Don't Forget!!!!!

Tuesdays and Saturdays
Playdate at Areford Park
11am Bring a picnic lunch if you wish!
We will meet at McDonalds on
Route 40 if it rains!

Please keep a watch out for upcoming summer activities!

The clock ticks on...

The clock ticks on yet...our hearts seem to not want that change.
Whether we like it or not, it's going to happen.

Click on the link to my blog to read some more...
http://mattersoftheheart-jen.blogspot.com/

At Home

We are spending the day at home. I so want to paint, but with rain in the forecast for the next few days, the primer would stay sticky. We'll find something else to do. In the meantime, I will find joy in the things that have been marked off my list.

::cracky plaster has been scrapped off the ceilings::

::it wasn't as big an area or a mess as I had been anticipating::

::legs have been put on our bed::

(I just won't think about how unstable it is and how much they need to come back off)

::our bedroom has been rearranged::

::Abigail has declared her readiness to put her bed in a frame::

(my sister and I had matching frames growing up. 

she sleeps in my sister's bed when we stay with my parents. 

she has been known to fall out of that bed)

::distant thunder::

::birds singing defying the thunder::

::sleeping bags on the floor for stormy (physically or dreamily) nights::

::seeing Thor last weekend for our anniversary::

::looking back at the last 11 years--good and bad::

::knowing I'd spent them with the one person I am meant to spend life with::

::liking him eleven years later::

What is on your list today?

Ooops....

I forgot that it was my turn to blog yesterday!
I think I was getting TOO pumped for the "Amazing Race 15401!"

"oh what fun it is to ride in Neely's Chevrolet...HEY!"

For those that were not able to make it to MOPS last night, we had a GREAT time!!

After MOPS was over a few of us hung around and got to talking. Our conversation sparked an idea for a question...TWO parter!

Name three positive things about your husband?

Why do you compliment each other?

Life is Short...

The other day, I heard a neat message on Klove radio (it's a nation wide Christian radio station if you've not heard of it. Find your local station here!) about a very cool video that has recently been released by the David Crowder Band. The song is called "SMS Shine" and the video is a compilation of thousands of hours of Lite Brite Pegs put into a stop action photography story.

Apparently, the David Crowder Band, along with over 80 people helping from their church, spent thousands of hours making over 700,000 Lite Brite pegs turn into over 120,000 different photo frames for the story told.

Curiosity had the best of me, and I watched the video. The first time I saw it, I spent my viewing time in awe of the work that was done. And since it was so good, I had to watch it again... and this time I paid attention to the story. It blew me away.

Have a look:




Did you see it? Wasn't it cool how they incorporated things from outside the Lite Brite coming into the story? Isn't it neat how the whole band attended the wedding in the background? As a designer, I was just drooling over this whole video concept. Story wise, I already loved this song from hearing it on the radio, but watching the video was more than moving.

David Crowder posts on his own blog that this video about the hope and comfort that God can be in the midst of the worst possible aches. "God shares in the suffering of life and brings redemption for everything that is broken, and this revelation causes, no, demands, that those of us who have experienced and participate in this great rescue, display such a thing to those who live unaware of a balm, a fix, an answer to and for all that is bent." (read his whole story of making the video)

When I watch this, which I've found myself doing a lot lately. I am reminded of two things- one is how short life really can be. Even if we're not experiencing exactly what this family does, isn't even 80 years a short amount of time to be here? It doesn't take tragedy to send us to heaven, am I making a difference for Him while I am here? James 4:14-15 says "Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”

The second thing I am reminded of is how amazed I am at the strength of people who seek refuge in the Lord through the toughest of times.

There is such a hope in Him! Proverbs 3:5-6 have been great verses for me to lean on these last few months of uncertainty in our lives:

Trust in the LORD with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight.


I yearn to make my life so that my path is indistinguishable from His path for me. I want to to a better job of seeking Him during both the tough and the good times. I want to give him space to shine His light so I can see it and for him to hold me close so I can feel love, too.

Too cute...

Quote of the day...

Me: (as I am getting Pizza on plates) "What did you eat at Grandma's?"
Ethan: "Nothing. I just had a drink...( a 5 second silence) ... and Ice Cream."

Typing it does not do it justice. Alex and I had a very good laugh over that for a few minutes. It's a memory that will last a life time!

I love being a mommy!!!

He Cares for You

I Peter 5:7 "Cast all your anxiety on him because He cares for you."

How often I need this assurance - there is a place for me to take my anxiety and leave it! That place is with the One who cares about it even more than it do! No matter how many years I've been praying and seeing God do amazing things, I am still in desperate need of His help and comfort each day.

This is one of the first Bible verses I ever learned and it continues to have an impact on my daily life. Because I don't have to carry the weight of the world, I can have a light and thankful heart.

