You are currently browsing the monthly archive for March 2007.
i spent my spring break (the third out of the last 4) in wheaton, il with my sister. we took a more relaxed approach to spring break this year since between us, we have added two to our number in the last 9 months. in years past we have packed the week full with crazy chicago fun, but this year we hung close to home…we went to a park, the popcorn shop, and trader joe’s…of course, but all of those are less than a couple miles from anna’s house.
anna has this basement full of toys that the kids pretty much stay in the whole time we’re there, unless it’s pretty enough to be outside in the cul-de-sac riding bikes and scooters, which they did for a couple of days. so we didn’t see much of the big kids except when they needed us to break up a fight. this left much time to play with and hold babies (i held phineas clay for the first time this week), read books and the newspaper (anna takes the new york times which i LOVE), talk, drink lots of coffee and fold the very occasional load of laundry. i read a memoir of an afghan girl who escaped to america and actually lives in anna’s area. i was still playing her story over in my head on the drive home friday and just wondering why God chose for me to live here and now in my life and her to experience what she’s been through. how does His amazing plan involve her suffering? and how does He expect me to respond to this kind of suffering in the world? i also picked up a book robert is reading about the way the job market in america is changing and the skill set that one needs for success is a total paradigm shift from the skills we’ve been prepared (or unprepared) with. the author outlined skills for this coming age as those more ruled by the right-brain and even his presentation was very right-brained…the skills being things like story and empathy. these ideas all fit in great with another book i’m working my way through about homeschooling and in fact, in general, homeschooling seems to be a wonderful arena for learning this way. this book is the total opposite of the homeschooling plan i’m currently using, but since we are still experimenting and learning around here with the whole homeschooling thing, i love hearing about all the different ways that other people are doing it. i’m learning that homeschoolers are a widely varied group. and since you can pretty much do whatever you want as a homeschooler, we will be taking another week of spring break before we start back up around here. everyone is exhausted. cole went snow skiing with taido instead of going with us (he did his first two double black diamonds this year…he’s officially passed me up), so he is even more tired than the rest of us. i’m excited about focusing on the fact that it is holy week, a luxury we haven’t had in years past. i feel especially grateful this lenten season for the people that God has placed in my life and as i was driving home on friday, i thanked Him for the faithful that are around me, struggling or triumphant, whatever place He has each one, coming before Him and being willing to live faithful to calling. anna and robert are trying to sell a monster of a house that they have owned along with their current house for over a year. it is such a struggle and yet i believe that they will get on the other side of this and be able to see God’s hand on them, sustaining them through one more day, one more month. other friends this week have answered God’s voice in their lives to reach out to people that God has placed in their path or to be a home for someone without a home. many people gave up a week of their lives to drive all night to and from colorado and spend a week with students from our city, skiing, laughing, not sleeping much and hearing the call of God on their lives.
i love a road trip because of the time it gives me to think, to pray, to listen. i thought about all these things on the way home. i listened to erwin mcmanus talk about how our soul craves God and we dull our craving for God with so many other things. i sang my old cheesy praise songs and hymns. i cried when i passed a funeral procession because i missed a sad funeral this week and i hadn’t yet stopped and cried for lindsey.
i am so thankful for what is practically a second home for my family and me in wheaton, where i can get away and be as relaxed as i would be at home.
yesterday, my sweet friends, natalie and whitney, helped create a moment for me that i just knew i would have to miss with baby #4. all three of the other chino babies had spring pictures of this sweet age in front of tulips at the tulip festival in washington, an event that still, 5 years after moving, tugs on my heart every spring. the flowers in the pacific northwest are larger than life, the colors deeper, the stems more green. i spent hours driving around and just looking at peoples’ yards in the spring and summer when we lived there.
this week i saw some unusually beautiful tulips (the kind you have to order and when you plant them in arkansas, they don’t come back very well (due to the warm winter), so you chance spending all that money and work on one beautiful blooming season. who would love tulips so much to have an extravagant bed of them in arkansas, i wondered?? well, i would never go up to a stranger’s door and ask…i’m such a wimp. but natalie would…and did. she went over and met them and asked if we could please take our babies’ pictures in their tulips. they were delighted. then whitney came on the spot and took these precious pictures of simon and kyah. tulip photos after all! thanks gals! you’re the best!
