Last Summer on the Farm...

The bed is in the room. So is everything else. I should take a picture. Our rechargeable batteries are uncharged and I fear the phone's pictures will never find their way out, so I'll just describe it for now. My main conclusion is that the room is so much bigger than I thought it was. I thought the bed would take up more than half the room, but it's probably just a third. The room is a nice minty green color, although the sample calls it "Weathered Copper."

I'm talking about our new abode, in case someone needs caught up. We recently moved to a farm in Colocord, Oklahoma, to live with our friend Naomi's parents, for approximately 1 year, since Jesse's job assignment is now in Siloam Springs. Breathe....

Which is what it feels a lot easier to do, now that I can go be in my own room for the first time since we've been here...well, we could be in it, but it was void of a 'proper' ceiling, floor, or anything else when we first came (again, pictures would have helped). Just uninhabitable. But with an amazing view. Which is why I asked if we could have that room in the first place. I went in, it was obviously the 'extra' room, without a floor and only a few patches of drywall on the walls, and full of items meant for the impending garage sale. But all I could see was the perfect view of the pasture and the little goats right out there, less than 20 feet away. I think I have mentioned these goats before, but I really do remain impressed with their presence. Today I had a goat encounter, actually.

Moving Day

I just looked at my phone and noticed it's April 23rd, my biological dad's birthday. And while I couldn't feel more estranged from him, I saw the look of a dad in Bruce's eyes as he spoke of how he and Audrey wanted us to come and be in their home for this coming year. Yesterday, my prayer with Laura was centered on the fact that Jesus came to introduce us to His Father and and invite us into the middle of their relationship..."that tHE LOv E YOU HAvE for Me may be in them" John 18, maybe?

Well, I was there when you were torn apart
Now a piece of you is gone
Somehow you wish that you could only find
A little strength to carry on
You've tried so hard to make it on your own
That your heart has come undone
So I am here to prove that I alone
Have the power to overcome
Don't let your heart be troubled
This world will never keep you down
It will never keep you down
So rise up, my friend
No, this will never be the end
So rise up, my friend
And live again
I didn't want you to feel this way
It's not what life was meant to be
And so for you, my friend, I'll take your shame
You can give it all to me
'Cause you've wrestled demons every day
And they've dragged you to your knees
But in your weakness you will learn to find
That I will always be your strength
In life or in death
Through joy or regret
And all of the secret things you have done
No matter what comes, my friend
Nothing can keep you from the love of God

A song I just heard for the first time that I'd like to dedicate to those of us who fear our secrets are darker than the blood on His side. Including my biological dad.

"Um, yeah, hi. My wife just ran over a boulder..." That was the beginning of Jesse's conversation with the Sears guy yesterday.

It was true. So very, very true. I went running at Lake Fayetteville after inhaling way too much Walgreen's 50% off Easter candy (1 chocolate covered marshmallow egg, 1 caramel cadbury egg, and an entire 5-pack of Vanilla Creme filled hershey's kisses...[which by the way, were the best of the three entrees, and i should have just been happy with those alone],not to mention all the mini cadbury eggs I'd had before even leaving home. the old fashioned chocolatey, canned milk tasting ones. I really really like them. Confession time is over now.) And when I got done I had about 15 minutes to get the car back to Jesse so he could get to class on time. So, as I was backing out of a parking lot, I didn't look over my shoulder. For the boulder. The air literally hissed out of my tire immediately and I could pull neither forward nor backward. This is starting to sound very dr seussian...

Our friend Steve went all the way from Springdale to pick up Jesse in Fayetteville and bring him to me. And then Jesse changed the tire without a single reprimand or complaint. I showed Anderson the daffodils. I wished for an upclose picture of his hands reaching out for them. I know he just does that to everything right now, no matter if its my chin, a cup of coffee, or the cell phone (especially the cell phone)--he isn't selective, he just wants it and then he just wants to taste it.

Spring is gorgeous here. Today we took the jogging stroller outside for the first time, he and I. It was very windy and I had to jog backwards some, so as not to blast him. He promptly fell asleep and missed all the scenery, but again, I wished for a camera. Overhead snowballs that will soon become "Just Trees" and tons and tons of Forsythia, Hydrangea, and Daffodils of course... I noticed mostly purple and yellow and wondered if there's something significant or scientific about those two colors being the most prominent ones of our Arkansas Spring. Is it the same everywhere else? It made me think of Gold and Purple and how they point to Royalty, the message of Easter, the message of a King.

those links

how sad that apparently you can't create a link to youtube videos in these blogs. The best I can do is tell you they were all videos by this very funny Christian Owen-Wilson looking character named Stephen Hawkins. You should totally watch them, as my last blog was very much an excuse to introduce you to them. Just cut and paste these into the YouTube search box:

Stephen Hawkins Homeschool Family

Stephen Hawkins I Don't Drink Beer

Stephen Hawkins Cletus Take the Reel


Josh, I especially feel you'll appreciate Cletus Take the Reel.

