Thanksgiving in Illinois

The children at Craig and Joella's house saw us coming from Kezia's house, and quickly blockaded the drive!

 

Joella masterfully carves the turkey ahead of time. She had made homemade cornbread stuffing.

The girls set the tables with the pretty blue and white pewter or china plates. 

Craig and Jonathan work on a window.

The girls admire the lovely desserts: pecan pie, pumpkin cream pie, cranberry pie, and cookies.

Sammy enjoys the litter of goldendoodle puppies in the lawn.

Jonathan visits with Grandpa and Craig out by the antique staircase. I loved the old house! 

Craig and Joella are masters of having a clean, neat, uncluttered, simple home that has its own beauty.

I was so tickled to discover that the younger children had all worked together to draw a place card for each family member who would eat the Thanksgiving meal together. We admired all the creativity--each card unique.

Inside the cards was a different Bible verse about praise or thanksgiving. Before the meal we all took turns reading our verses and singing a couple thanksgiving choruses. This was very special to me. I think it is important to be on purpose about celebrating Thanksgiving.

Because Thanksgiving is not just about turkeys and feasting, and about Chris bringing the cookies and broccoli salad in for the great feast.



It's not just about seeing our relatives' houses and seeing our lovely sisters again--Kezia, at 8 months along, was not very excited about me snapping her photo that day!

It's not just about feeding your faces, like Chris is masterfully doing at the ridiculous moment Jonathan chose to snap the photo.

It's about truly giving thanks.

And that is what Craig and Joella purposed to make sure happened. After the dinner and cleanup, we all gathered to sing Thanksgiving songs, listen to a reading Joella shared about the Pilgrims and Chief Massasoit, and a heartfelt prayer by Craig.  I felt it was worth going all the way to Illinois to get to be part of a family gathering where God was purposefully honored; where time was spent thanking Him and honoring Him. 

"Let the LIttle Ones Come"

My sister Joella's children: Susanna, the oldest, then Charity, Ethan, Jonathan and baby Laura. It was a blessing to watch a family that is being raised in the fear of the Lord, with godly principles, lots of love, happiness, work and play, and--music!

 

Lucas and Bradford cousins

Craig and Joella played a fantastic Christmas duet, "Hark the Herald Angels Sing." It was breathtaking.

Then little Jonathan wanted to play with his mommy! I was touched with how Joella encouraged him to sit up beside her and "play" while she played.

"Touch the keys softly!" she would say, "and not bang," when he got a little rough.

Little Jonathan was a sweet, obedient little boy. He played the keys softly and it was so sweet.

It is the way to train them in the way they should go.

You have to let them go; let them touch the keys.

Teach them to touch and not bang.



Sweet little Elisabeth gives her cousin a big hug!



Sunday evening Craig invited to their home another family of six young children who had been at church. The mom's name was Crystal Dawn, just like our Crystal Dawn. So I got a picture of them both.

 That evening there were 18 children (yes, you read that right) in Craig and Joella's house. They were very hospitable and kind to put up with all the noise!

Runaway steers

 

The boys and Rose coax the two runaway steers toward the trailer with old apples. The steers had finally come to a stop in a ranch a mile or two away as the crow flies--near a tall radio or cell phone tower.

Letting "patience have her perfect work."



Almost have them! If only they will go into the trailer where there is hay, feed, and more apples. One finally did go in, and Sammy quickly shut the gate. 

The kind farmer who was trying to help us hauled a couple heavy fence panels over to corral the second steer who refused to get into the trailer.  Maybe more photos later of bringing him home the next day.

Thanksgiving Geese

I know that title sounds a little off, but today was Thanksgiving Sunday, and it was warm enough that, with jackets on, we could eat a picnic on the way home at a park in town where there were hundreds of ducks and geese.

Jonathan carried down the crockpot (minus one handle--see story below!!) to the picnic table while the children check out all the geese all over the place. (Watch your step!)

 

Two trains go by across the road, and I enjoy the willow branches and the few leaves left on.

I miss trees so much, so what a blessing to go to this park and drink in the tall cottonwoods, and watch the ducks and geese in the water.

