That was such a blessing...

I know it sounds silly, but it took all of my courage to take the kids to the Assisted Living place here to visit the men and women there.  I think it was more of a stretching experience for me than for the kids.  I was looking for every possible excuse not to go, like "I can't go, Evelyn just fell asleep an hour ago".  God prodded my heart and said "then wake her up - she's not sick, she'll be fine".  "But I have so much housework to do"...that didn't work either - God just reminded me that that hasn't kept me from doing other things.  Okay, God, no excuses!  I even thought I could get myself out of it by saying "if I go into Evelyn's room and she wakes up, then it means I should go."  I went in and she was sleeping soundly, but I still didn't feel right NOT going to visit today. 

There is a home school mom that started going with her 4 young kids (all younger than mine!) and has done it faithfully ever other Tuesday, gently inviting anyone else to join her.  I'm ashamed to say, I was usually relieved when I had a "good" excuse not to go.  It's not that I didn't want to bless others, but more the fear of the unknown as well as selfishness of not wanting to feel out of my comfort zone and also, not knowing how the kids would react.  I even tried to get "out of it" in my mind and heart with, "I'll start once we move" or "I'll prepare better next time and go next Tuesday that they're going".  Oh, and another excuse I thought of this afternoon...the kids are dirty and they won't want to be around dirty kids.  All lame excuses.

I finally asked JB and Gloria if they wanted to go and they both were game.  Okay, God, it's just me and my selfishness hindering this mission...time to "just do it".  I'm soooo glad we went this afternoon.  I hope we blessed the people there and there was a couple of them that said they hoped we come back.  I hope so too.  Please help me like you did today, Lord, get over my fears and step out of my comfort zone.  I know, it sounds so lame of me, but I'm pretty shy, and would be perfectly happy to stay in my shell, except that God didn't let me today.

All the kids were great there - eight kids in all with Kerri's four and my four, seven men and women who live there, and two moms.  Gloria read to a lady, who seemed perfectly happy to just sit there and, even though I don't think she could hear her, seemed to enjoy it anyway.  Gloria didn't seem to have any fear or hesitation in talking to the older ladies.  JB was very good at teaching one of the younger boys as well as an older man how to play Othello.  JB was very patient with the man and the man very patient and grateful to JB.  It was really a sweet scene that melted my heart as a mom, who loves the fact that my kids are so much braver than I am.  Benaiah seemed to just fit right in.  He was happy just to mingle in with everyone like it was normal (which I hope it is with our kids...in the right setting).  I sat next to a lady with Evelyn in my lap and we read "Go, Dog, Go" and "Fox in Socks".  The lady told me the same story about her two boys three times and she delighted in Evelyn, who had a pink frilly skirt on.  This particular lady said "oh, she's so sweet" every time Evelyn would say a word.  I hope we were a blessing to the men and women whom we visited at the Assisted Living place because I know they were a blessing to us today.

Lord, please give me the strength to step out of my shell again and give the kids wonderful experiences to love and serve others without my own selfishness getting in the way.

Benaiah continues to take his cute pills...

As I was carrying Evelyn from the bathtub to the laundry room, where we keep her pajamas,  I noticed Benaiah quietly writing in a notebook.  He looked up at me with those big blue eyes and said, "I'm writing a story for you, Mom."  I said okay and kept walking toward the laundry room to get Evelyn diapered and clothed.  Benaiah joined us and announced that he was done with his story.  Since I knew he only wrote a jumble of letters, I made up a clever excuse and said, "I can't read it now since I am changing EV...could you read it to me?" 
Benaiah looked at with a puzzled expression and said "I can't read."
"But you wrote the story, so do you remember what you wrote?"
"Oh...yeah!  I do!"

He proceeded to read his story about dragons and castles getting hit by a tornado and the prince dying.  It was quite the story for a bunch of strung-together jumbled up letters on a page.  I was quite impressed by his reading skills.

We're still here, just a bit distracted...:) Read on...

Blog posts have been very few and very far between.  This is mainly because for the last few months if I have been on the computer it has been to look for a house in Colorado or more recently, to design a kitchen or a bathroom in our new house in Colorado.  We are not going to be there for a couple of months, but now is the time to get started on this stuff.  Also, if I have not been on the computer, I have been homeschooling, doing outdoor painting in preparation for the next people to move here, or doing other clean-up stuff around the house.

We are extremely thankful and relieved to have a buyer for this house and to have a house in Colorado near Max's parents (about a 15-20 minute drive) in a beautiful area, at the bottom of a "gated" mountain with gorgeous views.  Mixed emotions run rampant at this time as I am excited to be able to design a new house in Colorado (with the help of contractors, family, and home improvement stores), yet the waiting and decision making are stressful and exhausting.  I'm also looking forward to getting to Colorado to hopefully spend more time with my husband as he plans to take time off before his year-long deployment, yet our move to Colorado also means the deployment, a year without my beloved right next to me, is within sight.  My determination is to enjoy the time we have together while we have it, to keep in such good touch while he's gone (as much as possible) that it doesn't feel like he's distant, and to keep my eyes on the Lord, which is where my help comes from.  Help me in these goals, Lord, I can't do it without You.

Anyway, with getting started on house renovations in Colorado (contractors will do the physical labor, of which I am thankful, but more decision-making looms ahead - as I said, both exhausting and exciting!), getting our current place ready for the next occupants, and packing in the next couple of months, we don't have a lot of free time on our hands.  However, we are striving to take rests, as we tend to get less productive and much more stressed if we don't have a Sabbath, as the Lord prescribed to us and set an example for us.  It surely wasn't for His own good for him to rest, because as God, he didn't need to, but He surely knows His creation needs to rest.  We need Your strength in resting too, Lord...strength not to jump in on the next project or even to use brain cells thinking about where the oven or fridge should be located.

