one step at a time

Posted on January 14, 2015 by Shanda

See how pointed and sharp the corners of this first place wrestling metal are? Hold that thought.

Thank you for the get well wishes for my husband. He still has groin and hernia pain but he is happily limping around and getting better by the moment. He went to school last night to coach, and he went back to work today for a half day. His spirits are such that despite any odd shooting pain he may feel, he is joyful because of the relief in having the hard parts over.

Somewhat ironically, on Saturday and Sunday when their Dad was recovering from his wrestling injury, all five of our sons were participating in wrestling tournaments.

Uncle Jason watched Jacob and Ethan both win their weight classes in the J.V. tournament on Saturday, while Rich and I were waiting to leave the hospital.

On Sunday, I left Rich at home with the girls and drove an hour away to watch David (12), Caleb (9), and Seth (5), each wrestle in their first tournament of the season. Ethan was there as an assistant coach.

The school was loud and hot. I was thankful for my tank top that I wore layered under a sweatshirt. I was thankful for the concession stand so I didn’t have to be concerned about food and drink. I was thankful for the bathrooms everywhere. I was also thankful that Jacob and Michael came later on in the morning, to watch with me. Finally, I was thankful that Sarah Joy was at home with Rich and Grace.

(Jacob, Michael, and Ethan, and Seth)

Seth was adorable. He had been itching to wrestle for over a year. Last year he was a spectator of his older brothers. Now he is finally an athlete on the team and he smiled the entire time. He was a joy to watch, in fact, I got a little sentimental at times watching him.

This is the video of his first match ever. I started taping right at the starting whistle and Seth immediately pounced on his opponent.

Caleb’s group wrestled in the morning, too, and he did well but lost each match.

Here is a video of a portion of one match:

Over several hours, Caleb wrestled three times, and Seth wrestled four times.

I am happy to announce that little Seth ended up winning all of his matches and was given a first place metal.

He said, “I knew I was a good wrestler!” and then later on, “I wish Dad was here!” He was as proud as a peacock and I was, too.

He never got tired. In fact, he never stopped moving.

He was so active that at times I sent him over to hang around with coach, so I didn’t have to defend myself any longer.

(Mike took this picture as Seth was trying to perform moves on me.)

He wrestled everything that day; the wall, the floor, his mom, his teammates, his coach, his brothers…….

…..and then……

Dave and I were talking, sitting cross legged on the floor. Seth was hanging around, swinging his metal (see first photo) when suddenly it accidently bounced sharply off the back of Dave’s unsuspecting head. (Seth felt terrible).

We immediately stood up and when Dave looked at his hand after holding the back of his head, it was covered.in.blood, my friends. Blood dripped down. I rushed for the paper towels…….poor Dave could not see the wound so he was scared, but after cleaning him up and looking at it we knew that he was okay to continue wrestling, it was a only a very small cut.

His coach is from the era of “brothers and boys throwing a punch now and then is healthy and normal” so to encourage and distract Dave I heard him say, “David, when you get home later, when mom’s not looking,” he punched his palm, “punch him in the kisser!”

Coach and I took Seth’s metal away from him.

David was a wreck. He was upset, pale, and had to struggle to hold back tears. My heart sank.

He lost his first match, and in the midst of it, they had to stop and wrap his head all up in gauze to stop the bleeding.

He felt so self conscious and foolish that right after losing, he went in the hall to hide. I went out to find him and encouraged him to use his feelings to be aggressive, rather than give up. I told him I was proud of him. His coach did a great job of motivating him, too, and I went back to the stands to wait for his next match.

He fought hard and to my surprise, won it. Coach didn’t know where I was, so when I went to the team to congratulate Dave, he said, “Did you see David? I couldn’t find you! He did great!” I had watched it all from the stands, sort of hiding, myself.

And, to make a perfect ending to a crazy-day, he also won his third and final match.

The relief was visible on his face, and he went to collect his hard-earned metal.

Well done, my son. You are well on your way to impressive manhood.

The wrestling for our family was done, but we stuck around to watch just a few more teammates.

Mike took the other boys in his car, so Dave and I had the car to ourselves. We stopped at Dunkin’ Donuts on the way, and he read a book while I listened to the radio and drove us back home again. It had been an exciting day. To say the least.

