You Make My Life the Best, And I am Grateful

 We took a long awaited weekend get-away "up north". Not to raise the controversial question of whether or not it is OK to leave everyone and everything behind for three days and just be alone as a couple; I would say this. It works for us. We rejuvenate ourselves and our marriage with quiet and walks in the woods. Some of the chaff of the last two years was blown away for good, realizing that we made it through the hard things intact...maybe even better for it. Although I tend to think I could have learned to extend grace and forgiveness through less drama, right? I certainly would like to give it a try in the next two years.
    On our way  up the shore of Lake Superior we talked about how long it had been since we did a whole weekend away. Elv wanted to believe it had been one year.
     "Remember, we had all that snow and we came up in a snowstorm and did all that snowshoeing..." He didn't say it, but I knew he was remembering his trek out to get our food and luggage that we had left behind a mile away in the car when we couldn't drive any further.  I stayed home, sipping coffee by the stove, puttering in the kitchen, tidying and cleaning away the odd left-overs of the cabin being empty for too long. He was not impressed with me.

   Here is a link for  Two Years ago . I wonder where the snowshoes are by now. I hope someone has them stowed safely for a future snowy April day.
    The lake was just as blue as you see in this picture. We took a picnic lunch with us and Jeeped ourselves to the highest spot behind the cabin. This blue almost three miles away was clearly visible to us.

 I said we came through intact; but I will admit right here that we both have fears and insecurities that are new to us. I deal with depression and he with doubting my support for where we are now in our church life and family. Every day I rephrase in my mind what I am about to say for fear I will add to the negative side of the balance.
I am Dory; but forever grateful that he is NOT Nemo, and is not looking for his Father or family, having established those things with his Heavenly Father steadfastly. So I tell him, "Keep swimming, keep swimming." And I wonder why I am here and how did we get here. It is good for both of us that I trust him, so maybe this is enough for now.

Friday evening we went out for supper.  Northern Lights restaurant was mostly empty. The quiet radio was tuned to some nice "oldies" so we sat across from each other and smiled. We both ordered fish for our suppers. Where else will you have the perfect setting to visit or not and remember another time and place just so, while we were dating. Canoes and every sort of northern fishing, hunting, and trapping paraphernalia hung from the ceiling or were lined up on all the walls, the Lake just outside our window. There was one waitress for the whole place which shows you how quiet it really was.

We took walks everyday.

 This shoreline is below Kathy's cabin. I post it here just to show you one of the moods of Lake Superior. It was a grey, cloudy day, so the lake mirrored that. I have a picture from several years ago of this exact spot with the lake in a vivid blue instead.

    A pair of mallards have moved in to live on the little creek that flows under the  bridge that Elv built a few
years ago.

The old fence line is overgrown with new spruce trees growing right through. I followed Elv through the woods trying to not get my feet wet. We got pretty good at skirting the swamps. One day we decided to see what feeds the little creek just west of the cabin. We both got wet feet that time and ended up on the trail in the woods that takes us up to the top of Buck Mountain. The ruts were full of water, so we used sticks, wishing for shovels, and dug channels for the water to get away. We walked back to the cabin and stood on the foot bridge and imagined that now it was flowing a bit faster. Non-essential and unimportant, but relaxing and interesting. If only all of earth's problems were so easily remedied.

Elv added a bit of wiring to the cabin while we were there. Each time we go up we try to invest a little improvement.
We sat down to play scrabble once and in my search for a pen and paper to keep score; we found the notebook left there by friends for guests to journal in. We found two entries from the folks who had been there twice in March. That really made my day. Thank You, Patti for faithfully keeping the journal. I added to it for you this time.

        Cookstove Toast
Sliced bread
Butter
Jam
    Slather butter on both sides of the bread slices. Lay tin foil on the cooler end of the cookstove and lay your buttered slices on it. Turn to brown both sides perfectly. Cover the top side with jam and eat it with a fork off your plate, or from your hand with plenty of napkins handy. There's nothing like it. Anywhere.

Lattins made a mousse type cake for a friend's birthday and saved back a bit of mousse just for me. What's nicer than a cut glass goblet of chocolate mousse thrust into your hand to take home and enjoy by the fire with one's husband?

We headed home Sunday afternoon. We came the long way. I can't even tell you where we were exactly some of the time, but here's an old barn over by the village of Gordan, WI.

