My grandmother was a treasure trove of little sayings and songs, many of which are trapped forever in the recesses of my mind, breaking out when I least expect them. One that is replaying in my head of late is The Old Gray Mare.  You remember don’t you?  "The old gray mare, she ain’t what she used to be….." As I hum involuntarily questions come to mind:

I wonder if she was always gray?  Or at some point along the way did little renegade white hairs begin to pop out like corkscrews in all sorts of odd directions?

I wonder if she stared in the mirror thinking, “Huh. That is MY hair. Go figure.”

I wonder if she found herself musing over the arguments for going gray trying to decide if it was noble or just unnecessarily scrupulous?

I wonder if she thought maybe if she just let it be she would someday look like Diane Keaton or Jamie Lee Curtis? Even if she IS a very short mare….

I wonder if she ever realized that while Taylor Hicks and Richard Gere and a host of other men are thought to be cutting edge cool with their gray, google could not pull up any other gray actresses ….

I wonder what happens when she wanders out to pasture? Do the other horses think her gray is a “crown of glory” or do they just think she let herself go?

I wonder if she ever considered coloring her mane?

I wonder if the prospect of cancer from dark hair dye made her then shiver?

I wonder if the prospect of vegetable dyes left her with flashback images of bad henna jobs from the 70s?

I wonder if she felt coloring hair would be of no more importance than brushing a hint of blush across one’s cheeks or if it was somehow not being authentically herself?

Just wondering. Hypothetically of course….

But sometimes it doesn’t hurt to be reminded. Surfing some scrapbooking sites last night I ran across this too very true reflection on motherhood. I love her sister’s quote:

“Value yourself for this. It earns no worldly acclaim, no financial gain; sometimes you will see no immediate reward. Have faith in your worth as a woman.” Being a mother has been the greatest task that I have ever attempted to do. I’m not prefect by any means, but I realize that all I have to do is try to be the best mother I can and my children will love me for it. Being a Mother is my Greatest Joy. "

what she said. ; )   and some pics of one of nine reasons I get up in the morning and do it all over again:

Found this today. I love it! 

…tagged for the Thinking Blogger Award apparently lol. Thanks to Rebecca and the good folks at Knotty Pines! 

If you get tagged with a Thinking Blogger Award, you are then supposed to do the following:

1. Write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think.
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote.

Do you suppose it reflects poorly on one’s thinking ability when one cannot seem to upload the Thinking Blogger icon clearly? Sigh……

Here is the post for which Rebecca tagged me. 

Some blogs that have me thinking lately are:

Sara’s post on Transforming from Walk Slowly, Live Wildly is awesome as is everything I am reading here lately.

The CM Blog has bitesized pieces of Charlotte Mason’s Six Volume series. This section is on Habit which is a particular interest of mine right now.

I have thought long and hard about implementing a morning time routine like the one described so well at Dominion Family.

Alice Cantrell’s site isn’t loading for my browser at this moment but she wrote a lovely post about why it is that vintage homemaking is such a fascinating topic for contemporary women. Alice, where are you?

The Abiblog contains exerpts from vintage books about all sorts of things that make you go hmmm. The one I linked to touches upon the selection of a wife (circa 1897)

There are an awful lot of women who make me think on a regular basis. I do have such a hard time with limiting my choices. <g> 

Y’all are in trouble now. ; )  We have found our way to You Tube.  It would be more appropriate to say Asher deciphered the You Tube directions.  If the Pioneer Woman can upload her rendition of Ethel Merman I figured I could regal you with my favorite teenage pianist’s rendition of William Joseph.  Enjoy! Let me rephrase that: please enjoy despite the fact that I do have the worlds WORST digital camera…It was not tinny sounding in person, nor do we live in darkness lol! Maybe I should say we are LEARNING to YouTube <g>

(And I am tellin’ you right up front, do not bring a beverage with you to the screen when you visit the Pioneer Woman.  There.  Consider yourself informed. It is admittedly a  bit racy, but the most rip-roarin’ good fun I have had in a while. : ))

Save the Earth – have a baby : )   Sound contradictory?  Check out Maureen Wittman’s article to find out why that may not be so crazy after all.  The last Earth Day celebration our family attended was in the mid ’90s.  I had several young homeschoolers and was expecting another baby. It was free and educational so hey, we were there! Before attending this event I was not familiar with the term "zero population". I wandered past the Sierra Club table and saw literature with that phrase displayed. I stopped and read, bewildered. Did it really suggest that the solution to our environmental problems was the elimination of babies? Indeed.   

The man behind the table was pacing and silently counting heads. He looked at my children like they were sucking his air. As the message his organization was presenting sank in I said, "My goodness! We must be your worst nightmare then, huh?" He didn’t say no. In fact what he did say, looking at my belly, was, "It’s not to late to stop!" I try not to think of what he was implying.

His solution to our environmental problems reminds me of those who are ‘eliminating’ birth defects by eliminating handicapped babies in utero. That doesnt solve a problem. We can do better than that.  Maureen’s article has lots of food for thought. I am guessing our clan of 11 is easily more planet friendly than most families of four. We eat out maybe once a year. We make most of our food or buy it as ingredients rather than as packaged products. I drive an ancient van – twice a week. I buy all our clothing second hand and have furnished our home with about 75% thrifted treasures and refurbished hand me downs. We are raising animals suited to foraging in undesirable conditions. We tread lightly on the Earth. Tiptoes even. ; )

I admittedly have little tolerance for Hollywood figures jetting around the world dispensing environmental directives while they sip designer coffee in styrofoam cups, replacing their wardrobes every season, building oversized heated and cooled homes. My feeling is that environmentalism, like charity, begins at home. It begins small. It begins with selfdenial and thriftiness. It begins with phrases like:

Use it up, Wear it out, Make it do, Do without.

