Behold, and Observe
The Things That God Has Done
I rejoice in His creativity,
whether it is displayed in a flower, the plumage of a bird,
the clouds in the sky, the unreachable marvels of the universe,
fields of blowing grasses, the infinite musical possibilities,
or the expressive creative abilities He has given us.
I also believe He has an awesome sense of humor,
one that doesn't hurt or destroy, but that reveals and uplifts.
Hi,
Thanks to all of you who prayed. Christine's surgeon was quite pleased with how it went. She's also been responding well to the pain meds and has been a little loopy, but comfortable. I can't see any sign of bruising, which I thought might have been extensive and hard to live with over the Christmas season.
It's really nice having her home again. I suspect we'll be getting her out of the house tomorrow.
You could continue to pray that the graft will "take", as she hasn't started any foods other than liquid yet. She has to protect the area from impact and stress.
All is well, in spite of the long unexplained absence. I owe you an apology. It really wasn't a planned absence...I kept thinking I was going to get back on here.
This year is coming together a little differently, and I'll have to work harder to fit this in. I'm involved in helping teach some co-ops, and Josiah has taken on some extra activities this year.
But worse of all, in order to try to keep up with Christine (off to college) and her friends, I opened a Facebook page. uh. It really has helped with Christine, but it's SO time consuming, without much reward. It's just NOT like HSB. I've really missed the fellowship here. Even Josiah has gotten on to me, realizing how we're missing out on you all and what's going on in your lives.
I have missed you, and do think about you. I'm afraid I may never get caught up at this point....
Anyhow,
Josiah's reading is coming along with his tutoring. He can read some, even quite complicated phonics, although it's quite tiring for him and he resists it. He's had over 200 two-hour lessons.
He's singing parts in a choir (by ear, as it's too hard to read it,) and we're trying trombone in band, to see how he does with reading musical notation. So far it's been simple, and he's doing alright with that. Time will tell.
J.T. (21) has discontinued attending the local community college, and is looking for some serious meaningful direction. He's been quite frustrated, and we would appreciate prayer. He's one of those fellows who is probably too intelligent for his own good, overly analytical, but does have a heart for God. He's always had a heart for the "outcasts," even since preschool. But it's starting to show up in his choice of who he's hanging with today. They really need serious help and prayer. Pray for his protection, and that the Lord will also bring good solid believers into his social life. Thanks.
Christine is enjoying her first term at college, and although she has always been on the introverted side, seems to have come out of that. Perhaps to a detriment? ha. It's hard to balance academics and social life at school. She really has a strong heart for the Lord and is looking for how she can serve Him.
She is having some major reconstructive oral surgery tomorrow, Dec 11. When she was nine, she got too close behind JT when he was batting a ball, and lost three of her upper front teeth. She's had temporaries, waiting to stop growing so they could do something permanent.
In the meantime, there's been some bone loss in the area where they would do the implants, so this week they're going to take some bone from inside of her chin area, (uh?) and use it to rebuild. She will have a new set of temporaries, and then a few months down the line permanent implants, if all has gone well. Then perhaps some work on the gumline if necessary.
Please pray for the procedure, her health, how it turns out, and for no complications. She will be uncomfortable for a while, so we were fortunate to be able to schedule it for the day after her last final before break.
I have this plant I set out on our northern exposed porch all summer, as that's the only time we get any growth on it. We were expecting a frost, so brought it in for the year, all decked out in new leaves.
The next day we were sitting in the room and heard this distinct little chirpy sound, coming from the vicinity of the piano and the plant.
This is Tidbits helping us realize we really did hear something. Thinking that we unsuspectingly had brought in a bat, Bob carefully examined under all the leaves while I went online to listen to bat noises. Yup. Same kind of sound. Oh shoot. So we took the piano apart.
You should have seen us the first night, sitting in the dark with badminton racquets, waiting for it to come out. But it never flew around at night, so after a few days we wondered if it had either hibernated or died. Until I heard it again today. I ran to call Bob in from outside to help me do another search.
We finally found something in the plant.
A tree frog?
A tiny little toad, turned green from sitting on our plant.
WHAT a relief!
I went back and did a zoom of the picture of Tidbits at the piano that we had taken that first night, and take a look at what we missed....cause we were looking for something brown and furry.
Notice what he's doing, but don't really think about it until it's too late.
He was only spinning the pen on the rubber band stretched out between two table legs.
Looked like fun, actually.
Like those little rubber band powered airplanes.
Until the part where he (we) learned about centrifugal force.
My fella moved up in his soccer league this fall. He's a fifth grader, playing with and against up to eighth graders. He has been so afraid of being creamed he wasn't sure he even wanted to play this year. Look at the size comparison. He's on the right.
