Five Years!

The first Sunday of October, 2005, was Shaun’s first Sunday as pastor of Community Bible Church of Kansas. It’s been a roller-coaster, but God has done so much and—we believe—is being glorified as this little church becomes healthy and strong. We haven’t arrived yet (who has?), but we’re seeing progress in many ways. Many of them are tangibles such as more people serving and more people giving, but many of them are intangibles: unity, fellowship, peace, strength. Keep praying for CBC!

As a family, we are definitely feeling as though Lawrence is home. We’re off to probably the best school year start ever—partly because Beth is not pregnant and we currently have no nursing babies. Not that Elijah is exactly cooperative, but Beth has a lot more energy. Hannah and Abigail are learning violin and really doing well. Josiah is a Lego-maniac—constantly building and creating. Lydia and Mary are like sunshine (very loud sunshine) for whatever room they’re in. They laugh, they sing, they just enjoy life a lot. Elijah is mobile—crawling at a high rate of speed and very close to walking. Keep praying for the LePages.

Parents or the Village?

Click here to go to ParentalRights.org and read the proposed Parental Rights Amendment, as well as “20 Things You Need to Know About the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child” and “Why Do We Need an Amendment”?

Fall 2009

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Elijah Patrick LePage

Make a Smilebox photobook

#6 Baby and #2 Boy

We’re very excited to announce that we’re expecting Baby Six around November 1 of 2009!

We’ve been assured this one’s a boy! Josiah stood there with his four sisters watching that sonogram intently. Suddenly, the sonographer put up on the screen the message, “I’m a boy!” When Josiah read it, he smiled a big smile and pretended to faint.

The pictures posted here were taken at six months. Beth and the baby are both doing well—though Beth is dealing with gestational diabetes and is pretty tired by the end of the day.

But we’re all very excited and we feel blessed that God is entrusting us with another child.

Isn’t he handsome? Baby six sonogram shots – around six months.

Representing Home Education

This picture appeared in the Lawrence Journal-World on Monday, February 2. You can click on the picture to go to the newspaper's website and read the story.

We were recently interviewed by the local newspaper, Lawrence Journal-World. They were doing a story on the fact that there was a spike in the number of home-schooled children in the past year and that more children are homeschooled than ever (since they started keeping stats).

It was an exciting adventure for us because they also did a TV spot for the local news. You can view that by clicking here. We were also interviewed in May 2007 for a series of stories about home schooling in Kansas. In that series, Abigail and Josiah made the front page in a pretty neat action photo.

We’re not really evangelists for home schoolinig, but when we’re given the chance to explain why we do it we will happily do so.

Like I said in the interview, we don’t ever want to come across as judgmental toward those who don’t home school. We just think we’re choosing what is best for our family.

Three years in Kansas!

It’s hard to believe, but we’ve now been in Kansas over 3 years! It’s been a roller coaster ride, but like the grandmother on “Parenthood” (old Steve Martin movie), We “prefer the roller coaster.”

2008 has been a great year for our family. Nothing monumental, just enjoying life together.

Family Scrapbook

Beth recently put together some scrapbook pages. It was a lot of fun to sort through pictures. You can take a look if you’d like. I’ve put all 22 pages into pdf format. Click here.

Update on 5 great kids

Beth wrote this in an email to some old friends who recently contacted us. We thought it was a pretty good update to start the new year:

Hannah is in 3rd grade and very artistic and creative. She’s very slow and careful with her work – she wants it to be just right. She’s very sensitive, very helpful to her mother and plays really well with the younger ones. She’s always making up “shows” that they (the oldest three or four) perform for us.

Abigail is in 2nd grade and loves to read and to write her own stories. She’s very quick to get her work done so she can play. She’s also very helpful and plays really well with the younger ones and has a great imagination.

Josiah is in kindergarten this year and loves to be “reading” like his big sisters (he guesses the words based on the first letter sound). He adores his little sisters and is constantly hugging and kissing them and laughing at the funny things they do.

Lydia is 2 ½ and thinks she’s just as big as everyone else. She’s very outgoing and independent – so different from the older girls. She’ll disappear into her room several times a day and come out with a different outfit on sometimes matching, sometimes not, or completely naked, we never know what to expect.

Mary is 11 months – she’ll be one on February 15th. She’s very, very sweet and laid-back. She didn’t crawl until just this past month – she was just content to sit with a few toys and watch everyone else run around. She hugs all her toys, especially baby dolls, and says “aaaahhhh” and pats them – she’s very loving.

Christmas Play

Hannah and Abigail were angels. Josiah was a sheep. It was a simple Christmas play on Sunday, December 23, but they had a great time and we were all impressed. The entire thing was memorized Scripture. All the kids memorized a portion of Luke 2 and it was excellent. Here are a few snapshots.