One, two, three, say, "Mrs. Wow!" Jonathan shouted. "Longhorns!"
Sam, Jonathan and hay going up to the longhorn pasture to try to lure our cow back.
Timmy's birthday.
Jonathan gives Timmy a birthday ride on a borrowed four-wheeler.
"Your Word is a light to me," I said to Him. Would He shine a light? He did. That day I read about the seed the sower planted. Some fell into a thorny patch, and were "choked with cares, riches, and pleasures of life, and bring no fruit to maturity." I pondered that. I am so oppressed with cares, sometimes with money problems, and occasionally with pleasures (or the lack thereof). But I felt that I should read on .
Jesus did not say we should eliminate cares, money and pleasures from our life. He said we dare not be CHOKED with them. In other words, we have to have space and time in our lives for bearing fruit to maturity. We have to have margin. Cares will be there. We need money to live; we are obligated to pay our debts. We need some pleasure to keep a sparkle in our eye. But we must watch that we do not become ensnared, overcome, choked by these things to where we cannot prioritize what really matters and give time and space to eternal things like growth in grace and patience in tribulation; like teaching our children diligently, praying without ceasing, giving thanks, submitting to one another, loving God with all our heart and our neighbor as ourselves, worshipping God.
The thorns will be all around, even in the garden or at the edge. But they must be kept under control, at a distance. We cannot let cares, money and pleasure crowd out the word of God, our love for Jesus, and our love for one another. We must prioritize bearing fruit with patience, and patience means time.
Patience means endurance. Patience means keeping on growing and bearing fruit despite the battle against the encroachment of cares, money issues and pleasures. Lord, grant us noble and good hearts that keep Your Word and bring forth fruit with patience.
The men and boys start pulling down the tall tent poles.
Now they are folding and rolling up the tent tarps.
I don't have time to tell the 3-week long story about our cow and steer getting out of our pasture and deciding to live three weeks with the longhorns near the bluffs. Here they are.
The girls made 4th of July cookies.
We ate them.
Danny helps carry chairs.
And slides down tent poles!
Sam pulls out stakes and sticks out his tongue.
Anna and Naomi French help unlace two of the three sections of ceiling tarp. Oops, this picture is out of order. This is after the tent came down.
I took a walk and found a lovely glade in which was flitting a hummingbird. It sat under a pine tree on a little twig, looking and looking at me. I thought, "There must be a nest in this tree!" And sure enough, there was! So I ran up for the family and a camera. Sorry it is a little difficult to see the two baby hummingbirds in this nest. Maybe I will add a second picture.
Jonathan thought there might be bats in these rocks, because of the droppings he found here. We were waiting for them to fly out in the evening when the rain chased us back to the trailer.
Talk about an action picture below!! Carrie is helping Hannah jump from the rock.
Timmy and Danny loved to help their Daddy turn the crank for the trailer jack. We are now getting ready to go home! Goodbye!
Then we camped about 5 miles out of Lake George. The camping area had just recently had a fire. But we found a spot near the edge of the burned area, by some pretty aspen and pines. If you looked down, you would see ugliness. If you looked up, you would see beauty. See a lesson in that? So we parked our trailer with the doors toward the beauty, and we looked up.
Until the boys discovered lots of empty bullet casings hiding on the ground all around. Then they spent most of their time looking down, with their eyes glued to the ground, seeing how many they could find. They literally found hundreds. We all joined in the search, since the boys were having so much fun. Some of them put their findings in sandwich bags. Not Danny. When I asked him if he wanted a baggie, he said, "I have pockets!" in no uncertain terms. His pockets sagged, clinked, and weighed him down, but the more the merrier! In the pictures above and below youi see Danny and Timmy with their "casing farms," as Jonathan called them.
The children getting ready for another bike ride down a mountain road after a picnic in an aspen glade.
A day or two ago, I got a call from our pastor's wife who thought I'd like to know that our fawn is bringing joy not just to us and ...