I disabled the paragraph function on this blog. You will now be subjected to how things actually sound in my head.

What exactly is the point of a blog? A card catalog comes to mind. This antiquated piece of furniture with a million cards with a million headings all leading to different chapters of information contained in one building. "We read in order to find we are not alone."-C. S. Lewis
It was in red, laminated letters above the chalk board at the front of the room in my favorite high school English teacher's class. So simple, so true. I think my blogs are more like the back issues of my brain--things I should maybe throw away but might want to look at again someday, or better yet, someone else might! Probably this metaphor springs from my friend Beth's idea of having a magazine swap. I think it's a lovely idea, as we are needing to downsize considerably. Magazines, books, and dishes are the two things we seem to allow ourselves to accumulate incessantly. There would be room for neither in the home we are considering moving to for a year. It is a community-living situation which would be amazing in some aspects--its out in the country, on a farm, basically. Goats, cows, horses, doggies--you name the See & Say Character, it will probably answer you with its respective sound. It isn't by any means decided upon, just something we need everyone to pray for the right thing to happen for all involved. Wow. I'm becoming more and more like my husband every day. I just got really annoyed at him the other day for breaking this news to Josh & Meghan first thing after they got here. I explained how I felt it made things that were a really big deal seem a little anti-climactic for me and he explained how he just really hates drama. So I get it. And apparently, it's getting me...
I went for a jog today. I piece together blogs in my head on most jogs and thought I should rename my blog "Blog & Jog." Jogging is the one time of my day I get away from (usually) everyone and can "think a thought" as my friend Beth would say. Anne made it possible for me to go. I called her up out of the blue and asked if I could drop off Anderson while I ran (she's usually my running buddy, so she knows how much i love/need it). I came back to her holding him on her hip and talking on the phone--he as calm as a duck on a pond. I was going to say as calm as a pond. But I really didn't want to compare my baby to a pond. Anyway, she takes me into the living room and showed me how she entertained him the whole time--she had put a fuzzy blanket down and draped four of her pretty scarves onto the blades of the ceiling fan and turned it on. I wanted so badly to take a picture, as it would illustrate nicely the kind of girl she is. These were nice scarves, probably some of her favorites. Anne is like this hidden jewel of a person who I'd never expect to find in Fayetteville--just not stereotypical in any way, is what I mean. I often wonder how I am so lucky to know the people I know--it's like God just hits the stumbleupon button in their lives and they get http://www.christineneedsafriend.org/ NOT a real website there, at least I'm not clicking on it! Anyway, I do have a plethora of gorgeous, intelligent, GIVING friends and often I wonder what I could possibly do to bless them. This actually brings up another subject that I started thinking about again...Beauty School. If I went to the one in West Siloam, it would actually be called Beauty College. I can't wait to post a picture of the sign. It conveys so much more than I could with words. Although I guess it consists of words. Anyway. Before I thought about the Mary Kay thing, I thought the one way to keep in contact with lots of different types of people would be to cut their hair. Everyone talks to their hairstylist, whether they're friends or not. How much cooler if you were friends already? Plus its something you could do practically in your house. I think technically you need a little building that can get inspected or something. But that would totally be something to do with a baby or even a little family of homeschooled children. (Plus, I'm already dying to cut my hair again, and it would probably be good if I learned the tricks of cutting it without it growing back in two weeks. Anyway. So, as I was saying, I went on a jog today. So pretty. Chirps and squirrels and everything budding. It looked like English Countryside, maybe. All dark green grass and foggy. My husband says there's no such thing as English Countryside. "That's Ireland," he says. I observed several people are celebrating St. Patrick's Day with little door hangings, lawn rocks, etc...I didn't know anyone really celebrated it any other way than drinking beer. And so I don't celebrate it, because I Don't Drink Beer. Catalina and Lay and me and Jesse are gonna go fishing someday . That's all. It's Friday!!! It's Sunny!!! And there's a couch in our front yard. I should at least push it to the back yard, maybe? I got an idea while in the shower earlier...you know how there's a freecycle? I was thinking there should be a 'favor-trade' website. Like, I could get someone to watch Anderson and then in return, I could clean their microwave or something. I'm really good at cleaning microwaves, and I know nobody really likes that job. I guess it's something you'd only do with friends, though, so maybe it could be a private website in which you had to have an invitation to join. And maybe that stuff is supposed to be a little more organic and spontaneous, not like going shopping? Any thoughts?

Go look at my pictures or you're in trouble!

Jesse got me these yellow tulips with his birthday money. I guess I really liked them cause I took a few pictures...

