Prayers Please

In just 3 days James will be heading around the world to Uganda. He was there last summer for 3 weeks for work and is going back now for even longer...4 weeks.

He will be greatly missed in our home. He is the head of our house and supports us all in so many ways. It will be a challenge to have the VISIBLE source of strength far away. We'll chat and email but it won't be the same. I try not to complain to much. I try to be strong. I remind myself constantly of those wives who go without their husbands for 9-18months when serving in military all over the world. One month is nothing compared to that. But it is hard nonetheless.

I would appreciate your prayers and so would the children.


Please pray for safe travels and health while in Uganda for James as well.

Thank you so much.

"Living In Christ" Part 2

I really feel that I have been missing out so much because I have not studied the scriptures...hardly at all. I haven't moved past chapter 2 of this book yet. It's only 5 pages long but I've read it 3 times now, each time getting more. Going back to the study of scripture and the importance of it I want to share some more from this chapter. I'm not sure why I never really gave too much time and attention to studying the scriptures, I'm just not sure at all. But this next portion I will share really has me looking at things differently.


Even St. Anthony the Great and St. Pachomius, two great founders of monasticism, who did not have backgrounds in secular learning, insisted on the necessity of study. St. Anthony, who could not read, based his whole life on the impact of the Scripture readings he heard and memorized by attending Church from the time he was a young child. Pachomius insisted his monks be taught to read and that they spend every possible free moment memorizing the Scriptures; the Psalms and the entire New Testament were the required minimum. They were to recite these as they worked, walked, etc., as modern monastics might recite the Jesus Prayer.

Living in Christ: Essays on the Christian Life by an Orthodox Nun

I can tell you that the study of Scripture just moved from the middle/bottom of the home school curriculum all the way to the top of the list!

"Living In Christ"

I’m reading Living In Christ: Essays on the Christian Life by an Orthodox Nun

I just picked it up at the Church library because it looked good. I actually picked up the sequel first thinking that it looked really good and I can’t wait to read it, but I decided to read this first because she wrote it first. I just thought that while I read it I might quote from it now and again. Most of my posting goes on over at St. Brigid Farm nowadays and this will fill in here as to not completely abandon it.

Chapter 2 is titled “Prayer and Life.”

“That we may have life and have it abundantly.” John 10:10 In these words the Lord speaks of what He desires for all of us; indeed of what he desires for the whole of His creation.

Prayer is the only way. But only as we pray in the Lord’s own Spirit of truth will our prayer be the doorway to abundant life. There are many forms of artificial prayer that lead us to dead ends. We can get so involved in the external mechanisms of prayer that we lose sight of the goal. It is possible even to worship ideas of prayer and lose the living God in the process.

*light bulb goes on over head* Whoa! Is that what has happened?

Prayer is nothing other than bringing our whole self, heart, mind and body, before God, that He may in turn fill us with His own abundant life. This is an effort that takes the whole of our lives and demands everything we can possibly bring to it. We must strive with every ounce of our effort, knowing that when we do so it is God who is working within us. … We must learn to use our minds rightly.

The great saints and fathers of the Church, such as the theologians, St. Basil, St. Gregory and St. John Chrysostom, and their successors, St. Gregory Palamas, the great champion of hesychastic prayer, had a solid foundation in secular studies. Moreover, their minds and consciences were trained through the study of the Old and New Testaments, the lives and writings of the saints and the liturgical texts of the Church.
Until very modern times, study meant getting as much "by heart" as possible. Today, television and education may leave us nearly incapable of memorizing words, let alone knowing them so well that we continually ponder them in our hearts.

The Lord told us: "Out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks." (Matthew 12:34) More and more, we should be able to speak from these riches rather than out of the poverty of our hearts. We will learn to test our hearts by hearing how busy our mouths are in "normal" conversations with our self-centered thoughts, complaints and wishes rather than with the truth and beauty of God.

*another light...along with a loud knocking on the head*
How much of scripture do I have engraved in my heart? How much of the writings of the saints and liturgical texts do I have engraved in my mind? What have I been missing all these years? Years!?
More tomorrow. I'm going to wrap my ill-trained mind around this a little bit more.

