Snow Sunday

It's a snow day today. Church is closed, leaving us with an open, unplanned day ahead of us. Outside is below zero, covered in pristine snow. And while the sky was the most opaque white-gray yesterday, today it's an icy clear blue.

The kids, after being brokenhearted last night over canceled church,  are excited for our "Sunday school at home", reminding me of the different things we've done in the past for such days. "Remember when we made fish from paper and paper clips and then went fishing?" "Can we sing lots of songs?" "What are we going to do for the craft?".

Chester decides to try a breakfast experiment, and makes a batch of ginger-bread flavored bagels. Of course they turn out delicious, and breakfast is made more special with cinnamon hot cocoa and marshmallows.

I'm trying to think of a Bible lesson to go with ice and snow. And a craft too. And coming up empty. Then I overhear the kids' conversation about how God knows the number of hairs on our heads, and decide to go with Luke 12:6-7 instead. Chester teaches the story, and we start a bird craft. We talk about how we know and love each of our chickens, but God knows and loves us even more than that. 

While the paint dries on our bird puppets, it's decided that now is the best time to "break our backs". That is, go sledding. I stay home with Tommy.  We snuggle, and he plays the guitar and sings along.  Then he gets out a board book, and reads the story to me, in his baby babble.  I notice that he's covered with paint, and now it's dry.  I guess this nice shirt is now a paint shirt.  I should probably mind, because it's one of two nice shirts that he had that fit him.  But I don't.  It's a lazy day, and I feel content.

We make lunch together, creamy tomato soup, and wait for the family to return from their sledding adventures.




111. Long underwear
112. Ice-frosted weeds (wish I had a picture!)
113. Kids who love church so much that they cried their eyes out when it was cancelled tomorrow.
114.  Saturday night music practice, held as usual in the basement, at request of the kids (even though I wasn't scheduled to do music tomorrow anyway).

115. The Mondrian dress is finished and shipped.  Whew!  (There's 30 individual pieces in this dress). 


116. Instant gratification sewing projects!

117. Snuggling with my boys on lazy mornings.
118. A found jar of molasses, when cleaning out the cupboards!
119. Ginger snap cookies.
120. Ginger bread bagels.
121. All the kids favorite worship songs.
122. Singing at the tops of our lungs in the basement (so I can play piano to the singing.... not that you could hear the piano...)
123. Musical instruments, (that is, shakers, tambourines, drums and guitars), played as loudly as possible for the above songs.
124.  Baby songs.
125.  Furniture that isn't so nice that I'm bothered when I notice the kids painted it in addition to their craft.
126.  "Helpful" toddlers. 
127.  Wisdom that comes from experience telling me that someday the kids "helpfulness" really will be helpful.  Bennet loves to help by shoveling snow, for example.
128.  Crock pot suppers, making the day even more lazy.
129.  Sledding adventures, that didn't include a broken back.
130. Peek a boo between Dad and Tommy.

Thousand gifts, part 8

A start of a new year brings the freshness of snow, and the relived memories of building snow forts, making snow ice cream, and shoveling.  This time, I'm the Mom, introducing my kids to the delicacy.  Sure, some of them remember it from this time last year.  But it's still a super special treat.

Bennet has grown up enough since last year that he doesn't even ask if I want him to shovel.  I go outside to scoop the walk, and he won't let me.  He doesn't want me to get worn out.  So he shovels it, after having shoveled the entire driveway.  The driveway was scooped with a goal:  make a pile of snow big enough and packed down enough for a fort.

It was a successful engineering venture.






91. Husband willing helping friends put up their new swing set - an all day project
92. Husband willing helping me with homeschooling two children
93. The freedom to homeschool two children.
94. Local AWANA program, that the kids eagerly await each week
95. Kids able to read and memorize their own verses in the Sparks book.
96. No women's Bible study during AWANA this semester means a date with Jesus for me.  Bliss.
97. Winter snow days (not that we skipped school...).
98. Little engineers and mechanics - experimenting and building.
99. A day or so of warm enough weather to enjoy it before it really got cold.  Brr!
100.  Bennet loving to shovel! 
101.  My husband patient enough to push me out not once, but twice, after I got our little car stuck.


102. A healed perspective on life.  I'm liking it again, seems the blues are lifting.
103. A finished Mondrian dress (version 2)  Pics to come!
104. Sewing for pleasure again.
105. Instant sewing project means a new nice warm wool skirt for me.  Properly nerdy too!  (And yes, more pics to come)

106. Winter evening games of Apples to Apples with the kids.
107. And two kids reading well enough to be their own teams -- now we have four.
108. Opportunities to train kids to be good sports about winning and losing.
109. Big brothers deliberately helping the underdog.
110.  Snow ice cream.

The Jesus Song

I like family rituals. And we have many of them.

One of my favorites is the bedtime ritual. Each day, at bedtime, after the kids are theoretically ready for bed, we gather together in the living room. Then each child in turn says the verse for the week and picks a song that we as a family sing. Finally, we pray and the kids are off to bed.

