Heading South for the Winter!

...well, maybe not the entire winter (which, in fact, has not yet even begun) but for two weeks, anyway. :)

Tomorrow morning we leave to go to Alabama and Tennessee--the first few days spent in Nashville at the IBMA Awards and FanFest, then heading down into Alabama to visit my Gram. She has yet to meet my Little Man and says there is an army of people around there waiting to see him. And, judging by the look of things, I think she'll probably get to be around when his first tooth comes through (I'm expecting it to be there at almost any moment!) and he'll probably be fully crawling by the time we leave.

My internet access will be quite limited while we're gone, being that I'm extremely spoiled and the fact that she has a slow dial-up connection makes it hardly worth the time and effort to do anything beside check my email every couple days. :grin: So, I'll see y'all when I return... with my drawl reinstated and a cooler pack of barbecue as my carry-on!

A Day in the Park

This afternoon My Marine and I met at the park for his lunch break. The Little Man hasn't ever been to our nearby park (Ha! Shows you how often we do this!), and he was loving watching the dogs play, laying in the grass and watching all the activity around us.

Littlest enjoyed playing with his toes in the grass...


...and he loves twirling!

He played with Mama...

...and did lots of laughing!

But after a while, poor Little Man started to get a little grumpy.

He was clearly getting tired.

So were the dogs...

...so we loaded up and headed home! :)

Happy Anniversary, Daddy and Mama!

The greatest example a child has of marriage comes from their parents. How privileged I am to be blessed with being able to see a loving, Christ-centered marriage lived out before me daily. My parents are truly each other's best and truest friend. No matter what hard times they've faced, they've stood together, following Jesus together, and though, of course, not perfect, learning and growing together for all these years. Their love for each other has grown deeper and stronger since their relationship began as highschool sweethearts and I can truly say I have never seen another like it. I honestly get teary just thinking about it. :*)

Thank you for your example, Mom and Dad. You've given me such a gift just by living your life and being willing to be open for us to see the joys and the hard times and watch you draw closer the the Lord and closer to each other through it all. Love you...

More Sickness :(

I feel so terrible when my guys are sick.

Poor Little Man has already had three colds in his short little six months of life. He was two weeks old the first time, two months old the second, and now he's sick again. His little nose is all stuffy and he's had a slight fever. It's hard to tell if his cough is "real" or not, though, being that he has a silly little "fake cough" that he does for attention--sick or not. :)

My Marine had been saying that he thought he'd already had a mild case of this cold that's been going around and was now over it... until last night. By the time we went to bed, he could no longer be in denial. He's pretty sick now. :( He always takes such good care of me when I'm sick... I try to be at least half as good a caretaker when the tables are turned.

I am a little worried about him tomorrow, though. He has to be in to work a little early to check in for his 24 hour "Duty" and be in charge of the sound for the morning raising of the flag, National Anthem and Marine's Hymn at the General's Building. Then, later, he is scheduled to brief his General regarding the new course he's in charge of. After work, he will go straight back to the General's Building for the remainder of his Duty, which requires him to be awake most of the night.

If you think about it, prayer on both of my guys' behalf would be appreciated. Little Man is having a hard time getting much sleep at all, and My Marine really can't be "fuzzy-headed" tomorrow (which will probably, from experience, be the worst day of this cold). :( I know God's grace will be sufficient and this will soon pass, but it's so hard for me to see them not feeling well--especially after I just went through it myself.

Now I'm off to try--once again!--to get my tired baby boy to sleep! :)

Autumn will come... Eventually!

Yesterday was a perfect day. It was the first day I could really say it felt like autumn in the desert.

It was the kind of day that, had I not been trying to recover from a nasty cold I caught over the weekend, I would have loved to take our rambunctious Australian Shepherd and my Little Man to the park to play in the grass, enjoy the light breeze and soak up some golden sunshine.

