Remember Me

Find a vet and say thank you. It will do you and them a world of good.

In Need of Prayer

I am leaving to see my brother a week from tomorrow. He is having surgery on the 27th and my mother has asked me to go with her. My husband isn't to excited about the whole thing. He is worried that I will get there and not be welcome. He is afraid that thing will turn south and I will be stuck because he won't be able to come rescue me. He hates not being able to rescue me and, because he is my knight in shining armor, he become especially angry if he feels that I am being miss treated.

I am going because this is my brother and I love him. I figure some day in the not too distant future there will be a funeral that we will have to attend together and we need to have some kind of civil relationship if we are going to get through that time. So I keep opening the door and hoping that he will step through. So far he hasn't but I live in hope.

My pastor's wife says take my bible and remember to pray, (a given.) She also recommended reading the 91st Psalm every night. I think I will take her up on that one.

I asked my husband if he really didn't want me to go. I wasn't sure how I would make my excuses, but if he wanted me home I would. He said that he knew that I was stuck between a rock and a hard place and that while he didn't like it, he knew that he had more wiggle room than me. So I'm going. Pray for me.

My Husband Is Not a Happy Camper

It's October and in the next two weeks I have to:

• Get addresses to my sister-in-law for my parents 50th anniversary
• Get the financial stuff pulled together for our monthly church business meeting
• Pull things together for the Budget Meeting
• Finish the Annual Church Survey and get it put into the computer, (some people are not co-operating as well as they should so I will probably have to get that information myself.)
• Start a memory quilt for my parent anniversary gift

Before mid December I will need to get the quilt done; make three bouquets; make three boutonnieres; make at least 50 favors for the guests; Get up to see my mother twice (once to somehow make sure her dress fits without her getting suspicious and once just because she expects us to come once a month and I don't want her to be suspicious;) make a poster telling what life was like in the 50's when they got married; Take care of the RSVP; and Collect the glasses candy bar wrappers and a sundry other things for the wedding. Oh and I will still have to prepare for the regular business meetings at church, get thing ready for tax time, get out twice to see my son at Still water, and do school work with the boys. I think I'll just shoot myself and get it over with. It will be faster and less painful.

I would say that I will be glad when January rolls around so that I can slow down, but that was the same song I was singing about summer. Am I crazy or what?

Is It Awful Of Me To Be Glad My Son's Piano Teacher Callled to Cancel His Lesson?

There are days when the phone never stops ringing; today was one of those days. It was a hectic day to begin with and the phone was ringing off the wall. In the old days before we moved into the new house, I would have let the answering machine get it. I can't do that any more though because for some reason lightening strikes have become much worse now that we have moved to the back of the field, especially over the phone lines. We have lost two answering machines, three modems, a cordless phone, and two Dish receivers since the move. We now always unplug any electronics as soon as we hear thunder, and we have given up on an answering machine all together.

For some reason people seem to think that since I'm home I'm not doing anything and so they tend to call right in the middle of our school time. I try to explain and get off the phone as soon as possible but some times it's from someone needing human contact and they are hard to first, get you to let them go and second, not feel bad about asking them to let you go. Oh well.

Any way, today was one of those days where best laid plans fell totally apart. So at one point when the phone rang I thought "Not again. I'm so far behind already." When I answered it was my son's piano teach calling to say she couldn't do his lesson. She felt awful and was trying to fit him in on another day. I was trying to think of another day that would work. In the end we agreed that maybe it would be better to let it go for this week and just come next week.

I got off the phone doing the happy dance because it gave me breathing room. My son on the other hand was disapointed so I felt bad. It got a little better when I told him that his teacher said that I could let him learn a couple of new songs this week. Still, on one hand I really was glad not to have to go; on the other hand I felt bad for being glad. And we wonder why the bible says a double minded man is unstable in all his ways.

A sad but true comentary on my life. I'm off to the dentist to have a loose filling replaced tomorrow wish me luck. I'm not sure I'll feel like writing.

My Brother is Making Me Crazy

My parents are having their 50th wedding anniversary soon and my brother and I planned to do something for them. Some how this has become the celebration that at Chicago. Not only that, but my brother and his wife have almost totally cut me out of any of the decisions. It is somehow becoming this fancy big dollar affair which we have no say in but are expected to pay half of.

Well that isn't true. My sister-in-law told me that we didn't have to pay for any of it; that she and my brother were planning to take out a loan to pay for it. We didn't need to worry if we couldn't afford it. When I told this to my husband he became more angry than I have seen him in a long time. The only thing he would say though was "Oh they'll get their money or we'll never here the end of it."

Yesterday I told my husband that I was planning to get a job for the Christmas season so that we wouldn't have to worry about it. To phrase it the way the boys would, "That met with real success, (not!)" He managed to maintain his patients with me, (this is a sore spot with him right now,) and told me that I wouldn't be able to do all that I have on my plate and work too. That he would take care of it.

I don't know what his plan is because when I say I don't under stand how we'll be able to afford it without taking out a loan ourselves (who takes out a loan to pay for a party?) all he'll tell me is that, that is because I don't understand what he is going to do but that I will. Men can be so frustrating at times. The one thing I'm glad of in a way is that I'm not my brother because he is not my husband's favorite person at the moment.

On the other hand he is my brother. I do love him. I hate being the rope in a tug of war game and I most especially hate trying to maintain peace between the two of them.

Wow Has it Been That Long?

I was just looking at when I had last posted. I can't believe it has been that long. My husband will be impressed that I have managed to keep my mouth shut for so long.


I haven't forgotten this site. Neither is it that I don't have much to say. (Of course not, it me right?) It's just that with back to school and ever other thing that is trying to pull me in all the different directions of a compass I haven't had the time to sit here and right. Not to mention that every time I try to sit here and do it someone else needs the computer. I will try to be more diligent.


My mother wanted to go out to see my son at OSU and asked if I would go with her today. I agreed without thinking about the fact that this week was a business meeting week at church. So I was stuck. I talked with our pastor and explained what had happened. I told him that I could have everything ready but I couldn't be there. He said basically "Go, don't worry about it. Not much is going to happen anyway." So I have been working like a crazy person to get it ready on time.


I have to go over today and make copies of all the stuff and staple them together and I'll be done. I'm waiting to do that until I get a call from my mother so I don't miss it. I'll call her here in a minute if she doesn't call me soon. That way I can get it done and be ready when she gets here.


I told my husband that I couldn't imagine what I was thinking when I agreed to go today. I knew that I had this meeting coming up. He said I was thinking I was a regular person who didn't have all this weight on my shoulders and all these people pulling at me. Hmmmm, I guess he's hinting that I need to lay down part of the load. I'll have to think that one through.


The truth is that I wasn't thinking at all. She asked me to come with her and I said yes. She rarely asks me to do anything for her and this sounded like such fun mother daughter time. We rarely get any of that any more. With my husband being in the military we have always lived so far away. Now that he is retired his new job keeps him hopping and the boys are older so their schedules aren't very accommodating. I guess I just thought about time with her and never considered my other responsibilities.


But we've got it all handled and it's all good.

Rain, Rain

It rained all night long. Boy did we need it. We rarely ever just have showers around here; it always comes with a lot of thunder and lightening. It got bad enough that it woke me last night. All I could do was thank the Lord for sending it and roll back over and go to sleep. I know it means we'll have to mow the lawn again but that's what boys are for.

New Names

For some time now I have been thinking that the boys deserved better names than my oldest, my second oldest, and so on. I didn't want to use their names because you never know who might read these things and they do deserve their privacy. So after much thought I have decided to name them after characters in the Three Musketeers because there are four and because in a very loose way it sort of fits. My eldest will be Athos, who was the father figure of the novel. My second eldest will be Porthos who was the fun loving one. My second youngest will be named after Aramis who loved to chase after intrigue and adventure. Finally my youngest will be named after d'Artagnan who was also the youngest and most naive.

I think this will help make them more personal and yet still respect their privacy. Now there's only one more question; what to name my husband?

Here, Have Some Beans

I love beans and not just because the are cheap and taste good. For more than 15 years now I have used them very successfully as math manipulative's. We've used them for counting and for adding. I've made bean sticks to teach the boys how to carry. Now I am using them once again to teach multiplication.

Multiplication can be a difficult concept to understand. Yes it's a short cut to addition, but if you think about it, it's a rather complicated series of maneuvers that we do thoughtlessly once we know the process but in the beginning are difficult to remember and think through. This is where the beans come in. I can say "If I give you two beans two times how many beans do you have?"

After completing the first 10 digit problem together he was off and running on his own without my help. I checked his work as he went along but he had a decidedly Please mom I'd rather do it myself attitude. And he was having fun. How cool is that?

