Motherhood

(I wish I were that thin!)

After a particularly difficult morning Emily asked me, "Mommy, is it hard being a mommy?"  (Maybe the tear in my eye was a clue?)  I said, "Yes, sometimes it is hard.  But there's nothing else I'd rather be," and I looked her in the eye and smiled.  After a moment she said, "I'm glad to know that."  She got out of her chair to give me a hug.

I'm glad God is a man.  Male.  Whatever.  I can run to him for help and comfort.  He is strong.  He is bigger than the problem that is bullying me.  He doesn't let me ruin myself.  He doesn't validate my gripes, but shows me what's true and good.   I can get up and walk away knowing that he understands.  He hears me and helps me.

If God were female, praying would more likely be a girls' mutual gripe session, don't you think?  Talking to "her" wouldn't help me at all.  I would probably get off my knees feeling justified in my gripes, victimized, and righteously indignant.   ??   Just an idea.

Yep, I'm glad God is male.

Stuff

Where was I?  Oh yes, it was Alison's birthday the last time I posted, which was more than two weeks ago.  Life is just getting in the way of blogging, and that's okay, because it's in the right order.  :D  We said goodbye to my parents Wednesday morning after a quick and wonderful visit, and I had just enough time to change the sheets before the PlainJanes arrive!  We are waiting for them as we speak.  I already warned Jane that I do not "do" dusting.  Not regularly.  The dust lives here.  It is part of the furniture.  I hope the PlainJane girls are not expecting perfectly clean accommodations!  We live here, after all, and there are people coming and going all the time, now that this address has turned into a music studio.  Can I blame it on the music studio?  I didn't have anyone else to blame it on before this.

I missed posting a Happy Birthday to Emily last  Sunday.  She turned seven, and she got everything that was on her birthday wish list, except for an mp3 player and a digital camera.  She was very pleased to get canned peaches, dried mangoes and apricots, and yes, brussel sprouts, along with some Hot Wheels, Sculpey clay, and a "watch that lights up".  This is her reaction to unwrapping a nice book of teddy bear paper dolls that I found at the Salvation Army for 25¢, complete and unused.

Perhaps the best gift of all was when her grandparents accepted Emily's invitation to come for her birthday.  I told Emily that her grandparents were not going to come this year because such and such and blah blah blah, but she persisted.  Fine.  Invite them, I said.  So she emailed the grands, and to my amazement, they made a liar out of me!  I was very happy to have them!

Alison has picked up five more violin students.  Who needs high school anyway?  She now has a cottage industry.  There is so much to learn when you provide a service.  One of them is how to deal gracefully with a chronically late student, when that student is the last one of the day.  Another one is when parents drop their kids off and then forget about them.

We have three girls in 4-H this year, something that is new to us.  With all the forms and books and projects it is very confusing, but we'll get it.  Emily is the easy one, being in CloverKids.  I don't have any books to fill out for her.  She is doing sewing and leathercraft.  Elisabeth is doing leathercraft also, as well as  "auditing"  digital photography.  And Amy is doing photography, as you well know.  She was unofficially voted club historian and agreed to split the job with a younger girl who was very disappointed not to be an officer last year.  :)  Our schedule has just picked up, as well as our gas bill.  We will have a lot of running back and forth.  But it's a good bunch of kids, and this will be a good creative outlet for our girls.  The academics might have to take a back seat.

Goals for the rest of the day: Make a delivery, stop at the store, figure out what's for supper, finish up my Sunday School lesson, bake cookies, and oh!  Yes!   FINISH THE CHURCH LADIES' NEWSLETTER!!!!  That should have been first on the list.  What have I been doing???  After all that, we'll greet the PlainJanes!! :D  Must go.

Sweet 16 Alison

Today is the 16th birthday of my oldest baby.  I can't believe it was SIXTEEN years ago that she entered our lives!   Alison, you are a joy to my heart and a blessing to your family. Thank you for your helpfulness and your sweet spirit!

May God bless you with peace in your heart, joy in your soul, and the rewards of a life lived for Jesus Christ.

Fast Scrabble

Fun and educational.  I love when those two words work in the same sentence.  Our pastor's wife taught us a very fun way to play Scrabble, one which everyone can play and no one has to wait their turn.

Leave the Scrabble board in the box, and turn all the tiles upside down on the table.  Everyone draws seven tiles at random.  Put the remaining tiles where everyone can reach them.

On the count of three, everyone turns their tiles right side up.

Make your own Scrabble grid with the letters you drew, following normal Scrabble rules for forming words.

