Lord, That I May See

These wonderful best-you-ever-tasted raspberries will come and go without us. The daisies are coming soon -- my sister planted for us as a wedding present, along with purple petunias. The day lily that was a birthday present from a friend last year -- I haven't gotten to see it bloom. The wild roses that are everywhere now.

because we roast marshmellows for s'mores over our still-hot charcoal grill after dinner. Tonight was our last night.

is a good time to say: We have come to the end of a chapter in the life of our family. Our family will be moving this Saturday away from our dear little country home to a rented house in the suburbs among the cities where our construction company finds all its business. My dear practical grandpa summed it up when we told him. He said: "Economics makes a lot of people move." Yes, it does. Whether they like it our not. We hope that this move will make the strain of the work load easier on my husband, and he will not have to spend 3-4 hours a day in the car. We will not be selling our house here, just renting it, so we may come back in a few years. This is especially hard for me, as I feel I will wilt away from my beloved country. I feel that God is asking too much of me, and yet I know He can and will strip you of everything that you love if He sees fit. I am trying very hard to say "Yes" to His Will. We hope that we can find the happiness there that we hav...

This is what the kids and I are riding in for the week, courtesy of Enterprise. I feel . . . . well, funny driving it. :)

My house is dirty -- the floor, the dishes, everything. It is also disordered -- piles of dirty laundry to be washed, clean laundry to be folded. My toddler is dirty too -- she hasn't been bathed in nearly two weeks (she refuses these days) My refrigerator is empty, and my cupboards are too. My checkbook is unbalanced. My bills are unpaid. My lawn is unmown -- read: 3 feet high . . . .LITERALLY. And there are at least 25 other imminently-needing-to-be-done things on my list that I won't even mention because I think my brain would explode. And I'm blogging about it because I am too overwhelmed to do anything.

Five families went camping in the woods the first weekend of May. It was an ordeal -- with 8 children under 3 and a campsite full of poison ivy, a weekend shadowed by the threat of rain, two mostly sleepless nights, and 5:30am mornings, and the Sunday mass some of us attended was disturbingly illicit at best. But I miss it! Not just for what it was, but for what it wasn't. There was no stress, no bills, no impeding life-changing decisions, no overdrawn bank account, no auto insurance claims, no computer, no work, no cell-phones. Just sun, and rain, green and brown and gold, fire and food and games with friends. There was the sound of birds in the morning, the smell of tents and smoke, the sight of sunlight on the children's light hair and the sweet taste of smores and the heartiness of food prepared outdoors. It was a good weekend. And as we drove home, dirty and tired through the sunlit Sunday evening, I felt a reluctance to return to the work and stress of our life in these ...

"Man is never assured of obtaining anything, and everything which he holds in his hands can easily slip from his grasp from one day to the next; there is no guarantee on which he can count absolutely. . . "One could even say that the surest way to lose one's peace is precisely to try and assure one's own life solely with the aid of human industry, with personal projects and decisions or by relying on someone else. In what state of anxiety and torment does one place himself who thus seeks to save himself, given our powerlessness, our limited forces, the impossiblity of foreseeing so many things and the deceptions that can come from those we count on. To preserve peace in the midst of the hazards of human existence, we have only one solution: We must rely on God alone, with total trust in Him, as Your heavenly Father know what you need. (Matt 6:32)" ~ Searching For & Maintaining Peace: A Small Treatise on Peace of Heart by Father Jacques Philippe

and Marriage: http://www.crosswalk.com/1412081/ This is beautiful!

I love little children's hands and feet. There is something so innocent and sweet about them.

Like her mohawk?