Today I am thankful for...

a Friday - one of my favorite days. The Carnegie Science Musuem is coming to do an in school field trip with our kindergarten class and I'm almost as excited as the students!

Mother's Day weekend - it is always fun to be appreciated and it is also a happy time as I think about my own mom and all she means to me.

the people God has given me - family and friends who make every day worthwhile. Our grandson, Liam, is a special joy in our lives.

answered prayer - first, God brought my son-in-law, Aaron back safely from Afghanistan. Now he has given Aaron and Christy a safe and memorable trip across the U.S. and back. What an amazing country we have.

a quiet heart - being able to clear my mind of all that weighs on me as I give it to Him. Then meditating on some promise of God that soothes and refreshes my soul.

"Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord, O my soul. I will praise the Lord all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live." Psalm 146:1,2

~Joy Herman

Mommy & Me...it's getting deep in here!

It's a chocolate chip cookie for breakfast kind of day!

Sometimes you need one of those. I think the kids do too! Actually, the kids are the ones having the cookies for breakfast. I better not. You know I will though, with a nice cup of tea.

Parenting has gotten pretty "deep" the past few weeks. What I mean by "deep" is H A R D! Questions that I never thought would come out of the mouths of my children. How do I answer them?! My children are 6 and 5 ...when did they start to THINK like bigger kids?! When did they stop being toddlers?!
Oh and the attitudes! I remember before I was a mother, observing other mothers and children and knowing 'my child will NEVER act like that!' And 'can you believe they are letting them act that way?!!'

On this "Mommy & Me Thursday", I am going to take each question that comes my way with a prayer. Each attitude that creeps it's ugly head I am going to take with the knowledge that it is NOT only my child that needs to learn through this, but perhaps even more so it's ME that God is trying to teach.

Last night we had Family Game Night. We try and do one thing each week that is special. We alternate between Game Night, Movie Night, or going somewhere and doing something special. Cell phones and computers are off. It's wonderful! We bowled last night, Daddy won.
There is so much joy just spending time with your family and your family alone. We loved watching our childrens faces and become aware ONCE AGAIN, that they are NOT babies anymore. We need to cherish the moments, while doing the hard job of raising them to be who He wants them to be!

Question for today...

If you could rid the world of one annoying thing (NOT a person, situation, or emotion - this is just for fun and giggles!) . . .

What would it be?!

Happy Monday!

It is raining, but I think today is a beautiful day!

I wanted to share a verse with you today to ponder on this Monday, the day after Easter... His Resurrection.

Jeremiah 29:11
11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

Isn't it nice to know that someone knows your entire story from start to finish?

Isn't it a comfort to know that He knows every word, every exclamation point, every lull in your story?

That He knows the exciting parts, that parts that while you are living through them second by second, He is enjoying seeing your joy as much as you are feeling it? He is smiling right along with you?

That at the moments of great sorrow he is feeling your pain every second you are? That when you can't possibly understand why...He is patiently showing you to trust Him and one day He will tell you why this happened?

A friend and I we were talking about how frustrating it is sometimes NOT knowing what your future holds. (This lately, has been a recurring conversation in many peoples lives.) How stressfull it can be to know if you are making the right decision for your family.

I hope she doesn't mind me sharing something that she shared with me. Wise words from a man of God. I hope you find comfort in these words.

"While on the phone the other day, I asked him “Fr. John, don’t you wish you could just know what was going to happen in the end? Don’t you wish God would just make some kind of obvious sign to tell you how this is going to end?” He wisely said “No, I’ve come to learn that the Lord only gives me what I need to know for the next step because I can’t handle knowing it all at once.” Wow… he went on to tell me that because he’s an engineer by trade, he tends to like things to be neat and tidy. God doesn’t work in the neat and tidy. He said that if he knew the “end” instead of learning along the way, he would try to work his engineer skills to make a straight line from the here and now to the end needed.
He then told me about a time he had a conversation with another priest who told him this: “Look outside- look at everything with perfectly straight lines. A building, a street, a train track, a house and so on…they are all man made. Now, look at all of the things that God made. Nothing is perfectly straight. That is how God works”

Missing my kids...

At 3am on Wednesday I was awakened with a pain in my stomach. Approx 1 hour later I was sick. The flu. I caught it from my boss.

I woke my husband (mainly to ask him to get up -because his side of the bed is a better place to be when you are sick - it's closer to the bathroom and you don't have to worry about hitting your head on the slope that is our roof like you do on my side), he quickly got me a bucket, wash cloth and then went away.
He called off work and took care of me, good care of me, over the next 24 hours.
He kept the kids away.
That part was hard for me. I miss my kids. I am still praying that no one else in my household gets this bug. It was pretty bad. I still ache and feel I was hit by a rather large truck.

