This morning Jacob mentioned to me that on his next birthday (he's planning way ahead, apparently), Gramps and Grandma were probably going to give him a rocket ship man outfit, cuz when he's a dadult (that's how he pronounces adult), he's going to be a rocket ship flyer man.
I tried to break it to him that he might not get that, as I have never seen a rocket ship man outfit before.
"Well, you'll see it when they give it to me for my birthday."
It was both hilarious to me and sobering at the same time. Do I have that kind of faith in the actual promises of God? My parents have said nothing, I'm sure, abut a rocket ship man outfit to Jacob. Yet God has said a great deal to me, to all of us, about his care and provision for us. Am I just as convinced that God will keep His promises to me as Jacob is convinced that my parents will get him a rocket ship man outfit even though he's never seen one and they've never offered? Are you?
Friday, February 20, 2009
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Great Quote
Everybody respects Laura Ingalls Wilder, right?
"I believe it would be much better for everyone if children were given their start in education at home. No one understands a child as well as his mother, and children are so different that they need individual training and study. A teacher with a room full of pupils cannot do this. At home, too, they are in their mother's care. She can keep them from learning immoral things from other children." ~Laura Ingalls Wilder
"I believe it would be much better for everyone if children were given their start in education at home. No one understands a child as well as his mother, and children are so different that they need individual training and study. A teacher with a room full of pupils cannot do this. At home, too, they are in their mother's care. She can keep them from learning immoral things from other children." ~Laura Ingalls Wilder
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Friday Funnies
Three anecdotes for you on this fine Friday:
1. An oldie-but-goodie from Jacob, which I found in cleaning out my inbox!
The boys love to watch movies. Rarely do they get to, simply b/c then they get in the habit of asking for one everyday instead of applying themselves to something more constructive.
Andrew had just gotten over a bit of a bug, and Jacob and I had the following conversation:
2. Do you let your dog lick the dishes? We didn't used to, but I think we fell for the reasoning that "if it's good enough for us to eat it's good enough for the dog; besides, it saves money on dog food, and we just use the sanitize cycle on the dishwasher." Abby certainly appreciates it, and she does a good job. Sometimes too good of a job.
I was taking care of leftovers after dinner, and couldn't for the life of me find the lid to the container I was using. After scouring the kitchen, I finally looked through the dirty dishes in the dishwasher, and lo and behold, there was the lid. For about 20 seconds I was completely baffled, trying to figure out why the lid was dirty but the container was clean in the cupboard. And then it dawned on me that the container I had put the leftovers in was in actuality the very same dish I had given to Abby to lick out just a while ago. It was so clean that one of us actually put it back in the cupboard, assuming that Anna had just been playing in that cupboard as usual and left that container on the floor. Hungry, anyone?
3. With our permission, the previous owner of this house had left tons of household stuff that they no longer wanted, and left it piled in the basement. (We regularly do rummage sales at the church for fundraisers, and we knew we could use it for that). Among stuff left were countless bottles of cleaning supplies. I use natural cleaners, so had simply been carting the cleaning supplies down to the basement pile. Andrew was the only one of the kids here on moving day, and I stressed with him that while I could trust him not to touch them, once Jacob got home, the boys were only allowed on the other side of the basement until I got all the bottles boxed up...explaining that all the cleaning supplies were like poison.
You never know how what you say is being interpreted until you hear it explained back. A while later, Andrew was giving my dad a tour of the house.
"Gramps, you don't want to go in this part of the basement, because there's thousands of diseases in there."
Dad needed an interpreter for that one!
1. An oldie-but-goodie from Jacob, which I found in cleaning out my inbox!
The boys love to watch movies. Rarely do they get to, simply b/c then they get in the habit of asking for one everyday instead of applying themselves to something more constructive.
Andrew had just gotten over a bit of a bug, and Jacob and I had the following conversation:
J: I'm sick.
Me: Well maybe we should go to bed early then.
J: No! When your're sick you get to watch movies!
