Lord, That I May See

I miss you!

1.  The girls are often commenting on Sparky's "fake crying" act.  He hates it.  One day he is crying and carrying on about something, and then stops suddenly, turns to me and says in a completely normal voice, "Mom, I'm real  crying."  Then he starts crying again. 2.  Sunshine:  I don't like wet kisses.  I wipe them off.  I mean, well, I try not to wipe them off.   I know they are for love, but . . . I don't really like them. 3.   When Rosebud cut her foot open and we were waiting for the doctor to numb her foot before the stitches, D. was trying to persuade her to let him take a picture of her wound on his phone.  She would cry at the suggestion and shake her head vehemently.  The other day she told him, "Sorry I didn't let you take a picture of my foot, Daddy.  I was just kind of out of my mind." 4.   Last week D. found a robin's nest in a small tree in our back yard.  There we...

We spent a week at the Bay House  this summer!  It is pretty near a perfect vacation spot for doing all the different things that we love.  We were blessed to be there and to have a great Pop-Pop and Nana to make it possible! Unfortunately, we were unable to get the motor on the boat to work, though the men tried!  So, the tubing and cruising that we looked forward to with that didn't happen. Cousin B. and Sparky had time to become better friends, and of course we re-staged the cute  picture we took last year .  Turtle was old enough to drive the golf cart this year, much to her pride and delight. Rosebud had an injury the very first day on the piles of rocks in the bay when an oyster shell (we think) sliced her ankle almost to the bone.  We were worried about nearby artery and tendon damage but thankfully, there wasn't any.  She had to get six stitches in what was our family's first trip to the emerge...

They grew!

Much to my pride and delight ;) I've been reading a lot this summer. Long summer days of reading are some of those glowing memories of my young girlhood -- a glass of something cold, bare feet, a stack of books and no sense of the passage of time.   Although, I definitely can't get that exact kind of reading back -- (someday?) --I am finding, once again, that reading is definitely a habit that I can maintain or lose.  I can  make time for it if I try . . . at least in the summer, when the schedule is lighter!  Here are the fiction books I've read so far this summer.    1.   The Time Machine, by H. G. Wells This is one of those classics that I've always planned to read someday.  It's a old-fashioned science fiction adventure with a clear prophecy of social doom.   In fact, it was one of the books that started the science fiction genre altogether.  I believe I enjoyed the idea  of reading "a classic" more ...

"Look," says Sparky, pointing at the floor.  "Daddy's!" He is pointing at one of the yellow dry cleaners tags that come home on every clean shirt of Daddy's. "Oh, I always see those tags everywhere in this room!" says Sunshine. "Yup, me too." I say, "Daddy always throws them on the floor." "Maybe he doesn't know where the trash can is?" suggests Sunshine, perkily.  I laugh. Then she says, "Oooooorrr, maybe he PUTS them in the trash, but the fan just blows them back out." Nice try, child.

Continuing my thoughts today, with five more lessons I am learning about being married . . .  Be responsible for your own happiness It is too much to place on another person the weight of responsibility for your happiness.  Of course, in any relationship, the one's well-being necessarily affects the other, but ultimately you can choose to be happy on your own.  No one can steal your joy, and by the same token no one human being can create it for you.  Take your needs to God Or, as my mother would say, "don't be a black hole."   A black hole sucks everything close by into itself and swallows it, without giving anything back and without anything changing or affecting that hole.  If you expect all your needs to be met by your spouse you will be disillusioned and discouraged by how human they end up being.  I will be learning the lesson all my life of these words:  "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want."  ...