I may appear as if I am schooling out of the 1800s sometimes, but as I told the guy who said he couldn't understand how it could work as he watched me thump watermelons, "Neither can I but you can't argue with success." Besides, when your from a rural southern tradition beans are the perfect manipulative because you always have some around.

Back Home Again

We are back from our trip to OSU. After two days our son is safely installed in his dorm room. He has a microwave. His roommate has a refrigerator. It's a small refrigerator and my son wasn't sure that his roommate would allow him to use it, but I explained that he would want to have access to the microwave so he would let our son use the refrigerator. We picked him up a cell phone (important to us,) and food (important to him.) We also picked up a book case for $20.00 dollars at Big Lots. We put that in his closet and stored all his food in it. The beds where lower than my husband or son thought so he did need the bed lifters.

There is actually more storage in his room than I was led to believe. One ten foot wall is all closets and two dressers and over the top over them are cupboards for storage. It is rather hard to get to so he wont want to store anything there that he would want ready access to. Still it would be good for storing luggage and other things he only needs once in a while. Things he wants access to all the time will need to be in the closet, drawers, or under his bed.


He still needs a printer but said that he could use the one at the library till he gets one. I'm not sure where we would put one though. His desk is rather small and his computer takes up almost all of it. There is only one small drawer on his desk. The rest of the space is taken up by a bookcase on the side of his desk closet to his bed. I thought we might put a printer there but the more I think about it the more I'm sure it won't fit even if it is small.

There is a shelf that runs the length of the other 10 foot wall over the beds and desks but there isn't enough room for a normal sized textbook let alone a printer. It's wide enough to set his speakers for his computer and that's it. If he had a laptop that would free up space for a printer, but any laptop we could afford wouldn't cut it for his engineering classes. We would need well over $1,000.00. With all the other expenses we couldn't justify it; not when he already had an excellent PC. Besides he is always tinkering with his PC to upgrade it. The guys say that it is difficult to do that with a laptop. It wouldn't be long before it wouldn't meet his needs any more.

He had to go to a meeting at the engineering college while we were unpacking. When he came back he was excited for the first time in months. He has worried so much over the finances of it all that it was nice to see. They talked about different projects that the engineering school was working on. He came back with tales of Mars airplanes, competitions, places people have been fired. He was like a kid in a candy shop. He was also told that if he took one more class he could have a double major; one in Aerospace engineering and one in mechanical engineering. I think he is seriously considering it.

Right now we are working on his resume. Can you believe it? He's only a Junior. He needs one to get an internship on get into the cooperative program though. He really wants to do one or both of these. It will help him to earn money for school and work in engineering at the same time. Plus it will look good on his resume when he finishes college and is looking to get work.

Menopause Stinks

I think I have started to have hot flashes. And of course it would be happening at the hottest period we've had all year. It started all of a sudden about a week and a half ago. I get so hot I thought I was going to be sick. I had to leave the sanctuary, which is unusual for me so two people came out to check on me during church and several after the service. All I could say was that I just got too hot.

Every sence I have been miserable. I don't sleep well at night because I wake up way to hot and have to kick off the covers and then I wake up again freezing (my husband has turned up the air in an attempt to help me,) and have to pull the covers back up again. By morning I am exhausted.

My Grandmother was right, it's hard getting old.

Finally

OSU is finally listening to us. They have corrected my son's Bursar account and so we are poorer in pocket but richer in peace. Who would ever have thought it would be so hard to give money back? We now stand were we where originally, with my son quallifiying for a Stafford Loan.

My husband was asking me yesterday if we be able to put money directly into our sons account with OSU and for once I got to be the techno geek with the answers. How Cool is that? Oh, and the answer is yes we can, we have our own password and everything. He laughed and asked "Can we take money out?" I put on my firm maternal don't even think it face and said NO. He laughed all the more. And people wonder where my boys get it from.

Can You Ever Have Too Much Money

That's the question that we have been having to ask ourselves for six weeks now and the answer is yes. The bad part is that the people at the college are treating us as if we are crazy. We sent in our paper work for our son's fasfa but when we took the paper work in to prove our income the college finance took one look at my husbands disability income and corrected it in our favor because they felt we had made a mistake.

I can understand why they felt we had made an error because the letter does make it appear that we had less income than we really did. For this reason they are trying to give us not only a full pell grant, but something called a smart grant. The criteria for a Smart Grant are:

1. That you qualify for a pell grant.

2. That you make a grade point average of 3.o or more.

3. That you be a third year student.

4. That you major in one of the engineering, science, or math fields.

This grant is worth over 4,000 dollars and the pell grant is worth over 2,000. We sure could use it. Between that and the money we already have, it would totally pay for his schooling; if it were our money to spend. But it's not. Every time we try to correct it they ignore us and act like we are insane because we keep trying to get rid of this money.

We are at a point were we are so frustrated that we would like to say fine then we'll keep it but what would we be teaching our children? Besides the bible say not to grow weary of doing good and that our sin is sure to find us out. How could we keep it? On the other hand we are fast approaching a point where we wont have a choice. They have already dumped the money in his bursar account. While our son has to tell the school if he is willing to accept a loan or scholarship he has no choice where grants are concerned. If they say he qualifies he has to accept it.

On the other hand when they finally realize that he doesn't get the money then they will want it back. So we have to just let the money sit in his account and somehow not let them spend it. Mean while my very Type A son is starting to bounce off the walls in frustration. Some days I'm ready for a rubber room myself. Who ever thought that trying to do the right thing by giving money back would be so hard.

Two More Days Until We Start School

I seriously thought about putting it off another week. I just don't feel like I've got it all together. I've been tweeking schedules, looking through our books, downloading things from the net, and checking to see that my plan meets my objectives. Add to that the craziness that has been going on trying to get things pulled together for my son to get transferred over to OSU, plus the fact that we will be gone Friday so that we can get his stuff over to Stillwater and into his dorm. Right about now I could use a vacation.

Funny thing is here we stand just two days till school starts and everything is beginning to fall in place of its own accord. It can only be the Lord's hand. How else is it that a text book that I ordered and was told two days ago would not be available until the end of next week should arrive today. Today I also found a book that I had needed to buy but couldn't afford on the net for free. It's an older version but I don't care, there's not that much difference between the two editions. It's like that old saying "The Lord is never early, but he's always right on time."

Isn't it funny how He cares about even the little things. Sometimes I find myself saying to myself, Oh it's not important enough to pray about. Suck it up. But God is our Father and just like I want to hear about even the seemingly unimportant thing from my boys, so He wants to hear from us. Imagine if your husband came home day after day and sat in the same room with you, at the food you place before him, wore the clothes and slept in the bed that you prepared for him. Imagine that he took all that you offered but never once talked to you let alone said thank you. I think that must be how God feels sometimes.

I feel such joy when my husband praises me. He feels the same when I praise him. I want to know about his day and he wants to know about mine even if it just goofy things. If we are the bride for Christ, and we are, then doesn't it make sense that God feels the same way about us? If we are going to spend an eternity with Him than maybe we should start working on getting to know Him here and know and that starts with prayer even over the little things.

Doing the Homeschool Count Down.

Only five more days until we start school. I'm still shy a couple of books that aren't in yet. One is for my son's High School foreign Language and the other if for his history. He changed his mind on what Language he was going to take because while the idea of studying Farsi sounded good in the short term; it's so different from English that it was difficult. At that point he tried to sell me on studying British English as his foreign language but I wasn't biting. Finally he settled on German, but that has put us behind. As for the history book, it's supplemental so it isn't critical.

Still I thought about putting it off one more week because of that and the fact that we have to head to Stillwater on Friday but decided not too. I think I can go a couple of week with what we have without too much trouble. The boys will like the slightly slower start and I probably will too.

More OSU and Homeschool Stuff

We've been getting a lot of OSU related letters this last week. My son has told me to open any of them and call him to tell him what they are about. Isn't it funny how different kids are? If I were to open any of my second son's mail he would have a cow, my eldest wants me too so I can sift though what's important and what's not. Strange how two children raised in the same family can be so different.

Any way, he's been getting letters from the Bursar (Latin for "the keeper of the purse" they are the ones sending him his bills,) the engineering department, Residential Life (about his dorm, roommate, and food plan,) and the BCM (Baptist Collegiate Ministries.) He also has been getting letters from the First Baptist Church at Stillwater. There are several Baptist churches in Stillwater; two of them fairly close. One of these is First Baptist Church and the other is University Heights.

Our pastors wife went to University Heights so I had a good feeling about it which grew after I had checked out their web site. It has the added advantage that it is very close. She had told me about First Baptist as, well but she had only been there once. She said they had a good worship service but that they were a little further away and he would have to drive to service. I couldn't find a web site so I wasn't sure what to think about them. Well we got a second letter from them and guess what they have a brand new web site. It's not finished yet but it's coming along.

