Et cetera

Gift idea alert: 

• 10 Bible Resources My Kids Love - Some of these we have, but I also learned about some great resources in this post. 

Deal alert:

• Save on Everything and Nothing

Favorites on Spotify these days:

• Hide 'Em in Your Heart
• Bible Study Fellowship (the preschool songs!)
• SING 2019! (if you search under Getty Music, there are several SING 2019! playlists, including the annual Nashville HYMN SING!)

Favorite meal of the past week:

• barbecued chicken, hash brown casserole, oven-roasted green beans

Looking forward to:

• coffee with a mom an hour away whose baby was adopted from our same agency
• swim lessons for Little Guy!!!

Best moment of the past week:

• watching Little Miss's big eyes, happy smile, and "movin' to the beat" as we sang, "When we all get to heaven" with about 50 others at the annual reunion of descendants of Jim's great-great-grandfather (?)

Friday morning

What I'm drinking: Anthology black tea

What I'm watching: the sky slowly become light, as the sun rises through the clouds

What I'm reading these days: Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle boxed set (!) and the Little Lights biographies (to Little Guy) and, to Little Miss,  The Story of Daniel (LG never glanced at this series I bought at a garage sale, but LM "reads" them every day!), Prayers for Little Hearts (Little Blessings), and LG's A-B-C book.

What I'm listening to these days: "Sing! Most Requested Hymns" and "Hide 'Em in Your Heart" on Spotify

What's on my project list: Little Miss's A-B-C book!   This is a Shutterfly photo book I made for LG just before LM was born, introducing the story of his life ... B is for birthday, D is for dedicated, F is for extended family, G is for grandparents, N is for namesake, O is for official (when his adoption was official), etc. It includes the name of the city/state where he was born, etc.  LM reads LG's, but declares that the baby in each picture is her!

What I'm saying 'no' to:  the BEST townwide garage sales today (I spent yesterday inventorying the clothes I have purchased ahead for LG, and he's in good shape); and participating on a parent panel of special needs children

Who I'm praying for:  the birth mom of a little newborn baby, whom friends are adopting

What new app I'm using: Snore Lab

What new goal I have: to walk on the treadmill every day for two months, for a total of 60 miles

Ornery

I don't remember hearing this word until we were dating, and Jim used it.  Obviously I had heard or read it before, and knew the meaning.

Since then, I have heard it exponentially more than I ever heard it in the previous decades of my life.

When our pastor used it this week in his sermon, I wondered, "Is this a Midwestern thing?"

Google assures me (if it can ever assure you of anything!) that it is.  See this site. 

Do you use ornery? Are you from the Midwestern USA?

Keep your eyes peeled

I told Little Guy that we needed to keep our eyes peeled for something (I forget what).

His response (after asking what that meant) was, “Mom, how did you learn ‘keep your eyes peeled?’”

His little mind is going all the time. Not only does he want to know what new words mean, but he wants to know how other people learned those words.

He’s amazing!  And it's fun to have a front-row seat, watching him learn!

1000 Gifts, Vol. 5, #91

901. church library

902.  Sunday School teachers

903.  Little Miss jumping out of her skin with excitement talking about her teacher and her class!!

904.  Little Guy telling us that his teacher is tricky because she erases one word at a time from the verse on the whiteboard, but that his class is VERY smart and can't be tricked. :)

905.  Adult Bible Fellowship (adult SS) teachers, too!

906.  garage sale finds - View Master with 3 reels (50 cents) and Otter Box ($2.50)

907.  answered prayer, as we prayed for good deals & that we'd resist unnecessary ones!

908.  growth in Little Guy's ability to take care of his "devices," i.e. HAs (or hearing aids).  A baggie of HA batteries now lives in both his SS room and Children's Church room, so that he can change the batteries himself, whenever they die, instead of having his teacher text me to come and do it. Hooray!!

909.  other moms walking the same path I am

910.  unexpected visit from a cousin, that left LG & LM bouncing off the walls :)

What we ate

What we ate one morning in September

Tim Challies periodically writes a blog post about his church, e.g., "How We Worshipped One Sunday in September."