2. Do you let your dog lick the dishes? We didn't used to, but I think we fell for the reasoning that "if it's good enough for us to eat it's good enough for the dog; besides, it saves money on dog food, and we just use the sanitize cycle on the dishwasher." Abby certainly appreciates it, and she does a good job. Sometimes too good of a job.
I was taking care of leftovers after dinner, and couldn't for the life of me find the lid to the container I was using. After scouring the kitchen, I finally looked through the dirty dishes in the dishwasher, and lo and behold, there was the lid. For about 20 seconds I was completely baffled, trying to figure out why the lid was dirty but the container was clean in the cupboard. And then it dawned on me that the container I had put the leftovers in was in actuality the very same dish I had given to Abby to lick out just a while ago. It was so clean that one of us actually put it back in the cupboard, assuming that Anna had just been playing in that cupboard as usual and left that container on the floor. Hungry, anyone?
3. With our permission, the previous owner of this house had left tons of household stuff that they no longer wanted, and left it piled in the basement. (We regularly do rummage sales at the church for fundraisers, and we knew we could use it for that). Among stuff left were countless bottles of cleaning supplies. I use natural cleaners, so had simply been carting the cleaning supplies down to the basement pile. Andrew was the only one of the kids here on moving day, and I stressed with him that while I could trust him not to touch them, once Jacob got home, the boys were only allowed on the other side of the basement until I got all the bottles boxed up...explaining that all the cleaning supplies were like poison.
You never know how what you say is being interpreted until you hear it explained back. A while later, Andrew was giving my dad a tour of the house.
"Gramps, you don't want to go in this part of the basement, because there's thousands of diseases in there."
Dad needed an interpreter for that one!
Saturday, February 07, 2009
Have you met Jacob?
Jacob has the most vivid imagination of anyone I've ever known. And he doesn't get bogged down in details...it doesn't bother him that the protective plastic is missing from his goggles.
Jacob also loves the Word of God more than almost anyone. He spends hours, literally hours, reading his Bible. He pores over the pictures of his Bible, even the kids Bible dictionary. How many dads out there have had the privilege of their child asking, "Daddy, can we read my Bible for a bedtime story tonight?" Don't get me wrong, he reads other books and plays aplenty. But he loves his Bible, particularly stories of David and Goliath and also Joseph-they're higher-ranking than the stories of Jacob.
Our Bible curriculum is from Grapevine Press, "Stick Figuring Through the Bible." The boys love it! Here is Jacob with his embellished stick figure of Joseph in his coat of many colors...he was so proud of it, he asked me to take a picture of it!
I guess he's stick-figuring through everything...here's his rendition of daddy with his beard and mustache. 
And this? This, my friends, is Jacob flossing his toes. Why? I have no idea. He just disappeared right after the whole flossing and brushing routine, and I found him calmly sitting on the couch, doing this. And when I asked him what he was doing, his nonchalant reply distinctly impressed upon me that this is a perfectly normal, routine activity that he'd been at for years now. And do you know about perler beads? You know, those tiny plastic round pegs that are placed on a mini pegboard shapes, and then you iron the beads to fuse them? Those tiny plastic beads that aggravate mothers to no end, because they will scatter to all corners of the house in no time, but are tolerated because there has yet to be a child born that won't sit for hours working on a project? Yes...those beads.
Jacob was panic-stricken while working on a project the other day, and I'm glad he was panicked...because a perler bead fell up his nose. While we haven't covered the rules of gravity, I clearly established with him that beads don't just fall up ones' nose. Good thing, too-aren't you relieved? Thankfully a good hard nose-blowing was all that was needed to remove the weightless, self-willed yellow bead from his nostril.