I called my son to tell them that they had sent him another letter and seemed to really want him to attend. I gave him their web site http://www.fbcstw.com/ so that he could check them out. The first thing he did was go to their Belief section to see where they stood. (Most boys would have started and stopped with the Wednesday Menu and the college section, but not my son.) The next thing I hear over the phone is "Oh... they support both the Southern Baptist Convention and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. Hmmmm... they follow the 1963 Baptist Faith and Message." Coming to the Baptist Church from a Catholic background the first part didn't mean a whole lot to me. All I cared about when I joined was do their follow what I understand the Bible to be saying. Hearing the second part though my first thought was Older = more conservative and said as much to my son.

At that point my son gave me a short lesson in the Southern Baptist Church and why that was wrong. So to make a long story short He has decided that they are probably a little more liberal than we are. That doesn't bode well for them as he tends to be even more conservative than I am. Still he may give them a chance, he is fair to a fault. Right now though he seems to be leaning toward University Heights. On the other hand, all this is based on things we have heard and what we have seen from their respective web sites so all bets may be off when he starts attending services in the area. Oh, out of fairness here is the University Heights Site http://www.uheights.org/

Home School lesson planning is going well I have planned through to the middle of the year for everything and all they way through for a few thing. Still this is very fluid. Stuff happens and changes tend to need to be made at the blink of an eye. If my husband ends up in the hospital again then all bets are off. In those times we flip to a schedule that only includes the bare minimum and put the rest off till later.

Normally, if it was in a lesson plan book, I would only plan two week into the future to so that making changes would be easier. This year I am doing something different. I have made a Sonlight type schedule that I have put in the computer and will print out a week at a time. This I will use as a checklist for my sons. The oldest still homeschooling will be able to handle this by himself. The youngest will need my help. That's OK though because if it works then next year he may be able to handle a lot of it by himself and the year after that it will be easy for him. By keeping it in the computer and only printing out a little at a time, making changes will be easy. I can just go in and cut and past to get things where they need to be. I have also geared in an optional week at the end of every trimester. We can use these if we need to, to catch up without destroying the schedule too much.

This is a new way of doing thing so I expect bumps in the road. Still I think it will be good to make my second youngest more responsible for his schedule at this point. He only has a few years before college and I need him to understand how to do it before then. I have a nephew who didn't know how to handle the responsibility and he ended up totally blowing his first year. I don't want to see that happen to my boys. It's so hard to pull your grade point average up after that and a lot of times those kids will just quit instead. We'll see if this works.

How to Homeschool in 152 Easy Lessons

Over at homeschoolblogger they are having a homeschool open house, Now I know that not everyone is interested in homeschooling but I am so I was tickled to see this. Check it out at
http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/Tiany/366106/ if you want to see how it's done. Well actually there is no one way to do homeschooling. As a matter of fact I have come to believe that there are as many ways to homeschool as there are parents doing it.

The thing that really opened my eyes is how young some of these families are. I guess it's a sign of my age but I have gone along for years thinking that I was the norm and that most others were like me. Excuse the Okie hillbilly in me but it ain't so. As I read the different people's blogs I began to feel old indeed. I couldn't help remember the surprise of the leader of one of the class I took at the local homeschool convention this year when, after asking how long each family had been homeschooling she got to me and heard that I had been at this for 15 years now. The first thing out of her mouth was "You should be teaching this class not me."

I couldn't understand at the time because I really enjoy the classes and the ideas I get from them; they fire me up for another year. Plus I really did believe that there where numerous others just like me. Now I'm not so sure. I know I started homeschooling in the early days when things were a lot harder than they are now, but so did a lot of others. Surely they haven't all dropped out. Surely not all their children are grown. I know there are second generation homeschoolers out there now. Surely there are still some old timers around too.

On the other hand, lets be honest I will be nearly 60 when my youngest finishes high school. Then I will be the old hand of the bunch. I'll be able to stand around and say "I remember when we didn't have classrooms and co-ops. We had to walk two miles uphill both ways to and from the dinning room table in three feet of snow just to be able to do class." Until then I've decided to be young and continue to learn and glean from other's experiences.

Check you the site. It truly is interesting even if you don't homeschool. It's fun to see how someone can homeschool 9 children at the same time. I wondered at times how we accomplished anything with just 4, these women are amazing.

More OSU Prep Stuff

My husband was late coming home today. When he got here he was carrying socks and underwear for himself and a microwave, t-shirts, and gym shorts for our eldest. My second eldest thought we had finally lost our mind when he saw it, but the microwave is a good idea. We had our eldest pick a rather lean meal plan because:

1. College students tend skip meals, or they buy a bag of chips and call it a meal rather than eating at the dinning facility. (I survived a whole semester on Doritos and picante sauce. What a waste of my parents money.)
2. He can feed himself cheaper than he can eat on campus. (His roommate is bringing a regrigerator, so add a hot pot on top of the other two and they have a pretty good little mini kitchen going.)
3. If all else fails and he eats more than we thought we can put more money for his dinning card without having to pay a penalty.

My second eldest gave the t-shirts and shorts a once over and I said "I figure with a roommate this is better than sleeping in underwear since he's not family." My son happened to have a friend spending the night who looked at the two of us rather funny as I explained this. At which point my son told him "Not me, my brother." His friend look rather grateful as he said "Oh, well, that makes sense."

Only two weeks left. My eldest is kind of scared. To be honest so am I. I know fear is a lack of faith but there are so many unknowns. Will we be able to afford to get him all the way through? Will he continue to do well? Will he continue in his faith? Is he going to be able to get a job? Will I ever see him again?

It's funny in so many ways I am so proud of the man he is becoming. On the other hand when ever I look at him I tend to see that day when the Doctor handed him to me as this tiny little bundle. It's so weird. Where did all the time go?

Menu Planning

My boys hate it when I plan my menus. Not because I fix awful things they won't like, but because they know they are going to hear the same thing. "Don't eat that I need it for..." Now not everything is off limits, but some things are so they need to check first.

Today it was the soda. That should have been a no brainer because we rarely have soda in the house and then normally only when I have a plan for it. Today I had two renegades who saw the soda and decided to drink it without talking to me. One was my son, the other was my husband. My son had gotten in trouble when I caught him with a glass of soda earlier that day so when he saw my husband making the same mistake I heard from the next room; "Ooooh Daaaaad, Mama is going to get you."

My trouble senses went into overdrive and I came in to find out what was going on. When my husband saw the look on my face he said "It's ok I'll get you more." I hope so or we will be short one meal, then he will have to listen to me muttering about how I had planned to make cola chicken but can't because everyone kept drinking the soda. Any way the next two weeks are planned out and the groceries are bought. Short of bread, milk and another bottle of soda, we should be alright.

I've actually been making our bread over the last two weeks. I'm really not sure we are coming out ahead though. Loaf for loaf I can make it cheaper than I can buy it. The problem comes in that they tend to go through a two pound loaf a day when I make it where as a store bought 24 oz. loaf of store bought bread will last three days. If you asked they would say that they just like bread, that it didn't matter if it was store bought or not. But I'm the one buying it or making it and they definitely go through more of the homemade.

The same is true of cookies. I had a friend say once that she didn't make cookies because since we have the Little Debbie's Thrift shop close by, it is cheaper than making homemade and her kids liked them just as well. My first thought was that's not right, but I asked my boys and they said that they didn't care either. My feelings where more than a little hurt and I stopped making cookies and started just getting stuff from the thrift shop. Then one day we were out so I decided to make cookies for the boys. It was then that I noticed that they ate a lot more of the homemade things. At that point I knew the real truth.

Do I still buy things from the thrift shop? Sure, but I know that they will never take the place of the thing I make at home. So now they are the exception and not the rule.

I'm a New Foster Mom

We have just become the proud foster parents to a new calf I thought it might be nice for every one to see. He really is kind of cute. If you click on it you can get a closer look. Don't cows have the prettiest eyes? If only I had those lashes.

We are also the new foster parents to three kittens. They belong to our outside cat. She lost one and was in the midst of having the others when we rescued them and her and brought them all into the house. She's not a house cat and doesn't quite know what to make of sharing the house with us, but she is tolerating us nicely for the time being.

Lastly my son has hear from his new roommate. His last one ended up going to Mo. State at Rolla. This one could be nice too. He's a freshman and a history ed. major. Oh and his mom nags as much as I do. That's about all I know. Pray that it works out.

I Think My Youngest is Ment For the Stage

Today was the last day of VBS. We had our program for the adults and my kids (5th and 6th grade) made me cry. Well in a good way they made me cry. They had a signed song and they did a beautiful job. Even the young man who had me on my knees a fair part of the week made me proud.