(bolded parts are my emphasis)

Grandma's Respite

The other day I asked my mom if she ever remembers her mom taking time out each day to read scripture or did they do it as a family. It really was a dumb question if I had thought about it long enough for my grandfather was a minister and I remember my grandma so very well. I also have her bible and it’s pretty amazing. I asked the question nonetheless and her reply was, “We had evening family devotional - Mom would read during the day - I remember BEST as I got older - I think her Bible was always open on the table at HER spot!” Wow! That is so cool!

This is what I imagine my grandma’s “spot” looked like. She would have refreshment and other inspirational reading. As she worked through the day, I imagine her sitting here for a rest. A chance to connect to what was real and most important and than off to do more of what God expected of her. Be a help meet, a mother….a warrior.

This is what I see to be wrong with how I go about my day. My respites include this. How on earth am I to gain strength, peace, rest to go back and face the mounds of responsibility when this is where I come for my “rest”.

I love this example my grandma has left me. I love the look of my table as it is pictured above. May I be ever drawn to rest there at that seat, to pray and gain encouragement, peace, and strength from the One who can really give it to me.

A Contest

A Cowboy’s Wife is having a contest on her food blog! You can win a Hamilton Beach® Stand Mixer and she’ll ship anywhere so everyone is eligible!

The Prize:

The winner will receive a brand new
Hamilton Beach 4.5-qt. Eclectrics Stand Mixer, Pineapple Yellow!!

About the mixer:

From Hamilton Beach’s “Eclectrics” line, this all-metal stand mixer comes with a host of accessories - a Flat Beater for cakes and cookies, a Dough Hook for bread and a Wire Whisk for whipped cream or pudding. The 4.5-qt. stainless steel bowl comes with a Pouring Shield that helps prevent splattering while in operation. The pouring shield has a built-in chute for adding ingredients. Powered by 400 watts, the stand mixer has a two-way mixing action to ensure all ingredients are incorporated into the mix. The quick-release, tilt-up head assists when removing the bowl. 9 x 14 x 14-in. When you’re ready for a kitchen re-do, don’t call in the carpenters! Instead, “counterscape” your kitchen with Hamilton Beach’s retro-designed, affordably priced electrics in happy, sun-saturated colors. Their “Eclectrics” line includes updates to those classic appliances from the 1950s. All of their “Eclectrics” are available in six colors: Apple Green, Moroccan Red, Pineapple Yellow, Intrigue Blue, Sugar White and Licorice Black.

Long time no post.

Well, I guess keeping up 2 blogs is a little more than I bargained for. Oh Well! I'm still excited about my St. Brigid Farm blog and am doing better at keeping it updated daily, at least the egg count.

So life in general is pretty chaotic but I am pretty sure that a lot of the chaos is really due to ME and NOT just because I have 4 kids and a wanna-be-farm. You hear so often "how do you do it?" Well, my answer is "most of the time I don't". I'd like to think I do but in reality I don't. And the reason that is is not just because of the four home schooled children or the farm but because I am so cotton-pickin' unorganized!!! And because I have been so cotton-pickin' for pretty much all my life, any attempt to make myself organized usually seems to fail.
Well, yesterday I finally realized (as I've started for the billionth time to make some semblance of regime and orderliness with my children) that is it NOT going to happen overnight!!! Wow! What an epiphany!! So instead of falling to pieces because nobody cares a lick about my "new plan" I will just take small baby steps towards making the plan work. There are parts of the "plan" they are already used to so we got that down. For the next couple of days we'll concentrate on another part of the "plan" and so forth and such until it is habit!!