Have you ever wondered what your kids think about during that time between being put to bed and actually falling asleep? The other night Jacob had the flu, and was really nauseated. After hopping out of my bed 6 times in a half hour when he would start to cry like he does right before throwing up, I finally just crawled into bed with him for the night. His stomach did finally calm down, and we were both drifting off to sleep. In the sweetest whisper-voice, I hear him count to twenty...and then start over and count to twenty again. Then I hear him spelling his name to himself a few times..."j-a-c-o-b, j-a-c-o-b," and then reciting the alphabet song, twice. I don't know which of us fell asleep first, but it was so neat to get to "eavesdrop" on his own little world.
One last anecdote of Jacob that is too funny to risk forgetting. (Stop reading here if bodily functions gross you out). Jacob loves identifying letters everywhere, especially letters in his name. And, well, I hope that you don't think we're crude...but everytime he poops, he generally can identify a letter formed there in the toilet; and because of the spelling of his name, he's especially delighted that it's often a "c" or a "J." Well, with all the illnesses springing back and forth between all of us, Jacob had diarrhea the other day. He finishes, hops up, and peers into the toilet. Trust me, I was there...no identifiable letters to be found. No identifiable anything. Did I mention Jacob has a vivid imagination? "Mommy! My poop looks like an angel reaching up to heaven!"
(PS: Aren't you glad I didn't have a picture to go along with that one? And I did warn you)!
New leaf
If you spend any bit of time on blogs or books aimed at helping you be more organized or efficient, you've heard it before...Empty your email inbox every day. It's the equivalent of handling just once each piece of paper that comes into your house. Either file it in the place you will look for it, act on it, refer it to whomever is really responsible for it, or trash it. Sound familiar? Otherwise you just end up endlessly shuffling paper. Or shuffling through your inbox, as the case may be. I have far more organizing tips and strategies tucked in my brain than I have time to execute. This "emptying of the inbox" was one of them.
Was. No more past tense. After today, it's a reality. That's right...I am operating from an empty inbox. Granted, I had to create of file of "REPLY TO" emails, and it contains about 20 messages that I need to reply to/act on the info in them. The rest of the messages are either forwarded then deleted, filed appropriately, or deleted. I would have preferred to act on those 20 messages as I worked, rather than filing them and having to go back to them to act on them. But desperate times call for modified measures. That's right...this was an act of desperation.
Maybe I'm hoping that other people actually have twice as many emails in their inbox as I had, or that this will inspire someone else to purge their email to help make room for mental clarity, or maybe I think announcing this turn of a new leaf will help me stick to it. Regardless, this is why this is a big deal to me: I had 233 emails in my inbox as of this morning. That's right...233. Or maybe that's not so bad. Either way, I'm feeling like I actually accomplished something today. My goal is to spend just a 15-30 minute block a day handling emails, and then be done with it for the day. I'm working on a similar goal for blogging, once I work through my backlog of pics. There's just too much to do to not be organized about it.
So I'm curious...how many emails are in your inbox?
Was. No more past tense. After today, it's a reality. That's right...I am operating from an empty inbox. Granted, I had to create of file of "REPLY TO" emails, and it contains about 20 messages that I need to reply to/act on the info in them. The rest of the messages are either forwarded then deleted, filed appropriately, or deleted. I would have preferred to act on those 20 messages as I worked, rather than filing them and having to go back to them to act on them. But desperate times call for modified measures. That's right...this was an act of desperation.
Maybe I'm hoping that other people actually have twice as many emails in their inbox as I had, or that this will inspire someone else to purge their email to help make room for mental clarity, or maybe I think announcing this turn of a new leaf will help me stick to it. Regardless, this is why this is a big deal to me: I had 233 emails in my inbox as of this morning. That's right...233. Or maybe that's not so bad. Either way, I'm feeling like I actually accomplished something today. My goal is to spend just a 15-30 minute block a day handling emails, and then be done with it for the day. I'm working on a similar goal for blogging, once I work through my backlog of pics. There's just too much to do to not be organized about it.
So I'm curious...how many emails are in your inbox?
