to all of you, the very best of wishes for the new year. God bless you!
from all of us…
Category Archives: The Ranch Hands
the family that plays together..
The holidays are coming to a close this week. Dad will soon be back to a regular work week and the boys are preparing to head back to school. We have gone over the January chores, schoolwork and schedules. Before long the past few weeks will just be a memory. It will be a good memory though, full of fun and games – literally LOTS of fun and lots of games:
The train table has seen daily use since it was opened on Christmas. (a very good gift choice for the little ones, it was!)
There have been lots of after dinner board games. It took some creative teamwork but we were ALL able to play Cranium together. Tess and Brendan hung around the table playing with the play-do that comes with the game and we passed Abbie back and forth between turns. (Asher had just run in from barn chores which is why he is still in coat and hat <g> Thawing out!)
You know brothers can't get together without football being involved sooner or later <g> At least not these brothers…
Some of the best fun can be had by sharing the game with a couple dozen of your closest friends <g> I can't tell you how wonderful our weekend was! I looked outside when I passed the window Sat night and saw kids from ten to twenty playing football complete with fans on the sidelines. Did my only-child's heart good though I was shivering so hard in the cold that I couldn't even get a clear pic!
When it got too dark to play outside they all moved into the living room around the piano…
This is what I will remember about Christmas.
Simple Woman’s Daybook
Monday December 29, 2008
(Please visit Peggy's site to participate in the Simple Woman's Daybook project. She is on sabbatical this week)
Outside my window…. the sun is creeping over the eastern horizon spilling golden light over the prairie. Long shadows are cast across the field.
I am thinking…. Lots of thoughts about how and where to do our family picture in these last few days of all of our children at home.
I am thankful for… friends who come bearing gifts of food and flowers. Football games in the field. Dinner in the freezer.
From the learning room… It's clean! We are not planning to spend much time in there however. Dad will be home part of the week. We will try to do our 3r's a couple days. Meantime I am working out Morning Time plans for January. What should we include? I am reminding myself to keep it simple.
From the kitchen… there is homemade salsa from the Dog and Duck. Addictive, it is! Leftover turkey, ham and red beans, and crockpot chili line the shelves of fridge and freezer. This will hold us over til shopping on the first.
I am wearing… jammies and the famous slippers. It's early – the only time I can count on sitting here uninterrupted and even then it's not always a good time.
I am creating…wall arrangements for the living and family rooms (almost done!) I am dangerous with a can of paint.
I am going… nowhere today. This will be the only day at home this week. This week we have the final practice for the Epiphany play. There is a homeschool get together planned. We will be at church twice and will trek up to the mountains one day to visit a retired couple from our parish community. I am so looking forward to that!
I am reading… The Duggar's 20 and Counting. Actually I just finished it but I am rereading some sections. My kids surprised me with a copy for Christmas and I have had my nose buried in it since. I love them even more after reading the whole story. It has inspired me to be ever more diligent, patient, and joyful.
I am hoping… for safe travel as our sons head back to school, that we can get to the bottom of the baby colic mystery, and for a nap. (not necessarily in that order ; ))
I am hearing… snoring from big boys still asleep, excited chatter from little boys newly awake, and contented sighs from a baby sprawled on my lap.
One of my favorite things… see that last line <g>
A few plans for the rest of the week… work out everyone's outfits for the picture, make cakes for the Epiphany project day, hit the grocery store for New Year's eve snacks, finish packing up the maternity and outgrown newborn clothes.
Here is a picture thought I am sharing…
bookmarks
It's been a while since I shared links. These are delightful:
For starters Rebecca tipped me off to Cindy's new blog. I had her old, discontinued blog saved on Bloglines and didn't notice when she began to write again. I have had such fun catching up! Admittedly I don't read many blogs with words. <g> Dominion Family is an exception. If you haven't heard of Morning Time then really – go now. This is a gem of an idea. Gather your progeny around the breakfast table while they are still hovering over their Cheerios and do your memory work, art study, singalongs and read alouds during this not overly long time together.
Thrifty Decor Chic – God bless her, she had to tie her tree to the wall like me. You can't see through her tree though. What you CAN see is page after page of some of my absolute favorite design ideas. You just have to love a woman who declares that "Goodwill is my BFF" Amen sister – mine too!
Reader Kris sent me this nifty idea. It is a pattern for a fabric liner for plastic milk crates. Milk crates are extremely practical but not so cute. Til now! Check this out. While you are there you should really make a cyber visit to the author's bright cheerful home.
