:: Harvest

Some days it's easy for me to get discouraged when I look around my home.  In every room are half-completed house projects. What was clean just the day before looks as if it hasn't been cleaned in a month.  I notice the crumbs, the cracked eggs (the cracked dishes), the subfloors and lack of trim, the fingerprints on the windows, the dirt tracked onto bathroom floors.  Dirty floors tend to get me the quickest.

Do I love having a big family? More than anything. Do Josh and I thrive on the creativity of house projects? Yes. When we entertain and our home is full of people and laughter, is my heart full of the joy that only serving the Lord gives? Absolutely.  But do dirty floors get me down? Even though I know it shouldn't, there are moments when, yes, they do.
Then God gently reminds my heart: where are your eyes?  Are they focused on the crumbs, or the lives you are raising and touching for eternity?  Are they focused on the fingerprints on the door, or the beauty I have put all around you?  Are they focused on all you think you "need" (or want), or is gratitude turning what you have into enough?

 

One of the verses I think about the most often, talks about when you have "an empty manger" it will be clean (ie - clean home), "but from the strength of an ox comes an abundant harvest."  (ie - an ox brings a huge harvest, but not a clean stall)

Do the kids and I regularly clean our house? Yes. 

Should it have to be clean every moment and look like all those Pottery Barn magazines and blog pictures to keep me happy?  No.

Someday we WILL reap a harvest.  And when we get to heaven and see our Saviors face, it will be more incredible than we can even begin to imagine.  And oh so worth it.  But right now is the time for us to put on those boots, and fix ours eyes on lives forever changed for eternity. 

:: Summertime

I know this blog of mine has been quiet.  Things here have been so busy it seems I never have time to tell you about it. Between painting (lots and lots of painting), trips to the pool, company, and get-togethers, we are staying happily busy.
Last fall our oldest son turned 8, and was finally old enough to officially join 4-H.  He has 2 older cousins who have done Shooting Sports the last few years, so of course that's what he wanted to try. Even though Jack is the youngest shooter on the team, he absolutely loves it, and is doing really well.  County Shoot is in a few weeks, so everyone's gearing up for that.

(Daniel & Luke - Jack's cousins)

Every Thursday at 5pm, you'll find our family at the local shooting range, watching the boys

shoot, climbing trees, digging in the sand hill, eating a pot-luck dinner with the shotgun team and cousins, and generally getting covered in dirt and dust.  Thankfully the kids have a good time - then I give them baths when we get home. 

Alaina and Ellie

My folks came too

 Yep, it's a good time.

:: The start of summer

The start of spring and the end of the school year.  It's breathing in fresh air after being cooped up indoors all winter. 

 

 

I see the children soaking up the fresh sunshine as the girls pick countless bunches of wild flowers, Jack spends hours whittling and carving things, and the hose is constantly running in the sand area.  Now that Blaize can walk, he literally stands at the sliding door, crying to go out.

 

It's so easy for me to stay busy indoors with chores, laundry, house projects or sewing.  And when they play so happily outside without me, I have to try and make a conscious effort to make sure and not miss these days, those moments, slipping like pearls from a string.  I don't ever want to look back and regret NOT being with them enough.  I don't want to make issues of the sand being tracked into the house, and miss the outstreched hand cluthing wilted flowers for me.  And although mothering has its patience-testing moments for me, I desperately love my children - each one that God has blessed me with.  It's such a balance, isn't it?  I don't know if I'll ever have it down completely, but I'll keep trying.

 

:: Distracted Parenting

Yesterday I read a post called Distracted Parenting on one of my favorite blogs.  And I cried.  It was exactly the conviction my heart needed, as well as the encouragement to be more purposeful in my moments with my children.  Sarah (from Clover Lane) is a mother of 6 children, and she offers such encouragement, such practical examples and her own transparency in our daily struggles to not get sucked into being physically present - yet emotionally and mentally absent - from our children, You really should read it. It will do your heart, your moments, and your children, good.  Thank you, Sarah.

:: Learning to sew

My 6-year-old daughter loves being creative just about as much as I do.  When she was 4, she began doing a bit of hand embroidery.  But she loved to sit in my lap at the sewing machine and place her chubby little hands on top of mine as I sewed.  When she turned 5, she did even more hand embroidery.  Making multiple "pillows" for herself, and for friends. 

However, she still begged to be able to sew on the sewing machine.  So I bought my first charm pack (Bliss), and she made her first quilt.  She piece all of the blocks together herself, sitting on my lap at the machine.

This fall when she turned 6, I began official sewing lessons with her and her cousin.  The other day we cut out 5" squares to make a quilt for her to enter in our local county fair this summer.

 

 

She is so precise.  Going slow and steady.  After sewing a seam, she said, "Mom, I need to rip this one out - it's not quite straight."  Obviously she's seen me do it a time or two.  =)

 

(Sewing is even better when you dress up.)

Her very first 9-patch, and she is both thrilled and proud.  Her mama is even more.