Here are a few pictures I've been wanting to post, but haven't taken the time.  Sadly, we really don't have a lot of pictures in either the February or March folders, not nearly as many as we usually have.  Shows how distracted we have been. Forgive me to those who do check this blog for not keeping up with it.  I'm thankful for you!

Evelyn with her pony-tails, which Gramma Shell introduced into her life with our visit to Colorado for a house-hunting trip.  Now all she wants is pony tails.  Very cute.

The girls get to cuddle with a new lamb in Gramma Shell and Grandude's kitchen.

Max in the attic, looking from the other side of the ceiling, in Oklahoma house.  One of many projects with our current place was adding a fan/light in the kid's bathroom.

Evelyn likes to fall asleep in this glider when she is sick and gets "spoiled" with movie watching.  This was a couple of weeks ago.

The cycle of frustration over pencil sharpeners that don't work and never having sharpened pencils has recently been broken with the purchase of this nifty little camera-looking pencil sharpener.  Now the kids (esp JB) cannot wait for pencil leads to break or get worn down...It sometimes helps in homeschooling when the kids look forward to wearing down pencil leads:)

Evelyn and Benaiah resting, our Great Phyician's orders:)

Slam Poetry, Benaiah style

Benaiah, our 4-year-old, has episodes of slam poetry.  It's very cute and entertaining and he's very serous about it.  He doesn't know he's a poet yet, but Max called it slam poetry this morning, which I thought was fitting...

Benaiah: "The more it dries up
             The more the waterfalls don't go.
             The more we eat
              The more we grow.
              When we're in Heaven,
              This place gets burned up.
              How it is, it is, it is."

Benaiah

"Mom, I love you as high as the sky.  I love you as far as a river.  I love you as long as this house!"  A budding poet.

During nighttime prayers:  "God, you can see backwards, sidewards, frontwards, and everywhere."

Evelyn finally got an animal suit and new exactly what to do with it...

Snow-tubing on JB's 9th birthday

Gloria and Grandude on an inner-tube behind a 3-wheeler

Friends, Bob and daughter, Louella, about to go for a ride.

During ride.

Post ride.

JB with Grandude.  Max ready to give them a snow-gliding adventure.

After Max's 3-wheeler tipped over and had to be towed.  JB trying to hitch a ride.

JB hitching a ride.

We started out with good, old-fashioned sledding...

Sticking out your tongue must make it a better ride...

Oops...Benaiah had to go inside after trying to jump across the flowing part of the creek...

...I guess he had to learn about ice sometime...a bit frigidly.

Plowing with Granddude as it snows...

I'm all blog-posted-out for tonight, but will share the "outdoor" portion of JB's 9th birthday party soon...

JBs 9th birthday party...the indoor half of it...

Two things JB wanted to do for the indoor portion of his party...make fire-starters (works like kindling), which involves dipping string-tied pine cones into colored wax and then putting "funky flame" powder on them (an extra:)).

...the other thing JB wanted "indoors" was a Treasure Chest birthday cake.  Gramma Shell did a great job.

Not many kids get to blow our a treasure chest cake on a wood stove.  Enough sun was coming in through the South facing windows that it didn't need to be "on".  Plus, it provided a great kid-level display for the glorious treasure cake.

Cross country skiing with hubby on a beautiful winter day...

After a foot of snow had fallen...

First Evening in Colorado

Reading with Granddude after getting done with our long drive.

Daddy's "cupcake"

An early Christmas present...she's just getting into dressing up, but doesn't really know how to wear a princess skirt yet.  Her older sister will have to teach her...

She's also unfamiliar with how to show off a new skirt.  Good thing she had her pjs on underneath...

Bald Eagle

If you click on the pic to make it bigger, you can see an eagle on top of the post.

Our 11 hour (normally 9 hour) drive to Colorado from Oklahoma was quite an adventure (in a good way). 

We've had bad adventures before which involved witnessing a semi truck clip a farm truck in front of us, causing it to flip off the road, killing the driver, and then staying to report to the police and seeing the widow come and see her husband's body dead.  This past experience on a drive from Oklahoma to Colorado a few years ago is burned into at least 4 of our memories (I don't think Benaiah and Evelyn would remember it).  Anyway, that memory was also in a drive right before Christmas.  This time we did not experience anything so horrific. 

This time there were road closures we had to go around because of storms, which caused us to go the scenic route.  And this truly was a scenic route.  We spent more time in New Mexico than we ever had before on a drive to CO from OK.  We ended up going west into New Mexico instead of North through the Texas panhandle, through NM for only an hour, then into Colorado.  That route, which we normally travel, was closed and many were stuck in Clayton, NM or other places in Texas and NM, not able to get to their destination. 

Since we didn't really feel like sleeping in our truck that night nor dealing with the snow storm that was coming the next day (the previous one left 15-20 foot snow drifts, which caused the closures), we planned a different route early on.  Benefits to having a pilot for a husband are that he thinks about these things way ahead of time and was also able to call the weather shop on base to find out when the next storm was moving in. 

We ended up driving through beautiful NM prairie and then suddenly a mesa (butte?) was in front of us and we got to drive up and on top of it, where there was a beautiful little town called Masquero and a humble village (which is what they called themselves) called Roy.  The kids were great, already seasoned travelers, plus we found JB and Benaiah's missing Leappad before we left on this trip (thank you God!) and we got to see a bald eagle (in the picture above).  Thank you, Lord, for your many blessings!!