Anyway! Enough said on that! It's been awhile since I've written I have got to tell you a story, a kind of accidental experiment that took place here in my kitchen!
We received a pumpkin pie from Albertsons grocery store on Dec. 26th. It said "sell by Dec. 28". We ate a few pieces and then it sat in the fridge for about a week. Then I took it out and sat it on the counter to be thrown away but because it has all this plastic stuff that is not recyclable I hate to admit!!! that it sat on my counter for another week, kind of hidden by the coffee pot. I took it out yesterday to finally fill my trash can with it and noticed that there was not ONE SPOT of mold on the entire 2 pieces that were left. NOTHING!!!! Normally I wouldn't have thought twice about this but it hadn't been that long since I had BAKED a pumpkin pie from scratch! For Christmas day (so baked on Christmas Eve) I decided to bake a pumpkin pie. I had never done this but was excited to do so with my own pumpkin from the garden. Pie from scratch and everything. It was done in such haste that I forgot a very important ingredient....the sugar!! Well, because of this no one wanted to eat this pie! It sat on the counter...but not for 2 weeks like this other pie but my homemade NEEDED to be thrown away after 3 days!!!!! It was growing!! 3 days!

Have a happy day!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I cannot believe it is 2008!!! In 2008 I will celebrate my FOURTEENTH wedding anniversary!, James will turn FORTY!, my BABY will turn SIX!, my eldest will turn TWELVE!, I will turn 38 and last but not least we will celebrate our SEVENTH anniversary of Chrismation into the Orthodox Church! I am astounded! Where does the time go? How can all this be taking place this year? For the first time in a really long time I have given myself time (huh?) to actually think about these things. My age has really hit me for the first time EVER! (Despite the fact that I still get carded when I buy a bottle of wine....heehee) I'm moving into a new phase of my life. My babies are no longer babies and there are no more coming (unless God has a surprise for me), and everyone around me is having babies. It is weird! To say the least! A new phase! A time to grow! To learn! To love and enjoy my children on a different level. Before they leave for their new phases. I certainly feel like it is going to happen far faster then I would like it to.

Enough deep contemplation!

We are on 10th day of Christmas I finally have found time to sit down, relax, write, upload. We had a wonderful 10 days of Christmas. We were blessed to have guests everyday for the first 9 days of Christmas. Visits from missed friends and family. It was so good to see everyone and take the time to visit not only old but new friends as well.
Here are some pictures of our Christmas....

The four kids on the 2nd day of Christmas.

The girls got matching "pioneer" dresses for Christmas. They are so cute! This picture really shows how much Kelsey is growing up! I can't believe she is that much taller than Charissa!

James got this crocheted hat from the choir director. She picked the pattern just for him!

To really appreciate how it looks you have to see a profile shot as well. The colors were picked to resemble chain maille.

We got this for Christmas....

It is really fun!!!!! All the kids enjoyed it! As well as the adults. A closer look reveals "Collect $200" when you pass "Grow. It's fun!

I pray you all had a blessed Nativity.

Christ is Born!!

May you and yours have a wonderful Nativity Season!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY...

to my boy, Nicholas. Today he turns 7!!!

He is all BOY...he used to tell me "I'm not cute ( or beautiful) I'm 'handstom'". He's swords and shields, cars and trucks, rifles and bow. He's BOY!

May God grant you many years!

Crafts

We have been doing a few more crafts then usual and I have invited my children to join me. The scrap wreath ( btw-I love that website)I decided to do for them. It looked easy enough for them all to do. Little did I know that even my BOYS would thoroughly enjoy this one. They really got into it. This is Kelsey's finished product. The boys have not finished theirs as of yet. Maybe today I'll set them back at it.

Another project I did was to make mittens for the kids. The only problem was that once they were cut they did not even go over the hand, let alone a thumb in. LOL I didn't know what I was doing. I did finally later, much later, find a tutorial at that SewMamaSew blog that will teach me to do it correctly. In the meantime I turned those not so workable mittens into ornaments and filled them with fudge and sent them to MN to my nieces and nephew for Christmas. Here is what they looked like. I especially love the edging!

Introductions...

Introducing my NEW Farm blog!!!!

Updates

One week from today is the Nativity of Christ! I cannot believe we are ending 2007 so very soon.
It certainly is true that time flies VERY fast the older you are. It's astonishing.

