What is Prayer?

Albrecht Durer's The Praying Hands

Prayer Is the Soul's Sincere Desire

Prayer is the soul's sincere desire

Unuttered or expressed,

The motion of a hidden fire

That trembles in the breast.

Prayer is the burden of a sigh,

The falling of a tear,

The upward glancing of an eye

When none but God is near.

Prayer is the simplest form of speech

That infant lips can try;

Prayer the sublimest strains that reach

The Majesty on high.

Prayer is the Christian's vital breath,

The Christian's native air,

His watchword at the gates of death:

He enters heaven with a prayer.



O thou by whom we come to God,

The Life, the Truth, the Way,

The path of prayer thyself hast trod:

Lord, teach us how to pray. Amen.

~James Montgomery~

I found this poem in my English Literature book and I just had to post it. I always thought it was weird when people would say how a poem or painting "spoke" to them....now I completely understand. This poem exresses in beautiful meter the depth and meaning in prayer and I find it encouraging to my heart. I hope it does the same for you.

Seatbelts

As most of you know, my family and I were in a car accident in April 2009 that totaled our car. I can honsetly say that had I not been wearing my seatbelt, I probably would have ended up outside our car. I say this because when the truck slammed into our car, the impact caused my glasses to fly off of my head. They were found smashed and bent 20 feet behind us. I got whiplash so bad it still gives me problems, but I praise God that all I have is whiplash and not screws and bolts holding me together.

I know a lot of people don't wear their seatbelt because they say its uncomfortable or they just don't like wearing it, but please hear me when I say that seatbelts are there for your saftey and it is important that you use them.

I saw this video and I love the visual.

Please wear your seat belt whenever you're in a car. You never know when it might save your life.

Perfect Timing

The Revolving Door of Babysitting

Hello all! I have been neglecting this sweet little site, mostly because of having lots of babysitting jobs (which I'm super grateful for) and trying to cram a ton of school into each day. I think it was a couple Wednesdays ago, but its crazy enough to share.

Here is how the day went...
1.Get up around 7:30 and run around the house, crazily picking up swallable objects and stuffing them in high places.
2. Eat
3. Have babysitting job number one arrive...Taddy Wainwright

Taddy

4. Have tons of fun with afore mentioned Taddy and chase him around while he carries plastic food.

5. Tickle Taddy and laugh at his expressions

6. Eat lunch with Taddy

7. Play some more

8.Say good-bye and convince him not to cry

9. Find out that a friend with a preemie Downs Syndrome baby has to go to the doctor on short notice

10. Get recruited to babysit

11. Wrangle bike into the van

12. Arrive to babysit Ani and Brinn

Ani

Brinn

13. Have fun in the sun...and teach a 5 yr old to skip rope

14. Make "soup" with leaves and flowers and rocks and moss, then mix it together in a basket

15. Give everyone hugs and bike home

16. Get stared at by Jr. High guys

17. Laugh at Jr. High guys after passing them....quietly of course

18. Arrive at home just in time to see four kids getting dropped off to be babysat.. Gavin, Greta, Gabriel, and Gideon

19. Give everyone hugs and comfort a crying Gideon

20. Take everyone out to play in the tree house

21. Try to finagle everyone in...steps aren't high enough

22. Play with Lego and calm sibling rivalry

23. Carry everyone out of the tree house

24. Crack open the bubbles

25. Watch both a 9yr Gavin and a 1yr old Gideon chase the bubbles

26. Clean up Gideon after he decided bubbles didn't taste good

27. Go inside to get ready for a walk to the park

Gabriel

Greta

Gideon

Gavin

28. Have tons of fun at the park

29. Convince kids to run as fast as possible across the field to the sidewalk

30. End up running too

31. Wonder why kids have so much energy

32. Walk home

33. Keep kids occupied so Mom can get supper on the table

34. Figure out everyone's allergies and who can eat what...twice

35. Pray together and EAT!

36. Wind down to Winnie the Pooh

37. Wind things up again by building a fort

38. Greet parents coming in

39. Say good-bye to everyone

40. Flop on the couch

41. SCHOOL?!?!?

There you have it...the revolving door of babysitting. :)

Ode to the Beloved Playset

I suppose one indication of growing up is giving away toys and playthings that you used to love. Our playset has become one of those things. It was a boat. a castle, a village and a fort...just to name a few. We would "dry" herbs on it and make "sandwiches" with interesting results. Joanna and I used to have races on the swings and we would yank the hose up the side to make a waterslide, I think we even turned it into a theater once. I belive we came up with a creative version of The Secret Garden.We loved coming up with reasons to eat outside in its turrets and when we were done, we'd see how high we could climb. I remember I used to sit on the very highest point and sing for the world to hear. Another time we brought out blankets and books and made a comfy fort...then it started to rain. We ran to the shed and raided my dad's tarp collection, ran back and made it water-proof, then we lay down inside and just listened to the rain. We had so many good times, but I'm glad that we could give it to another family for them to have many of their own.

