The children and I went to Amanda’s house last week and Jason (her hubby) was home so we left the little ones with him because Amanda wanted to show us the fabulous bike trail/river walk by her house.  I was expecting an easy, meandering stroll…..um…yeah…so we ended walking for like 2 strenuous miles carrying Sarah (who gets heavy) the whole way.  That probably sounds like nothing to most of you but I am an out of shape woman, apparently.  I was hot and tired by the time I got back but Amanda, Jacob, Ethan, and Grace were still practically running.  Of course I was also the one holding Sarah most of the way……….

It was a beautiful walk, by the river which was wide, smooth, and flowing fast. 

And here is a darling little video of the most scrumptious baby.  I had found my gentle Sarah in the kitchen, playing with an open box of bow pasta (she took it from the cupboard herself, she knows how to open the lower ones).  She was so dainty about it and took one piece out at a time.  I was trying to teach her how to say thank you and if you listen close, you will hear her try to say it.  She is a little mockingbird.

This has been a very busy day so far.  David, Caleb, and I made chocolate chip cookies.  We mixed it all up then realized I had no baking soda (used the last of it on those pancakes).  So we went downtown to buy some and of course I had to make use of the trip and ended up getting a cart of groceries.  It was all worth it, the cookies are fantastic!   David chose the recipe because he said the last ones I made he did not like because “They made me have a bad taste in my mouth all day.”  While we made them, David said he felt like a chef.  It was the apron he was wearing (Star Wars), the apron made him feel all professional.  The only thing he did was crack the eggs and turn the mixer on and off……….

 J and E had baseball practice from 12-2 so we dropped them off and then went to the library and the park.  Would you believe it’s only 47 degrees outside.  I’m ready for some warmth and sun, please.  After we picked the boys back up (who were filthy from sliding into bases) we came home.  It is now quiet time.  Caleb is sound asleep on the couch.  Sarah and Seth are in the cribs upstairs, sleeping.  David is playing, Jacob and Ethan are reading their Science lesson.  Soon we will do the “floating egg” experiment, which I am sure will be quite thrilling indeed.  Oops, I forgot Grace.  She is also in her room, reading a book she checked out of the library.  I have a biography about Loretta Lynn that I am reading.  I just finished her first one and now I’m reading the one she published a few years back.  Did you know she was a grandma by the time she was 29.  I just can’t get over that.

Oh, and when I was at the library I gave the names and ages of my kids to the librarian.  The town drama coach-lady is trying to find children to act in her productions.  Grace wanted to do it, but on the way home I gave the boys the news.  With much loudness and drama, they told me that they would not do it, absolutely not, no way, no how.  “If it was Lord of the Rings, I would think about it.  But not Little Red Riding Hood!”, said Jacob. 

David, just now, by my side, in his pajamas, shyly:  “Mom? …. Did you take pictures of me?…  Did you put them on your blog?”

I look at him.  He has his little card in his hand.  It says

CONGRATULATIONS

PLAYER OF THE GAME

on it.

The corners are a little bent already, I’m certain he held it all night.

He explains to me, quietly:  “It was for my outstanding hits.”  (he got a good hit each time he was up to bat)

I ask (thinking that outstanding was a word I hadn’t heard from his vocabulary yet):  “Who told you that?”

He replies:  “The coach.  That’s why I got this.”

Me, waiting, wondering about little boys and baseball, wanting to know more:  “Do you have anything else to say about it?”

Davy, quickly answers:  “May I have pancakes?”

I laugh and say sure.

So I’m off to make my young Player of the Game pancakes for breakfast.

“WHO got Player of the Game?  Our Davy, that’s who!”

EDITED AFTER THE PANCAKES:  (I should mention, that this is all the sweeter, because he hardly knows what he’s doing.  This is his first season to play baseball and has only had a couple of practices.  Last night, at his first time to bat, he stood ON the plate in the lefty position (he’s a righty).  The coach had to go out and move him around while I was blushing for him on the bleachers.  It’s pretty amazing that he ended up getting good hits.  After the game the players were each given a cupcake and he held it and enjoyed it like a special gift.  As I was loading up all the children, I leaned over Davy who was already sitting in his seat.  I was putting baby in her carseat when he got brave enough to show me his little card that said “Player of the Game.”  I almost cried for him, I was so happy.  I patted his arm and looked into his glowing eyes….told him how proud I was of him.  Poor Rich missed it, he’s away on a business trip, but my sister and her children came to watch.  )

I’ve been feeling distracted in my life and my heart has been longing to refocus on God.  I want to leave my worries and burdens with Him and then care and love the people that He has placed in my life.  As a homemaker, I can give so many things…..although I must admit that because I am home so much, I sometimes forget just how much I can give in this ordinary life of mine.