But it looks like he started to get his courage up, even though he was sent in as a replacement for a team member who was injured. (The kids were saying it was deliberate. Hard to tell, but it makes it scary for them.....) Anyhow, Ouch.
This was his shining moment.
That's him on the left, and he's going after the ball.......
He's behind #75 now, but he passed it off to #72.....
who kicked it toward goal.....
and he had an ASSIST!!!!!
Look at the size of that other goalie.....some of these 8th graders look like men already. He's thinking maybe he'll hang in there this season. He really had considered sitting it out this year to get a little bigger. He's been hit before, and knows how hard these big guys can kick that ball.
We're proud of him for gettin' in there, even though I wouldn't mind him sitting it out.....ha.
We're in a weekly Apologia Astronomy co-op this year. Three of us trade off teaching about 10 kids and try to supplement the material with hands on stuff they might not be doing at home.
Today was my day to do the first half of "The Sun." I was so busy working with the kids I forgot all about my camera! I even had it right there....!
Anyhow, after talking about the spectrum of light from ultraviolet (sunburn) to infrared (heat,) I gave them a warning similar to that not to play with matches. I then took them out to the parking lot into the much hoped for sunshine(!) and had them turn magnifying glasses onto hunks of a Hershey bar. Talk about excitement and joy on their little faces!
I told them to first focus a larger circle of light onto their chocolate and watch closely to see if the surface started to change any. Then to focus it more sharply into a tiny spot of light and see if there was any difference. "Do NOT focus the light onto your paper plate, as it will catch it on fire..."
Well. Josiah had already seen me set a piece of chocolate on fire at home by trying a piece that hadn't been refrigerated first. It wasn't long before he had flames shooting off his Hershey. The place started to smell like a S'mores campfire site!
Some of them then started to complain that theirs didn't seem to be doing anything, until I suggested they try touching the chocolate. Some of those chunks dissolved into an immediate puddle. Must have been some kind of surface tension or something. It was so fun to see their faces light up.
After the chocolate had been devoured, we took this huge ball Josiah had won at six flags, and had them pretend it was the sun, and each of them made a little clay planet according to a cool picture I found online demonstrating relative sizes.
Then we got out the measuring tape and started placing them at the proper relative distances from the sun. The first was 4.8" away from the ball. Mars was 14.4" away, so the first four were quite close to the ball. By the time we placed little disputed Pluto, we were 77 feet out!
Here is the chart if you want to use it. Just take the "1" which is assigned to Earth, and make it be whatever measurement you want: an inch, 6 inches, a foot, whatever. Then do the multiplication to get the other relative distances.
Using the Bode’s chart below, place them at a proper distance from the sun
Use inches (indoor) or feet or yards.(outside with sidewalk chalk to find them again.)
1 foot1 yd
Mercury0.44.8”14.4”
Venus0.78.4”25.2”
Earth1.012”36”
Mars1.614.4”43.2”
Asteroid belt2.833.6”100.8”(8.4’)
Jupiter5.2 5’ 2.4”15’ 7.2”
Saturn10.010’30’
Uranus19.619’ 2.4”57’ 7.2”
Neptune38.838’ 9.6”116’ 1.2”
Pluto77.277’ 2.4”231’ 7.2”
Anyhow, once they were placed, to get them to think about it, we stood at Pluto and pretended to be explorers just discovering that it revolved around yonder Sun, and we went to see if there more planets revolving this sun.
We had gone about half way from Pluto to the Sun before encountering the next one, so it seemed unlikely that there would be very many. As we continued, and "finally" discovered Uranus, we looked back at Pluto, forward to the Sun and compared the distance and talked about the unliklihood that there would be many more, considering how far we had already come with only finding three.
Well, after Jupiter it was hard to see anything up ahead, (they were all so tiny) and besides, anything that close to the sun would have probably burned up anyhow. Imagine our shock and surprise to find anything at all inside that asteroid belt! SO close to the sun. Comparatively speaking.
We then had a talk about the Solar system diagrams they see in books and how accurate they were, and why not.
After going inside we looked at how light goes in a straight line, allowing for our hand shadows on the wall and even the shade we stood in. And how it bends when going through a different substance, like glass or water. This is because it actually slows down....!
I have a laser light, and Josiah had this demonstration he wanted to do with a clear plastic cup with a little hole in the side part way down to allow a stream of water to shoot out. When shining the laser through the cup at it from behind, the light will follow the stream's curve downward. It was so cool that he told me about it and then got to do it for the class.
Anyhow, these turned out to be great ideas that really kept the kids' attention. Next week I'll be working with them concerning color, rotation, revolution, and anything I realize I forgot. ha. Elementary is a fun age to work with.
Thanks for visiting!