Thursday, February 05, 2009
Operation Christmas Child
Every year, our church works together to fill as many shoeboxes as we can. A couple in our church , Bill and Mona, do a terrific job of watching all year long for sales on crayons and soaps, etc, and organizing rummage sales and such to raise money for buying the presents. Mark can get the plastic shoe boxes pretty cheap with his employee discount, and we pick a Saturday in November to do the filling of and the praying over the boxes! I take the kids shopping to fill a shoebox for a child their age, and they love picking out presents to give!
Last year we put together 71 boxes, with the goal being 100. This year
, we filled a total of 103!!! It's pretty exciting to see how God manages that kind of work when that's about 4 times as many people as come to our church! :)
Last year we put together 71 boxes, with the goal being 100. This year
, we filled a total of 103!!! It's pretty exciting to see how God manages that kind of work when that's about 4 times as many people as come to our church! :)Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Job
This is Job. He is a blessed man, as you can see by his numerous children and livestock. He loves and serves God wholeheartedly.
This is Job. He is a sad, wretched man. His children have all died, his livestock and servants are all gone, and now he has been stricken with boils. Even still, he blesses the name of the Lord, and will not blame God for his misfortune. Job 1:22..."The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord."
God visits Job, (in all his kingly regalia), and reminds him that no one else was there when God formed the earth, and that no one gives counsel to the Lord in all His wisdom. We are simply to trust and obey.
Because of his faith, God heals Job and restores to Job double all that he has lost!
(In case you can't understand the sweet, still voice of "God" talking, he says "Job, thank you for trusting me" as he removes from Job the boils)!
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Our fire department
UPDATE: Thanks to those of you who gave me the heads up on the videos not playing back in this post. I've changed the settings, and you should be able to watch them here now. As you probably can tell, I'm working through past photos to get caught up to current news! These were back from October (or maybe November) when Anna was just starting to walk!
Friday, January 30, 2009
Volcano News
In case you've been following the news and wondering how it affects us, here's a map showing the proximity of Mt. Redoubt to us! If it really blows, then we will be affected to some degree from ash fall, but how seriously (or not) will totally depend on the weather and wind. Basically, no news is good news.
And from the latest update posted on the Alaska Volcano Observatory website:
ALASKA VOLCANO OBSERVATORY CURRENT STATUS REPORT
Friday, January 30,
2009 12:20 PM (Friday, January 30, 2009 21:20 UTC)REDOUBT VOLCANO (CAVW
#1103-03-)60°29'7" N 152°44'38" W, Summit Elevation 10197 ft (3108 m)Current
Aviation Color Code: ORANGECurrent Volcano Alert Level: WATCHUnrest at Redoubt
Volcano continues, though no eruption has yet occurred. Seismicity levels have
increased since yesterday evening and have also risen markedly over the last
hour. Pilot reports, clear AVO webcam views, and satellite and radar views
confirm that Redoubt Volcano has not yet erupted at the time of this report.
Redoubt remains at Aviation Color Code ORANGE and Volcano Alert Level
WATCH.AVO's website continues to be overwhelmed with traffic today likely due to
the extensive local and national news coverage of this activity. A backup,
low-bandwidth webserver is operating with limited information.Staff are
currently monitoring the volcano 24 hours a day. We will issue further
information as it becomes available.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Fire Safety Story Hour
The local library has a themed story hour every Friday, and quite a while back it was for fire safety...complete with a visit from the fire fighters and a chance to tour a rescue truck!
The boys wore all their gear, and were quite the hit with everyone. Andrew was the only one who wanted to try on an actual helmet, and was amazed at how heavy it was. They had the kids crawl under a blanket that was simulating smoke, and they all got to "drive" the truck!
Honestly, Jacob was so overwhelmed by all of it, that he didn't say much and was clingy the whole time we were there (hence the lack of good pictures of him). But oh, how he talked about it for weeks afterwards!
We're up and running...
...or crawling, at least.
Wow, what a whirlwind of a month! Despite my urge to stay hermit-like till I feel like we're finally settled, I thought I'd post an update.
