Good evening! I’m feeling fine and frisky so thought I would blog some photos from today.

First of all, the day started out amusing right off the bat because when I got up David had chocolate muffins in the oven that he made himself from scratch. The kids were all on a two hour delay because of ice but that wasn’t why he had time to bake. He had time to bake because he woke up at 1 in the morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. He was actually not pleased that there was a delay……..

Anyway, I was impressed by the muffins, which included sour cream and two kinds of chocolate chips. While they finished baking I turned a chair around and put it right in front of the big window in the livingroom and drank my coffee and read a Gladys Tabor book that Jo gifted me recently and watched the sun come up. Oh it was lovely. I listened as David took his muffins out and reprimanded Sarah for daring to reach a hand out to touch them, “Don’t you put your filthy finger on my muffins, I’ll get if for you myself. Mom gets the first one.”

MOM GETS THE FIRST ONE.

my heart.

He served it to me on a plate with a fork and stood there as I took my first bite.

He took some to school. He gave two of them to Sarah.

off they all went to school

And I headed to the grocery store.

Oh and guess what? I packed clothes into 8 trash bags and took them to the donate bin! It felt so good and so productive to get rid of clothing that the children haven’t worn in a long time. Why hang on to it?

The clouds were amazing.

I was sincerely admiring the outdoors all day long, however I did not get outside for a walk, even though I did put on my boots and didn’t ever take them off until after the children’s music concert tonight. (Seth pulled them off me, saying I was lazy)…….(for asking him to do it).

While waiting to take Seth and Sarah to the school, Sarah and I watched a Great British Baking show. I am so thankful for my dear cats. These two are from the same litter, Samantha is a small female calico who used to be outside all the time but this summer something happened to scare her enough that she never goes outside anymore. She uses a litter box and stays in the living room the majority of the time. Sherlock is a fat orange male and (don’t tell the others) my favorite. We call him “Loaf” because his body is like a loaf of heavy bread. Both of these cats like laps and catnip and napping all day long.

I don’t remember what made her laugh but I love this photo. She chose this dress from her closet to wear in the chorus concert and once upon a time it was her big sister’s dress. She put on a necklace and earrings, too.

This morning I had joy in my heart over tomatoes so I thought I would start a running list of things on the counter of things I liked today and then forgot to add anything else……then, at the end of the day I saw someone had filled in the rest of the paper with her own thing she liked.

I didn’t take any photos of the children at school tonight but I did take photos of BUTTONS.

Our town turned 300 this year and there was a display case at the school of notable things that came from our town…..one of which was that there used to be a button factory!!!

I just adored these buttons so had to take photos for mom and Jo and this blog entry!

Buttons By Schwanda!!!!!!!!!!

It could ALMOST be Shanda! Almost!

Please don’t call me Schwanda.

Last but not least, well it is least actually, is a photo of myself and my nose. Yesterday I had my black armoire cupboards open and I was standing there arranging things inside. When I was done, I slammed the cupboard door shut RIGHT ACROSS MY OWN NOSE. It hurt so bad I cried and went and sat on Rich’s lap.

I’ve had so many stupid little injuries lately and this is just one of them! Over the last few months I’ve deeply cut my finger and then my thumb, burned a different finger terribly on a curling iron, I swear it was third degree, damaged my ring finger knuckle and now my Tiffany rings won’t go on, scratched and scarred my arm, burned a triangle (an actual TRIANGLE) on my other arm, and got a bee sting up under my arm that took a week to heal!!!! What next. Sheesh.

I’m on the couch. Rich is at my feet trying to help Seth repair a nerf gun. Sarah is coloring with markers and listening to Chris Rice hymns on the old green ipod. Now that I’m done on the laptop we are going to eat ice cream and watch Star Trek the Next Generation. Rich and I have spent months watching every episode and we only have three left.

I love you guys.