My fella started getting this messy looking bunch of white feathers high on the base of his tail a week or so ago. But look what started to grow out of them. This little cape of brown and white ones and the longer curved ones. His tail doesn't look like the gals' tails anymore. I've no idea how many more are coming nor how long they'll get.
Here he is in front of my sedum. I'm so glad I have Bantams instead of larger chickens, as they spend a lot of time foraging for food in my flower beds. Read: scratching with their feet. Larger ones would be so destructive!
They're racing across the grass. Because of a natural instinct against hawks? Nope. They think I'm herding them. I'm only trying to take pics. But every evening I have to herd them toward their pen for the night. Are they running toward their pen? Nope. Opposite direction. Didn't used to have to do this herding.....they just went to bed around 8:30 p.m. by themselves and all I had to do was go and close their gate.
UNTIL... they discovered the neighbor's apple tree to perch in for the night. In their pasture. Guarded by a ferocious dog that runs with the horses to take care of them. This dog still acts like it hates the site of us, after living next door to us for a year now. It was a little embarrassing to have to get the neighbors to shoo our chickens out of their tree toward our place for us. Two nights in a row. So now we have to go looking for them a little earlier before they feel evening coming on and get that roostin' feelin'. Or before we leave for the day. Or before a rain storm. NOT fun.
Thankfully I have Josiah to crawl in under these awful pines to chase them out into the open toward home. It does take two of us to keep them away from that pasture fence. They've become "social" and like to hang out near the neighbor's chickens. But thankfully they haven't integrated with that flock. They are still their own little flock and stick together like glue, with him calling to them whenever they get a little too far from him! whew....
This is when they left the flowerbed out into the grass and he couldn't see them.
Showing off? Nope. Found a bug.
Well. I still enjoy them, in spite of the frustration of the herding. We just have to remember to give ourselves a half hour before we have to leave the house for finding them, etc., so we don't end up late for things. I'm hoping they'll get the idea that when they see us coming they'll just head for the coop instead of having to be chased there. Wishful thinking? Hope not.....
Oh yeah....last night Josiah and I got home at 10 pm in the driving rain and felt so cold that we worried about how the chicks were doing. They have an open pen with only a roof and they perch up high on this pole. I had visions of sick chilled chickens in the morning. We're really new at this poultry thing. We know, like, nothing!!
So we went out there with a flashlight hoping to find that they had jumped into this three sided straw-filled rabbit hutch for warmth. No such luck. I had him hold the flashlight, and figured if I snatched them off the pole two at a time and quickly placed them in the hutch they'd all be cozy in there before they knew what was happening. ha. We know, like, nothing!!!
The first two set up a squawking to raise the dead! I think they thought they were being killed. (Duh...) They immediately began running around frantically, taking them right out of the hutch (from which we had removed the front door so they could get in and out of it easily...) The next two were awakened, but disoriented in the dark so I was still able to grab them and put them in. Then they added to the din and the scrambling.
I discovered that the combination of the darkness, the flashlight and the squawking made it able for me to tell where they were, but they couldn't tell where I was, so I was able to keep grabbing them up and popping them in. Not grabbing them well, I'm ashamed to admit. Sometimes I felt nothing more than a couple of legs or awkward wings.
We also discovered that if Josiah shined the light in their eyes once they were in the hutch, and pushed at them when they came forward, they mostly stayed in while I found the rest.
When the last one was in I suddenly got real smart and pulled at the straw on their floor and fluffed it up in front of their faces so they couldn't see out (except for this one hen straining her neck back in the corner who we kept the light trained on.)
We quietly backed out and locked up the door with the light on her and they were quiet and not moving. We left. We did not go back to see if they had stayed. I figured we had done our best!~
Sheesh. Do I like these chicks? yes. Do I know anything about chickens? I doubt it. Except that when Bob gets back from out of town it's going to be a priority to winterize their pen.
PS:
next day:
Just added these I took tonight of their pen. It's not so cold so they can just roost all they want! It's about 5' up.
This is where I grabbed them from, but with only a little pinpoint of light from a pocket flashlight
.
This is where I attempted to bed them down. ha. I still don't know if they stayed. (I think I was hoping to find them in there tonight....)
The staff have worked really hard here.
They're greeting the new students by name as they walk up to the registration tents! It's just a part of the personal feeling you get here.
Ready for a first look at her dorm room.
This is Ashley. They've met online, and Christine is excited to be getting to know her. They seem to have a lot in common. The staff who have been getting to know the incoming freshmen over the past year got together and using a questionnaire, prayed about matching up roommates who would likely work out well together.
The room was so tiny and crowded, we decided to go eat lunch while she and her family unloaded, seeing how they had eaten on the way. A wonderful complimentary lunch was provided for everyone under the Old Oak Tree.
