Lots of Love on Valentine's Day

Crystal put together a bulletin board last week for Valentines Day. It turned out so pretty.

 

Yesterday was a happy Valentines Day. The girls had a lot up their sleeves. Rosie kept covering up SOMETHING she was doing with Danny, which turned out to be some of these hearts they hung on our kitchen light. 

Jonathan had brought home this lovely Gerbera daisy for  centerpiece.

Each of the girls wanted to make a special dish from Taste of Home magazine, which a dear friend of theirs had gotten them a subscription for. Rose made these luscious apple dumplings with orange sauce almost entirely by herself, substituting homemade dough for the refrigerated crescent roll dough the recipe called for. I have never tasted anything so luscious, and I was thankful to actually have room for a whole serving after an already good supper.

Carrie made these cheesy potatoes, and Crystal made a heart-shaped meatloaf with bacon and shredded carrot. It was one of the best meatloaves I've ever tasted. We had to admit that our wonderful daughters are becoming quite competent in the kitchen! What a blessing!

The girls pushed me out of the kitchen, which I took as a complement.Here I am at the ironing board to iron and put away things. I did manage to sneak into the kitchen a couple times to wash or rinse some dishes without the girls shooing me away. 

Jonathan came home with this marvelous balloon "especially for you, but for everyone!"

The boys have had oodles of fun with it, hanging everything from magnets to little plastic helicopters on the string and watching it go up and down. 

And since the girls made most of the supper, shooing me out of the kitchen, they got it back! After supper, I shooed THEM out of the kitchen and did the dishes, and...

can you believe it? We had to snap a picture of this to document it. Jonathan actually helped rinse the dishes!!!! Maybe the girls need to make such a splendid meal more often.

The way to a man's heart is through his stomach. 

After family worship, Jonathan and I were still on our knees, and I was rubbing my worn out head, when numerous Valentines Day cards began descending in front of us. So we pull ourselves up and take time to read and enjoy all the loving little notes from our precious children. 

Perhaps we could say these chickens were an early Valentines Day gift for the children.

Sammy found them for sale on Craigs List, and we hurried and got them, as they are young and some just started to lay. Ours had started molting or for some reason had quit laying.

Now we are back to getting almost a dozen eggs a day--every color--green, blue, white, rusty brown, and brown. How delighted the little ones are with their little fragile treasures, loving to run and show Mom what they found.



I treasure my children in my heart, treasure my husband, treasure the gifts of God. His mercies, like these wonderful eggs, are gifts of love that are new each morning. Sometimes unexpected, you don't know what color or shape or size His gifts will be, but they will be all from His loving hand--

Even the cracked and broken things. Sometimes the children bring in shells already cracked or broken. But we carefully salvage the egg. There is treasure inside that broken shell.

I teach my children that

even a cracked egg is still an egg.

Even a broken egg is still an egg.

And we must not despise the circumstances that God sends us, though they may seem broken and messed up. "Why this, Lord? Couldn't you have sent me a nicer gift today?"

Sometimes the eggs are dirty and messy. We have to wash them, get through the mess to get the treasure. Sometimes we don't get a treasure from God until we have gotten through a messy situation and allowed more dirt and dross to be scrubbed from our lives.

And even though every one of us is cracked and broken and simply a vessel of clay,

God still considers us His treasure. He separates the cracked shell from the treasure inside and condescends to still use it.

God specializes in broken things, "in things thought impossible."
He chooses the weak, the foolish, the despised, the things that are not,

 to bring to nought things that are.

Great is His faithfulness!



Snow Forts and Crosses to Take Up

Today was such a beautiful sunny last-of-January Day, that I put on my long janes, coat, and gloves and took my camera out to snap some photos of the children building two royal snow forts.

 

They packed snow into some black forms to make blocks. Then Sammy, strong and able, hefts the block into a waiting toboggan...



and pulls it over to the boys' fort.

 



He sets the block in place on the snow wall.

Timmy prepares to throw snowballs!

Timmy and Danny inside one of the forts. They are building the forts on the south side of a little hillock in our pasture, where the snow collected in drifts during the night two nights before. Elsewhere, wherever the land is flat, the ground is almost bare. 

Here is the sled run the children made down through the empty pond by toting enough snow over to put the finishing touches on.

On my way back to the house, I stopped by to visit the barn and found all these creatures hanging out. There is something just plain cozy about a little barn with its hay and little creatures.

This creature was letting the whole world know, oh, letting the whole world know----

about what she was about to leave behind her!

 



Today in my devotions, I read Matthew Henry's notes for Matthew 16: 24-28, about taking up our cross. He wrote, "That which we have to do, is, not only to bear the cross, but we must take up the cross, must improve it to some good advantage. We should not say, "This is an evil, and I must bear it, because I cannot help it"; but "This is an evil, and I will bear it, because it shall work for my good."

"When we rejoice in our afflictions, and glory in them, then we take up the cross."
Wow!

I think sometimes because we are human, we end up suffering for our faults and for our mistakes and this is a heavy weight to a sincere Christian. It can leave us feeling like a hypocrite to have a testimony for Christ when we know others know we are faulted. Sometimes, though, it is easy to mistake  someone's speaking to us about an issue as "picking" at us, and as persecution, or a cross, when in fact, God is using the person to provide a check on something in our life, or in the lives of our children, that needs to be corrected or improved. The devil will want us to go up the miff tree rather than exercise humility and learn from those who see the problems and areas of fault in our lives.
This does not mean that we have to eat dirt and hang our heads and live a life of constant apology for living. We can live confidently and live in love,
and then when we are reminded that we supposedly think we are better than everybody else,
we can answer,
"No, I know very well that I am not any better than anybody else.
But I am striving to live by better principles than the unprincipled world around us;
I am striving to be a bit better tomorrow than I am today."
 