The first person to use all their tiles says, "Draw!".

Each person picks another tile and tries to incorporate it into their own Scrabble puzzle. Puzzles can be rearranged at will for as long as the game is in play.  Again, the first person to use all their tiles says, "Draw!"

Play continues this way until all  the extra tiles are used up, and either someone goes out or no one can play.

Score the normal way, subtracting your left-over tiles from your total.  Shared letters are added twice.

To include smaller children, allow them to make words without shared letters.  You could also allow proper nouns.  Or make all the bigger people draw two tiles, while younger ones draw only one.

For larger groups, combine two or more sets of Scrabble tiles.

Since starting this post, I learned that this is the same way Bananagrams is played!  Since we already have Scrabble, we'll save our money. :D

Even More Beautiful

Alison got her top brackets off yesterday.  Yippee!  See her post, which reveals some of her inner beauty, too.  :)

Summer's Last(?) Hurrah

There was some deliberation this morning about whether or not to go to the lake.  After all, the forecasted high temp for the day was only 108º.  Water temp: 76º.  With any breeze we'd be chilled to the bone!  We took our chances on the breeze.

With the boat, it's a tight squeeze .



Look at that beautiful empty beach:



Now from the other direction:



Add clean, clear water,



sand between my toes,



and five people I love:

Uh - oh.  I see another swimmer.  The beach is getting crowded.

Heading home.

I love it when school is in session.  ;)  It was the perfect day.

O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever. Psalm 136:1

2010 Trip Part 4

Are you ready for this?  I fell in love with, of all places, North Dakota.  (No, it was not January, I'm sure that had a lot to do with it.)  Before we could get there, though, we had to pass through lovely Wyoming (I am not being facetious.  It was lovely.) and South Dakota, where my children had their first experience with mosquitoes after dark.  They acted just like girls, which is understandable.  They are girls.  We stayed in a teeny tiny town, Buffalo, which has just one motel, and a decent one at that.  (File that away in case you ever need to stay in that vicinity, but be warned about the mosquitoes!)

I don't know what it is that I love about hay fields, certainly not the  allergens.  But I just adore a rolling landscape and wide open spaces with big, fresh, round hay bales scattered about.  (Bale, not Baal -- that's for Short) :)  A picture's worth a thousand words, and to me this picture speaks  of freedom and of clean-living, hard-working, orderly, family-oriented, patriotic people.  I know, there is sin everywhere, and LOTS of it, but if I had enough leg room and a comfortable seat, I could drive through baled hay fields all day, enjoying my delusion.  I could even call it home.  In July, that is.  Or August. In North Dakota.  I can't believe my resident photographer did not get even ONE hay bale photo for me.

Our entire route was planned and timed around the location of Little Caesar's restaurants, for where else can you fill up a family of six for $10 ($12 in pricey Bismark)?  Not even McDonalds, thankfully. :)  John Garrison, on location:

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At the same time we were driving all day across ND, our hosts, who are friends in the ministry, were driving home all day from Iowa.   This visit was so awkwardly timed, with us arriving between back-to-back weddings, but the Custers were top-notch in gracious hospitality.  We were to meet them at their church in Grand Forks and follow them to their home on the Minnesota side of the Red River.  While we waited for our friends, we were treated to a real live life-threatening ND thunderstorm!  John Garrison, knowledgeable amateur weatherman that he is, had his poor children all worked up over the ominous black clouds that were speeding our way.  The wind picked up, the sky blackened, the rain pelted us. Just in time our hosts pulled into the parking lot.  As we followed them to their home, my husband learned a good lesson.  If you do now follow the pastor, you may get lost or even crash. :)  We were completely blinded by the rain, having only the tail lights ahead of us to follow.  I love a good mid-west storm! It was so exciting.

Sunday morning was perfect.  We had  beautiful weather, maybe about 75º, a hot summer day up there in the north country.  (I know I can trust Weather Truth Man to comment if I am wrong about the temperature.)  Anyway, the air conditioning at Bible Baptist was on full blast, and my poor husband, though he was equipped with long underwear, had to go outside to warm up between Sunday School and the preaching service!  He preached the evening service, and a dear, thoughtful brother brought the desert-acclimated preacher a space heater for the platform. :D

Since the church is undergoing a major remodel, there is room for only half the orchestra to play at each service.  You all know Alison's longstanding dream has been to play her violin in an orchestra. In anticipation of that possibility, she squeezed her instrument into the seat with her for 5000+ miles.  Well, her dream came true!  :D  Space was made for her to play along.  She was one very happy young lady!

