I find tending my flower and vegetable garden to be a relaxing change of pace. It gets me outside every day and the colors, textures and fragrances are soothing. The children are growing in their love for tending things too. Loved this moment in school when Q took the time to include A in her math lesson. She methodically taught her how to add numbers and solve equations. It was beautiful to observe. All week we have been discussing Palm Sunday so when we got to church I told the children to wish everyone a “Happy Palm Sunday!” Arden eagerly listened to me and heartily wished the first person she saw a “Happy Pollen Day!”“Mom, wouldn’t it be nice if you only had one child- and it was me, of course, since I was your first. You wouldn’t have so much work to do!”One of them has the pretend name of Lolli and her pretend nickname is Pop. We are practicing kindness over here; it really doesn’t come naturally. In these times, Scripture is an invaluable resource. We can instill it in their hearts and speak it to them when we don’t know what to say anymore. God’s word is powerful even in the smallest of hearts. This is girl has been running a fever and she gets sad whenever I say her fever is getting better. It’s such a luxury to be sick, I guess. 🤷🏼♀️This boy has amazing older siblings! Today GH changed the sheets on his own bed all by himself and made his bed afterwards. Q helped Poppa make lunch!In these crazy confusing times it’s so much easier to seclude ourselves rather than step out and interact. But today we met up with friends and it was SO GOOD!! It felt good to laugh and compare notes on life and just live like everything is back to normal. Are the bad days a measure of how we are doing or are the good days? Or is it a little of both?Some hilarious quotes from GH while he was playing with his siblings: “Quinley, if there’s anything you don’t know, just show it to me and I’ll tell you. I know all sorts of things.” And later on when they were playing family: “I try to not feed my son too many carbs. I just feed him things like pizza, bananas, and things like that.”I recently read about the importance of plodding. There are those seasons when life is long and hard and we see few results. In those seasons, we need to keep doing what needs to be done and also take time for those special traditions: like Tea and Mail or quiet family reading. They offer comfort and soothe the plodding soul. There was an unexpected tornado warning yesterday. We hid in the closet and talked. I was reminded about how suddenly life can change. Shilo bowed his head, folded his hands and prayed softly to himself, “Jesus, please help the tomato not to get us.”Do you see the little boy carrying a big stick? He he always searching for nature’s treasures and bringing them to me. Sometimes it’s a huge stick; other times it’s a unique rock; and always there are flowers. They have a toy alligator they named Aloe Vera. Some special things from this weekend: 💕a play date with new neighbors 💕tea and a long chat with a loved neighbor 💕soup and sandwiches with dear friends 💕discovering fun things we forgot we had to hope doing some new year cleaning 💕hearing the cheerful chattering of the children as they played together outsideTonight I had the perfect moment: sitting on our back porch at dusk, feeding the baby, listening to the other 5 playing together, and watching the geese. Invigorating Celtic music was playing and behind me the warmth of my bedside lamp glowed through the window. All of a sudden the geese took flight off of the water! The water turned into billows of white foam as they lifted off and soared into the sky, one after another. In that perfect moment I thought, “Yes! It’s good to be alive and know that the earth is the Lord’s footstool.”Back when I was in my first years of college I assembled these pictures collages. It wasn’t long after 9/11 and patriotism was at its zenith. I was inspired to put together all that represented America in my mind, a blending of all that I saw as good, noble and heroic in our country. Today I pulled them out for the children to view; they pointed at pictures and inquired and I ended up telling them about the WTC and what happened after it. They were riveted to the stories and there was a stirring in my heart to still love my country even though it’s in rough shape right now.One of my favorite times of the day is our recess. After morning school and lunch we head outside for 15-20 minutes and just see where our imaginations take us. Sometimes you get the most accomplished when you don’t have anything planned.