I really took the class with trepidation. I had always taken the 3rd and 4th grade. I had let it be know that if I was needed elsewhere I would go, but I always seemed to end up back at the 3rd and 4th grade. Last year the woman who had the 5th and 6th grade had a very difficult time. This year she decided that she should take a different class and asked for mine. So I was asked to take hers. I agreed if they would get a man to take the class with me. They did and things went really well. I was surprised because I expected to have the same problems that there had been over the past few years but things went as smoothly as they normally do.

For some reason the Lord tends to send me pretty good kids. I guess He figures that if He's going to get me to teach He's going to have to help me as much as possible. Also, while that age tends to be one in which they boys especially start to act out, have a man in the class room really helps. While the boys may not be willing to listen to me, they will still listen to a man to a certain degree. That helps to waylay the problems somewhat. Any way the class went well and we even ended up with a new member for our youth group when it was done. All of which has nothing to do with my title. That comes from the final program.

My youngest was in the 1st and 2nd grade class when they got up to do their part of the program he was ready. He was on the top row of the risers and when their songs started he sang out and really got into the motions that went with them. He had everyone rolling in the isles when he was done. He was so funny.

He's really impressing his piano teacher too. She tends to be on the nervous side but he isn't bothering her at all anymore. Now when he plunks around on the piano trying out different cords she encourages him. When he plays a song by ear that he has figured out she shows him the cords that go with it. This week while the two of us where talking she noticed that in his boredom he started playing a five finger C scale exercise. The thing is that he was playing it with both hands in contrary motion. so she taught to do the whole C scale that way. He's as squirmy as he ever was but she thinks he's wonderful. With my being gone to Stillwater for two day and having VBS he hasn't been able to practice the way he should. He only missed one day but the rest of the time when I've practiced with him we pushed to get through it as fast as possible and when my husband practices with our son he never corrects him. I explained all this to his teacher and apologized but she thought he was doing superbly.

Once a month my husband takes him to his practices. The last time he did she asked if our son was tired of it yet. My husband said no that he really enjoyed it. She got really excited to hear that. We started this because he wanted to play. We didn't know how long it would last, still don't as a matter of fact but thought we would take it as far as we could. I don't want to push him till he hates it but I did want him to learn properly. She thinks he has talent though and is working to develop it. I'm beginning to wonder if this isn't a talent the Lord intends to use. He loves preforming. Not in a show offy kind of a way, but rather in a isn't this a blast kind of way. He loves getting on the piano and trying out new cords and runs. He enjoys showing others the new stuff he has come up with. He wants people to listen to his practices. It is so strange. On the other hand while it sounds concieted I think I see the Lords hand at work in it. Only time will tell. We'll just have to wait and see.

What A Week

Have you ever had one of those weeks where just one thing after another gets piled on top of you? This week I've had New Student Orientation with my son at OSU. Business stuff for the church that in ignorance I messed up and now have to get straightened out. And last but not least VBS. I am tired in a major way.

This was the first year that OSU had new student orientation for it's transfer students and my son was grumbling about it. His thinking was I've been doing this for several years now why should I go to new student orientation. But they had set this up for specifically transfer students, so it wasn't on a freshman level. They talked to them about how OSU did things and why classes did or didn't transfer and what available and expected of them at this level. It really worked out well and when they were done we were both glad we came.

I know that in this day and age, at this level, education is a money making business. On the other hand OSU is really trying hard to provide a good product. They want to be known, at least on the engineering side of the house, for providing the students who are eagerly snatched up by the business community due to their abilities. They advised the students coming into the engineering college that "Most students think that they should work on their resumes in their senior year but we want you to work on them now. You will use them not just to get jobs, but to get internships as well. We want you to leave here with not just one internship but rather two to three. This will help make you valuable to the job market."

Not only that but they also have a co-operative program with certain companies where you maintain your status as a full time student while you do three semesters working full time over a two year period. This is important to us because he could use the money but he needs to be a full time student for health and car insurance purposes. Not only that but it gives him a leg up in the job market. Most companies want to hire their co-op students after they finish school and will start their benefit package out as if they have been an employee for a year. If for some reason you choose not to go to work for them then on your resume you get to list not only your education and internships but a years employment as an engineer. Plus, as long as you turn your paper work in to your instructor on time, it's an easy A. As Martha Stewart would say "A's, their a good thing."

VBS is a mad house. I have had one student for three years in my 3rd and 4th grade VBS class. He must have fluncked some where along the way because Belle, our VBS director said that he and another boy actually still belonged in the 3rd and 4th grad class but that she took one look at some of the other boys in that class and decided to let the two of them go to mine, (5th and 6th.) One boy is a little slow and so struggles with the work but he is a good kid. The other though is very ADHD and is desperatly craving attention. I wish in a certain way that I just had him, I think it would help him to have one on one attention. The reality though is that I have a class full of students, slow ones, bright one, and others who craving the attention they don't get at home as well. It's hard to meet the needs of them all. He needs the attention desperately though. When he doesn't get as much as he wants he begins acting out and becomes very disruptive. Pray for him, and for me that I can find a way to meet his need.

Finally, Pray for my husband. Not much gets done around here during VBS. The house doesn't get cleaned, meals are catch as catch can. My husband is a good guy though and puts up with it in good nature. The last couple of years he has been as involved as I am. I guess it's an if you can't beat 'em, join 'em attitude. Still he diserves better than bologna or scranbled eggs for dinner.

Well I've got to go. In truth I really didn't have the time to sit and write this but I didn't want people worrying about me for being gone too long. Friday is the last day of VBS, hopefully I have more time after that. Wishfull thinking I know, but still.....

It Never Rains, But it Pours

Some times life is so hard. It seems for a little while as if you are making progress in your walk and then "BAMM" out of no where the awful things of life just seem to slam their way in. You get so swamped by everything coming at you at once. You struggle to swim but the waves get so high and you end up failing miserably. That's where I'm at now.

I know that the Lord doesn't expect perfection. If we could achieve perfection we would have no need for a Savior. All He expects is faith. Still I hate it when I fail. I have this image in my head of reaching heaven and the Lord just sighing and shaking His head as He motions for me to come in. I want Him to smile when He sees me. It hurts to think I let Him down.

The College Tranfer Blues

For the past few weeks we have been trying to get our son transferred over to OSU. He wanted to wait until he had finished this last semester and got his grades in because he was trying to get a merit transfer scholarship. He did in fact get one but not the one he wanted. He missed it by 0.03 points. That is kind of eating at him because he was so close and the extra money would be nice, but the truth is that he did the best he could do and you can't ask for more than that. But he's a lot like me in that he can be a bit of a perfectionist and tends to get into the if onlys if I don't watch him.

We have been filling out paper work (fun times in the big city,) writing essays, choosing dorms and trying to figure out how to pay for it all. I went through a bad patch where I had my stomach tied up in knots of the last of the list. With two boys in college we are pushing ourselves to the limit financially. Still, I finally got smart and took it to the Lord and things got better. Not that the facts have changed but I'm taking it one day at a time and trusting that the Lord will do what is best for my son.

It's a good thing too because right about the time I got my head clear, I got a midnight call from my son who was having a major melt down about all the things I was worried about plus a few that I wasn't. I told him that he didn't have to worry about them not transferring classes because they had already accepted his transcript and said which classes they would accept. As far as how much it was going to cost, all we could worry about without going crazy was this semester and this semester we had the money. Next semester we would worry about next semester. We would either have the money or we wouldn't. If we didn't we would decide what to do then. If we did then we wouldn't need to worry. The truth is we don't know what the future will bring. He could get sick and not be able to attend classes for all we know. There is no since in worrying about the what ifs until they happen.

I'm getting nervous about sending my son off because, while he has been very level headed thus far, this will be the first time that he has been off on his own. He asked me to ask our pastors wife about churches in the area, (she graduated from OSU.) She named off a couple that were close; one within walking distance. I figure if I get him involved in the BCM and a good church that will help a lot. He has also asked to be put in an all male engineering dorm. Hopefully that will get him away from the partying crowd and get him more studious friends. No guarantee, but I'm hoping. Mike wants him to get involved in any engineering groups that are available because he says it will help him get a job. My parent's neighbor, who did the Mars Lander project for NASA told him to be sure to try to get an internship during his senior year. Their neighbor said that if he can swing one with NASA it will give him an in after he graduates.

But today we work on getting in, making it to his new student orientation, getting the right classes, getting a dorm, finding a good church, and making good grades. The rest we rest we leave for later. Half the things we worry about never happen and most of the other half aren't as bad as we think they will be. We'll take care of them as they come up.

What a Week End!

