(And All My) Work Be Praise

A somewhat embarrassing (for me) but potentially amusing (for you) story: I do not like to think of myself as a girly-girl, but there are two of God's creatures that I absolutely detest: centipedes/millipedes (or anything with a gazillion legs), and wasps. Actually, I really only detest  the first group; I don't hate wasps, but I'd rather not have them anywhere near, either. They build nests on my front porch and on my back deck, and I'm not entirely sure what it would take for one of them to sting one of my children or myself, and I'd rather not find out. So it was with much chagrin that I discovered a wasp on my kitchen counter  as I was cleaning up on Monday night. Now, you'll remember from this post that I do not normally clean my own kitchen, and it was only because Isaac was on a trip that it was me who discovered the wasp. Sad for me. But, it was really just hanging out in one spot on the counter, and I thought to myself, You can do this. Just get th...

Since our strawberry picking was such a hit, I decided to brave the heat and cart everyone out to Rouster's Apple House in Milford for blueberry picking. I was hoping to be there by 9am, so that we'd be done long before it got too hot, but then I had to stop for gas and then I made a wrong turn that carried us an extra five miles into the country and after all was said and done, it was 9:45 before we had our pails and were headed to the rows of bushes. Happily for little legs, the blueberry bushes are very close to the parking lot. Too hot to be in a carrier, but pleasantly cool in the shade of the stroller! Isaac took the big boys blueberry picking last year, so unless I've forgotten some memory from early childhood, it was my first time. Such an easy thing for little fingers to do, pluck blueberries! Helps that they're close to the ground, too. A little too sunny to smile with eyes open. At first, the breeze was nice and even though we w...

I spent my junior year of college in a tiny town in west Wales. It was a year that would, as I imagine most study abroad years do, forever shape how I saw myself: capable, independent, confident. There are days when I still get a little nostalgic, missing my dorm-window view of sheep-studded hills and the familiar call of the chapel bells ringing, summoning one and all to the Anglican services I grew to love. I could write about half a dozen different facets of my year abroad, but there's one I want to focus on particularly today. Towards the end of my year, a friend and I traveled northeast to the big(ger) city of York, England. I (very briefly) considered graduate school in Britain, and the University of York had a fascinating music program, the title of which I can't remember now. While we were there, we took in the sights, which included the local cathedral. Now, I grew up in a very pretty medium-sized stone church, but by late junior high, my family was involved in ...

We haven't done much of anything formal since the Fourth of July activities , except Levi's math lessons, but I thought I'd jot down a quick list of the things we have  been doing regularly, as the mood strikes. * Coloring . Owen is newly interested in coloring all the time, and since I'm newly interested in strengthening his fine motor control, I'm all for it! Levi has a little box of supplies for his math lessons -- crayons, colored pencils, scissors, pencils and erasers, etc. -- that Owen has been pulling the crayons out of most mornings while Levi has his lesson. I save all one-sided sheets of paper from anything so they always have coloring paper available (and so I'm not wasting paper!). Mostly Owen just scribbles, but today he was excited to show me the circle he drew. Progress! Levi's Sunday school papers have proven that he is getting quite adept at staying in the lines on real coloring pages, but he usually draws clocks or writes numbers. Today...

This month marked the climax of Date Night 2013 (though there are, of course, five months still to come): the Big Expensive Date. Summer is a busy, busy time for a youth pastor -- like, so busy we missed our June date entirely. If I am alone more evenings than most women I know, it's multiplied over the summer, with camping trips and mission trips and meetings for the mission trips and extended youth group hours and so on and so on. I'm not complaining: it's a season, and we'll have long leisurely days together in August when Isaac has a million (or so) hours of comp time to use up. I mean, as leisurely as anything with three toddlers ever is. I was, however, determined to plan a little getaway for the two of us in the midst of all the crazy. I knew we'd be heading up to my parents' house this month for a family reunion, so I grabbed the opportunity for free overnight babysitting and booked us a stay at a bed-and-breakfast not far from where my parents live. ...

Levi woke up on Friday, July 5, and announced, "it's 25 days until my birthday! Can we make a chain?" Apparently he remembered our countdown to Christmas , because he remembers things like that. There wasn't an opportunity over the weekend, but this morning we finally made his chain. Exactly the same process as before: he cut the paper strips, made a pattern, numbered them, and applied glue as I chained them together. Getting so much better at cutting on the line! Owen got to help by holding the glue stick cap.  Great job taking a picture into the window, self. Something about Levi's latest haircut has him looking older than ever. He's been in the living room for most of the day, narrating his pretend play with the trains (every exclamation is followed by "said Gordon" or "shouted Percy" or the like), mostly acting out variations on the books we read often. Tomorrow we're going to visit a prospective piano teache...

After a month or more of busy days, out-of-the-ordinary trips, a week of swimming lessons, and host of other things that kept us from our usual morning routines, we're finally back to a low-key week, staying at home nearly every day. (Perhaps that's why I've felt such chaos within and without lately . . . ) Not surprisingly, we've been focusing on Independence Day. I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I receive regular e-mails from MoneySavingMom . On a weekly basis or so, she includes links to "educational freebies," and whenever the printable packs look worth saving, I go ahead and download them to a "homeschool" folder on my desktop. All of that to say, we've been basing our activities this week on a 4th of July printable pack from 3dinosaurs.com . The pack was supposedly based on the book America the Beautiful: Together We Stand , which I accordingly retrieved from the library. In reality, the book is just the first ver...

I cannot get over the sight of those tiny arms. I have struggled, just the past week or two, with the thought of this coming baby. We're limping along here, the house and the children and myself all in various states of chaos. I (mostly) quit getting on Facebook because the rest of the world seems so darn chipper, seems to have it all together, when I am seemingly failing on so many fronts. I say "seemingly" because I know my husband would argue that everyone is fed, everyone is dressed, and I am making baby parts. Everything else is inconsequential in comparison. He is good to me when I am not good to myself. But even so, it has crossed my mind more than once, in moments of defeat: I do not want this baby.  Not so much that I don't want the baby, of course; but I cannot add another thing -- another person, I mean -- to take care of. I can't.  I don't have it in me. I can't even keep up with what I have already. And every flitting thought comes with ...