Merry Christmasing…….. and I’ll be back as soon as I can to say hello again and hopefully brighten your day. That’s what I love to do best of all.

I was sitting in my rocking chair at 7:oo in the morning, with Rich at the table working, when my phone rang. I answered it and found my nephew on the other end, asking if he could come over and sled at my house.

And then, after I said yes and talked to my sister….my neighbor texted like he aways does to say “Let me know when your kids go outside because Jack wants to sled with them!”

All of a sudden it was a snow day and a party day both!!

Not soon enough, Amanda came over with a Venti Matcha Green tea latte for me, from Starbucks!! My absolute favorite.

We looked through my scrapbook, the one I’m currently working on.

And then we went sledding. Only the boys never did want to go out, so it was just the three of us girls.

We laughed a lot as we walked up and then sledding down the hill in front of our house.

Look how blue the sky was!

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Went inside and played yahzee, and Sarah rolled her first one, in “2’s”. So we told her it was her lucky number.

Then, hymns at the piano.

A lovely day.

Friends, you are LOVED.

Happy Thursday!

“It seemed to me that Plato put it correctly when he said, ‘Our eyes can be turned toward the light as well as toward the dark. If our whole soul is turned away from this visible world toward the bright regions, then our eyes can become able to understand the Good.’ He says further, ‘Do you not believe that it is a turning round of the soul into the right direction so that the eyes may see? For we all have eyes, though we do not know where to look.’
“I found these words lightened my hopeless hours. If I turned my soul in the right direction, my eyes could see. I saw a world in which I had some infinitesimal part, and to which I had an obligation. I saw the wide gaze of children, the tender look of lovers, the warm smiles of friends. I saw a newly opened rose. I saw the effortless flying movement of the Irish on a dewy lawn and the flat-out ears of the cockers following after. I saw so many wonders it would take a lifetime to list them.
“By observing, my eyes saw the mysterious light of dawn and the still blaze of noon. I looked at the world—-and forgot myself. And I began to find some good in every day. I didn’t try to work at being happy, I worked at finding that good in every day and experiencing it fully. And, at night, I thanked God in my prayers for whatever the good had been. It might be any one of a number of things: An unexpected telephone call from a friend. A letter of warm appreciation for something I had written. A neighbor dropping in with a bouquet of pansies in midwinter (from her small greenhouse). The sudden working out of a difficult problem in my current book. The overnight blossoming of the lilies of the valley. A special picnic with dear friends who only come on week ends. The voice of my granddaughter trying to get her tongue around words. ‘Tzeez,’ she says triumphantly, meaning ‘cheese’.
“There was, I found, something in every day if I kept my eyes turned toward the light!”

Gladys Taber in Another Path, published in 1963

On Friday I had something wonderful happen. I don’t know if you remember a few years back when my husband used to have me prepare lunches now and then for his team for “off site” meetings held at our house? I met Julie during these lunch meetings. I still don’t know her very well, but I have seen her huge giving heart several times and most recently, this Friday when my husband came home with a Christmas patterned gift bag saying “This is for you, from Julie.”

The tag explained that when she was in Korea recently, she saw these little cups and THOUGHT OF ME!

Someone was in Korea and thought of me!

She remembered my fiestaware and thought these sweet little cups would look nice with them.

In the bottom of each one there is a little fish!

How dear! I promptly put them on display amongst the fiesta.

So, my very dear friends, don’t get thrown off course. Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle. He brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all his creatures. James 1:17-18

you are loved.