Peaceful and beautiful! All thanks to God our Creator!

The broken handle of the crockpot--the handle broke while Sammy was carrying it across the parking lot to plug it in the basement of the church to keep it hot for our lunch later. All the vegetables landed on the parking lot gravel! I wish I had a picture of it now, for it was very colorful, and you would never see a picture quite like it!! But you do not think of taking pictures when you are in the middle of such an ignominious situation--your food all over the parking lot while people dressed in Sunday best are pulling up to the church...

In the middle of the catastrophe, I am breathing thanks to God for helping me not go to pieces when our dinner went to pieces. All the potatoes and carrots were in big chunks, and the green beans were long, the way we like them, so they were easy to pick up. We decided we could rescue the food if we just carefully picked the pieces up from the gravel, washed them off in the sink down in the church basement, added more water to the pot, and turned it back on to heat to a germ-killing temperature! Sammy and Jonathan all help pick up pieces while Grandma Lucas arrives on the scene with all a Grandma's sympathy.

Thank you, God, for the way You can put pieces of our lives back together

when we don't have a handle on things,

when everything goes to pieces,

when we fall, and break, and create scenes,

when things are not as they should be.

You are a merciful God!

Is this the way David said, "Oh, if I had the wings of a duck---" or did he say "dove"?

Or is this just cheering with joy on Thanksgiving Sunday?

Giving thanks with ducks and geese for all God's goodness!

Thanks-living!

 

The best thanks we can give is to live a life of thanks to God--

sharing our time and gifts with others.

One of the best things you can do when you are feeling down is to find someone less fortunate than you and go bring some joy or help.

The Springs Rescue Mission is a place where we are trying to reach out about once a month now. I was wanting to sign up again to serve a meal like we have twice before, but all the volunteer slots were full. So I volunteered our help for deboning turkey. Last week on Tuesday, I was able to take Crystal and Carrie to help debone the turkeys the mission is planning to serve to a couple thousand or more people this coming week for Thanksgiving meals.

Only a few people showed up to help!  There were 60 to 80 smoked or boiled turkeys to debone and about eight of us to do it for the first couple hours. Then the guys from the rehab program came in  to help.  The girls and I did about 14 turkeys before we had to leave.  Like the lady across from us said, serving the big THanksgiving meal to thousands of people next week would be more exciting, and all the volunteer spaces for that are full, but this is the behind-the-scenes work that gets little accolade, but needs to be done, and she was just figuring on stars in her crown someday in the future for doing humble work behind the scenes!!



Feeling low again? Off we go a couple hours early to prayer meeting so that we can stop in to see a friend from church whose liver has quit working, and who can only eat fruits and vegetables. The children and I enjoyed picking out some nice fruits at Sprouts market for our dear friend, Rose arranging all but the pineapple prettily in a basket.

"If all you can have is fruit and vegetables," we say, "at least we can put it in a basket and make it pretty!"

Our friend, not thinking of himself, asked us to go down the street to where his parents live, and "give them a little break." They cannot get out much, are in their nineties, I think. We follow him down the street, make acquaintance with the parents. The girls play some piano music and duets we had brought along. They want us to sing, so we sing. One part.  Hannah sings "Jesus Loves Me" quite a bit off tune. I surrender our lack of gift when it comes to music. We do our best and give it as a gift to Jesus--and to lonely people who prefer one part, off tune singing, to nothing at all.

It's part of Thanks Living.

And then in the middle of weary days, we on purpose take some time to

Just Rest.

When we don't take time to rest in His arms, we don't make it.

Having thought about something like this for a few years, this year the girls were big enough to make it happen this Thanksgiving Sunday--today. The children made three kinds of cookies to put into little harvest bags to all the folk at church who help with Sunday School--teachers, secretary, assistant superintendent, janitors, musicians who play the prelude. Here are whoopie pies with autumn sprinkles. They also made peanut butter cookies and molasses cookies.