My best advice for saving the planet? Stay home. : )  You will use less, spend less, and want less.

This was it no doubt. Our last snowstorm of the season. At least we hope so. <g>  This was Saturday morning. Today the sun is shining down on grass and mud puddles. not a snowflake left in sight!

We have snow in April at the ranch this year. In fact, as Aidan verified earlier today, we have "a whole ruler full!"  In Aidan-ese that translates to a foot, like right out the back door for instance. Yessirree and in April to boot. Needless to say we called it a snow day and they have spent the better part of it pulling each other around on the sleds and having snowball fights. They determined we neeeeed to keep a wether (male goat) this year so they can train it to pull. ; )

Imagine being 12 and in pain caused by an illness of uncertain origins. Imagine being the mother of said 12 yo. Imagine walking past her room and hearing the verses from "How Great Thou Art" floating softly into the hall. "Why are you singing," you ask. "Because there is nothing else to do," she replies. This incident is recalled in Dorcas Smucker’s book, Ordinary Days. She concludes that faith, finally, "consists of trusting when there are no easy answers, singing in the dark because there is nothing else to do, and finding it to be everything."

Some 15 years ago I was laid so low by recurrent illness that more than a few nights were spent propped on the couch wondering what the purpose of it all was. I had just before that been blessed with fervently Christian women who had introduced me to many new ideas. I was charting a new course in life. They had given me recordings of Christian music which filled the air through those long nights. Time slows to a crawl when you are counting every labored breath and it is tempting to wonder why. Also futile. In the end you are left with the choice to rebel or to sing.

Dorcas tells about an afternoon spent reading aloud to that daughter who was painstakingly working her way across her first rows of knitting. Her husband had taken her other children out for the day. She wondered if they would have had that opportunity to just sit, the two of them, had this illness left them any other choices. I know I would not have had hours on end to sit, captive, turning over the words sung by devout souls, thinking over their implications, if there had been anything else to do. Sometimes God does lay us down. Sometimes it isn’t until much later that we recognize those pastures as green.  Faith requires us to sing.

Her book is a delightful collection of essays about a woman whose life is so like mine, and yet so not like mine. It is full of my favorite things – random thoughts and quotes that make you smile such as: "It’s called ‘casserole,’ from which comes the Greek word for ‘Mennonite.’" There are serious reflections interspersed with lighthearted humor. Kind of like life. : ) I found she also has a blogspot and I have bumped it to the top of my ‘things to surf’ list whenever another free moment presents itself. Til then I am happy she wrote in short essays which I can squeeze into stolen bits of time throughout the day.

On a related note – as I come to the end of my lenten blog fast I see Elizabeth has a similar theme here. I wonder if when you talk with a dear friend on a daily basis you begin to think in step?  Or maybe that is how you become dear friends to begin with. <g>  As we find ourselves in the midst of dark nights of indecision I am so grateful for these messages. What is said about friends? "They know the song in your heart and can sing it for you when you forget the words." So sing. : ) If not just for you then for someone you know who cannot remember right now. Faith, and friendship, requires it.

Behold the birds of the heaven, that they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not ye of much more value then they? Mt 6:26

Good morning! Hoping your Easter weekend has been glorious! Ours has been very low-key.  My favorite <g>  As I have maintained over again, I have been a bit of a holiday flunkie in recent months. I have too many ideas to count but have only tapped into a very few of them. This lent has been sweet for all its challenges. We have prayed the Way of the Cross each week. (we are blessed with a looooong hallway in this house so we could display all the stations)  Our Easter dinner will be equally sweet but low key. Since we will be out much of the day we made our ham ahead and potato salad vs mashed.

Moira has been perfecting her bread making skills as you see. She made up some rolls for dinner this time. We made a lemon cake which the kids decorate with candies in the shape of a cross. Every year I remember I wanted to buy a lamb cake tin, every year I make this cake instead since I don’t have it. ; )

The children were also very sweet watching The Greatest Story Ever Told on Friday. Aidan is suddenly very aware of the Passion, having learned to read and devoured a children’s bible reader this year. He was spellbound watching on Friday afternoon and then found a rerun on tv Saturday to watch all over again. He admits he ‘about broke up’ over it. He is a rather sensitive child and it all hit him I guess. As well it should.

It brought to mind our trip to Tucson. As we were wandering around the mission there were two men standing under a painting, I should say gentlemen but the memory of the conversation still stings. The one was expounding about how the burial box and bones of Jesus have definitely been found and quoting all manner of pseudo-experts (coincidentally most of whom seem to be big screen names). I just shook my head in frustration. If that were true then none of this would really matter. There would be no Father God nor a Savior.  There would only be a hoax of the grandest proportions which Christian churches of all denominations have partaken of. Without the cross there is no Christianity, which of course is the reason why these claims resurface every so often.

It brought to mind another story we read where the author asks who is more fortunate, a small child who knows Jesus or an educated, successful man who does not. Looking at Aidan’s face, awestruck and contemplative, I know the answer. I hope your Easter leaves you awestruck as well. I am uploading a few scenes from our Easter prep.