We are all dried out, or were all dried out. Sunday night we got nearly an inch of rain but it did nothing compared to the storm. I was able to remove the pallets from the chicks stall. We are trying to get the new coop done before the end of the year. So far I am just finishing up the floor. But that is the hardest part, the posts the floor sets on, so once that is done it'll go fast I think.

Last Saturday, the 15th, I took Firefly down to the farm where the buck is. She started really confusing me with her symptoms of heat. I was seeing different symptoms for like a week so finally I just called them and asked if I could bring her down "just to see". At the very least I would get what they call a buck rag. A rag rubbed all over the buck and sealed in a jar. When you think your goat is in heat you open it and they will get all excited over the smell. Smell? you may ask. Ah, the smell is UNREAL! Goats are seasonal breeders, including bucks. They call it "rut" for a buck. He goes into "rut". This (move about halfway down the page to the subtitle "bucky characteristics) is what he does when he is in "rut"....all for the sake of ATTRACTING his mate, and he'll take as many as he can get. Anyway, we introduced Firefly to her buck friend and she was instantly smitten. They "played" for about a half hour doing what goats are suppose to do when breeding. It all looked very much like she was bred. If it took we will have kids right about May 13. Butter will be bred the first week of January. Now back to that smell. See Firefly was with that buck for 30 minutes, playing with him, rubbing on him and he on her. Well, we had to bring that doe home...in our truck....with us. I am certain that if I were to go out to the truck right now it would still smell. I had "buck" smell on my hands ALL DAY!!!! It is UNREAL! No wonder it taints the milk with a buck nearby, and it DID taint the next days milk. She stunk so bad her milk was inedible the next day. Last night Kelsey went to the barn with me and said it still stinks. I don't notice anymore.

James has been blogging about our latest adventure so I guess I don't need to say much there. After the initial shock and not knowing how we were going to make it all work I am now fine with it. We have a plan and the plan will work. So we are car/truck shopping!

Have a blessed last week of Advent.

My complaints are completely unfounded!

In this post you'll read of the work I had to do on the day we got 7 inches of rain. I take it all back. Not the work, I had to do it, but the complaining. It was completely unfounded and I sit back now and say a prayer for these folks. These dairy farmers whose total income rests in this farm, or shall I say, what's left of it...

She is walking through their front yard.

Their livelihood laying there covered in mud.

Raymond dairy farmer Terry Smaciarz and his wife Lana survey damage to their 63-year-old barn. "I guess Mother Nature really kicked me in the butt," he said.

There are so many stories like this and the pictures are just unreal. Please keep the flood victims in WA in your prayers.

This last picture has nothing to do with the farm above but I just had to say, this is what happens when you build a road where you shouldn't build a road. You see it all the time. They just have to use the land for something even though it is steep and unbuildable. They build up these big cement walls fill in behind them and then build on top of it. Well, this is the outcome when it rains hard. Gee, I wonder what happened to that housing development in Bothell on Bothell/Everett Hwy. that was built completely on top of these big huge cement walls with back fill underneath them, with a big huge hill behind.
Lord, have mercy.

Sewing project

I don't get much time to sew and I don't feel like I know very much about it to warrant the time it takes away from other duties. But with Christmas drawing near I decided to do a little project. After making a test "lovey" and tweaking my sewing and design this is what I came up with. I'm very pleased with the outcome. This is my own design and I call it a "lovey". It's small, only about 20"x20" (probably not exactly square either). After my own experiences with my children wanting to carry around large "blankies" everywhere I think having a smaller "lovey" that is soft and comforting would be be of great benefit. So I decided to try my hand at creating something for some of the MANY babies coming. Kelsey was playing around with my machine, testing all the different stitches one can use, and that's how I came up with the stitching along the edges. I've never experimented beyond the regular, simple straight stitch. Doing this edging made it so much easier to finish off the edges without the folding of the thick fleece. I hope the babies love it as much as I do. Here is the finished product.
Embroidered face:

Edging:

Folded and ready to be gifted.