I’m crashing today….so tired…slept in, got up just to throw clothes on and go to Sunday School and church with Rich and the children. We didn’t get very far into the service before I glanced over and saw Seth was crying and it wasn’t because he was under conviction of the Holy Spirit, either. He had gotten warm and taken his sweater off. And when David saw what he had on underneath, he laughed at his little brother, which hurt Seth’s feelings excruciatingly. Under his sweater he had put on a nice blue and gray checkered dress shirt but somehow he got it on wrong-side out. The buttons APPEARED to be right, but on closer examination you could see that he had had to work hard to do some funny folding and creative maneuvering to button a shirt that was wrong side out but make the buttons still appear to be right side out. It’s hard to explain. Try it. I thought the collar looked funny but that was my only intuition about it, I never dreamed the entire shirt but the buttons was wrong side out. Anyway, he cried from public mortification and I carefully and silently did the Mom-thing by pushing Sarah down a seat away from me and pulling Seth close to my side in one smooth motion. He got to stand next to Mother for the songs and sit next to Mother during the sermon. We may have even passed notes back and forth for a minute or two, too. I may have even gotten my hand held and hair touched and a head resting on my shoulder, a shoulder which may have been used to wipe tears off one small cheek.

Basically, I got mom points.

Here we are, after church, at Subway because I don’t make Sunday dinners. Subway does.

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I’m going to start posting my Sunday “style” every week. Just an ordinary mom, mind you!

(Basically I’m going to laugh as I post the photos)

Happy Sunday to my dearly loved bloggy friends!

Happy December! Here we are seven days in and I’m finally sitting down to type. It feels so good to my fingers. I’m glad I took keyboarding in HS just to fill up a spot on my schedule. I love to type. And blog.

I’m sitting here super tired but I have an extra 45 minutes and I’m determined to post some lovely photos that I took in the beginning of this week.

The children had a snow day on Monday.

And another on Tuesday.

The snow fall was beautiful. I ended up going outside with Caleb, Seth, Sarah, and their friend Jack from next door.

It’s always a sight to see everything covered over with white. Pure. Clean. Cold.

They love it when their dad plows the snow into a big pile. It inevitably becomes a game of “King of the Mountain” with snow as ammunition and a useful cushion to push your friend into. You can rough-house a little safer in a snow pile. Sarah jumped from the top into the soft snow.

I snuck around, trying not to let them see me. Sometimes when children catch sight of a mom they forget to play and start remembering hunger, thirst, complaints, and things that they want that only Mom can give or admire (“Mom, Look what I can do!”).

I wanted them to play.

I tiptoed into the woods.

They were following me, I think!

Yep, they certainly were. “MOM! MOM do you want to come watch us sled?”

I had to say “yes”.

The caught up to me and went on ahead.

But Seth turned around and said, “Come on, Mom, I want to walk with my moo-moo.”

He didn’t want me to lag behind.

And all of a sudden it wasn’t me and them. It was us.

It’s funny how God can turn a heart attitude around when I least expect it. I had been solitarily and somewhat sadly taking in the beauty of my surroundings when these dear children caught my attention and pulled me in to their world. They wanted me.

The hill was so very steep. I wish you could see it in real life. It’s so steep that they only wanted to go down 3 times each because it’s such hard work to climb back up. This is the photo I took while sitting on a throne made of snow. They were making the first trail so the sled would work.

Caleb went down first and the snow blinded him.

Then Seth flew down.

Sarah got ready.

“Don’t push me, Caleb!” she said.

“CALEB! DON’T YOU PUSH HER!” I yelled.

She was pushed.

(“it will make her tougher, it will make her tougher”, I chanted to myself as I took pictures)

Seth again.

And then Seth sat on Caleb’s lap and down the brothers went.

That smile!

I think the same one was on my own face, too.

Caleb was too suprised that he didn’t injure himself to smile.

The children walked back home one way, and I went another way. The air was quiet and cold. I admired the way the trees were each striped with white.

lines of brightness, lines of darkness

This is the beauty of a freshly fallen snow, as the wind cleans the trees off rather quickly.

It pays to get outside right away to soak it all into the soul.

Back inside again, with just a few scenes of what makes a cozy home even cozier…….

Happy Decembering, friends.

You are loved.

Twas the day before Thanksgiving when all through the house, all the creatures were stirring, even the spider in the laundry room that Grace and I noticed on the wall.

