God Rest Ye Merry

Beautiful post that our family needed today... Thanks, Sheila. God Rest Ye Merry.

Another Bittersweet Christmas

Honestly, I'd rather be writing about whether we should or should not do Santa. This morning (okay, I admit... it was really this afternoon) when I woke up, I had a lot in my head, and thought it might be a good time to blog. But a lot of what is there is not stuff I want to write about, because giving voice to something makes it more real than I want it to be. Like if I don't say it, it isn't happening (although I know that isn't true, it's happening). I had the same feeling this time last year, when we lost our dear Great Aunt, Pig. I wasn't able to write about it until January. That post is here: The Last Bath

And now we're back to a similar place, but this time with my Pap-Paw, one of my life-long best friends. He had a terrible fall on Friday night, and when I arrived to see him in the ER my first thought was what fragile packaging we are wrapped in. I thought of a car in a horrible accident that is so badly damaged that we don't fix it, we trade it in for a car in better condition that can take us another 100,000 miles. And I wanted to tell God that this body He gave Pap-Paw is all worn out and very banged up now, so we'd like to just order a new one, please. And thank you. But before I could get that silliness into a prayer, I knew we can't trade our bodies in for new ones. Well, we can. And Pap-Paw will. And I'm afraid it will be sooner than I'll ever be ready for.

The body repair guy, well, the surgeon, did the best he could. And today Pap-Paw is recovering, whatever that means when you're 98. Yesterday when he began reaching out into the air, my heart sank. I've seen that before, and it was in Mam-Maw's final days and again in Pig's final days... I've asked each of them what they are seeing, but they can't say. I guess I'll have to wait and find out for myself.

I know he won't read this. But I have to say it while I can. I love you, Pap-Paw.

Offerings at Christmas

This is a very quick post, and I apologize to all my readers (all 3 of you?) that I haven't written in so long. We just kinda go through busy spells where I can live or I can write, but I can't do both - do you? And I can't bring myself to post just for the sake of posting - I feel like I have to have something to say, something to offer...

Here are my offerings for Christmas - if you live in my area (you know who you are) and would like to be involved in a ministry to assist families in need on a personal level, please please let me know. Check out Scotty's Gifts and get in touch with me via email or leave a comment here & let me know how to contact you.

My other offering is a short post by my friend Laura at The World is Our Classroom. You'll never look at the Red Kettles the same way again...

Merry Christmas.

Old Things New

A few years ago, we had one of Sr. Smith's (aka Batman's) co-workers & his family over for dinner. Pablo (the friend) gave me a compliment that I just loved the wording of, "You have lots of cool old stuff in your house!" And I appreciated it because I do truly love old stuff - especially if it once belonged to someone I love, or if it connects us to a family member that we never knew but know we would have loved had we had the chance. Like my engagement ring, for instance. It belonged to Sr. Smith's maternal grandmother. I never knew her, but wearing her ring makes me feel like I belong in her family. And this wash stand in the picture above was Pig's. She gave it to me in high school, and it was painted green then. Sr. Smith refinished it for me during our engagement (it gave him something to do - haha!), and now it is in the entry of our home topped with a doilie passed down from my great aunt Nora, an assortment of nature items, a couple of vases, and a new guest book that we recently started keeping (thanks for that idea, Javamom!). But old things also remind me not to be too connected to my "stuff". They remind me how quickly life on earth passes, and how this world will eventually pass away...

Now on to some of my old things...

I have to comment on these nature items... the pressed flowers sitting on this plate are 14 years old. Last week I dug out my old leaf/flower press that I made in graduate school the summer I got married. I was taking a Science in the Elementary School class, and our class made presses & then went out on a nature walk to collect items to press. Jirafa is taking Botany this year, so I pulled out the press for him. When we opened it, I couldn't believe my eyes - it was full of flowers! I picked a few for our nature display, and let him have the rest for his Botany book cover. Very cool.

The final picture here is a little basket of wildlife nests we've found along the way. A wasp nest from Brambleside last summer, a dirt dobber nest from our neighbor, and the last 2 sparrow nests from my hanging plants on the back porch. The other day Paco & I did our outdoor "Autumn cleaning" which included retrieving the last nest. The birds had found some great soft lining this year! I carefully removed it from the plant, and Paco (ever the observant) said, "Look! There's something down there" pointing down in the leaves. Well, sure enough, 3 little eggs had been kicked out of the nest and were sitting whole down below where the nest had been. So we have included them in our display as well.

"You turn winter into spring

You take every living thing

And You breathe Your breath of life into it over and over again

You made the sunrise, day after day after day

But there's a morning coming, when old things will all pass away

And everyone will see You make all things new"

- from "All Things New" by Stephen Curtis Chapman

Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come. 2 Corinthians 5:17

Wordless Wednesday

Pizzas & Pijamas - Our Back to School Party!