The other night, Josephine was the first to say the verse and pick the song. She said the verse perfectly (as usual). It was Psalm 112:1 "Praise the Lord. How blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in his command". She decided to sing make up her own song to sing, so the rest of us just listened.

"Jesus, Jesus, I know you, and you know me and I love you and you love me. You're my savior and you save us, Jesus, Jesus". It was very sweet and pretty.

Next was Matt. He, too, said the verse almost flawlessly, then requested to make up his own song. He started off singing sweetly.

"Jesus, Jesus"

Then his whole body flailed, and his song turned to a series of gun and bomb and smoke and fight noises as his feet kicked and his arms swung wildly.

Then it was over. The entire "song" about three seconds. I about died laughing.


81. Family rituals
82. Songs to Jesus
83. Ripe raspberries - so sweet off the bushes

84. Our first chicken egg!
85. Two jars of wild grape jelly, from a small bag of wild grapes that God allowed us to find, even though we were tardy by nearly a month from their normal season.
86. A more-rapidly-healing-than-usual bout with poison ivy, after hunting said wild grapes
87. Neighbors with apple and pear trees, who don't want their fruit
88. A juicer, given to me years ago, that makes such quick work out of apples and such
89. Fresh apple juice
90. New recipe: candy apple jelly

Thousand Gifts, part 6

61. A gentle father, teaching his son to mow the yard
62. A son, eager to learn and contribute to the household
63. Men teaching boys to love hard work

64. Sweet Sunday, once again sweet
65. (and the namesake meets again, little Tommy)
66. wide smiles
67. curly tops
68. guitar lessons
69. pleasant, filling fellowship
70. Calm tummies, even after eating too many sweet rolls and sweet corn

71. Young love
72. The eagerness and anticipation of two upcoming weddings
73. Family, serving together in preparation
74. A dress-cutting party
75. Wedding shower reminders on making marriage last long

76. Garden produce, so abundant I can't keep up
77. Boss at work, sweating with eyes dripping after biting into a cayenne pepper that I claimed was hot
78. Gallons of spaghetti sauce, ready for canning
79. Cases of bananas (no, not from our garden), made up into yummy bread and shared among friends


80. A new home for two chickens that turned out to be roosters (which are illegal to have in our city)

31. So many shades of green in the summer tree tops
32. Hazy water, evaporating from sprinklers
33. One more chicken than last week (we mis-counted last week, I guess!)
34. Ladies and families that serve our church every week by cooking breakfast for all who come
35. Three different people that were kind enough to jump our van
36. Stores open late on a Sunday evening, that carry new batteries for cars and the necessary tools to change one
37. A new battery that fixed all the evening's problems with the van
38. Grass along the parking lot to play in and squish our toes into while Chester fixed the van
39. A husband that knows how to fix a van!
40. A safe arrival home, late on a Sunday evening

Thousand Gifts, part 3

21. Partial fencing around a yard that keeps an escaped chicken from really escaping.
22. Bennet isn't afraid to catch such a chicken.
23. Neighbors all use their air conditioning and haven't noticed the crowing of that particular chicken, who is almost certainly a rooter, not a hen like we thought.

24. Husband's coming home after a bit away for work.
25. Restaurants to celebrate such a return.
26. The financial gift to do such a thing.
27. Brainwashing that's so effective the kids had no concept of a restaurant!
28. Picnics, which would have been our normal special outing. ("Mommy, you forgot to bring the food!")
29. After a couple of weeks without a husband, a day with only dishes, laundry, chicken care, cooking, cleaning and a two-hour appointment felt really low-key. It's all about perspective.
30. The rhythm of my husband's snoring. So calm and relaxing.

Thousand gifts part 2

11. A hard-working husband
12. The funny colors that peppers turn in the garden (yellow, white, purple, orange, red)
13. Friends who understand
14. The colors of the brown and black chicken
15. Instant water
16. A kind and gentle dentist for the kids
17. A book on gratitude
18. Purple-red beets (and that most of the kids liked them)
19. The fun of sharing our produce with others
20. A big cicada in the kitchen (instant insect study)

Thousand Gifts part 1

1. The sound of cicadas at night
2. The breeze of a fan in the window
3. Cool evenings
4. The sound of canning jars, popping to seal
5. A baby who's a good nurser
6. Chickens eating table scraps
7. The color of fresh peaches
8. The flavor of fresh peaches
9. The fact that fresh peaches have only about 37 calories each
10. Chester's homemade bread, extra crunchy after being forgotten in the toaster oven, and even yummier for it.

Thanksgiving 6-18-2010

I am thankful today for my husband who is so hardworking that he got up this morning, and, like every other morning, made breakfast for the family. Then drove us all an hour and a piece to go kill chickens. He killed the chickens himself, then also helped to skin and gut and quarter them. Afterward, he drove us all home, made supper for us, and took off again to mow the lawn of our other house. He didn't get home until about 10:00 from nothing but work today. What a work ethic.

Signs of Spring