Right away this morning, while I had energy, I mixed up Grandma’s dough recipe for rolls and while it was rising Grace and I went back to bed with tea and did some reading. She got inspired by Carl Larsson artwork and I read a book written by a photographer that I forget the name of right now.

We also did laundry together.

I formed the dinner rolls with Ethan by my side, and he played us music on his phone and used some of the dough to make a big pan of cinnamon rolls.

Rich was home by 2 and we drove Caleb to school for a football game.

Now he is with Ethan, Jacob, and Seth out running. After they are done they will come home and get cleaned up and go out to eat because mama isn’t making dinner today, it’s all coming out tomorrow instead……the feast!

House is clean…..enough. My parents, my brother Nathan with his family, my brother Dave and his girlfriend Ann, Brittnee, and Michael will be here. It will be lovely and warm and family.

Sherlock the cat is curled up in the chair next to me, Grace is reading across from me and Brittnee is typing a mile a minute next to me. It’s cozy.

I’m currently reading The Valley of Horses by Jean M. Auel

I’m wearing overalls, with a red flower tshirt and a cardigan.

I have more laundry to do.

I’m going to have someone else chop onion and celery for the stuffing.

Maybe get the butternut squash done.

Feast your eyes on this bunch! I am so proud of these children o’ mine!

Happy thanksgiving my dear friends! You are loved!

Day by day continuing with one mind in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart….Acts 2:46

Grace is home. She’s twenty now and so much me, part of me, and most especially of all her own self, too, that she keeps me endlessly praising God for the gift of this dear daughter of mine.

The house is full again even though Jacob and Ethan don’t get home until tomorrow. We had Michael and Brittnee here last night and the chaos made me dream again the dream I have of all of us living together in this same house for always.

Then, at the end of the day, the heavy wet rain turned into heavy clumps of slush and then big heavy snow. I kept running out to the porch to look, it’s amazing how the weather effects the spirit! I jumped up and down! Seth stripped down to his underwear and stood in it!

Yesterday in Sunday School the teacher mentioned the Spirit of God and what that means and in my mind I thought, “God has spirit”!!!!!!!!! you know, like spirit week at the High School, with cheering and motivation and pep? And my mind was blown. I usually think of the spirit of God as holy and quiet and peaceful, which is also is, but what about a YAHOO GIDDY UP AND GO Spirit? I love it! I want more of it! I’ve been quiet and pensive enough for a lifetime. I’ll still be these things, I have to be……..but this other sort of spirit has been sorely lacking for me. And I want it! (blessed are those who hunger and thirst)……..

I think this is why today’s mantra was “kick it”. Grace and I got in the car and set out to get all the Thanksgiving shopping done and that’s what we said periodically to one other, “we’re kicking it!” I even did a high kick on the way into Costco.

The word of the day was QUEEN.

Such spirit!

“Breathe on me, breath of God, fill me with LIFE anew.”

Breathe on me, Breath of God,
Fill me with life anew,
That I may love what Thou dost love,
And do what Thou wouldst do.

Breathe on me, Breath of God,
Until my heart is pure,
Until with Thee I will one will,
To do and to endure.

Breathe on me, Breath of God,
Till I am wholly Thine,
Until this earthly part of me
Glows with Thy fire divine.

Breathe on me, Breath of God,
So shall I never die,
But live with Thee the perfect life
Of Thine eternity.

hymn by Edwin Hatch

Then I looked inside.
Then I went inside.

with a thankful heart

You are so so very much loved.

Psalm 103

O my soul, bless God.
    From head to toe, I’ll bless his holy name!
O my soul, bless God,
    don’t forget a single blessing!

He forgives your sins—every one.
    He heals your diseases—every one.
    He redeems you from hell—saves your life!
    He crowns you with love and mercy—a paradise crown.
    He wraps you in goodness—beauty eternal.
    He renews your youth—you’re always young in his presence.