A few months ago we offered it to the Higgins family and they accepted it....as well as the job of taking it apart. Calvin and Mr. Light worked hard pulling nails and general dismantling.

Calvin hammering the nails out.

Getting some assistance

The partially dismantled castle

Here ends the life of the playset in our yard. May it bring much joy and laughter in its new one.

Fearless Boyhood

Sun + Saturday = Family Work Day!

As a kid, I always thought that Saturdays were supposed to be for rest and relaxation. And I was almost always wrong. I would either end up picking up pine cones or shoveling out my room. However, now I love it when Saturdays are sunny and it means YARD WORK!!



Joanna mowing the lawn for the first time....ever!

I found out the hard way that galvanized tubs are not good planters, unless you drill holes in the bottom. Otherwise they fill up with water and drown your plants and grow algae. So that was my first project of the day. My dad and I drilled holes in the bottoms of both my planters, then I filled them with small rocks to improve drainage. I only had enough dirt to fill one on them, but that will be remidied shortly.



Planter ready for seeds (sorry the pics are out of order)



Improved Drainage

Second project of the day was planting my veggie garden! We went to Home Depot and I picked out my tomato plants and my cucumber seedlings.  

Veggie Garden Before



My tomato plants and the bug repelling maragolds



Veggie Garden After

I am so happy with the way it turned out. Now all I have to do is keep it alive...


 

New Beginnings

Spring is the season of new things, fresh starts and newfound hope for what is coming. Trees suddenly burst with delicate blooms, the grass grows two inches before you can turn around, and the birds wake you up in the morning with their songs. Soon you see calves following their mothers to graze, fluffy chicks falling over their feet and ducklings struggling to keep up.

Spring is also the time when everyone is planning their gardens. I always love the planning stage of gardening. It’s so much fun to look at seeds and plants and figure out what to plant where.

Of course this process is much easier if you thoroughly weed the designated areas first. It is a lot harder to picture English daisies and lavender if all you see is moss and overgrown grass. Fresh dirt is a blank canvas ready to be made beautiful. Many people hate to weed. That is a fact. I love to weed. That is another fact. Something about yanking weeds and throwing them in a pile is great fun to me. I enjoy looking at an overgrown bed full of weeds, deciding to tackle it all at once, pushing up my sleeves, getting my hands dirty and then realizing halfway through that I should have started at one end instead of somewhere in the middle.

My mom and I have a good system for the gardens around the house, she picks the plants and I take care of them (except for the roses…those are all hers). However, because of this arrangement I am not always sure of which plants are which. For example, something that I thought was a groundcover, and because of this thought, tended all last summer, is a weed. I suppose my green thumb was a bit pink for a while after that realization.

I am very excited for my vegetable garden this year. I am going to plant seven or eight different kinds of tomatoes and cucumbers. The reason I am excited is I love tomatoes, so planting so many

varieties is a lot of fun. I want to have one Cherry, two Yellow Grape, one Beefsteak, one Plum and a couple Heritage plants. As far as cucumbers go, I just really like growing them and they are fun to watch grow.

I have learned a lot about veggie gardens over the last few years. Things such as, if you’re going to plant carrots don’t mix manure into the soil where they will grow. They don’t taste good. At all. Another thing is that if you’re going to plant corn in a small amount, protect it at all costs. After 3 years of trying to get it to grow properly, I finally had a great crop. I brought in four or five ears for supper that night, went out the next morning and all the stocks were knocked over and the rest of the ears were eaten by rodents. Stupid raccoons! A final thing to remember is that the seed packets have the times for planting veggies for a reason. Last summer, we had to rebuild my veggie bed and it took longer than I had expected. For that reason, I planted my cucumbers about 3 weeks after the last suggested time. Fortunately we had a warm September, so they actually grew and started to bloom and germinate and grow tiny cucumbers. Unfortunately, once they were big enough to stop looking like pickles we had a frost. Therefore we had a crop of about a dozen good sized cucumbers and a whole lot of gushy gross ones. Lesson learned.