It has been two or three months since I have been able to go up to see my mother. That doesn't mean I've had no contact with her, we've talked on the phone and over the Internet, we met them at Grove and spent a day with them, They have even come down here once. But, because I have three nearly adult boys to coordinate live with, we haven't been able to get up to their house. And she was starting to do the, "You never come to see me no more" thing.

I finally arranged to get it done though we hit a few snags along the way. So we get there and after only one day away from home I get a call from a friend to tell me that two of our older friends had died during the night and a third had shot and killed an intruder that had broken into his home during the night. My first thought was I have only been gone a day, how could this happen?

I couldn't leave my mother's in time to get back so I missed one of the funerals. I hate that because his family was so good to us when my father was in Viet Nam. If my mother needed anything, he and his wife where there. The night my mother got news that my father had been wounded he and Mary came and stayed all night. He was just a simple, old fashioned country boy, but he was good people and I liked him.

I guess he liked me pretty well too because one day he came to my father when I was about 14 or 15 and tried to arrange a marriage between one of his sons and me. My father recover fairly quickly and said "Wayne, I don't even let her date yet. Don't you think this is a little soon?" When my husband retired from the Army and came back to look for a place for us, Wayne couldn't help but brag about how I had nearly married his son. I couldn't understand where he had gotten that from until my father enlightened me about Wayne's attempted marriage arrangement. Wayne could be a little territorial. I guess that was his way of telling my husband that I belonged to them before I belonged to him and that he had better take care of me. I'm going to miss him.

The other friend who died was Edward. He was older and had been sick for a long time. He was a good, strong Christian and was ready to go. His biggest worry was his church. He had been the pastor there for years, even when he felt that some one else should take over the responsibility. He had gotten someone to help preach every other Sunday, but it was a little bitty church and it's so hard to get pastors for small churches. A few years ago his grandson, who had been a bit wild during his high school days, got saved and a couple of years ago he felt called to the ministry. So for the past year he has been leading the church. Now the church which was graying and dieing has started to grow. I'm glad Edward got to see that before he died. I know it was a blessing to him.

The last incident involves an older gentleman who was a friend of my husband. He had been robbed two nights in a row and on the third night they came back to do it again. I don't know if they had gotten braver or for some reason just didn't know that he was there this time. Anyway he was home when they broke in and he shot and killed one of them.

He had been selling fireworks to help raise money for the Senior Center. That was what they had taken the first two nights. Everyone thinks that that was what they were after on the third night but he really didn't have much left. Maybe they thought he would replace the fireworks but he really couldn't afford to. The kids were in high school; the boy who died was a junior. There are no winners in this situation; not the boys who were so foolish, not family of the boy who died, not even the man who shot boy. He only wanted to frighten them and now he will have to live with that boy's death the rest of his life.

That's an awful lot of sadness for one 24 hour period, especially in a town our size. Pray for these families, they will need it.

Make My Life A Prayer

I love music and the Lord knows that so sometimes he uses music to touch my heart and call me closer to him. The bible says he sings over us. That brings to mind a mother comforting her child or a suitor wooing his beloved.

This was one of those day when the Lord used music to touch my hardening hear and call me back to my First Love. This is the song he used.

Make My Life A Prayer To You

Make my life a prayer to you
I wanna do what you want me to
No empty words and no white lies
No token prayers no compromise

I wanna shine the light you gave
Thru your son you sent to save us
From ourselves and our despair
It comforts me to know you’re really there

Chorus
Well I wanna thank you now
For being patient with me
Oh its so hard to see
When my eyes are on me
I guess Ill have to trust
And just believe what you say
Oh you’re coming again
Coming to take me away

I wanna die and let you give
Your life to me so I might live
And share the hope you gave me
The love that set me free

I wanna tell the world out there
You’re not some fable or fairy tale
That I’ve made up inside my head
You’re God the son, you’ve risen from the dead

Chorus

I wanna die and let you give
Your life to me so I might live
And share the hope you gave me
I wanna share the love that set me free

Keith Green

The Hay Is Gone

It was cut over the weekend and bailed Monday. I really wanted to take a picture of it before they pulled it out of the field but I got busy getting ready for the business meeting at church. By the time we came home Wednesday after the business meeting the hay truck was loaded and on the way out our drive. Oh well maybe next year. Honestly, it probably only looked pretty to a country girl.

We got good rain this year so the field produced 127 square bales. Not bad for 3 1/2 acres. We need to get out and take care of the other field. It's 4 acres and we could probably have produced close to 300 bales if we had had that one as well. We have a friend who has a licence to spray so we wouldn't have to worry about getting one ourselves. My husband hasn't felt it was worth the trouble but after this cutting I think he's ready to change his mind.

My boys had bought me two Pear trees for mother's day. They made a mistake and purchased one that was an ornamental pear. When they read small fruit they thought it meant smaller than regular, they didn't realize that it meant pea size. But it flowers beautifully when it matures so I wasn't disappointed at all. The problem is that the one that the puppies got hold of so now it is looking rather sickly.

My eldest while he was here was working valiantly to try to save it for me. My husband has been helping me since. I have my doubts that it will pull through though. My husband refuses to give up because he knows how much I wanted it. He say "You never know. Wait until spring to see what it does. It may pull through, and even when they look dead sometimes they aren't." He's so sweet. If it dies he will still go out and water it in the hope that a miracle will happen before spring. Then he will come home with a new one just to see me smile. How cool is that.

The new lawn mower has arrived and already had a good workout. I'll get my husband or son to help me post some pictures of it. I know a lawn mower, so what? Well it comes with shot of my son driving it. He's a good looking fella so it will be better.

Well I'd better go I need to get ready for math. I promised my youngest that we would make play dough when he finish so he should make record speed today.

What is wrong with Women?

Saturday I went to a homeschool convention in our area put on by the Arkansas Education Alliance. It was the first year they had put one on in our area so it was kind of small but I really enjoyed it. The Key note speaker was Todd Wilson who runs Familyman Ministries. He was speaking on a book he had written titled "Lies Homeschooling Moms Believe". For the most part he was funny but what he had to say was so true.

At one point he said something that was so sad though. He asked the question "What percent of women, do you think, feel that they are doing a good job homeschooling?" Several replies where given; 40 percent, 10 percent, 1 percent. After listening to the answers he said softly and seriously, "Zero percent." Then he went on to admit that it wasn't a scientific survey but rather just based on the answers he was given as he went from place to place talking to homeschooling families and asking homeschooling mothers how they were doing.

I think, based on my own life and the lives of some of my friends, that he is right. I am the only woman left in my circle of previously homeschooling friends that is still doing it. When you boil it down, they all quit for the same reason. They didn't feel capable. There has never been a time when I have sat down to plan out a school year, or even as I am in the middle of one, that I haven't felt inadequate. In a way its a good thing because it keeps me on my knees but it leaves me with such self doubt. If I wasn't absolutely sure that the Lord wanted this for my children I probably would have quit a long time ago too.

I think that it goes past the homeschooling issue though. I think that it is an attitude that women just have in general. My mother, who has managed one office or another for the past 20 years had to fire someone a few years back. When she had finished telling us about it my husband jokingly said "Boy, your harsh," because my mother hadn't let her finish the day out. For the rest of the day Mom sat around second guessing herself. She was even asking me if I thought she had done the right thing and I've never managed an office. What do I know about it? I think women tend to be like that even when they are pretending that they aren't.

A few days ago my husband commented on what a wonderful wife I was and how lucky he was to have me. Rather than smiling nicely, feeling proud, and saying thank you. I said "If only you knew the truth you wouldn't say that." He rather indignantly replied "What do you mean?" i.e. How dare you insult my wife! In trying to explain I turned to Prov. 31 thinking When he hears this he will plainly see that I don't match the standard. When I finished his answer was "So? I don't hear anything there that you don't meet."

At the time my thought was that he can't see the truth because he sees me with his heart and not his eyes. But now I wonder if I'm not the one who is at least partially blind. Don't get me wrong, I know I'm not perfect. Not by a long shot. But there is a growing belief within me that I'm not getting the full picture.

I picked up "Lies Homeschooling Moms Believe" and have started reading it. While it was directed toward homeschoolers I believe that there is a lot there that is good to hear for women in general. Sometimes we are so willing to be deceived; so willing to believe the lie. Do we forget who we are? We are daughters of the King, ambassadors for His cause. There is nothing that He calls us to do that we can't achieve with his help.

We need to stop measuring our weaknesses against other peoples strengths and get on with what He has called us to do. If He has called us, He will equip us. If He has put us there then we are the best person for the job, whether we believe it or not. We need to start believing it. I am the one the Lord has put here in this place. I am exactly the wife my husband needs, exactly the mother and teacher my children need, exactly the clerk and Sunday School teacher my church needs because the Lord has put me in those positions.