This isn't as weighty as a subject, but he inspired this title. :)

Mom - leftover roasted baby potatoes, boiled egg, string cheese, apple slices, hot tea

Little Guy - chocolate milk, yogurt tube, applesauce pouches, granola bar

Little Miss - toasted frozen waffle, granola bar, water

All of this in the van while hurtling down the backroads toward our carpool spot.  We try our best to eat semi-healthy, while eating (mostly packaged) on-the-go breakfasts. 

 

Groceries & dishes

I'm a great fan of online grocery shopping.  It's not hard to understand why a mom of a baby or toddler (or two or more littles) would prefer to just pull into a parking space, have someone fill her car with her groceries, and then drive home.  Who would want to add in all the buckling and unbuckling, snacks, potty breaks, training opportunities, etc.?

But, there is a cost.  Little Miss doesn't know how to go grocery shopping.  She's missed out on all those training opportunities.  She hasn't learned how I shop.  She isn't getting to help find a can of peaches, etc.

And I?  I have missed out on miles and miles of walking in the grocery store over the past 2.5 years. 

Hmmm... Maybe I need to start grocery shopping in the store???

While groceries are the prologue to a meal, dishes are the epilogue. 

And our dishwasher has been put out of service until the new one arrives (hopefully today), in order to prevent large puddles of water on our kitchen floor. 

The podcast, A Slob Comes Clean, is where I first heard of dishes math.  If you do your dishes everyday, let's say it takes 10 minutes.  But if you skip a day or two, it doesn't just take 20 or 30 minutes; it takes more like an hour. 

Not being able to use my dishwasher has taught me another principle of washing dishes.  If you use your dishwasher primarily, it's easy to let just a few pans, etc. sit in the sink.  You might be running your dishwasher once or even twice a day, but if you leave the pans in the sink for days on end, you could still have a sink-full of dishes.

So, not having a dishwasher, has meant that I wash ALL the dishes, which means that my sink is clean. 

Hmmm... Maybe we need to stop delivery of our dishwasher???

Issues in Missions

I commend each of these articles to you, and would love to hear your thoughts. 

 

An open letter to the question - are missionaries just modern colonialists or white saviours? 

 

Dear Tanzanian Friends, I'm Sorry for Being a Jerk Sometimes 

 

Missionary Money: How it All Works

 

Netflix Is Making It Harder to Be a Missionary

 

1000 Gifts, Vol. 5, #91

901.  both a dental and eye exam successfully completed by the 5 year old this week.  Hooray!  Thank you, Jesus!!

902.  examples of so many family members who are lifelong learners!

903.  articles or books they recommend

904.  opportunities for me to learn: by reading, by observing LG's teachers in action, etc.!

905.  quiet Saturday afternoon with LG "working" on the farm and LM giving in to sleep during "quiet time"

906.  rest

907.  the help that our new mattress is!

908.  the weekend, to stop, pause, and be

909.  slowly but surely, finding a few options for babysitting at times we need it

910.  an emergent reader "book" sent home from school, with instructions to have LG read it to us several times this weekend :)

Parking lot adventures

We meet at the same parking lot

     morning and afternoon,

          5 days a week,

               11 months a year.

We notice others in the parking lot ~

     construction workers carpooling,

          golfers carpooling,

               high school students coming for a snack in the afternoon,

                    the coffee crowd in the morning, etc.

This week ...

     one morning after we watched golfers get into the biggest vehicle and pull out, we noticed that one golfer had left his trunk up, so one mom and two boys walked over and closed it before the rain came,

     one morning after the carpool had left, and I was still meeting LM's needs, a member of the coffee crowd called out to me across the parking lot, "Are you all still carpooling? How's it working out?" and proceeded to tell me his daughter's woes, after years of homeschooling & now enrolling her older ones in a Christian school 30 minutes away with a carpool plan, but the other ladies dropped out, and she can't be there to pick them up and also pick her kindergartener up near home at the same time [proving yet again that Americans share their life details with strangers!],

     and one afternoon I pulled in early to see the highway patrol doing a field sobriety test on an unkempt person (in the very spot where we park!).  I parked farther over, and texted the mom driving that day, to alert her.  She kept it mum (from three little boys who would love nothing more than to see a policeman in action!!!), pulled in on the other side, and helped them out of her van in such a way that they did not see the man being handcuffed (!) and taken away. 