Today was an interesting day. Despite my handicaps today I feel that I had a very productive day.
My handicaps? I've been fighting a minor cold all week and yesterday evening it got the best of me. I completely lost my voice. Not just a little hoarse but COMPLETELY! Nothing above a whisper would come out of my mouth. It was pretty amusing for awhile. Kelsey quite enjoyed being "my voice", as she would say. And during the day today Charissa made some phone calls, she felt so grown up. James took today off and I'm very glad he did! He didn't know it was to help me out in this way but nonetheless I'm glad he was here to answer the phone and run errands and help me preserve jelly. Yes, that's where the productive part of the day comes in. I FINALLY canned all the juice I put away into the freezer from blackberries and apples.
We made jelly!

There are 36 jars total of varying sizes, some only hold probably less than a cup and large portion of them hold just over a cup and others are pints. I do know that I prepared 36+ cups of juice all together. I can't wait to try it on toast in the morning.

Apple Jelly

The snow is gone and now we are floating away!!!

I am completely astounded at the amount of rain that is coming down as we speak. We went from this....


To this....

The water above is over ankle deep to walk through. That's our driveway.

In just 12 hours. Our driveway is flooded, Diamond Dr. is flooded our neighbor has a HUGE pond in his front yard and my own yard isn't much better. I can't imagine what it would look like if we hadn't dug the trench. The trench is flowing! My rain barrel filled up 3x since last night and fell over. I finally rigged the pipe into the trench for now. We definitely don't need to SAVE the water! The kicker....I am guessing, based on my rain guage and a bucket that was outside (and emptied last night) that from 8pm-8am we got over 4 inches of rain!!!!! Now since 8AM(it is noon) we've had another 2 inches.
There are record breaking river flows happening. At Central Market in town their rain gauge says the MONTHLY rainfall has been 5.94 inches. IT'S THE 3RD OF THE MONTH!!!
Here is the latest from KOMOTV.


Lord have mercy!!!



UPDATE
It is closer to home than I really like. My BARN IS FLOODED!!! I have 2 goats and 43 chicks swimming!!! I spent an hour hauling pallets into the chicks to raise their floor up 6 inches, spreading many inches of straw into the goat stall and rescuing wet chicks!!! ARGH! I've soaked through 4 outfits with my needed outdoor work.
OH do I hope it doesn't back up the drainfield...this is UNREAL!
3.86 inches of rain since midnight at Central Market in town.

Snow Snow Snow

James posted some pictures from earlier on in the afternoon....this is in the evening.

Above is the start of the HUGE "Mr. Frostbite."
Below is the finished "Mr. Frostbite."

Joseph built his own little snowman.

My Little Baby Butter ready for the snow for the first time in her life-Kelsey

They say it is suppose to disappear in the night...but I'm skeptical that 4 inches can disappear that quickly. We'll see.
At any rate...it's been AWESOME!

Let it snow, Let it snow, Let it snow!

Experience tells me that because this is predicted it really won't amount to much but we can't help but dance around singing the words to "Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow".

The weather guessers at the National Weather Service are guesstimating 2-3 inches along Hood Canal and on the Kitsap Peninsula tonight.

Oh do I hope they are correct in their guesses...it would be so fun!

This brings me to say that I've decided that I really do miss the winters of MN where I grew up. I do know that they have had very few white Christmas' over the last several years but I really need to try and get back for Christmas some time in the next couple years. My last Christmas in MN with my family? 1993!!!! OH I MISS YOU ALL! (and the white snow)

Here is a picture from my childhood. This is the kind of snow I remember. Snowstorm of '82, I was 11. That's my sister taking a break from shoveling.

Warning!

Never, Never rub your eyes anytime within the evening after chopping up jalapeno pepper.
It is NOT a good outcome!

Happy 11th Birthday to my Sweet Girl!

Kelsey Sierra
November 26th, 1996
5:56PM

The above was taken at 3 months old.
Below is Kelsey at about 4 1/2 years old.

And here is my baby today! I cannot believe she is 11! Time flies WAY too quickly.
I love you my sweet Kelsey Anna Sierra.
(Chrismated Anna and ever since is known as Kelsey Anna!)