She Worketh Willingly With Her Hands...

   Remember this post where I mentioned my loves-to-stop-and-smell-the-roses-girl? Well, she has been hard at work. Very diligently and very patiently.
I made this little sampler when I was eight...



I thought it would be neat for each of the girls to make one similar and then have them all framed. Bri has done a lot of different needlework before so she's doing a great job zipping through her's. This is all new to Tori, I think she was more afraid of holding the needle than I was of giving her the needle ;). She has had to take out and redo many, many stitches but she hasn't sighed or complained even once. It is such a blessing to me to see her steadily and joyfully plodding along :). Here they are working hard...



Tori's precious smile...



I even put Bethani to work refining her fine motor skills with a very blunt darning needle, some plastic canvas, and very close supervision ;)...



She felt like such a big girl :).
   I'll have to update sometime when they are completed and let you know how they turn out. I'm kind of anxious to see myself :).

 She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands. ~Proverbs 31:13

Here's To Say...

 

...to our favorite guy! The king of our home, a wonderful father and the love of my life :). Lee is such a great father and I am so glad there is an official day set aside for proclaiming that because I am afraid we don't say it nearly often enough. I love the poetry of Edgar Guest and this one in particular captures exactly what I would love to give my sweet husband on Father's Day, and every day of the year...
  

When Day Is Done
When day is done and the night slips down,
And I've turned my back on the busy town,
And come once more to the welcome gate
Where the roses nod and the children wait,
I tell myself as I see them smile
That life is good and its tasks worth while.

When day is done and I've come once more
To my quiet street and the friendly door,
Where the Mother reigns and the children play
And the kettle sings in the old-time way,
I throw my coat on a near-by chair
And say farewell to my pack of care.

When day is done, all the hurt and strife
And the selfishness and the greed of life,
Are left behind in the busy town;
I've ceased to worry about renown
Or gold or fame, and I'm just a dad,
Content to be with his girl and lad.

Whatever the day has brought of care,
Here love and laughter are mine to share,
Here I can claim what the rich desire--
Rest and peace by a ruddy fire,
The welcome words which the loved ones speak
And the soft caress of a baby's cheek.

When day is done and I reach my gate,
I come to a realm where there is no hate,
For here, whatever my worth may be,
Are those who cling to their faith in me;
And with love on guard at my humble door,
I have all that the world has struggled for.
                                           ~Edgar Guest

I hope you know how much we love you, Lee, and how much we appreciate all that you do for us. Have a blessed Father's Day, sweetheart :). 

Here's a fun link for more information on the history of Father's Day.

And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse. ~Malachi 4:6

Seven Things I Never Thought I Would Say...

1. Bethani! Stop eating that candle!!!

2. Come here, sweetie. Let me kiss it. I'm sorry you're hurt but that's what happens when you jump off of the coffee table with roller skates on...

3. Bri, please stop climbing the walls (literally)!

4. Tori, that's not a lobster, that's a scorpion. Stay away and get me a jar!!!

5. Lee, I found the rest of my tea set...Bethani hid it in your speaker and the hole is so tiny I can't get it out. Oh! and there's that egg we never found last year -thank goodness it was empty!- and a....fork!? eeewww...

6. Me on the phone with Lee: Well, if I tear this panel out of her bedroom door I think I can get her out...

7. Motherhood is boring...Oh wait...I'm still pretty sure I won't ever be saying that ;)!

Thanks for the fun tag Marie :). I'm not really one for tagging because I can never remember who's done what but I would love to hear your list :). So if you've done this leave me a link! If you haven't done it consider yourself tagged and leave me a link after you have if you like :).

He maketh the barren woman to keep house, and to be a joyful mother of children. Praise ye the LORD. ~Psalm 113:9

Future Agrarian in Our Midst?

And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. ~Genesis 2:15

I. did. it.

I made something. I made something with sleeves.



And all of the blood, sweat and tears (yes, I mean that literally) were all worth it yesterday morning when my daughter rose up in her brand new nightgown and called me blessed ;). Maybe I will do it again after all.
I have got a ton of patterns, some even cut out. I have made aprons, doll clothes (all sleeveless), I've done a lot of mending and I could have "whipped up" a jumper pretty quickly but I have always balked at the idea of even trying sleeves and now I know I can do it! I just need to try a zipper and then I'm good to go!
Thanks for the pattern suggestion Tanya :)!

And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it. ~Psalm 90:17

Have any of you experienced Dermatographia?

   We've had some interesting things come up lately. Most disquieting to my mother-mind is a little issue Andrew is having. From what I have read it is harmless but I would still really like it to go away. On its own. So, if any of you have experienced dermatographia  and had it go away on its own (or through natural home treatments) I would be so encouraged by your testimony! It doesn't seem to be bothering him, it is just so disconcerting to me to see his face turn bright red every ten minutes! Here is a picture of Andrew after rubbing his eyes with his little fists and his face on my shoulder shortly after waking up from a nap...


