Friday, December 31, 2010

After Christmas Blues


It’s a bad feeling. This let down feeling after a week of busy fun with the family. All the old familiar quiet is filled with heaviness. We play music; which doesn’t help much.

Too much happened in such a short time. The memories would be gone to me if I didn’t have the photographs, because it was too much, too fast. I know I said that twice now. I want to take that week of minutes and stretch them out in a rerun of a month of time just so that I could absorb them for what they are.

I didn’t get to spend enough time with the babies. By next year when it happens again they’ll have changed so much. So many little things I’ll have missed. Nobody…nothing waits for me to get the full benefit.

We girls here at home didn’t get to have Jenny’s good humor and talk enough. We had to share with friends and other people so many times. And then evenings came and everyone was tired and went to bed. The truth I have to reface is that she is not ever going to come home to stay. I simply cannot make my heart believe that…not even after two years.

( Lisl’s been gone for four years, yet somehow I believe she’ll be back at least to our community. I don’t know why I think that. It’s probably just denial again like it is for Jenny. Maybe it is due to my never having been in Thailand in her home. I am on hold about her, I guess. )

Jenny and I did take a walk one day and we went up town shopping another day for a couple hours. I am glad we did that but frankly, I didn’t savor the moments enough because somehow I thought I had so many of them? I am unsure as to why when they are here I don’t spend more time just holding the moments up to the light looking at them. How do they all slip like that until you can’t go back?

I am motionless on the road looking back, longing for a way to hold time up so that I can get enough, finally, of the flavor and joy of Christmas family time. It’s not doing me any good, this paralysis of sadness. Here I am, stranded. Going forward puts the memories even further behind me, but standing here doesn’t allow for going back either. Nobody can go back. Eternity calls, and time sets the pace. My waiting is a waste.

I wonder if Heaven will finally let a person get enough time for joy!?

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Christmas Pictures

The best part of Christmas family time is right here for me. Gwen appears to have a secret, but she doesn't...she is quite honest with her opinions. Benny only wants to be sure that we aren't ignoring him and giving Gwen more attention than what he gets.

The best man in the world. No question!

They came and spent a whole week at our house. We loved every minute of it...except when Gwen had a fever.

The Great Train Set-up. Here's track one being put together.

Now we have two tracks and a train for each. They spent hours playing at this.



They even spent a little time taking pictures of the trains in motion as well as parked for effect.

Jenny gave Elv a copy of Penrod for Christmas. Here Lance is apparently introducing it to Benny.


This would be about a cell phone.

On the outside looking in at the Graber's house during Christmas week. Honestly!

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Christmas Cookies


We did the traditional cookie baking here last week and the week before, too. I bought more almond bark this year than ever before. We coated peanut butter balls, coconut balls, shortbread, kringles, and pretzels. I didn't mean to have a one track mind; just did, that's all. Charlotte made those cookies with the jam and glaze there. She has good ideas and makes good cookies. Shortbread was hers, too. Yummy, melt-in-your-mouth.


The shortbread was surprisingly easy. We formed it into squarish logs and cut them like slicing bread with a sharp knife and baked them. Dipping them was a nice added touch.


Instead of all that garish, colored frosting, I opted for white frosting and colored sugar this time. This is much nicer looking on the plate and less messy on cookie day. Brad adjusted well to the change, too. Youngest sons make the best kitchen helpers, ever!
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Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Trash Disposal

Years ago the local dump was at the end of the road where you backed the pick-up tailgate over the edge of a smoggy pit, shoved the trash off, and then drove away.  Everything went in there and slowly burned or rusted away.  A bulldozer nearby made sure it was confined and neatly buried eventually and another large pit created for more trash.  It was a simple straight forward process: no sorting, no smashing down the large plastic milk bottles, and no questions asked.  Although I know it is a great want of awareness on my part; but to honest, I liked it better that way.  Nobody expected to be given money for dumping the trash...how rude is that?! Most people were glad to see you were taking responsibility for your unsightly trash by hauling it to the dump.

Now we have numbered plastic, aluminum, tin cans, glass, metal, paper, and cardboard to recycle. Maybe we just have more trash then our grandparents did.  But what's left over after a week of living as a household of six is amazing. Not to mention that huge bag of old boots and shoes that resulted from cleaning out the boot cupboard yesterday.  What to do with that?! Has anybody ever heard of recycling old shoes?

Perhaps the truest test of a woman's management skills is how she handles her household trash. If I compost the food garbage, sort the recyclables,condense the big things by smashing, and haul as often as needed instead of waiting...then what?! Never mind, it's just trash. Its the unlovely side of life and has to be done. Complaining doesn't make it nicer.  

Aunt Eva always said, "There are no free lunches."  She was right, as usual.  Now, "no free lunch" means even more to me than it used to. Somebody has to pay, even for trash disposal; we might as well pay for our own. 


Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Tree Give Away


...But only for two weeks. I love our fig tree of living green all winter in a land of snow and cold. It's twenty below this morning!