And just for fun – every couple months I go catch up on Brocante Home for my comic relief. I send you with the disclaimer that some posts are, um, PG-13, but things like this just crack me up. I am a Doris Day fwiw. Not that you asked. : )
Ok off to clean something. If the snow doesn't hit too hard we have three families coming to celebrate many years of fun and friendship tomorrow night.
Merry Christmas Eve Mom and Dad…
So began the letter carefully slipped under our door by giggling boys who were trying very hard to be quiet. There are a lot of reasons why we get up every morning and do this all over again. This would be one of them…..
but wait, it gets better…
Wishing you all a most blessed Christmas!
howdy
Just checking in. Things have been moving at the speed of life around here. Lots to share. Lots to quote. Lots of lots of things. Time not being one of them. We did get the tree up – twice now if you count the rescue when it hit the window. Don't you worry though. It is now tied to the ceiling. : ) What were we thinking, putting up a tree and not tying it to the ceiling right off?
They way we ensure they don't redecorate the tree? We gave them their own. I saw this idea on My Montessori Journey and had a eureka moment. WHY didn't we think of this sooner?
Abbie watched the hustle and bustle in her Christmas wardrobe…
We intended to do one cookie recipe per week for advent. We got the 'one recipe' part down! Around here it is a toss whether the biggest challenge is getting them made or hiding them adequately.
and finally, Tess turned two. How could that happen, sweet girl? It was surely just a minute ago it was you in those Christmas jammies. Her birthday pictures were less than spectacular. This one the kids took after she found these old glasses captures her silly newly two year old self better than the obligatory cake shot anyway.
Turn your eyes…
It seems when God has something to say He says it over and over until a person takes notice. This same message has cropped up repeatedly in recent weeks. Stacy Macdonald's article helped pull it together. She speaks of those fears that tend to strike in the night, causing us to doubt both ourselves and the One who strengthens us:
Then I idolize my friends and their families. I think about others who seem to have it all together and I dwell on how I will never measure up – then anxiety comes.
I have seen articles advising women to focus on their own work, versus coveting another's, but she points out that our own work is still the wrong place to fix our gaze. How much better to turn away from both our work and others' and focus on Jesus and His grace instead as advised in Ps 119:
Turn your eyes from looking at worthless things and give me life in your ways.
Keeping our homes and carrying for others' are not worthless (nor less spiritual) tasks but using those things as a yardstick to measure our worth most definitely is.
Tradition of Omission
Once again the advent wreath was missing this first Sunday of advent. It is an annual tradition of sorts. The advent wreath always ends up packed with the Christmas things which we fully intend to unpack in the days after Thanksgiving. Those days inevitably end up being filled with other activities. The candles don't generally survive the summer so sometime the first week in advent we remind ourselves to replace them. (we did!) We are usually reminded of the need to do this when we read the lovely advent articles and realize that we really should have begun preparing our prayers and practices sometime LAST month.
What WERE we doing last month? Just having a baby I guess. ; ) That is my excuse this year. Actually it was my excuse for 3 of the past 5 years but the truth is this is a longstanding reality for us – one I tend to beat myself up over year in and year out. I was in the process of doing just that today when Keeping House came. It has been on my wish list since Rebecca listed it on her sidebar way back when. It had been all but forgotten until I was on baby rest and needed new books for company. It came just at the right time. In my funk, I opened to the first chapter and read gratefully:
"Forget fantasies of "accomplishing something." Perhaps somewhere in the world there were people who measured their days by how much they got done – at work, in class, wherever. I measured my days by whether at the end of them the members of my household had been dressed and fed and bathed and put to bed. If we had been, then that was a good day. I had done what mattered most."
Though there are so very many beautiful ideas for the holidays, the truth is that the majority of my waking hours are spent on much more basic feeding, bathing, cleaning, and schooling chores, most of which do not break for holidays. I have become rather adept at sneaking in little spurts of crafting and decorating between my more pressing tasks. There is always that list of all I am not doing in the back of my mind however, particularly this time of year. So much more I wish I could do but can't. Part of the frustration stems from a wrong understanding of what IS being done instead – namely caring for people near and dear to me.
It is tempting to view meeting their most basic needs as somehow less valuable than doing the extras. "Basic" doesn't mean "barely acceptable minimum" though. It means core necessities that are absolutely essential to growth and prosperity. Extras without basics is like frosting with no cake. Or worse, cake with no dinner.