Even though we looked over the papers, we still missed the ice cream social.
Anyhow, back at the dorm...there were lots of upperclassmen who came two days early to help the freshmen move in their stuff. They also helped the girls understand how this "stackable" furniture could be arranged all these different ways to make this tiny crowded room more livable. Last year this floor had all singles, but due to higher enrollment, they're doubles now. I wish I had gotten a picture of how it looked when they first arrived. It was pathetic....so we moved most of the stuff back out to the hallway (including mattresses) and let the experts help rearrange the furniture while grandmas worried about the fire hazard obstructions in the hallway! Anyhow, they now have the beds up on their desk and a dresser/shelf unit. This freed up the floor space near the window. She found this waste basket available in the hallway...perfect size and shape!
This is half the size of the dresser I had at school.
It didn't take long before we all had bumped our heads on this. It's actually designed to set higher up above the desk and dresser units, but because of the low ceilings, they set the mattress bed right onto the furniture instead of the bed legs on the furniture. Does that make sense? Ouch....
(That thing in the center is how she stores her earrings. It's a woven wicker thing)
Note all that head room! Bob went out and got them both clip-on fans so they could sleep better at night. She tried it without the ladder. ha. See an earlier pic for the ladders they need for this. And you can see more easily how they set the beds lower in this pic.
This is all the space she has between the bed and the closet. This is being used for her bedside table. I'm trying to figure how to make it higher for her so she can reach her clock and glasses more easily.
Thankfully she can push her clothes off to the side to get to her other things. I noticed later that her roommate doesn't seem to have that extra room off to the side so she's really tight.
This is their window nook. Note the fridge her roommate brought!
I'm so glad for her wonderful view. And she doesn't need a wall clock in the room. ha.
During a (free!) dinner, we noticed outside the window a young couple on a bench under the oak tree. It looked to us like they were having a sad goodbye kind of a time instead of dinner. I remembered my first roommate went home after one term because she missed her boyfriend. It was sad to see, in more ways than one.
That's Christine in the black top listening to them address all of us after dinner.
This is the university president. He was our Sunday School teacher for several years until taking this new job this June. We were so pleased, as we had already chosen her university. But knowing he would be leading it gave us an extra measure of confidence in the direction it would be taking.
The "blue shirts" are the leaders of the 25 core groups that the freshmen and transfer students are required to take as a class. It's designed to help them adjust to college and to plan their college career. We think it's a great idea. It would be really hard for a student to "fall through the cracks" at this school with no one knowing what was going on with them.
This is her meeting with her core group for the first time. One of the girls is a homeschooler from our area who has a lot of mutual friends with Christine.
This annual ceremony involves stretching a ribbon all the way around the circle of new students who have their parents standing behind them. This was another instance of the many times of prayer throughout the day. They then cut it so each student had a piece, and parents could have one, too.
Josiah is saying that it helps him to not feel so badly about missing her if he reminds himself about how much fun she's having.
Then the students went off with their group for an evening of activities and families were to just go home......
This is her dorm. Her window is the one peeking out of the roof on the right.
(We were still there, after dark, as we had gone and spent the evening with our friend, our former SS teacher, at his house. Interesting job he has now.)
I haven't cried yet.
But she'd better be calling me.
I'm going to miss sitting and talking with her every time she got home.
Have you ever wondered what Navy Pier was in Chicago?
We did.
I think it was once the Navy's, but it's now dedicated to our entertainment.
There are various boat rides you can pay for that launch from this side. One is a tall ship with sails, there's one that features speed, and others that give a tour of the Chicago shore line, with or without dining experiences.
Let's not get in too much trouble.....we've just arrived!
(notice neither of them are actually touching it....ha)
These shoes were a gift from Grandparents,
have wheels in the heels
and are perfect for all this concrete in Chicago!
He can sure get around in these...
Yup...it's a long ways up there....
And yes, we did. Christine and I, that is.
Upper right hand corner are those swings on long chains that get spun around.
The blue water has remote control boats.
The merry go round and mini golf are somewhat evident.
But be prepared to pay for each one.
That's Bob in the bright green hat with Josiah in the white shirt.
They're not so great on heights.
We thought we would be fine,
but not even half way up my legs were still in that jelly-like state.
She decided to hold hands.
But neither of us felt like moving forward in our seats....
sheesh...what a couple of ninnies.
Yup...that's what we did.....
Too bad the writing on the sign didn't show up.
I'll show it to you anyhow. It struck us as funny.
A little white sign telling us there was a big red fire hydrant.
(Uh.... maybe you had to be there? sorry.....)
We didn't see a playground anywhere, but somehow managed to play.
The bricks stick out here....Spiderman!
They even provided trees to climb.