I am just looking for a more spacious feeling in our house for over the holidays while the married children are here.


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Monday, December 13, 2010

Wake Up Call For Us Moms

We tell our children that tomorrow's world is going to be much different than today's.  We tell them that they will have worse or more intense evil to face and to teach their children against.  It's a scary future if you get to focusing on the news or listening to too much VCY America radio. 

Being aware of the things that are happening in our world is one thing.  Being prepared and preparing our children to stand up for Jesus is THE thing. How are we going to do this? By making sure there is a Bible class at school? By making sure the children behave in Sunday School? Those are good things, but it is you, Mommy, who has all this time with your little ones. Whereas I don't think a panicked cram session each day is the answer ( it might be, though); I believe there would be a lot more attention given to making sure the children know their Bibles if we had just a five minute glimpse into the world they are going to face. I am not terribly impressed if your precocious infant can quote a movie... I have heard enough of that even in our own home. I wonder how many Bible verses they can quote! And when my/your child is asked about his or his parents beliefs, can he answer that as readily as he can the "wonders" of technology?

What about our day to day living? Do you realize that our daughters are going to be passionate about the same things in life as we are?  I know of young ladies who have disappointed their respective mothers with their current church choice but are following their same mothers  carefully  in the arts and practice of homemaking.  I conclude that we pass on what we really care about.  It's what we LIVE everyday that cuts the mustard, not what we only talk about or do once a week.

Saturday, December 11, 2010

Reformatting December 2010


I had a bad bug in my computer. This bug would throw up red boxes onto my screen at random and then emit a fierce weird scream.  Besides it held the whole security system hostage.  I could not scan for it.  I could not put it in quarantine. And as I frantically tried to gather the thing up and throw it out it began to multiply. As of this morning I had 26 of them.  I'll admit that it was a little unnerving for me. So unnerving that I failed to make sure I had backed up my photographs properly. Thus I lost three months of pictures including our Two Lakes Anniversary Camping Pictures.  

So Clark came over to spend our winter storm at our house and reformatted the computer.  This is just as good for a computer as repentance and conversion is for a sinner like me.  Everything is fresh and new and works quickly.  No more red boxes, no screams, no truncated operations for unknown reason, and no more apologetic pop-ups from windows. 

But the pictures I lost.  Oh, it feels badly. They're gone forever, just like my sins in the deep blue sea.  I want the pictures back.  But I can't. So get over it! 

I am glad that God's computer...the one that He keeps our names in, never needs any backing up, nor any reformatting unless you call the blood of Jesus and His intercessory work back-up.



Saturday, December 4, 2010

‘Do You Hear What I Hear?’

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 I have always considered this carol to be a little fanciful, maybe not quite accurate.  

It was written in protest during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Some of you are old enough to remember those days when tension ran high between the United States government and the Russian leader, Khrushchev.  Russia was building a missile base in Cuba including missiles enough to blow up a few major cites in United States.  Never mind the fact that United States already had missiles trained on Russia over in Europe somewhere. The United States decided what was happening in Cuba was unacceptable. So we had a situation where two strong nations showed their muscles to each other and hoped the other one would back down first.  Russia did, thankfully, and all the truck for missiles down in Cuba was shipped back home.  A year later the US followed suit and got rid of the offending missiles over in Europe.  That’s how I understand the history. Anyway, people here at home were very concerned about what could have happened. The author of this carol watching babies in strollers along the streets of New York city, came up with these words to say how he was feeling about the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was written in October 1962 for the Christmas season coming up.

Said the night wind to the little lamb,
"Do you see what I see?
Way up in the sky, little lamb,
Do you see what I see?
A star, a star, dancing in the night
With a tail as big as a kite,
With a tail as big as a kite."

Said the little lamb to the shepherd boy,
"Do you hear what I hear?
Ringing through the sky, shepherd boy,
Do you hear what I hear?
A song, a song high above the trees
With a voice as big as the sea,
With a voice as big as the sea."

Said the shepherd boy to the mighty king,
"Do you know what I know?
In your palace warm, mighty king,
Do you know what I know?
A Child, a Child shivers in the cold--
Let us bring him silver and gold,
Let us bring him silver and gold."

Said the king to the people everywhere,
"Listen to what I say!
Pray for peace, people, everywhere,
Listen to what I say!
The Child, the Child sleeping in the night
He will bring us goodness and light,
He will bring us goodness and light."

                                 Noel Regney and Gloria Shane Baker 

  Which lamb was Regney referring to?  Was it the little lamb out there in fields by night? or the one in the manger? or was it just all those babies in prams he noticed? At any rate, Christmas is about that Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world. 

A voice as big as the sea? According to Revelations 1:15 Jesus has the voice of many waters. The author was making poetry out of the angels’ message to the shepherds, but still…

Please listen to the words of the carols this Christmas and try not to pass them off as simply fanciful as I have done in the past. May the songs we hear remind us that what happened in Bethlehem has to be reckoned with someday.  Better now than later, my friends.

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