I was rather tired of all the excitement, to tell the truth. How thankful I am for a loving heavenly Father. We can trust Him completely with every moment of our lives, so that even during busy seasons of life, a peace that passes all understanding is there from above to nurture us along. He gets all the glory for everything and always and His loving hand is so blessedly and obviously underneath us all, holding and loving us, even during the most difficult of times.

“This is the blessed life—not anxious to see far down the road nor overly concerned about the next step, not eager to choose the path nor weighted down with the heavy responsibilities of the future, but quietly following the Shepherd, one step at a time.” F.B.Meyer

orange

Posted on October 30, 2014 by Shanda

There is a pumpkin taped to the side door, made from orange construction paper by one small five year old. Beyond the glass of that same door there is a garden flag hanging from the porch that has an orange fabric pumpkin sewn to it, and beyond that there are glowing orange trees. At this time of year, orange seems to be everywhere.

This is a blog post about a handmade orange Hobbes. My boys love to read Calvin and Hobbes comic books and David especially has such a fondness for them. After reading the comic books for a while, David thought he would make himself a Hobbes. He didn’t think about trying to purchase one, because he watched a documentary about Calvin and Hobbes and learned that Bill Watterson didn’t want companies making Hobbes or other merchandise that goes along with the comic. “I made Calvin and Hobbes as a comic strip. That’s all I want them to be.” David knew if he wanted a Hobbes he had to make one himself.

First of all, he needed some orange material. He had just the thing in his dresser.

For Hobbes’ white belly he used……another shirt from his dresser.

The next thing he needed was a pattern.

After drawing his pattern, he set to work. He had help in threading the needles and taking out knots. He used a black sharpie to give Hobbes his stripes and then took a break to scrub ink off the wooden floor in the master bedroom, where he worked. He had various other problems, and even put Hobbes aside for a month or so, but eventually completed him last week. He had him on his shoulder for a day and then unfortunately his little brother somehow ended up with him. When David finally found him, to his horror Hobbes’ arm was hanging off by a long string and a seam had opened, exposing stuffing. He was tempted to throw Hobbes away but put him back on the sewing table instead, to work on after his emotions cooled.

David is home sick today and as a surprise, someone who loves him very much reinforced Hobbes’ seams. David was sound asleep when it happened, so when he woke up, he was surprised to find Hobbes on his pillow, ready to spend time with his boy once again. They are currently on the couch watching Wild Kratts.

davy’s birthday is today

Posted on September 27, 2014 by Shanda

Last night we had a house full of people for dinner and Bible study, so we decided to have David’s BIRTHDAY cake a day early.

Yes, 12 years ago today Rich and I welcomed our little David into our arms and lives.

Rich was gone this afternoon, watching Jacob and Ethan’s football game, so David and I went for a walk just the two of us.

A few weeks ago, he thoughtfully made me a detailed list for his birthday gifts. Everything was on amazon.com, and he even gave me the monetary total of all requested items.

The Spiderman mask was one of his gifts. He also received an instant-appearing magic wand, magic balls, invisible thread, and a trick pen.

He said to me on our walk that he is gaining a reputation at school because of his magic tricks.

He says that soon he will be able to make about five dollars by performing them.

He’s currently playing with the Spiderman lego set that his best friend Ryan gave him.

After I took this picture we sat down and read books up on the mountain.

Happy 12th birthday, David!

timmy the mouse…beans…concord grapes

Posted on September 2, 2014 by Shanda

“After a mouse has been studied it should be set free, even though it be one of the quite pestiferous field mice. The moral effect of killing an animal after a child has become thoroughly interested in it and its life is always bad.” ~Anna Botsford Comstock

GOOD morning! How are you today? Did you have a nice Labor Day weekend? We did, too. A little bit of everything…rest, play, work, fun, and so on. The children are back to school today and I just taught little Sarah how to use the vacuum cleaner to clean up her own cookie crumbs. She did a great job. Now she’s going to watch Franklin (the turtle cartoon) until I’m done with my blog-writing, and then we’re going to the library for some new story books to read for the week.

Do you know what I think is fun about life right now? The unpredictable way of it, the way you can take a break on the porch with a stack of cookbooks and be interrupted by a mouse! Or when you host a Bible study at your house and someone’s grandparents bring you a bag of fresh garden beans. Or, when a little one is too sick to go to church and you end up going for a walk and find ripe grapes!