Home Stuff:
Yes, we're moved in, relatively uneventfully. It worked out most excellently (for us, anyway) to have the kiddos with my parents. We were actually pretty much ready for the delightful crew that showed up Saturday morning. Can I just say that God has blessed us immensely with some pretty amazing friends and family? Okay, good-I'll say it. God has blessed us immensely with some pretty amazing friends and family. The moving part went pretty smoothly, and here's a tip for you:
If you want your moving out and subsequent moving in to go really fast, then schedule your move for January when it's -20 degrees. Why? Those movers move pretty fast when it's that cold!
We're actually getting settled in rather quickly...I just have a few more wall hangings to place, and my desk/office is, well, still a disaster. But other than that, and sewing some curtains and such, and the major projects that need to happen later, we're in, and we're loving it. It cracks me up, though, having this much space...the kids and I spend our days trying to locate each other, hollering to get a general sense of direction before finding and conversing (this is a 2000 sf house w/ a full basement. Our previous house could fit in here almost 4 times). We had about 2 weeks of -20 weather, so the boys and I were especially thrilled with the basement, as they spent much of their days riding bikes and scooters down there since it was too cold to play outside!
The huge praise is that we closed on our house!!!! Done deal, finished, dotted lines signed, money exchanged, no loose ends. God is good! I was feeling a tad melancholy about the whole thing, until a few days after our move when I was back at the house to finish up cleaning. And that's when I saw the mold growing up the wall in the corner behind where our corner china hutch had been. And the mold growing in the corner behind where my bedside table had been, even though I had bleached it and sol-u-mel'd it before. I got over being melancholy about it all pretty quickly.
So all in all, life is good in the new place, and I'll post pics...eventually.
Health:
We've made some headway with figuring out Jacob's allergy symptoms. Our chiropractor recently started using a highly sensitive blood sampling test that gets sent out to a lab. We tested Jacob on the panel of 96 foods and 16 environmental allergens. Interestingly enough, he is not allergic to mold, though we'll never know whether the presence of mold is what triggered his allergies (this link is one of them that explains the connection). Whatever the cause, this poor kid (and poor mother who has to cook for him) is allergic to wheat, dairy, eggs, tomatoes, citrus, and peanut butter. And while he is not highly allergic to them (as in, we don't need to carry an epipen around with us), his system is on overload, and we have to strictly adhere to eliminating these foods if his immune system is going to recover. Eventually he may be able to work them back in on a rotation diet, but in the meantime, potlucks are a cruel twist to life as he knows it.
Church:
Thanks for your prayers for our New Year's Eve movie event! We had about 30 adults and 15 kids show up, and the movie really hit home with a lot of people! If you haven't yet had a chance to see the movie Fireproof, we highly recommend it!
Our paperwork to constitute/incorporate has been turned in, and now we're just waiting for it all to be filed at the state level. Ha! As soon as that's done, we can close on this house/property for the church. We have some minor edits to make on our bylaws (it will be "take two" on making those edits. Another friendly tip from me to you: If you have a toddler, and your computer tower is at floor level, don't leave a zip drive plugged into the front of it, as said toddler will attempt to stand on it, snapping it off and rendering all information on said zip drive inaccessible). In general, moving right along.
Sorry to be so lengthy...at least I didn't go into details about installing and reinstalling a new dishwasher, building the goat/dog pens, car trouble for Mark, leading a special joint church service in Sol, or the almost-puking and runny noses going on here. Yeah.
If you still have our old phone # and address from before we bought our house last year, we're back to those. If you don't have them and need them, leave me a comment and I'll email you. And I promise we'll get back to pics soon....enough of this rambling with no pictures to make it worthwhile. Right?
Wow, what a whirlwind of a month! Despite my urge to stay hermit-like till I feel like we're finally settled, I thought I'd post an update.