 Took these with my phone on the way home.
The perfect ending to a wonderful weekend. Thank You Elv for the nice time we had. You make my life the best and I am grateful.

Diffusing the Fragrance

 It's a rainy day. Elv is puttering about much needed tire changes on the Jeep and pickup.     I am sitting at my computer trying to write. It is not working. After three hours of scribbling and backspacing; I have a few disconnected paragraphs about something which I am only partially in the know. There is a kernel of a good idea there, but that's it! And it won't go anywhere because it is only a soapbox for now. I know it could be written and true. But evidently not by me.
   Doing better with enjoying these spring flowers by the house. They last about ten days thriving in rain or snow. They smell fabulous, too.
   What I really want to say is that I believe we should learn to thrive and be beautiful on the inside no matter the weather. We should smell good, too, like Christians do, even when we become old and tired.

2 Corinthians 2: 14, 15 Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place. For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.

Places In Our house

Here's a picture posting just for fun. I started out with a camera to take pictures of our various home made blackboards. You'll see those as we go along here, too.                                                          



        


 Amy and I have a belief that there should be flowers of some sort on the table at all times. These are our most recent batches. We have a friend who often brings flowers just for this purpose.

 Lisl sent this home made card and the little magnet for our refrigerator. A gem for an eye, and two more flowers: on the hat, red, of course!, and in her hand. Bonus of red shoes on her turned in toes.  I do miss her and hers. A lot! Snail mail is the best.
   Gwen sent me another bouquet of flowers last week.


 

We enjoy our black boards. Brad and Amy each have one made of chalkboard paint and a plain old board.

So just now, Amy and I have sayings on three of them. This little slate lives on my work table.

Here is Amy's inspiration board for you. Pretty simple, right?

 Dried roses, pine cones and a bird in another corner.

 This picture bugs me because I should have taken it at a better angle. Found this on a bookcase in the hall on my camera hunt.

 I found Brad's black board sporting a  leviathan. And a tall ship. "Out of the Depths" is written under the monster there. Who knows what he had in mind. But it makes you think. It reminds me of pre-Renaissance superstition. Columbus was brave, wasn't he? And, of course, Job's poetry.

 I like maps. Brad took this old school map and framed it out with pallet boards. It covers a goodly part of one wall in his bedroom.

 .

Just Scribblings of Nice Normal

Sitting up in bed with my computer in my lap just because I can. And thinking about our nice, mundane life...just work and mud problems (easy and passing), and ordinary stuff.

All four of us were game to head off to bed/our rooms at nine tonight instead of sitting in the living room yawning over pinterest, chess, or rook. I took a phone call up to Amy from one of her house cleaning clients and she was relaxing already: candle lit, bookish tidiness, and her new black board written up in white chalk creative lettering a saying. Brad is starting the counterpart chain mail glove. (He's a clever kiddo.) He said he'd be doing that for awhile yet this evening in his room. Elv is doing his own work clothes laundry for a couple more hours while he lounges and reads/studies on his device. Four people on "me time" tonight pretty well sums this paragraph up.

I get to stay home the rest of the week. I can do whatever I want to do. Since I'm all grown up that means I will do what has been waiting to be done in the line of sewing and sewing.

Just sewing. Oh but it takes me a long time to want to. First, I start to dream about pretty, cotton-cool clothes for work when I see a pretty skirt on a friend. It is not coveting! It just wakes me up. And I need to be waked up. Next I have to think through the practical problems of new dresses: where to buy fabric, how many pieces, and to plan how they shall be made up. Then to shop, either myself online, or through my smart girls who live near to fabric sources and know what I like. After that, I insert the project of sewing up two other dresses for someone else who needs them far worse than I do. That gives me a deadline on those and an incentive for these.

All this time I am dreading having to actually sit down and sew. Sewing is a pain and I don't want to do it. I am worried that I'll have to actually sew when I don't feel like sewing. I find myself just putting it off. I have so many other things to do: read a book, blog, take pictures of the tulips coming up, the everlasting dishes piled up in the kitchen. Even those household chores I don't enjoy can be happily done while I put off the sewing. I tell myself that no miracle of wanting to sew is going to come to me at any given point. I shall just simply have to make myself get at it. Soon.

I am actually enjoying the sewing, as I always do, after all that hoopla in my mind. Don't ask, I don't know.