It's back to school on Labor Day! Whoo-hoo! We decided to have our first day today as Sr. Smith would be able to join us. Typically when Daddy has a day off of work we are not doing school, so this just felt like the right way to get started this year.

To kick off our new year, we had a pizza & pijama party in our school room last night. After we ate, I gave each of the kids their new assignment notebooks and we went through them and our new schedule together. They were so excited to read through it all. "Look, Jirafa, a 15 minute break at 10:15!" Okay, so they weren't nearly as excited about the hours of work that preceded and followed the break, but they had fun thinking about what the first day would be like.

I plan to write about the changes I've made to how we work through our day, and new things we're doing this year. But for now I'm just posting about the party and pictures of our school room (aka "the loft"), which has been re-vamped to be more user-friendly. We hope to use it more for our actual work, whereas in the past we've sort of spread out all over the house. Of course, in the winter we'll be snuggled up by the fire :o)

Okay, here are the pictures from our party...

Braces and black olives...! Jirafa is starting year 5

Extra cheese, no sauce, with garlic shake! Paco is starting Year 3.5!

Each boy has his own bin filled with current books; the rest are on the shelf above his bin. Jirafa takes his bin to the large table, while Paco prefers the small table. Grab & go on Wednesdays!

Here's a view of most of the room - Sr. Smith built all those shelves & the window seat (which has four compartments that open for storage).

He's too good to me :o)

If you look to the bottom right hand corner of this picture, you can see the corner of a chair; Jirafa's table is up against that wall w/two chairs. A map of the world hangs above it. To the left you can see some smaller black shelves, those are just from Wal-Mart until Sr. Smith has time to build more shelves; to the left of those shelves is a map of the USA, followed by Doorposts charts on down the hallway (which is where I'm standing with the camera). Hermosa's picture books are on the shelf that faces the rocker where Sr. Smith is sitting, and behind him on the wall is the dry-erase board.

Well, that's a peek into our little world over here. Blessings to everyone starting school, whether at home or another school of your choice. Have a great year!

Consignment Sale on Cash

I've decided to start blogging about some of my money-saving finds both to share them with others as well as to keep myself going on our adventure of "living like no one else so that later we can live like no one else" (a la Dave Ramsey).

For a long time now, Sr. Smith has the habit of taking out cash every payday, giving it me to sort into my envelope system, and keeping some pad in the checking account "in case I end up short and need to put something on the debit card". Well, no more. I am determined not to need that padding!

This morning my friend & her daughter & my 3 headed to a consignment sale where I thought I was going to find "smashing deals". Well, not quite as smashing as I'd hoped, I still found great deals after some hunting around. I started looking through clothes for Hermosa, then made it over to jeans for the "King of Holes in the Knees" (jirafa) & found him a few tops also. We sat down near the Thomas train bed (the girls thought they were riding a choo-choo) & started going through our piles looking for holes & tears, and I pulled out a pen & an old receipt to write on. I started with the jeans for Jirafa, because that's where I was getting the biggest savings ($7 vs. $20 or more per pair), and wrote down each price. Then I sorted through Hermosa's & picked my favorite things. I kinda had $50 on each of them in my mind depending on what I found (my budget was $100). (btw, Paco hasn't outgrown what he has, so that's why I didn't shop for him - he isn't going around without clothes! He also gets whatever is passed from his brother) Well, when I wrote it all down it came to $99.50. I was so proud to stay in my budget!

Then when I got up to the register I told the guy working it that if I'd added right I had just what I wanted & .50 to spare - "Did you figure in tax?" He said. Oops. I didn't know they were charging tax. I quickly did the math in my head, and pulled out a pair of khaki's for Jirafa that were $8.50 to remove from my pile. "We take credit cards, you don't have to stick to cash," said the man very nicely. "Nope, cash only," I replied. He grinned when my total was $99.05.

But I grinned bigger :o)

Here's what I came home with:

4 pair size 14 jeans (3 Levi, 1 Wrangler)
1 pair size 14 camo pants
1 sweater (Gap)
2 long-sleeved cotton tops (Old Navy & Cherokee)

6 complete fall/winter outfits (pants and tops) for Hermosa. Some of these had an extra top for versatility, and one of the pants is cream colored corduroy which can go with other tops as well.
The brands of these are also good, high quality (Gap, Gymboree, Old Navy, Carter, and some boutique things I didn't recognize). And they are all super cute, modest, and comfie.

The kids will wear these hardly-worn items just as long as they would have worn them had I bought them brand new, and I paid less than half of what I would have paid in the store, even if they were on sale. The girls working the sale were wearing shirts that said, "Retail is for suckers," to which I'd add, "So are credit cards!"

Some may think I didn't get as great a deal as I could have gotten at a garage sale, for instance, which may be true. But I got a deal I'm happy with, and I stayed within budget, which right now is the goal.

Now if I could just get Jirafa to take better care of his jeans...