Home Stuff:
Yes, we're moved in, relatively uneventfully. It worked out most excellently (for us, anyway) to have the kiddos with my parents. We were actually pretty much ready for the delightful crew that showed up Saturday morning. Can I just say that God has blessed us immensely with some pretty amazing friends and family? Okay, good-I'll say it. God has blessed us immensely with some pretty amazing friends and family. The moving part went pretty smoothly, and here's a tip for you:
If you want your moving out and subsequent moving in to go really fast, then schedule your move for January when it's -20 degrees. Why? Those movers move pretty fast when it's that cold!
We're actually getting settled in rather quickly...I just have a few more wall hangings to place, and my desk/office is, well, still a disaster. But other than that, and sewing some curtains and such, and the major projects that need to happen later, we're in, and we're loving it. It cracks me up, though, having this much space...the kids and I spend our days trying to locate each other, hollering to get a general sense of direction before finding and conversing (this is a 2000 sf house w/ a full basement. Our previous house could fit in here almost 4 times). We had about 2 weeks of -20 weather, so the boys and I were especially thrilled with the basement, as they spent much of their days riding bikes and scooters down there since it was too cold to play outside!
The huge praise is that we closed on our house!!!! Done deal, finished, dotted lines signed, money exchanged, no loose ends. God is good! I was feeling a tad melancholy about the whole thing, until a few days after our move when I was back at the house to finish up cleaning. And that's when I saw the mold growing up the wall in the corner behind where our corner china hutch had been. And the mold growing in the corner behind where my bedside table had been, even though I had bleached it and sol-u-mel'd it before. I got over being melancholy about it all pretty quickly.
So all in all, life is good in the new place, and I'll post pics...eventually.
Health:
We've made some headway with figuring out Jacob's allergy symptoms. Our chiropractor recently started using a highly sensitive blood sampling test that gets sent out to a lab. We tested Jacob on the panel of 96 foods and 16 environmental allergens. Interestingly enough, he is not allergic to mold, though we'll never know whether the presence of mold is what triggered his allergies (this link is one of them that explains the connection). Whatever the cause, this poor kid (and poor mother who has to cook for him) is allergic to wheat, dairy, eggs, tomatoes, citrus, and peanut butter. And while he is not highly allergic to them (as in, we don't need to carry an epipen around with us), his system is on overload, and we have to strictly adhere to eliminating these foods if his immune system is going to recover. Eventually he may be able to work them back in on a rotation diet, but in the meantime, potlucks are a cruel twist to life as he knows it.
Church:
Thanks for your prayers for our New Year's Eve movie event! We had about 30 adults and 15 kids show up, and the movie really hit home with a lot of people! If you haven't yet had a chance to see the movie Fireproof, we highly recommend it!
Our paperwork to constitute/incorporate has been turned in, and now we're just waiting for it all to be filed at the state level. Ha! As soon as that's done, we can close on this house/property for the church. We have some minor edits to make on our bylaws (it will be "take two" on making those edits. Another friendly tip from me to you: If you have a toddler, and your computer tower is at floor level, don't leave a zip drive plugged into the front of it, as said toddler will attempt to stand on it, snapping it off and rendering all information on said zip drive inaccessible). In general, moving right along.
Sorry to be so lengthy...at least I didn't go into details about installing and reinstalling a new dishwasher, building the goat/dog pens, car trouble for Mark, leading a special joint church service in Sol, or the almost-puking and runny noses going on here. Yeah.
If you still have our old phone # and address from before we bought our house last year, we're back to those. If you don't have them and need them, leave me a comment and I'll email you. And I promise we'll get back to pics soon....enough of this rambling with no pictures to make it worthwhile. Right?
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Moving Day!
We moved into the parsonage on Jan. 5th...it was clear, sunny, and -20 at our old house and -30 at the new! One doesn't stand around to take many pictures at those temps! We had a TON of help from my family and our church family. My mom kept the kids all weekend, Dad came with Andrew to help on Saturday, and we had plenty of trucks and strong backs for the furniture and boxes! Ladies from church helped clean at both houses, and we got done in record time!
Moving in leaves lots of space for new hidey holes and mischief!
Moving in leaves lots of space for new hidey holes and mischief!
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