Instead, I opened up all the windows and let the fresh, crisp air fill every room in the house. In the afternoon, I curled up with Littlest on a bed made with soft cotton sheets and we both took a long nap while the breeze floated through our bedroom and a pretty little bird twittered from his perch on the backyard fence.
My wonderful brother had come for the day to help with the baby after seeing how terribly sick I was on Sunday, and he and I enjoyed the extra time we had together, watching his school videos together and finding ourselves amused at the hand motions and voice inflections of a few of this year's teachers.

I chatted for a while with my dear Mother-in-Love about the new carpet they're having installed, about this little grandson of hers who is much too far away from her, and a little about our trip to Colorado for Christmas. While we were enjoying our mild weather and calling it fall, she was able to look out her windows and see snow. In a town at 10, 300 feet elevation, I guess it shouldn't be surprising to have snow in September, but still, I find myself amazed!

Today was a little warmer again. I knew that the cooler weather of the past few days was only a "teaser." Experience tells me we're still due for another triple digit hot spell. But I think the autumn bug has bitten me. I now have out all of my fall decor... not much, just a garland of golden leaves woven among the pictures on top of the piano, a wall hanging outside the front door, harvest placemats and a pumpkin centerpiece on the table, and my miniature scarecrow standing in his little hay bale on the entry-way table. But still, we're pretending it's cooler and crisp outside. We had soup and biscuits for supper with cinnamon-spicy candles lit and the sounds of our Smoky Mountain Hymns CD's playing. (Yes, even our music changes when the seasons change!) I'm eager for cold weather to arrive in the desert, and even if our changing of the seasons only gives us mild weather in the place of the scorching heat, I don't mind being prepared!

The Seed of Love

For my dear friend, in whom the Seed of Love is being planted... and for all others, for we all must endure the pain to see the Grace and Glory of the Savior's love.

The Shepherd put his hand in his bosom, drew something forth, and laid it in the palm of his hand. Then he held his hand out toward Much-Afraid. "Here is the seed of Love," he said.

She bent forward to look, then gave a startled little cry and drew back. There was indeed a seed lying in the palm of his hand, but it was shaped exactly like a long, sharply-pointed thorn. Much-Afraid had often noticed the the Shepherd's hands were scarred and wounded, but now she saw that the scar in the palm of the hand held out to her was the exact shape and size of the seed of Love lying beside it.

"The seed looks very sharp," she said shrinkingly. "Won't it hurt if you put it into my heart?"

He answered gently, "It is so sharp that it slips in very quickly. But, Much-Afraid, I have already warned you that Love and Pain go together, for a time at least. If you would know Love, you must know pain too."

Much-Afraid looked at the thorn and shrank from it. Then she looked at the Shepherd's face and repeated his words to herself. "When the seed of Love in your heart is ready to bloom, you will be loved in return," and a strange new courage entered into her. She suddenly stepped forward, bared her heart, and said, "Please plant the seed here in my heart."

His face lit up with a glad smile and he said with a note of joy in his voice, "Now you will be able to go with me to the High Places and be a citizen in the Kingdom of my Father."

Then he pressed the thorn into her heart. It was true, just as he had said, it did cause a piercing pain, but it slipped in quickly and then, suddenly, a sweetness she had never felt or imagined before tingled through her. It was bittersweet, but the sweetness was the stronger...

--Hinds' Feet on High Places, by Hannah Hurnard, Chapter One, "Invitation to the High Places"

Busyness!

I don't have much time to be on the computer today, but I had a few little updatey things to write up. :)

Fiddleboy is here for a few days again. No, he does not live here... although that could be considered debatable. :) My parents' anniversary is next week, so they are celebrating this weekend... and so are we--I get some time with my brother! ::smile:: Tomorrow night, a young Marine is coming over for a casual dinner. He's a good friend of ours who is leaving for Iraq next week. Saturday morning we'll be going "door-knocking" with our church family, sharing the gospel and inviting people to church. In the afternoon, we'll be enjoying fellowship at our church's annual picnic. Sunday, My Marine and I are singing with a quartet in both morning services, a wonderful song that we've wanted to sing for quite a while. A fun-filled weekend, for sure!