Now, I can allow Satan to spoon feed me a pack of lies; I can believe every sentence he spews out of his deceiving mouth and become so bound up by his deceitfulness that I am unusable by God. OR I can get up off my duff and prayfully be about the business the Lord has given me.

Am I going to be perfect? No! On the other hand if I could be perfect, what would I need with a Savior? He knows I can't be perfect. What I can be is usable. I can be what God intended me to be, even if I can't fully understand His purpose. He knows what He is doing. Out of all the people in the world that He could have placed here, I'm the one He chose. It's the same for you. Think about that. If you really think about it, it will blow your mind. You didn't just happen to be where you are. Out of the 6,602,224,175 people in the world you were the one, the only one, that He chose to put where you are. No one else, just you.

We have a purpose, an important job. The Lord saw the need and placed us where we are to fill it. The scary part is that there is no back up plan. The Lord chooses to use people. We either fulfill our purpose or we don't, the choice is ours. Today I choose with the Lord's help to fulfill mine.

Sundays

This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it!

I just love Sundays, even when it's First Sunday Sing. Have a good one.

P.S. We may be about to get a working lawn mower. Whooo Hooo!

We Went to the Cemetary Yesterday

On the good side it was beautiful. It always is but particularly so around Memorial day. There are over 100 years worth of my family members buried out there. It has always been this little cemetery out in the middle of Farm country. The Man who originally donated the land placed in his will that the cemetery was always to be given land when they needed it and that that stipulation was to go with any contract for the land in perpetuity. For 100 hundred years that stipulation has been met.

Now though they have built an airport not too far from there and the land in that area is being chopped up sold for a million dollars an acre. I made the mistake of turning left instead of right a few months back and saw that the land a short ways in that direction was already turned into lots. Yesterday as we drove to the cemetery I noticed that the farm land just before the cross roads to the cemetery has started to have dirt work done to it and the roads have already been cut.

I know that it is foolishness on my part. I know that my family isn't really there in that cemetery; it's just what's left of the clay vessels that they lived in. On the other hand, it is the only place that I have to go and honor the lives of those people. We would go and I would tell my children about the people those markers represented.

"Here in this area, in an unmarked grave, are the graves of your third Great-Grandfather and Great-Grandmother. He fought in the civil war with a battalion out of Illinois. He was a sharp shooter. They were used then to range in the cannons." "These are the graves of your Great-Grandmothers parents. They moved here from Nebraska; they lived in a soddy out there. Your seconded Great-Grandmother would cut patterns in the dirt floor to make is pretty and she actually used to sweep it. One time a fire came through on the prairie and your second Great-Grandfather, who was plowing at the time, when he saw the smoke unhooked the plow, jumped on the back of the horse and rode for all he was worth toward the house. When he got there his wife was waiting with the door open and he just rode on in. Because the house was mad out of dirt and partially underground they were able to ride the fire out inside the house. It went right over the top of them and they were OK. But it had been so fast that it actually singed you Grandfathers hair as he was riding in." And on and on for six generations of stories about their heritage.

For over 100 years it has been a peaceful place where that could be accomplished. Now it's about to be surrounded by housing developments. My husband doesn't understand my problem. He's a practical man who was born and raised in Detroit, MI. The time that he has spent here has been the first time he has done more than just drive through the country one his way to another city or Military Post. His reply is that "It's the way of the world. All cities where country sometime." But my people where all farm people. They chose to be buried where they were because it was farming country. I don't think they would want to be surrounded by houses.

I plan to be buried there. We already have plots next to my son and close to where my parents will be buried. I don't want to see that happen. But the truth is that that is what is coming. worse yet, we will probably be the last generation laid there. With a worth of a million dollars an acre no one will want to give the cemetery land. They will find a way to legally avoid an old mans dieing wish made over 100 years ago. The cemetery is just a little country cemetery, they family members take care of the land and virtually give away the plots. They can't afford to spend that much an acre for more land. So the remaining sites will be filled, then in another generation families will stop coming and the people living around the cemetery will petition to "do something about that eye sore." The grave markers will be pulled down and turned into a tasteful monument and the area will be turned into a park.

While I know that none of my family is actually there; that they don't know what is going on. Still I don't think that was what they expected when they decided that that is where they wanted to be layed. It breaks my heart.

Memorial Day Musings

Please go to http://www.army.forces.gc.ca/chief_land_staff/remembrance/English/video.asp and listen to Terry Kelly's "Pittance of Time". It was written for Canada's Remembrance Day, hence the Nov. 11 date, but I think it is appropriate for our own Memorial Day. He wrote it in response to a man he observed refusing to honor the two minutes of silence in memory of fallen soldiers, he was too busy with his shopping. I think it says all that needs to be said better than a thousand words from me.

I'm Here But...

I'm in kind of a hurry. It's Sunday morning and I have to get ready for my Sunday School Class. So this has to be short. I stayed up late making cookies for my kids and ended up with enough for my son's class as well. That will be good because teenagers like to eat and our pastor being a man doesn't always think of that.

I haven't forgotten about you Anita. I do think you will be disappointed though. The computer is in the school area next to the boys' desks. The closest book I have next to me right now is a spelling book. One of our book cases is a little farther away but it is filled with mostly school stuff as well, though I have to say that many of them are more interesting than a spelling book.

Oh wait, your saved! It only has 130 pages in it. Will flash cards do? I know I have more than 161 of those sitting right here on the computer desk. Oh the joys of homeschooling. More later.

On the Homeschool Front.

The Boys are almost done for the year. The two oldest have finished for the semester and are now working to save money for the next. My oldest went through his graduation ceremony and made his mama smile. Toward the end of the semester the other boys were teasing me about making such a big deal about his graduation. It was after all only an Associates degree. But I heard my eldest tell them to leave me alone, it was like the high school graduation that he never had. They did stop bugging me about it after that, but my seconded oldest told me with a gleam in his eye that he would graduate but wouldn't walk for either his Associates or his bachelors degrees; that I would have to wait for his Masters to see him walk. I smiled that knowing smile that my mother used to use on me and said "We'll see." Little do they understand the power of a mothers will.

My youngest is through with everything except his math. He would be done with that but he and his older brother have a major case of Spring Fever. My second oldest has math and bible left to do. If they would just do it they could be done but they won't. The grass is calling, the days are long and warm and there is a cool breeze in the air. How can a school book compete with that? So we do other outside stuff.

Yesterday the dogs raised a huge racket. When my son investigated what should he find out in the field but a large, 1 ft. diameter, turtle. He came to get his brother an I so that we could see it too. I, ever the mommy, was worried that the dogs would kill it. We have one dog who is the leader of the two puppies that was wild when he got him. He had been running around a friend neighborhood living off whatever for months and was in the process of eating a deer when my husband stopped and called him in the car. He was one visit from animal control away from being in doggy jail, but they couldn't catch him. He nearly starved himself to death before we could get him to eat dog food. He still would rather have a rabbit, but everything else considered, he is a sweet boy. Anyway, I don't think he would be above trying to eat the turtle.

On the other hand we do have snapping turtles in this area. I'm not sure what they look like compared to other turtles but I didn't want my son getting bit in an attempt to find out. I told my son my worries as he got ready to move it and he said that he was pretty sure it was one. When I asked how he knew he told me he had move it away from the dog once before and that it had tried to bite him then. Sure enough when my son carefully picked it up it's mouth came open. luckily it was too afraid to pull it's head out of the shell very far to do much damage. It just sat there with it's mouth open. I wish I had though to take pictures but I was so shocked by it's size to do more than stand there and watch it for a while.

We have been checking out the birds, rabbits, and wild flowers. Because the field hasn't been hayed yet they grass is high and there are plenty of flowers out there. They are so pretty. Every time I walk through the field I think about the settlers walking through the plains. They say the young girls sometimes collected wild flowers as they went. I can't help feel that it must have been very much like our field.

Out west of us, out of the hills and hollers, is the Tall Grass Prairie. They have replanted all the old grasses and let the wild flowers grow. A few years back they let Buffalo loose on it again so that it would look much like it did a hundred years ago. I think that would make a good field trip for the boys this summer. I'll have to talk to my husband about going.

We used to take field trip like that more often before my husbands health started to fail. Last summer he and I took the boys out too see Monte Nae because the lake was low and you could see a lot more of the old town. As we started to leave my oldest got a little wistful and said "We used to do this kind of stuff all the time. This was fun." I resolved at that point to do more of it again, but the school year started and trying to come up with places to go got put on the back shelf. It's time to pull it down and dust it off again.

