Flowers--and Faces Toward the Sun

Yesterday we had a huge prairie grass fire nearby, but before I tell about that, I want to tell about the flowers.

Sunday morning we were getting ready to go to church when I remembered it would be nice to take a vase of flowers. So I went out to pick some from Hannah's garden. Jonathan got this picture on the sly, but I ran across it, so I salvaged it from his phone for my blog post!

Jonathan seemed to enjoy watching the bouquet take shape. I am not really great at flower arrangement, but the vase was pretty, anyway! 

And in my opinion, the rather wild, helter-skelter look was lovely, too. Some kinds of flowers won't stay perfect no matter how much you fix them.  

Like some people, like me, for example. 

A little wild no matter how you fix them! :)

So we enjoyed the flowers at church Sunday morning and then brought them back home to enjoy the rest of the week.

Monday morning, after a night of darkness, I noticed the sunflower was turned toward the light of the window. 

Like the sunflowers we'd passed a few weeks ago on our way from Arizona to Colorado.  We noticed how they were turned to face the sun--even in the darkness. 

Lord, I am just one of many common sunflowers in this world.

Help me, when the world is dark, when sun's rays of joy fade, to keep my face turned toward the only Sun that lasts. "Sun of my soul, thou Savior dear, It is not night if Thou be near. Oh, may no earth-born cloud arise To hide Thee from Thy servant's eyes."

"When the soft dews of kindly sleep My weary eyelids gently steep, Be my last thought, how sweet to rest Forever on my Savior's breast."

Music, Noise, Love, Laughter, and Good Food

Last week for a few days we had lots of family and nieces and nephews and friends in for the barn raising.

  

What fun it was to have lots of help with the cooking!

This is one of the dishes I actually made myself in a large electric skillet, with fresh summer squash and zucchini with bacon--and it sure got eaten up fast! 

 I never saw pancakes served vertically before!

One morning the girls made biscuits and sausage gravy.

And nearly all day long, one or more girls (or boys) were playing music at the piano or keyboard or guitar.

No end of music.

 

More chopping vegetables 

And cutting zucchini cake

  A scene I loved in the kitchen--my two middle daughters that I miss a lot.

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After saying one goodbye after another earlier last week, I was happy to hear from my sister Dorcas that her son Peter was going to be in South Dakota this weekend and hoped to come to see us. 

He did!   

Jonathan and Danny had to leave Saturday morning to replace windows for a lady's badly damaged home in Mission, but Peter said he wished he could do something to help here at our place.

Well, I had some blinds that needed to be installed in our basement windows, and he willingly did the screwing while I unpacked the blinds from their boxes and found curtain rods and hardware for hanging curtain rods, too.

My phone takes poor pictures, but here he is getting a kitchen curtain up in the basement kitchen, so it is more and more finished and ready for company and teams.  

A full basement to keep work teams was Jonathan's original goal in building our house, and that is being realized.

 

 

 

Goats--and Thoughts--Where They Do Not Belong

 It is after midnight, but when I got up from bed, I discovered the goats out and the cat where she did not belong. The goats are jumping fence like they did when the cousins were here over Labor Day. Ezra put the goat back out and tried to fix the fence, but I guess the goats are finding another low spot somewhere since the property was mowed.

As I stuck a couple of these random photos of goats on my blog, I thought about how goats are like thoughts--they easily get out of line and jump the fence.  But it is our thoughts about our thoughts that make the most difference, as explained below.

 

Here is a quote that I read recently:

"It is our thoughts about our thoughts that get us into trouble," wrote Jack Pransky in Simple Truths for Living Well. He went on to say that if we get a thought such as, "I want to slug him!" and follow that thought with, "Go for it!" we give the first thought power over us and likely follow it. 

But if we follow the first thought with "That was just a thought and a ridiculous one!" it will pass.  

I found that extremely helpful. 

Sort of like, "Birds will fly over your head all the time, but you don't have to let them nest in your hair."

Here is another quote I ran across.

And a simple quote shared by my sister Joella recently when someone was quite sure Anna and probably some others were confused about some things.

"I don't think it's confusion to have to try to sort through...things."

I know that came from my little sister, but my simple brain thought it rather profound--and comforting.  

Here is another  thing my husband and I ran across and thought valuable enough to share.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Deck to the Formerly Unreachable Front Door

Once upon a time, the front door to the Lucas residence was about seven feet above ground with no way to get in! 

 Enter Lucas children, Hagerty boys, and three nephews from Missouri. 

Things began to change around here!

  Along with the barn-raising, they began our deck the Saturday before Labor Day.

Jonathan's work crew in Colorado had torn down a deck some time before we moved, and Jonathan had saved all the decking for our own deck in South Dakota. It's been sitting out in the back yard behind the clotheslines.

We gals helped the boys haul all that to the front for the builders. 

We gals also watched from the dining area window (also salvaged from one of Jonathan's jobs in Colorado before we moved). This house is a lot of piecemeal!!

For a while the deck looked piecemeal, too!

But especially Joey kept at it late that Saturday night.  

The decking spacers (or whatever they were called) ended up not being quite the right size, and some of the guys and gals both worked for hours trimming bits off them to make them usable, in the absence of being able to buy new ones.

Everyone was up late waiting for Krissy Miller and Carrie to arrive back from the Rapid City airport. 

 Tim looks ready for bed after sawing all sorts of decking boards and getting black in the process. 

Working in the dark

 

Busy as beavers Tuesday morning

More views

 

 This was probably Monday, actually.

 Building the front doorstep.

 

Building the steps to the deck. Having our house built into a hill creates the need for lots of steps!

Danny working under the steps 

Hannah grabbing an unofficial photo that was too funny to not put on the blog. 

This is the official photo we were getting ready for above! Tim and Danny helped till nearly noon on Wednesday to make sure the steps to the deck were finished.

  

Crystal posing for me with the deck and steps! Now we need the little roof over the front doorstep. Jonathan will saw the posts down to size, and hopes to have some kind of log beams across. And stone on this one front wall of the house. 

One step at a time--one day at a time--because there is no use quitting.

We don't know what tomorrow will bring, but today we will simply do the task at hand and trust God to do the big things that we cannot do. 

An Almost Amish Barn-Raising!

 We've loved hearing about Amish barn-raisings, but we just experienced an Almost Amish barn-raising our very own selves over Labor Day weekend!

Our Tim spearheaded getting all our seven children together over Labor Day weekend, along with several cousins and friends, to raise the barn for us.

 

Only a couple days earlier, Jonathan had a concrete company pour for a job near town and then empty the truck for the barn piers at our place.  

And then the sons, nephews, son-in-law, and Hagerty boys arrived, 

along with two nieces, Elizabeth Hagerty, and Sam's girlfriend Caitlyn who helped with meals and good cheer.

Here is what our basement kitchen looked like each meal for a couple days!

 

The first day went slowly as the guys tried to figure out how to put the kit together that Jonathan had bought in Colorado off of Craigs list, before we moved up here.

There were no directions and they discovered one wall's worth of tin was missing!  

But by hook or by crook (or maybe both) they got that frame up and tin on the walls and roof.

Those guys were just amazing.  

 Barn-raisings would never be complete without the ladies doing the cooking, would they?

 So here they are!

My girls with Krissy, Iva's daughter. 

Getting steaks ready to grill--some from Rose's elk and some from our steer. 

Home baked french fries along with the steaks.  

 Burgers and fresh salsa another meal.   

What a happy time!