"Housekeeping – cooking, cleaning, laundry, all the large and small tasks that go into keeping a household humming along – is not a trivial matter but a serious one. People need to eat, to sleep, to have clothes to wear….. These are the needs housework exists to meet."
The past several years of homeschooling and homemaking have shown me over and over the beauty of 'basics'. A good example was that the children had no need to break from their learning to wait on me for school during this baby season. (They did break to play some dozens of board games with their big brother and to work outside with Dad during his time off and to baby gaze.) Simple systems enabled us to carry on. Laundry got done, learning happened, two and four legged creatures were fed, watered, and sheltered. While it is easy to take that for granted it is important to remember, as Ms.Peterson says, these are the things that Really Matter. Meeting true needs is never a small thing, it is everything.
So we may limp along with our advent devotions but we remain fully devoted to caring for one another. We will continue to fill our pew on Sundays and holy days through this season. We fast, we pray. We do the simple, though not easy, things we always do and we will eventually get all the visual reminders in place – the nativity, the wreath, the tree – or at least most of them. When we get discouraged by all we are not doing, we will remember that these practices are meant to serve man, not man the practices. Ours is not a faith of clever crafts and object lessons (though these are absolutely fine and can be helpful when you can swing them!) but rather we walk in imitation of One who came to serve. He met basic needs in those He met and admonished others not to get sidetracked by the extras. (remember Martha)
"Jesus has very strong things to say… about the Christian duty to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and shelter the homeless….. Housework is all about feeding and clothing and sheltering people who in the absence of that daily work would otherwise be hungry and ill-clad and ill-housed."
I have to think that taking our cue there is a fine thing this time of year. As the author says, there is more to Matthew 25 than just our households, but we must start here. We must also realize there are many seasons in life, some of which are more conducive to extras than others. If we find ourselves in one that is not we can rest assured we are doing exactly what we ought to be by simply doing what we must with a glad heart.
It is better to have a little with fear of the Lord than great treasure with turmoil. Prov 15-16
Tuscan Christmas
I have been in a bit of a sleepy haze here, looking at pretty pictures and waiting for a certain baby to get as sleepy as her mama. I stumbled on this decorator's blog and one of her bathrooms looked so similar to mine I had to look around more. She has a Christmas tour here for holiday inspiration.
Are you kidding me??
That was all I could say when Asher updated me on the news this afternoon. Left to myself I can miss what many people consider 'major' news for days or weeks at a time. My computer is not set to a news feed and my tv moves between HGTV, PBS, and TLC on the days I even get over to it. I figure since pretty much everyone else on the planet is tuned in, sooner or later word will get back to me.
Black Friday was more like 'nap Friday' here. We alternated between dozing, snacking, and playing board games. I also have been ordering books and art supplies online for Christmas gifts as I nurse Abbie Rose. There is nothing I would like less than fighting the crowds for factory made or plugged in gifts in town. So when Asher told me crowd size reached 2000 people at some Walmart stores I couldn't believe it. When he told me one man was trampled TO DEATH by one of those crowds all I could say was, "They have lost their flippin' minds!"
To kill someone for mass produced "stuff"??
It makes me realize that it is a small circle, relatively speaking, that we move in, where women talk about unplugging, scaling back, and making by hand. It is a small circle populated by folks who would rather own an old book than a new gadget. It is a small circle that gets a thrill out of repurposing things deemed useless by others. It is a small circle that is not feeding on a steady diet of commercials and store ads convincing them they needs things they don't. It is a small circle but one I hope is growing, because this is just nuts.
It is especially sad because in the end a 70 cent pack of crayons, scrap paper and an adult willing to color is worth more in the eyes of a child than a talking stuffed animal. A carton of ice cream and a hour to share it with a friend is worth more than anything Box Mart sells, hands down. People matter. Stuff doesn't.
Tell you what, it brings to mind a blog post a friend forwarded me the other day. It has been in my mind since. Do go ck it out. It is a timely reality check. As one of her comments reads:
Clutter is another way of saying "too much stuff". Pulling things out of their hiding places emphasizes how much too much we have. It helps to curb my impulse to buy more. I think that your idea of looking at all that you have instead of thinking of what you don't is a powerful one.
We have so very much to be thankful for. You have to wonder how those crazed customers would explain their deadly need for 'more' to the young woman at the bottom of that post?
Starry Sky Journal 