 Between Sunday School and church this morning, Jonathan, our church's Sunday School superintendent, read a poem his wife had written thanking all those who make Sunday School happen, while the little children passed the bags pictured below to the teachers and others who do so much for Sunday School for nothing but love of God.  Little Rebekah, an 8-yr-old in my class who has a gift of art, drew a lovely cornucopia on a dry-erase board, which we set up front, with the verse "O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good." It was a lovely way for her to use her talent for the glory of God.  Some children find it hard to sing or play music, but they have other talents, and I have been trying to find ways to encourage them to use those other talents for God's glory.



Our Ukrainian friend, Henri, who took these pictures one day for us,  gave us the CD Friday with the photos on them.

 

These two photos capture some of the golden wonder of God's beautiful autumn colors!

"That our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth..."

"That our daughters may be as pillars, sculptured in palace style..."

Psalm 144:12

His Eye is on the Chicken

It was just an ordinary chicken--

black and white speckled feathers, three crooked toes, beady black eyes.

But with a very UNordinary squawk.

The wife and the husband who were in the office trying to work through a difficulty,

suddenly heard a strange sound that seemed to be coming from the kitchen.

"A chicken?"

A dog?

"It's a kid!" the husband says.

There it comes again! "Errr-or-awk!"  Some sick sound! Plus, what would an animal be doing in the kitchen? Except that Carrie was out doing chores late. Had she let something in?

 

Without further ado, both run to the kitchen, Mom wiping tears from her eyes, wondering if one of the kids is blowing a strange whistle, or is it some neighbor dog????

And there they see it, the black and white speckled chicken, craning its neck and making the most woeful squeaks and squawks you ever heard.

This was one time there had to literally be a frog in the throat. Every cluck was a croak. Every squawk was an anguished gaggy howl that sounded like a cross between a --

well, a coyote and a --glurp, whatever that is.

Obviously something had gotten stuck in its craw.

Stuck in its craw.

We know something about things stuck in the craw. You don't really want it there. You try to get it out. But it just stays stuck.

Wife and husband laugh through tears. They laugh and laugh and laugh. The chicken croaks, the wife laughs. The chicken howls and chokes. The husband doubles over laughing. They try to capture the chicken, which Carrie had brought in because of its strange problem, and it skids across the floor and glurps and croaks and screeches.

The wife fills a container with water and the husband captures the hen and a drop of water gets choked down.  A drop here and a croak there. Mom rubs the poor hen's neck and craw. More drops of water. Let the hen go. Mottled feathers skid across the linoleum again.

Somebody bigger came to the rescue.

Living water mixes with earth's problems.

Softens the hardness, shows mercy to choking humanity.

Man laughs at stupid extremities that ought not to have happened, stuckness that shouldn't be stuck.

But do not the imploring, choking cries that others laugh at, or, that others don't hear at all, 

get heard by the "Somebody Bigger Than You and I"?

Somebody Bigger did hear; and sent a choking chicken to dispel the gloom.

Thanks, little mottled black and white choking chicken!

 

Birthdays and Bad Hair Days

 

I found these pictures on the camera memory instead of the camera card! I wondered where these pictures of Danny's birthday had disappeared!  

Danny practicing decorating his cake before it got iced!

 

The new pair of pajamas Grandma Morley sent Danny for his birthday.

Did someone say we have been having some bad hair days lately?

You never know what toddlers (and their seniors) will come up with.

This is called "green tongue disease." Actually it is a dill pickle. My children would eat pickles all day if I let them. They even drink pickle juice!

And this is....

well, would this be what is called a "bad hair day"?

Somebody huddling under the covers trying to read their Bible before starting the day,

while youngest daughter climbs in with Zebra, the kitty. 

Or bad feather day?

Or maybe "everything going upside down day,"

On upside-down, bad hair days, these are the kind of pictures we take--

 



to make up for photos that got accidentally deleted.

And to find ways to stay positive about mice in the attic.

 Thankfully, a fourth mouse was up in the attic and got caught

so Rose

 could pose

with a successful mousetrap in the attic for a bad hair day picture!

Always something to be thankful for!

 

Up to here---

with bad hair days??