Emily Custer, who is the piano accompanist on her brother Seth's beautiful soprano saxophone CD, Come Thou Fount (produced by Soundforth), graced Alison with her company at the piano and violin.  Besides being quite an accomplished musician, she is a graceful servant of Jesus Christ.  Our girls enjoyed her so much!  They all slept out in a TENT for the first time ever, thanks to Emily C.  Yet another trip highlight!  Sleeping in a tent is something every kid should get to do at least once in her life.

Elisabeth found a haven up in the old attic school room.  Come to think of it, all the girls did!  What a treasure trove of good old books.

My Emily made a new best friend whose name is Lollypop.  That's Lolly, for short.  She is  a Pomeranian/Bichon Frise mix, and soooo sweet!  I normally do not like small dogs.  They are all high-strung type A personalities, yippers, ankle biters.  (All except yours, of course!)  I am now developing a theory that dogs are much like their owners; this one certainly is.  I anticipated Emily's subsequent request for a dog, but she was smart.  Knowing her chances of getting a dog were nil, she asked for a FISH instead!!  The answer was still no. Poor kid.

Something else every kid should do -- go frog catching!  The salamander was a bonus. :D

Ah, a  real campfire with hot dogs and smores.  These dear people really know how to show desert dwellers a good time! Thank you, Custer family!  We love you!

I love North Dakota.  I love the people.  I could live there.  In August. :D

But I am resolved "in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content."  Philippians 4:11

2010 Trip Part 3

The momentum on my vacation posts disappeared!  I have to finish them, just for my own sake -- my blog is sort of my travel log.

Let's see, I left off with southern Utah and the National Parks.  Ha ha, that is also where I started these posts.  Oh I have a long way to go!  Next we drove from America's playland, Moab, UT, to somewhere near Greely, Colorado.  GORGEOUS scenic drive the entire way!!!  I know I have said that several times, but it's true.  I couldn't even get into a book that day.  Our faithful old van ground up the freeway over Vail Pass with a worn-out bearing, creating a huge racket, but the Lord got us to our destination.  While we waited for work on the van to be done, we visited Platteville Baptist Church and had a good meeting.  The preacher and his wife, the Smiths, treated us to a late-night buffet where the girls innocently and adventurously tasted Rocky Mountain oysters. *blechhh*  They decided "oysters" are pretty good, even if these were rather chewy.  *~~shudder~~* Those folks were a blessing!  One of the church members, bless his heart, loaned us a car so that we could spend the next day visiting Rocky Mountain National Park.

If you ever get close to Denver, you must see RMNP.  My camera just does not do the place justice -- it is so huge and so magnificent, and it made me feel like such an infinitesimal part of God's creation!  There was still snow in spots -- in mid-July -- and we needed our jackets as we climbed to the 12,000 ft+ peak of  ... can't remember the name of it...  That's what I get for not writing things down.  Anyway, it really did seem like we had our heads in the clouds.  Delicate arctic plants lined the trail, and we saw several animal species that were new to us.  Real campers and hikers could spend weeks here, but we just stayed one day.  We like the convenience and comfort of a motel room, especially when it is raining. :D

Here's Amy, the indomitable photographer, scaring me to death again:



And the resulting photo:

We parked and took a bus to a trailhead, where we met dozens of soaking wet hikers.  Assuming they must have all ducked under the Alberta Falls,  we adventurously headed up the trail in the drizzle.

The bus ride was as big an attraction to some people as the scenery was to the rest of us!

This is my kind of hiking, a nice smooth path with little elevation gain:



A rare photo of Amy without her eye behind a camera:



Gummy worm break!  It's important when hiking, to keep up one's energy.



John Garrison at Alberta Falls:

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Would you believe that guy was planning, at one time, to be a TV weatherman? :)

We finished the hike soaking wet, not from the falls, but from the drizzle, like all the hikers who had gone on before us.  More exploring, another bus ride, a great picnic, and a drive through Estes Park finished the day off.  We had as much fun watching people as we did viewing God's handiwork.  :)

Had we known our van repair was going to take the entire morning of the next day, we'd have invited Wendy and her daughter, Laurie, to come and visit us in Greely!  But we expected it to be done first thing in the morning.  The motel pool kept the kids happy, comfortable, and entertained in the meantime.  The longer stay in Colorado required a rerouting of our itinerary, and we missed Mount Rushmore.  Instead we made a beeline for eastern North Dakota.

Stay tuned for more excitement!