A friend here on base is going to start attending a Pilates class with me on Tuesday evenings and running with me a few times a week. We'd like to run a 5K in January (possibly... the only one I could find around here is some animal-lovers' thing, so I'd have to find out more about it first) and it's much easier and more fun with a partner. Scheduling makes it hard to run with My Marine, and he prefers longer (read: marathon) races. A 5K would be nothin' to him. Makes me sick. ;)

Today I will be busy... vacuuming! Woohoo! :) My new vacuum came yesterday to replace the old, cheap, worn out one I've been using. After a couple hours of panic when I thought it was useless and we'd been "taken" by an eBay seller, My Marine came home and found that the belt wasn't hooked up on the bottom. After that, it was love at third try. :D So today, I'm going to be vacuuming everything in sight. Fiddleboy thinks I'm crazy. Maybe I am... but we'll have very clean carpets to show for it!

And with that, I'm off. I'll leave you with a link to My Marine's excellent post from today about the humility of our Savior. It's short, but well worth the read.

First Day of School

Yes, I know... I'm married and a mom of a five month old, so it can't be my first day of school, but, indeed, this was the Holiday we celebrated yesterday. We were also remembering the fifth anniversary of September 11, 2001... praying for those grieving, for our country and for those fighting in the vital War on Terrorism. We proudly wore our pins featuring Old Glory and my fireman Daddy wore the neatest shirt that served as a memorial to the firefighters of FDNY.

It was Fiddleboy's first day of tenth grade, and as the tradition of the past fourteen years demands, we carried through in the correct manner. Littlest and I drove out to my parents' house in the morning, as I've done the past two years since I got married, because I like to think they couldn't continue quite right unless I was there. ;)

Fiddleboy, Dad and I made our traditional First Day of School chocolate chip cookies, which we've done since our first day of homeschooling when Daddy had to explain to me what he meant when he said we needed "three-quarters of a cup sugar." I knew what "three-fourths" was, but not "three-quarters." :)

So, we made our cookies, with me seeing to it that we followed very closely to the Family's Rules of the First Day of School Order--Fiddleboy and I measure out the ingredients, Mom reminds me to let Fiddleboy do some of the work, she stands in the dining room taking pictures, Dad does the stirring when we add the chocolate chips (a reminder of the days when we were too little to stir ourselves... because we have to do these cookies by hand, no mixers!), we take our "test taste" of the dough with mom out of the room (but knowing well what we're doing), amid her calls that we will all end up with salmonella, then in goes the first batch, we clean up, and wait for the pretty cookies with melted chocolate chips to come piping hot out of the oven.

Once they are all cooked and taste tested to be sure they are edible for the other members of the family ;), Dad puts the cookies in a container and they are loaded up with us in the car for a drive up to the cool, quaint mountain town of Big Bear. This tradition started a few years after the cookies, but fast became part of the Rules. Yesterday, as always, we visited our favorite little shops, strolling around smelling Yankee Candles before and after we eat at the traditional Mexican food restaraunt, followed by ice cream from a little shop in the "downtown" area.

We ended the day with a trip down to enjoy the beauty of the lake before heading back down the mountain. Fiddleboy and I fell asleep on the drive, as dictated by the Rules, which we never seem to have trouble obeying in this instance.

No, we do nothing that really pertains to school on the First Day of School. We used to go through all of our new books and organize our new school supplies. But Fiddleboy has his things in order already and being that he's using the same curriculum as he has for the past few years, there wasn't much to go over (a far cry from the days when I was younger of trying a few new things each year in search of "the perfect curriculum"). And perhaps the fact that, um, I'm no longer in school has something to do with my lack of interest in getting my school supplies together. ;)

Top picture: Fiddleboy at the Lake; Middle picture: My mom and the Little Man; Bottom picture: Guess Who? :) I didn't take too many pictures yesterday, but my mom did... if they're not there already, she will soon have quite a few posted here.