At least that what he figured.
This is a greenhouse you can walk through, up high next to the ferris wheel.
I didn't get pictures of it,, but there's a huge indoor exhibit out toward the end of the pier of stained glass window pictures. They're really beautiful. (There was one that was objectionable, so you might want to go ahead of the kids... ha.) There was also a timeline of Chicago related events. Interesting.
This is at the McDonalds.
There is also a Children's Museum, but we didn't go to it.
There's a "fun house" like you might find at a fair,
and these mirrors are outside it.
Parking on the pier in the ramp was $23 for the day. We found out later you can park in town and there's a free Navy Pier shuttle bus that runs a route. It'd be worth looking into ahead of time!
I suspect the place gets busier in the evening, as there was a ballroom and there were drinking establishments that hadn't even opened yet. It looked like there was a variety of movies and shows, too.
So many things in Chicago are near to each other, like the Pier, the aquarium, planetarium, the Hancock Center, (like the Sears tower, not quite as tall, but at the shoreline.)
(view of Navy pier from top of Hancock building)
(shoreline to the north from the Hancock)
Also nearby are the Museum of Natural History, the "Magnificent Mile" of Michigan Avenue (with the American Girl store), and a big new ball stadium. I didn't notice if it was football or baseball. Oh well...I'm sure those of you who care already know! The Museum of Science and Technology is a short drive away, as is the Sears Tower. I'm sure there's lots more that we missed on our 4 day visit.
Check it out ahead of time, as some things, like a museum, might be free on certain days. And we only sent the kids up the skycraper, to save expenses.
NORTH STONINGTON, Conn. (UPI) -- A pilot whose single-engine Cessna crashed in North Stonington, Conn., said investigators told him the crash was caused by mice aboard the plane.
Danny Hall said his 1968 Cessna suffered engine failure and plummeted into the Pawcatuck River Aug. 2. Federal Aviation Administration investigators told him a mouse nest was the cause of the engine trouble, WSFB-TV, Hartford, Conn., reported Wednesday.
Hall, 42, said the investigation found mice had built a nest in the plane that was sucked along with its occupants into the carburetor after he activated a device designed to prevent icing.
The pilot, who suffered only minor injuries from the crash, said there would have been no way to detect the mice and their nest prior to takeoff without opening up the plane completely for an inspection of its innards.
We had a really huge mechanic's bill once because mice had gotten up into the engine area of my son's car and chewed their way through all kinds of stuff. This seemed to have happened practically overnight, as he was driving it regularly. That time of year is coming up again...when they start looking for shelter.
So, what do we do?????
Go see Mary on Fridays at Canada Girl for more Show N Tells.
Uh. Bob just left town with his flash drive in his pocket. It has most of our trip pictures on it. BUT DON'T DISMAY! I have the last day still on my camera...
(What were those old jokes about going to people's houses and getting stuck looking at family slide shows of their trips? Are any of you old enough to remember those?)
I think this is a much better system, don't you? You don't know who looked and who couldn't care less. And you don't get stuck having to look when you'd rather be doing something else.
Anyhow...I love this shot of Josiah at the Adler Planetarium, even though you can hardly see him.
I thought some of you might like to try this with your kids!
We're studying astronomy this year (Apologia) in a co op, so really saw a lot here, but it really didn't make for interesting photos. Lucky you, eh?
This was leading up to our 4D movie experience at Shedd Aquarium. It was on The Shallow Seas, which we had just seen at Six Flags in 2D, due to one of their many glitches. It was good, so we were wondering what the 4D was about, until we saw all the paraphernalia attached to our seats.
Sheesh.....we were splashed, spit on, squirted in the face, poked in the back, rumbled in our seats, made to feel we were being electrified, (but the tiny bubbles all over were fun.)
Actually, the only "problems" were the unappreciated full powered watergun in the face that I decided to put out of commission with my foot, and the air squirter under our seats that whiplashed the back of our legs if we were unlucky.
We had this "thing" going right from the beginning of our trip, where anytime there was the slightest irritation or setback, someone would say, "This is the best vacation ever!" We had a lot of opportunity for fun with that! It kept us laughing all through the trip....
Like with our 3 day stay at this hotel where Josiah couldn't wait to get into the pool. He didn't even want to eat at this fancy Rainforest Cafe or anything for wanting to swim.
We went down to see it, and the pool couldn't have been any bigger than our bedroom, with a whirlpool the size of a dining room table. I was so afraid for his disappointment.
As we silently scooted single file around the edge to all have a seat in the wider area at the end, I could see him trying to be really brave. That's when I noticed the sign on the wall saying we could put 41 people into that little pool. We got to laughing so hard at the image of all those people crammed into that little pool trying to have fun that somehow he got totally over his disappointment. That had to have been from the Lord. Thank you, Jesus, for that one.
