I know that Bekah will eventually want to point you over to Amoretti to see her two new summer dresses. Her three daughters will be wearing the cornflower dresses (they will be flower girls) for their cousin Brooke’s wedding in a couple of weeks. I think you’ll agree they are just perfect! Since Bekah is still up to her elbows (or is it eyebrows?) in unpacking, I’m jumping in on her behalf.
Monthly Archive for July, 2009
Page 3 of 4
So, in thinking of how to respond to a couple of the comments on my last post about the crazy- town activities at our house, I realized that there is a lot to say. It is not that I have this material mastered by any stretch of the imagination, but I do spend a lot of time thinking about it! It is actually something that I work on every day, so I may as well just share some things that have been helpful to our family as we navigate these busy years.
If you are just joining us, I have four little dinks, and our oldest and wisest will be five in the late fall. So no, I do not magically coast through the days with tender smile on my face bringing cookies on doilies to the children who are wearing tastefully chosen ensembles, and sitting on a monogrammed picnic blanket. You are more likely to find me calling a meeting to discuss the use of the shower curtain as a hand towel ( a meeting conducted while trying to chip up Cheerios that have dried on the floor under the table), or trying to explain why I put an end to pulling each other around at breakneck speeds on a tablecloth tied to a jump rope.
Life is not smooth or scenic a lot of the time, but it is happy and funny, and full of things I never expected but couldn’t live without. Probably the most helpful things that I concentrate on are perspective adjustments. When there is a behavioral problem, a disobedience issue, or a particularly difficult or tiring stretch with my children, I know it is time for a perspective adjustment. Time to sit down, think about what is going on, look at my initial reaction to it honestly, and then turn that reaction  on its head. So far, I haven’t found a situation where this did not clean everything up quickly. Here are a few examples, based on my own real-life encounters with young children! Continue reading ‘Growth Spurts!’
The Merkles made it! Hoorah! We are very thankful, as you can imagine.
They arrived in Seattle last night and spent the night there. Then today they hauled their trailer full of luggage across the Cascade Mountains to home again.
Bekah has some fun stories about the trip, but they are all good. No catastrophes. In fact, the whole thing was a spectacular success. But I will let her tell you the splendid details. Thanks for your prayers for them!
We had all eight cousins lined up on the deck to wave to them as they drove up the driveway. (Actually, a little no-name cousin, currently referred to as Cinco, was also present, which brings the total cousin count on the deck to nine, though this little one was no doubt unaware of the significance of the event. Yep. Nate and Heather are expecting! Yay and Hooray!)
“Sincerity enables the Christian to do two things in affliction which the hypocrite cannot — to speak good of God, and to expect good from God.”
“There is a day coming, and it cannot be far from us, in which we shall meet lovingly in heaven, and sit at one feast: full fruition of God shall be the feast, and peace and love the sweet music that shall sound to it; and what folly it is for us to fight here who shall feast there!”
“Prayer must be the key of the morning, and the lock of the night. We show not ourselves Christians, if we do not open our eyes with prayer when we rise, and shut them again with the same key we lie down at night. Pray as often as you please besides.”
William Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour
Hope you all had a happy Fourth celebration! We had a relatively quiet party. With the Merkles due back in the country tomorrow, and the Wilson gang over at the beach, we just had our little Janks kids (we call the Janksycats) here for our front-yard fireworks display. I’m happy to report there were no tears this year. Of course, Doug just set off the tame, little fireworks; he’s saving the big mother load for this coming Saturday when we have our belated party with all the family. We’ll be grilling the all-American hamburgers and hot dogs (and we won’t be getting them out of a jar).
Tonight is the Merkles’ last night in the UK. In just a few hours they will be boarding, Lord willing. Last time I talked with Bekah, the cows were mooing so enthusiastically outside her door that I could hear them loud and clear over the phone. (Guess they were saying their goodbyes.) She was in the throes of cleaning, and they still had several loads of stuff to take to the dump. They have sold most all their possessions, except for what they could fit into fourteen action packs. Some kindly friends are putting them up for the night and helping them to the airport in the morning. It has been harder to say goodbye than they really expected. It has been a wonderful experience for them, these past three years. But I’ll let her write about that once she has her feet under her again. We expect them all to completely collapse once they get in our door. They should surface some time Friday if we’re lucky.
And that leads to what I’ve been doing of late. They will be moving into our downstairs, so I have been getting all their rooms ready for occupancy. So, the lake house will soon be full to the brim and overflowing.
Meanwhile, the twins have been learning to share the sin-mobile. Here’s a picture of them being spiritual!
So, things just keep splashing along over here at our house. I have four full-time re-arrangers on staff, and let me tell you, they do not slack off. When they are on the job, they really put their minds to it, and use the proverbial elbow grease.The twins have become enamored of doing chores – usually with the laundry, which involves snagging whatever they can reach out of the laundry basket or off the table and charging off to stuff it into something somewhere. They also rearrange their room every time they think about napping. They do this by wildly skooching their cribs around until they can grab hands and work as a team. Sometimes in their aimless wanderings, they chance to pass by the changing table close enough to grab the wet wipes, which I believe they scrapbook about later, with lots of special words like experience and dream in fancy fonts around the pictures.These helpers of mine are so diligent that I have taken to loading the dishwasher in secret. I prepare all the dishes in the sink for quick entry, check to see if anyone is lurking, Â crack it open, and start chucking. I don’t know how it is, but one dish-clack in, and I hear a delighted scream and pounding fat feet. They round the corner as I slam it back shut and wipe the sweat from my brow. Often times this is just a half-time break, and I have to go pretend to do something else for a while.This morning my husband was making scrambled eggs, and as he scrambled, this team of efficiency snuck up behind him and took the egg carton off the counter and set it on the floor. We both heard it without hearing it, if you know what I mean. They were moving those eggs as fast as they could out of the carton and throwing them into the sink. Even after he saw it, and tried to stop it, I think they got another three rounds off. Meanwhile, I had to snake the battery out of our kitchen clock for something else, and you would be surprised how much of the time I can believe it is 9:15.
Recent Comments