We've been hauling in rabbit manure/mulch for the gardens and lawn. Mike and Cindy don't charge us for the mulch, but they asked us to do the chores this weekend. So Brad and I followed them around while they showed us how it is done. How hard can it be to feed and water rabbits? I'm a little nervous about Mavis, though. She is the old grandmother rabbit who is aging and won't live long now. Mike pretended nonchalance while telling me that if she dies, I should put her in a plastic bag and throw her in any one of their three freezers in the garage. You just never know what you're getting yourself in for doing rabbit chores, I guess. So I am praying that Mavis doesn't die this weekend. Because if she dies and I put her in a freezer; I'll get home and worry that she wasn't dead after-all, and I've killed her instead, by freezing her to death. Seriously!

Brad repaired his cabin roof today and threw the bad shingles in on top of the fully loaded dumpster. Elv asked him to take them out of the dumpster. My conscience could easily bear leaving them in there. What else are we going to do with four dead shingles? Elv and I both have complicated consciences on completely different things. And there is no rhyme or reason to either of our discrepancy. So Elv will not defile his with illegal shingles and I won't use insurance claim money for anything but exactly what that insurance was applied for. We have a mutual respect and eye-rolling for each other. Oh well.

Elv will not knowingly drive a car with expired license plate, either. I did it for two days this week. And nothing whatsoever happened. I did nothing to attract the concern of a cop and it was fine. Elv scolded me saying that if I were to be picked up with an expired license the car would be grounded right there on the shoulder of the road. I guess he must know, but I find myself thinking, Then what? that is so not the end of the world, really, is it? It's just the Eve in me, I know. So I went online and registered it, pronto. Now if  I get picked up, it will only be for the bad tail light.  
                                                     Goodnight. 

Flowers For The Table

 Amy brought flowers home today. Made my day and our evening table, too. 
Inspiring, too. We set a pretty table for supper. Of course, I had to make a favorite supper to put on the table. Sloppy Joe's with cheese on bread. So with all that going on, we had ice cream for desert while we were at it.  I recommend boosting your homemaking morale with a few flowers. Besides, one can always find something to celebrate. What better way than to have a nice supper on a pretty table? 

Easter is here. I'll admit it. I need Easter this year. I am more aware than ever how much I need the power of our risen Saviour in my life.

Some Thank You Spots On My Planet

 A patio fire and cookout during the very first week of 50 degree weather made us feel triumphant. We made it through winter! A big fire, a few friends, coats, and a picnic supper... a perfect spring celebration.  Never mind the snow in the back ground.

 We took a Sunday afternoon drive the other Sunday and it turned into a mudding. Now we know that nobody bothers to plow the forest roads in winter. And we found out that Josh doesn't mind mudding with his nice pickup as long as it was kind of by accident and the only way home was through. "It's dirty now, so it's fun."  

I found this wall art at work to add to the kitchen. Looks nice on this picture and in real life. Elv's gift of white oak shelves are still beautiful, don't you think? I'm never going to get tired of this kitchen. 

   I'm collecting "Thank You" spots in my life. My kitchen is one of them. I need these places to override other ugly voices of discontent and undoneness. Here is a good place to remember the good things and thank Him for a tangible blessing at the moment amid the clamor. 

 Morning in the swamp outside our living room windows at the cabin. It's dry up there this spring. No green yet and there is still frost in the ground. And snow here and there, especially in the woods. 
    Everyone enjoyed Sunday for our first 5th Sunday church in Minnesota schedule. A couple of the advantages of being a small congregation is that we all fit in a coach bus and in Lattin's living room of rows of chairs.
   Good times of worship and fellowship. Our singing is good when we are all in one place. For me, the singing is what I go to church for. (I know, bad grammar). But seriously, the singing makes or breaks it for me. So that's my humble confession this post. 
   
 

The Cabin, Another Thank You Place

We came home from the cabin this time saying, "Ok, now it is time to get wall coverings over that insulation!"  Funny thing is, we have all the materials. Just need a good space of time to do it. And the three windows behind the table are to be replaced with three big windows, 12 feet of window! The indoors will move in to grace our every meal. Can't wait! We have the "new" windows, as well. 

   So there's my blog contribution for the week. We are busy with spring chores at home and at work.  The dumpster is getting a workout here at home. Spring cleaning is like the clearing of a bad conscience. It's a great feeling.