"O Cross that liftest up my head, I do not ask to fly from Thee;

I lay in dust life's glory dead,

And from the ground there blossoms red

Life that shall endless be!"
 

Midwinter Blahs Blasted

The January blahs and blues descended upon us early as our family suffered through a week and a half of sickness--croup, coughs, fevers, upset stomachs.

In between, however, we combated such blahs with inviting company over.

One evening we had friends with girls who helped our girls put together three layette bundles for Christian Aid Ministries.

 

Sorting the baby things and putting them in bundles.

The tank that Jonathan and his guys painted. It got into the newspaper!

Another project of Jonathan's--He and his guys built this deck and pergola to show along with a landscaper's demo at the Home and Garden Show in town this weekend.  Jonathan hopes to sell the deck and pergola after the show, and perhaps get jobs from it.



Late yesterday afternoon, Jonathan called with the bad news that the hay barn at our local Big R ranch store was burning. We heard that earlier in the afternoon, there was a big BOOM, and the barn was aflame. The children wanted to go see, so we drove the 12 miles to watch. By then, the barn was completely demolished.

This front end loader was digging up smoldering debris and spreading it around for the firemen to douse with water. There was still a huge pile of burning hay that had to be dealt with.

IT's difficult to see in the dark, but the flames are coming out of the burning debris in the bucket of the loader. That was the most exciting thing to watch. Firemen would hose down the tires of the loader, and hose down the burning debris, and then the loader would go back into the smoke and smoldering debris again.

This morning, we talked at the breakfast table about what God's Word says about what kind of work will withstand the fire of God's judgment. Will our work be wood, hay and stubble, such as burnt up in this fire, or will it be gold, silver and precious stones, something that will withstand the fire?

May God grant each of us the wisdom, grace, and courage to do the work that will stand the test. 

We read that just the barn there at Big R was worth about $275,000, not including the hay inside. What a loss! Hay is so expensive now.

But something to be thankful for is that despite forest fires and barn fires and judgment fires, God

has "the whole world in His hand."

Just like this tiny little helpless puppy in Carrie's hands, God has our times in His hands. We may rest in that. 

Amaryllis blooming in the sunshine, bringing joy to our January!

The girls keep knitting!

Rose having a good time with our pastor's baby when they stopped by this week. 

My blogger doesn't seem to be working right today. Jonathan is helping me get pictures on another way. He took pictures of his unusual job that he and his guys did this week: repainting an army memorial tank at Shrine of Remembrance, a local funeral home.

The boys got to climb all over the tank, and the owner even let Timmy inside.

The boys help pressure wash in preparation for new paint. Jonathan was thanking the Lord for the warmer weather this week.

The guys spray painting.

Timmy fell asleep in the truck while waiting on his dad.

Jonathan paints the "Black Horse" emblem on the sign in front of the tank. Precise work. He had to make stencils and paint three more emblems on the tank--in red, white and black. Today, a photo of the painting job was on the front page of the local and state section of the Gazette.

Getting ready for Christmas Day

Making cloverleaf rolls to take to Grandma's for dinner on Christmas. It was fun rolling the little balls of dough together with the girls--having fun working together.

The bouquet is one Jonathan surprised me with!

 

Making popcorn balls!

The girls used a recipe from a Little House book, using brown sugar and molasses for these popcorn balls. It was a fun Christmas eve--nothing fancy to brag about, nothing grand. Just home and family and candlelight and making memories and loving one another and listening to a story Mom wrote and having Dad read it about Christmas three years ago when we took propane to a homeless man who was freezing in his tent, and how God got involved in our small efforts to show Christ's love. 



Rose with the bird feeder they got for Christmas.

An effort that we made to give a gift very practically to Jesus this year (inspired by the example of Ann Voskamp's blog) was to let each child choose a project from Christian Aid Ministries to send a certain amount of money to. They looked through the projects catalogue pictured below and the boys chose to sponsor a goat and a pig!

The girls chose to do a layette bundles project. 

And here is the special gift the children were given Christmas night from our mama poodle!

The very best Christmas gift, they said!

IT is not what great things we do or give. It is the little things we do with great love, as Mother Teresa once so simply stated. So this Christmas wasn't about grandness, but about small things done with love to and for those we love and for others.

Wishing we had pictures of Christmas caroling with our church group Sunday evening. That was fun!

Crystal's and Sammy's Birthdays

We had a friend of Crystal's and her family for her actual birthday.

 

 Because of extra sweets at Christmas time, Crystal made the cake with a cream cheese and honey frosting and decorated it with orange slices and swirls.

This is back on Sammy's birthday, when we celebrated both birthdays together with guests, to save an extra trip for relatives.

Sammy has a very simple cake and a very glowing smile.

Our good friends, the Albertsons, came for Crystal's birthday, spending 2 1/2 hrs. on the road. We really appreciated their efforts to make Crystal feel special.

Sis. Albertson's hair is growing in so beautifully after her chemo.

Beth and Emily, their mom and Grandpa watching the children open gifts.