Everything in the garden has flowers now and I’ve got a few tomatoes and some tomatilla peppers starting to grow. I’m doubtful about my zucchini and pumpkins though. They seem to be the favorite of every kind of garden pest.
For someone who has never done very well with plants, I really enjoy spending time in the garden.
A friend of the family has set up a website with updates on Ellie’s progress as she and her family deal with her cancer diagnosis. Please continue to lift Ellie before the Lord.
http://ellieskees.blogspot.com/
I’ve seen white pumpkins around and I haven’t quite formed an opinion on them yet, but now there are blue pumpkins?! Well, maybe grayish-greenish-blue. These are interesting, I mean, there are just not that many blue vegetables. The flesh of the white pumpkins is still orange and I assume the same is true of the blue pumpkins, but wouldn’t it be weird to make a blue pumpkin pie? It just wouldn’t be right.
Even so, I’m tempted to buy seeds for next year’s fall garden.
Even though it still feels like summer, it’s fall. I have a spice scented candle burning and my sweet husband brought me a Pumpkin Spice Latte from Starbucks, and a package of pumpkin peeps. Yup, I’m enjoying fall, even if it’s just a state of mind.
“Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who trusts in Him!” That verse came to me so many times during the first days and weeks after Emmaline’s heart problem was diagnosed. As awful a time as that was, I was reminded again and again of God’s love, mercy, comfort, and attention to our prayers. I coveted prayers, was greedy for them, asking people I hardly knew to pray.
Now I am asking on behalf of our good friends Sarah and John and their little girl, Ellie. Ellie is in the hospital awaiting further testing on a mass in her head. The mass has damaged her optic nerve causing blindness in one eye, but has not reached her brain. The biopsy has not yet been performed, but cancer is strongly suspected. She has many doctors working to find the best way to proceed and will probably be traveling to see a surgeon specializing in this kind of thing.
We visited them in the hospital over the weekend and I fell apart as soon as I saw Sarah. As she held my hand, I felt like she was comforting me rather than the other way around, but it was good to see how God is giving them peace already as they begin this journey.
“You have tasted that the Lord is gracious.” I Peter 2:3
“We speak what we know and testify what we have seen.” I John 5:10
“Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who trusts in Him!” Psalm 34:8
I’ve never been very enthusiastic about camp, but I’m so glad I went to the ladies retreat this past weekend. The theme was Walk Worthy, taken from Ephesians 4:1, “I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called.” Our speaker, Lois Van Wageningen, spoke about the areas of our lives this walk includes: our thinking, our speaking, our actions, our reactions, our emotions, and our motives. Lois used the illustration of a squeeze bottle to emphasize the importance of living a Spirit-filled life. When the bottle is squeezed, whatever it is filled with comes out! I was reminded of this the very next morning as we were running late for church all scurrying around and I was impatiently snapping at everyone while looking for a sippy cup lid. Yup, it doesn’t take much squeezing sometimes. It’s good to remember our walk even in these little day to day things.
Along with the teaching, the fellowship (sans chasing around kids) was such a blessing. A wonderful day spent with wonderful people. How wonderfully refreshing.
To complete the transformation from family room to dining room, we needed a chandelier for above the table. Trent has long loved this chandelier from Restoration Hardware, and I have long loathed its price. Thanks, once again, to ebay, it should be arriving in our home soon!
Inspired by Alicia’s switched around rooms, and a couple of Pottery Barn catalogs, I invited Tricia over to redesign our living spaces. She’s brilliant that way.
I have been longing for a dining room wide enough to accommodate a full table of guests and I’ve been wishing for a better set up for the kids’ tv. Voila! We switched the dining and family rooms. I am amazed at how much I love my new dining room. I’m enjoying the new “family room” too, but it needs some tweaking still.
Now, I’m itching to paint. For some reason, this change has really brought out the color in the new dining room and I’m loving it! It makes the green in the other rooms look too cool and minty though. I might have to devote some weekend to painting in the near future.
Thank you, Tricia, for all your help!
I just must share one of my favorite items in the ever -raging battle against grossness in the kitchen. When I realized that Emmie still needed a booster seat after passing hers on to Micah, I went in search of a strapless booster. This is what I found, the Cooshie Booster. As soon as Micah outgrew his absolute need to be strapped into his seat for mealtime, I bought another one. I cannot sing its praises enough.
It is light-weight, one simple piece that sticks to the chair with a textured grippy bottom, and best of all completely strapless. This means that there is no place for that spilled juice to seep down into. There are no crumbs that get trapped in the buckles or mashed into the straps. There is no food falling into that awkward place between the chair and the seat that hides there for weeks because the seat too complicated to remove from the chair. This thing gets a quick bath in the sink after dinner and it’s totally clean. Also, it weighs next to nothing so it’s easy to pop in the trunk when we’re having dinner at someone else’s house. It’s also soft and foamy so it’s nice and comfortable for the little ones.
Check out Rocks in My Dryer for more Works for Me Wednesday tips.
Emmaline has been taking swimming lessons with Uncle Tim recently. While she loves Tim, and loves to play in the water, she does not like to do the work required to learn to swim.
“Okay, Emmie, arms out and jump to me.”
“No thank you, I don’t want to.”
“Come on, this is how you learn to swim.”
“No, I don’t want to learn to swim.”
“Swimming is fun! You’ll be able to play in the pool and swim in the lake.”
“No, I don’t want to be a swimmer. I want to be an ice skater.”
“You can be an ice skater and learn to swim too!”
“No. I want to be an ice skater who doesn’t know how to swim.”
Fortunately, Tim is a very patient teacher.
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