You just never know what you'll encounter in the parking lot!

1000 Gifts, Vol. 5, #90

891.  Wednesday carpool day

892.  four precious & delightful children, their interactions with each other, and their active imaginations

893.  a day of errands for me, between drop-off and pick-up

894.  used bookstore with 50-cent books (!)

For 50 cents, this is worth saving til Little Miss is into arts & crafts. :)

We love Maurice Pledger books!

These stickers are nicely repositionable.

895.  70% off this $7 dress

896.  $5 beauty

It's hard to tell in the photo, but this is black velvet with a white Peter Pan collar, and pretty pink flowers embroidered around the waist. 

 897. This is a picture of love - homemade freezer meals from friends, to help lighten my load.  Mini-meatloaves were frozen and in a ziplok bag.  This morning I took them out and let them thaw in the baking pan in the fridge all day.  The 8x8 pan has mashed potatoes with cream cheese in it and can be baked from frozen. Yumm!

898.  the $1 Dayspring cards at Dollar Tree ~ They have such good biblical messages, and are not $4.99 or $5.99 as most greeting cards are :-O

899.  Eric Liddell: Are you ready? book that Little Guy loves right now!

900.  God's Little Guidebook ~ the perfect size and style for Little Miss to learn the 10 Commandments!

Notes

My favorite 5 year old asked me if I would write a note everyday in his lunch box that says,

"I'll love you forever. I'll like you for always. Love, Mom."  

Then he said sadly, "I didn't notice a note in my lunch box today." 

I guess this mom has fallen down on the job. 

Onward & upward!

1000 Gifts, Volume 5, #89

881. Cousins and their emails and our shared history

882. Aunts and uncles and years of memories and their loving care

883. Carpool friend who drops everything and picks everyone up early when the school calls because MY son is sick

884. A 5 year old who can go in the post office by himself to check our box and get any packages

885. A 5 year old who can go in the library by himself and return books and pick up our inter library loan books and choose one or two more

886. A 2 year old who loves to clean up

887. A 2 year old learning to ask, "Help me, Jesus."

888. Early fall weather (nice for me, but not for the crops that need more heat degrees)

889. Imaginations

890. Siblings playing together using their imaginations

Bless the Lord, o my soul

At 6:15 am my phone buzzed to remind me to read Psalms and Proverbs. 

This is what my eyes saw. But my ears could hear the voice of Jim's 92 year old uncle who was just promoted (to heaven) this summer. How many times in 9 short years of knowing him on earth did I hear him recite these verses?!

^yBless the LORD, O mysoul,

and all that is within me,

bless his holy name!

2  ^yBless the LORD, O my soul,

and ^zforget not all his benefits,

3  who ^aforgives all your iniquity,

who ^bheals all your diseases,

4  who ^credeems your life from thepit,

who ^dcrowns you with steadfastlove and mercy,

5  who ^esatisfies you with good

so that your youth is renewedlike ^fthe eagle's.

Amen. 

More audio books

I asked a mom who has older children what other audiobooks she would recommend similar to the ones we have been listening to see previous post, and these are her recommendations.

I am posting them here so that I do not lose them, and BONUS! Any of you looking for recommendations will have them also. :)

A few recommendations...

*The Penderwicks series

*Winnie-the-Pooh

*Stuart Little

*Charlotte's Web

*Homer Price

*Ramona series

*Pippi Longstocking

*Magic Treehouse series

*The Boxcar Children series

*A-Z Mysteries series

We are always open to suggestions, so keep them coming.