Anyhow. Back at the aquarium, these little wormy fish were interesting.
When a fish came by they scooted back in real short.
I was hoping to see what they would do if food came by.
No such luck.
Of course this was really awesome to see.
How can one not believe in God when seeing all this stuff??
Personally, I thought the rainforest was a little creepy, especially after seeing this animal planet show at the hotel called Eaten Alive (I was the only one in the room, thank goodness....) It made me really glad Christine's trip to Honduras was already over with and she had done it with me being totally oblivious to all the little things that could take up residence in her body. Ick.
Can you see what he's wanting her to look at?
(This is a little "dress" she found on the Magnificent Mile on Michigan Avenue. She's 18, and still loves to play dress up. She still has to find the right stuff to go under it, but this was what she had along with her on the trip.)
This is where they had a lot of fun.
They could scroll these pictures and see everything that was in this aquarium, and then look for it.
Of course, this being the best vacation ever, we "just missed" the last show with the ocean mammals. But we got to go underground and watch them swimming. There were also exhibits of penquins, otters, frogs, and lizards, including a Komodo dragon. Did you know they bring down water buffalo? They also hunt in groups, and can smell food miles away like a vulture. Scary creatures. So glad we don't have to think about those around here.
All done and headed home. Got home at midnight.....
My feet were killing me. Too much concrete in Chicago!
OK...this is a shot Josiah took of Tidbits out on the porch....
and she's creeping around scared.
Of what, you might ask? Look who came up close for a visit and a closer look at her!
But I'm afraid I'm going to have to draw the line at this.
I've only been letting them out of their pen during the day for a week now.
They're great at bug control!
But this is NOT going to become their afternoon nap roost if I can help it.
(no names yet....but only because I can't tell the hens apart yet!)
Uh ohhhh. Scary birds again....
Maybe I can pounce up there and scare them this time!
Uhh... Hello?? Wake up and look at me~
This isn't working
I don't think they care how many of us there are....thanks anyhow.
(Did you notice our new little friend?)
This is Mitzie.
Her owner had to move to Arizona without her. It's taken her two months to decide to come out of Josiah's room and join the rest of the family. These are our first pictures of her. For those of you who remember Isabelle, we had to give her away to someone who could make her an outside cat in a safe environment. Finding that special someone was quite an answer to prayer, as a declawed kitty who makes mistakes in the house hasn't much hope in this world.
Anyhow, Mitzie loves the kids and they love her, so it made it easier to have had to say goodbye to Isabelle. And Mitzie doesn't hiss at Tidbits!
(any of you remember how awful that was??)
Old posts, in case you have nothing else to do... ha:
I'll have to visit everyone when we get back, as we're leaving this morning for a few days in Chicago...
P.S. Please pray for my son. A long term relationship that ended recently is suddenly taking a big toll on him. He had wanted to marry this gal, and he's realizing it's over. He's not doing well. Thanks
We're gearing up for our 15th year of homeschooling...
JT is living with friends in town...
We're getting ready to take Christine off to college at the end of the month...
Josiah will be the only one living at home in actuality, although the others still list our address as theirs...
and we spent the afternoon at emergency waiting to see if Bob was still deathly allergic to bee sting.
Good news: he isn't
Bad news: we had a big medical co-pay
Seems now that we could have figured that one out sitting in their parking lot, eh? Oh well. Even at my age you still live and learn the hard way at times.
I'm just now remembering that a bunch of us here at HSB did how-we-met wedding posts a while back. For those curoius ones of you who didn't know me back in March of '07, here's my old post from March 2007 on how we met and our wedding, back in 1985. Yes, I'm probably old enough to be mom to several of you, and maybe even grandmom?
Beware: Things you really don't want to find out the hard way...
1. A king size waterbed holds enough water to fill a 2,000 sq. foot house
four inches deep.
2. If you spray hair spray on dust bunnies and run over them with rollerblades, they can ignite.
3. A 3-year-old's voice is louder than 200 adults in a crowded restaurant.
4. If you hook a dog leash over a ceiling fan, the motor is not strong enough to rotate a 42 pound boy wearing Batman underwear and a superman cape. It is strong enough, however, to spread paint on all four walls of a 20x20 foot room.
5. You should not throw baseballs up when the ceiling fan is on. When using the ceiling fan as a bat, you have to throw the ball up a few times before you get a hit. A ceiling fan can hit a baseball a long way.
(My own edit: see what happened when my son's replica civil war gun was thrown up and hit the ceiling fan: civil war injury post)
6. The glass in windows (even double pane) doesn't stop a baseball hit by a
ceiling fan.