I woke up this morning to the sounds of cabinets opening. Brenna was making us breakfast. That touched my heart. They both were so worried about their mommy.

Sometimes you don't think they get it. Sometimes you don't think they understand all that you do for them. And then you get breakfast.

Tomorrow is Good Friday. Tomorrow someone did ALOT for us. Are we going to live everyday remembering and knowing what He did.

Know Thyself

Yesterday, I shared about the book I was reading, A Family of Value, and the author, John Rosemond's, take on so much expert material available to us making us nervous Nellies as it were.

Well today, I want to share something that I learned about myself recently. It begins before recently. I like blogging and I like reading blogs. If you were to look at my MyYahoo page you will find quite a few blogs feeding their titles and first sentences to my desktop regularly. You would also find that most of them are not blogs of my friends or blogs of people telling anecdotes about their lives. Nope, those blogs are other women telling me how to be more intentional, or more professional in my motherhood.

Before these blogs, I would not have really thought about intentionality or professionalism or mission statements in relation to the way I go about my life. But these women do, so I must too! Or so I thought. In my thinking too much, I lost track of my very nature. I don't do well in the world of deliberate. I struggle in the land of planned. I find I can't breathe on the Island of professional motherhood.

Striving to do those things, in my life, takes my eyes off of the One who created me and these children and firmly on the list. So when things go wrong I don't roll with the punches well. And before intentional, professional motherhood with mission-statements, goals, and prioritized to-do lists entered my world I could roll having fun while doing it.

If you want to know the story behind the revelation and see a tree on my house, you can find it here.

Incidentally when I told Chris I thought it would be wiser for me (an education major) to buy planned curriculum for our homeschooling instead of planning it myself, he agreed. Saying I never imagined you a lesson-planning type of teacher. I must embrace it. Now for someone to tell my dear brother-in-law planning a weekend to see another brother-in-law graduate graduate school in six weeks. We have a place to stay. I'm good.

On Thinking

So I'm reading a book, a parenting book. The author's premise is that we are nervous mothers as a rule because of modern psychology. It is an interesting read, John Rosemond's A Family of Value.

But that isn't what I want to start here (a debate about child-rearing, don't think so). My question for this Tuesday is. . . (drum roll)

Do you think we (as women with vast informational resources at our very finger tips) think too much about our lives?

It is something Rosemond brings up. That essentially our lives are made more difficult by the amount of expert-written material we have available because it makes us think too much about what we are doing. Thereby making us all wonder constantly if we are good wives and good mothers and good neighbors and, well, the list goes on.

What is your take?

Being an avid reader, I think everyone loves to read as much as I do. When, in conversation, I find they don't, I fear I may look at them as if they have just grown two extra heads right before my eyes. There is a quote I love, "The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid." - Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey) Okay, so that may be a bit harsh. It certainly isn't a true statement. It's just very hard for me to comprehend how anyone can not LOVE to read. My husband is one of those three-headed freaks! Reading is something that I started immediatley doing with both of my children. They both have their favorite books. It seems each year they each have a different favorite. I try and save those books and put them aside to give to them when they are older. Sharing something you are passionate about with your child, and then slowly realizing that they love it too...what a great feeling that is! Their love of books does seem to come and go a bit, but I am confident it is here to stay. Inspite of the 50-50 shot of them growing two more heads. Tonight, Brenna and I spent some time together snuggled on the chair reading the first chapter of a new "Chapter Book" that we got for her. Now being a big-time first grader, she really knows the adventure that awaits her in a book. Soon, very soon, she will be reading that entire book on her own, without my help, and not in my lap. I hope this Chapter Book never ends. . . I am still waiting patiently for the right moment to introduce Brenna to Anne (of Green Gables that is!). Not just yet. It will come at the right time, and when it does, another memory we can share together!

Question...

What's in a name... Share with us why you chose the name (s) of your children?

Loving the man in my life -

When our darling grandson was born last October, I was completely smitten.  I confessed in a light hearted way to my husband of 30 years that for the first time in our marriage, I had fallen in love with someone else.  He laughed and said, "That's not true!  This has happened six other times in the past!"  He was referring to our six children and how with the birth of each of them, my maternal love was so strong that I was just a bit neglectful of our romance for awhile.

The first time I heard the parenting principle "The best gift you can give your children is to love your spouse", I remember pondering it for a long time.  That's a pretty strong statement, but it does makes a lot of sense.  What better gift can we give our kids than the sense of security a happy marriage brings to a home?  What more effective way is there to teach our kids love and forgiveness than to model it for them as parents?  What legacy can we give our kids that would be more meaningful than two parents who are completely devoted to one another?