What a blessing Edith Shaeffer’s book is, The Hidden Art of Homemaking.  It was just what I needed to read this morning.  We homemakers can and need to create, make things beautiful, in our everyday lives.  It makes our hearts grow and our lives abundant.

Here is the list of her suggestions in capital letters.  (My own application for myself is in parenthesis.  Everyone is different so you may think of other ways to incorporate her ideas.)

MUSIC (I can play good music on my ipod, enjoy listening to the children play their instruments, sing with the children, hum, whistle, and notice the bird’s songs.)

PAINTING, DRAWING, SCULPTURE (When the children work on their art projects I can join in, too.  When I write letters, grocery lists, or journal, I can draw little pictures).

INTERIOR DECORATION (It’s fun to make our homes beautiful according to our tastes.)

GARDENS and GARDENING (It’s that time of year again, for my neck of the woods.  I love pansies, I think I will plant some soon.  And later, when the beautiful vegetables are ready, I will arrange them like fruit, in a bowl on the table.)

FLOWER ARRANGEMENTS (I picked some of my daffodils for the table, and added some branches off a shrub that is just starting to sprout leaves.  Oh, it is so pretty.  I feel happy whenever I see God’s handiwork.)

FOOD (Homemade food, made with LOTSA love, is a wonderful way to give to our friends and family.  I also give away fresh chicken eggs right and left.)

WRITING—PROSE & POETRY (My blog is my writing outlet, also letter writing and journals.)

DRAMA (OH the drama!  I love to dramatically read to my children…..)

CLOTHING  (Put on something pretty for your husband and children.  I am wearing a necklace that my wonderful sister gave me, with big pretty blingy jewels on it.  Baby Sarah loves it.  She held on to it when I nursed her to sleep, just a little bit ago, for her morning nap.   A pretty scarf, or earrings, or a pin would work, too.)

I would encourage any of my Christian sisters who are feeling sorta frazzled and empty to pick up a copy of Edith’s book.  God is the first artist and He created us in His image. We could all use some time away from tv, facebook, and other things to be artistic and creative.  It’s a wonderful and simple way to GIVE to our families and friends.  And as we give, our hearts get big (like the Grinch discovered, at Christmastime). 

(morning art:  homemade muffins by candlelight)

(gardening art:  the daffodils are in bloom and are being admired.)

(enjoying God’s original art: Seth loves to watch the pretty birds.  We have a couple of feeders set up outside the window.)

Please share your ideas!  When I read blogs I often discover that the feedback is just as valuable as the actual blog article.  We can inspire one another by giving helpful, encouraging ideas and information, through our comments.  Thank you so much. 

Love, your sister in Christ, Shanda

more inspiration:

Mary posted some beautiful Easter pictures on her blog. 

Tara wrote beautifully about what God is doing in her life.  She is a kindred spirit and an encouragement to me.

Days after reading this post, I’m still thinking about inaorchard’s pretty pictures and words.  I’m an old soul, too.

A moment from our week.

“Attempting to remove the hook”

I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.  I am the good shepherd:  the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.  John 10:10b-11

The full and complete awareness of this concept of abundant Christian living can come to us only as we grasp the nature and character of God, our Father.  The Scriptures reveal Him to be love.  By that is meant not a selfish, self-indulgent, sentimental love, but its opposite.

The love of God spoken of so extensively is total selflessness.  It is God, in Christ, sharing Himself with us unhesitatingly.  It is He giving Himself in glad, wholehearted abandonment to us.  It is God pouring Himself out for His people.  It is God losing Himself in our little lives that we might know the abundance of His life.  It is God giving Himself to us without measure in overflowing abundance so that in turn His life spills out from ours to go running over our weary old world in streams of refreshing…………

The best a mere mortal can do is to go quietly to some place, still, alone, there to meditate before the splendor of our God………..

He is with us.  He is our counselor.  He is our companion.  He is our “alongside one.”  He is our comforter.  He is our closest friend.  He is here in rich and wondrous intimacy. 

A Shepherd Looks at The Good Shepherd and His Sheep, by Phillip Keller

This passage meant a lot to me this morning as I applied it to my own daily life. 

Have a wonderful day, friends.

We are loved.