7. When you hear the toilet flush and the words "Uh-oh", it's already too late.
8. Brake fluid mixed with bleach makes smoke, and lots of it.
9. A six-year-old can start a fire with a flint rock, even though a 36-year-old man says they only do it in the movies. A magnifying glass can start a fire even on an overcast day.
10. Certain Lego's will pass right through the digestive tract of a four-year-old.
11. "Play-Doh" and "microwave" should never be used in the same sentence.
12. Super glue is forever.
13. No matter how much Jell-O you put in a swimming pool you still can't walk on water.
14. Pool filters do not like Jell-O.
15. VCR's do not eject PB&J sandwiches even though TV commercials show
they do.
16. Garbage bags do not make good parachutes.
17. Marbles in gas tanks make lots of noise when driving.
18. You probably do not want to know what that odor is.
19. Always look in the oven before you turn it on. Plastic toys do not like ovens.
20. Some fire departments have a 5 minute response time.
21. The spin cycle on the washing machine does not make earth worms dizzy. It will however make cats dizzy. Cats throw up twice their body weight when dizzy.
I don't even want to know how all these were compiled.......
We now have three little hens and a little rooster. They're quite young, so we're not sure yet just what they're going to look like once they get their feathers all organized. I'm sure I'll keep you posted if they start to look any different! ha.
I can see now why it was recommended that I get the little rooster to go with them. These little hens, barely out of the fluff and into their feathers, simply adore him. It's obvious they trust him with their little lives.
He's the one who is all alert to everything, and he'll call to them if they get separated from him when I'm working in the pen. They frantically run around in a little hen clique, trying to get next to him.
I'm glad I figured that out, because when I went out after dark to see if they had figured out their routine for the night, there they were in a little huddle on the ground. Not the best situation. I quickly discovered that when I approached them with a flashlight, they would just sit there mesmerized. So I decided to pick up the little fella first and pop him into the straw-filled nesting box. Yup...he didn't jump back out looking for the others as I suspect a hen would have done, but instead extended his neck and called to them! One by one I popped them in and they were so happy to snuggle down with him into that straw!
So now, we're about to discover if we're cut out to be chicken farmers. They won't start laying for quite some time, and when they do there'll be these little bitty eggs, as these are Bantam chickens. I remember my parents had these little Bantee eggs, and I only remember that the yolks were a richer color.
So if the kids can get used to that, we'll do alright. And if we can handle having to tend to them in the cold of winter. And if the critters don't get them. And if we can set them up well for when we want to go away for a few days. And if the chicken feed doesn't offset any savings we realize on eggs.
They're really too little to eat, for all the work involved in butchering them. So maybe we'll end up naming them after all. If we end up keeping them, right? They seem to have cuteness going for them...or is that just something about me and all my little pets? Oh...did I say "pets??" (Shhhhhhh)
This was a cool looking cloud we saw on a several hour car trip spent dodging storms as best we could. Some of the clouds that were all lit up with lightning inside them and that had storms pouring out the bottom of them were so cool to look at, but we thankfully didn't have to drive through any of them. Somehow our timing was such that they sort of wove their way around us as they all went from west to east and we were going south.
This is the same cloud a few minutes later. I don't think we quite captured the awesomeness of it all as it blew up and outwards.
It's like it was being brushed upwards with powerful handstrokes.
Anyhow.....I just wish you could have watched it with us.
My fella was fighting Urguls in the dining room the other day.
He had an old wooden shield made at Christian Service Brigade
and a sword fashioned from a broken barrel from a toy rifle.
His sword slipped out of his hand, and immediately disappeared.
The window shade looked disturbed,
so he went to see if it was stuck behind it.
take a closer look...
This is what he found on the deck.
The do it yourself price is over $60.
A week from now we have to install the glass ourselves,
hoping I measured well.
Please pray for my homeschooler friend Stephanie. She and her daughter Katie were in a car hit by a guy running a stop sign, and now she has blood clots in her lower leg. Her 18 yr old daughter is recovering well, with injury lingering in her right hand.
I don't understand why Stephanie's at home instead of in the hospital. She'll be talking to her practitioner today about it. Too many questions.
I'm concerned that:
Stephanie isn't supposed to move her leg.
She's supposed to move her legs once an hour.
She's supposed to stay off her leg.
She has to move to go to the bathroom.
She's on all these really serious medications to dissolve the clot.
She went from having one clot to having several (smaller?) clots.
She doesn't know what symptoms there might be to tell her they're moving....are there any?
I don't get it....this is life-threatening if one were to travel to her lung or heart.
She lives way out in the county far from any medical facilities.
Please pray for her condition and for her medical treatment.
We finally found something in the plant.
It wasn't even on a green leaf! Duh......
Showing off? Nope. Found a bug.