The camera didn't pick it up very well for some reason. Anywhere you see red, picture it twice as dark and that would be closer to what it looks like in person.
And here he is about five minutes later, practically flawless skin!


Isn't that odd? I have gotten some great information through a forum I'm a part of, in fact that is how I figured out what was going on in the first place! That was such a blessing to at least have a starting point in my research. But if any of you can share anything else pertaining to this I would be so appreciative.
   I truly believe that during his first round of vaccinations his immune system was overloaded. Not only did he have the same screaming fits that Bethani used to have, but seemingly overnight he developed extremely red patches of dried skin that we have been battling for months now. The same thing that caused his dry skin has now left him predisposed to develop this new problem, especially if he came into contact with an allergen, and allergies are nothing new to our family. Lee has extreme allergy problems and the girls and I all have our own things we can't handle. There is some regret there because I really felt during Bethani's babyhood that God was leading us to stop vaccinating our children and I didn't listen. I was more afraid of what  "man" may do to me than listening to that still small voice and searching the scriptures. In the end, after prayer and study of both the scriptures and from a medical standpoint, we made our decision based on the fact that God puts a high view on the "lifeblood" of a person and we were concerned with injecting pig, chicken and monkey DNA into our children's blood and even more discomforting and saddening was the knowledge that we had been allowing them to be injected with cells grown from aborted fetuses. Other concerns were the levels of aluminum and mercury, among other things, in the vaccinations. If you are interested in learning more about the health concerns with vaccinations I highly, highly recommend the documentary The Hidden Truth, that you can watch online. It is long but sooo interesting!  We did not know that this documentary existed until after we had made our decision but it was very confirming from a medical standpoint. I got my spiritual confirmation the day that we went in and had already decided that we were going to tell the doctor our decision and there was a bible verse hanging in the office that really spoke peace to me. I had been kind of nervous about a confrontation with our very vaccination pushing pediatrician but the verse put my spirit at rest and the conversation with the pediatrician actually ended up going surprisingly well!  It probably helped that he had lost his voice that day ;). We'll see how it goes next time when he can actually speak above a whisper. Anyway, we had never seen that bible verse in the doctor's office before and I continued to see that verse throughout that day, it got almost funny :). For information on what ingredients are commonly found in immunizations see here and for a chart of cell lines used see here. 
   In other news of excitement...I checked up on a credit account yesterday (which I do quite regularly "just in case" there was ever a problem) expecting to owe nothing and learned that our card has been hit with a very large charge that was not made by us. Capital One and Home Depot both gave me the run around so when Lee got home he called back and wasn't on the phone for ten minutes before they had actually done something! Grrr ;). Anyway, they are doing an investigation so it should be cleared up in the next thirty days. The odd thing is they are saying that the card was swiped but we still have the cards in our possession. Irregardless, neither of us have ever been to Tampa, Florida so I'm confident they will be able to get it cleared up. I  just have a nature that is so prone to worry even when my head knows everything is going to work out fine. I guess God is giving me plenty of opportunity to practice letting go and trusting.
   To leave this on a positive note... I spent Wednesday visiting with my mom, dad and sisters with the two littlest littles. It was a very sweet time of fellowship for me, it had been a while since we had all been together. It was the first time Bethani has seen a cat up close, it was so cute. She called the cats everything from bears to doggies ;). Bethani had a ball and Andrew obviously enjoyed himself. It was the first time he has ever gone to anyone without even batting an eyelash since he was a few months old. Hopefully we can do it again soon!
   Lastly, here are a few links for you. My friend Tanya posted about her family's recent visit with our family, Kim C. at Life in a Shoe has a very thought provoking post on technology versus the Bible and Carmon at Buried Treasure is sharing about how the view of contraception by the church has changed over time (The March 22, 1931 Washington Post quote is very interesting!).

Praying Scripture

   There are many beautiful prayers in the Bible and the book of Psalms is an especially great book to read when you use scripture in your prayers, just ask my five year old...
   This particular child of mine is very, very  s...l...o...w... ;). As in, the girl doesn't believe in being in a hurry. It's not that she can't, she started reading at four and I was willing to wait until she was six or seven! And you should have seen her hurry when Tanya's family showed up and she was in the middle of folding some towels ;). When it comes right down to it you don't have to remind her to stop and smell the roses but you just might have to remind her that she's supposed to be watering them a couple of times before it gets done ;). Many times in the past I have had to pull her aside and tell her how blessed she is that God has given her such a naturally calm and patient personality, but that it could become a weakness instead of a strength if she doesn't learn to apply herself when necessary. That said, I learned two things the other night during devotions:
1) She realizes she needs to be working on this particular part of her character
2) She is listening during family Bible time
We were reading Psalm 119 and had gotten to verse 156...Great are thy tender mercies, O Lord: quicken me according to thy judgements...
At that we heard a sigh and Tori saying to herself, "I need to pray that...". So cute :).