{picture from Friday, of the sweaters my Great Grandma made for E and G, that now fit S and S}

***************************************

It’s not quite 8am but it will be after 8 by the time I finish this, probably.  So far I have nursed the baby, changed two stinky diapers, served a milk sippy cup to the toddler, fried 8 eggs for three of us, toasted english muffins, made my husband and myself our morning cup of coffee, rebandaged Seth’s cut finger, dressed Seth, checked out our sick Caleb, and ran the dishwasher.

Now I get to sit for a little bit, in the livingroom, as the little ones watch (it’s 8am now) “Curious George”.  Sarah looks darling in her short little nightgown.  I love seeing my babies’ bare toes.

New England is warming up.  Saturday morning was nice enough that the whole family took Davy to his Little League practice down town.  It was lovely. 

Lovely.

Fresh air, the sounds of the birds singing, kids playing and running, coaches calling out directions, the ball slapping the glove, laughter on the playground…..a perfect morning.  I love SPRING. 

This is the very first organized sport our boys have participated in.  WE LOVE IT.  My brothers were all really good ball players.  My Dad and husband both loved church softball and were great players.  It’s been a part of my life, so I have this big smile on my face (and sometimes tears in my eyes) of joy, as I see my boys learning about the sport.  And they are doing so good!

I had a private concern that the running around to practices would be too difficult on us.  I have done some reading about women who opt out of extra activities for their children, because they feel that the lifestyle is too busy and ends up damaging the family.  We will be careful about this and I know it won’t always be easy, but so far I can say that the change has been very good for us.  We homeschool the children so we spend the majority of our lives AT HOME, and I have found that getting out has been WONDERFUL for the children.  It has also been good for me because I am focusing on the activity, rather than always hanging around the house, cooking and cleaning, tending to brood about this and that (it’s a way that I am tempted now and then, BROODING and over-thinking about issues that I don’t need to think about)….it’s also been good because it is giving Rich and the boys a common interest.  Rich loves this just as much as the boys.  He takes them to practice and even COMES HOME EARLY to do it.  Oh, I laugh and smile to see him enjoying himself.  He is now helping to coach and the boys come home telling me stories about how “Dad was running around the bases so fast” or pitching for them, or demonstrating how to slide into base.  Rich has been coming home with more dirt on him than the boys do.

J and E are on the same team, and then we have Davy on a different team for his age group. 

On Saturday morning, I hung out at the playground (what a blessing that is for the little ones who are waiting for their big brothers to be done with practice!) with Grace, Caleb, Sethie, and Sarah.  Rich played catch with Jacob and Ethan.

I spent my time keeping track of the children, watching Davy, and getting distracted by my gorgeous husband…oh yes, spring is in the air for sure.

David spends most of the time with a smile on his face.  He is so thrilled to be a ball player.  That’s what I say to him here at home, “Hi, ball player!”  And he smiles in a shy, proud way.

The coach was batting to a line up of kids, they would catch and then throw it back to Davy.  Then Davy would drop the ball by the coach and wait for the next one to come at him.

Rich asked Seth to retrieve a ball for him and Seth was just THRILLED and HONORED. He got it and held it and looked at it as he ran back to his Dad with it.

(As a side note:  Seth is talking better now that we took away his pacifier a few weeks ago.  He is by my side right now looking at the pictures and saying, “Oh, ball!  Oh, that.  Oh shoes!  Oh Papa!” etc)

After practice we stopped at the library so I could pay my 20 dollar fine. 

I was going to crop this so it looked better but Sarah was too cute.~

So, the nickname my Dad has called me by my entire life is Goon.  It has an insulting meaning in the dictionary, but in our world it means “darling daughter whom I love more than words can say”.  When I saw this book, I had Jacob take a picture, I thought Dad would get a kick out of it.  But we did NOT check it out.

By the time we were done at the library, it was lunch time.  We brought home subs and had our first picnic of the year outside on our lawn. 

Caleb

The chickens free range and didn’t bother us at all as we ate (surprising, because they love treats).

David and Caleb chased one and caught it. 

And then David caught Romeo, (our 2nd in command rooster.)

A couple random pictures:

This is my table center piece right now.  I found the apple blossom sprig at Pottery Barn, and the darling bird candle holder was 60% off at PB, too.  The vase is rose fiesta and belongs to Grace.  It was a happy coincidence that Ethan was eating his french toast off a rose plate, too.  My friend Kathy gave me the beeswax candles and tray for my birthday, I just started burning the candles this weekend. 

And, our cat….last night Rich and I were watching TV when he jumped up on the couch with us.  He was so funny…sat right up like he was going to watch, too.  We gave him the remote.  He’s even looking at the TV. 