This is where I grabbed them from, but with only a little pinpoint of light from a pocket flashlight
This is where I attempted to bed them down. ha. I still don't know if they stayed. (I think I was hoping to find them in there tonight....) 
The staff have worked really hard here. 
Ready for a first look at her dorm room.
This is Ashley. They've met online, and Christine is excited to be getting to know her. They seem to have a lot in common. The staff who have been getting to know the incoming freshmen over the past year got together and using a questionnaire, prayed about matching up roommates who would likely work out well together. 
The room was so tiny and crowded, we decided to go eat lunch while she and her family unloaded, seeing how they had eaten on the way. A wonderful complimentary lunch was provided for everyone under the Old Oak Tree. 
Even though we looked over the papers, we still missed the ice cream social. 
Anyhow, back at the dorm...there were lots of upperclassmen who came two days early to help the freshmen move in their stuff. They also helped the girls understand how this "stackable" furniture could be arranged all these different ways to make this tiny crowded room more livable. Last year this floor had all singles, but due to higher enrollment, they're doubles now. I wish I had gotten a picture of how it looked when they first arrived. It was pathetic....so we moved most of the stuff back out to the hallway (including mattresses) and let the experts help rearrange the furniture while grandmas worried about the fire hazard obstructions in the hallway! Anyhow, they now have the beds up on their desk and a dresser/shelf unit. This freed up the floor space near the window.
She found this waste basket available in the hallway...perfect size and shape!
This is half the size of the dresser I had at school.
It didn't take long before we all had bumped our heads on this. It's actually designed to set higher up above the desk and dresser units, but because of the low ceilings, they set the mattress bed right onto the furniture instead of the bed legs on the furniture. Does that make sense? Ouch....
Note all that head room! Bob went out and got them both clip-on fans so they could sleep better at night. She tried it without the ladder. ha. See an earlier pic for the ladders they need for this. And you can see more easily how they set the beds lower in this pic. 
This is all the space she has between the bed and the closet. This is being used for her bedside table. I'm trying to figure how to make it higher for her so she can reach her clock and glasses more easily.
Thankfully she can push her clothes off to the side to get to her other things. I noticed later that her roommate doesn't seem to have that extra room off to the side so she's really tight.
This is their window nook. Note the fridge her roommate brought!
I'm so glad for her wonderful view. And she doesn't need a wall clock in the room. ha.
During a (free!) dinner, we noticed outside the window a young couple on a bench under the oak tree. It looked to us like they were having a sad goodbye kind of a time instead of dinner. I remembered my first roommate went home after one term because she missed her boyfriend. It was sad to see, in more ways than one.
That's Christine in the black top listening to them address all of us after dinner.
This is the university president. He was our Sunday School teacher for several years until taking this new job this June. We were so pleased, as we had already chosen her university. But knowing he would be leading it gave us an extra measure of confidence in the direction it would be taking.
This is her meeting with her core group for the first time. One of the girls is a homeschooler from our area who has a lot of mutual friends with Christine. 
This annual ceremony involves stretching a ribbon all the way around the circle of new students who have their parents standing behind them. This was another instance of the many times of prayer throughout the day. They then cut it so each student had a piece, and parents could have one, too. 
Josiah is saying that it helps him to not feel so badly about missing her if he reminds himself about how much fun she's having. 
This is her dorm. Her window is the one peeking out of the roof on the right. 
Let's not get in too much trouble.....we've just arrived!
These shoes were a gift from Grandparents,
He can sure get around in these...
Yup...it's a long ways up there....
And yes, we did. Christine and I, that is. 
We thought we would be fine,
Yup...that's what we did.....
Too bad the writing on the sign didn't show up. 
We didn't see a playground anywhere, but somehow managed to play.
They even provided trees to climb.
This is a greenhouse you can walk through, up high next to the ferris wheel.
This is at the McDonalds.
There's a "fun house" like you might find at a fair,
(view of Navy pier from top of Hancock building)
(shoreline to the north from the Hancock)
Anyhow...I love this shot of Josiah at the Adler Planetarium, even though you can hardly see him. 
I thought some of you might like to try this with your kids!
Anyhow. Back at the aquarium, these little wormy fish were interesting.
Of course this was really awesome to see. 
Can you see what he's wanting her to look at? 
This is where they had a lot of fun. 
Look who came up close for a visit and a closer look at her! 
But I'm afraid I'm going to have to draw the line at this. 
Uh ohhhh. Scary birds again....
Maybe I can pounce up there and scare them this time!
Uhh... Hello?? Wake up and look at me~
This isn't working
I don't think they care how many of us there are....thanks anyhow. 
(Did you notice our new little friend?)
This is Mitzie. 
take a closer look...
This is what he found on the deck.
