD watch the program called “Blackbeard” that was showing on the History Channel. Then we looked up facts for Argentina and printed them up for the brochure. Most interesting was the name Argentina means “Land of Silver.”

For language arts I was going to have JD write some facts about Blackbeard when he suddenly volunteered to write five things to thank God for. He thanked God for letting him live another day, saving him and loving him, for giving him two great parents, and for helping him today. This was from the heart and I did not tell him anything to write. This life skills lesson came up because of our conversation about repetitious praying. He says the same prayer about cousins and dogs and I was trying to tell him to expand his thankfulness.

JD gave up on reading Iwo Jima and started reading a Star Wars Jedi Apprentice The followers. He read for more than thirty minutes this time. Yippie.