Most of my curriculum is purchased for next year. I only have a few literature books and one book for history left. I found what I wanted on Ebay and thought I would get it at a pretty good price. I put a ten dollar bid on it to see how it would do. I had twenty dollars left of my school book money so I thought it would be fine. I ended up giving it to my husband but he promised that he would get it back to me in time to take care of the book. That was before all the money problems. I have spent the last few days figuring that the book would go for more than that and praying that I would be right because I knew that we really needed that money for gas money. The sale ended at $10.50. One the one had a part of me say "Oh man $10.50, what a good price." On the other hand the mature, sensible side of me says "Thank you Father!"

Well in seven minutes it will be 9:00 and the school day will start so I had better go.

P.S. Oh the joys of school work! My youngest has decided that before he can start the window by his desk really does need washed and is in the process of doing that right now. If only I could get him to wash windows at any other time. He's doing better than his brother though, who has decided that guitar practice is of utmost importance. How else will he be able to play during church one day?

My You Live In Interesting Times

As far as I know I don't know anyone in China but I must have made someone there angry because boy have we been living in interesting times lately. To begin with we still don't have our lawn mower back yet. I am beginning to believe that he has never had any intention of giving it back to us. Maybe he's had it so long that he looks at it as an ornament and he doesn't want to do without it, I don't know. Anyway my husband has plans to borrow a friends trailer and go get it himself.

Since we don't have the mower we can't fix it, which means the grass is getting high. That's not bad in the field because we intended to let a friend hay it. The yard is another matter though. It's beginning to get scary. The other day I was sure that I saw gorillas peeking out at me through the tall grass. I need to get out and take the weed eater to it and knock some of that down.

The city lost it's water again. They won't let us dig a well because they want the water revenue yet this is the third time that the whole town has lost water in the past 15 months. The last time they lost water the repairmen told them that they needed to replace the pipe because it was getting old. That was during the Great Oklahoma Freeze, not even 6 months ago I think. Anyway, the city fathers decided that they would let it go for a while because they didn't want to spend that kind of money. Well, last Thursday the pipe gave way and fell into the well pulling the pump down with it. It's a deep well. So they ended up having to find the pipe and the pump in the water pool and pull it up. It took four days. Now the city has water again but we are under a boil order for another 6 days. They are still giving out drinking water but they don't have enough so they aren't giving out enough to last the day.

It has made it hard because you can only cook so long before all the pots and pans need washed. You couldn't wash them because there wasn't any water. You couldn't use the water they were handing out because there wouldn't be enough to drink and cook with if you did. So in the end we ended up using more expensive non-cooking options; ordering pizza, buying lunch meat and bread and so on. We rarely use paper and plastic for eating so I had to purchase those as well.

The next interesting thing was that one of the cars had trouble. We had to have the car for my son to get back and forth to work. So that was more money that we hadn't counted on having to spend and really could have used for other things.

Now I sit here scouring my freezer and cabinets trying to find a way to feed a rather large family for another two weeks without buying groceries. I have to come up with 39 meals without buying a thing. I think I'll make it but it's going to include beans three times a week. The big freezer will be almost empty when I'm done, which is a good thing because I was thinking last week that I really needed to get in and defrost it. Next paydays grocery bill will be a whopper though because when I'm done there will be very little left in the freezer or the pantry.

I have a little ground venison in the freezer, I think I'll take that and some beans and make chili tomorrow. The guys will like that. I may try to make some crackers to go with it, we'll see. I might be better off making bread, I know how to do that.

A Strange and Wonderful Thing Happened at My House Today And I Wasn't Even There.

Early Wednesday morning I was looking at the Flylady site before I headed out to get everything ready for the business meeting. While at her site I read a recommendation for something called the House Fairy. It would magically get your children to clean their room without any arguments or struggles. All it took was to subscribe to her program in which the House Fairy would write your children weekly letters, send them videos on the computer, and promise them rewards.

My first thought was "yeah right, that will never work." To prove my point I proceeded to write a letter to my youngest, messiest son from a Fairy of my own. In it I explained that his mother had written in desperation needing help to get him to pitch in and clean his messy room. I too promised weekly letters and rewards, (no videos of the fairy talking to Santa though, I do good just to be able to use the word processor.) As a kicker I added an elephant joke to the bottom of the letter and printed out an elephant book mark as a reward if he cleaned around his toy box. He was told that there was a surprise waiting in that area if he cleaned it enough to find is. I then had one of his older brothers "find" the letter after I was gone and read it to him.

Guess what? He loved it! He called me at church to tell me all about the letter. He then went on to talk about how he had cleaned around his toy box and found an elephant book mark there. He told me that he was going to use it in his reader so he could find the right page. He then went on to contemplate were the letter had come from.

Now you have to understand that he is not a stupid child. He knows good and well that there are no real fairies, elfs, or Santas. So now he is all excited because he's going to get letters but he can't figure out from who. Could it be Skyler? Could it be Jeffery? Would someone else write him a letter? I really think he liked that part better than the surprises. Don't get me wrong, he's not above taking any gift he can get, but getting letters from someone is somehow special.

The other thing that he was really excited about was that one of the rewards for doing the work was that he gets to spend alone time having fun with his father or I. Imagine that, he's with us all the time, but the idea of alone time with us was one of the rewards he liked best. Funny how the smallest, cheapest rewards are the ones he prizes most.

So anyway I have painted myself into a corner. I can't stop because I promised that this would be a continuing thing if he did his part, and so far he is with great excitement. I can't purchase the other program because I have created a different personality in my first letter. How would I explain the change? Plus I know my son and can get personal, she does not and so she can't. Still she can provide cool videos when I can't but that doesn't out weigh the other problems. So now I'm about to become a split personality; on the one hand the mother on the other the anonymous friend.

Well I'm off to hide a well done sticker. This could get interesting.

The Lord is Good All the time . . .

But sometimes He pulls through for me in a special way. I have been getting more and more nervous about school books. I had, had to take a fair portion of the money my husband had allotted for school and spend it on other things, (Gas and clothes for the kids, groceries; you know the drill.) Plus, while I got one son's math curriculum used, it was still over $100.00 dollars. That didn't seem so bad when I had all my allotted money but now I'm beginning to second guess myself.

I prayed about it and was sure of my decisions but as money gets short you wonder if you got it wrong somehow. So for the past three weeks I've been setting here contemplating whether I should choose a free program for my other son. It's a very good program but when I pray about it I don't feel free to use it. As a matter of fact the clear message I get is "trust Me." (I really hate it when I here that one, it always means a lesson in faith is coming.) So that's what I've been trying to do and it's been getting harder and harder. That is until today.

Math for one son and writing and part of history for the other for the other are the only things I have left except for a few literature books which I can pick up as I go along if need be. Not much I know but necessary still yet. Lately I couldn't help but wonder if I was getting it wrong; maybe I was being stubborn when I should be looking at other options. Then what should drop into my hands today but the thing I least expected to buy used; my youngest son's Math program. More over I found it at a place that I rarely go at less than 1/2 price. I can't believe that no one else got to it before I did. It was as if the Lord had put it there and covered it up waiting for me to come along to get it. What a blessing!

Now I find myself sitting here embarrassed thinking how many time have I heard the older members of my church say "The Lord is never late, but He's never early either. He always comes right on time." Boy are they wise and boy am I embarrassed that my faith is so small. I sure am feeling better about things turning out OK with the rest of my curriculum though.

Now if I can just get to the point of rejoicing when I hear the Lord say Trust Me rather than feeling dread.

My Son Made Me Cry

I got into the car today with my husband as we went to Wal-Mart to pick up a few things. There on the floor was a paper from my son's American Government class in college that had fallen out of his book bag. I started to pick it up so that it wouldn't get stepped on and my husband said "you'd better read that. I think it will surprise you." So I did and was shocked by what I read. He had been assigned a paper on Political Socialization and had to limit it to two beliefs he held. Here is what he wrote:


"The ideas I hold in politics have always been an evolving thing. Over the years as I have matured in both age and reasoning so have the beliefs I hold. Some of these beliefs have changed a lot; some not so much. Now tracing back where I got these beliefs and ideas, my "political socialization", has not been easy. I have had many influences in my life that have adjusted and changed these beliefs as time has moved on, but I had to find two beliefs I could try to pinpoint. So for this I ended up choosing abortion and gun control.

Now I'm against abortion and my beliefs on this go back to when I was young. As you might guess I come from a Christian family with moral beliefs that it is wrong. Also you would be right in tracing many of my ideas when it comes to life and abortion back to that. My parents raised me to respect life especially human life and raised me to believe that human life starts at conception. I remember this from my earliest years, my mom especially held these beliefs. But you would be wrong to generalize so far as to thinking that is the only reason. I actually have a much more personal reason for that as well. You see when my mother was pregnant with me she had a good career in the army going and many of her friends told her just to abort me so I wouldn't get in the way. Well as you can see she disagreed and dropped the career instead. She told me about this when I had gotten old enough to understand and it just stuck with me. I could never have been given a chance in this world and life just because I was too much of a bother for someone and that has never sat well with me. So as you can well see, you might say I have a personal reason for my beliefs . . ."