Well, I took a time out now and then from writing this, for half an hour I talked to my sister on the phone, too.

It’s 9:20am.  Have a wonderful Monday!

Love, Shan

PS, I’m attaching a link to a book that Grace just finished and she enjoyed it very much.  She talked to me about it and I thought it sounded wonderful.  It’s about a red hen and a dog who thinks he belongs to her. 

“A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.”    ~inspired by soulemama

We weren’t planning on it, but when Seth brought me his shoes this morning, I asked Grace to go with us and we went on a walk in the woods.  I had baby Sarah in the Ergo.  We wore sweatshirts but it was chilly at times because of the wind.  We walked up to the field in the woods. 

This tree caught our eye.  Some of the bark had been pecked off, we think from a woodpecker because of the holes.  We just didn’t understand why the bark was gone all the way down to the ground.  Would a woodpecker do all that? 

The delightful sound of peepers (peepers are tiny tree frogs that sing in the early spring) called us and we knew from past experience where to go.  There is an old beaver pond in the woods near the field.  Tall grass grows there during the summer but it is dry and dead now.  Shallow water stands in a small marshy pond area at the edge of the dry grass and that is where all the action takes place. 

The Evidence of Action:

Spring peepers are almost impossible to see and we did not see any of them today.  They are very small (about an inch long), and blend in to their surroundings amazingly well (they can change color).  However, peepers aren’t the only frogs using this pond…..I don’t know the names of the other ones but they are average sized dark green/brown frogs.  The females are a red color.  Grace and I were standing around, observing them for about 10 minutes before we noticed The Nursery.  All the eggs are being laid by multiple sets of parents in the same location, which we thought was interesting.

The eggs are tiny black unmoving dots surrounded by thick jelly.  Here is a picture of Grace lifting a clump of them up, with a male frog watching.  The water is cold, but when the sun is shining it warms up slightly. 

Here is a very short video clip of sweet Seth.  He is cheering because he had JUST thrown a clump of grass into the water………you can hear the constant singing of frogs in the background…..

I didn’t really talk to Seth about what was going on.  So I was proud of him at the end of our visit, when I said, “Seth are you ready to go home?”  He said, “Yes!  Bye, frogs!”  I knew when he said that, that he had caught on to what we were doing. Children are so perceptive and soak everything up like little sponges.  The sounds, the excitement of Mama, the feel of the wind, and the grass underfoot.  He also found and threw little rocks, got hurt by a briar (he says OUCH in such a cute way), discovered his shoe untied (“SHOE!  MOM, SHOE!”), and saw a plane way up in the sky.

All tired out, we took the little ones back home.  However, the two of us hadn’t seen enough yet, so after some lunch, we put them to bed and then Grace and I went back out alone.  We took blankets, paper, pencils, a book, and a journal.

I discovered a frog couple in The Nursery.  I took this picture so the boys could see that the female frog is a red color.  I tried looking it up in my nature handbook but haven’t discovered what species it is yet.  As you can see, when the eggs are first laid they aren’t surrounded by the jelly…it must develop somehow in the water.  So interesting!

Grace and I arranged our blankets by the edge of the water.  When we first approached, the sounds stopped because the frogs are shy, but we waited and kept very still and after a while the frogs all began their singing again.  I took this video (it’s very short) in which you can hear the two different calls; the spring peepers are higher notes, the frogs are a lower sounding croaking.  And it NEVER stops unless they get spooked!

Oh, and you can’t see any frogs in the video, they are off in the distance and in the water.

While Grace wrote in her journal, I put my head down on my blanket and listened to the sounds.  Before I knew it I was fast asleep there in the woods, to the lullaby of frogs.  Grace got restless waiting for me to wake up and wandered around exploring.  She told me later that when I was snoring softly some male frogs came to investigate.  Ha!

When I woke up, Grace was back by me playing with the grass.   I remembered that I had brought chocolates in my pockets for us and so we sat there together and ate them.  We were getting tired of all the incredible frog noise so we got up laughing, and walked back home. 

Now I’m here tucking the event away, as a favorite memory.

When I was getting ready to leave for the weekend, I went out on the porch and heard quacking coming from the stream down below our property.  Ethan ran down to look, and took the camera with him.

He took this picture for me and I think it’s lovely.  Apparently the quacking was coming from the female duck.  She wasn’t too happy with her mate, who had left her on one side of a log while she was on the other.  When they were back together again, they swam away, up the flowing stream, under snow covered pine branches.

I hope you are having a peace-full and beauty-full day today.