Meghan Walton Rocks
She made Jesse's Birthday (cup)Cake... And then I ate most of it. It was throwing itself at me! Isn't it pretty though? She has really really good taste, in my opinion. We even like the same ballet flats at wal-mart.

Foiled by lack of aluminum muffin pan

I'm not sure what this blog is about. I've been away so long, you'd think I'd come back with a bit more substantial of a post. What's more substantial than breakfast, though? I think the technical answer is 'every other meal thereafter.' Whatever. You get this because I have pictures that go with it. Because I am a dork and like to chronicle my cooking mishaps (via the digital camera from Meghan!) to show my husband when he gets home. Actually, it's worse than that. I just like taking pictures of food. Jesse usually makes it look so pretty, it feels like a present.
So I take a picture of my present before I eat it. In this case, I was taking a picture of the present I made for him. So I started this new thing where I cook all I need to cook for the week all at once. Probably the thing that wouldn't work for most people about it is we don't mind eating basically the same thing all the time. For dinner, I just cook the tube o' ground turkey with some onions and a taco seasoning packet and we eat it with spinach and baked doritos and whatever else we have to make 'Taco Salad.' For lunch, I make the tuna salad ahead and peel the carrots and cut up the broccolli. This week, I made semi-hummus for the vegetable dip instead of ranch. It's basically all the same stuff in hummus only with yogurt instead of the tahini, making it low-fat. Oh my gosh, I'm already annoying myself by talking about food this long. I just really wanted to make fun of myself. Breakfast. Last week we had Baked Oatmeal Mini Muffins and Quiche Mini Muffins. This week I made the Oatmeal ones all precisely and they turned out great. I spent all this time measuring exactly 1 tsp. of sausage into those little silicone muffin cups and then 1/8 cup of egg mixture and 1 little chunk of ff cream cheese and upon trying to place it on a rack, it sloshed all over itself like drunkgirl. Or like drunkgirl were making it.
So, after that happened, I did a little stompy dance in the kitchen and figured I sortof deserved it for being so concerned with the little egg muffins. Then I poured it all into a pyrex pie pan and it turned out to be a perfectly pretty quiche. Yay. I just really like making things into mini versions of themselves. Bites. I think it's because I tell myself I'll just have a bite of something and that's it. I do like all the various "Bites" there are out there. Chick fil A chickn minis are an amazing example. And we're back to breakfast. "What about Second Breakfast? And Elevensies?" "I don't think he knows about Second Breakfast, Pip."

We need to be Beautiful because He Is

The Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis

To explain why I named my blog this...

I have every Monday night free because my husband has a class. Up until tonight, I would frantically call every contact in my phone over the age of 5 and under the age of 65. Or clean between the stove and the cabinet. Or bake something I would say is 'for someone else' and then eat well over half of it. All while watching really bad tv. I think Monday night tv is really bad tv. Monday night tv is the bowling alley of tv nights. Shows that get to be on air only when football season is over and there's no where else for them to hang out.

I spend the first 8 hours a day with my gorgeous little boy, Anderson Judah, and after he goes to bed, I'm pretty desperate for anyone to talk to that likes it when I actually connect the syllables I'm speaking into words.

So, those Contacts are only usually half of them home and even fewer of them feeling at all chatty like me. So I decided to be chatty by myself and maybe give everyone a chance to catch up with me at once and post a few pictures and thoughts. The reason I've never done this before, though, is my overwhelming sense that it would be vanity. Turning little things into big things. I have quite the capacity for this vice. Today, I took 25 pictures of myself and my new haircut. I did cut it myself. I did mean to cut the bangs that short. It took around 4.3 minutes to cut but I probably stared at the mirror wondering if I would do it for 4.3 days total. Vanity, vanity, a chasing after the wind! That's my vague recollection of Ecclesiastes.
So, since I cut my hair yesterday morning, I really had nothing left to do on Monday nights. Other than the above mentioned activities, plus any number of unfinished projects laying around, and plenty of laundry and cleaning. Thus, Monday's Child is born.

I had some vague recollection of one of my relatives saying that I was born on a Monday, so I did official calculation.

Then, I remembered "Wednesday's child is full of woe" so I wondered if Monday's child was full of anything better. Here's the whole poem:

Monday's child is fair of face;
Tuesday's child is full of grace;
Wednesday's child is full of woe;
Thursday's child has far to go;
Friday's child is loving and giving;
Saturday's child works hard for a living;
The child that is born on the Sabbath day,
Is bonny, and blithe, and good, and gay.

Turns out, I am fair of face. Ivory 100, the lightest one there is, is my Mary Kay foundation match. To celebrate my new do, I did my face, too, with some MK starter kit makeup. I felt pretty in a grown-up sort of way after I put it on. I haven't worn foundation since 9th grade. As I was saying, vanity!!!