On Being a Mama

Yesterday at my parents' house, the Little Man was being very "talkie" and so his Grammie took the opportunity to try to get him to say "Mama." He was staring very intently at her lips as she repeated it over and over, exaggerating the two syllables. Soon he was copying her, and this five and a half month old Little Boy has hardly stopped saying it since. All morning I've been hearing "Maaaa Maaaa, Ma mAAAA, Maaama..." Of course, I know that he does not really understand what his saying Mama means, but it still melts my little heart!

Sometimes the reality of the fact that I am this baby's Mama stares me in the face and completely overwhelms me. He looks at me with such baby-love and trust, believing that I will care for him, love him and guide him. He doesn't know my weaknesses or my fear of incompetance. He doesn't know that his Mama is young and is sure that others are watching her wondering if she'll be up to the task of raising him with his Daddy. He just knows that this is the person who loves him, feeds him, cares for him, holds him when he cries and blows the tears away. I know the truth, though. I know that this is an unbelievable responsibility God has given us. He has entrusted to us His little person and expects us to be good stewards with what He's given us, not only in caring for him physically, but spiritually--leading him to Jesus. The enormity of it frightens me. It reminds me of how desperate I am for the strength of the Lord in this life long endeavor. In giving us this baby, God has given us the greatest means of drawing us closer to Himself. We see now, more than ever, how weak we are and how great God is. My baby... my blessing... It is all summed up when I hear his tiny little voice learning to mouth the word I've longed to hear. "Mama."

Pray for the Godfrey family

Most people in our blogging world have heard about the Godfrey family and their soon-to-be-born baby. The baby has been diagnosed with Potter's Syndrome, which means that the baby doesn't have any kidneys and shouldn't live more than a few hours after birth. Susan was supposed to be induced this morning, so please join with the many others who are lifting her and her family up in prayer during what will be an incredibly difficult time.

We're starting him early. :)

We love music... many different kinds of music. One of our current favorites is Southern Gospel, and more specifically, the Gaither Vocal Band and Ernie Haase and Signature Sound. My Marine and my brother, Fiddleboy, listen to these cd's non-stop, singing with all their might, discussing parts and types of singing. Fiddleboy spent the night here Wednesday night and brought a few of the Gaither DVD's with him. We were watching the Ernie Hasse DVD and the Little Man decided that he'd had enough just hangin' out with Mommy and listening... it was time to grow up and sing with the big guys!



Notice the glazed over look on his eyes as he sits glued to the TV. That part is not something I'd like to encourage. ;)

Never in a million years...

...did I think that I'd hear My Marine say this.

Setting the scene:

It's after dinner on Tuesday night. I'm checking my friends list and a couple blogs, and My Marine gets out his lap top (being that his wife was "busy" :)) and proceeds to go down the list of things he usually does online. Check the email, read a few articles on Fox News, go to the bank's site and balance the check book, go back and check the email, stare at the screen....

Then IT starts.

"I'm bored online."

I'm incredulous. "What?! How can you be bored? I'm, like... never bored."

Then IT is said.

"I think I should get a blog."

I smile and my eyebrows raise. I clearly think he is joking. "Yeah, good idea. That'll sure cure your online boredom."

"So... I just go to Blogger.com, right?"

My smile relaxes, takes on an air of absolute surprise and my eyebrows go up a fraction of an inch higher. "Well, yeah, if you're really going to do it."

"Wait a minute." Mouse clicks. Keys typed. "I think I can do one through my Hotmail account."

I shake my head and laugh. "No, those things aren't real blogs. Those are mostly just the kind for people who are trying to hook up with someone over their instant messenger."

"And I'm NOT trying to do that, that's for sure! Then, it's just Blogger...."

"What about Live Journal?" I grin.

"Uh, no." He smiles. "That's just all your girl friends. Okay.... here it is... 'Create a Blog'..."

Fifteen minutes later, here is the result.

And if you click that link, you simply MUST leave a comment for him... he's thoroughly convinced that nobody will ever even check out his blog. :)

Yummy?

I guess Troy decided he was ready to start solids. :)

For fifteen minutes, he sat sucking on his big toe. He'd look up at us laughing every once in a while, then went right back to it.