He then goes on to talk about gun control and how it fits with his beliefs. The thing is that I didn't tell him that story about my pregnancy to be a hero. As a matter of fact I revealed that for a short period it had been hard even though I knew what was right. What I was trying to show him was that even when we know what's right doing right can be hard. Even though I kept thinking no I won't this is wrong, Satan brought a lot of people in to tempt and confuse me. It wasn't until I spoke my convictions aloud that peace came and I ceased to be tempted.

I don't know what it is about speaking it aloud that caused that to happen but it did and it's biblical because the bible tells us that that is what we have to do. That was the lesson that I was trying to teach my son. Somehow speaking it aloud confirms it in our mind. That he took so much more to heart remained unknown to me until I read his paper.

I walked in the house and said "Son, you made me cry." He looked at me with a shocked What-could-I-have-done look. His dad then told them that I had read his paper. He then got embarrassed and said 'You weren't supposed to read that, it must have fallen out of my bag." When I kissed him on the check he smiled that goofy little boy smile that he used to get when he had done something that pleased me. I haven't seen that smile in a long time.

Sometimes you spend a lot of time worrying about your kids and then sometimes they just blow you out of the water. Maybe he'll be alright after all.

The Lawn Mower is Coming Home From the Shop. . .

But no it's not fixed. I am so frustrated. We gave him the mower and $1,000.00. He wanted to keep the mower and take another $3000.00 to sell us a new one. I don't think he ever wanted to fix it to begin with. He kept trying to talk us into just buying one of his. We didn't want one of his, we wanted ours.

Now the repairman is saying that it can't be fixed that we need to spend $2000.00 for a new gear box because it's so old that they don't sell parts for the old one any more. We have a friend, who has a friend that does tool and die work. For $400.00 he can make the knew part. Hmmmmmmm . . . $2000.00 or $400, I wonder which one we will pick?

When my husband told him that we wanted the mower back and weren't interested in a new one the repairman talked like we wouldn't see much of our money back. DH thought that he was going to try to charge him for new part that we had taken care of. As it turned out we ended up getting half of our money back. He did do some work and I don't mind paying him for that. The truth is that I'm just happy to be getting any of it back. I didn't honestly think we would.

How Deep The Father's Love For Us

This Song by Stuart Townend has been on my heart lately. I think the first and last verses hold the mystery of the gospel. How is it that I am so precious to the Father that he would give up his son for my sake, or that the Christ would willing lay down his life for me. I can not fathom it. The words to this song are so powerful so I thought that I would share it here.

How Deep The Father's Love For Us

How deep the Father's love for us,
How vast beyond all measure
That He should give His only Son
To make a wretch His treasure

How great the pain of searing loss,
The Father turns His face away
As wounds which mar the chosen One,
Bring many sons to glory

Behold the Man upon a cross,
My sin upon His shoulders
Ashamed I hear my mocking voice,
Call out among the scoffers

It was my sin that held Him there
Until it was accomplished
His dying breath has brought me life
I know that it is finished

I will not boast in anything
No gifts, no power, no wisdom
But I will boast in Jesus Christ
His death and resurrection

Why should I gain from His reward?
I cannot give an answer
But this I know with all my heart
His wounds have paid my ransom (REPEAT)

Ordinary for the Lord

I had intended to write this the Monday after coming home from the Women of Joy Conference in Branson; but with all that happened in Virginia that Monday this didn't seem appropriate. I had come home with such joy and a vision of God moving, only to have it in a certain way stripped away. It was hard to write about the joy of the Lord in the midst of what was going on. I know that we shouldn't allow Satan to steal our joy though and what the Lord showed me is true. So I am pulling this out for draft mode, dusting it off a little, and putting it on my blog where it belongs.

The Women of Joy conference in Branson was wonderful. Believe it or not there were people there from as far away as Indiana and Texas. Imagine 2000 women getting together to worship, learn and praise the Lord; it was awesome. All of the women in our group plan to go back again next year and several more that didn't go this time want to go with us next time.

The thing that the Lord kept saying to me time after time through speaker after speaker was how much he loves us. Lisa Harper came out and spoke on a topic I hadn't heard since I was a young child. Years ago they use to talk about the Song of Solomon as an allegory of God's love for the church, but recently most people speak of it as just a husband's and wife's love for each other. I guess we have become to sophisticated to spiritualize it. Anyway as a pastor I had once would say "Sometimes the Bible is not this or that. Sometimes it's this and that." I think that is true of the Song of Solomon.

Lisa Harper spoke of how, while on this earth it is wrong for a woman to pursue a man, God is absolutely pleased with us pursuing Him. He is absolutely Knocked out by us and nothing gives us more pleasure than our worship and praise. Think about it, when you praise your husband doesn't he just beam with pleasure? For days he's walking in the clouds. Well that's God only more so. While our love and praise is God's due, just as our love and respect is our husbands' due, it gives him great joy when we search for ways to please Him. He loves us that much.

Another speaker that touched me deeply was Angela Thomas. Lately I've been down in the dumps because I am getting older and my life is nothing like I planned it to be. You know the old adage, "Man proposes, God disposes." I had planned to do something important, to rock the world; and here I sit, just a simple mother and housewife. Yes, I know that other old adage "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world," but that can be hard to remember as all the women around you answer "Oh that's nice" when you answer the question of "So what do you do" with "I a housewife." I know what I am doing is God's will and that I shouldn't let others rule my self image but it's hard when even your own mother is disappointed that you didn't do more with you life. I guess that's why Angela touched me so deeply.

At one point in Angela's talk she told about going to speak in South Africa. She hadn't really wanted to go but they were so persistant that she felt that maybe the Lord was in it. She tried to pack as much in as she could for the few days that she was there and in the end was exausted. The woman who had hosted the event took her out to eat before taking her to the airport and while they were eating she said to Mz Harper, "Angela I think I have a word from the Lord for you." Well her first thought was "No, Lord not now, I'm so exausted. I can't give any more." But the woman went on and what she had to say was important to Mz Harper and me as well because it gave me a new perspective.

She said her slightly British, South African accent "I have prayed over and over 'Lord, what is it about Angela? Why is it that everyone loves her?' And what He showed me is that it is because you are to Ooordinary." Angela said that, that made her smile. It was the best compliment that she could have recieved because she realized that everyday she got up out of her ooordinary bed, took her ooordinary shower, put on her oooordinary clothes, brushed her oooordinary teeth and hair, got in her oooordinary car, drove out to her ordinary life filled with ordinary people, and was able to allow an Extraordinary God reach all those other ordinary people through her.

The Lord showed me that that was like me. I am a simple housewife in a small town, in the backwoods of Oklahoma, at the foothills of the Ozark Mountains, surounded by quite a number of people in great need both spiritually and financially. Suddenly I realized I had it all wrong. I would have never said it but by my thoughts and actions it was as if I was just marking time trying to work for Him where I was at until I He managed to find me where I was at.

How wrong is that?! It's not like I wondered off someplace and the Lord didn't know where I was. I'm exactly where He wants me and I'm exactly the boring, ordinary person He needs to serve Him where I'm at. If I were anybody other than who I am; if I were a vice president of some bank like my cousin, if I had married money or made money, I would never be usable here. And I know this is where He wants me because I never intended to come back here again and yet after traveling the world, here I am. I didn't intend to be here, He put me here. This is my mission field and if I were anyone else I wouldn't be able to understand these people and even if I could they would never believe that I could and they wouldn't trust me.

The bible says to praise God in all things. Sometimes it's hard when we can't see the silver lining in the cloud. We can't understand what God is doing. A month ago I would never have thought to praise God for allowing me to be ordinary. If I bothered to think about it at all I would have sighed in frustration for disappointing so many family members. Once in a while though God pulls back the veil a tiny bit and we are allowed to catch a glimpse of what God is doing. Today I can praise God for my ordinary life, with my ordinary husband and ordinary kids, in our ordinary house, worshiping in our ordinary church, with our ordinary friends, as we work to reach others with the help of an extraordinary God.

How much better would it have been if I had been less like Thomas and trusted in the fact that a loving God knew what He was about?

Virginia Tech Shooting

I don't always understand people and no one is able to make sense of what happened today. We cut God out of our lives and wonder why things get worse and not better. My heart grieves for those who were injured or lost their lives in Virginia this day. I pray the Lord will comfort their families and friends as only He can.