Who would have guessed these little events would happen to us this weekend, just small parts of the whole of course, (we did much more), but these are a few of my favorite things that happened in our family as we moved from August into September……..and enjoyed an extra day in the week-end. *I love my family*

“I SMELL A MOUSE”

I was, like I mentioned, sitting on the porch looking up recipes for green bean side dishes…..when superhero David rescued an adorable deer mouth from the jaws of death. He promptly put it in a bucket and gave it a cheerio. Seth was an onlooker, looking but not touching, but then when big sister arrived on the scene, she promptly named him TIMMY and picked him up!

I had told the boys not to touch it.

David was offended because it was HIS MOUSE. And she wouldn’t give it back! She said she loved Timmy.

She tried to put Timmy back in his bucket but he ran up her arm!

So she kept him longer. She said he loved her, too!

David continued to be annoyed.

Annoyed and stressed out. Grace was bonding with the field mouse. It is my belief that the mouse was in shock and didn’t know what was going on.

They started going into the house to show Dad but I began to yell about how unwise that idea was……what if Timmy got away?

So Grace came back, yelling at her brothers to stop trying to take him away from her…..not sure what Sarah’s doing…..

Grace, Seth, David, and Sarah marched in a line to the woods and released the mouse with blessings for a long and happy life.

I left the porch and set to work on my green bean side dish.

I used a recipe from the old cookbook Kara gave me through the mail (thank you, dear dear friend!!)

The beans were wonderful. I washed them, trimmed them up, and cooked them in a pot of water until they were just right (we like them soft).

Meanwhile, I fried three slices of chopped bacon and then sautéed finely chopped onion (3/4 cup) in the bacon grease.

When the beans were done, I added them to the onions and bacon, and seasoned them with salt, pepper, and paprika.

Rich and I ate them all for dinner (that’s all we ate). Grace tried them, too. They were delicious.

I took this picture while the beans were boiling.

We had a strange little illness go around the family…consisting of a stomach ache and head ache. Sarah threw up one night, but the others just had the aches. Caleb had it in the night before church and said he couldn’t go, he “just couldn’t stand it” if he went to church. Consequently, Rich left with the other children and I stayed home with Caleb…..after resting all morning and giving him Advil, I decided it wouldn’t hurt for us to go on a gentle stroll down the road.

He took a plastic bag in order to collect wild concord grapes. They were sour; our walk was punctuated by the sound of him vigorously spitting them back out…….I politely refused his generous offers of grapes from the bag.

They are abundant this year……and smell so good, much better than they taste. However, Rich also likes eating them. Later on, he was delighted to discover Caleb’s bag of them on the kitchen counter.

I made jam from them last year but we still have a few jars left so I’m not tempted to do anything with them this year.

The neighbor’s cows.

***

I hope you have a wonderful day where ever you are, school, work, home….isn’t it marvelous that God sheds his blessings (big and small) on us no matter what we’re doing? I’m thankful for time to get things done, an opportunity to write to my friends here in blog-land, a trip to the library, a beautiful warm day, with health and energy to do what I need to do for my family. God is good.

You are loved.

“Gentleness towards self and others makes life a little lighter.” Deborah Day

davy makes awesome stuff

Posted on April 24, 2014 by Shanda

Dedicated to inventors, crafters, and 11 year old boys

***

David, 11 years old, has been extra productive lately.

During this year’s spring cleaning itch, I completely organized all my sewing stuff into plastic containers with labels and everything.

DAVID is taking advantage of these newly organized things more than I am at this point.

If he has an idea, he follows through until it is a completed project.

(I need to learn this virtue.)

With his two little brothers stuck like glue to his side, he made a basketball hoop for the basement.

It is put into place with about seven tacks and also includes yarn, cardboard, and tape.

They were thrilled to tell me that it works great.

I didn’t see it until days later when I was downstairs collecting laundry and it stopped me in my tracks.

I got right up close to see the details, laughing with delight.

He even broke the heads off the longer tacks, for extra security. This thing isn’t going anywhere.

****

I found him rummaging in my sewing stuff again about a week later, needing velcro.

“How do you put this stuff on, can I use glue?”

“You need to sew it so it’s strong enough to pull apart.”

“Okay.”

I left him to it, wondering what was coming next.

With a plastic cap, staples, elastic, velcro, paperclip, tape, and legos, you too can make a spiderweb shooter!

****

Yes, he is very fascinated with spiders now, thanks to watching the Spiderman movie.

He came off the bus yesterday with a big piece of yellow construction paper.

He had drawn a spider stencil on it of his own design.

He went downstairs, emptied Christmas stuff out of a long box, and tacked the paper to the bottom of the box.