once a month our family receives a basket of products from local farms that we pick up at the river market. it is a highlight of our month! it is also one of my favorite food challenges to use a new variety of products in our meals for the few days following the basket pick-up, which happens at hardin’s river mercantile. today’s pickup definitely heralded spring with three bunches of different greens and lettuces…mmm. there are a few staple products in the basket, one of which is one dozen eggs from local chickens. these eggs make the ones that you have from the grocery store…even the good eggs (organic, omega-3, etc) taste like plastic. at our house, the 12 precious eggs are sort of coveted, and it is considered a sin to use them for anything but eating fresh…for breakfast or in an omelet. anything else would waste the flavor of these eggs. put the grocery store eggs in your pancakes and your cookies. these are for savoring…just a little cheese or a few herbs is all they need. and so, the great surprise in this month’s basket was that the chickens have been working overtime and we got 2 dozen!! that’s one of the joys of the csa (community supported agriculture) in arkansas. as a “share-holder,” you get to benefit from a bumper crop. i love it. so we’ll be having eggs for breakfast tomorrow. come on over. we have 24!
this was a couple of weeks ago…my dad emailed me these pictures of ben’s first backpacking experience. the four of them hiked in to twin falls and camped out for two nights. mary polly and i went shopping and had a girl party.
i am taking a break from frantically picking up the clutter in my house so that it can be cleaned tomorrow to say that having one’s house cleaned is truly one of the greatest gifts i know. i ran into two friends at the the lake today (oh, the lakewood lake and the running into that happens there…why do i not remember to stop going there unshowered?) and one of them had just cleaned the other one’s house for her. how wonderful a friend is that!!! i myself have a friend who has my house cleaned for me every other wednesday (ok…it’s my mother), and it is a gift like none other. here are all the reasons i think it is a wonderful use of her money (i have to work extra hard to justify it, since it isn’t my money…if you know me, you know that to call me cheap would sort of be an understatement).
reason #1: ismari comes every other wednesday at 9am, and so i have to pick up by then. i don’t even pick up for company like i pick up for ismari. also, the children pick up for ismari because they don’t want their legos and polly pockets vacuumed.
reason #2: it is the only time that my whole house is clean…the whole thing…all at once…not just one little area.
reason #3: it frees me to spend my “cleaning” time doing deeper organizing sorts of tasks.
reason #4: it employs ismari…and actually i know another gal in need of the same kind of employment who is really really good in case i convince you to join me in having your house cleaned…
reason #5: i am much more at ease with having company, even when the house is cluttered, because…hello!! at least the toilet isn’t gross…
reason #6: there is no way to describe how it makes me feel when i come home on every other wednesday afternoon!! this reason is really just a gross luxury and whenever i am lecturing you about wasting money on frivolous pleasures that could otherwise be used to further the kingdom of heaven, you can hold it over my head… because really, i’m just a little bit spoiled.
ok…now i am going to go finish the mad pick up of the chino house.
i finished this book yesterday and i have been sort of haunted by it. (i’m obsessed with memoir lately…i think it makes me grateful for my childhood and conscious of the one i’m creating for my own kids.) i have decided that this particular memoir stands out to me because the author actually transported me in way that i had to struggle with loving/hating her parents. i feel like they are people in my life and i’m saying one minute, “this act was just absolutely unforgivable…i cannot forgive him/her” and then “wait a minute, what about this beautiful moment. does this redeem them for me?” also, the reading of this and other memoirs has confirmed my notion that currently the trend is to overindulge our children to the extreme and it is a daily fight to hold back the tide of materialism that threatens to undo our family-ness. (just us and jesus is enough) i want my children to bond with each other the way that these children did, but somehow without the trauma that caused them to hold so tightly to each other. is that impossible? surely, the owning of so much crap gets in the way of their ability to improvise and share with one another. i want them to work with each other to dig a huge hole, to save a large amount of money for one common cause, to protect their youngest sibling or to discover a wonderful place to live. these are all things that the older three children in the glass castle did, but they were in response to or in spite of constant turmoil in their home. i want mine to do it even in the midst of a happy childhood.
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