God makes everything come out right;
    he puts victims back on their feet.
He showed Moses how he went about his work,
    opened up his plans to all Israel.
God is sheer mercy and grace;
    not easily angered, he’s rich in love.
He doesn’t endlessly nag and scold,
    nor hold grudges forever.
He doesn’t treat us as our sins deserve,
    nor pay us back in full for our wrongs.
As high as heaven is over the earth,
    so strong is his love to those who fear him.
And as far as sunrise is from sunset,
    he has separated us from our sins.
As parents feel for their children,
    God feels for those who fear him.
He knows us inside and out,
    keeps in mind that we’re made of mud.
Men and women don’t live very long;
    like wildflowers they spring up and blossom,
But a storm snuffs them out just as quickly,
    leaving nothing to show they were here.
God’s love, though, is ever and always,
    eternally present to all who fear him,
Making everything right for them and their children
    as they follow his Covenant ways
    and remember to do whatever he said…….

Happy Friday! Rich arrived home early today and I’m sitting at the table while he reads his Lincoln book, which he bought in Washington D.C., right next to me.

I have a chicken simmering on the stove with onion, two bay leaves, & salt and pepper in chicken stock. Soon I will make chicken and homemade biscuits.

If Josephina sees this post, yes I’m blogging the photos I just texted you.

It’s been a nice day despite the darkness and rainstorms.

I went for a walk before the rains began. I listened to a podcast while soaking in everything around me, including this bright pink seed…….so pretty. It’s still in my coat pocket waiting to be glued into my nature journal.

early morning face happy to be outside in the fresh air

This is what a pinecone looks like after it has been in the road and frequently ran over with many tires. The children’s art teacher used them (representing Christmas trees) to glue on her homemade Christmas cards one year, and even decorated them with tiny sequins and glitter. So I always think of her when I see them. This is in my pocket, still, too.

I went and had my hair done with Amy today and took an “after” photo right before driving to Barnes and Noble……….

……where I saw this big book of inspiration (did not purchase because I already have three FLOW books for Paper Lovers which will take me at least 25 years to use up, so I took a picture of this because they are copying Flow’s idea and just had to show Jo……..I looked through it and it’s almost exactly the same concept.

“……Henry David Thoreau recognized the redemptive value of exposing oneself to harsh winter: ‘Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.”

Reading this almost had me going BACK outside for a walk this afternoon in the rain (I mean, I would have taken an umbrella……..)

Journal Prompts from a magazine

I left the bookstore with a coffee, a piece of quiche and a new paperback. I drove to home sweet home in the rain.

Whilst listening to uplifting Christian music on K-Love.

Cozied up with my new book (number 2 in the series)……

…..and a pretty kitty.

But, as luck would have it, and moms everywhere can relate, as soon as my eyes got tired and I started to think about taking a little nap, son Caleb called. “Mom, are you at home? Could you please bring me my hoodie and my white football jersey?”

Yes, son, and I’ll bring you a bag of food, too.

All of these things kept my spirits up.

Now, off to make chicken and biscuits for my family….it’s gonna be a good dinner…stop on by!

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You are loved.

“Something inside me loosened, unknotted. Compassion and warmth welled up in me….there was nothing I wanted for myself, I just wanted to give. Christy, page 402

“Lord, you alone are my inheritance, my cup of blessing.
You guard all that is mine.” Psalm 16:5

“Satisfy the hunger of your treasured ones.” Psalm 17:14

“In prayer we act like men; in praise we act like angels.” Thomas Watson

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Just four photos from today and four quotes that I recently found and scribbled down in my journals.

I had matcha green tea today, I covered my Message Bible in pretty paper, I’m reading a good book that Grace will borrow when I’ve finished it, and my cat loves squeezing into a tiny amazon box……….

Praising God for a beautiful day.

You are loved, dear friends.