Many principles like that make great sense, but it doesn't mean they are easy to live out from day to day!  Most of the time I am completely committed to living this principle.  My husband is an amazing person and he has loved me unwaveringly through the good and bad times.  There are, however, moments when I let tensions build up and the romantic feelings dip a little and it requires work to keep loving.  I am fully aware that it requires work on his part to keep loving me sometimes because I have days of the month when I don't even like myself!

At times when loving doesn't come as easily, the life giving words of Scripture infuse me with new strength and resolve.  One of my favorites is this passage from Colossians 3:12-14 -

Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.  Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another.  Forgive as the Lord forgave you.  And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity."

I've said it before, but I just have to say again that the great thing about God telling us to do things, is that He is right next to us giving us all the resources we need to do them!   Jack and I have followed these powerful words as a couple through some very tough times and it totally works!  Sometimes we look at each other and our hearts are so full - God has brought us such a long way together and we really do love each other more deeply than we ever thought possible.

If you are still single and waiting for that man of your dreams, don't get caught up in looking for him.  Use all of your energy to become the person God wants you to be.  Pray for that man you are waiting for - that God will make him the person he should be.  Then be patient until God brings that person into your life.   My favorite verse I pray for my single friends is Psalm 84:11b, "...no good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless."  The word "blameless" here doesn't mean someone who is perfect; it refers to someone who is following Jesus, confessing her sin and not compromising in areas that would not please God.

If you have tied the knot and are faltering at times when the romance seems lacking (I don't think I have ever had to put as much effort into this as when we had babies and toddlers!), remind yourself what a gift you are giving your children when you persevere in loving that man of yours.  The benefits of sticking with each other may not always seem spectacular from day to day, but over the years you will see great rewards.  The wise One who created marriage smiles on us as we fulfill our vows and He gives us the love we need so we can give our kids the great gift of a mom and dad who are truly in love!

Just two months ago...

Just two months ago, I believe, there was snow on the ground. I was very happy about that. I know because I remember getting not nice comments on my FACEBOOK page when I would post, "Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!"

You will all be very happy to know that I no longer sing that song.

It seems some are never perfectly happy with the weather.

A perfect weather day for me is a temperature in the high 70's.

I happen to LOVE the rain. I think it's pretty amazing how our Creator created the Four Seasons. When you think about it can really blow your mind. How everything works together and one season depends on the others.

Rain something I never tire of. When Brenna was born, I wanted her middle name to be "Rain." For some odd reason that got vetoed! True story. = ) I love the snow, but when it's time for spring, the snow needs to be done. I never feel the rain nees to be done. I do not care for those loud things that sometimes accompany the rain.

To start off my thankfuls today, I am thankful for rain!

Spontaneous lunch playdates at McDonalds

Great doctors who love what they do and you walk away feeling comforable and secure in their decisions.

A very high mohawk on a very cute little boy.

8 baby chicks

That today is FRIDAY, and I don't work again until Tuesday!

That today is FRIDAY, and I get to spend the ENTIRE weekend with my family.

In the days that are hard and I have to really, really, count my blessings and it doesn't take long to realize.. "I've been blessed beyond measure, and by His grace alone I overcome!!"

Writers who write amazing songs like the one above.

What makes your list today?!

A Poem...

I came upon this poem today, and I thought it was a perfect thing to share. It is a very old poem, but I really liked it. Made me smile. Hope it does the same for you.

Life's a Puzzle!

Mothers can do many things,
As little boys all know:
They can untie knots in strings,
Or make an Indian bow;

And they can patch a cut you've got,
Or pick a splinter out;
They can crack the hardest nut,
Or fry a rainbow trout.

A mother even seems to know
If you didn't wash your neck,
Or if you sneaked outside to go
Where she forbid, by heck!

And mothers bake the things you like
To eat the best of all!
They seem to know you broke your bike,
Or lost your brother's ball.

The only thing I want to know
Is how a mom so wise,
Can act so dumb by kissing me
In front of all the guys.


By Saxon White Uberuaga

What matters MOST

Dear moms, As I get ready for bed feeling weary from a "full" day at home, I look up on my mirror at a card (send from a dear friend) that reminds me of what's important....what matters MOST. God sees our gentleness in the most trying of motherhood moments and faithfulness in the most routine tasks. What a comfort to know that He gives us all we need to be great Moms. It is a joy to share the motherhood adventure with you. "And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not." Gal. 6:9 KJV Journeying Together, Lauren

Word Association!

I'm going to list a word, and someone else should say the first word that comes to their mind! Then, the next person will use the person above's word to write the first word that comes to their mind! Am I making sense? So, I'll say blah, and you read "blah" and think "blee" and then the next person reads your "blee" and writes "bloop!" (example, don't do that for real!)

Tell others to come on and contribute! I can not go on Facebook right now, but someone can! So to make this fun, please tell more people to come on today :-)

Ok here goes! My word is...

Bubbles