Then, he took my seam ripper and lightly traced over and over each line, to cut each section (we don’t have an x acto knife).

When he was done, he had a stencil of his very own making.

Next, he came to me and asked if he could use his new Easter shirt to paint his stencil on.

I, of course, said “yes”. There really was no other answer.

He ran off again to work and the next thing I knew, he was coming upstairs with his creation.

He wore it to school today.

***

When I was driving him to practice yesterday I was complimenting him on his inventions and creations and I asked him, “What will you be making next?”

He shook his head. All my compliments had made him feel amazing. “You’ll find out in the news.”

{this moment}

Posted on December 13, 2013 by Shanda

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

This one needs a story. It happened today. David stayed home from school because he was sick so we went to Costco. He was a big help to me and when I was in line with Seth and Sarah, I sent him with money to buy the hotdogs. He did it successfully and even assisted Seth in getting some ketchup. We were heading out the door with full cart and hot dogs when I noticed he was looking longingly back at the vending machines. He can’t stay away from them; they are a boy’s dream come true- with food, slots for money, a door that lets out good stuff, and maybe money got left in it or rolled under it.. “Mom, can I go get something from the vending machine with the change from the hotdogs?” I looked at him. He asked so nicely, and since he was such a help, I said yes.

While he was busy with that, I went out to the car to start loading in Seth and Sarah and about 350 pounds of bulk foods. Dave arrived, hopped in, and away we went. “What did you get from the vending machine”? I asked politely. He proceeded to pull out FIVE CANDY BARS FROM HIS POCKET, surprise. He had used ALL the money leftover from the hotdogs to buy FIVE full sized candy bars!!! One entire dollar each. I was not happy and I lectured him. In conclusion (to the lecture), I told him he could have one, and that he could give the rest to his siblings for Christmas stocking stuffers.

Looking at the picture, it hurts my heart that I had to make him give up four. But one must learn moderation.

One candy bar is enough and enough is as good as a feast.

what David did with his hour

Image

“Every child is entitled to one happy, care-free hour every day. We, in our anxiety to surround him with every safeguard, inspire him to greater effort, and lead him into habits of industry and righteousness, are likely to leave him no time for leisure. That is a great mistake. Provide for his hour of freedom and let him do as he likes. Even when he does things that you wish he wouldn’t. Let him.”

Child Training by Angelo Patri, 1922

David, age 11, is a cartoonist now. He read this book, by Betsy Byars, and is now excitedly forming a new group at school. Last year was an origami club, and now it’s a drawing comic strips club. He says he has all of his friends doing it.

(“When the boy organizes a club, encourage it. It is the sign of leadership. The clutter of boys about the place annoys you. Their noise bothers you. You have troubles enough with your own sons without gathering the neighbors’ as well. Be patient. Be glad that it is your son that is doing the gathering. He is leading. He is learning to carry responsibilities. Help him along.” Angelo Patri)

As soon as he arrived home from school yesterday, David set to work. He cleared off the small table upstairs and then hunted down all the colored pencils in the house he could find. He chose his Dad’s coffee mug to put them in. That done, he set out to find a lamp. He found one in his sister’s room and took it to his table to plug it in. Now he had light to work by. He got some pure white paper, sat in his chair…..and worked for such a long time. His brother Caleb had to beg him to go out to jump on the trampoline with him. Then right back to his table he went, until it was nighttime.

The evenings are so busy, I wasn’t paying much attention to his pursuits. But when he came and showed me his finished comic strip, I thank the Lord that I took the time to really study it and talk to him about it, and I was impressed.

This morning while he was busy making his lunch, he said this:

“For once I understand how to draw good comics. You have to put all your life’s skill into it.”

It was after writing that one down that I began to realize just how interested he was in drawing comics.

All on his own:

He read a book.

He gather up supplies.

He formed a club at school.

He set up his own work station.

After he was gone, I went upstairs to look at what David did with his hour yesterday.

He kept asking me where a tan was. He needed TAN. I didn’t know. This morning I saw his practice paper, where he was trying to figure out what to do. (He ended up using a tan crayon.)

He hung up pictures of his club from last year. He loves these pictures. His teacher took them, and gave them to him.

(By the way, a couple weeks ago I found David weeping over his memory book from 2nd grade. He put it away and wrote his 2nd grade teacher a note, made a homemade envelope, and mailed it to her. She wrote him back!) He has such a tender heart and so wise beyond his years.